Tim Sweeney emailed Gabe Newell calling Valve 'you assholes' over Steam policies, to which Valve's COO simply replied 'you mad bro?'

Zzero

Major Tom
9 Jan 2023
3,970
2,314
Steam "might be the best option out there, but monopolies aren't great for anyone" - who asked you?
Actually, there's a number of cases where monopolies are great for everyone. Having friend groups split among various social media companies sucked and was unsustainable, eventually a "natural monopoly" was going to form. Having competing fire companies was bad and governments had to legislate them out of existence. Forcing companies, such as Apple, to sign onto a different company's format for charging, as the EU did, is seemingly good for the general populace despite restricting choice in charging platforms to a single group's product. A similar thing has happened for EVs. In sports leagues its been generally accepted everywhere that what could in a business sense be called "anti-competitive behavior" actually helps the public interest because it prevents cheating and promotes "in-game" competition. In the US pretty much every major league has needed some sort of anti-trust exemption to operate and the general public is perfectly happy with it. I'm really only scratching the surface here, there's soooooooo many cases, but then am also arguing with a corporate CEO trying to get a court ruling rather than an actual poster so there's really no point going on.
 
27 Jun 2023
5,366
4,255
29
United kingdom
Tim Sweeney is viscerally repulsive. Good to see Valve showing Sweeney the level of respect he deserves.

We have the side-by-side. On the one hand, you have Steam. It takes 30% (down to 20% over $50m revenue), and offers world class features and service. On the other hand you have Epic Game Store. It takes 12%. It sucks to use. It's barely improved after 6 years, and it doesn't have many games. It doesn't compete with Steam on equal footing in any capacity. There's no reason for it to exist, and users are rightly rejecting it. It's a shame that great developers like Remedy and Psyonix are wedded to this garbage platform.

Every single PC game launcher other than Steam sucks ass. They all claim they're going to improve and none of them ever have. If it was easy to do what Valve is doing, we'd have a dozen great portals into PC gaming. In reality there's only one.
I don't play Fortnite but I'm pretty sure its mtx 'V bucks' are the same price on Epic games store as they are on the platforms that get a 30% cut (they also raised the price of this completely made up currency not too long ago) he's a hypocritical 🤡
 

rinzler

Banned
12 Mar 2024
352
244
Tim Sweeney and EGS are a joke. Consoles gatekeeping games between each other I can understand, but on the same platform that being a Windows PC is just asinine.

I also don't want to hear well Valve does that too, no they do not. Developers choose to release there with no monetary compensation.
 
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Reactions: flaccidsnake

flaccidsnake

Veteran
2 May 2023
2,997
2,526
Actually, there's a number of cases where monopolies are great for everyone. Having friend groups split among various social media companies sucked and was unsustainable, eventually a "natural monopoly" was going to form. Having competing fire companies was bad and governments had to legislate them out of existence. Forcing companies, such as Apple, to sign onto a different company's format for charging, as the EU did, is seemingly good for the general populace despite restricting choice in charging platforms to a single group's product. A similar thing has happened for EVs. In sports leagues its been generally accepted everywhere that what could in a business sense be called "anti-competitive behavior" actually helps the public interest because it prevents cheating and promotes "in-game" competition. In the US pretty much every major league has needed some sort of anti-trust exemption to operate and the general public is perfectly happy with it. I'm really only scratching the surface here, there's soooooooo many cases, but then am also arguing with a corporate CEO trying to get a court ruling rather than an actual poster so there's really no point going on.
Yeah, I agree. Just saying "monopolies are bad" is a baby brain way to approach the issue. Especially when you're arguing in favor of another massive company crow barring a bad product onto people's computers using anti competitive tactics. Monopolies can be bad, fragmentation can also be bad. The solution which takes the best of both is interoperable standards.