Community MetaSteam | January 2019 - Steaming along through Epic storms
- Thread starter lashman
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A title for the next thread: the epic Exodus.
1 year (coming back to Steam on February 15, 2020)
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I'm glad that this hasn't affected any game I actually wanted so far, but it will only be a matter of time. I swear, if Epic gets Digimon I'll riot. By aggressively not buying the game while being devastated.
On the other hand, even if no game at all released this year on Steam, I'd still be swimming in games.
That, and I have like 1300 Kamen Rider episodes left to watch (jesus).
On the other hand, even if no game at all released this year on Steam, I'd still be swimming in games.
That, and I have like 1300 Kamen Rider episodes left to watch (jesus).
Why do people use Pyre not setting the sales charts on fire as justification for Supergiant signing an exclusivity deal? Why is it the fault of the "cRowdED MaRKEtPlace" and not the fact that they made a weird-ass, narrative-heavy, 3v3 fantasy-themed NBA Jam?
I would be interested in playing Hades - Battle Out of Hell though.
If Spelunky 2 or Crash Team Racing is exclusive to the Epic Store, I would cave in.
I'm still sad I can't just skip the sportsball part of Pyre. It's been ages since I played, maybe there's a good trainer or something for it now. I want to finish the story but I hate the actual Pyre game so much. Despite that I would have pre-ordered Hades day 1 if they hadn't gone anti-consumer out the gate.
I remember I got Nioh once with it. Now that I think about it your work could help devs write really useful descriptions.
Even more wonderful is that Capcom seemed like the last one to be willing to doing it.you know it!
i wish publishers would give up on using that pile of crap already ... it's not like it's doing anything any more ... especially lately
Its for the board and investors, denuvo is the easiest way to keep them happy.
Koktaku is a website for schmucks to write on.
Hahahaha, I'm still in 2018Fuck all that noise, I'm not buying Exodus at all
That's 0 years
welcome
Yeah, having a VN sport hybrid game will obviously turn some people away. I guess that's why Hades is the way it is so they don't lose sales.
still the best OST supergiant ever made
OP
Ok. I disagree with this take but I think your post is shitty and the topic has more nuance than that.
Kotaku's stance on social and political issues aside (since this is about Steam, right?) Valve's statement here is pretty shit. They basically said something to which everyone agrees in the most passive aggressive way possible. AND in a way which leaves themselves blameless and heaps all the blame on the publisher/developer.
Without access to internal communications we can't tell if Valve is bullshitting here (they might or might not be), and obviously their stance is pro-consumer, since most consumers like Steam's platform better than Epic's. So we are left with a very terse statement sent in a very public way to people who are very likely already angry. The second tweet is completely right. It's a frequent complaint of developers on Steam (and actually a lot of video game developers), so why not address it right off the bat? Additionally the article on Kotaku doesn't mention that at all, similarly the same author followed up with more tweets on the subject that add nuance:
So it looks like you're picking the most click-bait-y part of the discussion and ignoring the actual issues. That's bad form and I hoped we were better than that here.
Valve should know by now that Steam users frequently game its systems (look at all their sales games, review systems, bombing, etc) and if there is a way for an audience direct their anger in a public way some of them will do it. It makes easy PR sense to address that shit right up front. Valve's statement could have easily had 1 more sentence about "our platform allows refunds" or whatever so people can actually vote with their wallets in a way the publishers will feel, but instead it just ends and gives no recourse to people who are stuck in that situation.
They even claim that "no worries I'm sure the patches and DLC will all come out at the same time!" LOL. Ask anyone who bought a non-CDPR game on GOG recently how that goes. Patches are late or never show up frequently. I can't take Valve's word at that, they aren't in control of it, the publisher is. Its all designed to keep Valve blameless and point the anger somewhere else instead of diffusing the situation. It's a choice. They could have made a different statement. Instead they chose to send this one and they can be criticized for what they chose to say. Even when their statement is mostly right.
Steam OT for february- Nothing new is coming thanks to Epic so you can finally work on your backlog.
OP
I'm sorry, I don't really follow this. What's wrong with Valve's message?
This just says that the game will still be available for people who preordered, and that they think this decision is unfair for Steam customers who expected the game to be available on sale on Steam for more time (since they now only had a few hours to buy it before it was delisted until Feb 2020). What's wrong with that?
