Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/19/steams-google-result-reads.html
…
3 Likes
Once you get past the valid concerns about Epic Game stores security issues, 99% of the complaints amount to “but it’s not fair I have to buy my games elsewhere.” Which is one of the most ludicrous complaints I’ve ever heard. Competition is good, for both game designers and consumers. Having everything tied to one platform is bad. See: Amazon and the wholesale cluster fucking of the book market.
The other 1% of complaints: “I pre-ordered X game on STeam and they pulled out to launch on Epic.” Yeah, well, that’s not Epic’s fault, that’s the game company who did you wrong. And you still ran off and bought their products, so really… were you THAT put out by it all? Nah.
Gamers are weird, man. I say that as a gamer. I just remember the time you had to hunt for stores that sold games and you didn’t have the luxury of getting everything online. The more stores that offer a wide variety of products, the better for everyone.
9 Likes
Yeah, Epic is very sparsely featured tho.
And they lock up games for exclusive distribution.
I use it, but I am team Steam.
What I hate more is the Ubi one.
Any of them beat the hell out of Gamestop.
5 Likes
maybe it did once, but it’s gone
2 Likes
It’s crazy how big Steam gotten over the years, and how long it’s lasted. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact my Steam account is almost 16 and a half years old.
Good times.
5 Likes
Yep, every fan base has their collection of infantile whiny bitches. Gamers just happen to generally be better at Internet so they seem louder.
I miss me the days of Egghead, EB, and Software ETC. Nerd mall-ratting was good. If you ran out of games to look at then just hit up B. Dalton and Waldenbook till the olds told you it was time to go home. Ahh Friday nights.
4 Likes
I remember visiting Baltimore around 1990 and wandering into an Egghead store for the first time at the Inner Harbor. We had nothing like that in Maine, and I didn’t want to go home again. So. Much. Software! I’d been buying at Sears mostly before that, they had the best selection at the time where I was.
1 Like
Mine too.
Competition is good.
But please explain to me how bribed exclusivity is ‘competiton’ please…
I cannot choose, i’m forced onto one store because someone paid for that to be the only option… that is an odd version of ‘competition’…
(on the plus side, this is saving me lots of money. In refusing to enable Epic’s attempt to remove competition on the PC, i’m buying a lot less games…)
4 Likes
Because the exclusivity is for a limited period. After that, they go on other platforms. You could, I don’t know… wait? Thinking off the top of my head here. Crazy I know.
No one is forcing you to buy a video game on day one of its release. In fact, in my history of playing games since the 80’s, I recommend NEVER buying a game day one. Wait until all the bugs shake out after a couple of months. Every PC user couldn’t wait to get Red Dead Redemption II on the day of its release. Yeah, that went not well at all.
But that’s a choice you decide to make. Having more stores is good for the whole industry, and in the end its good for consumers. Monopolies are only good right up until the moment they’re not, at which point everyone is screwed.
You’re not being bribed. It boils down to developers taking the best deal offered, and Epic offers the best deal. Competition. Steam can step up or not, it’s up to them. And you can play that game, or you can play another, there’s like a bajillion games to purchase and play. You’re not being forced to buy it, and if you don’t like the Epic platform, you wait until it comes out on Steam.
Doesn’t matter, forced exclusivity is bad period. the time does not matter.
Indeed, hence me buying less games now.
Epic is trying to force a monopoly.
Steam has an accidental semi-monopoly, by being the best in the market. Epic is not trying to do better, but is trying to force itself into being the monopoly by bribing devs… This is NOT a good thing for the PC…
2 Likes
The most annoying thing is this is totally unnecessary.
Keeping up their free games program, and instead of bribing devs into exclusivity, but undercutting steam on price, they’d have gotten tons of goodwill from gamers despite their underfeatured store…
But they went gung-ho on the force method…
2 Likes
I’ve bought games from Apple (rarely), Steam, Gog Games, and (once, for a particular game available only from one store, from Epic). My wallet enjoys the fact that the stores normally compete against each other (and Steam and Gog Games have sales). What I’d hate is for each publisher to exclusively publish on a single platform.
2 Likes
I simply don’t agree. If it’s permanent, I would. But it’s not. All you have to do is wait.
More likely they are trying to make inroads in a market that is heavily biased in favor of a competitor. Remains to be seen how well it works, but I suspect it’s not entirely sustainable.
It’s not the bad thing everyone its saying, either. If they aren’t buying every single title, then I don’t see the real problem here. If you want it, you’ll get it from Epic. If you don’t, you’ll move on to other things until it comes around.
Long as I get my games and the price is fair, I don’t care if someone makes an exclusivity deal. I’m platform agnostic. I’ve gotten most of my games from Steam and GOG, a few from Amazon, and direct from Rockstar and EA/Dice (had to try out Battlefield 1). Probably some other places I’m forgetting as well. I just don’t see the occasional premium title that goes exclusive to one or another provider as a real problem. It seems pretty obvious the intent is to get a few of those per year to build a customer base, not to corner the market on all major titles.
So you have no issue someone bribing someone to keep goods out of the hands of competitors…
DO NOT call this competition, for it is not.
Like i mentioned, they have ways they could achieve this without being hilariously anti-consumer, they chose not to.
So to confirm, you see no issue with a company bribing another to restrict sale of a product to only one store…
So bribery is fine now aparrently…
2 Likes
Clearly I won’t agree with you this is a “bribe.” It’s not. It’s called a business agreement. It’s pretty standard, too. But because up until now Steam was pretty much the only market in town, people buying games haven’t had to think about it. But hey, go to Target and try to buy Martha Stewart products. You’ll be surprised to find out they are “bribed” to be sold elsewhere. Also, try buying Doc Marten boots anyplace that they haven’t been bribed to sell them. Try watching a movie that HBO has on Starz.
You have choice. A million other games. Or wait until the one you want is no longer exclusive. But it’s not a “bribe” any more than ten thousand other manufacturer/seller licensing agreements are.
But are the company selling Martha Stewart products paying to make sure they’re not sold at target?
Important point here.
1 Like
There’s often significant financial incentives to become the “exclusive” seller of a product line. So yes. It’s in the same vein as CBS/NBC/FOX being the “exclusive” station for one or other of the NFL games (I’ve long since stopped watching, so I don’t know who has what these days). The networks paid a huge amount for those rights.
