Valve Brands Metro's Exodus From Steam "Unfair"

[WYP]

Metro Exodus has moved from Steam to the Epic Games Store. Valve has branded the move 'unfair to Steam customers'.



Read more about Valve Branding Metro's Exodus From Steam "Unfair".

 

[WillSK]

I mean..if the customers get stung with higher prices because of the game moving to EPIC store then yeah but otherwise this is just business imo.

If the extra money made by developers leads to better pricing and more investment in post release content, I'm all for Epic doing their thing.

I just think Epic need to be careful. Sure they've got all this extra cash from Fortnite which they can use to bully their way into this market but the hype will die eventually and they need to make sure they are able to run a quality and sustainable platform on 12% cut

 

[grec]

Well, given Epic develop the most popular AAA game engine there is and are arguably the most important back end developer for the gaming industry, from consoles to PC, with even first party console titles now relying on them, I seriously doubt they're going anywhere anytime soon. If you look at popular titles nowadays, including recent ones like Ace Combat 7, Gears 5, Crackdown and so on, it's almost a 50/50 call as to whether Epic developed the engine for it, and it's a big contributor as to why many big games now are PC first, then ported to consoles, but still well optimised across platforms, while now also being a key driver of crossplay.

Epic has long proven themselves as a potent force for good in the game industry, and having cemented that with their latest Unreal Engine releases, which are available for free to anyone, I think it'll be a long time before we see a company reach the same level of influence in this industry.

 

[Dark NighT]

Well, given Epic develop the most popular AAA game engine there is and are arguably the most important back end developer for the consoles, with even first party titles now relying on them, I seriously doubt they're going anywhere anytime soon. If you look at popular titles nowadays, including recent ones like Ace Combat 7, Gears 5, Crackdown and so on, it's almost a 50/50 call as to whether Epic developed the engine for it, and it's a big contributor as to why many big games now are PC first, then ported to consoles, but still well optimised across platforms, while now also being a key driver of crossplay.

Epic has long proven themselves as a potent force for good in the game industry, and having cemented that with their latest Unreal Engine releases, which are available for free to anyone, I think it'll be a long time before we see a company reach the same level of influence in this industry.

Yeah totally agree with this.


Valve had their chance, and they blew it on making as much profit as they could while still appearing to do good by everyone but in the background they made a huge mess of their store, their hands off approach to quality control and just not giving a damn about leaving us in the dust with a few games in the last decade.

 

[ET3D]

I just think Epic need to be careful. Sure they've got all this extra cash from Fortnite which they can use to bully their way into this market but the hype will die eventually and they need to make sure they are able to run a quality and sustainable platform on 12% cut

They claimed that it's sustainable, based on their experience with Fortnite. They gave enough details for that claim to be convincing.


Also, the money doesn't just go away, unless they squander it, which they probably won't do. The billions they got from Fortnite could last for a long while. When a company has excess money it's a good time to get into new ventures, especially the kind that only costs a fraction of the money they have.


I'll wait to see how successful the Epic store is, but I don't see it dying quickly.

 

[AlienALX]

As I said elsewhere -

Yeah you'd think after all of the hints valve would have gotten the message.

Uplay, Origin, Battlenet, GOG, Bethesda and any I've either forgotten or don't know about. That's a lot of hints,man.

 

[grec]

Battlenet is far older than Steam to be fair, but yeah the fact many of the larger studios have felt the need to sacrifice what is potentially the largest platform in PC gaming in order for them to be able continue selling & developing PC games (The margins can already be relatively slim compared to consoles for AAA devs) says a lot. The fact that the only meaningful updates Steam has really had since then was a side effect of Valve attempting to sell pseudo-consoles says a lot too, if anyones wondering where all that money went.

 

[Dicehunter]

Of course they will label it as unfair, They aren't getting money, Valve are pure greed, Customer service is terrible, All they care about is money.

