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Dusk Developer David Szymanski: I'd rather pay Valve 30% and put up with their de facto monopoly than help Epic work towards their own (very obviously desired) monopoly (twitter.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

159 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If I'm honest, I don't disagree.

I would love for Steam to have **actual competition. Which is difficult, sure, but you could run a slightly less feature-rich store, take less of a cut, and pass the reduction fully on to consumers and you'd be an easy choice for many gamers.

But that's not what Epic is after. They tried to go hard after the sellers, figuring that if they can corner enough fo the market with exclusives the buyers will have to come. But they underestimated that even their nigh-infinite coffers struggle to keep up with the raw amount of games releasing, and also the unpredictability of the indie market where you can't really know what to buy as an exclusive.
Nevermind that buying one is a good way to make it forgotten.

So yeah, fully agreed. Compared to Epic, I vastly prefer Steam's 30% cut. As the consumer I pay the same anyways, and Steam offers lots of stuff for it like forums, a client that boots before the heat death of the universe, in-house streaming, library sharing, cloud sync that sometimes works.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Both Valve and Epic are private companies. I still trust Valve over Epic, but I think technically Tim Sweeney has pretty much full control over Epic as well (for better or for worse).

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

He does, but not the stake Gaben has. Sweeny sold 40% to tencent. This still gives him control, but thats a very large shareholder that can push and pull when they want.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

They can't "push and pull" anything. With Sweeney owning 50%+1, Tencent and anyone else he sold shares to can literally do nothing - he will always have the final say. And since the company is private, there's almost certainly an agreement/contract in place on those share purchases that if someone wants to dump them they have to offer them back to him/the company first. Since it's not a public company they can't just go sell their shares on an open market. The threat of a large shareholder is gone in a case like this - they can't stage a hostile takeover and they can't dump and run.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You’re thinking of technically taking the decisions in the company. But shareholders can do much more. Like influencing the value of stocks by selling too many at once.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Tell me you didn't actually read my comment without telling me you didn't read my comment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You’re also assuming there are no other shareholders………..

Sure, maybe those 106 are sharing 10% but I doubt it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Another point for me at least, I actually put in effort to not getting made in China products where feasible. The same thing applies here, supporting epic is supporting China. I really just prefer not to support China, so no epic games for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Ah that’s a fair point. I haven’t paid too much attention to this. Thanks for providing some more context :).