Game Informer Sez

Steam already provides a good bunch of services (automatic updating, friend lists, game invitiations, sales, decent search engine, managing your library, wishlist, etc).
But while most of them work theres decent room for improvement.
Also I would like to see integrated services for finding groups for games with coop.

I don't care about Steam but when people talk about things like the fact you can sell Steam keys on a different site and keep 100% of the cut, it seems hard to hate them, especially when this Steam vs. Epic debate (in news articles) is always about the cut.

I would have thought that fact + the scummyness of allowing Steam preorders for x months then pulling the game and putting it on Epic alone would cause a lot of journalists to shit on the store. Not sure why every article about them is positive unless the writers are even more unaware of Steam features than I am.

Devs can already make as many keys as they want and sell them in other marketplaces beyond Steam at no cost. Valve is happy to eat up all the bandwidth costs as long as you don't try to shaft its customers with massive discounts on third party websites and not on Steam.

The cut is a myth. In reality this is journalists with an axe to grind and devs desperate for a chance at a store they perceive to not be "cluttered" with too many games - falsely attributing "a lack of curation" as the reason their shitty games flopped.

Anyone who buys Ubisoft games from any platform beside Uplay is retarded anyways.
Adding double DRM for no reason, as Uplay is always required.

I don't like Steam but we're well beyond having a choice now. Steam is the go-to DRM and keys for it are always the cheapest. I can't see this changing in the slightest.

Epic is yet to have an exclusive that I want to play, so I can't see any reason why I'd use it.

Guess I'm forced to get epic then since there's no way in hell I'm skipping out on Anno. It's one of the few series I still support with money rather then a quick torrent.

>it most likely is good for everyone else
>Having a little competition on the market should encourage Steam to take more proactive steps at securing developers and games on their platform.
To which benefit for the consumer? I genuinely don't know what they could possibly be suggesting.

uplay

iplay
we all play anno

Good, i can pirate all their games without remorse

is this fake news? I already saw it on Steam

Why don't they ever explain how Steam doing more for developers helps the consumer?

Look again. They took it down and are only fulfilling pre-orders.

they are suggesting that steam should also start buying out games to be exclusives on their platform. They literally are suggesting console wars on PC.

>While this might not bode well for the ongoing strength of Steam's marketplace, it most likely is good for everyone else.

Holy fuck i'm mad.
Exclusivity deal are NOT good for the consumer ffs, what about putting it on every store available and then the consumer decide, there it would be good for everyone.

This is ONLY good for Ubisoft
the only reason people bought Ubi games on steam because its the most feature-complete platform where they have their biggest library
once you take that away, why bother buying it from Epic when you can just simply buy it from Uplay directly? all the money goes towards ubisoft, and epic's paycheck as well
tim sweeney didn't think this through

Maybe they don't know. I don't think even bad journalists could seriously talk about the percentage differences all the time if they knew about selling keys or whatever.

you don't grow big without exclusives just look at gog and how small their market share still is.

Not denying that its good for Epic store and an effective business tactic.
Just saying fighting for exclusives is not good for consumers.

steam already had competition, fuck gameinformer and fuck chinks strong arming me to try and get me to use their gay little store.

But they aren't trying. Just use uplay

would rather use piratebay honestly

It's funny how Valve corporate is so libertarian and have created an open market which everyone condemns them for. In reality they could have just crushed all their opposition from the beginning like Amazon.

Pirates are the only people with a problem.

Nothing has changed.

Buy it on Steam?
>Uplay
Buy it on Epic?
>Uplay
Why don't you use Uplay?
>I don't buy game I only pirate them

>Is it literally just about the cut to publishers
Fixed, next time don't fall for the obvious propaganda

pirates are only people without any problems.
>Get game
>Play game

Don't be retarded, you don't need epic to play it just Uplay.

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>game still needs uplay
>everyone just buys it from uplay (which they should have been doing with ubi games the entire time) to avoid egs
>epic literally paying ubi for customers to go to another store instead of their own
what did tim sweeney mean by this?

>reading that
>making that

Hm. Yike.

aaaaaaaaaaaah make it stoooooooop, no more launchers please.

Attached: Age of Launchers.png (1127x955, 149K)

Can't wait for the poison to sink in and Steam buys their own exclusives. People thinking that the long term changes will be Steam offering a 10% cut are delusional.

What do you mean. Steam already has those exclusive games

Attached: steam exclusives.jpg (677x1033, 214K)

Did they forbid the devs from offering the product in another store?

Does Anno even sell that well?

they keep making more games, so something must be going right.

