After Borderlands comes crawling back to Steam, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford responds [...] about Steam being killed off by the Epic Store: 'Epic is not pressing their advantage'

riskable , 9 hours ago

What advantage does EGS have? Epic levels of anti-consumer sentiment? Horrific customer service? Biggest piece of shit company in the gaming industry?

Dudewitbow , 9 hours ago

their advantages are purely for developer tools for games using Unreal. thats about it. the only thing it offers to consumers is their free games.

TachyonTele , 8 hours ago

Exactly.
I have a decent amount of games on epic, but it’s all the free games. I might have one or two I bought years ago.

The games I do like (Prey, Sunless Skies, Tony Hawk, Old World, etc) I put in my steam library. The epic Library is horrible to use. From having games auto install just by clicking on them instead of showing you information on them, to having a web shortcut instead of a shortcut to the exe, it’s just flatout annoying to use.

Banichan , 9 hours ago

Blizzard/Activision must be on break.

Wimopy , 8 hours ago

The moral low ground? Willingness to pay for exclusivity, allowing crypto games, that sort of stuff?

People opening it once a week sometimes to get a free game?

Yeah, I don’t see what Randy is on about, but that guy says a lot of bullshit.

shinratdr , 8 hours ago

Higher revenue cut for publishers. That’s it. This is just a big anti-consumer pissing contest about who gets a bigger slice of the pie when a sale is made. Everything else is just distracting noise. If Valve charged 5% then none of this other stuff would matter. Valve charges 30% base with some sweetheart deals for devs who sell millions of copies. Same as Sony, Nintendo, Apple, and most other online software marketplaces.

This is a high percentage to pay vs retail margins for a brick & mortar storefront, but a reasonable percentage when you think of it as a customer acquisition cost. So the question is, did I go to Steam to buy the game or did I go to Steam and buy the game? Everyone will have a different opinion on this, but in my opinion Valve revived PC gaming when it was on the brink, and a large percentage of sales that happen on the platform are because of the eyeballs it brings and the value it delivers.

Borderlands 4 coming back to Steam is strong evidence of this, even with Epic essentially paying developers the difference in potential lost sales out of pocket. You can’t pay for the lost conversations, word-of-mouth, and other “free” advertising that those lost sales would have generated. So Borderlands 3 looks great on a balance sheet, but nobody really liked it or cared about it, and Epic won’t pay you to make games nobody plays forever.

It might seem better for the storefront to take less of a cut from a consumer perspective, but in reality it barely matters. This doesn’t go towards reducing game costs for consumers or improving bonuses & wages for developers. The market has already been set. Any behind the scenes change in revenue sharing just goes to the next group in line, which is of course the already wealthy and massive publishers.

So do whatever works for you. Just don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes and act like this fight is about anything other than which already very rich people get slightly richer.

Dudewitbow , 7 hours ago (edited 7 hours ago)

basically how i see it is it only makes better sense from a consumer standpoint if the decreased developer cost is ALSO decreasing the upfront user cost to buying the game, as the worst policy that Valve has on steam is that the games base price has to be the same on all storefronts.

however in reality, most developers do not pass some of that savings to consumers and just take the cut for themselves. So devs are basically playing againt future benefits on growing a larger consumer base on a different platform for more upfront profit.

basically most of the investment money that epic throws is thrown at development and developers, and basically outside of free games, none of it is thrown back into making the platform better for consumers. Developers can complain however much they want that steam has a “consumer monopoly” (while ignoring the fact that other companies like Riot, and mobile game companies with PC clients like Mihoyo does fine without steam). this will continue to happen until epic reinvests some of that money into their client, or devs actually use the benefits of taking a lower cut and biting the bullet and regularly passing some of it off to consumers.

regardless of the situation, developers are stopping developers ultimately if they want to break the “consumer monopoly”

Max_P , 4 hours ago

What developers seem to forget is how much stuff they get in return from Valve:

• Valve invests heavily into Linux gaming, because they know it’s how you keep all those games working in the long run. (Proton)
• Valve takes care of download bandwidth forever.
• Built-in streaming and remote play together
• The Steam Deck and upcoming SteamOS for the console-like experience
• Forums
• The workshop and mods
• Chat and social networking features
• Steam Input, and my beloved Steam Controller
• Achievements

The Epic store is just, here’s the game files loaded with DRM, try to enjoy. Why even sell through a store and not provide a direct download at this point and get 100% of the sales?

I only buy on Steam because I want Valve to have their 30% cut, because they invest it in the community for everyone’s benefit, including Epic’s games and customers who want to play on Linux or the Steam Deck. Epic would be perfectly happy with the subbar Windows handheld experience because “it’s how PC gaming works”. Proton is amazing, it even eliminates variance that would exist on real Windows machines which results in more games just working right out of the box compared to Windows, esepcially very old ones.

Between Epic and Valve, I’ll pick the one that makes gaming better for everyone.

Broken_Monitor , 8 hours ago

I met Randy once, shook his hand, told him “keep up the great work!” Shortly afterward that god awful Alien game was released and I felt like a shmuck. It’s become more and more apparent since then that Randy is the real shmuck. He originally was a magician (its called an illusionist, Michael) and that really speaks to his manner. It’s all a show, and his facade isn’t real. Pull back the curtain and you’ll find disappointment.

apotheotic , 8 hours ago (edited 8 hours ago)

The only thing they have going for them is better cuts for devs studios, but it surely hasn’t positioned them in a place where they can “press their advantage” that’s a hilarious claim.

Charzard4261 , 8 hours ago

better cuts for devs upper management

apotheotic , 8 hours ago

I’ll edit it to say “studios” instead I guess, yeah