Can Valve no longer afford to not retaliate?

I definitely think they shouldn't copy them.

The best thing they could do is release some killer feature or better yet, a game.

It's interesting seeing how tepid the legacy media are in criticizing Epic. In some cases you'll find Kotaku goons defending them on Twitter deeming consumers not liking bullshit as "toxic masculinity", absolute bell-ends.

The cut is less a case of "need" and rather "greed". So, screw them? If they're willing to shit on the consumer i'm bemused as to why I should give a shit back.

At this point, it's childish to hate on a launcher when every company has it.

I thought Epic exclusives would be a thing of 2019, but nah, they are taking this into 2020 as well.

On one hand I like what Valve is doing: they still have the best place to buy games, they have the steam workshop, they don't spend silly money on buying up exclusives.

On the other hand I hate Valve for not creating games anymore.

Retaliate how, pay for exclusives? How about they just release a new Half Life if they're worried, and stop releasing junk.

I'm neutral to both Steam & Epic and I take no sides of the matter. I go where the games are and that's it.

Valve does not really need to do anything huge. They just need to continue working on features and they need to cut down 30% cause it sure is hurting publishers or so they claimed. Epic is using an unsustainable tactic to artificially pad their launcher. Eventually, the cost of buying temporary exclusivity will overrun earnings from revenue share, and they will either need to start cutting costs somewhere else to sustain, end the practice and hope their lower revenue share is enough to entice developers to a storefront with significantly lower market share, or actually develop a community to compete with Steam. An actual response from Valve would likely harm Steam more than it would help.

I think its great we (5 people who voted so far) all agreed Half Life 3 is more important.

Valve is staying the course. Plenty of new AAA releases still on Steam.

Really only talking about a few franchises getting a timed exclusives because of signing bonuses. These games will be free agents soon enough.

Yeah I've noticed that most game journalist are defensive of the Epic Store no matter how bad they mess up or screw gamers over. The PC Gamer Show being sponsored by Epic Games makes any comment PC Gamer have about the Epic Store to be taken with a grain of salt because we know now that they're in Epic's pockets.

What possible killer feature could they have for Steam? It seems like it does almost everything these days, it even has a built in Windows emulator so Linux users can play games through it.

Except this launcher is far worse than the rest and lacks some basic stuff crucial to anyone that actually wants to have a successful store. This is a launcher that doesn't even have cloud saves. In fact forget that, it lacks basic things like a shopping cart and email verification. Lack of email verification has lead to very poor security and the lack of a shopping cart has even resulted in someone's account getting banned because they thought it was fraud due to them making multiple orders in a short amount of time which would have been avoided if they just made a damn shopping cart already.

I'm really wondering how much money they have to throw around because they're not only giving out money for exclusivity deals but giving out money with no strings attached regardless of whether those unreal engine projects will be highly profitable or not with the Epic Mega Grant. The Epic Mega Grant is said to be giving out $100 million this round so unless they're going to stretch that over at least a decade that is even more money being drained. But considering Fortnite made $2.5 billion in profit last year they likely aren't sweating it. Fortnite is gonna have to significantly drop in popularity for that to happen and by the time they run out of Fortnite money it may be too late. Then again I'm sure Epic is offering AAA-AA publishers at least 8 figures checks just to go exclusive since a few hundred thousand or 1 to 2 million ain't enough for them to jump off Steam like the indies.

Only thing I'd like to see Valve do is secure contracts with publishers that won't allow them to go exclusive after their game is up on the Steam store whether the game is available to buy or pre-purchase or not. As it is now, Steam is being used by publishers like Deep Silver and 2K as cheap advertising for their products on a competing store and I can't imagine Valve are particularly happy about that.

@NoodleFighter: Then take it up with Epic to fix the issues.

Mehh arguably the greatest exclusive they have bought so fare is metro, that game got 60% off last months like 2(?) months after its release... and are now coming to a 5$ game pass, that should probably tell you something about how much it hurts their sale not to be on steam..

Oh look, it's the hermits that claim PC gaming is not complicated and now are crying because of a launcher LMAO

Yawn......

Considering that Epic has already lost Metro Exodus and going to lose more every day to come, I don´t think Valve is concerned with the failed attempt from Epic to be hip with the crowd.

Also with Epic still 6 months away from adding something as simple as a basket with multiple orders, And when cyberpunk 2077 is going to be on steam and GOG, well enough said.

nope. epic shooting themselves in the foot with out any help

And yet you hate on a Console, a piece of plastic.

They've been quiet for a very long time but they're still on top by far. Epic is in some ways shooting themselves in the foot since they're being regarded very negatively by PC gamers.

When Ubi, EA, Bethesda and the rest make consoles, then i'll lay off on the Bone.

Till then, Bone gets hate.

Nope, Valve should sit this one out. The model Epic has is not sustainable.

Launcher Wars.

Fortnite money, bro. Fortnite money.

