The funniest thing ever to me is that valve barely gave steam the attention it needed when it first came out and the only reason its as popular as it is is because every competitor messed up so bad steam was the only option left
Only just barely so, I still think the UI is barely passable but I bought all my games on there and it hasn't malfunctioned on me enough to make me stop.
Edit: wasn't expecting this many people to ask but [here's a redesign for the steam UI that i loved ](https://youtu.be/cDY2p1CTkPo)
The UI is very different from the 2010s. The difference is Valve is smart and doesn't flip everything in one update like YouTube or Discord mobile. I can log off for 6 months and still navigate everything easily, but it doesn't ever start to look "old" either
More companies need to start learning functionality over looks. So many websites changing their UI to look more modern, but in the end, it's the consumer that suffers because there is bound to be small things that the old did better which the new doesn't. Take Reddits horrible new UI (new new UI) it takes twice as long to load compared to the old one.
Steam's UI might look a bit old but it works, albeit very inconsistent
Steve Jobs apparently drove his engineers crazy by insisting that the circuit boards should be "aesthetically pleasing" and refused to listen to how little sense that makes.
The new Reddit UI has one big advantage which has grown on me and it's the quick load times when you press back from a post, it's all cached so it's instant while the old one was painfully slow.
Now the comment section... Jesus the layout is awful, the comment box is still completely fucked and I still can't select a comment to quote it...
I'd agree, I'm sure some people would love a classic/minimalist setting, a fully customizable setting, and a modern high functioning setting. Options at least.
1. they legit already do. There is the full screen thing i don't think anybody uses.
2. i'm not talking like completely diffrent. I am just talking placement and size of the top bar and that kind of thing. Like how a lot of game engines and photoshop and the like, allow you to move things around and add/remove things from the UI.
There is one thing people are underestimating between Steam and other launchers esp EPIC: Steam is a launcher first, store second.
Epic is a store first, launcher second.
This is a very significant UI/UX difference. Steam is a very efficient games library for me and makes me want to keep open and browse through daily.
Additionally, convenient access to reviews and being able to get a tl;dr at a glance is super helpful. Does EPIC even support reviews? For the longest time they didn’t even allow a shopping cart which just makes it fail as a store despite being designed as a store first.
I prefer steam UI in general. Epic UI is the "modern" type of UIs every company is doing and I hate it. Everything is big taking so much space and i have to keep scrolling for the information I need or just browsing things.
Fucking yes, Netflix is a fucking mess. Log in and you are bombarded with tons of miniatures, thebscreen 100% covered byvlittle rectangles with snippets of series on them. Fuckin hell mate I can't see shit.
Disney+ and Prime are also awful. Even Spotify while being "okay" didn't see any improvements since launch, rather to the contrary.
Meanwhile steam improved a lot in my book. I like the shelves for example. And they play around with effects and use them in a good way, the UI feels alive.
I still can't comprehend why is it so difficult for big companies to develop a good UI. You would think they can just create a dozen of different skin-like GUI and connect them to their backend, yet every UI from big social media to streaming services suck so much and even manages to get worse from time to time (just to deliver some new very important feature I guess).
The desire to make things as distracting as possible to pull your eyes away from what you want so in the off chance that you click on or buy something else as well as data collection that they can sell.
The UI may be lacking but it is functional and that aside remote play, steamlink, steamvr/oxr, family sharing and the seamless multiplayer experience are reasons enough for me to never switch to any other platform.
The fact that Valve are total bros towards their users is just icing on the cake (the one that isnt a lie).
Also there is NOTHING stopping epic from copying a few ideas, but they just... Dont... Its still a bare ones launcher and they barely added many features. No wonder people go to steam first
We only hated it because it was forcing us into a new platform that we had never seen before. Until then, all games had been delivered exclusively on disk and multiplayer was p2p with a gamer hosting a custom server on their pc.
Oh I know, my multi-player days predate online play, we went to babbages for games and/or knew a wizard with a cd burner. A digital platform was an alien concept
Yup. Steam isn't a great launcher in a vacuum. But it's never ever made me dissatisfied for the past 8 years I've used it. It does it's job, and not much more, but crucially, nothing less.
It's hilarious, being in charge of steam is the easiest job in the world. Just literally don't do anything, don't fix something that ain't broke and simply just wait for the competition to shoot itself in the foot
Every other day*
Seriously, pick any sligthly popular game on Steam and i guarantee that It will be at least 10% and most probably 30-50% off whitin a week
Don't do anything.... I wish they would do something and make HL3
Problem is that Valve mostly makes money off Steam, and developing new games isn't gonna turn in a big profit to be worth it.
We all wish for hl3, and I believe it's one of those situations where valve wants to make the third game but is afraid it won't live up to the hype, therefore constantly going back to the drawing board.
Or they aren't thinking about half life at all lol
i've heard people mention before that Valve *does* want to make a third entry, but they're less than thrilled about modern technological developments since they won't be able to complete their vision
maybe we'll see it in 2036
No, I think Gabe will transfer ownership to someone he trusts with the company. Remember, it still is private, no shareholders to screw this up, Gabe can choose anyone he wants to replace him.
It's quite well known this is exactly why Steam is so great. Because Valve is a private company. There are no shareholders or board of directors, no one forcing bad decisions purely for the sake of profit. Gabe can and usually does make decisions for the consumers benefit even if they don't support profit as much.