 

[AlienALX]

Of course they will label it as unfair, They aren't getting money, Valve are pure greed, Customer service is terrible, All they care about is money.

Yeah lest we forget that they literally had to be dragged through European courts just to offer refunds...

 

[demonking]

No different to any other 3rd party Estate agents or Insurance brokers. There was a need for this and this was fulfilled by a genuinely interested party who wanted more people in pc gaming. Then came all the money and Valve got more concerned with the spreadsheet numbers than the people they serve....

 

[WillSK]

They claimed that it's sustainable, based on their experience with Fortnite. They gave enough details for that claim to be convincing.


Also, the money doesn't just go away, unless they squander it, which they probably won't do. The billions they got from Fortnite could last for a long while. When a company has excess money it's a good time to get into new ventures, especially the kind that only costs a fraction of the money they have.


I'll wait to see how successful the Epic store is, but I don't see it dying quickly.

I completely agree that by no means the money isn't going anywhere fast, however I think we can all agree there have probably been cash incentives beyond a better cut offered to publishers such as Deep Silver to make this last minute move.

It's definitely the right move for now and it's something companies have done for ages. My point would just be to ride that fine line between using the extra capital to make big moves while also investing in a quality platform

 

[ET3D]

My point would just be to ride that fine line between using the extra capital to make big moves while also investing in a quality platform

From what Epic said, I figure that the reason the store is heavily curated for now is because the store and client aren't completely ready. Though that's just my understanding. But I do imagine that Epic intends to develop the client and store further. It certainly has promised some features which is hasn't yet implemented.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

It is so ironic that everyone is complaining about the monopoly Valve has with their Steam platform. If it's exclusive to one client, that is a monopoly, which it is now but to the Epic Games store.

If 4A decided to launch Metro on both platforms, Steam and Epic; no one would have unleashed this storm of complaints, those that want it cheaper on the Epic games store, could have had it on their client, easy. Those that are willing to pay a little more on Steam, will have had it, no problem.

If Valve felt then that they are losing too much sales, they would have to adopt their prices accordingly to developers and clients. That is what real competition looks like. Not excluding all other platforms for just one, which is currently the case. It forces the desperate fans hand to buy it on the Epic games store and there are a lot of us that DO NOT like being manipulated like this.

Steam has a very large customer base that prefer their games on one platform. I personally don't want a whole string of clients in the bottom right of my screen. I will not buy it, as a big Metro fan, that is saying a lot, I live and breath metro, finished their games multiple times and can't get enough. Sorry 4A, you screwed up.

 

[looz]

Epic client isn't finding it's way to my computer either. The ToS gives it rights to be basically spyware. That combined with Tencent's 10% stake gives me the chillies. And no, the competition isn't as bad on that regard.

 

[grec]

It is so ironic that everyone is complaining about the monopoly Valve has with their Steam platform. If it's exclusive to one client, that is a monopoly, which it is now but to the Epic Games store.

I think you're confused as to what a monopoly is, a launcher can not have a monopoly over a game, a game is not a market(besides this game is on multiple platforms), however a launcher can have an effective monopoly over a platform (PC). Exclusivity to one store front or another does not hinder anyones ability to buy the game for their platform, therefore it is freely accessible on the PC platform regardless of store exclusivity as the store itself has no barriers or prerequisites.

If 4A decided to launch Metro on both platforms, Steam and Epic; no one would have unleashed this storm of complaints, those that want it cheaper on the Epic games store, could have had it on their client, easy. Those that are willing to pay a little more on Steam, will have had it, no problem.

They are not two different platforms, they're two different stores for a single platform.
Do these people complain when a game is Steam exclusive? I think we know why people are complaining now.

If Valve felt then that they are losing too much sales, they would have to adopt their prices accordingly to developers and clients. That is what real competition looks like. Not excluding all other platforms for just one, which is currently the case. It forces the desperate fans hand to buy it on the Epic games store and there are a lot of us that DO NOT like being manipulated like this.

