Why are "Steam Exclusives" not a controversy?

[Shagger]

It has been common practice for gamers to be outraged whenever Epic, for example, has a game exclusively on thier storefront for PC, especially a major third party title. Werther or not you think that Epic are justified in doing that is another matter and not really the point of this thread, but it has been a big deal when it's happened. The thing is, though, I have just purchased Tales of Arise on PC. I looked around Steam, GOG and EGS to find that this game can only be purchased on Steam. So for people who have called Epic out for this, why is this OK?

 

People who call out Epic for exclusive games always say it anti-consumer to have PC games only sold on one storefront, but surely that rule would have to apply regardless of what storefront that happens to be. So my question is, why is it never controversial when Steam does this, and it happens on Steam probably more often than anywhere else when it come to PC games, but people only every lift thier torches and pitchforks when Epic does it? Surely CDPR with GOG have the best policy by allowing even thier own games to be sold on other storefronts and Valve obviously don't do that either.

 

Is this some massive hypocrisy or is there something I'm missing?

Edited September 30, 2021 by Shagger

[m76]

What is anti-consumer about epic's behavior is that they specifically offer monetary incentives to developers / publishers if they don't sell their games on any other platform.

I'm unaware of steam doing anything similar, but if they did, it would be equally contemptible.  As far as I'm aware steam "exclusives" For indie developers is a matter of convenience and a lack of the ability to distribute their game the traditional way.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if steam started making such deals in reaction to what epic was doing.  But if that is the case they are doing a good job of keeping them quiet.

 

[Withywarlock]

To answer the title, it was a controversy. Steam wasn't always as popular as it is today. Back when it was first launched people really didn't like that Half-Life 2 among other Valve games were going to be Steam-exclusive, and that there wasn't going to be a disc in their cases but a paper code. What Epic is going through with their hate has been going on with Valve, and in response to that Steam improved. It became something people wanted to use, and I think it fair to say that it's done a lot in bringing the pockets of a massive audience together under one platform.

Both Steam and its users have had their growing pains, and now Epic is going through the same, albeit in a time when past mistakes ought to have been avoided. Except with Steam, there's no monetary incentive for a developer or publisher to lock access off to other platforms. GOG are (or used to be) highly selective of what games came to their platform and the amount of legwork they can do fixing older ones up for modern systems, so if it's Steam exclusive it's probably because the second best PC service has rejected it or deems it too much legwork to maintain. This then becomes a question to developers and publishers: "where do I buy the DRM-free version of your game?"

Honestly, I believe there to be some hypocrisy but for many users it can be forgiven because they don't remember or even know the time of strife Steam and its users went through. It's a toughie. 🤔

Edited September 30, 2021 by Withywarlock
Multiple typos and additions.

[m76]

34 minutes ago, Withywarlock said:

To answer the title, it was a controversy. Steam wasn't always as popular as it is today. Back when it was first launched people really didn't like that Half-Life 2 among other Valve games were going to be Steam-exclusive, and that there wasn't going to be a disc in their cases but a paper code. What Epic is going through with their hate has been going on with Valve, and in response to that Steam improved. It became something people wanted to use, and I think it fair to say that it's done a lot in bringing the pockets of a massive audience together under one platform.

Both Steam and its users have had their growing pains, and now Epic is going through the same, albeit in a time when past mistakes ought to have been avoided. Except with Steam, there's no monetary incentive for a developer or publisher to lock access off to other platforms. GOG are (or used to be) highly selective of what games came to their platform and the amount of legwork they can do fixing older ones up for modern systems, so if it's Steam exclusive it's probably because the second best PC service has rejected it or deems it too much legwork to maintain. This then becomes a question to developers and publishers: "where do I buy the DRM-free version of your game?"

Honestly, I believe there to be some hypocrisy but for many users it can be forgiven because they don't remember or even know the time of strife Steam and its users went through. It's a toughie. 🤔

When steam launched a launcher was  a completely new concept for people (although it wasn't really as many games had launchers before), so the hate was more aimed at the fact that they couldn't play the game without an internet connection. And it was basically the end of reselling games on PC.

Steam was mostly hated for being new, and people always have fears about new things, epic is nothing new, it is simply hated because they are being awful, basically treating users as the commodity and publishers as the consumer.

[Shagger]

3 minutes ago, m76 said:

When steam launched a launcher was  a completely new concept for people (although it wasn't really as many games had launchers before), so the hate was more aimed at the fact that they couldn't play the game without an internet connection. And it was basically the end of reselling games on PC.

