Ex Valve Developer Lashes out about Steam "Steam Killing PC Gaming"

Two points I've read in other guru's posts here that I kind of / partially disagree with:

@The Laughing Ma : I agree with you that the steam store is horribly filled with utter rubbish games that wouldn't have made it into a box ever. But I don't see this as Epic's advantage, if anything, it's Steam's disadvantage... and to be fair, it depends on what people themselves see as rubbish. One's junk is another man's gem, and in the EGS I see quite some games I simply could not be interested in, due to various reasons. And in the beginning, there was no steam greenlight, there was no early access on Steam... let's check on EGS again in a few years, shall we? When they have gone a third of the way we as PC gamers have suffered / travelled with Steam...
Also, not sure how people use steam, but I only search for games I want... I already know what's released... I don't need to check my queue, so I don't see 95% of the crap that's on steam... I can't be offended by what I don't see, so I'm not sure why I'd object. But I can see it being annoying if you check your discovery queue daily and all... but honestly, I don't suffer such things as being shown too much of the crop there. At least you have settings to dodge games you don't fancy.

@EspHack and @nhlkoho : Exclusives are a thing, that's true. Nobody was offended by UT requiring the Epic launcher to start, I too did not object. Because we're used to it. Remember, like other's said, that Valve forced Steam onto us with HL2? Or Origin and Battlefield? Or Blizzard with Battlenet? They are effectively exclusive titles. And I was pissed about Steam back then as well. Or with Origin, since it still can't live up to the prime, which is Steam.
BUT they are on their own publisher's platform... they were never announced anywhere else, no launch on other platforms, never ever a chance to get around those publisher's launchers. So they were not bribed to switch, baited away from the competition (as a distribution platform), or simply got their money thrown at... they were taking the hit of possibly missing sales to strengthen their own publisher's launcher / game store, and saving on the money that was supposed to be Valve's cut and keep that money in their own houses. But Epic, just like Steam, only profits of other publisher's / dev's work... so they're actually just as bad as Steam in that matter, and now put timed exclusives on top of that.
Like I said before, too, why didn't those publishers wanting a bigger cut switch to GOG? Which offers a bigger margin for the publishers / devs for years now? Because Epic is throwing money at them. Saving on the cut is... well, I don't believe that's the main reason in this whole thing. It's hard cash that's coming in, not the cut they make or save months or years down the road. And that's where I agree with you, @nhlkoho , it's all about who has the most money in their pockets. And Epic's got money from UE and / or Tencent (they certainly aren't going to make millions off of UT), whereas Steam's source engine is pretty much dead. (Except that Valve is probably working on porting it fully to Vulkan, so they can use it for mobile gaming in the future.)

 

game have same prices for me from epic, origin, steam etc
what good from this for me ? nothing like allways just only bank changed
one game one gameloader crap soft another "big +"
we dont know if money going to developer resp. developer have more money like from steam
and in this time so many crap games going from developer, it worhty to pay him more?
especialy if prices goiung up is nothing good for pc gaming no mater who sell this game
and no mather who have this money at the end, because its simply overpriced for player

 

What about games being exclusive to Steam? Should that be banned too? If so, does that mean every game Dev needs to secure an alternate method for acquiring their game?

 

Good point here:
Do we generally want to give bigger cuts to companies not being the distribution carrier even though they tend to make worse and worse games every release?
Do we give them more money in hope that it really lands at the devs, and also hope they use it for better games, not more marketing?
Do we trust good devs switching to Epic to really get the money, bad publishers they work with not to keep it and give it to the dev that might actually improve their games substantially?

I believe these are valid questions to think about.

 

Until there is something worth playing then we will see whats going on. The game that have come out like BF5/Fallout/ Division 2 are just shocking. Yes steam needs to step up there game. We need Halflife 3 left for dead 3 and maybe TF3. Valve needs to start making games again. This guy is just salty because he was let go. Blaming steam for the decline of PC gaming this guy must be joking.

 

If you are a game connoisseur, you cannot possibly be reduced to buying on a single platform, and it isn't just because putting all your eggs in a single basket is not a good idea. I've been amazed, frankly, at how many games are available on GOG that are not available on Steam at any price. Years ago, I used to believe that the two sites mirrored each other--a reasonable belief if you think that that IP holders want as wide a circulation on their games as possible. But what isn't public knowledge are the *exclusives* that these platforms get--GOG's got them, certainly--Steam has its own share, and now Epic's getting them. My GOG collection has grown to 332 games, atm; Steam is ~64 titles owned, but not that many active as I have re-bought ~30% of my Steam games when offered during GOG sales because I like owning my own installable copies, which Steam does not provide; about 28 Games on Origin (mostly older C&C titles and Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate--which I bought on DVD many years ago) and probably 10-12 games via the Ubisoft store--and exactly 1 game on Epic--a freebie--which I got just to see what it was like--I found that contrary to conspiracy theorists, you can run the Epic store games direct from their executables and the Epic Launcher does not even run. I don't see how anyone who loves and collects games might ever go with but a single distributor like Steam or Gog or the rest.

