Some Epic Store Games Are Pushing Back or Scrapping Steam Releases

They need to make a light-weight client for each game. When you start the game, 10MB or RAM is used to authenticate your game. Like a Steam-thin client or something.

My biggest gripe is the start-up times for Steam, Origin, etc.

I go back and play a DRM free game, it starts in two seconds... Start Steam, etc... it takes like 30 seconds before you can actually launch a game.
 
Flogger23m said:
I don't really understand this blind loyalty. If the platform sucks (because all of the good games are not on there) why continue using it? Unless something big happens at Valve, Steam will be nothing more than a platform for crappy free to play games built on a 14 year old + game engine & other worthless low effort cash grabs in 3-5 years. I'll certainly miss Steam but if through neglect Valve lets that platform slip further they only have themselves to blame. And I won't remain loyal to a company increasingly becoming mediocre.
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Steam is basically the only thing that kept pc gaming alive for one. Secondly, all the new stores are just blatant money grabs along with generally being bad applications and provide zero benefit for actual consumers.
 
Lakados said:
It's not just EPIC's model they will have to contend with, Microsoft is launcing a lot of new stuff that should be tieing in the XBox and PC platforms very nicely for Q4 2019. A lot of people laugh at MS and their games platform but they still made 3x more than Valve this year granted that was mostly with Xbox but they are working hard on tieing that back to PC.
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And they've been working hard at that for the last decade+.
 
aaronspink said:
Steam is basically the only thing that kept pc gaming alive for one.
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Outright false. PC gaming was only "dying" because the AAA publishers didn't count digital sales into publicized sales figures until around 2014 or so. That and higher piracy rates. Understandable, but companies like Ubisoft made outlandish claims that 90% of all copies played were pirated copies which resulted in a loss of 90% of sales. No doubt part of the reason they're less hostile to PC gamers these days is they are planning to make subscription models and streaming models, which will debut on PC first before consoles. In fact it may very well be the thing that kills off traditional consoles. Clearly EA games has been pushing this - take BF5's early release to those who pay a monthly subscription. Even Far Cry 5 and Assassin's Creed Origins had explicit mentions of streaming video games mentioned in the game worlds. Ubisoft has publicly stated this is the future of gaming. Microsoft clearly has been gearing up for this as well. If I recall the next generation will have two Xboxs, a streaming only box and a traditional console.

So yeah, the publishers are buttering up PC gamers in the short term. But we'll likely be the first to be screwed by streaming / subscription only games.
 
umeng2002 said:
They need to make a light-weight client for each game. When you start the game, 10MB or RAM is used to authenticate your game. Like a Steam-thin client or something.

My biggest gripe is the start-up times for Steam, Origin, etc.

I go back and play a DRM free game, it starts in two seconds... Start Steam, etc... it takes like 30 seconds before you can actually launch a game.
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I don't have this problem. They seem to start up right away for me.

But then I have to sit through forced splash screens that cannot be skipped, every single time...
 
Flogger23m said:
Outright false. PC gaming was only "dying" because the AAA publishers didn't count digital sales into publicized sales figures until around 2014 or so. That and higher piracy rates. Understandable, but companies like Ubisoft made outlandish claims that 90% of all copies played were pirated copies which resulted in a loss of 90% of sales. No doubt part of the reason they're less hostile to PC gamers these days is they are planning to make subscription models and streaming models, which will debut on PC first before consoles. In fact it may very well be the thing that kills off traditional consoles. Clearly EA games has been pushing this - take BF5's early release to those who pay a monthly subscription. Even Far Cry 5 and Assassin's Creed Origins had explicit mentions of streaming video games mentioned in the game worlds. Ubisoft has publicly stated this is the future of gaming. Microsoft clearly has been gearing up for this as well. If I recall the next generation will have two Xboxs, a streaming only box and a traditional console.

So yeah, the publishers are buttering up PC gamers in the short term. But we'll likely be the first to be screwed by streaming / subscription only games.
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I will quit games all together before I ever pay a subscription fee for a game or online service.
 
