Ex Valve employee admits that Steam was killing PC gaming, and that Epic is saving it

[Remij 4,670]

 

 

 

 

Even ex-valve employees know exactly what has been happening.  People will start to realize in time, but they'll still be salty.  Valve will have to start funding, buying, improving their AAA game catalog.. this will mean more games will come to PC, and perhaps new AAA games built SPECIFICALLY for the PC, where the platform can finally flex it's muscle a bit.

 

 

 

http://www.zenofdesign.com/the-epic-steam-war-is-here-and-game-devs-are-all-for-it/

[Purist 134]

MS needs to put Halo MCC on Epic Store too. What could be stopping them?

[JonDnD 2,608]

Fat Gabe and his gang of Sheep HBFK

 

Epic eatin now

[Vini 430]

PC gaming sucked way before Gabe Newell came long. 

 

Nothing but twitchy point and click shooters and boring ass strategy/RPG games for smelly ass hermshits

[lynux3 2,052]

PosC gaming.  

[Playstation Tablet 1,725]

Valve charges 30 percent, Epic store 12. Why would anyone NOT want developers to make more money instead of some shitty store

 

[102020393023445948594 2,223]

LMFAO! Vavle can go fuck themselves. Terrible company, Steam is a dumping ground.

 

 

[kaz 2,439]

his name is Richard "Moneyrich". 

[Ike★ 2,906]

Good, hopefully Valve has to move their ass and make an actual new game. 

[McWicked 825]

16 minutes ago, Ike said:

Good, hopefully Valve has to move their ass and make an actual new game. 

This.  I don't care about how people are ass-blasted at Valve.  They have a superior product to EA and Ubisoft.  Now Epic comes along and gives them competition.  OK.  You're still gaming on your PC.  What's the big fucking deal?

 

I couldn't care less about any of this shit until it produces Half Life 3.  Then I'll proceed to jump on the Epic dick-sucking train. 

[Hot Sauce 2,727]

Steam has problems and competition is always good, but a 30% cut isn't killing an industry that has only seen growth under the banner of Steam. I mean shit, if a 30% cut was enough to kill an industry how did we ever get to this point when retail copies of games lost 45% to distribution, retailer margins, and platform royalties?

[jehurey 3,227]

2 hours ago, Hot Sauce said:

Steam has problems and competition is always good, but a 30% cut isn't killing an industry that has only seen growth under the banner of Steam. I mean shit, if a 30% cut was enough to kill an industry how did we ever get to this point when retail copies of games lost 45% to distribution, retailer margins, and platform royalties?

Steam pushed PC gaming prices to the level of console gaming prices.

 

Remember when a brand new, retail package PC game was $10 cheaper than the console version?

 

On the flip side, Steam normalized the act of putting games on sale during certain points of the year, so this actually trained consumers to just not buy the game at full price and "wait for the Steam Sale"

 

From Valve's perspective, they actually make more money from special "sales" because it increases the amount of purchases made on the steam store from consumers. Which means they get their cut. The increased amount of purchases more than offsets the lower purchase price. It makes no difference on Valve's back-end, because they still have to pay for the server space and bandwidth anyway.

 

But from the developer's perspective, they're fucked. Unless their game is wicked hot and GoTY material, its not going to sell very fast at $60 at launch. That means PC users are waiting for it to go on sale. That means less money, and Valve is taking 30% on top of that.

 

Valve had this coming.

[bhytre 2,753]

Hermsmells used to hate Steam, then they started loving it for many years, now they're back to hating again  

As it should be with PosC gaming  

[DynamiteCop 2,085]

Disgruntled ex-employee.

[102020393023445948594 2,223]

Glad to see the framework behind the PeeC gaming scene crumble. As the in-fighting continues and the hermits cannibalize themselves, we can successfully exploit an irreparable wedge in PoC gaming, making sure PoC as a platform, no matter what launcher you use, never reaches the scale of console.

 

This will deter developers from supporting PC, thus taking away games from PC, thus taking food off the table + mouths of the fatass hermits.

We are coming for YOU, YOUR GAMES, YOUR PASS-TIME! You will not be allowed to co-exist here. This is console territory you low-down snivelling SCUM!

 

Begone to your games, BEGONE to your pity ports, BEGONE TO PeeC!!!  

 

[Hot Sauce 2,727]

58 minutes ago, jehurey said:

Steam pushed PC gaming prices to the level of console gaming prices.

 

Remember when a brand new, retail package PC game was $10 cheaper than the console version?

Sure, Steam charging a cut forced publishers to up the price of PC games. I don't think either the development side or the players would prefer to return to $50 games without the benefits of Steam or another centralized storefront, though.

 

1 hour ago, jehurey said:

On the flip side, Steam normalized the act of putting games on sale during certain points of the year, so this actually trained consumers to just not buy the game at full price and "wait for the Steam Sale"

Steam also normalized the act of buying shit you'll never play because it's on a Steam sale. It goes both ways. And I think you're vastly overestimating the impact that it's had on people waiting to buy games, especially after the first few sales when it was pretty clear that AAA game that came out a month earlier wasn't going to see a 50% price cut.

