Comment on What's up with Epic Games?
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 5 months agoI 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 5 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 5 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 5 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 5 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 5 months ago
Steam was fined in Australia for not providing refunds for games
Firenz@lemmy.world 5 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 5 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 5 months ago
Gabe had a say in greenlighting horse armour? What?
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Horse armor was a dlc, not a mod (well, there were also joke mods), and it was for oblivion. They tested the paid mods on Skyrim. Officially implemented on the steam workshop and all, and obviously valve was supposed to get a cut out of every sale which is probably why they were A-OK with it