Comment on Remedy and Annapurna announce a strategic cooperation agreement on Control 2

• domi@lemmy.secnd.me ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m not saying you should, I’m saying it doesn’t make them villains or a bad company.

  But it does, paying third parties to not publish on your competitors platform is the oldest anti-competitive behaviour in the book.

  It would have been completely fine if they started out with actually funding development of new games and only releasing them on their store.

  I would have even given them some slack for their bad launcher since they were new to this.

  Instead we are here, almost 6 years later. Their launcher is still trash, their exclusive deals were a complete money sink, EGS is still not profitable, they burned all bridges to Valve and are not one step closer to their claim that 30% is too much and they can do it with 8% 12%.

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  • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But it does, paying third parties to not publish on your competitors platform is the oldest anti-competitive behaviour in the book.

    It would have been completely fine if they started out with actually funding development of new games and only releasing them on their store.

    I would argue that even restricting sales to your own store is anti-competitive tying. You’re avoiding competing on the merits of a store using exclusive licensing of a creative work.

    Again, not a fan of the tactic, but they are trying to break an entrenched monopoly with a ton of network effects which is near impossible.

    Instead we are here, almost 6 years later. Their launcher is still trash,

    Their launcher is perfectly fine.

    their exclusive deals were a complete money sink,

    Not really. They weren’t as effective as they wanted them to be but they did ultimately gain a significant chunk of market share.

    EGS is still not profitable,

    No, they needed to gain more market share to break even.

    they burned all bridges to Valve and are not one step closer to their claim that 30% is too much and they can do it with 8% 12%.

    But they are. They’re not losing that much money, even with a tiny portion of market share. Valve having far more market share means they should be able to do it for an even smaller percentage.

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    • domi@lemmy.secnd.me ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I would argue that even restricting sales to your own store is anti-competitive tying. You’re avoiding competing on the merits of a store using exclusive licensing of a creative work.

      A creative work which you made yourself, which you can sell wherever you want.

      Should you sell it everywhere so as many people can play it as possible? Sure. Do you have to? No.

      Again, not a fan of the tactic, but they are trying to break an entrenched monopoly with a ton of network effects which is near impossible.

      Let’s reverse the roles for a second: EGS is the big player and Steam is just getting started. EGS suddenly starts paying all publishers to only publish on their platform. Does that sound like competition to you? You don’t break a monopoly by using tools used by monopolies.

      Their launcher is perfectly fine.

      Fine? Yes. It does the bare minimum of being able to buy a game and start it. Does it do everything I expect a modern game launcher to do after existing for almost 6 years? Nope.

      But they are. They’re not losing that much money, even with a tiny portion of market share. Valve having far more market share means they should be able to do it for an even smaller percentage than what epic is using, especially since Valve has 21 years of infrastructure to lean on.

      They are “not losing much money” while providing a fraction of the services Steam does. They say 30% is too much, we can do it in 12% and yet they severely lack in social features, have no modding support, no VR support, no in-home streaming, no Remote Play Together, no Big Picture, no Family Sharing, a barely functioning Steamworks alternative, no Steam Deck support, no Linux support and absolutely zero open source contributions. That’s just the obvious stuff I can think of right now, every single menu you open in Steam you find a barebones menu in the EGS.

      They don’t even need 21 years of infrastructure for most of these, they just need to fund development of it. Which they seem to be unwilling to do so.

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      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Let’s reverse the roles for a second: EGS is the big player and Steam is just getting started. EGS suddenly starts paying all publishers to only publish on their platform. Does that sound like competition to you? You don’t break a monopoly by using tools used by monopolies.

        You’re so close to figuring it out yet you pass right by it…

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      • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        A creative work which you made yourself, which you can sell wherever you want.

        Should you sell it everywhere so as many people can play it as possible? Sure. Do you have to? No.

        We’re not talking about what you currently have to do, we’re talking about anti- competitive behaviour and what you should do.

        If you set up your own shop to avoid paying a middle man for something you can do yourself fine. If you set up your own shop and then use your exclusive games to grow your shop into something bigger, then that’s anti-competitive tying. Your shop is not competing on its merits as a shop.

        Let’s reverse the roles for a second: EGS is the big player and Steam is just getting started. EGS suddenly starts paying all publishers to only publish on their platform. Does that sound like competition to you? You don’t break a monopoly by using tools used by monopolies.

        There is a fundamental difference between using anti-competitive behaviour to break a monopoly, and using it to entrench a monopoly. That’s like arguing that a bully using violence and someone standing up to a bully using violence is the same thing.

