The Ongoing Disasters of the EPIC Games Store

Both of these are examples. There's also:

• Valve's former--and illegal--Steam "refund" policy, under which you could never receive a refund, period. Which it then replaced by requiring all game purchasers to waive their right to a refund. Which was then replaced with a policy of "you can receive Steam credit." It took years of consumer outrage, and a $3 million fine from an Australian court, before Steam finally relented and gave us consumers what literally every video game store offers--refunds.
  
• Valve takes a 30% cut of every game sold on Steam. Yes, big developers can absorb those costs, but up-and-coming developers and indies are slammed by this. There's no justification for it other than that Steam is a monopoly, and developers realistically have nowhere else to go if they want to sell games on PC. This is both anti-developer and, by limiting the ability of smaller developers to create and sell us games, anti-consumer.
• Valve's treatment of Steam Workshop creators is even worse; historically, Valve has taken 75% or more of profits from Steam Workshop sales. Indeed, they have told creators that they don't have a right to any payment for their work. And they force creators to keep their own sales data confidential. Again, because Valve is a monopoly, they easily get away with screwing over content creators and consumers like this.

We continue to use Steam despite all of this (and more). But when Epic lures one game away from Steam, we consumers think it's such a dirty move that we grab our digital torches and get ready to burn its store to the ground. The double standards are incredible.

Folks, if you want to stick with Steam exclusively because you don't like the inconvenience of having to select a different .exe file to run before your game can launch, fine. But targeting the Epic Game Stores as part of some kind of moral crusade because they're "anti-consumer" over this Metro Exodus incident, while putting faith in Valve as a "good guy," is seriously misguided. Valve is as anti-consumer and anti-developer as the law and market allows them to be, and one of the few things that can help make them less anti-consumer and anti-developer is having some real competition in the marketplace. Again, let's not cut off our noses to spite our faces.

 

You forget that people complain about all of those things and deal with them together and individually as appropriate.

"Exclusively" is Epic's deal, Steam allows placement of games on their service and others without requiring Exclusive use.

And, what a bunch of BS it is with you and others trying to say this is because we don't want to bother using another "Icon" or ".exe", that's bombastic hyperbole, and nowhere near the truth, and you know it.

Not going along with or being a part of a criminally minded business transaction motivated solely at stealing away Game IP, an action that shows us all that we can't trust Tencent / Deep Silver / Epic Game Store to honor business arrangements - they'll come in a rob a place blind if they idiotically think it will advance their goals or put ill-gotten gains in their pockets.

I am fine waiting for a year for a game I saw for sale on Steam that seems to be unavailable "due to forces outside their control" and now won't be available until February 14th 2020.

Another day, another game that doesn't deliver on time as promised through Steam.

 

For many people, it is the truth. There are people in this very thread who have said the reason they don't want to use the Epic Games Store is because they want the convenience of everything centralized on a single launcher. Regardless, that isn't my main point. I take more issue with people letting Valve off the hook for its books'-worth of sins while condemning to death its would-be competitors who have sinned far less.

And thank you for editing out of your original message that uncalled-for dig about me "needing work." Let's continue to keep things civil.

 

That's not truth, that's made up BS being repeated over and over once it's misunderstood or misspoken.

And you keep changing the subject away from the crime's of Tencent / Deep Silver / Epic, to dull the sharpness of our complaint with the situation.

That's not truth, that's not so subtle manipulation of the conversation away from the pursuit for truth.

Again, you are changing the point away from the crimes of Tencent / Deep Silver / Epic, and trying to pull in dirt about the victum in this particular instance - and trying to justify the crimes at hand through supposed victim's offenses, like Steam doesn't deserve honest treatment.

I call BS on that tactic, it takes justice away from those that were victimized.

So far all you guys have done is make a breeze in the thread, with nothing substantial to offer as an excuse for Tencent / Deep Silver / Epic's behavior, but of course there is no excuse, so it was a fool's errand all along.

If you want to become complicit in Tencent / Deep Silver / Epic's bad behavior, then open an account and purchase Metro: Exodus.

The rest of us will wait for Metro: Exodus to come back to Steam, and enjoy life honestly and fully without becoming an accomplice of Tencent / Deep Silver / Epic's bad behavior.

 

Except that Valve/Steam actually provides devs/users with numerous value-added and pro-consumer features that Epic can’t touch, such as the whole SteamWorks suite (servers, anti-cheat, cloud storage, inventory, marketplace, third-party workshop support, DLC hosting, Steam Direct, etc.), community hub features (forums, guides, user generated content sharing), support infrastructure, stats monitoring and achievements, VR support, Linux support, SteamOS, Big Picture Mode, support for alternative input devices such as Steam Controller, broadcasting, in-home streaming, parental control, family sharing, reviews, curators, tagging, algorithmically generated recommendations, and last but not least the largest install base of PC gamers on the planet.

As for Valve’s cut, it’s 30% but goes down to 25% or 20% depending on how much the game sells on Steam. A dev can simply sell keys on their own website and keep 100%, which in fact many indie devs do, since Steam allows devs to generate an unlimited supply of keys, while still benefitting from all the features I listed above.

 

Funny thing, preload will be available only on Steam (ha,ha):
https://twitter.com/MetroVideoGame/...iframe/2/twitter.min.html#1095389361082978305
BTW, my taptop is ready:

 

Stop saying that I'm trying to "justify" what Epic did. I've acknowledged, repeatedly, that it was a dirty move. What you seem incapable or unwilling to acknowledge is that Steam also has made more than its own fair share of dirty moves, nor can you comprehend how intellectually inconsistent it is to excuse Valve for their "crimes" while literally calling for the Epic Store to die.

To accuse me of "manipulation" and of "taking away justice from those that were victimized" is beyond hyperbolic. You clearly feel strongly about this, but strong feelings and strong words do not substitute for reasoned discussion. You seem more interested in accusing people who disagree with you of acting in bad faith than in legitimately trying to understand their viewpoints and conversing with them respectfully, so I honestly see no reason to continue talking to you about this.

 

Is there gonna be preload? I thought there wasn't gonna be one for steam.

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

Well, they also did say Metro: Exodus would be released for sale on Steam, and that turned out to be a lie, so how can we believe them on anything they say??

https://twitter.com/MetroVideoGame/status/1095389361082978305

I guess those poor saps that pre-ordered Metro: Exodus on Steam will have to see what really happens, when it *really* happens.

This is the kind of general uncertainty that builds into an environment of disbelief that they've earned by going back on their word with Steam to sell Metro: Exodus on Steam.

 

https://twitter.com/MetroVideoGame/status/1095417771867996160