this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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The first-mover advantage and network-effect.
I think it's slightly more than just that. Those are big parts, don't get me wrong, but Valve has legitimately done a decent job with their store from what I understand. Nearly two decades of regular, if incremental, improvements. That sort of quality is difficult to catch up to.
I think if the Epic Games Store had come out swinging with a more fully fleshed out user experience, instead of relying almost solely on the free game lure strategy, it might have grown to be a much bigger deal. But all Valve had to do was pretty up their UI a smidge and they were at parity or outcompeting EGS in every category.
I dunno. Maybe that's just me.
If we're getting into a more nuanced discussion, sure, there are a lot of things Steam does right, mostly because not turning into a publicly traded company allows them to not to get enshittified. But I don't like to talk about it because the internet is in a permanent circlejerk about how Steam, and Steam specifically, shouldn't be said to enjoy all the benefits of a natural monopoly, while other digital platforms with similar positions and policies get all the criticism they deserve.
Costco is public, and Epic is private. It’s an issue of genuinely responsible corporate governance, which is shockingly rare.
Everyone knows it's a problem but it's a future problem, from a certain perspective, and no one wants to upset the currently pleasant status quo.
They shouldn't be lionized for being the only game storefront that doesn't actively hate their customer base, but I suppose I get it
Yeah fair. Steam is virtually a monopoly on PC gaming. If I had to guess, it's basically because it hasn't enshittified... and that may be the one of the biggest reasons it has succeeded so far.
In an ideal world we'd get to reap these benefits forever. But I do suppose that someday something will happen, and the stability and trust that Steam has built its reputation on will crumble. Then, all the worrying about digital purchases not being real purchases is gonna catch up with all of us. That day will suck.
Personally, I decided to have nothing to do with them once I heard they were getting exclusivity with certain games. Well, that combined with their connection with Tencent.
And understanding that they killed off the UT franchise (which I loved) so that it wouldn't compete with Fortnite (which I've never been interested in and consider more of an adjacent genre than the same one), it sealed my position of never intending to install the epic app.
Oh yeah, also Valve being the main force pushing Linux gaming while epic is firmly in the windows camp is another factor. I'm already going to be dropping gamepass when I make the switch and don't want to add any more reasons to consider dual boot instead of just running Linux.