Last year, they all came crawlin' back to Steam, and this year was another strong one for Valve.

From the opinion piece:

Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.

  • mammut@lemmy.worldEnglish
    32·
    9 months ago

    Valve also spent money to force customers to move games they’d already bought over to a different launcher, though. AFAIK EGS has never made anyone rebuy anything, but forcing existing titles to new launchers is standard practice in the world of launchers. Users were happy playing Half-Life and the original CS outside of Steam. Then Valve decided to spend a shitload of money building Steam, and, one release, they announced that anyone who wanted to keep playing Half-Life or CS would need to start using Steam. Users were furious because Steam was fucking awful at the time. It got even worse when Half-Life 2 came out because Valve’s services were constantly down. Computer Gaming World or one of the other gaming rags at the time ran a story about it talking like 2 days to install Half-Life 2. And they were installing from disc. It had to connect to Steam to download patches / decryption keys. The original Borderlands also forced users over to Steam.

    I know you guys love Steam and hate EGS, but, honestly guys, they’re starting out almost the exact same way. Steam was shit. EGS is shit. Steam infuriated people by forcibly moving existing games over to Steam. EGS infuriated people by forcibly moving existing games over to EGS. Steam infuriated people by not having all the features that the old platform did and generally being shitty. EGS is doing the same. Steam forced people to use it by having exclusives. EGS forced people to use it by having exclusives.

    People did not trust Valve for pretty much the same reasons they don’t trust EGS now. I boycotted Valve for something like 15 years because I lost an account that had several of my games when their password reset feature didn’t work for a months long period (and support never responded).

    I understand Valve had redeemed themselves in a lot of people’s eyes, but if it’s okay for Valve to be completely inept, force people to move to a new launcher, and not be trustworthy in the early days, isn’t it okay for Epic too? Alternatively, maybe it wasn’t okay for Steam to be so shitty early on. Would we be better off today if gamers had more backbone and boycotted Steam so hard that it failed? Valve even forced people to rebuy games in the early games! They used to completely ban accounts (i.e., you couldn’t even login) when there was a payment processing issue, and there was a longstanding bug where they’d ban people for using PayPal. Forums used to warm people to never use PayPal. And if anyone did get banned when they used PayPal, everyone would just blame them for using PayPal. “Everyone knows not to use PayPal on Steam!” But why the hell was Valve accepting PayPal and then banning people for using it?!

    To put it another way, being a shitty company early on benefited customers in the long run one time (at least, according to many). Could it a second time?

    • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
      22·
      9 months ago

      You really are not listening. You are going off on old grudges that have literally nothing to do with what I am saying to you.

      I get it. Steam kicked your childhood dog. That has nothing to do with epic buying a game out of peoples mouths.

      • mammut@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        I guess I’m struggling to understand why you’re specifically mad at Epic for this behavior. Why not be mad at Steam? Because it was longer ago?

        • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Show me when steam forced people who had paid for a game from a completely different retailer to rebuy the game on steam, while completely deactivating the copy that was already purchased.

            • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
              1·
              9 months ago

              They made you re-purchase half life? If you owned half life, you had to rebuy half life again on the steam page?

              Or they launched a new launcher, and did what every single other game publisher does when they launch a new launcher, and ported all of their own personal titles into the launcher?

              Because with metro exodus, until mass backlash caused them to revert the decision, everyone who had preordered the game on steam needed to refund the purchase and repurchase it within the epic store. Only after backlash did they honor steam prepurchases.

              And even then, they struggled with the fact that all the physical orders still had steam codes, despite the game apparently not being allowed to be owned on steam.

              All of this happening 2 weeks before the game release.

              • mammut@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                9 months ago

                Yes, for some people.

                Which game did EGS make people rebuy? I know they moved Rocket League, but it went F2P when they moved it.

                • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
                  1·
                  9 months ago

                  Interesting, because in your previous comment you said literally the exact opposite, that people just needed to open it via the launcher to get the next update.

                  My previous comment already says this. With metro exodus, they expected people to rebuy the game on epic, and only reversed the decision after the immediate backlash.

                  Which, mind you, is not a game they developed nor published. Your valve example is the owner of the game moving their own game into their own brand new launcher, with conflicting claims of repurchase. Epics example is buying out a random hyped games release and scrambling to backtrack after it blew up in their face