Yup, especially with Tencent being on, let's say, good terms with Epic it's something that Gabe will want to keep an eye on.
Valve gives top-selling games a bigger slice of the sales revenue
- Thread starter Cmdr-Wotherspoon
- Start date
You are of course right, sort of. IMHO the average user has WAY more bloatware just from the s he/she installs than from (let's be generous here) ten storefronts. I also suppose that the average user is too dumb to understand that they are DRM clients and can incur performance penalty. That said, I am not registering statistically significant performance impact from running these storefronts on my old i5 potato, I suppose with newer machines the impact is even more negligible. You can also quit steam for example and it disappears from the radar (IDK if has some hidden services or not, never bothered to check tbh).
So I disagree with you there - I think it's purely for convenience reasons. Heck, I like to have my games on steam too and frankly fret if I am forced to use something else, unless it falls into a "category" like "I have assassin's creeds on uplay".
There is a market for a "storefront aggregator" but I don't see it happening for pure business reasons. After all these storefronts are there to generate more revenue, not for your convenience ;-)
I use only Steam and GOG Galaxy (which is optional thankfully) on a regular basis. Each "storefront" wastes GB-wise SSD space (bloating my backups) and wants its own access credentials. The latter are saved temporarily, but only if you launch the bloatware often enough, otherwise these expire and have to be reentered. Stuff like GOG then even puts you through two-factor authentication, if your IP address changed.
I can't imagine putting up with ten of those. When I look how PS4 handles this: Game updates through the OS without any logins - and for download games only one storefront with everything on the platform in it. The publishers have no control over the platform that's not really a bad thing.
I don't really care, I don't have to use those "storefronts".
I get the benefits of console media, that they can be sold or given away again. But it is a deliberate choice to a quasi-monopoly. The discs are (not always) as useless for content storage as the PC-counterparts. How many games run without large patches on a console, or without dumping all the data on the internal drive?
And the digital stores of Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are not different to those primarily on PC. A console with online services is a form of DRM itself, which satisfies the publishers, even if it is not noticeable and not as intrusive. Third party publishers still get customer data from the service providers and Microsoft is trying to adapt their console-structure to PCs.
This doesn't matter. The game discs are self-contained (yes, they run without patches) and the PlayStation OS concerns itself with installation and updates (no, you don't run games from disc anymore, that would be stupid). And it doesn't require one to sign into a dozen different accounts with a dozen different kind of ToS. In fact just for updates no sign-in is required at all (just a working Internet connection).
How it used to be PC, too, but nobody remembers.
Oh, these are much, much less cumbersome to work with. And the games are guaranteed to work, you don't have to refund them, because your rig chooses to be incompatible.
What Microsoft has done to the PC platform is the reason why PC hardware is going down in sales each year. I'm still playing PC games, but I can tell you, everything around that platform sucks. It isn't great, it isn't fun to use. There are just a few games there, which make it worth dealing with all the crap.
So you can tell that I am NOT looking forward to just another crappy DRM bloatware for PC.
That might be your opinion, but I personally love PC gaming. I’ve not owned a console in 20 years and I have no desire to buy one today either. Most of the games I want to play can only be found on PC, games like Civilization, Kerbal Space Program, American Truck Simulator, Microsoft Flight Simulator, not to mention hundreds of indie games which can only be found on PC’s.
I wish I had more time to spend playing games on my PC as I just don’t have the time to play them all!
I don't know what you're trying to tell me. I don't care if you buy a console or not and your gaming preferences are just as irrelevant to me.
Before you entered the thread, the discussion was going about the inconveniences of publishers forcing their own launchers on consumers to circumvent Valve's 30 % cut. I then explained how leading platforms beside the PC deal with this issue and provide a convenient unified environment, where publishers can't do whatever they want. Microsoft could have achieved the same, but failed at their shoddy attempts or provided an even more cumbersome experience in the process (Games for Windows LIVE), despite having the Xbox department right in house. In my opinion Microsoft completely ruined the PC platform.
So I think you completely missed the topic, this isn't your console war thread.
Dude, I know it is inconvenient when other people talk in between your rants, but he just expressed his opinion. A terrible sin, sure, but try to forgive him. And what he is trying to tell you is that his opinion differs from yours. You claim there are 'only a few games' worth 'dealing with all the crap', he tells you there are loads. Oh me of my, a different opinion!
Oh, you cant tell him "this isn't your console war thread." after just crapping with zero nuance or insight onto an entire platform. [haha]
And my opinion is that I disagree with that. I have no love for Microsoft, but having Windows as a common standardized platform literally opened up the PC for the gaming haven we all enjoy today.
I remember the DOS days, they were far, FAR worse than what we have now.
Sure the Windows Store sucks but it's easily ignored due to the plethora of other options available to us. Microsoft has made plenty of mistakes over the years, but to claim they "ruined the PC platform" is a gross exaggeration IMHO.
Windows is not a standardized platform, is a proprietary one (with no proper specification). It's the opposite of a standard.
Computers in general were worse, PC was nothing special in that regard. Early PCs weren't up to the task of "gaming", but once the hardware did catch up (abou a decade after PC came out), it was rocking the house. This lasted another decade until Microsoft usurped the whole platform with Windows and then dropped Vista on us. But Vista was nothing compared to how they screwed up this decade.
Blizzard moving to mobile is a result of Microsoft f'ing up.
You are spot on, but as with all these console internet flamefests there is no reasoning with people who decided to hate something with a burning fury. If someone made up their mind Microsoft is the devil reincarnated they wont even acknowledge the most basic of facts.