DIgital Store client's. Competition is bad?

[Yeshu]

Ever since the whole Epic Store thing people started to discuss about the tragedy that are digital store exclusives.
But here is the thing. A digital tore is not like a console. You still are using a PC and don't need to get any other third party hardware to play your games.

Also, Steam, for the longest time had basically a mental monopoly on PC gaming for several years now. Heck, people even use the term "Steam Game" instead of PC game. Many people are addicted to the trading market to the point that they don't give a damn about games, they just want the cards.

Of course, I would expect a digital storefront to to provide a good service and no BS practices (looking at you steam). But I find it strange that people rage at other store fronts just out of principle and admitting that they are to incompetent to track there games from more than one storefront: "I want all my games in one place!".

Unless Epic will start some scummy business practices, what's the problem with them making some competition for steam?

[Animusisters]

Competition is not bad, just the way they compete is bad for the consumer.

[Misfit410]

Steam has built more than just a gaming store front, it's an entire ecosystem that most enjoy using... there is not a single other client that is anything less than a half-assed metoo just to play 3-4 games

[Merlin]

rad. Thanks for the share. Never heard of it.

[Yeshu]

Someone needs to make a program that just displays your library of games across all digital stores. Something like an email client, but for steam/epic/gog/uplay.

That already exists. It's called Playnite.

[Jokerthefoolio]

I think a lot of these are contracts with a year give or take in length so once the devs make the money on epic, the devs will publish on steam after that and steam can just give devs the deal they want if epic gets a good size of the market

[Jargoyle]

Yes exclusives don't do fans any favors. (Hey Disney, hows EA working out for you?)

"If Epic Games wants to compete with Steam, they can make a product worth using." Yeah I agree on this point as well. But in typical "publisher fashion" they rushed it out the door. It's like the no man sky of the digital services then?

[ethansito]

Competition is good, but getting exclusives doesn't encourage competition. It just leads to shitty services holding titles hostage and forcing us to download and navigate their stupid UI to play one or two games. If Epic Games wants to compete with Steam, they can make a product worth using.

[Jargoyle]

There is lots of room for competition.

I want to see steam challenged! We win as consumers with a open and free market.

Look at the damn ISP's. We have crappy service, high cost for speed,a shrinking infrastructure all because of ZERO competition.

Everyone is talking about Epic challenging steam, when in reality they don't even challenge Origin. They have a bizzillion dollars and they rush a "half baked" crappy story front out that has none of the services or functionality. Steam has over 3000 games umteen users with 100's of games in their library's, and you don't even take the time to get the storefront to a equal level of functionality? (chat, achievements, mod support, I guess it has a friends list so there is that

On second thought it is Epic games we are really talking about so I'm not all that surprised

*Amazon and google will be the ones to watch in my opinion

[Dub-Z]

People are going to choose the ones they want and criticize the ones they don't want.

Competition is good in that it forces stubborn companies to get their act together, but in cases where a company is already doing what you want and just has to lose/spend more money in order to fight more companies on more fronts (without those competitors offering what you want) rather than investing in quality of life features for their services, the emergence of a competitor could conceivably have deleterious effects on your own self-interest.

I suppose It's when a sort of equilibrium and stalemate is achieved in the competition that the innovative advantages of one competitor over another can begin to emerge or re-emerge.

[OzzieArcane]

Hopefully once Epic's store gets established Epic will reneg on exclusivity and Epic will stand on their features to compete with steam

I don't think they'll have a choice. I'm sure they only have so much money to keep bribing developers/publishers with.

[Yoshi]

But they are Still basically "Steam Games" as they require Steam to work. If that's not Exclusivity i don't know what is.

I'll accept your definition of "Steam Games" and remind you that being able to buy a game wherever you want but then being required to install it in a given client is still better than being forced to buy a game in a single place and then also being required to install it in a given client. There is no objective way to argue against that.

[Jokerthefoolio]

Hopefully once Epic's store gets established Epic will reneg on exclusivity and Epic will stand on their features to compete with steam

[Gloomy64]

Competition is good I think but honestly I'm more comfortable using Steam and I hate to change what isn't broken.
I have a lot of games, friends, badges etc on Steam so it would take a lot for me to move.
I really do have a lot of hate for Epic Store but that's just because they be taking on dem games away from Steam.

But yeah competition is a good thing for Steam it means Steam has to step their game up to compete which can only work as a good thing for consumers in the long run on both digital stores.

[Lehran]

Someone needs to make a program that just displays your library of games across all digital stores. Something like an email client, but for steam/epic/gog/uplay.