Tim Sweeney supports a lawsuit against Valve?!?!
I’m shocked.
If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it. You got your own store, Timmy.
It isn’t fair that their store is vastly superior to mine and don’t pay developers to use it exclusively like we do! - little timmy wah wah boo hoo
Not how market dominance and unfair competition laws work though.
Maybe Timmy could try making a store people wanna use instead of whatever epic is
Sure, they can do that. Doesn’t prevent abuse of market dominance ok.
Fair
But I wanna riff on Timmy!
Heh :p
If the majority of developers gave a shit about the difference between Valve’s 30% and EGS’s 10 or 15% cut, you’d think they’d actually be going over there. But they’re not. If anything, they put their game out everywhere. So clearly the 30% cut thing isn’t a problem. The only devs they are coaxing over to EGS over Steam are the ones they strike up exclusivity deals with, which is anti-competitive bullshit.
I think a majority of devs would jump ship if epic had the userbase, that 10-15% difference can be huge! But the store is bad and doesn’t have the consumers so it’s mostly a waste of resources
Prior to me switching to Linux, the main reason I preferred Steam over others was the Steam Workshop. Modding is typically so easy on Steam. As far as I’m aware, none of the other stores have that. I’d love to proven wrong though, because that just means more games can use mods.
But now, as far as I’m aware, Steam is the only major one that supports Linux.
They definitely do a lot to earn that 30%, there’s a ton of dev tools for games. Workshop, leaderboards, multiplayer, etc
Anyone else here old enough to remember old-school modding with multiplayer games? Having to make sure everyone at the LAN has the same base game with the right patches applied, the right mod versions and of course if a new version has come out since last meet there might be files that need to be changed/shifted/removed.
Ahh those were the days… that sucked. Thank god for Steam workshop! So much easier especially in games with deep support for it. ARK Survival Evolved for example. If you join a server that uses mods they automatically install from Workshop! What a time to be alive.
Though I have to admit, I haven’t used EGS for a while, I bet their version of Steam Workshop is even better! Otherwise Tim would look like an absolute muppet with the constant criticisms of other platforms.
Yup, and this kind of stuff is why I support the lawsuits against Valve - in the sense that I do want oversight and fair judgement on the issues being raised, especially since one included an email from a Valve employee saying a developer isn’t allowed to sell their game cheaper than on steam.
I imagine if Valve isn’t doing anything wrong, it’ll just waste some time - but it could also do good for game developers and players, by reducing the cut, but also potentially by opening up Steam’s tools for networking, input, workshop to not be locked into their platform (since that can definitely keep devs on steam in cases where they might want to diversify)
Offering servers as a service would be great, so many PC only games that rely on steam’s multiplayer would be easier to port!
deleted by creator
This is about micro-transactions specifically. Tim Fortnite is arguing that games sold on Steam should be able to offer in-game purchases with payment options outside of Steam.
It’s very similar to Epic Games v. Apple, where Apple had required in-app purchases for iOS apps, notably Fortnite, to be handled through their app-store so they get a cut.
One big difference that I see here: On PC, a developer isn’t required to use Steam to distribute software. Players often prefer Steam because Valve has made Steam a great option and has lots of good-will with players. Still, Steam does dominate a massive portion of the PC market.
And a 30% cut is high. Especially for smaller games with less financial resources. As a developer, that’s a trade-off you’d have to choose. I think it’d be best to offer the game on multiple platforms.
For Steam-bought games, I think having an option to pay off-platform would be fair, but I think the option needs to remain available through Steam too. For many games, I don’t want to give my payment details to yet another developer, company or third-party.
Tim Fortnite is arguing that games sold on Steam should be able to offer in-game purchases with payment options outside of Steam.
But they already can and already do. For example If I wanted to buy ARX for Elite Dangerous, you have to go through Frontier’s website to purchase it. Same for Daybreak cash for Planetside 2. And isn’t Maplestoy also on Steam? You most certainly have to kiss the Nexxon ring before purchasing NX.
But they already can and already do. For example If I wanted to buy ARX for Elite Dangerous, you have to go through Frontier’s website to purchase it.
You can buy ARX on Steam now, but you don’t have to.
For the life of me I could not find this while I was playing. It always redirects me to a browser with the Frontier store when I try to buy ARX in game. Thanks for this lol I like using my steam wallet funds for this sort of thing over actual cards.
I think one problem is that although ARX packs are pictured on the game’s Steam page, “ARX” doesn’t appear in the text, so you can’t control+f for it.
War thunder I can pay either through steam (I prefer that personally) or you can just buy the stuff from their site and ignore the steam part entirely.
