This isn’t new information, here’s the People Make Games video on this topic from 2 years ago, I can’t see Valve taking action on this unless they’re forced to. Seeing that - apart from this...
This isn’t new information, here’s the People Make Games video on this topic from 2 years ago, I can’t see Valve taking action on this unless they’re forced to. Seeing that - apart from this massive exception - Valve is relatively pro consumer, I do wonder if this is essentially their safety net for their more risky endeavors like the index, deck, or arch investments.
Ultimately I think this is a situation where government intervention is warranted. The gambling sites themselves usually dodge this by being located in particular favorable jurisdictions, but...
Ultimately I think this is a situation where government intervention is warranted. The gambling sites themselves usually dodge this by being located in particular favorable jurisdictions, but afaik Valve isn't, and they're definitely the root you ultimately would need to uproot to actually get rid of this whole network of child gambling weeds.
I like many of Valve's other products, but I don't think any of it justifies them profiting off child gambling like this.
I tried to watch this video when it came out and I really, really don't understand it. Sorry to be that person, but could someone who understands video games and Steam explain what's going on...
I tried to watch this video when it came out and I really, really don't understand it.
Sorry to be that person, but could someone who understands video games and Steam explain what's going on here?
I don't have Steam, so I'm kind of lost on what the fundamentals are. I thought it was just a storefront, like the Google Play or App Store.
I'll give another shot at explaining what's going on but the gambling section in this Wikipedia article does a good job explaining it. Valve, the video game company responsible for immensely...
Exemplary
I'll give another shot at explaining what's going on but the gambling section in this Wikipedia article does a good job explaining it.
Valve, the video game company responsible for immensely popular Counter-Strike (CS) and other games like the aforementioned Half Life, also operates the ridiculously popular digital video game storefront, Steam. CS, like many games, offers cosmetic items, aka skins, that can be earned by spending real money to purchase a loot box, a single use item that presents the buyer a chance to earn a skin of various rarities. Skins can be traded between Steam users for Steam's in-system currency which in theory could be used to buy additional games on Steam as Valve does not allow for the direct conversion of Steam currency back into real world money.
However a well known and unregulated black market exists to facilitate this conversion. In essence, one could spend $2.50 on a loot box, get lucky and receive an extremely rare skin, then use Steam's skin trading feature to cash out that skin using the black market : it's basically the digital version of Tide bottles.
Because skins are basically defacto cash, skins have been used to gamble on e-sports, purchase crypto currency, or even used to gamble at the chance of earning rarer skins. All of this is accessible to anyone at any age so long as they have the funds to purchase these loot boxes which makes it incredibly predatory on it's younger audience.
In essence, it's gambling that's accessible to all that only requires a few extra steps. Whats funnier is that Valve has done a lot to try to remove the appearance of gambling, including adopt tactics that the gambling industry itself uses as what better way to emphasize you're NOT facilitate gambling than to do things the gambling industry does. Ultimately, the thinking is that Valve has no incentive to stop this practice because it gets a cut and in 2023, made nearly a billion dollars off the loot boxes alone. My understanding as well is Valve makes some money on every transfer of it's in-system currency so they're making ridiculous amounts of money of this.
Valve added item trading to Steam. This means that microtransactions can be traded between users (if the developer implements it). Additionally, some even have markets, where these items can be...
Valve added item trading to Steam. This means that microtransactions can be traded between users (if the developer implements it). Additionally, some even have markets, where these items can be bought or sold with steam wallet funds.
Basically, this creates an unregulated digital currency. Like bitcoin but with Valve as the guarantor. The items have guaranteed liquidity because you can then use steam wallet funds to buy games.
As a result, rather large industries of gambling and betting industries have been built around steam items. These function basically exactly like any other gambling sites, and there’s everything from slots to sports betting.
I might be showing my age here but, when I joined reddit, Gabe Newell was seen as a people's hero, Half Life 3 when, 'he's not like other game devs', etc etc. In the gaming world and wider fandom,...
I might be showing my age here but, when I joined reddit, Gabe Newell was seen as a people's hero, Half Life 3 when, 'he's not like other game devs', etc etc.