Do I still have to install uplay? Then i'll continue to not buy them. Uplay sucks, it uses more resources than origin, egs, and steam combined, it's got less security, and denuvo is forced onto nearly all of their games. Fuck them.

Is there any GoG game that requires Galaxy?

no but these are the kind of games that no other store would touch even with a 10 foot long stick, makes them kinda "exclusive"

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How is it competition if you can only get it from another store?

>its good for everyone! Even though divided friends lists are annoying and we have no positives to list!

All it sounds like they're saying is that Steam should get more exclusive devs. These fags want a PC launcher war.

>Having a little competition on the market should encourage Steam to take more proactive steps at securing developers and games on their platform.

I'm sure, the best for the market is when Steam also starts exclusivity deals for 3rd party titles. What could go wrong? Let's not compete with best service and functionality for the customers. Being locked into a specific store is the way to go, so I have to accept whatever conditions for privacy or customer friendliness they deem acceptable, if I want to play a specific game. Yeah, exclusivity is best for the market.

On another note, I may give the Epic store a shot, once their platform is up to standards set by Steam. With their feature list so far, I only see them pandering to the publishing side of the equation, not the customer side. Not to mention that there's some critical stuff missing atm. The roadmap is a step in the right direction, but until they have actually delivered on those promises, I'll pass.

Epic has made refunding games so annoying

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>how does having to install multiple launchers benefit me? Why are Journos shilling for Epic so hard?

Do you guys honestly believe that Valve could just sit on their asses for years, doing very little, and something like Epic Store wasn't gonna happen eventually? If anyone needs criticism, it's the naivety of Valve, for thinking could sit on the money printing ma hine Steam forever. If anything this is a good thing cause it will shake Valve out of their laziness and apathy to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING.

not for single player, for multiplayer/any online connectivity most newer titles do, though. double dragon trilogy, dead cells, avp, etc, gotta have galaxy running to play the online content.

they changed the refund system in january. you're way too slow mister shitposter.

I mean they estimate it'll take 6+ months for a shopping cart, like they can't be bothered to make it convenient for their buying customers to buy multiple games.

>E3 PC Gaming show
>EG shilling
>gets booed to oblivion
(lol I cannot wait

>December 10, 2018

Ideally they wouldn't have to go toe-to-toe with a scummy corporation that will buttfuck us hard if they win but sure, I'll act pleased that Valve has to do work now.

There's a couple things going on. Firstly, valve and the steam store have been very stagnant as of late, despite rising criticism over the unevenness of it's content policing as well as issues with it's customer review system. Developers don't like it because they get boxed out by shovelware or review bombs killing impulse buys/fence sitters. The media, being Essentially filter feeders, give that back in a feedback loop. The disconnect with the public comes either willfully, or from the fact that media associates far more with publishers and developers than the public does due to incestuousness inherent in the current digital media industry. Then you have an effect of popular contrarianism, similar to Yea Forums where it's popular to shit on something and gets attention. Well it's the same thing going on with steam. Folk wisdom about competition being good serves as justification for clickbait, and the contrarianism becomes gospel.

>mfw they pay the audience to cheer

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epic will just buy the entire show and fill the audience with shills. it will just a couple hours of the hosts reading prepared statements telling how great epic is how great our dear leader is.

Audiences are already directed at these things, you have to tell the reaction from the lack of applause

what about blizzgate

how is having a Chinese company strongarm publishers into making games exclusive on a piece of spyware that doesn't even properly function as a games store good for consumers?

I keep hearing about how Epic's exclusivity faggotry is good for the market because "hurr the competition is better for the consumers!" but I've yet to see any price decreases or literally anything that positive for me.

hubris

That was Blizzard being cocky and paying the price

It's because Steam is an open market where anyone can sell which invalidates the purpose of cultural gatekeepers. If you can read a review what purpose does a reviewer serve? If you can put your game on steam directly the media have little control of the zeitgeist because success or failure of a dev / game is independent of the media (to an extent).

thats retarded

It's good for clickbait.

you can still buy it on steam or uplay as others have said

>ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING.

Out of curiosity, what is the "do something" that would satisfy you? Are you strictly speaking about the customer side, so stuff like the Store UI and Half Life 3? I made a little search what the benefits of Steamworks are for developers and came across pic related. Seems to me that Valve provides quite a bit of framework stuff that they have built up over the years, to ease up development overhead. I guess if Epic provides all that and still only takes a 12% cut and pays for your development on top of that then Steam needs to rethink their pricing and general market approach. Even with Fortnite funds, I don't see Epic throw money at everyone forever, the way they are doing now.

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From my understanding you get 12% and usage of the unreal engine without fees, and an up front payment like in the case of Metro, But that’s about it.