Nothing shitty in my eyes about calling calling Grayson a schmuck for complaining about "a hyper-toxic "pro-consumer" user base" and his usual (ironically) rabble-rousing nonsense.
I am literally 100% on board for Valve being more vindictive at this point, even if it includes some juvenile passive-aggressivity. Sergey and Sweeney get to go around completely shitting up the discourse, but Valve is expected to act like the gentleman in the room?
Give me a break.
What could Valve possibly be at fault for here?
Considering that just a few days ago the official Metro Twitter was talking about Steam keys:
And that no key-sellers or third-party stores, including Microsoft's announced that the game would no longer be available via anything but Epic before today either, I'm inclined to believe that this was sprung on Valve just like they claim.
I'n not advocating GAMERS RISE UP here, but I don't see anything wrong with Valve sending out a statement that condemns anti-consumer behavior in no uncertain terms.
What's right about it? They shouldn't condemn anti-consumer behavior because some dumb nutsos are going to go harass Sergey on Twitter?
Again, give me a break.
The article is actually relatively okay since it's mostly only a report on what Valve said. I'm taking issue not so much with the actual article, but the unnecessary and idiotic editorializing around it.
And these tweets are dumb as rocks too. The only people that really drone on about MUH COMPETITION constantly are all the people banging the "VoLVo BaD, EpIC GooD GUyS" drum.
The irony here is that developers only want competition when it benefits them. Having the audacity to criticize customers for wanting less competition in the launcher space when developers have recently been constantly complaining about their competitors on Steam is the height of backasswards takes.
Shocking news: all self-interested, rational market actors only want as much competition as benefits them, and once a threshold is reached, typically start acting in anti-competitive ways.
lol
Why would they need to include this? We all know that we'll be able to get a refund, that's not really the issue that Valve was raising with their statement.
Ironically, since you're whining on about Valve throwing people to the wolves, they actually threw Deep Silver and 4A to the wolves here and tried to completely exonerate themselves from blame. It's not "their word" that they're conveying:
Now if the game isn't updated, they've preemptively cleared themselves of blame and can easily say "Deep Silver and 4A told us otherwise" if/when they don't actually update the game properly.
And good for them. If they don't actually update the game for paying customers, they should be torn a new one.
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The part where Valve ignores the giant elephant in the room that is people are going to be rightly pissed off at this anti-consumer move. Instead of directing them to places to show their displeasure constructively (refunds, IMO) or making some sort of mea culpa, they just leave it all at the publisher's feet so that it becomes their problem. Which is exactly the behavoir that many publishers are citing in their moves to Epic. It's playing into Epic's hands here.
It literally is the problem of the publisher.
Why shouldn't Valve issue a statement making their displeasure with Deep Silver/4A known? Why shouldn't they encourage people to get their voices heard regarding their opinions on anti-consumer business practices?
How in the hell are refunds "constructive" displeasure here, over constructively issuing our displeasure over the decision to the actual perpetrators?
I don't see how this is Valve's fault. Also, I bet if they told people to refund their game, then we'd get articles saying "Vindictive Valve tells customers to refund game because it's now an Epic exclusive". And about leaving it at the publisher's feet, why is that bad? Who decided to cut a deal with Epic and remove the game from Steam after months of preorders? the publisher. Why shouldn't the publisher deal with that? I don't understand why Valve should be doing any mea culpa here if it's not their fault that Deep Silver took a bag of cash from Epic.
OP
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- #1,627
well Deep Silver did leave it all at volvo's feet tbh .... they've been taking pre-orders for months now ... and only spring this stuff right before release
this is EXACTLY what would've happened ...
like i already said - there is no winning move for volvo here ... no matter what they do, they're the bad guys
Yeah, I'm really not seeing the issue here.
- Deep Silver took the exclusivity deal, likely in exchange for some kind of moneyhat.
- They seem to have sprung this on everyone in the industry since there were no substantial rumblings, and no announcements from Valve, Microsoft or any other third party store ahead of time.
- They're taking a product off a store which was already taking preorders, admittedly while promising to honor their purchase, but with no real way yet to know if Steam users might end up as second-class citizens in the update cycle.
- Epic, journalists, many devs and many gamers have been laying various pieces of blame at Valve's feet for months.
