I think any information is relevant in the appropriate context. Since I brought it up after reading about it, I think it’s perfectly relevant for the situation.
Like @HouGuard already mentioned, I am hoping for competition to make Steam make a bigger move to match, because they are bigger and are able to do it, just a matter of willingness. As a result, this might drive prices down a bit overall (I mean, or not at all for some games I am sure. Sometimes I see such crappy games marked up at ridiculously high prices I just want to cry.) Before there was any realistic competition for Steam, I think they could decide whatever and get away with it. The recent Steam announcement regarding their revenue sharing of more towards developers once they sell such and such amount was likely directly triggered by this.
I have never used the launcher and never played Fortnite, so I didn’t know how cumbersome this is.
I rather dislike this particular bit as well. I wish every service could give players an option of running a client or not, like GOG does. I have UPlay and rarely use it. I don’t launch Origin at all. GOG I am on a little bit more often, but for the most part I am on Steam because that’s where the majority of my games are located, plus the biggest game database in terms of availability.
Wouldn’t that be nice, to have some services being used simultaneously without needing to have the individual launchers/clients. I used to use Trillian as a go to for such a long time, I thought it was the greatest thing in the world!
I agree, as that means monopolizing a particular field in some shape or form. Plus it’s a bully system with the fallacious “you are either with us, or you are against us” mentality.
In my mind I was thinking of the revenue sharing that could allow the devs to lower the prices as well. Perhaps not for all of the revenue difference, but to partly share it with the consumer. Any kind of cost sharing will have some impact on the decision-making on the consumer’s part.
Never having played Fortnite or used Epic, I wasn’t really thinking about the existing user base. Though this is a really good point. I was actually not thinking of exclusive deals at the time, more just thinking about one more distribution service and more widespread of all monies that may sway Steam to be more fair to the developers on their end.
Absolutely, this is the thing about all things digital. Selling more copies and having a service to go through means that you just need to worry about refining your product, and not needing to worry about copies generated and distributed, shipping costs, etc. As long as it is on a stable server that can take the amount of expected traffic, you can just watch the sales/stats without having anything tangible beyond a rolling bank account I guess.
I guess I really haven’t paid attention to Epic or anything Epic -related to know about the depths of their practices.
I know I have, unfortunately. Long gone are the days when all of the games that you could play are games stacked on a physical rack. It’s not been too long gone since I wasn’t even buy any digital rights, but trying to secure as many physical copies of games as possible. Of course my latest computer purchase doesn’t even feature an optical drive and I didn’t flinch a bit.
This is the main reason I have hopped on the train myself, many years later compared to a lot of folks here. I certainly don’t want anything to happen to Steam, as so many of us have invested so much into this one entity.
I would hate to see Indie groups leave due to this, though the much broader user base with more varied preferences at the moment on Steam means that a lot of them won’t hesitate to stay with the behemoth in the industry in hopes of becoming the next biggest indie hit that will rock your socks, like Hollow Knight or Dead Cells. Absolutely, way more sales through Steam will likely mean a bigger profit overall through there, despite 30% vs 12% fees, unless they can sell a lot. though Steam’s announcement regarding the differed revenue sharing clearly was not in alignment with indie-industry growth and development, and that caused quite a brouhaha already.
Lets!
Yay for bundles and 90% discounts! This current reality has broadened my gaming horizons way more than I could think possible.
, -no 
