It's been a fairly exhausting weekend seeing so many reduce the resistance shown towards Epic's launcher as simply not wishing to click a button. It's not just a matter of convenience, but the end result of years of research Valve put into the demands and expectations of both developers and customers alike - all while heeding their position as a global storefront and giving devs the tools to understand markets with less strong currencies and economies. Not only that, but Valve has looked to their competition on more than one occasion and integrated superior ideas and functionality into their own toolset. Origin beat them to having a built-in streaming feature by some time. Other storefronts had much more lenient refund policies before it became a matter of doing business legally in certain territories. They've even begun to rebuild the chat functionality of the client in response to Discord, despite it being a bit of a mess and still not allowing for access to group chats on Android yet. That's not even getting into the software they've contributed to and their vision for making Linux a fully viable option for gamers.They're always looking at the big picture mode.
I get the desire to side with developers first and foremost because, as a dev who plans to offer her game on Steam natively alongside other storefronts such as Itch, the promise of greater revenue for me per sale is extremely attractive! Every extra penny I can earn would go a long way towards keeping game creation as a sustainable option for myself and the small team size I plan to maintain. However, that's not the end all be all. As a developer, being on Steam gives numerous advantages:
- Hooks for community features that let people share screenshots of my game instantly, stream to friends with the push of a button, and send media of my game to social media platforms of their choice easily. Word of mouth can be very important for small titles, so Steam's functionality gives players many ways to do just that natively within the client.
- Forums hosted for tech support, general questions about the game, community bugfixes & enhancements and more. Discord servers and private email correspondence is terrible for this because it's not easily linkable nor do these appear on search results when someone googles an issue they're having or an enhancement they heard about, like a SpecialK build for my game. As these are hosted by Valve themselves, there is a much smaller risk of seeing all that information vanish.
- Store pages with countless points of data that may be very important for a user to see before they make a purchase. What languages do I support? Does my game recognize controllers and take full advantage of their functionality? Is there online play of some kind? What about badges, cards, achievements, and other functions of the sort? It's all there in a standardized way that makes it super simple for a user to find out what they need to when viewing my game for the first time.
- Vast metadata which gives potential customers a way to find my title among similar titles, as well as curated lists written by users who may be looked to for advice on purchases. There is still a responsibility on me to properly advertise my title, which also depends quite a bit on luck and if my product can catch the eye of the right people, but I'm not completely on my own on the storefront once my game is there.
- Investments in and integration with projects that will enable my game to run on OSes that I may not be able to support directly depending on the engine I use, which has culminated in the development of Photon and other tools that generally make my title more accessible than ever.
- Free key generation for my title, so that I may sell on other marketplaces and take advantage of their sales periods and consumer base. Valve does not make a profit off of any of those keys, so I could use those to earn up to 100% of the revenue depending on where customers buy my game from. This ranges from storefronts like Humble, Greenmangaming and Amazon to clients like Itch.io. At no point are users forced to buy through Steam exclusively.
- Extensive sales opportunities, all completely within my control.
- And much more!
As a consumer, there are certain expectations we may have depending on our use cases and needs:
- Native controller support and extensive customization options for everything from the Dualshock 4 to the Switch Pro Controller.
- Full screen, console-style interface for accessing my library and every one of the client's functions for comfortable playing, for those who prefer a less spartan and controller-friendly navigation.
- Seamless integration into online functionality through the friends list and chat client.
- Consideration for local currency and economic situations. Valve has made a point to understand the markets in different parts of the world as a way to combat piracy for those who were being unfairly charged three times as much as customers in other countries. Steam currently supports almost 40 currencies and gives developers advice on how to price their games in less economically well-off territories.
- A search function so that I can find the game I'm looking for to wishlist, purchase, gift to a friend, or just link to someone who may be interested.
- Metadata that lets me know about the game I may be potentially buying, as well as methods to find games that are similar to it - either by algorithmic comparison or user-submitted lists, all hosted natively on the service so I don't have to leave Steam itself.
- Social features that let me share moments from games I love with friends and the internet as a whole, all natively from within Steam as a client.
- Built in community forums so I can get in touch with developers to offer feedback during Early Access periods, get support for bugs I may be having, or download mods to fix broken games that may otherwise still be a lot of fun to play, all completely public and just a search away.
- Cards which let me earn a little bit of money back per game that supports them, which in turn gets put directly into another developer's pocket both by the purchasing of cards to finish badges as well as helping fund games I may otherwise not have the extra money to afford in my bank account.
- No questions asked refunds so long as I am not asking for refunds constantly. I just click a few boxes, wait a short time, and my money is back.
- Extensive sales opportunities not just through the main store, but key resellers and developers' personal sites as well if they offer Steam keys as part of the purchase.
- ...and much more! Not even including things like their work with VR, their own controller, etc.
You may be thinking, "ListeningGarden, some of these are duplicates!", but that's more to highlight the fact that what Steam brings is a positive for both developers and consumers alike. Valve as a company is not perfect, and I have a lot of criticisms for the way they've handled various issues with their policies and storefront, and I will call them out whenever they do something I don't approve of. Looking at it from both perspectives, Valve has addressed most of those, even if they were unclear on how they would do so until their solution was rolling out.
Which brings me to the Epic client... It lacks almost all functionality that I expect as a developer and a consumer living just weeks away from 2019. They've had the Steamspy guy on staff for years, who has personally invested a ton of time into understanding the inner workings of Steam and the economy within, and yet they couldn't launch a store that has even a tenth of the capability? Who won't even bother offering functions that the Steamspy guy openly criticized Valve for not offering? (Thanks, Kurt!) Epic, who has Fortnite and UE4 royalties to back and fund the development of the launcher and storefront which has already existed for several years in slightly different form, as well as business partners with considerably hefty bank accounts of their own? Whose very founder spoke out against Microsoft for a potential monopoly of their own, only for Epic Game Launcher to completely ditch Linux as an option for distribution?
I'm supposed to champion them as a developer because they're offering a greater share, but stores like Humble and Itch give developers an even bigger share than Epic does. Why were those not celebrated as openly? Epic's answer to that is to force exclusivity to their store, taking choice away from the consumer and not giving much of a benefit to the developer. Their cut doesn't really mean much when other storefronts/launchers offer even better cuts and have much more functionality. Epic's decision to launch their store by only giving already successful and known indie studios preferential treatment at the cost of losing every advantage Steam offers me has greatly limited what trust I have in them to develop this into something that would actually be a net good. Team Meat doesn't need a curated spot to sell their game, they're already a household indie name. Where's the support for the not quite as well off who could benefit much more from being front and center of a new store launch (without the need for forced exclusivity of titles to a specific storefront or a client that lacks pretty much any functionality), who find the completely honest breakdown by the Brigador devs after their launch failed to be all too familiar to their own situation? If they're really about making a difference, that's really where their attention should be.
Yet, it isn't. And that concerns me! And if you're at all interested in the actual health of dev teams both small and large, as well as your own experience as a consumer, you probably should be too. This isn't competition with the desire to create something genuinely better for the PC landscape, and Epic has a long, long way to go before I can comfortably believe they are doing so with such an intention.