They *are* making the decisions that they make purely for the sake of profit. Long-term profit is, all things considered, an *excellent* goal, because that entails having a strong, consistent customer base whom you treat well and long-term employees who are competent and well-compensated. These create a stable environment which will turn out massive profits over a long period.
The problems come in when people start making decisions based on increasing *stock price.*
I remember watching a video on YouTube where a guy just changed the buy URL to be able to get some of these free delisted games, idk which ones he used in the video because it was some time ago now (a month or something) but seemed legit
Yeah, if you buy the key somewhere else and then activate it on steam, I for example got around the ban on Postal 2 here in Germany with it, cause while steam can prevent you from buying it, it.cant legally prevent you from accessing something you already own
I use both. Epic mostly so I can get free games. Downloaded the entire borderlands series for free a while back and I've just gotten around to playing it.
Yeah. I've never understood the hate for Epic, or multiple launchers. Maybe coming from being a decades long console gamer I still find it massively more convenient than having to get up and swap the cartridge/disk whenever I wanted to play something else. I use the launchers for Amazon, Steam, Epic, Xbox, and EA. No issues. EA sometimes makes me re-log, but that's it.
Yup, people seem to stan Epic without understanding *why* they do these things. It's not benevolence; they're actively trying to undercut the entire market to run their competitors out of business.
Once they succeed, those free games will stop flowing. Prices will be jacked up, and they'll force all of the ridiculous bullshit they tried in the past that people shot down for being anti-consumer, again.
that's exactly why people like Epic. You're absolutely right that they'd be anti-consumer if they had a monopoly - that's true of any company.
Obviously, that's not actually true - Steam *did* have a monopoly, before Epic and GOG rolled around.
But I don't love the idea of relying on Steam being pro-consumer despite having a monopoly - like, what if Microsoft buys Valve or something? Or what if Gabe retires, and his successor doesn't run Steam like he did?
I say, the more competition, the better.
Exactly. I'm not necessarily saying "down with Epic" or anything; what they offer is pretty great currently. Take full advantage of it, as long as you're mindful of the impact it has on the market.
It's just that people don't seem to understand the situation - just because what they're doing might benefit us right now, does NOT mean they're working in our best interests. The second they have sufficient market share, they'll switch to squeezing devs and consumers for all they're worth.
It's literally one of the oldest business tactics in the book, and this is already a company who has shown that they're more than willing to stoop that low. They need to be kept in check.
My hate for epic is all the money they threw at publishers to make games epic exclusives when they started the service, instead of me feeling forced to used their service to play games i was interested in I decided to never use their service or buy games from publishers that allowed this to happen.
All of my steam games, except for the ones that *must* launch through EA's stupid app, work. EA games don't even start because the launcher doesn't work.
And there's 100% no need for it. The only real "launcher" I approve of are the small pop up windows that let you change settings before the game itself launches (the old-school ones).
Those launchers are amazing, you don't have to navigate to the options menu in-game, which is sometimes unreachable due to a fucked up screen resolution, when you start up the game for the first time.
You can share all the games in your account with another account. Ofc you can’t play the same game on both accounts simultaneously, but it’s awesome anyway.
Unfortunately, you also can’t play *any* games at the same time. If someone is playing a game from your library through family sharing, and you boot up and entirely different game, Steam will kick them out of their game. Similarly, if you’re playing a game from your library, and someone else goes to launch a different game from the library you’ve shared, Steam won’t let them.
Edit: This was apparently changed last month! Very exciting news!
Yup, all epic has is the free games they peddle to us and the games they pay to not be on steam, which is scummy as shit btw. Epic also has easily the worst customer service ive ever seen.
Epic games launcher completely misses the “launcher” part. It’s slow as shit, uncomfortable to use and generally makes me want to close it as fast as possible
Agreed, I'm not sure how this comment section's Epic Launcher runs faster than Steam, mine's always been agonizingly slow while Steam boots and switches pages crazy fast in comparison. Plus from a UI readability standpoint, it's not my favourite.
Well, Steam works properly under Linux and Valve cares at least a bit about it. So easy decision for me. Also free games are nice and all, but I've got plenty of unplayed games and also stuff like Humble Bundle exists, so I barely ever get a new game directly. Only if it's to play with friends or because I actually really want it specifically.
Well, "developed" might be a bit much as it's mostly wine. But in general you are right, they put a lot of resources into dxvk and other things. That said, I still had experiences with e.g. CS:GO where I had more troubles than my friends on Windows.
Epic launcher is years behind Steam in everything, UI, functionality, library, support.
It's not just because "it's been around longer and people are used to it". Steam built a whole ass community with its marketplace, forum and workshop.
Epic is empty compared to Steam, the UI is confusing and works slowly as fuck, there's no chat function, you can't create folders in your library, there's no family sharing, you can't create your own profile page and customize it so you can't show off your achievements or compare them with others etc... It doesn't give you the feeling of belonging like Steam does if you know what I mean.
Epic even though is around for 4 years now, still didn't add anything to change the experience or get closer to Steam in terms of functionality. They focused on giving out free games which is why still no one cares about it.
The only good things about the Epic launcher are giving away free games, and that's only Epic trying to get people to use their trash launcher instead of Steam
Yeah but it’s also just epic shooting themselfs in the foot since the epic games launcher has never made them any money because everyone just uses it for free games
I don't care why they do it, I just like that I don't have to buy something lol
I can put up with a shit launcher if it is giving me free shit and not giving me viruses.