Like you keep saying, Valve is literally in a no-win situation. If they come out and speak against anti-consumer practices, they get tone-policed and told to be nicer. If they don't say anything, everyone accuses them of being too quiet and uninterested in problem-solving.
What kind of bullshit thinking is this? What Mea Culpa should Steam do? What Mea Culpa should Valve do? What is their wrongdoing? Getting told last minute the game is going to be sold exclusively at the Epic Store?
This is a publisher's problem, not a store problem. The publisher decided to, at the last minute, make the game they have been taking preorders for on Steam, an Epic Store exclusive. This is unfair to the customer base. Any person trying to twist those words is an imbecile, just like Grayson and Walker showed in that twitter thread.
Not to mention they essentially left it up to Valve to LEAVE A WARNING on the still-existing pre-order page. This is 100% on Deep Silver and Valve basically let them off with a near-objective statement
So, Deep Silver deserves death threats and hate mail over their shitty business moves? Fuck that, no one deserves that stuff for any reason.
You want the companies to be *MORE* aggressive? Get excited for more exclusivity deals and bad marketing tactics then. That's what you're endorsing here. This stuff isn't a free market as much as Valve wishes it was. Epic is money-hatting developers who are upset at Steam rightly or wrongly. Valve has just shown everyone on the fence that the people who jumped ship were right by doing the most Valve thing possible.
I think Deep Silver deserve to be punished with terrible game sales, not twitter mobs. Sadly that doesn't seem to be the case and since public sentiment is already against them in the journalist's mind, why play into the trap? It's all shitty and no one wins here.
I mostly think Valve has made a bad situation worse. If there is fallout from this --and I think we can all be sure it will be watched closely now-- it seems poised to make all companies involved LESS communicative rather than more. So everyone loses.
You want the companies to be *MORE* aggressive? Get excited for more exclusivity deals and bad marketing tactics then. That's what you're endorsing here. This stuff isn't a free market as much as Valve wishes it was. Epic is money-hatting developers who are upset at Steam rightly or wrongly. Valve has just shown everyone on the fence that the people who jumped ship were right by doing the most Valve thing possible.
I think Deep Silver deserve to be punished with terrible game sales, not twitter mobs. Sadly that doesn't seem to be the case and since public sentiment is already against them in the journalist's mind, why play into the trap? It's all shitty and no one wins here.
I mostly think Valve has made a bad situation worse. If there is fallout from this --and I think we can all be sure it will be watched closely now-- it seems poised to make all companies involved LESS communicative rather than more. So everyone loses.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #1,632
no, of course not ... no one does ... EVER!
that's the thing, though .... they did this and there are already articles misrepresenting what they wrote ... if they didn't say anything at all - people would be complaining they don't care (and/or aren't willing to do anything about publishers leaving) ... if they reminded people about refunds in that notice - you'd see articles about "vindictive volvo" encouraging people to hurt developers by refunding their pre-orders ... etc. etc. etc. ... there is literally NOTHING volvo can do (or not do) that would get them any positive sentiment among lots of devs, publishers, and the press right now
let's face it - their "we don't talk to anyone" approach throughout the years only enabled people like Tim or Sergey to go around spreading bullshit about volvo on twitter and during dev talks ... and since volvo wasn't commenting on anything, some people just automatically assumed it must be true (even if it wasn't)
like, don't get me wrong - there are TONNES of things to criticize volvo for ... no one here is claiming otherwise ... but they are not the things they're being criticized for by Tim/Sergey/journalists etc. ... but you can't even really say any of that without someone automatically labelling you a steam shill/fanboy/whatever (not talking about you, obviously ... just in general) ... it's really gotten up to the point where if you say ANYTHING positive about steam people just stop listening to you ...
I feel like this really needs to be emphasized.
Sergey gets to make $10,000 a month on Patreon for Steam Spy, while spreading FUD about Steam all the time, all while he works for Epic as their Director of Publishing Strategy.
Again, I'm not advocating for threats, harassment or Twitter mobs. But I am absolutely advocating that Valve needs to not sit back any more and let the narrative be written by schmucks like Sergey, concern trolling console gamers or disinterested "journos" who don't actually care about the health of the PC landscape. It's far past time for Valve to take the gloves off and write the narrative themselves.
It is unfortunate that there is very little positive stuff to talk about regarint the epic store as even i cant think of many myself.
It is creating a one sided biased view of it.
