r/Steam • u/Haunter777x • 11h ago

Discussion They got us guys.

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

22.8k Upvotes

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162

u/Puzzled_Connection 10h 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 10h 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 8h 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/Trump_Russia 6h 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/SS0NI 1h 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/shadowbanthiskekw 32m 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/b0w3n 8h 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 6h 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 2h 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 5h ago

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

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u/Arterra 1h 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 42m 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/Alex_2528 10h ago

And they have an actual good support team.

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u/Snipufin 10h ago

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

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u/mxzf 9h 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 9h 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/KingdomsSword 9h 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 6h 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 10h 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/SickBurnerBroski 10h ago

Epic has had plenty of time to not be shit.

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u/nikongmer https://steam.pm/t7czt 9h 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 6h 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/Freezman13 10h ago

The epic launcher is 7 years old.

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u/superxpro12 9h 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/Kougeru-Sama 9h 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 9h ago

1.5 Do be more than 1 though

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u/Then_Musician_8673 5h 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 5h ago

I would indeed

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u/cgaWolf 8h 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/Affectionate_Tax3468 8h 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/PleiadesMechworks 8h 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/Dreadgoat 7h 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/crustyrobots 6h ago edited 6h 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 6h 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 6h ago

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

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u/tha_dank 5h 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 5h 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/farva_06 2h 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.