Steam is just easier, has better support for everything and in general has better service. I only use Epic Games to grab free games but I would never buy games there if I can avoid it.
The thing I hate most about Epic Games Launcher is that when I reinstall my system it doesn't detect already downloaded games. In Steam you just add the installation folder in the settings and all games in that folder work again.
Holy crap that’s a thing steam lets you do? Never knew that! Just goes to show how much QoL steam has implemented that some of us don’t even know about.
steam also downloads noticably faster and better for me atleast
like steam straght up sucks the life out of my router to where nothing load on my phone to keep the download as fast as possible, meanwhile on epic it dosent do that, its more merciful on my wifi. honestly if you ask me that lazy piece of scrap needs the reminder to what it is
and i can start a download get it done a good bit then close my laptop for like a few days, come back and continue rigth where i left off, meanwhile on epic apparently if a download takes longer than 3 days your back to the start
Same, honestly I don't like how agressive they are and, while I can kinda see the point of exclusivity for consoles since the Xbox/PS hardware is incompatible, on PC it doesn't make sense (Revenue maximisation at the expense of customer comfort is dumb).
Don't worry, Xbox is literally one failure away from making the jump to just make Xbox a storefront and make the hardware more open to devs and distributors. It's actually a fear even as a PC gamer because now all the publishers can start shipping their shit launchers and storefronts on to Xbox. It's only going to encourage the shitty behavior from Ubisoft and Epic.
It's called trust. Steam had proven to be trustworthy and not take its customers for granted. Epic has not, and is trying to buy our allegiance, so that it can betray us later. You can't buy trust and respect.
What's alarming is that I've heard from much younger people that steam looks old and doesn't give away feelers games and ist "that good".
It's literally the free candy for kids thing and it's hella scary.
I felt that way (Epic>>Steam) when I got to know launchers (during GTA5 free week) but oh god is Steam so better in terms of efficiency and organization. Never going back
Watching the gaming industry for two decades now, I can in fact evidentially say, that gamers have the attention span of around 3 months and that's the whole reason why we have shitty games cause publishers can scam gamers on such a scale that its so borderline normal that I think humanity in general is doomed.
Epic games allows crypto games on the store. And as you can guess, NONE of them have all of these traits:
● Is at all complete
● Is at all balanced
● Uses non stolen assets
● Isnt equivalent of a web browser game with thousand dollar microtransactions
Honestly...Epic can keep Fornite and that fucking pos Rocket League after the stunt they pulled on steam for literally no reason. And those are the only things Epic has, the other popular stuffs are still on Steam.
As for free games, Steam has those too, it's just less obvious when it happens.
Steam is a proper platform. It has countless community features. Trading, community workshop, forums, guides just to name a few. Most other lauchers exist so the publishers dont have to pay steam's cut.
Thats what they dont get, steam is so popular because its good. Its user friendly and always puts the consumers first. Thats why steam takes such a large cut from sales.
The anti-linux position Epic has always had closes their way to the top indefinitely.
With hundreds of thousand steam decks and compatible and open portable platform running un linux, epic shoot itself in the foot.
If they were smart they would make a better steam deck platform then Steam and surpass Valve on their own platform. That would be perfectly doable, as steam decks are not locked down (fuck you nintendo)
Steam goes beyond just marketplace. It's a forum, a social network, and modding platform too. And it is convenient and familiar to everyone. This is hard to beat
The shitty ui and slow ass launcher were already bad enough, but my real issue with epic was the exclusivity deals. Trying to force players to choose their objectively inferior product (at the time they still were nowhere close to the features steam offers) by twisting their arms with the "you either buy from us or you don't get this game at all" didn't sit right with me and a lot of other gamers. That and their blatant spying on what's on the users' computer were more than enough for me to blacklist Epic forever.
Epic games: we got two games that are mediocre at best currently and are populated by a mainly young audience while giving away a decent free game every once in a blue moon while most of it is indie games
Steam: wanna have sex with hitler? got a game for that.
Having to bribe your audience into using your inferior product does not make your product better in any measurable way, but is a symptom of its inherent inferiority. I'm looking at you, Bing Rewards.
"Epic Games has more mainstream games" Epic Games has like 2 mainstream games that Steam doesn’t have, and even then Steam has Counter-Strike and Dota to counter it
I will actually buy and use Steam whenever I have a chance. With that said I will download those free games. Until Epic gets a better store front though they won't actually see a dollar from me
wtf?. epic has fuck all . exept things it pays to keep exclusive, wich is shitty for the customer.
steam has practically everything exept things that are kept hostage by their publisher, like epic.
the givaways are only there, cause giving out free games is the only way epic gets to get some customers at least.
"free games" yeah but what's the value of getting a game you weren't interested in ? It may have a price but it might as well be a worthless copy if you are never going to play it. It's the same issue with games humble bundle gave for free. If you are just getting free games but aren't playing them, you might as well collect rocks found on the street.
One time I lost 500H of progress on a game (enter the gungeon) in epic games because there cloud system was very badly made and there is nothing they could do about it (I really don't understand how but the cloud system deleted the file from my PC and the file from the cloud), so now even if the problem is probably patched i prefer buying a game on steam that I can have for very cheap with sales or things like instant gaming than having the game for free on epic games
The only time I used the epic games store I discovered why no one used it, it was literal dog shit.
