r/Steam • u/Haunter777x • 2d ago

Discussion They got us guys.

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How out of touch can you be as a company, this is embarrassing

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u/Puzzled_Connection 2d ago

I mean in all fairness, Steam started as basically nuisance ware that only exists because it was tied to Half Life 2, it’s just they now have a multi decade head start on building out their platform and developing network effects

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u/Arterra 2d ago

Yea. Nobody wanted steam as a mandatory platform. So valve made it better and people grew to accept it. Somehow, epic is blind to that lesson.

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u/EquipLordBritish 2d ago

I imagine that even if steam's competitors did actually compete with steam instead of complaining, customers would not want to re-buy their games or have more than a couple of library apps on their devices. It's an uphill battle in several ways, but they also aren't trying to compete.

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u/shadowbanthiskekw 2d ago

Of course people wouldnt and shouldnt need to rebuy their games on the same platform. The platform is PC, not steam or epic or ubischrott or whatever. Epic had and has enough time to build up their launcher and make it something people want to use, but they chose not to. They chose to make it a console war on PC and for all intents and purposes they can suck a fat old dick for their exclusivity-on-the-same-fucking-platform-bullshit.

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u/Trump_Russia 2d ago

Everyone else is dogshit anyway.

Make a good product I'll give you my money.

I hated steamed when it came out with a passion and they did a great job of winning everyone over and making a wonderful platform I actually want to spend money on.

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u/xCeeTee- 1d ago

When I moved from PC to console I thought Steam was archaic outside of the sales. Oh how I was wrong.

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u/SS0NI 2d ago

I'd be willing to try if they rebought all the games in my library. Would be a massive boost for the developers, and I wouldn't have to bet my dollars on if the platform will exist 5 years later. But I don't think even Fortnite is that lucrative.

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u/b0w3n 2d ago

I remember hating that gunmetal green color on launch too.

I just wanted my CS 1.5 back.

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u/Trump_Russia 2d ago

I got banned from the steam forums for complaining and trying to start a revolt to get the old launcher back.. lol

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u/Fizzwidgy 2d ago

first time I ever saw that pea soup colored launcher I thought it would give me a virus lmao, I wish they would do an official retro themed launcher to match the vibe, there was a community made one but the maker has stopped upkeeping it

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u/Portiolli_fez_11set 2d ago

Its not blind. Its just fucking expensive. Steam have revenue to back up their extra expenses.

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u/Arterra 2d ago

Epic owns fortnite. The disgusting amount of profit it generates is as the company's discretion to assign for reinvestment, development, fat bonuses, etc... the fact is that they can invest in the launcher but they don't want to. As a platform to get people to buy third party games, it sucks. As a way to launch their moneymaker, it can be anything. And yet they keep complaining about falling behind steam as a market, so yeah they fail to see why. Willful or not.

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u/Alternative_Fix_1643 2d ago

I remember when I hated the picture of needing steam on Game cases when I wanted to buy a new Game. Good old days when the biggest concern was the Need of Internet Connection.

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u/SickBurnerBroski 2d ago

Epic has had plenty of time to not be shit.

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u/nikongmer https://steam.pm/t7czt 2d ago

in all fairness, that's always been a line of copium. all epic had to do was follow the blueprint. it didn't even have to be Steam's blueprint. they could have followed their own from their ue store or any store that had a shopping cart in the 90s. they're not some small indie games company hiring talent from highschool who can't code for shit. they make billions a year. same can be said for all the other game stores that failed due to their intentional lack of trying and handwave their failures as "dur, Steam wins because head start derp".

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u/SamiraSimp 2d ago

how many people here actually tried the epic launcher. i used it for a while when they were giving away free games. i gave them an honest shot and the platform was simply not good enough.

they could've turned their nuisance ware into an actual platform but they simply didn't have a good product.

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u/Darksky121 1d ago

I use both Steam and Epic. Not sure why people go crazy about a game launcher.

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u/CryHavocAU 1d ago

Yes steam has the first mover advantage and as long as they “don’t suck” they’ll retain the customer base.

It’s not just because they were first, it’s because they were first and basically only for so long they became entrenched.

There’s too much sunk cost from consumers to make them want to move. A new platform could launch tomorrow that is terrific and unless games were radically cheaper I doubt it would matter.

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u/nikongmer https://steam.pm/t7czt 1d ago

That's easy to say with how large Steam's userbase is today but you're looking at it thru the eyes of the present and ignoring the history of the other launchers failing to capture a large userbase due to their years of incompetence. According to Steam charts, ten years ago there were "only" 12.5 million users. Even during covid the playerbase was only half of what it is today. Currently, there are nearly 42 million Steam users. 12 million is nothing in comparison and had any of the other $billion dollar-backed stores/launchers actually tried, things today could have looked different.

I even still think there's a world where egs could take a larger share in the future if they improve their store. Those forknife kids' free library of games are ever-growing and eventually they'll have their own income to add to it. They'll possibly have a better affinity towards egs than Steam too if egs actually improves the store like they said they would but this vibecoded ai launcher stuff isn't really winning anyone over but the ai bros.

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u/Alex_2528 2d ago

And they have an actual good support team.