In the gaming world and wider fandom, are people revising their opinions of him in regards to this? Because this sounds an awful lot like encouraging gambling, and letting kids gamble - much more blatantly than the only platform I'm familiar with (Xbox).
You can buy Steam gift cards (which I guess are guaranteed Valve cryptocurrency?) at almost every department store in my country. AFAIK, there is no age verification required, because I - like most uncles, aunts, parents or caregivers - assume that is money to buy a game. Or, at "worst", a Fortnite skin.
Edit: Jesus christ he's worth 9.5 billion US dollars.
I haven't seen any real change in attitude. People are rabidly defensive of Steam, in spite of their outsized market share, and whine about games being sold through other storefronts. They turn a...
I haven't seen any real change in attitude. People are rabidly defensive of Steam, in spite of their outsized market share, and whine about games being sold through other storefronts. They turn a blind eye to Steam Marketplace while complaining about loot boxes or battle passes in games that have zero trading being "gambling."
If anything, we're just seeing problem gambling being normalized, with esports events even having sponsorships and legacy sports shoving Draft Kings everywhere.
Barron's had an article about the current state of Counter-Strike gambling, earlier in the month.
It's honestly not that surprising. My qualms with loot boxes in general aside*, Valve is remarkably pro-consumer in the gaming space. They've picked up a lot of goodwill among gamers because they...
It's honestly not that surprising. My qualms with loot boxes in general aside*, Valve is remarkably pro-consumer in the gaming space. They've picked up a lot of goodwill among gamers because they sell stuff cheap and they add a lot of benefit to games that utilize their feature set (workshop for mods, save syncing, etc.). Not to mention they're basically single-handedly enabling the progression of linux gaming these days via the Steamdeck.
* - idk how CS handles lootboxes, but the way they were handled in TF2 is mostly fine by me. Primarily cosmetic items, with a few functional items that are also available via dumb luck without participating in the gambling. All that being said, I do think it's largely immoral to do lootboxes because they're clearly predatory toward those with gambling problems (otherwise known as "whales"). But lootboxes are also not a hill I'll die on when assessing whether or not I'll do business with a company. Especially given how tame Valve's seem to be compared to the endless supply of pay-to-win mobile games, AAA games, etc.
Same. People love Steam and they're losing their shit over the Steam Winter sale, just as they do during the Summer, Spring and Autumn sale. I have no real ill will towards Valve/Steam/Gabe...
Same. People love Steam and they're losing their shit over the Steam Winter sale, just as they do during the Summer, Spring and Autumn sale. I have no real ill will towards Valve/Steam/Gabe Newell, though after this video, I find them less savory and more deserving of criticism but in some circles, you criticize Valve or, god forbid, talk about how EGS is fine, and you'll get crucified. People are dumb and tribal about shit that doesn't fucking matter.
This is one that always baffled me. It’s a store, who cares? I remember that (a probably tiny, but very loud group of) people were freaking out about World of Goo 2 only being available on Epic,...
talk about how EGS is fine
This is one that always baffled me. It’s a store, who cares? I remember that (a probably tiny, but very loud group of) people were freaking out about World of Goo 2 only being available on Epic, despite it having a DRM-free purchase option as well, direct from the devs.
As someone that doesn't really like EGS, but isn't really strongly opposed either I can try to answer. EGS is just kind of a bad store propped up by some business practices that aren't very...
As someone that doesn't really like EGS, but isn't really strongly opposed either I can try to answer. EGS is just kind of a bad store propped up by some business practices that aren't very popular.
It is a bad store largely due to bad implementation. To this day it still doesn't have user reviews, a critical part of many people's buying process, instead just linking to other sites. They also have an extra bad reputation for slop, eclipsing even Steam's, due to allowing crypto games. For me personally I also think it sucks that they have no Linux support at all, forcing the open source community to pick up the slack for them. This isn't even getting into missing the social features that make many online games nicer to play with friends on, remote play together, or even just remote play.
The unpopular business practices are mostly just the contracted exclusivity. Because EGS kind of sucks as a store and launcher I usually end up skipping games that I did want but ended up EGS exclusives. Some do also get separate releases, such as the example you gave, but some don't. I also think that many people, myself included, aren't really all that interested in dealing with the hassle of a custom account, payment, download, and installation process for each random company that offers direct sales either.