>pirate ubisoft game
>mandatory uplay installer
>without remorse
kek

>I-I will pirate it then! No money from me h-haha!
Is there a more obvious way to out yourself as a poorfag?

the one good post

>should encourage Steam to take more proactive steps at securing developers and games on their platform.
Yeah, I can't wait for steam to go full lockdown and force developers into exclusivity deals. That surely will benefit us consumers

Weird conspiracy. I don't think steam reviews steal that much traffic away from gaming sites. There would be a crusade against Twitch if anything.

>Out of curiosity, what is the "do something" that would satisfy you?

They won't be happy until steam sinks to their level and also starts buying exclusives. Then we end up trading the """monopoly""" for an even worse duopoly where no other stores or key sites can compete with their bottomless money pit, and then they start shafting us with service changes and pricing

See: American isps.

>indie game """""developers""""" demand Gaben to allow their shit on Steam
>Gaben gives them Steam Greenlight
>turns out almost no one cares about their games
>game """""developers""""" demand Gaben to lift quality control so that they could have unlimited access to Steam store
>Gaben gives in once again and the market is now flooded with their garbage that no one wants to buy because it cannot compete in free market
>game """""developers"""" flock to Epic store in attempt to make Gaben pander to them exclusively
It's like I'm watching a horde of entitled children all throwing a tantrum at once.

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>ebic is good for consumers i swearer
>caved in and bought division 2 to play with friends on epic because it was cheaper there.
>epic downloaded 50gb of installer, including uplay
>"launching" the game on epic will launch uplay, which THEN install the game, taking around 40gb which is the actual game
>you're now left with that 50gb that epic launcher still keeps on your computer, you can and have to delete it manually
>you can literally uninstall epic now because the game requires uplay anyway
the state of modern user friendly launcher

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Is it going to be a return to form? Please anno I want you back.

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>typing developers in multiple quotes means they are suddenly not developers

Epic I guess.

China number one

1837 chinaman plaza

>50 gigs for a LAUNCHER.

Fuck no.

>Developers
>Release dumb community college project-tier games that only spread leftisp propoganda and/or porn
>Developers

>50 gigs of botnet yhat you can never truly weed out
Ftfy

you can develop a shit game, user. developer doesnt mean competent game creator

Can someone tell me about Anno genre. Is it a stressfull rts where enemy seeks to destroy you, or is it a comfy city builder that allows player to enjoy himself without stress?

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No

Simple shit like a fucking shoping cart would be an improvment already. You know, one of the things even the most basic indie store has, yet Epic doesn't.

I sure hope ubishit moves all their garbage out of steam so I don't have to look at "ignored publisher" all over the place while looking checking out sales.

>No stupid conspiracy shill theories
So you believe they're willing to throw away millions on fucking everyone over exclusivity but not buy a few disposable cumrags that is gaming journos?

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steam grew big without exclusives.

It has it's fans like me that buy them. Tough 2205 fucked up in a lot of places. 1800 looks more as a return to form. I do doubt that anyone will buy it on the Epic store tough, simply since they started to sell it trough UPlay, buying it there saves headaches unless you pirate.

>pissing of gamers and steam

Why would Ubisoft do this? Considering that they also got a lot of games on steam.

How is it good for me that I can't purchase the game on a platform of my own choice? Fucking niggers I don't want to install any more launcher and I never will.

I will pirate or not even play anno 1800.

>Valve doing very little

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Epic is paying them a shitload to do it obviously.

Since they outshin every other store in virtually every aspect I take it you want them to start paying off devs to release only on steam, yes?

Do what?

Honestly I don't care about Ubisoft games going epic-exclusive, even if you buy them on steam you still have to install Uplay and create an account there in order to play, might as well but Ubisoft games on Uplay directly

You won't believe me, but the blue haired I HAVE A VAGINA reporter from kotaku is the only gaming journo I've come across that is somewhat critical of epic.

Probably why Jim sterling did a 180 on epic, he buckles to peer pressure like nothing else.

Nice. That means that i'm gonna pirate it.

Comfy city builder unless you play against multiple opponents on agressive settings. hell, if you want you can play all by yourself and colonize all islands by yourself.

Arrr
Impressive

Tencent has a hand in Ubisoft as well.

Attached: Screenshot_2019-03-30 For Ubisoft it's goodbye Vivendi, hello Tencent.png (646x195, 15K)

What do you want Valve to do?

If it's to make games, then it's not a platform issue. I agree that Valve needs to make some real fucking games, but that's not happening. You think Half-Life 3/Left 4 Dead 3/Portal 3/Team Fortress 3/etc would change what Epic is doing?