        They don’t even need 21 years of infrastructure for most of these, they just need to fund development of it. Which they seem to be unwilling to do so.

        Where do you think the funding for Valve’s system came from? 21 years of taking 30% of virtually every single PC game sale.

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• fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yet consumers get more value from Steam as a platform where that 30% cut has helped fund a powerful gaming platform, remote game streaming, driven developers to release builds for macOS and Linux and license users for all platforms with a single purchase, an open source handheld gaming device, an input library that enables practically any input device to be used and for controls to be remapped even if the game doesn’t support it, the best VR headsets and room-scale VR, popularising VR and making it mainstream, contributing to upstream to further gaming on Linux, enabling DirectX games to execute natively on Linux, several of the most popular multiplayer games on the internet, enticed PlayStation to release games on PC, putting indie developers on a level playing field with the biggest studios, enabling developers to release games mid development to help them self fund the game’s development, support the modding scene, and so much more.

  Epic may charge developers less but that doesn’t offer me, a consumer, any extra value.

  Instead their platform and its lack of investment and innovation make the purchases I have made in their store feel less valuable and cumbersome as their competition increase the value of their offerings.

  I’m not saying they’re the bad guys but the argument that developers get more money doesn’t really matter if that 30% cut is felt justified to consumers.

  And with the upcoming untethered VR offering from Valve on the horizon, which will no doubt be powered by open source with their improvements upstreamed, that 30% cut feels even more justified when Linux becomes fully capable of VR thanks to my purchases.

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  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What value so you actually need? Hell, I use a third party launcher so I don’t have to deal with the other ones and can just launch my games.

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  • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mean, I’ll give full Kudos to Valve for investing in Linux gaming, it wasn’t exactly a selfless maneuver, but it is still valuable and makes the world a better place.

    And I’ll give them Kudos for contributing to VR, but they neither popularized it, nor make the best headsets, both of those titles go to Oculus. They do have the hands down best VR game ever made, but even that is not what popularized VR, Beat Saber is.

    Ultimately, Valve has made billions and billions in profits on top of all that investment, and on top of paying all their employees $300k+ salaries + stock. I like a lot of what Steam offers, but it’s also objectively unquestionable that they could have offered all of what they offer for far less money, but their de facto monopoly means that everyone will buy from them no matter what.

    Because, let’s be real, gamers aren’tt hating Epic for having to download mods through a third party mod site, they’re hating them for having to use a second launcher / store.

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    • fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They could have gone Unix and not contributed upstream like PlayStation did.

      Oculus was a device. Valve built SteamVR literally for the Rift (I had the original developer model and using Steam was pretty much essential). Valve also ensured that SteamVR supported other devices too when they came to market, levelling the playing field and enabling consumers to pick and choose hardware without having to buy games across multiple different marketplaces.

      Valve pay their employees what they’re worth and share their success with them rather than devaluing them and extracting value from them. That’s pretty good going. And given how much they do with so few, it says a lot about their culture and ethic.

      I don’t know about other gamers but I dislike EGS because it’s simply an inferior product and I vote with my wallet. If they offer me more value than a competitor, I’ll gladly use them. I use GOG, itch.io, and Xbox GamePass so it’s not like I’m averse to other platforms. I just don’t see why, if a game is on EGS and Steam (and not on GamePass), what value is there to me as a consumer with going with EGS?

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      • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Valve pay their employees what they’re worth and share their success with them rather than devaluing them and extracting value from them. That’s pretty good going. And given how much they do with so few, it says a lot about their culture and ethic.

        Gabe Newell is a literal billionaire. Valve executive are not taking a hit to pay them fairly, Steam just prints so much money that they can pay them more than they have to. Rather than lowering prices for the rest of consumers they decided to pay their staff exorbitant salaries in addition to themselves. It’s better than just paying themselves, but it’s not noble or good on a broad scale, it’s them taking more societal resources than they need to provide a service.

        I don’t know about other gamers but I dislike EGS because it’s simply an inferior product and I vote with my wallet. If they offer me more value than a competitor, I’ll gladly use them. I use GOG, itch.io, and Xbox GamePass so it’s not like I’m averse to other platforms. I just don’t see why, if a game is on EGS and Steam (and not on GamePass), what value is there to me as a consumer with going with EGS?

        Again, not saying anyone should prefer EGS, but this thread started off because someone said Epic was a bad publisher, which is just based of their hate for EGS, not based on anything to do with their merits as a publishing partner.