I know you're not shitting on EGS or are some pro-Steam zealot but honestly, I personally don't find these reasons all that compelling or any different than Steam or other online stores, certainly...
I know you're not shitting on EGS or are some pro-Steam zealot but honestly, I personally don't find these reasons all that compelling or any different than Steam or other online stores, certainly not enough to create a whole subreddit dedicated to hating it. Take slop, including crypto games aka slop for guys who vape in their Cybertrucks. Like Steam has a whole curated list so this isn't an EGS exclusive problem. At the same time it's not just slop burying gems, smaller games routinely get buried by launches of bigger releases. There's just an over abundance of content in all media spaces and whether it's AI music on Spotify, generic crap on Netflix, or shit games on Steam/EGS/GOG whatever, we're living in a time of content churn.
However, my guess is most players are making somewhat informed decisions about what they're buying based on recommendations from friends, publications, content creators etc and slop can be avoided due to the search bar. Even if I intentionally purchase slop, the refund of Steam and EGS are identical so I can just dump the game within 14 days so long as I've played fewer than 2 hrs.
Concerning exclusivity, I find the complaint overblown as the only major game that I can think of that's EGS exclusive is Alan Wake 2. You could argue that Rocket League is also an EGS exclusive but that's because the studio is owned by EPIC and I don't think anyone would complain that HL or CS is a Steam exclusive. Honestly, I think exclusivity would be less of a concern if Valve had a prolific library or was making games more regularly.
That said, I can't speak to multiplayer experience as it's been a while but I do recall it being fine? As for Linux support , that I certainly can see as being a frustration but at the same time, I feel Linux users should be used to this as they've adopted a relatively niche operating system and with any niche interest, there are compromises and workarounds that the user has to adopt. Like I have a huge interest in physical media which is harder to find these days but I accept that it's part of my interests and I'll be damned if some Swede drives my musical interests.
That's all fair enough, and I agree that the actual program is pretty terrible. I usually just add icons to my start menu once I've installed a game, so I don't spend that much time interfacing...
That's all fair enough, and I agree that the actual program is pretty terrible. I usually just add icons to my start menu once I've installed a game, so I don't spend that much time interfacing with the launcher.
Having some DRM free games is the one positive thing that EGS has over Steam to me. I tend to just download the DRM free copy and move it over to my SteamDeck though. The store itself is kinda ass...
Having some DRM free games is the one positive thing that EGS has over Steam to me.
I tend to just download the DRM free copy and move it over to my SteamDeck though.
The store itself is kinda ass from my experience , I’m willing to put up with it but no way is it gonna replace Steam for me. Library aside, Steam never gave me issues and is more functional, while EGS seems to log me out after a while and put me once on a login loop.
That being said I haven’t bought a game on EGS yet, I tend to go for GOG if it is available in multiple stores, then Steam if it is cheaper due to regional pricing or availability, EGS is mainly when they have a free game that I’m interested in(or when I remember they give away free games).
This is exactly it. With the exception of first party Nintendo games , I rarely buy games at full price or on release. I've definitely adopted a patient gamer mindset as I no longer have as much...
This is exactly it. With the exception of first party Nintendo games , I rarely buy games at full price or on release. I've definitely adopted a patient gamer mindset as I no longer have as much time to play games (but plenty of time to write comments on tildes??!?!?) so finding a good deal is extremely compelling. GOG, EGS coupons, Steam sales, IndieGala, etc. I'll buy basically from anywhere ever if the game is priced right and 99% of the time, I'll be provided with a Steam code.
At the same time what's better than free? I've played a ton of free EGS games and I'm currently playing Vampire Survivors which was given away a few days ago. Honestly, I'm just looking for options when it comes to games and unless a launcher gives me issues (I haven't experienced any yet from EGS like your login loop), I'm completely agnostic to what platform I use.
early on a lot of the criticism could charitably be attributed to failings with the store itself -- even people who vocally welcomed anything to shake up the Steam monopoly were criticizing it for...
early on a lot of the criticism could charitably be attributed to failings with the store itself -- even people who vocally welcomed anything to shake up the Steam monopoly were criticizing it for lacking basic features a store should have. But a lot of that carried on into what basically amounts to tribalism.
