It’s a shame this game released as the industry is imploding, it’s really cool. Old schools Blizzard level of polish, fun gameplay, barely any players though.

Curious if dick-detecting will be there on launch day or a week after.

Consumers aren’t the only consideration. Even if Epic sucks in many ways they’re much more better for smaller devs because they don’t take anything until you make $1M. One would think that this would be enough for indies to publish there but they don’t want to split sales between platforms (they need all sales to happen on Steam so that they rank better there, it’s the only store that matters).

It’s a viscous cycle where smaller competition like GOG or Itch.io have no chance in hell to compete. I’m pretty sure anyone considering competing with Steam has done this math, hence you get only competition backed by big $$$, which usually is the worst people imaginable.

It’s not leeching, Valve mostly lucked into this monopoly because of how grossly incompetent competition was at the time. Valve owners were rewarded handsomely for this already, there’s no reason for this to continue until heat death of the universe because there’s not that much value added that they provide now.

It’s cool that they pay salaries of like 3 Linux devs and piggyback on Wine work that Codeweavers funded for the past 30 years. You’d think there’s so much more they could do with 30% cut of nearly all PC game sales however which is why they need competition.

Details of such breakup can be ironed out but it’s important to keep in mind that this option exists and was used before successfuly.

Enforce interoperability, lower Valve cut as abusive and punish abusive clauses in developer agreement (you can’t price your game lower than Steam on other storefronts).

Ideally you’d treat Valve like a telecom monopoly, meaning you’d have to break it down into two companies - Valve infra (handling license ledger, storage, bandwidth) and Valve store/developer. Allow other stores to notify that user owns a game and allow access to Valve infra with third party stores. Valve infra can’t give preferential treatment to Valve store.

If Valve is as good as everyone says they have nothing to fear, they provide better service after all. Where I live this approach killed monopolies and prices dropped quickly.

If gambling can be regulated then why not monopolies? This was more to point out Valve won’t behave unless forced to.

Indies don’t release there either. I wrote about an observation in this comment thread - small devs are no longer releasing their games outside of Steam because they need all sales to go into one pot - if they split it between stores they rank lower in the only store that matters.

Aren’t you bothered by the fact that most Valve games these days rely on gambling for monetisation? Aren’t you bothered they don’t make an effort not to advertise gambling to children unless forced to like in Netherlands or Belgium?

Even if GOG gets Linux support it won’t make the devs come there.

I saw what it looked like. We had native ports and Wine (rebranded as Proton by Valve so that it looks like their own product).

EGS is just one store. Devs don’t even bother releasing games outside of Steam and you can’t make the same argument against GOG or Itch.io.

„Gabe wouldn’t do that to me”.

There’s GOG, there’s Itch.io. What’s wrong with them?

Nobody cares about Linux, it has user share close to a margin of error in a poll of 1000 people. Valve employing 3 Linux devs doesn’t offset damage to consumers and devs.

I’ve done so in this community it repeatedly over the course of ~2 years. If you don’t want to make an effort why would I.

It’s the first point of agreement Valve signs with a dev publishing on Steam.

EGS is used as an example. They don’t charge devs until they earn $1M so you’d think games would release there at least but we now have many many Steam exclusives. It’s gotten to the point where indie games release demos on Itch.io but don’t release full games outside of Steam because they need algorithmic momentum there.

Check out EU DMA and how it impacts gatekeepers like Valve (even if Valve somehow dodged that label, probably because their finances are private).

They take 30% cut of nearly all PC game sales. Sony uses that kind of money to sell PS5 at half the cost, employing 3 Linux devs is the least Valve can do.

EU seems to have the right idea with Digital Markets Act.

They don’t have to. You don’t need to abuse your monopoly to be a monopoly (although Valve does in different way). Valve enforces same pricing on all stores a game is available on so EGS can’t compete on price despite having lower cut. In the end customers and developers lose.

Steam is a self perpetuating monopoly because people love having all of their toys in a single place. Just one more confirmation that it’s pointless to try to compete until regulators take a look at this situation.