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Dusk Developer David Szymanski: I'd rather pay Valve 30% and put up with their de facto monopoly than help Epic work towards their own (very obviously desired) monopoly (twitter.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Carighan@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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If I'm honest, I don't disagree.

I would love for Steam to have **actual competition. Which is difficult, sure, but you could run a slightly less feature-rich store, take less of a cut, and pass the reduction fully on to consumers and you'd be an easy choice for many gamers.

But that's not what Epic is after. They tried to go hard after the sellers, figuring that if they can corner enough fo the market with exclusives the buyers will have to come. But they underestimated that even their nigh-infinite coffers struggle to keep up with the raw amount of games releasing, and also the unpredictability of the indie market where you can't really know what to buy as an exclusive.
Nevermind that buying one is a good way to make it forgotten.

So yeah, fully agreed. Compared to Epic, I vastly prefer Steam's 30% cut. As the consumer I pay the same anyways, and Steam offers lots of stuff for it like forums, a client that boots before the heat death of the universe, in-house streaming, library sharing, cloud sync that sometimes works.

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[-] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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[-] tehmics@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I use so many of steams features it's unfathomable to use any other launcher or even pirate anything because steam is so streamlined. Cloud saves, automatic local file transfers instead of redundant downloads, family share to my friends PC so half the time when I visit she'll have already downloaded and played my new games. When I get there they're just ready to go. Remote desktop to make any tweaks on my PC or casual gaming over stream. Big picture mode so I can lay back with a controller and chill, no futzing with m+kb UI. Steam input means I can easily drop in and out with any controllers.

I just got a steam deck and while I could install another app store on it, I've entirely stuck with steam just for the UX. I don't want to fuck with extra launchers and touchscreen bs.

I just played a coop Windows game on a Linux based portable PC on a 4K TV with a $24 USB hub for video out, using an Xbox and ps5 controllers over Bluetooth. This was completely seamless and controller navigated. Steam is insanely good.

[-] natryamar@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Last I tried using a Bluetooth controller it didn't go very well, has the experience gotten better?

[-] tehmics@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I didn't have any issues. We did notice some input lag but disabling vsync helped a lot. Not sure if that was controller related

[-] natryamar@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I tried to play Halo reach over Bluetooth a long while ago and when the rumble went off it would stop taking my input. Glad to hear your aren't having any issues.

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 3 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure they have the same refund policy as steam. They also do have a networking system (which I think even has interop with steam -- the Bigfoot game tried to use it but it was very unpopular since it required steam gamers to link an epic account but it exists).

Also pretty sure there are cloud saves but less confident on that one.

And yeah, steam streaming and card collecting aren't really all that important to me in particular, but I get that some people really like them.

[-] brawleryukon@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Not only the same, but better. Epic will automatically just refund you the difference if a game you bought goes on sale within a certain period of time after your purchase (allegedly even beyond the two week refund window, although I haven't been able to find any definitive statement of how long they watch it for). Just flat out, you get an email one day telling you they've credited back X amount of your purchase.

Also pretty sure there are cloud saves but less confident on that one.

There are. For more than four years now. The problem is that, just like with Steam, they can only put the option out there - it's up to devs to actually implement it. And there are a lot of devs who haven't done so, which lots of people interpret as EGS not having cloud saves at all.