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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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I'm far from being a business savvy person, but honestly, from business perspective what exactly is Epic offering that sets them apart from other competitors? Even if Epic fixed their launcher issues, how would they be different to Steam that is already well established for 20 years? That's why I like GOG as Steam's competitor. GOG focuses on selling DRM-free and retro games. If a game also happens to be available in GOG, I would prefer to buy it from there than Steam. Moreover, GOG keep old games well maintained and updated to run in modern computers; something that Steam is very poor at doing. What does Epic even do differently, apart from doing exclusives which any companies could do?
It's slightly cheaper for developers to put their games on there. But that sucks as a business model, because game prices aren't any lower so for the end user it doesn't matter. And on features, Epic just loses every matchup against Steam.
Hmm... that's fair but it seems that Epic even forgot to think of end users-- the gamers-- in that regard before trying to compete with Steam. They prioritised devs first over the actually most important stakeholder.
Specifically, if they're also wanting to be on Steam (the largest marketplace by far, so you need to be there) your game can't be cheaper anywhere else. It's a little fucked up that Steam can wield their power like that, but they essentially have a monopoly so they can.
That’s only true if you’re selling steam keys. Eg you are using Valve’s infrastructure. And they don’t even require the 30% cut in this case. If you sold the game using another infrastructure then you can price it how you want.
Sure, but even Epic exclusives aren't any cheaper than the games on Steam. These savings directly go to the game developer/publisher, not the consumer. This means there's no incentive for the consumer to switch to Epic other than exclusive games, which is a pretty poor reason to switch away from a well-established platform.