That is very strange. I think the only software distribution platform I really care about is the Apple App Store, because in my experience they have really good security vetting compared to when I...
That is very strange.
I think the only software distribution platform I really care about is the Apple App Store, because in my experience they have really good security vetting compared to when I was using Android.
If I was a software developer I'd probably feel differently about the 30% cut. But as a customer I feel like if that's what the market will support for them to be profitable and run a fairly rigid signing system, fine.
But if it came out that the App Store was doing even half of what I understand Valve has been doing with Steam, I'd drop it like a hot rock.
My only hypothesis is that maybe Steam has been around for so long that it essentially has a monopoly, making it really annoying to buy games through any other shop front? That plus having a huge library, I can see how customers might tell themselves, 'Well, it's only fools who are affected, I would never...' etc.
Still, as an outsider to the culture, this is really shocking. I feel like Apple and Google have gotten into huge EU trouble for what seems like a lot less, but I will freely admit I'm one of the most 'tech news' ignorant people on Tildes and am just going by headlines
To add to this, many people have huge libraries of games. Part of this is because Steam has been around so long, they have such a large library/inventory, and they frequently have sales where you...
To add to this, many people have huge libraries of games. Part of this is because Steam has been around so long, they have such a large library/inventory, and they frequently have sales where you are picking up bundles of games for a buck a piece (not necessarily good games, but in a bundle with so many games, how can you resist?). So when it comes time to contemplate not using Steam, you look at your game library total count, and you've got 2000 titles in it? Feels pretty crappy to just lose those, since you can't carry them to another service or even save directly to your computer.
Edit: I suppose the counterpoint is that you can continue to use steam for what you have, and just start buying elsewhere.
EDIT: Leaving my comment below, but actually you can likely ignore it. I did forget how many of the Steam items for games like CS are the “loot boxes” and keys…which are straight up gambling IMO....
EDIT: Leaving my comment below, but actually you can likely ignore it. I did forget how many of the Steam items for games like CS are the “loot boxes” and keys…which are straight up gambling IMO. Having the games drop the loot boxes for free, but then having to spend real money on keys is absolutely predatory. [Though by selling these freely-obtained cases through the Steam market, high school me was able to buy skins and other games that I wanted].
I did not watch the video, so not sure if this is addressed in it or not- but the clarifying point IMO, is that none of the gambling is directly “on steam”, it’s all on third party websites, though I believe on ones with steam inventory integrations or “log in with steam.”
But I do think Steam should be cracking down harder on making gambling with Steam items against TOS, and making it harder to do so. (Though I’m not sure how well they could enforce it, because they can’t easily directly punish a third-party site hosting gambling without catching other things in the crossfire.)
Under capitalism almost every company will seek money over social perfection, but goodwill is capable of being valuable. There are a lot of reasons that people like them even though there is still...
Under capitalism almost every company will seek money over social perfection, but goodwill is capable of being valuable. There are a lot of reasons that people like them even though there is still plenty to criticize. They did do a decent job positioning many of their biggest criticisms to be things that are a bit harder to notice so can keep goodwill high despite them.
Some reasons they're liked:
Most of their games are exceptionally well done
The ease of use of Steam, including the centralized location for so many games and support even for codes bought off-platform
Sales
Advancing Linux gaming
The refund policy
It doesn't seem like they plan to enshittify Steam
And some criticisms:
Lootboxes and the marketplace. I think these fly under the radar most of the time just because the amount of people interacting with those is so much smaller than the number using Steam.
Motivations not being to help customers. Linux push is to insulate themselves from Microsoft and notoriously the refund policy is the result of a lawsuit.
The store cut is too high. It's in line with similar stores, but all those stores have frankly insane cuts.
There is a lot of garbage software on Steam. People only really seem to care that the software isn't malware or illegal because stuff that's just bad can be refunded.
Some people claim it's a monopoly, although some claim such a monopoly can be a positive by disallowing some bad developer behaviors (see discussions about their recent DLC rule changes).
While that isn't an exhaustive list of criticisms they are the ones I'm aware of right now. Notably they're all very easy to miss with most of them requiring some rather specific interactions to even notice.