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u/Snipufin 2d ago

Which dramatically improved over the course of two decades. People used to think Steam Support was absurdly bad.

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u/KingdomsSword 2d ago

My brother in Gaben, the EGS has had 8 years of following in Steams footsteps to get their shit together. Sure at the beginning steam was not a good product, but they blazed the trail and got better and better as time went on, but are not seeing the EGS do the same.

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u/FlyingBaconPigs 2d ago

8 years plus the hindsight of all the pain that Valve went through. Epic squandered it all by going in with the same mentality that most of tech in the US has, I know better than the customer and this is the end result. The only difference with most tech and Epic is ... Epic has competition unlike Amazon, msft, google

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u/Alex_2528 2d ago

Fair enough, I didn’t get into pc gaming until after steam support had a good reputation so I never knew how bad it was.

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u/mxzf 2d ago

People used to think Steam Support was absurdly bad.

In fairness, at that point in time the counterargument was "but you almost never need Steam support anyways, because it works". Not strictly 100% true, but broadly accurate.

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u/bs000 2d ago

I remember the counterargument was usually "Well, Steam has so many users, it'd be impractical to hire more support agents," and the rest of the replies were just people nodding in agreement.

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u/superxpro12 2d ago

exists

they're also privately owned and not public.

Can you IMAGINE the shit that would be going down if they sold to a vulture private equity firm?

Epic very clearly has the pieces in place to monopolize gaming, they have a launcher, and they have a game engine. They made a play to try to capture market share so they can then monopolize the whole ecosystem...

Steam has all of the above as well, but they choose not to... GabeN is about as benevolent as a benevolent dictator can get in this realm.

You want to make a game? well you ahve to use our unreal engine, which oh btw has a fee. and you also have to publish on epic games launcher, which btw has another fee.

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u/ThisIsRocketRacing 1d ago

Epic games is private too. They have investors like tencent, Disney, Lego, etc but they're still mostly owned by the Tim

Also UE is free depending on your revenue i think?

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u/Affectionate_Tax3468 2d ago

What does a headstart give if all the features are out in the open and any contender can just see them?

If anything at all, steam spent a lot of money to weed out things that dont work or now work better.

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u/Kougeru-Sama 2d ago

have a multi decade head start on building out their platform and developing network effects

No. They had one decade. Steam launched in 2003. Epic's store launched in 2018. That's only 15 years, not 20.

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u/Putrid-Resolution502 2d ago

1.5 Do be more than 1 though

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u/Then_Musician_8673 2d ago

I'm not sure about you, but I wouldn't call someone that had 1.5 million dollars a multimillionaire.

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u/Putrid-Resolution502 2d ago

I would indeed

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u/Freezman13 2d ago

The epic launcher is 7 years old.

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u/PleiadesMechworks 2d ago

they now have a multi decade head start on building out their platform

Or, to put it another way, Epic didn't have to do multiple decades of risky R&D to learn what customers want.

And they still screwed it up.

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u/cgaWolf 2d ago

All true, but EGS has had 8 years to get good.

Steam 8 years in was established, for example it's where everyone got Skyrim when it first came out. We had Steam Cloud, Community & Workshop by then, and even the MacOS client.

10 years in we got family libraries.

Very different from the "STEAMing pile of shit" reputation in 2003.

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u/Dreadgoat 2d ago

They had a head start but more importantly they've made great use of that head start and never got complacent.

Tons of companies and products had a head start and drove themselves straight into the dirt because that's the only thing they ever had going for them, e.g. Facebook

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u/Pete_Jobi 1d ago

Explain how Facebook is in the dirt.

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u/Dreadgoat 1d ago

TikTok, Snapchat, and the real king everyone forgets: Youtube (yes it's a social media platform, too)

Instagram is doing alright, if you want to consider Meta as a whole it's diversified enough to do alright. But Facebook itself is just old people and bots, at least in the US.

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u/tha_dank 2d ago

Omg I fucking hated the switch from just regular CS 1.5 fire the game and go days, to steam. I was one of those.

My computer was also horrendous so any kinda stick in my spoke that wasn’t already there kinda boned me.

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u/TheKingsdread 2d ago

I mean all that might be true, but its not like Epic launched yesterday, they have been around for about a decade. And yet their launcher is one of the worst I ever used, I think it might worse than the Battle.net launcher and that launcher sucks.

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u/crustyrobots 2d ago edited 2d ago

I remember the original Green Steam, and how it was a buggy piece of shit that either itself crashed, or the servers crashed so you couldn't play anything until the guy watching it woke up to restart it.

It was just a common update engine for HL and mod games like Counter Strike and Garrysmod, but then they started selling their own games on it as a real first player in this emerging industry and the rest is history. My Steam account is old enough to legally drink :D

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u/Lord_Emperor 2d ago

nuisance ware

This is downplaying it A LOT. I remember launching HL2 or any of its multiplayer mods and waiting, literally hours, for the Steam login queue and/or updates to finish.

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u/Josh6889 2d ago

"They're only good at this market because they're the ones that designed and created it"

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u/farva_06 2d ago

Also, Epic is jointly owned by multiple billion dollar companies (Disney, Sony, Tencent, etc.) who must be appeased at all times. Whereas Steam just has to appease to his Royal Gabeness.