this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
286 points (99.3% liked)

Games

32622 readers
1127 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The Unreal series may have been shelved years ago, but Epic is letting its first two installments live on through the Internet Archive.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] echodot@feddit.uk -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

As much as I like them I don't think you can call them a competitor.

I've seen games that are available on both platforms that sell hundreds of times more copies on Steam simply because of steam's reputation.

A competitor actually has to be able to compete.

[–] szczuroarturo@programming.dev 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Im pretty sure gog is more popular than epic games . Alghtough i might be biased due to my country of origin.

[–] Glide@lemmy.ca 0 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

My experience with GOG is that it is a fringe option, at least in the combined North American (USA+Canada) culture. Plus, the unfortunate reality is that in many cases GOG's principles preclude it from being a genuine competitor to Steam. Insisting on being DRM free means half of released games never go to the platform, so it will always be the secondary "better if" option.

I worry about Steam's functional monopoly on PC game access. It hasn't been an issue so far, because it has remembered that it is, first and foremost, a service, providing consumer protection through a generous refund policy and supporting devs with easy access to simple matchmaking and anti-cheat systems. But without a healthy competitor, it would be easy for Steam to start milking it's users and developers alike.