I’ve used that quite a bit over the last couple of months. Paid for about 6 or 7 games that didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped, and refunded within 2 hours. It’s super useful.
I’ve used that quite a bit over the last couple of months. Paid for about 6 or 7 games that didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped, and refunded within 2 hours. It’s super useful.
No. I think the reason for that is that Steam offers a pretty reliable customer-friendly service that - so far - has been free from shareholder-driven enshittification, and most people are simply...
are people revising their opinions of him in regards to this?
No. I think the reason for that is that Steam offers a pretty reliable customer-friendly service that - so far - has been free from shareholder-driven enshittification, and most people are simply glad that they exist. Additionally the gambling is not really a part of using Steam unless you seek it out. I'd guess most people are not aware that it's even a thing.
And there aren't really any good alternatives. The EpicGameStore has basically no features at all, and Epic isn't any better when it comes to ethical behaviour, e.g. they had to pay more than 500 million dollars just to settle a lawsuit for tricking kids into making unwanted charges. And I'd argue that Fortnite is basically designed to attract kids/teens and collect billions of dollars in microtransactions from them.
Other stores (GOG, itch.io, Ubisoft and EA stores) are mostly specialized with much smaller catalogues. Or the Microsoft store, but AFAIK the user experience there is pretty awful. It's just not comparable to what Steam does, which also has social functions, forums, family sharing and all that stuff .
So, if someone is interested in PC Gaming, then Steam is the most obvious, rational choice to use, it's a good experience, and that makes it easy to turn a blind eye to its gambling problem (especially when so many other companies on the market have questionable ethics too).
We really need legislation to fight gambling in the gaming markets. Otherwise this won't stop.
I agree with the conclusion of the video, however, it bothers me how absolutely petty the people involved are. Nobody wants to look in the mirror. Everyone (including the victims) points back at...
I agree with the conclusion of the video, however, it bothers me how absolutely petty the people involved are. Nobody wants to look in the mirror. Everyone (including the victims) points back at Valve for enabling their acts.
Whilst I agree gambling addiction is a huge issue, everyone involved is well into the acceptance which makes it even more bizarre of any of them to point fingers.
Children don't understand the psychology involved, but these grown ups do.
This isn’t new information, here’s the People Make Games video on this topic from 2 years ago, I can’t see Valve taking action on this unless they’re forced to. Seeing that - apart from this massive exception - Valve is relatively pro consumer, I do wonder if this is essentially their safety net for their more risky endeavors like the index, deck, or arch investments.
Ultimately I think this is a situation where government intervention is warranted. The gambling sites themselves usually dodge this by being located in particular favorable jurisdictions, but afaik Valve isn't, and they're definitely the root you ultimately would need to uproot to actually get rid of this whole network of child gambling weeds.
I like many of Valve's other products, but I don't think any of it justifies them profiting off child gambling like this.
I tried to watch this video when it came out and I really, really don't understand it.
Sorry to be that person, but could someone who understands video games and Steam explain what's going on here?
I don't have Steam, so I'm kind of lost on what the fundamentals are. I thought it was just a storefront, like the Google Play or App Store.
I'll give another shot at explaining what's going on but the gambling section in this Wikipedia article does a good job explaining it.
Valve, the video game company responsible for immensely popular Counter-Strike (CS) and other games like the aforementioned Half Life, also operates the ridiculously popular digital video game storefront, Steam. CS, like many games, offers cosmetic items, aka skins, that can be earned by spending real money to purchase a loot box, a single use item that presents the buyer a chance to earn a skin of various rarities. Skins can be traded between Steam users for Steam's in-system currency which in theory could be used to buy additional games on Steam as Valve does not allow for the direct conversion of Steam currency back into real world money.
However a well known and unregulated black market exists to facilitate this conversion. In essence, one could spend $2.50 on a loot box, get lucky and receive an extremely rare skin, then use Steam's skin trading feature to cash out that skin using the black market : it's basically the digital version of Tide bottles.
Because skins are basically defacto cash, skins have been used to gamble on e-sports, purchase crypto currency, or even used to gamble at the chance of earning rarer skins. All of this is accessible to anyone at any age so long as they have the funds to purchase these loot boxes which makes it incredibly predatory on it's younger audience.
