Path: ...!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-3.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:08:47 +0000 From: Spalls Hurgenson Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Subject: Re: Epic Game Store tops $1 Billion USD in 2024 Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:08:47 -0500 Message-ID: References: <5qp6rjdphgs1o27vr0mdo1dllamjsc3qm8@4ax.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 55 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-38Wc3CWgONJrCW0yEFte1ONK9qxE8l1HT171Jw4aYrK1hDMVhnZ9xM9QOQJyAMVdQa6aYC0xO+9/Ag2!ys10fZ9bMNvB3WaXY4Hum9zqTlLtiPazW4vgg4R8dmC9UdegEb6LRtm51yZMZETisp+iRVns X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 3376 There's a related article talking about how Amazon expected it could dominate the PC gaming market-space and yet repeatedly failed to dislodge Steam/Valve.* Like Epic, they thought that just throwing huge amounts of money around would be sufficient, and were surprised that tactic didn't work. Apparently the idea of actually creating a product that could compete on features never occurred to them. To any other would-be competitors to Steam, here's a (probably incomplete) list of features you need to have in your storefront: a) a way to launch games (duh) b) a way to buy games (also duh) c) preferably a way to make the launching bit the default, and not the storefront d) chat e) user reviews f) discussions g) workshops for mods h) screenshots & saved videos g) sharing libraries amongst family h) remote play i) toggleable FPS counter j) cloud saves This is just a minimum of features Steam adds (feel free to add any others you think are essential). There's a lot more functionality too, but if your client doesn't add at least these basics, you have the inferior product and why should anyone bother with it? The thing is, I WANT there to be a more robust marketplace. Steam has been a reasonably good curator (considering it's a modern-day corporation) but you can't DEPEND on their good behavior to last forever (and Valve has its dark side too). But almost all its competitors** have relied too much on their money and name-recognition rather than creating a product people might actually want to use. And it doesn't work. Gamers aren't going to flock to your platform just because you're Activision, or just because a few games are exclusive to your client, or just because you occasionally give away a 5-year old game for free. You've tried that tactic for years and Valve only grows stronger. So maybe try a new tack? * its on PC Gamer, but we'll overlook that: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/amazon-apparently-thought-it-was-gonna-compete-with-steam-since-the-orange-box-but-prime-gamings-former-vp-admits-that-gamers-already-had-the-solution-to-their-problems/ ** EA, Ubisoft, ActiBlizz, Microsoft, Rockstar, Bethesda, Epic, Amazon... just to name a few