The multi-billionaire owner with the backing of the Chinese government
Who cares about the backing if it has no effect on anything? I’m more concerned about Valve having a separate Steam client for China, censoring their games specifically for China and even reportedly banning for bringing up Winnie the Pooh.
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t disagree with everything you said here but come on, Steam is basically a privately owned PC games store monopoly that has now been going on for 25 years. Since it’s not public we can’t really know for sure but there’s a very real possibility that Epic is the underdog here
darganon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t think steam has any anti-competitive behavior that I’m aware of.
Fortnite has roughly 100 million more monthly active users than steam, to say nothing of every piece of software running Unreal Engine, Epic is huge.
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Steam somehow prevents publishers from selling games at a cheaper price in competitors’ stores, even if their cut from the store is lower. That is extremely anti-competitive and has to be illegal.
asret@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
If you sign up to use Steam to distribute your game then one of the things you agree to is to make it available on Steam at the same price you offer anywhere else. This protects Steam’s business and ensures that Steam customers aren’t disadvantaged.
However, it also applies even if the alternative channels don’t make use of Steam directly (e.g selling on Epic). This is where the Wolfire Games lawsuit comes in. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 11 months ago
True. I forgot about that in my comment actually. I think they calmed down on that because it was basically illegal in a lot of countries
dotMonkey@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Steam was fined in Australia for not providing refunds for games
Firenz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It was a bit more than just an issue of Valve not providing refunds.
Read about it here and here.
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Epic doesn’t make nearly as much money from Fortnite’s players as steam makes from their users though. Same for UE royalties. I don’t think there’s a single UE license that has a 30% rev share (which is what you get on steam if you don’t have big AAA sales)
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Gabe had a say in greenlighting horse armour? What?