In essence, it's gambling that's accessible to all that only requires a few extra steps. Whats funnier is that Valve has done a lot to try to remove the appearance of gambling, including adopt tactics that the gambling industry itself uses as what better way to emphasize you're NOT facilitate gambling than to do things the gambling industry does. Ultimately, the thinking is that Valve has no incentive to stop this practice because it gets a cut and in 2023, made nearly a billion dollars off the loot boxes alone. My understanding as well is Valve makes some money on every transfer of it's in-system currency so they're making ridiculous amounts of money of this.
Valve added item trading to Steam. This means that microtransactions can be traded between users (if the developer implements it). Additionally, some even have markets, where these items can be bought or sold with steam wallet funds.
Basically, this creates an unregulated digital currency. Like bitcoin but with Valve as the guarantor. The items have guaranteed liquidity because you can then use steam wallet funds to buy games.
As a result, rather large industries of gambling and betting industries have been built around steam items. These function basically exactly like any other gambling sites, and there’s everything from slots to sports betting.
I might be showing my age here but, when I joined reddit, Gabe Newell was seen as a people's hero, Half Life 3 when, 'he's not like other game devs', etc etc.
In the gaming world and wider fandom, are people revising their opinions of him in regards to this? Because this sounds an awful lot like encouraging gambling, and letting kids gamble - much more blatantly than the only platform I'm familiar with (Xbox).
You can buy Steam gift cards (which I guess are guaranteed Valve cryptocurrency?) at almost every department store in my country. AFAIK, there is no age verification required, because I - like most uncles, aunts, parents or caregivers - assume that is money to buy a game. Or, at "worst", a Fortnite skin.
Edit: Jesus christ he's worth 9.5 billion US dollars.
I haven't seen any real change in attitude. People are rabidly defensive of Steam, in spite of their outsized market share, and whine about games being sold through other storefronts. They turn a blind eye to Steam Marketplace while complaining about loot boxes or battle passes in games that have zero trading being "gambling."
If anything, we're just seeing problem gambling being normalized, with esports events even having sponsorships and legacy sports shoving Draft Kings everywhere.
Barron's had an article about the current state of Counter-Strike gambling, earlier in the month.
It's honestly not that surprising. My qualms with loot boxes in general aside*, Valve is remarkably pro-consumer in the gaming space. They've picked up a lot of goodwill among gamers because they sell stuff cheap and they add a lot of benefit to games that utilize their feature set (workshop for mods, save syncing, etc.). Not to mention they're basically single-handedly enabling the progression of linux gaming these days via the Steamdeck.
* - idk how CS handles lootboxes, but the way they were handled in TF2 is mostly fine by me. Primarily cosmetic items, with a few functional items that are also available via dumb luck without participating in the gambling. All that being said, I do think it's largely immoral to do lootboxes because they're clearly predatory toward those with gambling problems (otherwise known as "whales"). But lootboxes are also not a hill I'll die on when assessing whether or not I'll do business with a company. Especially given how tame Valve's seem to be compared to the endless supply of pay-to-win mobile games, AAA games, etc.
Same. People love Steam and they're losing their shit over the Steam Winter sale, just as they do during the Summer, Spring and Autumn sale. I have no real ill will towards Valve/Steam/Gabe Newell, though after this video, I find them less savory and more deserving of criticism but in some circles, you criticize Valve or, god forbid, talk about how EGS is fine, and you'll get crucified. People are dumb and tribal about shit that doesn't fucking matter.
This is one that always baffled me. It’s a store, who cares? I remember that (a probably tiny, but very loud group of) people were freaking out about World of Goo 2 only being available on Epic, despite it having a DRM-free purchase option as well, direct from the devs.
As someone that doesn't really like EGS, but isn't really strongly opposed either I can try to answer. EGS is just kind of a bad store propped up by some business practices that aren't very popular.
It is a bad store largely due to bad implementation. To this day it still doesn't have user reviews, a critical part of many people's buying process, instead just linking to other sites. They also have an extra bad reputation for slop, eclipsing even Steam's, due to allowing crypto games. For me personally I also think it sucks that they have no Linux support at all, forcing the open source community to pick up the slack for them. This isn't even getting into missing the social features that make many online games nicer to play with friends on, remote play together, or even just remote play.
