Who are you expecting to come on top in digital distribution market?

[Medi22]

I've seen the name gog.com tossed around a few times before, but until searching it up I'd somehow never realised it was a game store. Maybe I just forgot, or wrote it off because the UI reminded me of League of Legends terrible design and ecosystem.

[Matias]

even tho i prefer gog i would say steam is gonna stay on top.

[xadu]

I wish I could buy games directly form the creator. All money to him. Cut the intermediary.

Platforms like steam police your toughs, ban you with arbitrary rules, survey you, and make games more expensive by taking his cut.

[Anaconda156]

What if the fact that the Epic store takes a lower % on the game causes the price of those games to be lower than Steam? Could this motivate you to buy on the Epic Store instead of Steam?
I recently got subnautica from the epic store and when the game starts it tries to start the Steam VR thingy as I have an Oculus dev kit. I'm wondering if Epic will be able to sell games that have the multiplayer managed via steam for player invite. If this works and they have a lower price for the game I would gladly use the Epic store but as the friend list is not shared between the two stores I'm guessing that most people will just stay on Steam for the convenience.
A bit more concurrence between Steam and others would be good for us in the long run.

[twidget]

GoG would be my choice to become the leader in digital distribution but it'll probably be the 800 lb gorilla that is Steam.

[Brenker]

Discord will take over them all

[k4far]

k4far I like this topic, its interesting to speculate on who will dominate the pc distribution with all these new competitors joining the fray so I dont want to turn this thread into arguing about early access but your response confirms what I speculated. You decided to buy an unfinished product, it wasn't what you wanted , you feel cheated but no one forced you to buy it, blame is not on steam. Also I think you get 24hrs or more from time of purchase to refund and its max 2hrs play time to refund for any reason I think.

I never bought anything Early Access in my life I just see STEAM customers complaining about it. You can find me and see my games.

[ryvrdrgn14]

I don't know who will end up on top, but I'm sticking with Gabe.

[Marius]

k4far I like this topic, its interesting to speculate on who will dominate the pc distribution with all these new competitors joining the fray so I dont want to turn this thread into arguing about early access but your response confirms what I speculated. You decided to buy an unfinished product, it wasn't what you wanted , you feel cheated but no one forced you to buy it, blame is not on steam. Also I think you get 24hrs or more from time of purchase to refund and its max 2hrs play time to refund for any reason I think.

[k4far]

Its not Valves fault you got stung by trash early access titles , its happened to us all but we know the deal when we part with cash for an unfinished product and it seems at least 3 of your 4 negatives stem from that experience.

As Marius pointed out, your "early access scams" negative for Steam isn't entirely fair.

It's up to STEAM to uphold standards for their games on Their platform. If the game is trash you get 2 hours to request a refund after that you have wasted your money. Maybe, at least pretend to care and set some standards but that would require someone playing ALL those games and Valve actually understanding what they are publishing and advertising under their own name. The fund ride never stops, few years ago they introduced new guidelines in order to stay away from all of the people using their platform. When you get scammed they will not waste time to review the conversations and go through inventories of people who participated in the trade. If you have messed up - they gave you the guidelines (it's not their problem anymore) "all trades are final".

Their social analysis is severely lacking, they do not understand what players want. If not for old games like Team Fortress or Dota 2 they would be in serious trouble trying more cash grabs like Artifact. They are out of touch, try realize that and stop giving them money just because you have been using their service for years.

Time to move on to someone who is less money driven and more consumer friendly GOG all the way!

[TakahiroSama]

Steam has the most important thing of all, a loyal and huge customer base. From what I usualy see in internet discussions, people don't enjoy using multiple launchers/store programs and Steam has the customer base on lockdown on that front. Valve would have to do major fuck up after major fuck up for customers to leave Steam and start to use another store for their game purchases on a relevant Numbers. GoG has the best shot of surviving and thriving because they focus on DRM free games which Steam doesn't provide and well optimized classic games, which Steam doesn't garantee as well. Other than that, origin continues to exist because you can only buy new EA games on it. Epic has a big userbase as well because of fortnite but as a store has almost no games and as a launcher and as a general service I heard it lacks features that Steam has and executes well. They probably should have waited a bit more before oppening the storefront.

[Saskia]

As Marius pointed out, your "early access scams" negative for Steam isn't entirely fair. Steam is just a content distribution platform. I think a lot of the blame should go to game developers who over-promise and under-deliver, and also to the customers who either don't bother to read disclaimers, or who continue to throw money at those titles despite being burned again and again.

I buy from both GOG and Steam so I don't really have any preference, but I think Steam will continue to be top dog for the foreseeable future. Maybe though, with a little more competition, Steam might be persuaded to clean up their act a little.

[Marius]

Steam, its just so entrenched at this point and if it were ever in danger of losing any significant market share valve could simply adopt any of the differences between platforms (eg. change dev split) .

Also @k4far I found some of your - points for steam a bit unfair. Its not Valves fault you got stung by trash early access titles , its happened to us all but we know the deal when we part with cash for an unfinished product and it seems at least 3 of your 4 negatives stem from that experience.

[Merlin]

short term, Steam. It is, that won't change. But because Steam is turning into a steamy pile of poo day by day more and more...well I can see that changing.

There are only 2 people I see taking the throne, Microsoft's windows store(more on that) or GoG.

GoG has been around for a while now, and has a good library and overall is beloved by its users like Steam once was, and these were the circumstances that launched Steam to its present status, it gave consumers exactly what they wanted and good word of mouth meant it was trusted by gamers, not pushed from advertising like other stores.

Now yes MS windows store is really bad and has been really bad. However, if they get it working well, it could easily take up a huge market share. It would be pre-built into every windows PC, and Microsoft has huge market share of OS and all games are made for Windows. You also get cross play to Xbox titles, exclusives you can't get anywhere else. Gears of War anyone? Now, this relies solely on if Phil Spencer has enough clout in the company and the mind enough to realize the gold mine waiting if they can get it working right. GFWL failed because they tried to make it like console online for PC, instead of giving PC gamers what they want, and he has a mind to change things for the better at times. Time will tell, but I think they are the only other company in the running.

[monnef]

Those comparisons seem lacking. E.g. Discord is marked as "pro-consumer", weren't they cough selling users' data? Epic should have a label "anti-consumer" (no user reviews, no forums, most probably no user ratings; all by design). I would also add "Linux support" to Steam, since not much software/companies are doing anything regarding this (GoG do sell Linux games, but doesn't have native launcher; Steam/Valve ported many their games to Linux, client as well and they are developing Proton/SteamPlay and helping related projects).