No, they have an monopoly, Valve's sales are not hindered by bad performance, they've continued doing anti-consumer rubbish for over half a decade without having to take notice because *Monopoly*.

Steam has a very large customer base that prefer their games on one platform. I personally don't want a whole string of clients in the bottom right of my screen. I will not buy it, as a big Metro fan, that is saying a lot, I live and breath metro, finished their games multiple times and can't get enough. Sorry 4A, you screwed up.

You don't need to, just install the game & pop it in Steam, it actually makes 0 difference, people are just complaining for the sake of 20 seconds work. Look, I get it, you'd rather avoid a minor inconvenience than allow a functional distribution of income in one of the largest industries in the world. Just don't go complaining about the state of modern games and how it;s turned into a hollywood style industry when you're actively contributing to its downfall by giving one heavily problematic company 30% of everything you spend on the industry.

 

[Warchild]

Steam has a very large customer base that prefer their games on one platform. I personally don't want a whole string of clients in the bottom right of my screen. I will not buy it, as a big Metro fan, that is saying a lot, I live and breath metro, finished their games multiple times and can't get enough. Sorry 4A, you screwed up.

I don't quite understand your point?
I could argue that I hate steam so much, it sickens me I had to resort to its game ad spamming window pop ups every time I ran it.

you are saying you put a shortcut for every launcher on the bottom of your screen? if so, whats the point of that? or do you mean you have multiple launchers in your taskbar at once? or are you saying that you have all launchers configured to automatically load with windows starting? if so.. again, whats the point of that?

I have a folder on desktop with shortcut to games I play, which will load the launcher only when I want it too. With that in mind, 20 launchers makes no difference to having 1. You play one game at a time, and it opens in a launcher.

 

[SPS]

Look, I get it, you'd rather avoid a minor inconvenience than allow a functional distribution of income in one of the largest industries in the world. Just don't go complaining about the state of modern games and how it;s turned into a hollywood style industry when you're actively contributing to its downfall by giving one heavily problematic company 30% of everything you spend on the industry.

100%.

I've had Epic games launcher and Steam installed on my PC for years and I can tell you that Steam is by far the most annoying client out of the two, constantly updating, runs like an absolute dog and feels like it's designed for 4:3 monitors.

 

[looz]

Steam's redesigned features are a perfect example of modern app development. Its got so many layers of abstraction in addition to overriding OS' compositor for window frames that it's a buggy mess which isn't capable of running smoothly even with good hardware.


But it allows web devs to program cross platform applications with widely used tools. I'd be fine with the jungle of abstraciton layers if it was a niche application or by a smaller developer. But a company as wealthy as Valve has no excuses here.

 

[AlienALX]

I stopped caring about how many launchers there were ages ago. I simply hide them in a folder, then stop them starting with the PC and forget about it. Once we passed two I realised that Steam was not going to win. I actually loved Steam for a while, then I remembered how angered I was having to install it in the first bloody place.

 

[grec]

Naaah pretty much every modern app has a good chunk of platform agnostic HTML5 in there, most app UI's are HTML5 based at their route, abstraction is a potent tool especially for front-end development that is useful for dev teams big or small. Abstraction doesn't have to be messy or slow, you can write an interface in HTML5 that works on basically any platform but still feels smooth on a 32-bit A7 ARM processor.

Steams traditional interface completely bypasses Window's compositor & uses its own badly made one which is why it could be so buggy(Especially on assymetric multi-monitor setups, where the interface literally hasn't been usable for like the past decade if you have one screen in portrait), not sure how this slow revamp is changing things but in many ways Steam's problems were from the opposite of abstraction. There are definitely far too many layers at play though, it's like a house that's been falling down for a decade but the landlord just gives it a new lick of paint and some botchy repair jobs each time and says it's ok. It's technical debt taken to an extreme.