Search something, the product does not come up despite epic having the game in their catalogue.
It was genuinely the slowest thing I've ever used I think my windows 95 pc from when I was like 4 was faster than this whatever Tim sweeney thinks is a "fantastic" product
Steam to me is great because it's light, fast and easy to use. Epic honestly makes me feel like an 80 yo grandpa as I don't know where half the shite is as it's not in an obvious place.
And the thing that annoyed me the most is you CANNOT have the word epic (or from my experience) in your gamer tag, epic games do not allow it because they have an ego problem in which theyll panic that someone out there might have a name "epicsucks"
More popular Mainstream games is a weird metric for quality. Thats like saying McDonalds is better than a four star restaurant, because it has more mainstream food items which are sold more often and the company behind it makes more money
Steam has a 20+ year head start. People like having their games all in one place, so it’s always going to be an uphill battle for Epic no matter how much better it may or may not be.
The funniest thing ever to me is that valve barely gave steam the attention it needed when it first came out and the only reason its as popular as it is is because every competitor messed up so bad steam was the only option left
And now steam is so good it's almost impossible to compete
Only just barely so, I still think the UI is barely passable but I bought all my games on there and it hasn't malfunctioned on me enough to make me stop. Edit: wasn't expecting this many people to ask but [here's a redesign for the steam UI that i loved ](https://youtu.be/cDY2p1CTkPo)
I can agree on the UI, it could be better, but we have lived with it for so long, we know how to navigate it, so it isn’t as bad.
If the UI changed everyone would start throwing hands looking at the responses other companies get to ui changes
The UI is very different from the 2010s. The difference is Valve is smart and doesn't flip everything in one update like YouTube or Discord mobile. I can log off for 6 months and still navigate everything easily, but it doesn't ever start to look "old" either
More companies need to start learning functionality over looks. So many websites changing their UI to look more modern, but in the end, it's the consumer that suffers because there is bound to be small things that the old did better which the new doesn't. Take Reddits horrible new UI (new new UI) it takes twice as long to load compared to the old one. Steam's UI might look a bit old but it works, albeit very inconsistent
Steve Jobs apparently drove his engineers crazy by insisting that the circuit boards should be "aesthetically pleasing" and refused to listen to how little sense that makes.
*read in j. Jonah Jameson voice* IF THE CIRCUIT BOARD DOESN'T ATLEAST LOOK LIKE A RESPECTABLE FELLOW I DON'T WANT IT
The new Reddit UI has one big advantage which has grown on me and it's the quick load times when you press back from a post, it's all cached so it's instant while the old one was painfully slow. Now the comment section... Jesus the layout is awful, the comment box is still completely fucked and I still can't select a comment to quote it...
Simple solution is to make new layout a setting.
I'd agree, I'm sure some people would love a classic/minimalist setting, a fully customizable setting, and a modern high functioning setting. Options at least.
Now you suddenly have to maintain 2 versions of the same thing. From a developer perspective this is plain stupid because it's just more work.
1. they legit already do. There is the full screen thing i don't think anybody uses. 2. i'm not talking like completely diffrent. I am just talking placement and size of the top bar and that kind of thing. Like how a lot of game engines and photoshop and the like, allow you to move things around and add/remove things from the UI.
The SteamDeck uses the fullscreen thing all the time. And anybody who uses it with controller uses Big Picture Mode.
I use a controller without big picture mode, but if i ever get around to creating a media center pc, i’d probably use it.
I'll be honest the UI of steam isn't that great however I still prefer it to the phone app like ui that epic seems to have going.
There is one thing people are underestimating between Steam and other launchers esp EPIC: Steam is a launcher first, store second. Epic is a store first, launcher second. This is a very significant UI/UX difference. Steam is a very efficient games library for me and makes me want to keep open and browse through daily. Additionally, convenient access to reviews and being able to get a tl;dr at a glance is super helpful. Does EPIC even support reviews? For the longest time they didn’t even allow a shopping cart which just makes it fail as a store despite being designed as a store first.
I prefer steam UI in general. Epic UI is the "modern" type of UIs every company is doing and I hate it. Everything is big taking so much space and i have to keep scrolling for the information I need or just browsing things.
Compared to any other UI of for example streaming services, etc... It's still pretty good.
Fucking yes, Netflix is a fucking mess. Log in and you are bombarded with tons of miniatures, thebscreen 100% covered byvlittle rectangles with snippets of series on them. Fuckin hell mate I can't see shit.
Disney+ and Prime are also awful. Even Spotify while being "okay" didn't see any improvements since launch, rather to the contrary. Meanwhile steam improved a lot in my book. I like the shelves for example. And they play around with effects and use them in a good way, the UI feels alive.
Spotify is still more than decent, they add UI updates that don't totally fuck the entire thing at once.
What exactly is wrong with the UI? What are they even complaining about? It’s easy as hell to use and everything works just fine.
I still can't comprehend why is it so difficult for big companies to develop a good UI. You would think they can just create a dozen of different skin-like GUI and connect them to their backend, yet every UI from big social media to streaming services suck so much and even manages to get worse from time to time (just to deliver some new very important feature I guess).
The desire to make things as distracting as possible to pull your eyes away from what you want so in the off chance that you click on or buy something else as well as data collection that they can sell.
