You're starting to sound severely schizophrenic. Do you agree with me that epic's action are anti-consumer fuckery or not? I don't care if it's a valid strategy for them or not, no one does and why should they, this is not what's getting people angry.
I do agree with that. And I never claimed otherwise. What I'm saying is that there is no other way for them to have a realistic stab at Valve. Which is, I assume, their intention.
What I'm also saying is that it is not a big deal. Only extremely few, and very vocal, people have a problem with it at all. The same people that probably had/have a problem with Steam to begin with. Most think like I do and will just install what is needed to play the game they want to play. So I'd launch my game frome EGS instead of Steam. Problem? No. Hell, I might even add an EGS game to my Steam library if that is possible. Even less of a problem.
The only really annoying thing would be layering of launchers or overlays, as is/was the case with a few titles requiring Steam as well as UPlay. But I think that is annoying enough for users to only happen extremely rarely.
But again, back to my initial post - fabulously optimistic. I'm sure that anti-consumer tools will be put to rest as soon as we can have a healthy competition. Especially if they prove effective and everyone on the market is made aware of that. That's how rl works. It's not setting a dangerous precedence at all.
That is indeed one possible outcome. However, these exclusivity deals are a loss of money for Epic, a bet at best. It will only be worth it on its own in cases where the game is VERY successful. They simply cannot keep doing that forever.
However, let's assume they can and others (namely Steam) start doing the same:
Right now, we have games that are Steam-exclusive (by dev decision, but in the end it doesn't matter who decides), Epic-exclusive, publisher-store-exclusive (ala Origin), anywhere, or excluding Steam. In your case, the only change would be we'd also have games that are excluding Epic (if Steam, for example, also starts having deals that allow their games to be sold anywhere except Steam) or excluding other stores specifically.
Don't see much of an issue here that would cause me to raise a fuss.
I hope you, at the very least, have a conscience to realize that just a few posts ago you suggested that a market in which companies spend huge sums of money to make sure they're the only ones with means to distribute certain products might result in lower prices.
I did not suggest that. I was laying words in your (?) mouth, trying to figure out what your point could have been in how Steam is supposed to "retaliate".
And you're asking me this question as a PC gamer? You do realize how PC market looked before evulll monopoly took over? How we had many different entities in each country "fiercely competing" for the consumer? If not, then check how prices looked then, check the sales and promos, check refunds and customer support, check anything ffs this is not gaming kindergarten class.
That was also before the internet "took over". Markets with and without internet really aren't comparable.
What happened then was digital downloads began to take root and - due to many reasons - were cheaper. Across the board, that wasn't just Steam, but many others. If you remember, there was a time before Steam, but there were already digital downloads on various platforms. The phenomenon of digital downloads can hardly be considered a single entity competitor.
It wasn't Valve or Steam that made games cheaper, it was the existence and spread of internet technology. Same with movies, music, etc.
Or a more concrete example: there was this time when MS was actually dead serious about competing on PC market and paid studios to develop their "exclusives". Which, due to stark competition, cost merely 300% of a typical, brand new "aaa" release (example from my local market), with said aaa baseline already being way too steep for a typical customer.
I honestly have no idea what you are even talking about. This was either before my time, or after I stopped caring about non-digital stores. I haven't heard of an occurance of a single publisher asking for three times as much as competitors.
But even if that was true, you are just proving my point, because obviously MS is not competing in the PC market any more (well, they might get back into it, who knows), so their plan with the triple prices failed. Just as Epic would fail if they started asking for obscene amounts of money or similar stunts.
I care about the bigger picture and I don't like it.
Fair enough. I just think you'll have to try to adjust to a new situation eventually.