Steam was mostly hated for being new, and people always have fears about new things, epic is nothing new, it is simply hated because they are being awful, basically treating users as the commodity and publishers as the consumer.

 

I don't see Epic making thier planform appeal to publishers/developers as being such a terrible thing.

 

GOG was there, but it had a very different claim of the market wasn't really meant to compete with Steam. Other services like EA's Origin and Ubisoft's UPlay were fairly indigenous for thier respective publishers and weren't the same thing as Steam. Let's face it, Steam held a monopoly and that's never good for the customer. In fact, I remember people screaming out for somebody to break that monopoly, and nobody offered a realistic alternative to Steam until EGS came along. Epic's strategy was to make thier platform appealing to publishers/developers with lower commission to gain traction.  I see nothing wrong with that at least for small, independent developers accepting a better commission deal for exclusivity, especially since Steam has become a difficult place for such dev's to get thier games noticed in more recent years. This will always be a problem for Steam so long as they insist on having this "open door" policy with the piss poor quality control that goes with it. The problem for me starts when big publishers accept these kinds of deals, they have no excuse to deny a large amount of people the option of buying thier games where they want.

 

I think both you and @Withywarlock are right, Steam got better with time and perhaps so could Epic, and maybe Epic should have leant the lessons through Valve's mistakes, but I get why Epic didn't copy Steam directly, such a thing would be doomed to fail. So, they try something a little different. Offer free games weekly to customers, better commission deals to developers/publishers and exclusivity deals. Some of thier policies I agree with, some I don't. I for one just refuse to deny the importance of competition in the game market on PC just because I don't agree with everything Epic does, especially when I have at least an many issues with how Valve handle themselves.

[m76]

12 hours ago, Shagger said:

 

I don't see Epic making thier planform appeal to publishers/developers as being such a terrible thing.

 

GOG was there, but it had a very different claim of the market wasn't really meant to compete with Steam. Other services like EA's Origin and Ubisoft's UPlay were fairly indigenous for thier respective publishers and weren't the same thing as Steam. Let's face it, Steam held a monopoly and that's never good for the customer. In fact, I remember people screaming out for somebody to break that monopoly, and nobody offered a realistic alternative to Steam until EGS came along. Epic's strategy was to make thier platform appealing to publishers/developers with lower commission to gain traction.  I see nothing wrong with that at least for small, independent developers accepting a better commission deal for exclusivity, especially since Steam has become a difficult place for such dev's to get thier games noticed in more recent years. This will always be a problem for Steam so long as they insist on having this "open door" policy with the piss poor quality control that goes with it. The problem for me starts when big publishers accept these kinds of deals, they have no excuse to deny a large amount of people the option of buying thier games where they want.

 

I think both you and @Withywarlock are right, Steam got better with time and perhaps so could Epic, and maybe Epic should have leant the lessons through Valve's mistakes, but I get why Epic didn't copy Steam directly, such a thing would be doomed to fail. So, they try something a little different. Offer free games weekly to customers, better commission deals to developers/publishers and exclusivity deals. Some of thier policies I agree with, some I don't. I for one just refuse to deny the importance of competition in the game market on PC just because I don't agree with everything Epic does, especially when I have at least an many issues with how Valve handle themselves.

Unfortunately for the consumer a monopoly and the fragmentation of the market are both bad. The same fragmentation is going on with streaming services, netflix seemed great value when it launched, but now with everyone launching their own service left and right, you have to get a dozen different streaming services if you want to watch your favorite shows. But I digress.

Epic's campaign of giving away free games is not as big of a success as they'd have liked. There was a leak some months ago that suggested that most of the people who register for the free games aren't actually becoming paying customers for epic. So basically the only benefit they have is that they can say "look we have this many millions of users" when making deals with publishers. I expect that the EGS is bleeding money, not making it still.

I genuinely think it would've been more succesful if they tried to appeal to the consumers instead of developers. I'd have gladly switched over to Epic if they offered better prices than steam, but "you buy it from us or nowhere" doesn't win them any favors with me.

Right out of the gate when it was first launched their first action was to take a giant dump on us Eu customers. When they made the Metro Exudos deal they offered the game for $50 in the US, to appease people for their bait and switch. But in the EU, we actually ended up paying more for the game than we used to paying for games because the EGS deal meant there were no alternative stores selling games, so if you wanted the game in the EU you ended up paying $70 or close to it. I'll never forget that.

So I obviously have a very bad taste in my mouth about epic, and have not purchased a single game from them. I avoided even those games I was very interested in, and I'm reluctant to buy them even after the exlusivity period ended, because I don't want to reward their behavior.

Edited October 1, 2021 by m76