The unpopular business practices are mostly just the contracted exclusivity. Because EGS kind of sucks as a store and launcher I usually end up skipping games that I did want but ended up EGS exclusives. Some do also get separate releases, such as the example you gave, but some don't. I also think that many people, myself included, aren't really all that interested in dealing with the hassle of a custom account, payment, download, and installation process for each random company that offers direct sales either.
I know you're not shitting on EGS or are some pro-Steam zealot but honestly, I personally don't find these reasons all that compelling or any different than Steam or other online stores, certainly not enough to create a whole subreddit dedicated to hating it. Take slop, including crypto games aka slop for guys who vape in their Cybertrucks. Like Steam has a whole curated list so this isn't an EGS exclusive problem. At the same time it's not just slop burying gems, smaller games routinely get buried by launches of bigger releases. There's just an over abundance of content in all media spaces and whether it's AI music on Spotify, generic crap on Netflix, or shit games on Steam/EGS/GOG whatever, we're living in a time of content churn.
However, my guess is most players are making somewhat informed decisions about what they're buying based on recommendations from friends, publications, content creators etc and slop can be avoided due to the search bar. Even if I intentionally purchase slop, the refund of Steam and EGS are identical so I can just dump the game within 14 days so long as I've played fewer than 2 hrs.
Concerning exclusivity, I find the complaint overblown as the only major game that I can think of that's EGS exclusive is Alan Wake 2. You could argue that Rocket League is also an EGS exclusive but that's because the studio is owned by EPIC and I don't think anyone would complain that HL or CS is a Steam exclusive. Honestly, I think exclusivity would be less of a concern if Valve had a prolific library or was making games more regularly.
That said, I can't speak to multiplayer experience as it's been a while but I do recall it being fine? As for Linux support , that I certainly can see as being a frustration but at the same time, I feel Linux users should be used to this as they've adopted a relatively niche operating system and with any niche interest, there are compromises and workarounds that the user has to adopt. Like I have a huge interest in physical media which is harder to find these days but I accept that it's part of my interests and I'll be damned if some Swede drives my musical interests.
That's all fair enough, and I agree that the actual program is pretty terrible. I usually just add icons to my start menu once I've installed a game, so I don't spend that much time interfacing with the launcher.
Having some DRM free games is the one positive thing that EGS has over Steam to me.
I tend to just download the DRM free copy and move it over to my SteamDeck though.
The store itself is kinda ass from my experience , I’m willing to put up with it but no way is it gonna replace Steam for me. Library aside, Steam never gave me issues and is more functional, while EGS seems to log me out after a while and put me once on a login loop.
That being said I haven’t bought a game on EGS yet, I tend to go for GOG if it is available in multiple stores, then Steam if it is cheaper due to regional pricing or availability, EGS is mainly when they have a free game that I’m interested in(or when I remember they give away free games).
This is exactly it. With the exception of first party Nintendo games , I rarely buy games at full price or on release. I've definitely adopted a patient gamer mindset as I no longer have as much time to play games (but plenty of time to write comments on tildes??!?!?) so finding a good deal is extremely compelling. GOG, EGS coupons, Steam sales, IndieGala, etc. I'll buy basically from anywhere ever if the game is priced right and 99% of the time, I'll be provided with a Steam code.
At the same time what's better than free? I've played a ton of free EGS games and I'm currently playing Vampire Survivors which was given away a few days ago. Honestly, I'm just looking for options when it comes to games and unless a launcher gives me issues (I haven't experienced any yet from EGS like your login loop), I'm completely agnostic to what platform I use.
early on a lot of the criticism could charitably be attributed to failings with the store itself -- even people who vocally welcomed anything to shake up the Steam monopoly were criticizing it for lacking basic features a store should have. But a lot of that carried on into what basically amounts to tribalism.
That is very strange.
I think the only software distribution platform I really care about is the Apple App Store, because in my experience they have really good security vetting compared to when I was using Android.
If I was a software developer I'd probably feel differently about the 30% cut. But as a customer I feel like if that's what the market will support for them to be profitable and run a fairly rigid signing system, fine.