Competition is a good thing, otherwise companies feel content doing nothing or fucking over their users (YouTube is a prime example of this) but what Epic is doing is not competition.

Taking all the games people want to fucking play and making them exclusive isn't competition, it's strongarming people into using their shitty and inferior platform. Not even mentioning the dog eating slant eyes stealing your data.

why would pirates care? they don't have to bother with any launcher at all.

I just want to play video games without having to create an account for single player

Cool bananas! I will make some brown people produce sugar cane rum for me!

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>now I have to preorder the game on steam
Why epic forcing me to do this?

>While Vivendi is departing, two new long-term investors have come on board: Canada’s Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and Chinese Internet giant Tencent, which have committed to acquiring a 3.4% stake (for 3.7 million shares) and a 5% stake (for 5.6 million shares), respectively. The deals value Ubisoft at €66 ($80) per share.

>Ubisoft and Tencent have also signed a strategic partnership to fast-track the reach of Ubisoft franchises in China in the coming years.

only an idiot would have all these running at the same time.

whats the difference between anno games and civ games

Civ is a lot easier and more board game like with heavy focus on win-cons.
Anno is harder (I remember fucking up my economy billions of times as a kid), but its more like a simulation and not focused on achieving specific wincons.

Also turn-based vs real-time.

>real time
Rip comfy laptop play.

Since the other thread got deleted few minutes ago.
Delivering the screenshot.

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If you want to start playing go for 1404. It has the best Anno experiece without the interface of 1602 and issues that 1503 had, while 2070 only starts to shinew with the add-on and 2205 best be avoided enterily.

Makes sense, not all of them are out for virtue signaling and money, some are genuinely mentally ill.
And sterling is an annoying fake cunt, I tried to get into his stuff after TB stopped making proper content and eventually died, but he's just too slimy and disgusting to watch.

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ALWAYS BET ON THE MAKERS OF FORTNITE BAYBAY! *dabs on valves corpse then begins to floss*

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I really, really, really fucking hate game "journalists", they're the slimiest cunts on this planet

>Anno as been struggling for a while
>They have to bring back trust into them
>How do we do this guys ?
>Let's go on a platform that a lot of people currently don't want to use

Good for their dev costs, but it's a bad move in the long run

>steam grew big without exclusives.
wrong

Were online game stores big enough of a thing back then to talk about exclusives?

They literally saved PC gaming and single handedly created the indy market.

>Linking the actual site
>Not using pastebin or archive.is to not give them any advertisement money.
>Responding to the bait
Yea Forums has been shit lately on the quality control.

I wish Steam were curated desu. It would help out the actually good games that didn't have marketing budgets.

You do know that would get abused hell and back

you dont get it
Epic is paying Ubi so people only buy it on uplay because barely anyone will buy it on Epic

Epic is fucking retarded while Ubisoft is enjoying free money from Epic

Will look into

They got big via exclusives that weren't purchased as exclusives, or by the games they developed themselves. A lot different then shuffling cash around.
Don't fall for Tencent's lies.

>Not sure why every article about them is positive unless the writers are even more unaware of Steam features than I am.

Tenncent is worth half a trillion dollars and game journalists have zero integrity.

Do the math.

Just going back to the way it used to be.

Nigga its the same shill over and over again.
>Link to the paid article
>Greentext
>Some epic conclusion

All the epic shill threads follow the same template and at this very moment there is few of them here.

But i will say this again, linking to nonarchived link should be bannable offence

Why don't you look faggot, it's still up for pre-order on Steam and will be until release.

Why you valve cucks always gotta be lying like little weasel faggots.

You just repeated what that user said

Did you not play the beta?
Anno 1800 is literally GOTAY and the best Anno has ever been.

Literally the only game i'm looking forward to this year.

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No, he said they took it down, they didn't.

It's still up.

No he didn't you can go and buy the game on Steam right now if you want.

everyone read this post. there is also the fact that many gaming "journalism" outlets have had it out for steam for a while. it really kicked into overdrive when steam stopped gate-keeping their store as much. then all the wrongthink/problematic games they hated so much got on steam and were successful and there was nothing they could do about it but keep bitching. they think this is their chance to hurt steam which is why they're shilling epic so hard (they're also paid shills anyways so...). they want to manipulate the market too, into one where their culture war clout has say on store gatekeeping like with epic. then they can boost their own rightthink games and force problematic games out of the market.

Literally no one fucking ever bitched about 30% cut until epics epic pr marketing flooded the shit out of everything how greedy 30% cut is.

