Steam does. That's why they're the undefeated king.

This applies to everything. If you see a product category where users are legitimately unhappy; then enter it, build something actually good, you'll be the biggest and richest in no-time.

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jrozner 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People hated steam when it launched but you needed it to play CS 1.6. It made installing mods easier. Then HL2 released, orange box, and they were able to get a critical mass as they provided platforms support for other games. Steam got better. It’s still not great but they have so much market share that basically any PC gamer already has it. Epic wants some of that money. The problem is nobody wants to install another store and they aren’t doing anything to improve gamer’s experience other than giving away games and having some exclusives. They’ll never hit the critical mass needed that way.

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wredcoll 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I mean, people really didn't hate it. There was some grumbling about digital and not having a cd, but by and large people liked it as soon as they had broadband.

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ryandrake 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I still don't like Steam. I resent that I have to have this "Store" middle man on my computer just to have access to games. I want to pay a company for their product on their web site, download the installer, and install it on my operating system directly. I don't want this other layer that I'm dependent on, who could switch off my access to the things I "bought" whenever they want.

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ChoGGi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> People hated steam when it launched but you needed it to play CS 1.6.

I thought CSS was the first release on steam beta? I remember playing the crap out of it, then the actual steam release happened, and it somehow turned into a laggy buggy hunk of crap for months.

	▲	rounce 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No, it was 1.6 that was on the Steam beta. That was years before HL2 and CS:S were even leaked let alone released.
	▲	Sleaker 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Steam dropped basically alongside team fortress.

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pas 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

it was pretty meh back then, so people had pretty understandable reasons. it made LAN parties harder for example :)

but it got a lot better.

Epic had more money and time compared to Valve. and their store is still worse.

sure, Steam has an enormous moat, but that won't be the case forever, Epic should be ready with a nice platform to exploit niches that Valve misses

instead they hemorrhage money on things that does not make their fundamental position any better.

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troosevelt 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Steam has a lot of issues but there are too just lots of areas where better products don't win out over inferior products, that's just not how the world works for lots of reasons.

	▲	storus 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Updating games on HDDs on Steam takes ages; I often see the download complete but then wait another 30 minutes for their diff to complete; and that happens with 10-20 games every week when they have big updates (10GB+). Just for this one thing I would switch elsewhere.

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gverrilla 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If you see a product category where users are legitimately unhappy; then enter it, build something actually good, you'll be the biggest and richest in no-time.

In what role-playing game?

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laughing_man 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's what's happening to Windows as we speak.

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johnnyanmac 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Steam was first to market and it took forever for competitors to form.

It being a good service is secondary.

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usrusr 4 hours ago | parent [-]

If Valve started to routinely do Bad Things on Steam they'd be gone pretty quickly. Many would go to GoG, some just stop buying games. Bad Things do occasionally happen (bad things like those "oops, we don't actually have licenses for the music used in the game you bought" revokes), but Valve keeps succeeding in keeping it to a rather low background noise level. Competitors have two decades of being that good or better to catch up. You can't buy trust, you can just put money into not losing any of the trust that grew over time. When competitors have done that for two decades, Valve, unless they fail in the meantime, will have even more.

	▲	johnnyanmac 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I heard the same thing for Discord last month, and reddit and Twitter a few years back. It kind of worked for Twitter due to be outstandiningly bad, but it still didn't "kill" Twitter in the colloquial sense. I don't see it going down any differently with Steam. It may take a dent and open up a competitor, but it won't do a move so catastrophic that it losses its leader status from that alone.