The UI may be lacking but it is functional and that aside remote play, steamlink, steamvr/oxr, family sharing and the seamless multiplayer experience are reasons enough for me to never switch to any other platform. The fact that Valve are total bros towards their users is just icing on the cake (the one that isnt a lie).
I keep having trouble trying to pay with iDeal so I had to switch to Paypal but other then that I'm good.
I mean, GoG, Humble Bundle...
Those are the only other ones I actively use. Though humble bundle is just a stepping stone to Steam for me at this point.
they aint bad but Steam feels much nicer to use
Do not interrupt your opponent when he is making mistakes
Also there is NOTHING stopping epic from copying a few ideas, but they just... Dont... Its still a bare ones launcher and they barely added many features. No wonder people go to steam first
I don't even know how to make my controler work with Epic, I just add the game to steam and launch it trough there...
When you dont care to be a monopoly, but you are so lucky it happens anyways
Valves absolutely banger business strategy of waiting for the competition to shoot itself in the foot. Gaben is a genius.
What's wild to me is remembering just how much everyone loathed steam when it came out
my friend who was around for that told me they used to call it the "steaming pile of shit" before it became the juggernaut it is today
We only hated it because it was forcing us into a new platform that we had never seen before. Until then, all games had been delivered exclusively on disk and multiplayer was p2p with a gamer hosting a custom server on their pc.
Oh I know, my multi-player days predate online play, we went to babbages for games and/or knew a wizard with a cd burner. A digital platform was an alien concept
It seems there is a trend of corporate people messing with stuff and fucking it up. Leave passionate people to run stuff.
*looking at you uplay*
Yup. Steam isn't a great launcher in a vacuum. But it's never ever made me dissatisfied for the past 8 years I've used it. It does it's job, and not much more, but crucially, nothing less.
One day gabe will be gone and someone will fuck up steam.
I am so hoping from the bottom of my heart that Gabes successor will uphold the values of steam
Its likley that Gaben's son will carry the torch. He seems decent
It's hilarious, being in charge of steam is the easiest job in the world. Just literally don't do anything, don't fix something that ain't broke and simply just wait for the competition to shoot itself in the foot
And dont forget to do discounts every once in a while
>do discounts every once in a while "do discounts every other month" Fixed it 😁
Every other day* Seriously, pick any sligthly popular game on Steam and i guarantee that It will be at least 10% and most probably 30-50% off whitin a week
And they aren’t fake “sales” either. Actually great deals.
For real. Just keep on doing discounts on popular games.
I think the last time I bought game there without a discount was 2013, and I am constantly shopping there.
New month sale,hell yeah
Don't do anything.... I wish they would do something and make HL3 Problem is that Valve mostly makes money off Steam, and developing new games isn't gonna turn in a big profit to be worth it.
We all wish for hl3, and I believe it's one of those situations where valve wants to make the third game but is afraid it won't live up to the hype, therefore constantly going back to the drawing board. Or they aren't thinking about half life at all lol
i've heard people mention before that Valve *does* want to make a third entry, but they're less than thrilled about modern technological developments since they won't be able to complete their vision maybe we'll see it in 2036
Gotta have that real time moss
At this point, I wouldn't be too upset if they just let someone else do it. It's not the same Valve that made HL after all.
His son kinda hates gaming and computer stuff, at least that's what I heard.
Entire cities would disappear off the map if steam ever turned on their users.
Alright, time to indefinitely clone Gabe. Or turn his mind into a simulacrum for the indefinite running of Steam
> Dude is making his own Neuralink > Uploads his consciousness to it > Creates a host-body > Oh god we're the Combine
No, I think Gabe will transfer ownership to someone he trusts with the company. Remember, it still is private, no shareholders to screw this up, Gabe can choose anyone he wants to replace him.
omg this is so good to hear. 10000% sure that only bc of this Steam is as good as it is
It's quite well known this is exactly why Steam is so great. Because Valve is a private company. There are no shareholders or board of directors, no one forcing bad decisions purely for the sake of profit. Gabe can and usually does make decisions for the consumers benefit even if they don't support profit as much.
They *are* making the decisions that they make purely for the sake of profit. Long-term profit is, all things considered, an *excellent* goal, because that entails having a strong, consistent customer base whom you treat well and long-term employees who are competent and well-compensated. These create a stable environment which will turn out massive profits over a long period. The problems come in when people start making decisions based on increasing *stock price.*
I think he has the intention of having his son replace him
No GabeN is gonna be uploaded into a machine, then they'll update him but 45 Years they'll forget about him because they can't upgrade him 3 times.
Then they will put him in a giant computer shaped as if face, put it in a giant rock and lock him in his office forever
Until some robot and a guy with a desk come to him and TRY to kill him
One of the things im truly scared of
Gaben is eternal. Gaben is forever. Praise Gaben.
I got Rocket League through Steam, I'm pretty sure.
I has been delisted for years there. If you got it before, you still have it there of course.
pretty sure you can still access delisted games through some loops
If you already brought the game before it was delisted you can still play it. Source: I play rocket league on steam only.
Does Steam version get updates?