If you ever run any kind of shop (on internet or irl), youll know that 30% is industry standart in everything you sell or distribute. i mean everything.

And its not like 12% cut will remain IF egs will blow out

the thing with multiplayer is that no modern dev wants to actually build the full functionality into the game anymore or provide sevices. steam nor gog force devs to use their services, they just choose to since they're offered for free. it's entirely possible to release a game on steam in basically the same way and state as on gog, with no DRM, no need to use the launcher, and no need for 3rd party online software, but few devs do.

How come I never see gaming sites pushing for, say, GoG, as hard as I see them going for Epic now? For the longest time, GoG has been a customer's wet dream (less so over the years, but that's for another discussion and still leaps ahead of what Epic does), yet I never saw gaming journos writing "Fuck Steam, buy GoG!" articles for weeks upon weeks like I do now with Epic, whose store mostly panders to devs and publishers. Where were all those articles when GoG was "the competition" all through those years?

Pretty sure this is the only good thing in this thread

that was at blizzcon, not at a single controlled presentation where they can pack the audience with company people and shills and home no one notices.

>How come I never see gaming sites pushing for, say, GoG, as hard as I see them going for Epic now?
you seriously have to raise that question?
video game "journalists" are amoral subhuman whores. They work for the biggest bidder and the ones who fill their pockets. Right now this happens to be Epic Chang Store

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it's real-time in terms of control, not necessarily pressure unless you set it up that way. you can play anno and do fucking nothing for a while and be fine. even fucking up you just have to play longer to correct your mistake in most cases. in that sense it's actually comfier than civ because it doesn't have hard conditions where you get fucked and can't turn back, and it's not as competitive against other players or AI unless you make it.

Do a lot of people buy Ubisoft games on Steam? Whats the difference between Steam and Epic if you have to use Uplay anyway?

so all epic is doing is cruising threads seeing whats popular and buying it? cause i doubt there gonna do this for normie devs.

Anyone remember when it was almost a fact that 60fps in games simply feels unnatural and that 24fps is the best for absolute cinematic experience? Just because one or two games on one platform couldnt do even 30

>BethesdaNetLauncher
Jesus christ

Thanks for saving me 8 minutes

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Not to worry. Seems like plan to scrap it.

NO STEAM NO BUY

>we have to fuck over consumer choice before we can bring better deals to the consumer

Is this guy a fucking republican?

It's on Steam, now go buy it.

So if they've already been paid by Ebin ahead of time, pirating those games won't count as loss of sale

this is why Rayman will never be in Smash

Easy pirate

Well, I admit I threw out the question more for effect, than genuine curiosity, but it's worth throwing it out once in a while, going by how all those current fucking articles make it out as if the Epic store is the first competitor setting out to do things differently. Fuck it's not, of course. And those articles sure aren't born out of idealism, otherwise, as I have already asked, where were the fucking articles when a competitor with a plethora of customer benefits on its agenda was trying to get a foothold? GoG curates its store as well, resulting in "lol no gaems" feedback, if mentioned at all. Epic says it curates its store and the headline goes "Small selection in Epic Store and here's the top 10 reasons why that's a good thing!".

No. I probably won't be able to buy DLCs and stuff via Steam

Is it a timed exclusive? If so, I can live with it. When was the last AAA game released that didn't need a year's worth of patches until it was playable as intended?

>everyone thinks the journalists are alligned with TenCent or Epic somehow
I think it's more likely that they're gunning for big publishers, as usual, and the big publishers want to push Valve out.

GOG didn't grow big because of their no DRM policy. No major publisher was going to go along with that since it make pirating trivial causing GOG to only have very old releases and indie titles.

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>Having a little competition on the market should encourage Steam to take more proactive steps at securing developers and games on their platform
Isn't the fact that Valve kept introducing more and more features regardless of any threatening competition the reason none of the competition has been threatening?
Now the only way anyone has managed to even be a blip on Valve's radar is by bribing devs into platform exclusivity instead of actually making a better product, and these fucks are trying to say Valve needs to work on getting their own exclusives?
Fuck right off.
EA isn't happy just killing development studios anymore, now they're trying to ruin an entire platform.

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>Steam, Origin, uplay, GOG, Blizzard launcher, Bethesda launcher, Discord
monopoly
>Steam, Origin, uplay, GOG, Blizzard launcher, Bethesda launcher, Discord, EPIC store
competition

>it's good because it's competition
nice assertion with no argument but let's assume it's true; then why is everyone pissed about it if it's such a good thing?

Steam doesnt bow down to the game media pariahs demands. Some journos get free access to the whole of steam's library. My guess is that the bloggers who dont get access are paying back steam in kind.