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If you're going to try and compete with something like Steam, you need to actually compete.
Most launchers are storefronts at best and nothing else. Often the buying experience isn't even good.
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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I would like to see Steam broken up so it is just as a storefront as well
why?
Monopolies
As the comment section points out; it’s impossible to compete with steam because they have so many adjacent perks
And all software should only ever do one thing, otherwise it’s bloat
I really wish people would stop calling successful companies "monopolies". Mono = 1. As in a single company operating in a market.
Most often it involves anti-competitive practices also, which Steam has absolutely none of.
The competition just sucks. All of them. Which this article articulates beautifully.
If by "broken up" you mean you'd like to see another company actually make an attempt to compete with them by providing value to their customers instead of trying to exploit them like cash cows while simultaneously locking them into their shitty launcher, I absolutely agree.
By broken up I’d like to see the community, workshop, chat system, achievements, and marketplace all be separate companies
That would be better for everyone
Why? All those features already exist as separate companies. Discord for chat, Nexus for workshop, like 5000 places run their own marketplace etc.
How would it be better for everyone if you have to set up 5 separate things? That's currently the issue with Epic's launcher that it does nothing other than let you buy games so it doesn't provide the value Steam does.
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Except what steam does isn't considered bloat to a large swath of users.
Or developers
I’m not sure I agree, but thank you for explaining
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Do you mean to say that Steam has a store front separate from the launcher?
It's weird how ruthlessly it tears down battle.net for its interface, but doesn't even mention it for steam
I like steam's UI. Only thing that I wish it was better is steam forum's UI. I wish it was more like lemmy, where you can better see who answered you. Other stores don't even have forums, except maybe for GoG, I'm not sure about that one.
search for steam forums has the worst ui they could have possibly made, quotes of posts are completely fucked
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It's kinda the same for EGS. They added a bunch of things like achievements, user scores and critic scores, but no mention of those.
This doesn't take away that it runs like a buggy mess sometimes. I just hate false equivalencies
EA App is not even a little bit better than Origin. Offline mode straight up doesn't work in the EA App, which has been reported so many times and ignored. You can't move your installation to another drive like you could with Origin. You can't gift games or DLC to your friends in the EA App like you could in Origin. EA apps sucks so much that when I recently purchased Mass Effect Legendary Edition for the ridiculous deal of 90% off (on Steam), and then remembered I would have to use the EA App to play it, I immediately refunded it. Given a choice, I would happily go back to Origin. I hate the EA App so much. It deserves a negative score.
yeah I mean who can compete with family share. wait what. one person being on means the library is unavailable????
Ya I never understood that. I can understand that one game being locked while someone is playing, but everything is ridiculous
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Sadly steam is no longer a viable platform for purchasing games in Argentina, so I have to disagree with this article
Sadly Argentina is no longer a viable country, so steam had to disagree with being involved.
For those out of the loop and don't care to check, Argentina and Turkey have had very volatile currencies for years now. Developers had to constantly update the pricing on those countries because the currencies keep losing value. So Valve decided to ease the burden on the developers and let them set the pricing based on the USD. That price then get converted to the local currency based on the exchange rate. When the exchange rate is 1 USD to ~800 peso it's no wonder that game prices are insane.
ding ding ding, winner!
Who could have predicted such a thing? Only every economist on the planet.
It's higher now, more like 1 USD is around 1200 (black market rate, the 'real' value) The problem per se is not that the store is in USD now, but that during the transition many games abandoned regional pricing and set their prices to the default, which is the american value. So for example the game Jedi survivor is now listed at USD70, and with taxes it comes around to ~USD110. I'm working full time as an accountant, and that's a third of my monthly salary, which is completely unaffordable.
Was is ever to begin with? In any case luckily the Microsoft store still has competitive prices so we still can use that
Probably pre CIA Coup. But the issue is the here and now.
Shame there's no HGL or Lutris...
Steam always or lutris if push comes to shove