• Bratosch@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    My guy. I deliberately left out GOG in my comment because they fill a different niche in the market, DRM-free and generally older games. The bureaucracy of refunds is probably alot less complicated.

    You’re probably the first person I’ve heard say Steam has bad customer support.

    They are not making “their product accessible”, they are making other people’s games accessible by providing an open OS for gaming outside of the Microsoft Windows system.

    Again, having a large market share because you simply provide the best service is -not a Monopoly-. How do they in any way dictate prices? Ubisoft are free to sell their game for half the price on their store front if they want to.

    I’d happily pay 30% to Steam for all the service they provide over 100% to Ubisoft’s reskinned, buggy, unoptimized quarterly “games” or EAs microtransaction simulators any day.

    • REDACTED@infosec.pub
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      2 days ago

      You’re probably the first person I’ve heard say Steam has bad customer support.

      Steam customer support was a fucking meme back in my day. You also got oceans of videos like these: https://youtu.be/kE0QtkTNUqk

      How do they in any way dictate prices? Ubisoft are free to sell their game for half the price on their store front if they want to.

      I… are we speaking English? Do you simply refuse to read and get new information? I mean, sure, they can, but they will get angry emails from Valve Corporation and threats of suspended sales, no pre-orders, etc., because that’s what a near monopoly does to further cement their position on the market, and I don’t even want to think about the future with different CEO and valve having basically grown into the next google or microsoft with Gabe long gone

      • Bratosch@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        i mean, sure, they can, but they will get angry emails from Valve

        So? Maybe they should put more focus on improving their own platforms instead of whining about Steam, then they could sell their game exclusively there without issue.

        I don’t know I can make it any clearer; Steam has a big market share because people choose them, not because they use any hostile tactics to push out the others. Ubisoft and EA, among others, have for years done everything in their power to lose any good will from the player base in favor of their shareholders.

        • REDACTED@infosec.pub
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          2 days ago

          Correction: Steam has the largest market share because for majority of it’s existence, it had no competition. It already became a standart before others appeared. That being said, Valve has increasingly become evil during the past decade. I was fully on board with supporting valve, but not fixing fees, supporting and defending gambling, inventing subscription passes, supporting in-app purchases, abandoning games and not using their ridiculous money to develop things people want like Half-Life 3 (don’t even get me started on TF2 mess, almost entire community holds grudge against Valve for enshittifying it like a corporation that only cares about profits). Sure, Valve also does some things that are great for gamers, but I feel like it’s our duty as a society to keep these companies in check, otherwise it’s a slippery slope where if they’re no longer being held accountable for shitty things they do, it will become a normality.

          I’m seeing some parallels to Elon Musk where everyone was praising him as an anti-corporate dude who’s going to save everyone from oil or whatever, while few guys were screaming about red flags they’re seeing, but everyone ridiculed them

            • REDACTED@infosec.pub
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              1 day ago

              I mean, there is only other platform that functions like steam (Epic store) because GoG focuses on DRM-free games, which is better than Steam pushing for DRMs.

              That being said, Epic lowered the fees and showed steam what’s a reasonable tax (I’m sure you’ve heard about Epic v Apple). Sure, they’re not as feature rich as they’re quite new, but you cannot deny the fact that both GoG and Epic does some things that are great for us, customers.

              • Bratosch@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                Games are surely cheaper on Epic then since they take a smaller cut? Right? Right…? Since they do it for us.

                Edit: I deleted my previous comment because I felt done with this conversation. Apparently I’m not.

                • REDACTED@infosec.pub
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                  1 day ago

                  If you’re a developer, then yes, you make more money for your work. Whether the developer takes the extra money or makes the game cheaper, is not really in Epic’s control.

                  • Bratosch@lemmy.world
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                    1 day ago

                    Exactly. The publishers want to satisfy their shareholders by forcing Steam to lower their fee. Instead of just, I don’t know, release a competitor? Polish up Uplay and sell games from other developers too. Bam, fixed it.