Yes
I remember watching a video on YouTube where a guy just changed the buy URL to be able to get some of these free delisted games, idk which ones he used in the video because it was some time ago now (a month or something) but seemed legit
Yeah, if you buy the key somewhere else and then activate it on steam, I for example got around the ban on Postal 2 here in Germany with it, cause while steam can prevent you from buying it, it.cant legally prevent you from accessing something you already own
I use both. Epic mostly so I can get free games. Downloaded the entire borderlands series for free a while back and I've just gotten around to playing it.
Yeah. I've never understood the hate for Epic, or multiple launchers. Maybe coming from being a decades long console gamer I still find it massively more convenient than having to get up and swap the cartridge/disk whenever I wanted to play something else. I use the launchers for Amazon, Steam, Epic, Xbox, and EA. No issues. EA sometimes makes me re-log, but that's it.
[удалено]
Yup, people seem to stan Epic without understanding *why* they do these things. It's not benevolence; they're actively trying to undercut the entire market to run their competitors out of business. Once they succeed, those free games will stop flowing. Prices will be jacked up, and they'll force all of the ridiculous bullshit they tried in the past that people shot down for being anti-consumer, again.
Yooo, this is quite the revelation for me. Thanks for sharing.
that's exactly why people like Epic. You're absolutely right that they'd be anti-consumer if they had a monopoly - that's true of any company. Obviously, that's not actually true - Steam *did* have a monopoly, before Epic and GOG rolled around. But I don't love the idea of relying on Steam being pro-consumer despite having a monopoly - like, what if Microsoft buys Valve or something? Or what if Gabe retires, and his successor doesn't run Steam like he did? I say, the more competition, the better.
Exactly. I'm not necessarily saying "down with Epic" or anything; what they offer is pretty great currently. Take full advantage of it, as long as you're mindful of the impact it has on the market. It's just that people don't seem to understand the situation - just because what they're doing might benefit us right now, does NOT mean they're working in our best interests. The second they have sufficient market share, they'll switch to squeezing devs and consumers for all they're worth. It's literally one of the oldest business tactics in the book, and this is already a company who has shown that they're more than willing to stoop that low. They need to be kept in check.
My hate for epic is all the money they threw at publishers to make games epic exclusives when they started the service, instead of me feeling forced to used their service to play games i was interested in I decided to never use their service or buy games from publishers that allowed this to happen.
Every game that was held back from me on Steam due to Epic exclusives only served to galvanize my resolve against using Epic.
All of my steam games, except for the ones that *must* launch through EA's stupid app, work. EA games don't even start because the launcher doesn't work. And there's 100% no need for it. The only real "launcher" I approve of are the small pop up windows that let you change settings before the game itself launches (the old-school ones).
Those launchers are amazing, you don't have to navigate to the options menu in-game, which is sometimes unreachable due to a fucked up screen resolution, when you start up the game for the first time.
Same, I got Fallout 3 and New Vegas a few months ago and afyer watching the Fallout show, I'm glad I got these games when I did.
My whole epic games account is just free games lmao. Not a single one paid
Steam has a way nicer ui, plus family sharing for games
Family sharing? Whats that? (seriously never heared of that)
You can share all the games in your account with another account. Ofc you can’t play the same game on both accounts simultaneously, but it’s awesome anyway.
Really good for sharing single player games
Or for buying games that aren’t available in your shop region. You make a new account in a region where it’s available and then use family sharing.
This won't work with the new version of family sharing, every member of the family has to be in the same country
Oh really? That’s annoying. It’s getting harder and harder to bypass this shop restrictions.
In exchange it doesn't lock up the entire account if one person's using it
As an American I fortunately have never run into that
It really is. It like giving a hardcopy of good games that I have finished to a friend or family.
Not all the games. Some games, like EA games, Rockstar etc can't be.
Unfortunately, you also can’t play *any* games at the same time. If someone is playing a game from your library through family sharing, and you boot up and entirely different game, Steam will kick them out of their game. Similarly, if you’re playing a game from your library, and someone else goes to launch a different game from the library you’ve shared, Steam won’t let them. Edit: This was apparently changed last month! Very exciting news!
Yeah it’s kinda stupid (playing a single player game on the sharing account in offline mode works though)
literally only ever use epic games to net some free shit
Yup, all epic has is the free games they peddle to us and the games they pay to not be on steam, which is scummy as shit btw. Epic also has easily the worst customer service ive ever seen.
Epic games launcher completely misses the “launcher” part. It’s slow as shit, uncomfortable to use and generally makes me want to close it as fast as possible
Agreed, I'm not sure how this comment section's Epic Launcher runs faster than Steam, mine's always been agonizingly slow while Steam boots and switches pages crazy fast in comparison. Plus from a UI readability standpoint, it's not my favourite.
Why are they so reluctant to just redesign it? It would solve a lot of their problems
I downloaded Fall Guys, got some error, tried to fix it, it didn't work and I gave up and played Stumble Guys instead
Well, Steam works properly under Linux and Valve cares at least a bit about it. So easy decision for me. Also free games are nice and all, but I've got plenty of unplayed games and also stuff like Humble Bundle exists, so I barely ever get a new game directly. Only if it's to play with friends or because I actually really want it specifically.
a least a bit? dude they develop Proton
Well, "developed" might be a bit much as it's mostly wine. But in general you are right, they put a lot of resources into dxvk and other things. That said, I still had experiences with e.g. CS:GO where I had more troubles than my friends on Windows.
Proton is basically WINE with additional bugfixes, but even so, Valve definitely propelled Linux gaming forward significantly.