CD Projekt Red has me changing over to GOG when I can but if there's more competition, I'm down.

From reading / watching the YouTubes, no wonder Valve doesn't ever get around to doing Half Life 3 - they get a 30% free ride (now less) from everybody that sells on Steam!

If people gave me a 30% cut off the top (like a boss), I'd be sitting on my ass too.
 
VALVe has done nothing but make STEAM better time and time again for me and my experience. I see zero reason to stop using STEAM and really I have limited to no interest in installing yet another fucking gaming store.

I already have enough fucking accounts to manage, you think I want to manage yet another just to buy games? Get real.

Oh, and STEAM works on Linux too, eat that Epic.
 
lol you seriously underestimate how many people don't like Windows, they use it because they think it's the only choice for gaming.

And before you say it is, it isn't. And I'm part of the effort to prove that.

My dollar is just as valuable as yours.

GoldenTiger said:
And all six people needing steam on Linux rejoiced...
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Steam will always dominate business, The others game client won't able to take Steam down.

I have 506 games on Steam, So...Epic will not the success and try to baits you for free games to play on their new game client.
 
If Steam were just a storefront, this would be great news.
Competition is always good, but in this case the competition benefits developers and there may, or may not, be any trickle down to us the end-user in terms of a higher quality game.

With Steamworks, it's a whole lot more than that and I hope developers, Valve and Epic can play nicely together moving forward as there's several unanswered questions.

Keep in mind, a developer who wants to have a presence in both stores, will also need to spend some of those profits on ensuring their end-users from both stores can communicate and connect across platforms.

Is that even possible? Are there API calls to allow Steam & Epic chat services to talk directly?
Or will the developer now need to spend some of those profits providing an in-game solution that unifies users across platforms?
If yes, then the developer would opt-out of using Steamworks?
Can devs use parts of it (chat) and ignore other features such as achievements or matchmaking or is it offered all-in-one?
If a game releases on Steam, there's a certain level of expectation with using parts of Steamworks such as achievements. I'm not a completionist so not a big deal to me, but I recognize a majority of gamers are.

Epic does have some experience in cross-platform, probably the most of any developer and they understand how important it is, as a game developer.
Are those principles going to remain as Epic also becomes the middleman?

I'm a huge fan of what Steam has done as a gamer, but they need more transparency given to developers so they understand the value of their services at 30%.
I cannot say if it's a good value, only a developer can, but hopefully with good alternatives (half-open solutions like Uplay, Origin and Battle.net don't exactly count) that value can be more easily gauged.

It's NOT a free ride as one person in here said.
The cost of operating, maintaining and improving the Steam interface and infrastructure is there, though invisible because Valve wants it that way.
We see complaints about 30% being too high, but never see sources backing up WHY they are too high. I would enjoy reading an article or two on cost breakdowns and what kind of cost would be required to actually run a service like Steam for millions of players.

Epic will need to add/improve on the functionality that we all take for granted (thanks Steam!) and if they cannot do that while keeping their cut at 12%, it is simple undercutting and not to be lauded.

Epic will need to make serious improvements to the UI to just bring it up to Steam's level, and hopefully this will encourage Valve to make the improvements they've needed for years, along with improving their apparently lacking customer service department.
 
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Jagger100 said:
More gaming stores is not more competition if they don't offer overlapping products.
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Exactly.

In a way, restricting a title to a single retailer, or a subset of retailers is a form of monopolistic behavior.

Make every title available to every retailer who wants to sell it, and let the market choose the winners and losers.
 
Epic game laucher only has like 25 or so games at launch people are so spoiled by the layout of Steam for people it's hard to make a switch and still feel at home.
 
umeng2002 said:
They need to make a light-weight client for each game. When you start the game, 10MB or RAM is used to authenticate your game. Like a Steam-thin client or something.

My biggest gripe is the start-up times for Steam, Origin, etc.

I go back and play a DRM free game, it starts in two seconds... Start Steam, etc... it takes like 30 seconds before you can actually launch a game.
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If your gripe is startup time why not just leave the client running.
 
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