PC Gaming

if you're running a business (like epic), and you feel like you're somehow just entitled to a certain percentage of the market share dominated by the king of the market (steam), while also giving consumers literally no reason to give you that money (in epic's case, actually giving more reasons NOT to use them), then-- LOL get fucked. keep shitting on linux and refusing to unfuck your shit tier slopfest UI, while whining about everything. i find it amusing.

What's with all the shade on GOG and itch? They're great, and arguably serve other segments of the gaming market better already. The only difference is that Steam has a dominant position in online and AAA PC gaming, which is all corpos actually care about.

All Steam had to do is something that has long been forgotten by lot of companies these days. Treat customers well and make them feel they are the main priority.

Lot of other companies know they can treat customers like crap and still make money, and even outright reject them like Crucial deciding enterprise customers buying millions to billions in bulk sales is all they need.

Many companies think customers can be forced to buy from them. Like Epic did with exclusives and thinking sounds bites taunting Steam would wins hearts and minds. Meanwhile steam just quietly focused on improvements to their own services without acknowledging Epic.

It's the logical continuation of Gabe's law. He said piracy was a service issue and that people would be willing to pay for the product is the service was good.

Epic tried and win by the venture capitalist playbook and give away free shit and undercut the incumbents to steal away their customers. Unfortunately that doesn't work because their service is shit, and Valve has incredible soft capital built up.

If Epic could find a way to monetize the constant fucking whining about Valve they'd be doing great.

Well let me think some reasons to actually support Valve:

• Supports open source
• Doesn't try to fuck up their customer base
• Produces nonrestrictive hardware
• Invents things to make gaming better
• Their own games actually optimized and work on older hardware
• Optimizes the gaming experience and helps 3rd party developers to be successful (literally opposite of Nintendo)
• Customer support actually work
• Non invasive opt in data collection / telemetry to make products better
• Filters away the adware customer is product bs
• Supports older hardware by updating / upgrading drivers that original manifacturer doesn't anymore (less evaste, more opportunities to game)
• Developed SteamOS (Linux distribution) to keep Microsoft from vendor locking gaming

Lol, the only real competition would be GoG, not fucking Epic

Yeah, and their unknowable secret sauce to win capitalism was to not overdo it and enshittify. Wild stuff. Who could tell that keeping your userbase happy is more productive in the long term than chasing "growth" at every turn?

People use capitalism to mean anything involving commerce, I guess.

The fact that valve is privately owned and the profits go to the owner instead of the labor isn't really the reason steam is dominant. A worker owned co-op could have succeeded by making the same product. Though if they were beholden to shareholders who demanded a profit, it probably would have resulted in a worse product. An argument against capitalism, with uninvolved owners taking profits, if anything.

They made a product people like. Boo-boo. Epic could have made a good product. They didn't.

Epic actually make a good product challenge

level: impossible

Kiaran Ritchie, former principal animation engineer at Epic Games kicked off discussions surrounding Steam's 30% sales cut last week (with the assertion that "you could vibe code a Steam alternative in a week").

We've tried nothing and we're out of ideas.

Steam has problems, Epic games could fix that. They choose to whine about it on social media instead.

itch and gog are both great storefronts and I continue to buy games from both of those. At this point the only person who can defeat Steam is Steam itself. You might laugh but I've seen a change in leadership absolutely destroy companies before. Let us all pray that Gaben lives forever. The next person might run Steam into the ground to make himself richer, just like all our American CEO's.

Steam... "broke" capitalism?

When Gabe passes one day and the next owner is some business dimwit and makes steam really win capitalism, pretty sure we'll jump to GoG. That's my headcanon at least. Because that's what always happens to private companies when the person who cares about the thing no longer leads the company.

People are tired of being milked and anti consumer practices.

Steam is the only company doing what we expected.

As far as I know, caring for and listening to your customers and offer a great service isn't capitalism, that's just good business practice. Companies like Epic and Sony in the other hand they're doing capitalism very well.

Like I enjoy a lot of what Valve does but people who simp to the extreme levels we see on Lemmy are honestly wild to me.

Two points to be contended with:

• Valve are getting 20-30% of every sale. Other marketplaces - notably Google and Apple - are rightfully despised for this level of rent seeking
• Valve popularized the concept of the loot box in Western games, making money off of children gambling

Valve lives rent free in Epic's heads

More like it's compatition is so shit, it doesn't have to lift a finger to stay in the lead.

Valve wins by doing absolutely nothing

Anticompete laws are a thing, but I don't know if they're applicable at this point to anything valve does.

Epic could also just try to not be utterly shite. I personally won't touch it as long as sweeny is involved and they are deep-throating AI.

BS. Steam offers games simply without the bull. They didn't break capitalism, they just didn't enshitten their platform.

You can't vibe code good leadership.

Valve's software is not the reason for thier success. It's the fact that they have stayed consistent, reliable, and forthright. When you buy a game on steam, you know exactly what the deal is, and what it will still be ten years from now.

If I buy a game on Epic, I feel no certainty I will be able to play it tomorrow, let alone in several years.

Jesus Christ I've seen so many posts about epic or it's out of touch CEO fucking straight up whining about Valves success. How about using the powers of publicly held capitalism and making a product that's worthwhile? You can't. Take your loss and shut the fuck up already. Yes I fully realize I'm not talking to them. Just needed to vent because this shit that passes for news these days is just fucking garbage.

Keeping customers happy, no bullshit, that's all.