I have some personal qualms about supporting “the biggest fish” in the pond, since that tends to lead to the Apples, the Googles, and the Microsofts.
However, Steam hasn’t particularly abused its market power, and has even used it to create a very successful Linux handheld that has both helped propel Linux desktop adoption and added upstream improvements to Linux in general.
I’ll revise my opinion when Valve changes to a more overtly predatory model of capitalism, but for now, I’ll enjoy only needing to keep a partial eye open.
I’ll revise my opinion when Valve changes to a more overtly predatory model of capitalism
I believe as long they’re not publicly traded )and Gabe is in charge), that’s not a concern.
Being public (or owned by a publicly traded company) tend to bring out these nasty traits. It’s more about finding ways to bring value to shareholders than the customers.
Private companies can be dicks. Public companies can and will be sued by their shareholders if they aren’t big enough dicks.
One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. – Gabe Newell, 2011
Time and again, digital distribution platforms have proved this. Apple Music became a dominant music distribution platform at the height of Napster, LimeWire and other peer to peer sharing apps. They did it, because it was easier to just buy the tracks/albums you wanted than to dig through trackers and websites which may or may not actually have what you want. Netflix became the de-facto source for streaming movies at a time when BitTorrent was common and well known. Again, they made it easy and convenient, while not charging an arm and a leg. Steam also faced competition from BitTorrent piracy. But again, Steam made buying, downloading and running games easier than the pirates. And people are willing to pay for that convenience and not dealing with the crap which floats around the high seas.
And, so long as Steam continues to treat it’s customers right, those customers will keep coming back. And that’s the problem with Pitchford’s whole premise. Developers will go where the customers are. Sure, you’ll get the odd case of a publisher/developer doing an exclusivity deal. But even then, it’s probably limited, because the customers are on Steam. If another storefront wants to draw customers, they need to start with treating customers well. They will still face headwinds, as Steam has a large “first mover” advantage. But, success is going to start with making customers want to come back.
The Epic Games Launcher is so far behind on features compared to Steam it’s not even funny. Epic chose not to try and compete with Steam on that front and to try and force users onto the platform with exclusivity deals and sweeten the deal with free games.
The one user-centric killer feature Epic has in their stack IMHO is the built-in multiplayer crossplay. Except it’s not even exclusive to their store ironically (you do need an Epic account for it though).
Epic chose not to try and compete with Steam on that front
Forget competing, they lack even the basics.
What do you consider basic that it’s still missing? To be honest I’ve felt content with it as a game launcher for a while now, but I admittedly don’t use it that often either.
Linux support.
I kinda understand it not being a priority; even if they dedicated the resources to both create and adequately maintain Linux support, I imagine very few of the games on the platform have native support anyway. Sure, many would work (to varying degrees) with the various bags of tricks available, but it’s still an extra step of compatibility that’s sort of beyond their immediate control.
Fuck off. They paid to remove support for Linux from Rocket League because their launcher doesn’t support it.
Existing games that had Linux support already.