Hmm, so is Tim Fortnite willing to let me purchase DLC from a third party store to go with that free game that I got on Epic?
Tim’s opinion is clearly unbiased.
Oh this is the same guy who said it was censorship when people said that maybe Grok shouldn’t create pictures of children in bikinis?
deleted by creator
I don’t know much about in-game purchases, but as long as i can remember, it was possible to register cd keys from other stores or even the keys from hard copys of games. To me this looks like a totally different thing than what was going on with ios and android. Also a little wild for epic to complain about locking out competition when i am still waiting to purchase Allan wake 2 on any other store than epic…
I really hope Remedy can buy the publishing rights for Alan Wake 2 one day and release it on Steam / GOG. Such a great game.
I’m waiting for Alan Wake 2 to be given away since free games is all epic is good for.
Right, because managing, securing, updating, and operating steam is all black magic that costs valve nothing.
Listen, they need that revenue for their R&D for the steam deck 2 and steam machines and shit. Fuck off ya hoser, eh?
I’m no Epic Games fan, but this is an overcorrection. Valve makes money hand over fist and they aren’t making those products simply out of passion. They’re doing it to make even more money. The company are pioneers in micro transactions and loot boxes. The other large game companies (and especially alternative storefronts) have just been so shit that gamers feel a weird attachment to this company.
TIL that Tim Fortnite does not consider Sony or Nintendo to be ‘major stores’.
TIL that the video game industry has never had nor currently has titles that are priced exclusively on certain platforms.
(Where ‘its only available for purchase on one platform’ is an effective price of infinity on other platforms)
Just… from the article:
“Steam’s rules do explicitly prohibit games from steering players to competing purchase methods, forcing everyone to pay 30% to Valve,” he [Sweeney] recently tweeted. “Apple and Google did the same until the court explicitly found this practice to be unlawful. Now they don’t!”
It’s not clear exactly what rule Sweeney’s referring to here, but Steam’s own guidelines state that “it’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.” Though Valve would also prefer that developers “don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam key purchasers.”
It’s almost like this guy is malding, crashing out even, and has just… departed from the realm of even trying to make sense.
What is happening here is that Tim is losing his mind because Unreal Engine 5 only runs on GPUs (mostly from Nvidia) that cost as much as an entire PC did 2 or 3 years ago, and so many AAA studios that used UE 5 to make a pretty but hollow and buggy game are now collapsing or seeing a dramatic consumer pullback.
See how this is all connected, and these idiots did this to themselves?
Nvidia decides that Real Time Ray Tracing is the new paradigm for gaming graphics, and Unreal is the primary way people will experience this, by having all the lighting be done ‘auto-magically’ by UE 5, from the perspective of game devs.
Fastforward 5 or so years, half of everything computer hardware is too expensive now, hugely funded AAA games are routinely failing and causing financial disasters for publishers, Unreal Engine 5 is a hugely stigmatized joke because its not any kind of optimized for hardware people actually have, and outside of AAA games, is notorious for low quality UE asset store flips and actual scam games…
…this paradigm doesn’t work.
Compare that to Valve pretty close to singlehandedly developing its own VR hardware, and showcase AAA tier game for it… and well hey shucks, yeah, its too expensive for wide adoption, but that didn’t ruin their entire business’s financials.
They just actually properly accounted for the costs of trying that paradigm shift, and are today still iterating on and improving it, ala the upcoming SteamFrame and new software layer for translating ARM to x86 calls.
Funny thing is I don’t support Valve or Tim Sweeney. While by American standards, Valve are angels, that is a very low standard. Sweeney is your stereotypical American corporate degenerate:
But honestly Valve is no better. Europe (and other countries/regions) should either force Valve to have to de facto white label their store for Europe (where they are a junior partner and hold minimal control) or kick them out. And I am not saying there can’t be collaboration on common goals; e.g. investing into Linux support and open platforms, but you can’t have Americans in charge of major platforms. That ship has sailed.
There are many massive issues with Valve:
- They made a huge contribution to the rise of lootbox gambling schemes
- They initially attempted a fraudulent scheme on local consumer laws on refunds
- For most of Steam’s life their TOS had mandatory arbitration requirements which is a local corruption scheme that is not too different from Soviet kangaroo courts. In their defence they did add that “as far as your country’s laws permit”.
I will admit that the overall logic of the case doesn’t make sense.
Says who, the guy who is all-in on AI and is probably a TESCREAL-believing dipshit?
The price cut is the only thing Tim cares about.
Of course he does 🙃
Hilarious. Didn’t Epic just introduce microtransactions for user-created content in Fortnite with intention of taking 63% fee on that? All the while, trying to turn the said Fortnite in Roblox-like major store for games?
