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Dutch consumer foundation sues Sony for overpricing digital PlayStation games (www.gamedeveloper.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

I don’t know. Most of my games are on Steam but I have lots of games on EA, Ubisoft, Epic Games, GoG and Blizzard platforms, not to mention Battlepass. But yeah Steam is dominant but it’s third party and not controlled by Microsoft

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  • [+] [S] -12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    EGS just published their sales numbers and it’s a fart compared to Steam which has the defacto PC gaming monopoly. It’d be fine if it was some open platform but it’s just another unaccountable company that prints money for being first to monopolise the market, no different from Microsoft.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Not being publicly traded makes this very different from Microsoft, actually.

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  • [+] [S] -9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yes, it’s even less transparent and accountable.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    In what world do you think publicly traded companies are more accountable? If anything it's the opposite.

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  • [–] [S] -5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Private company is not a subject to many regulations and duties that a public company has to adhere to, mostly on external reporting. How much do you know about Valve? What’s their profit for 2023?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That's because Steam offers a better user experience than EGS. Here are some nice things about Steam that EGS lacks:

    • Steam input - awesome controller mapping
    • Linux support - esp Steam Deck
    • huge back catalog
    • user reviews - maybe this exists now for EGS?
    • lots of features I don't use, but others might

    While EGS has:

    • free games
    • timed exclusives

    Why should I use EGS? Steam is better.

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  • [–] [S] -4 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Valve has an arguably better platform but is more expensive and doesn’t have some exclusives. That would be a great opportunity for a competitor yet nobody broke through despite pouring billions in. Weird, huh?

    Valve didn’t figure out how to port Steam to ARM and dragged their feet on x86-64 so I’m not sure where that money goes, probably gambling research.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago*

    Valve has an arguably better platform but is more expensive

    Yes, I think everyone would agree that Steam is the best PC games platform

    doesn’t have some exclusives

    Well yeah, that's the definition of exclusive. Sony, Epic, and Microsoft pay to have games not available on other platforms. First parties don't release their games on other platforms to increase the attractiveness of their platform. Valve does this with their first party titles as well (CS:GO, Half Life, etc), but they release very few games.

    Exclusives are the definition of anti-competitive behavior. Valve only does this for their first party titles, and other than that is very competition friendly, since they allow devs to release on any other store, as well as make free keys to sell elsewhere.

    As a platform, they behave much better than pretty much everyone else, with maybe only GOG beating them due to license transfers and DRM-free commitment. Steam arguably has the best customer service in the industry (or if not best, very close to it), so it's less of a concern.

    Valve didn’t figure out how to port Steam to ARM

    Why would they? Windows on ARM is pretty much nonexistent, emulating x86 on ARM on Linux has severe performance issues, and the best platform support for ARM is from Apple, where there's even less game selection.

    Most games don't work on ARM, so there's little point in supporting it. But Steam does work on macOS on ARM (I think it uses Rosetta still?), where devs are actually going to port their games to ARM. Windows and Linux on ARM are incredibly niche and games just aren't ported for those platforms. I guess they could do a compat layer like Rosetta, but it'll be a terrible experience running a game through a compat layer.

    AFAIK, EGS and GOG don't support ARM on anything other than macOS (and phones for EGS), and why would they?

    dragged their feet on x86-64

    Why does that matter? The main reason to port to x86_64 is to access more memory. Even while Steam was x86, games could still absolutely be x86_64. During the transition, they still needed to support 32-bit, so why do extra work when the benefits don't really apply?

    I've helped update to 64-bit, and it can be a lot of work. Why prioritize that?

    I'm not sure where that money goes

    • Steam features like Steam Input (i.e. all that stuff that makes them stand out)
    • Linux support - tons of investment into WINE/Proton, drivers, etc; this is huge for Steam Deck
    • hardware development - Steam Deck, Valve Index, etc
    • marketing - both their products and other devs' games
    • employee salaries - Valve employees are paid very well
    • legal fights - e.g. patent lawsuits
    • Gabe's yachts - similar to how Unreal Engine profits are used by Tim Sweeney

    They're not public, but it's not hard to estimate since they publish a lot of data about the platform.

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