[hughesjj]

EGS never gave us proton, steam deck, steam workshop, early access, steam link or controllers, big picture, etc. steam and valve in general has great VR support and lots of r&d in general.

No hate nor shade towards epic but man valve kills it. Best video game company (studio or platform) by far for several decades now imo.

[RockRobotRock]

Steam is undeniably the best platform for PC gamers, but I can't help but feel bad for game devs who get squeezed and don't have good alternatives.

[leereeves]

Are they getting "squeezed" by Steam? That would imply there is pressure coming from Valve, but the pressure to use Steam is coming from customers.

I'd say that Steam is a great service that customers love and demand that game developers provide, and the 30% fee is the price of that service.

I know that in my own case I've bought games on Steam that were available cheaper elsewhere, or even given away for free on EGS.

And the attempts at creating alternatives have all been unable to create a good alternative. (Except perhaps Good Old Games, which stands out by being DRM-free.)

[rezonant]

Well they're getting squeezed by the 30%, but also that the act of participating in the Steam market means they cannot sell their game for less money (to incentivize a better cut for themselves) off platform, since Steam doesn't allow you to do that, at least to the best of my current understanding. I've posted this elsewhere and had one user pretty upset that I had posted false statements, but I haven't seen evidence to the contrary yet (context is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38624916)

[leereeves]

Do you have any evidence of that?

I know I've seen games given away for free on EGS while they were also for sale on Steam, and seen lower prices on IsThereAnyDeal, but those might all be temporary.

According to Ars, "Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this "parity" rule only applies to the "free" Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms."

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fe...

[rezonant]

Thank you for a source. I do link to my source in the thread in question, and while that law firm was working with Wolfire Games who presumably saw agreements directly from Valve, it's not exactly going to be an unbiased account since they were, you know, suing Valve.

After reviewing the article, it's still a second hand unidentified source, but definitely clear the facts are contested.

I updated that thread with these details.