 

These kinds of sales aren't exclusive to Steam and the economic study is generally supportive of it as a business plan, but it is a tight rope that end up being harmful.

 

1 hour ago, jehurey said:

From Valve's perspective, they actually make more money from special "sales" because it increases the amount of purchases made on the steam store from consumers. Which means they get their cut. The increased amount of purchases more than offsets the lower purchase price. It makes no difference on Valve's back-end, because they still have to pay for the server space and bandwidth anyway.

This would make sense if Valve's cut was a flat amount. If they took $1 off of every sale regardless of price then selling 20,000 copies would be way better than selling 10,000. Valve's cut is a percentage, though, so if they're making more money by selling more copies at a lower purchase price then the developer is too.

 

1 hour ago, jehurey said:

But from the developer's perspective, they're fucked. Unless their game is wicked hot and GoTY material, its not going to sell very fast at $60 at launch. That means PC users are waiting for it to go on sale. That means less money, and Valve is taking 30% on top of that.

Nah.

 

1 hour ago, jehurey said:

Valve had this coming.

They did, but largely because they've become a bloated storefront that punts curation to users while not providing the necessary tools to make it particularly useful. Steam has problems and Valve has sat back while the money rolled in because they had a monopoly.

[jehurey 3,227]

51 minutes ago, Hot Sauce said:

Sure, Steam charging a cut forced publishers to up the price of PC games. I don't think either the development side or the players would prefer to return to $50 games without the benefits of Steam or another centralized storefront, though.

 

Its 2019. Centralized storefront isn't something special anymore. That's one of the biggest points being made here. Maybe in 2004-2008 Valve was investing in the server space to host all of this. But that is now commonplace. Companies don't need to worry about extensive piracy anymore. Major publishers have now established their own verification for games, and the same Windows program used to verify Ubisoft games IS also a storefront for Ubisoft games. Same for CDPR games, same for EA games.

 

55 minutes ago, Hot Sauce said:

Steam also normalized the act of buying shit you'll never play because it's on a Steam sale. It goes both ways.
 

Yeah.......shitty, cheap indie games. You inadvertently supported Bodycount's remarks.  This doesn't help traditional game publishers. This creates a race to the bottom.  This is straight out of Satoru Iwata's GDC speech about mobile games.

 

Consumers begin to view all games as being the same value, and cheap indie games being sold at $3.99, $5.99, $9.99 ends up dragging down AA and AAA-production games.

 

People here aren't whining about Epic Games Store because they're losing exclusivity to indie games, are they?

 

1 hour ago, Hot Sauce said:

This would make sense if Valve's cut was a flat amount. If they took $1 off of every sale regardless of price then selling 20,000 copies would be way better than selling 10,000. Valve's cut is a percentage, though, so if they're making more money by selling more copies at a lower purchase price then the developer is too.

No it doesn't make sense if Valve's cut was a flat amount.  To Valve, they are losing potential money by having a game sitting there wasting time on their servers being unsold. Its the equivalent of having a product sit on a store shelf, taking up space.

 

Valve issuing licenses to a product being sold 10,000 times doesn't cost them anything different than issuing 60,000 licenses. Same goes for downloads. It cost Valve the same thing, either way. So they might as well move product, and get a 30% cut of a lowered price because the thing Valve does not want is to lose time on a product that isn't selling.

 

Why do you think they allowed user-created DLC on their store?

 

Why do you think Valve had the "Greenlight" program?

 

Why do you think Valve went ahead and ditched the Greenlight program and told developers, who may or may not have any real merit to make video games "go ahead and sell your shit in an unfinished state"????

 

Valve just wants TRANSACTIONS. Credit card transactions, at all time. They're almost like a Credit Card company in this respect.

 

1 hour ago, Hot Sauce said:

Nah.

If the developer puts a game on sale, they move more copies of the game. But they now have less people left to sell the game to, and they people who hadn't purchased the game are now waiting for it to go on sale again.

 

You end up shortening the value of your products, long-term. If I bought Assassin's Creed 3 back in 2013 for $15, why would I ever pay $50-$60 for AC Black Flag? or AC Syndicate? or AC Odyssey?

 

Now add in Steam's 30% cut and imagine what Ubisoft, EA, Activision would do.

[Remij 4,670]

 

[Spicalicious 128]

Wouldn't it be great if MS purchased Epic?

[Hot Sauce 2,727]

1 hour ago, jehurey said:

No it doesn't make sense if Valve's cut was a flat amount.  To Valve, they are losing potential money by having a game sitting there wasting time on their servers being unsold. Its the equivalent of having a product sit on a store shelf, taking up space.

1 hour ago, jehurey said:

If the developer puts a game on sale, they move more copies of the game. But they now have less people left to sell the game to, and they people who hadn't purchased the game are now waiting for it to go on sale again.

lol