It is creating a one sided biased view of it.
Well you wrote please so i cannot deny your request good sir
Ill have it posted later tpday on here
Ill have it posted later tpday on here
OP
It's up now~awwwwww, thank you!!!
OP
I just made this ultra biased shameless edit
An example of consumer choice:
I want to get Pikuniku. I could grab me a Twitch Prime and get it off there, but I prefer having my games on Steam or GOG, at least.
Game is availble on BOTH GOG and Steam at the same price. If I get it on GOG, I get a drm-free back up installer, but oN sTEAM I get to use the activity/community features which can help encourage more of my friends to get the game. Also card money.
As is I'm leaning towards GOG as my choice of support and because I want a drm-free back up of the game.
Of course if it pops up on Humble I'd settle for that since I need the credit :V
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An example of consumer choice:
I want to get Pikuniku. I could grab me a Twitch Prime and get it off there, but I prefer having my games on Steam or GOG, at least.
Game is availble on BOTH GOG and Steam at the same price. If I get it on GOG, I get a drm-free back up installer, but oN sTEAM I get to use the activity/community features which can help encourage more of my friends to get the game. Also card money.
As is I'm leaning towards GOG as my choice of support and because I want a drm-free back up of the game.
Of course if it pops up on Humble I'd settle for that since I need the credit :V
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It's been a while since I've had to argue for a noble PC gaming cause. I kinda missed it to be honest, although I expect that sentiment to be short lived.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #1,642
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I wish steam would add in a gog.com kind of integration that works something like this-
You link your gog account, any game you own on GOG that is available on steam will get community and controller integration. This'd be very useful for me as I'm too lazy to create my own controller profiles for certain games :V
You link your gog account, any game you own on GOG that is available on steam will get community and controller integration. This'd be very useful for me as I'm too lazy to create my own controller profiles for certain games :V
I've been tempted to grab Biomutant off GOG tbh. If they announce some kind of steamworkshop integration I may grab it off steam tho.
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Last month:
"We have over 40 partners, we are not planning any exclusives".
Today:
"We fully own this company, but this was totally their decision, we had nothing to do with it. Oh, that's not to say we won't have any exclusives of our own".
Yeah, excuse my language, but fuck them.
And, I say that as a long time supporter of this publisher, and someone who probably owns more games and DLCs from THQ Nordic than anyone else in here.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #1,645
i don't think there's any meaningful customization in that game ... other than the character, i mean
don't think that's really workshop-worthy (from their perspective)
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well, to be fair - they did say "at this stage" even last month
Deep Silver doesn't deserve death threats but certainly deserves complaints directed their way for the business decision they made.
I'm not sure how a store putting a warning notice on top of a preorder button that the preorder is being taken down soon because an exclusive deal has been signed (at the last minute) and they think that such a move is unfair to their customers (which it is, since the game is being taken down before release while the preorder campaign has been running for a while and customers wont be able to purchase it for a year) but nothing they can do about it is telling fence sitters the people who jumped ship did the right thing.
Caring for your customers is the first thing about running a good business. Something some developers, publishers and even journalists seem to have forgotten is that it's not us paying customers the ones who need publishers, developers and their products. It's them needing us and our money. We can still live without buying their games. They can't live without us buying their games, because while our job isn't buying games, their job is selling games.
Valve looking after their own customers by warning them is a good thing, not a bad one. Trying to paint it as a bad one feels to me like watching that youtube clip where a dude shoots another dude and then asks why that other dude did it to himself.
Acting like this is a call to arms from Valve to people to harass and send death threats is disingenuous at best in my opinion.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #1,647
Devolver bless
Companies aren't your friends, I appreciate a lot of what THQ is doing, so it's important to take in their good along with any of their bad.i don't think there's any meaningful customization in that game ... other than the character, i mean
don't think that's really workshop-worthy (from their perspective)
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well, to be fair - they did say "at this stage" even last month
OP
- Thread Starter
- #1,649
yes, absolutely ... no corporation is your friend ... not THQ ... not Epic ... not even Volvo
I'm feeling like having a soft break from gaming because of all this shit. I like buying stuff on Steam because of the consumer friendly options like refunds and regional pricing. On Epic Store everything is more expensive because they use euros instead of my local currency, so that's a big reason for me to stay away. I don't care about Valve or Steam itself, I just want a reliable service.
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