But if it came out that the App Store was doing even half of what I understand Valve has been doing with Steam, I'd drop it like a hot rock.
My only hypothesis is that maybe Steam has been around for so long that it essentially has a monopoly, making it really annoying to buy games through any other shop front? That plus having a huge library, I can see how customers might tell themselves, 'Well, it's only fools who are affected, I would never...' etc.
Still, as an outsider to the culture, this is really shocking. I feel like Apple and Google have gotten into huge EU trouble for what seems like a lot less, but I will freely admit I'm one of the most 'tech news' ignorant people on Tildes and am just going by headlines
To add to this, many people have huge libraries of games. Part of this is because Steam has been around so long, they have such a large library/inventory, and they frequently have sales where you are picking up bundles of games for a buck a piece (not necessarily good games, but in a bundle with so many games, how can you resist?). So when it comes time to contemplate not using Steam, you look at your game library total count, and you've got 2000 titles in it? Feels pretty crappy to just lose those, since you can't carry them to another service or even save directly to your computer.
Edit: I suppose the counterpoint is that you can continue to use steam for what you have, and just start buying elsewhere.
EDIT: Leaving my comment below, but actually you can likely ignore it. I did forget how many of the Steam items for games like CS are the “loot boxes” and keys…which are straight up gambling IMO. Having the games drop the loot boxes for free, but then having to spend real money on keys is absolutely predatory. [Though by selling these freely-obtained cases through the Steam market, high school me was able to buy skins and other games that I wanted].
I did not watch the video, so not sure if this is addressed in it or not- but the clarifying point IMO, is that none of the gambling is directly “on steam”, it’s all on third party websites, though I believe on ones with steam inventory integrations or “log in with steam.”
But I do think Steam should be cracking down harder on making gambling with Steam items against TOS, and making it harder to do so. (Though I’m not sure how well they could enforce it, because they can’t easily directly punish a third-party site hosting gambling without catching other things in the crossfire.)
Under capitalism almost every company will seek money over social perfection, but goodwill is capable of being valuable. There are a lot of reasons that people like them even though there is still plenty to criticize. They did do a decent job positioning many of their biggest criticisms to be things that are a bit harder to notice so can keep goodwill high despite them.
Some reasons they're liked:
And some criticisms:
While that isn't an exhaustive list of criticisms they are the ones I'm aware of right now. Notably they're all very easy to miss with most of them requiring some rather specific interactions to even notice.
This is utterly huge. Most other game stores, consoles included, tell you to pound sand.
I’ve used that quite a bit over the last couple of months. Paid for about 6 or 7 games that didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped, and refunded within 2 hours. It’s super useful.
No. I think the reason for that is that Steam offers a pretty reliable customer-friendly service that - so far - has been free from shareholder-driven enshittification, and most people are simply glad that they exist. Additionally the gambling is not really a part of using Steam unless you seek it out. I'd guess most people are not aware that it's even a thing.
And there aren't really any good alternatives. The EpicGameStore has basically no features at all, and Epic isn't any better when it comes to ethical behaviour, e.g. they had to pay more than 500 million dollars just to settle a lawsuit for tricking kids into making unwanted charges. And I'd argue that Fortnite is basically designed to attract kids/teens and collect billions of dollars in microtransactions from them.
Other stores (GOG, itch.io, Ubisoft and EA stores) are mostly specialized with much smaller catalogues. Or the Microsoft store, but AFAIK the user experience there is pretty awful. It's just not comparable to what Steam does, which also has social functions, forums, family sharing and all that stuff .
So, if someone is interested in PC Gaming, then Steam is the most obvious, rational choice to use, it's a good experience, and that makes it easy to turn a blind eye to its gambling problem (especially when so many other companies on the market have questionable ethics too).
We really need legislation to fight gambling in the gaming markets. Otherwise this won't stop.
e: english hard
I agree with the conclusion of the video, however, it bothers me how absolutely petty the people involved are. Nobody wants to look in the mirror. Everyone (including the victims) points back at Valve for enabling their acts.
Whilst I agree gambling addiction is a huge issue, everyone involved is well into the acceptance which makes it even more bizarre of any of them to point fingers.
Children don't understand the psychology involved, but these grown ups do.