I agree with Rocks though. Epic Store only offers something good for developers/publishers, and only bad things for the end user. So long as that doesn't change, and they keep burning good will by closing down the open nature of PC gaming, Steam doesn't really need to respond. They may want to prepare in case Epic gets their act together. But considering Epic's current mentality and investors, that could take a while. It would be smart for Steam to keep developing their software and presentation to stay ahead, but that would be smart regardless of Epic.

Yeah. I can see that happen.

I know that's why I said that. They bleed money when they buy those exclusives deals and the very reason they are doing it because they want to have the an alternate revenue stream. Fortnite is a masssive money maker for them and have been for sometime but they also realize Fortnite is just as easily can be replaced by other phenomenon. The model they have is not sustainable long term unless they are also relying on Tencent's deep pockets. They are also letting go of their UE4 royalties in order for games to be on Epic Store.

The PC Gamer Show is misleading when it comes to PC Gaming it only shows a small portion and most of the top upcoming PC games were not even at that show. Steam is still the place to buy games and most game publishers understand this. Look at Mordhau it sold over 1 million copies on PC on Steam if it was on Epic it would never have even got close to that. Most of the publishers are going to Epic because their games are not selling well. I highly doubt RDR2 won't be on Steam and even if it isn't it will still be available through the Rockstar Social Club.

Except they are making games. Infact, they are nearing release to a new Half Life game releasing this year.

A new half life but without showing any trailers or screenshots?

Plus all the writers left so Valve won't make anymore singleplayer games.

It's happening, and it will be revealed at The International 2019 in late August. Set your calendar. And no, some of the writers returned a while back.

Valve need to just double down on being pro consumer.

Having a race to the bottom with a Chinese company is not what they are about.

Steam killed valve, they dont care about making games, they care about selling other peoples games, steam getting praise for being pro consumer is bs. Anyone who grew up with CS 1.6, just look at the buisness practices in CS GO. Knife skins being sold for 200$ spray paints are now pre rendered micro transactions with a limited amount of sprays where you used to be able to use any jpeg off you pc and just tag whenever. Gone are the glory days of steam and valve. Gaben is as much of a greedy pig as tencent if not more. Screw gaben.

I agree completely about the whole economy they essentially lifted from EA, turning gambling into a game. Valve gets a free pass for that while others do not, it's a double standard.

But to say that are anti-consumer is straight up false. There entire business model has been based around improving the consumer experience. Steam itself originally envisioned to deliver content patches faster at a time when downloading a patch from a website was the norm.

Even stuff like their hardware such as the Steam Controller is designed around getting around major issues inherent to pc gaming. You can literally play any game on a console pad now even if it doesn't support it in the first place. It's saved me so much headaches with older video games, back when shitty porting was the norm, with the touch-pad, while not quite on the level of a mouse, a much better stand in for FPS/TP than the Xbox360 pad.

@uninspiredcup: id say that copying the EA buisness model is anti consumer.

They have destroyed thier own IPs with this kind of buisness, dota 2, cs go, tf2, they are riddled to the brim with micro transactions.

The spray tags in cs go are the best example, I remember how awesome it would be to see the crazy sprays in CS, they were just jpegs but it gave the community some life. (I'm guessing it was a move to censor graphic jpegs? But not sure, i remember sometimes people would spray porn) but to then sell sprays and then make it so you can only use these pre made sprays a certain amount of times untill it runs out was lame, just a way for more micro transactions. Day of defeat/ CS diddnt have micro transactions. Tf2 originally diddnt have micro transactions, now look at all the goofy crap they sell in that game. Then they put out a card game artifact, the ultimate template to squueze out micro transactions. Luckily it bombed, with the amount of micro transactions in that game it should have been f2p, but no steam wants you to buy in for 30 bucks to be able to buy more micro transactions lol

I'm glad you got some use out of the steam controller, but imo it doesnt make steam pro consumer, its just a product they sell to make money. I'm glad you made the EA comparison. Most people act dumb when i bring it up, but its 100% true. I hate EA, I've not liked them for years and ive started to get that way with steam /valve.

Ive used steam my whole life but it was really because of valves games, thats why i had steam, idgaf that steam has some extra features. I still would have never downloaded the client if it wasnt for valves games back in the day. Valves games was the reason i supported steam. But those days are over.

Why should I support steam now? I dont get it. My consumer experiance with steam has progressively gotten worse over the last decade.

Valve can afford to do whatever the **** they want. They are filthy rich. They are privately owned and don't have to answer to public shareholders. They could not make another penny and still walk away laughing.

@BassMan: true

The Epic game store has very few games on it. Steam has about a million. They still currently have nothing to worry about.

@BassMan:

That is exactly what I wanted to say. I am too lazy to google their value/how much they have, but isn’t it billions sitting in the bank?

They have so much money saved up, it’s why they are so damn lazy and don’t make games anymore.

Why make games when you can just sit there and count cash all day?