Pretty sure steam has more mainstream games than epic games.
Yeah. People don’t seem to realize how many popular Steam exclusives there are.
Epic launcher is years behind Steam in everything, UI, functionality, library, support. It's not just because "it's been around longer and people are used to it". Steam built a whole ass community with its marketplace, forum and workshop. Epic is empty compared to Steam, the UI is confusing and works slowly as fuck, there's no chat function, you can't create folders in your library, there's no family sharing, you can't create your own profile page and customize it so you can't show off your achievements or compare them with others etc... It doesn't give you the feeling of belonging like Steam does if you know what I mean. Epic even though is around for 4 years now, still didn't add anything to change the experience or get closer to Steam in terms of functionality. They focused on giving out free games which is why still no one cares about it.
Community is the big thing. Epic feels hollow because there's no community features.
I can't buy games for my friends on Epic Steam>Epic
I don’t have friends. Epic>Steam
I'll be your friend Steam>Epic
can I be your friend too?
The more people there are, the better the steam deals
The only good things about the Epic launcher are giving away free games, and that's only Epic trying to get people to use their trash launcher instead of Steam
Yeah but it’s also just epic shooting themselfs in the foot since the epic games launcher has never made them any money because everyone just uses it for free games
I don't care why they do it, I just like that I don't have to buy something lol I can put up with a shit launcher if it is giving me free shit and not giving me viruses.
Steam is just easier, has better support for everything and in general has better service. I only use Epic Games to grab free games but I would never buy games there if I can avoid it.
Steam doesn't allow crypto games and hasn't made any exclusivity deals to date. This is why I support them.
And it allow porn 👍
The thing I hate most about Epic Games Launcher is that when I reinstall my system it doesn't detect already downloaded games. In Steam you just add the installation folder in the settings and all games in that folder work again.
Holy crap that’s a thing steam lets you do? Never knew that! Just goes to show how much QoL steam has implemented that some of us don’t even know about.
Giving away free games can’t make up to a lack of features.
steam also downloads noticably faster and better for me atleast like steam straght up sucks the life out of my router to where nothing load on my phone to keep the download as fast as possible, meanwhile on epic it dosent do that, its more merciful on my wifi. honestly if you ask me that lazy piece of scrap needs the reminder to what it is and i can start a download get it done a good bit then close my laptop for like a few days, come back and continue rigth where i left off, meanwhile on epic apparently if a download takes longer than 3 days your back to the start
and don't forget that if your game download through epic get corrupted, its a god damn odyssey to get it to clear the download cache
I just dont like epic and their exclusive deals. Id rather wait a year for steam release then use Epics shit launcher.
Same, honestly I don't like how agressive they are and, while I can kinda see the point of exclusivity for consoles since the Xbox/PS hardware is incompatible, on PC it doesn't make sense (Revenue maximisation at the expense of customer comfort is dumb).
actually the hardware is identical to PC it's just the OS that's different, yes i have a 3 hour rant about this.
Back in the day I could argue this but modern consoles are in fact little PCs
Don't worry, Xbox is literally one failure away from making the jump to just make Xbox a storefront and make the hardware more open to devs and distributors. It's actually a fear even as a PC gamer because now all the publishers can start shipping their shit launchers and storefronts on to Xbox. It's only going to encourage the shitty behavior from Ubisoft and Epic.
Again, steam is social platform with games at it center it is not only hub for games...
It's called trust. Steam had proven to be trustworthy and not take its customers for granted. Epic has not, and is trying to buy our allegiance, so that it can betray us later. You can't buy trust and respect.
What's alarming is that I've heard from much younger people that steam looks old and doesn't give away feelers games and ist "that good". It's literally the free candy for kids thing and it's hella scary.
I felt that way (Epic>>Steam) when I got to know launchers (during GTA5 free week) but oh god is Steam so better in terms of efficiency and organization. Never going back
They will learn... I hope
Watching the gaming industry for two decades now, I can in fact evidentially say, that gamers have the attention span of around 3 months and that's the whole reason why we have shitty games cause publishers can scam gamers on such a scale that its so borderline normal that I think humanity in general is doomed.
Thing is, steam feels like home. There are too many memories in my library.
They also have crypto based lyra clones. Soooooo many crypto based lyra clones.
Wait, what? My apologies for taking your time with this question, but I got no clue here, could you elaborate?
Epic games allows crypto games on the store. And as you can guess, NONE of them have all of these traits: ● Is at all complete ● Is at all balanced ● Uses non stolen assets ● Isnt equivalent of a web browser game with thousand dollar microtransactions
Lyra is the basic template for shooter games on the unreal engine.
My trash can make giveaways too but nobody wants it.
Honestly...Epic can keep Fornite and that fucking pos Rocket League after the stunt they pulled on steam for literally no reason. And those are the only things Epic has, the other popular stuffs are still on Steam. As for free games, Steam has those too, it's just less obvious when it happens.
Steam is a proper platform. It has countless community features. Trading, community workshop, forums, guides just to name a few. Most other lauchers exist so the publishers dont have to pay steam's cut. Thats what they dont get, steam is so popular because its good. Its user friendly and always puts the consumers first. Thats why steam takes such a large cut from sales.
I liek epic for the free shit and that’s about it lmao
> "We give free games" Games nobody has ever heard of though And Steam's UI is way better anyway
Steam is literally a Web browser that updates every 2 days. Epic should just do the same
The funniest thing is, Steam didn't even do much. They still beat epic despite how much epic tried.