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• GoodEye8@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m not saying you should, I’m saying it doesn’t make them villains or a bad company.

  I think it does. Instead of competing they chose to try and force customers to use their platform by buying exclusivity that specifically targets Steam. From the perspective of the customer they took the worst possible approach and, along with how Sweeney has talked about people like us, treated customers like a cattle to be herded, as if we couldn’t think for ourselves and would throw ourselves into EGS if our games went there.

  But the end goal of EGS wasn’t just to make them more money, they offer every developer more money when they publish there.

  That is the PR they sold that the money goes into the hands of the developer. That is true only if the developer is also self publishing. Actually that extra money goes into the hands of the publisher and then it’s up to the publisher to decide if the developers get any more money. And once again, from the customers perspective, we barely get anything out of that goal. Games don’t get cheaper for us, we don’t really get more games because of it. The publishers simply get more money per sale. They don’t even get more money (except for the exclusivity money that Epic threw their way) because you sell significantly more copies on Steam because unlike Epic Steam doesn’t treat its customers like cattle.

  The underlying motivation for creating EGS in the first place was the recognition that Valve does not need to be taking a 30% cut of every game sale to provide the services they provide.

  So to prove that Valve doesn’t need to take a higher cut they make a store where they take fraction of the cut Steam would take but also offer a fraction of the services Steam offers? I think that would be an argument if they offered at least half of what Steam offers but they don’t even do that. They made a barebones store for a barebones cut, that doesn’t show anything.

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  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    buying exclusivity that specifically targets Steam

    That specifically target Steam or Steam ends up being the only target because the other stores are either specialized or publisher specific?

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    • GoodEye8@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m not sure what you’re asking so I’ll just expand on what Epic did. Epic made a deal with Ubisoft where Ubisoft releases their game on their store and on EGS but not on Steam despite all previous Ubisoft titles being on Steam. I remember there being another smaller publisher who made a deal with EGS and released their game on other storefronts (I think it was EGS and GOG but it also could’ve been the MS store) but not on Steam. I would consider that exclusivity targeting specifically Steam.

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      • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You are not arguing in good faith here - the other user is being very clear about their question and you are pretending not to understand. You invented a sourceless situation to answer the question while saying you didn’t understand it.

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  • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The store taking a smaller cut of the pie either means that developers get more money to spend on the game or consumers spend less for games. Full stop.

    Publishers have revenue sharing percentages with the developers, if a game sells more and makes more money per sale the developer gets more money.

    There is no way that Valve is the good guy or even neutral for taking more of the pie then they need to.

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• LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It makes their product shit

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• stardust@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Naive child thinks epic is offering a lower cut for altruistic reasons as opposed to it being the only method they could think of to try to convince devs to sell there. And that they wouldn’t jack up the rate once they corned the market given how their how strategy has been more reminiscent of Walmart approach of pricing lowering to gain market share. Biggest sign is that the store isn’t even profitable much like how lot of services these days aren’t profitable and burn money then jack up prices and offer less. Hell even Microsoft has offered low rates. Going to argue Microsoft is nice too now? Not falling for it Randy.

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  • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Naive to think epic is offering a lower cut for altruistic reasons as opposed to it being the only method they could think of to try to convince devs to sell there.

    This is literal the entire basis of our economy. A company being able to offer a service more efficiently charges less and gets more customers to come to them. It is the literal only mechanism in capitalist that keeps it running at all efficiently.

    And that they wouldn’t jack up the rate once they corned the market given how their how strategy has been more reminiscent of Walmart approach of pricing lowering to gain market share. Biggest sign is that the store isn’t even profitable much like how lot of services these days aren’t profitable and burn money then jack up prices and offer less once they corner the market. Hell even Microsoft Store has offered low rates of 12% because few want to use it. Going to argue Microsoft is nice too now? Not falling for it Tim.

    How would they corner the market? Steam still exists. As you pointed out, the Microsoft store still exists. If they ever jack up their prices devs can go elsewhere.

    No one is accusing Epic or Microsoft of altruism, they offer 12% because that’s closer to what it actually costs them to run the store. Steam charges 30% because gamers refuse to buy games from anywhere else so they can just tack on an extra 18% more money that they’ll take.

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    • stardust@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You still haven’t given a reason why to actually use epic despite your attempts to paint a billion dollar company as though it is some altruistic startup. If product isn’t good why should I go out of my way to pay for a worse one from another billionaire. If it is all billionaires I’m going to just pick the better product.

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      • masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Because I’ve never once tried to argue that anyone should use it.

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