 

You are not going to get HL3 till there is new great looking engine ready and great story behind gameplay. That's because Valve lives from this legend... Great percentage of people gaming are time to time thinking about HL3 and that keeps Valve in their minds. If HL3 looks bad or is boring, legend is over.

So, they only want to deliver things that are good as Great image from the past is better than bad image from present day.

 

Gotta go with walt here. Like many who more or less predate the PC gaming we've all got multiple copies of games. I think I have 3 or 4 different versions of Star Wars Tie Fighter. Same game, just repackaged to launch natively in a DOS box versus needing to fudge with autoexec.bat and config.sys files. I float around all the various game storefronts/launchers to see which is offering what deal. The games are all installed on separate drives from the OS, two 4TB spinners for games and a SSD I rotate games in and out of that benefit. I understand the tension between what looks like wider choice, but with exclusives is giving less choice. I don't know well a 'timed exclusive' period would salve the butt hurt. I think that's an idea they are floating.

 

I never think about HL3 in a positive light regarding valve. I don't know anyone who fires up Steam and thinks )(&#%)(&#$)*# Where's HL3? Only when some does a 'HL3 confirmed' meme or now, you mentioning it.

 

And yet you just confirmed statement "time to time thinking...". I have not wrote that you have to do it from your own impulse. But you just did it anyway.

 

Sorry, you don't get to say your point is confirmed by adding a caveat AFTER the fact.
That's the same thing as claiming I know you were thinking about beating your wife, because you replied to a post I made about you beating your wife. I know you were going for clever, but that was dumb.

 

Dam Hemi, why you derail a good thread with wife beating comparison? ...good grief Dude.

 

I don't. Not at all.

I don't miss the time ...

... where i had to go to a store just to be told that they did not have Sanitarium. "Is it even a game? Nope we don't have it. We can order it though but you'll get it in 4 weeks and we will ask for a premium".
... where i had to install a game from a slow as **** CD and it took more time than actually downloading the game today.
... where i had to find and install no cd patches just to be able to play the games i legally owned and which were fully installed on my hdd ... and i had to redo this every time i updated a game ...
... where i had to check manually on the publisher web site if a new patch was available and where i had to download it and install it myself.
... where the god **** ****** ******* patches were not available on the publisher web site anymore and i had to go to a 3rd party download site to get the patches.
... where only the triple AAA games were advertised in magazines (and all rated b3st g4m3 3v4r 10/10 GOTY) and nobody knew gems like Sanitarium or Little Big Adventure even existed. Rogue Legacy would have stand absolutely no chance back it the days.

Nope not missing it at all.

 

I have no problem paying a little more to be on Steam I guess I am just use to it what can i say? I do not like Epic or Orgin that much to be honest.Steam came along at the right time and made there Money what can you say about that when there is no competition you can charge whatever you like sorta like how Intel has been ripping us for years until Amd bounced back. Its all just habbit impulse buy basicly.

 

30% is outrageous. I'm so glad American Tim Sweeny has set the Epic Games Store rate at 12%. Much fairer towards developers.

 

Only suckers sign up for anything to do with Epic or EA

 

Team Steam baby.... If EA and Ubisoft offered their titles on Steam, I would be ditching Origin and Uplay too. I am more than willing to pay a small extra for the game to play on a well-developed and functioning platform. That dude is just salty and delusional. Only thing I do agree on is that Game exclusives aren't going to stop any time soon

 

Or how about making sure you don't lose the CDKey required to install the game. I still have a spreadsheet of all my pre-steam game keys for when I had to reinstall them. Or better yet when you had to look for random words from the manual to install the game. Anyone ever had the original Mortal Kombat game? Their version of a CDKey was giving you a random page number and line number from the manual and you had to type in what word you found before the game would even launch. It was great

 

little different , fortnight is an epic product , wow is a blizzard product and battlefield is an ea product, no one is saying a publisher can't distribute their own product.

epic bribing third party devs to pull their products from steam, is anti-consumer, and while epic may take a smaller cut, ultimately with the transaction fees being customer side, the game may end up costing more.(assuming the listed prices stay the same , vs steam)

doesn't sound so great to me.