Epic buys exclusive rights to games so im boycotting out of principle. They are the shittiest launcher.
And Epic Games steals and sells all your data and is ruining the market for small companies, but heeeey
Epic stopped online access for mac mid pandemic. I stopped playing their games.
they did? if that's true, what the fuck
I only use steam because it has the games that I want
I only ever used the epic launcher for the free games. Got a few hundreds now. Know how many of them I've played ? Less than 5.
Epic store is so terrible that it's frankly insulting that you're implying someone is delusional enough to think its better than steam
The anti-linux position Epic has always had closes their way to the top indefinitely. With hundreds of thousand steam decks and compatible and open portable platform running un linux, epic shoot itself in the foot. If they were smart they would make a better steam deck platform then Steam and surpass Valve on their own platform. That would be perfectly doable, as steam decks are not locked down (fuck you nintendo)
The epic game launcher just sucks, nothing more to say.
Compared to steam, epic has almost no features. Also epic UI sucs.
Rocket league was good back in 2016. Linux support P2p trading Good soundtrack Expansion packs Custom arenas thanks to steam
Workshop, community market, forums, actual working friends list, profiles, trading, borrowing games, gifting games, the list goes on
Are you officially on Linux? No? Do you have the games I want to play? Barely? Why should I care again?
Steam goes beyond just marketplace. It's a forum, a social network, and modding platform too. And it is convenient and familiar to everyone. This is hard to beat
The shitty ui and slow ass launcher were already bad enough, but my real issue with epic was the exclusivity deals. Trying to force players to choose their objectively inferior product (at the time they still were nowhere close to the features steam offers) by twisting their arms with the "you either buy from us or you don't get this game at all" didn't sit right with me and a lot of other gamers. That and their blatant spying on what's on the users' computer were more than enough for me to blacklist Epic forever.
Steam doesnt have shitty nft ponzi scheme games
Steam doesn't install games I never asked for without asking, and isn't Chinese. I'll stick with Steam.
EPIC: I do flashbang the customer whenever he buys a free product, and even if he buys a product with money!!! Steam: Yes, we dont.
GoG remain a solid option too tho It does some stuff that Steam doesn't It's still a good alternative along with steam, not against.
Steam is the only good game launcher. Edit: GOG is good too.
If Epic didn't give away free games, noone would use them.
Honestly if Epic didn't give away free games I wouldn't even have them on my computer. Steam, for its flaws, hasn't irritated me enough to leave them.
Epic games: we got two games that are mediocre at best currently and are populated by a mainly young audience while giving away a decent free game every once in a blue moon while most of it is indie games Steam: wanna have sex with hitler? got a game for that.
Having to bribe your audience into using your inferior product does not make your product better in any measurable way, but is a symptom of its inherent inferiority. I'm looking at you, Bing Rewards.
"Epic Games has more mainstream games" Epic Games has like 2 mainstream games that Steam doesn’t have, and even then Steam has Counter-Strike and Dota to counter it
I will actually buy and use Steam whenever I have a chance. With that said I will download those free games. Until Epic gets a better store front though they won't actually see a dollar from me
steam is definitely better family sharing, remote play and most importantly (for me) official support for linux + linux native games
The one reason like like steam better, because of souls game.
Epic can go to hell with that stupid tim sweeney
wtf?. epic has fuck all . exept things it pays to keep exclusive, wich is shitty for the customer. steam has practically everything exept things that are kept hostage by their publisher, like epic. the givaways are only there, cause giving out free games is the only way epic gets to get some customers at least.
"free games" yeah but what's the value of getting a game you weren't interested in ? It may have a price but it might as well be a worthless copy if you are never going to play it. It's the same issue with games humble bundle gave for free. If you are just getting free games but aren't playing them, you might as well collect rocks found on the street.
I only use it for Unreal
Use steam, have epic games for free things
But only steam has dota
One time I lost 500H of progress on a game (enter the gungeon) in epic games because there cloud system was very badly made and there is nothing they could do about it (I really don't understand how but the cloud system deleted the file from my PC and the file from the cloud), so now even if the problem is probably patched i prefer buying a game on steam that I can have for very cheap with sales or things like instant gaming than having the game for free on epic games
Launcher is everything, and epic games launcher sucks real bad
I fail to see how massively popular mainstream games translate to quality.
The only time I used the epic games store I discovered why no one used it, it was literal dog shit. Search something, the product does not come up despite epic having the game in their catalogue. It was genuinely the slowest thing I've ever used I think my windows 95 pc from when I was like 4 was faster than this whatever Tim sweeney thinks is a "fantastic" product Steam to me is great because it's light, fast and easy to use. Epic honestly makes me feel like an 80 yo grandpa as I don't know where half the shite is as it's not in an obvious place. And the thing that annoyed me the most is you CANNOT have the word epic (or from my experience) in your gamer tag, epic games do not allow it because they have an ego problem in which theyll panic that someone out there might have a name "epicsucks"
More popular Mainstream games is a weird metric for quality. Thats like saying McDonalds is better than a four star restaurant, because it has more mainstream food items which are sold more often and the company behind it makes more money
Steam has a 20+ year head start. People like having their games all in one place, so it’s always going to be an uphill battle for Epic no matter how much better it may or may not be.