this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Steam has been improved over decades, epic has to play catch-up
No. They could have taken a look at what their competition does and start from there. When I'd want to sell a new phone I sell one that has festures of a common phone these days. What I don't do is start with a brick of a phone and say "Please buy it, I have to play catch-up."
Bad example as the phone can't be updated as time goes.
Perfectly fine example. You are just dying on the hill of your pretty stupid argument.
Tell me how you change a flip phone into a smart phone with over the air updates, please
You are missing the point or that is a strawman. The argument ist that it is stupid not to learn from others.
To use your example: It is stupid to not release a smartphone in the first place.
I was just pointing out that it wasn't a good comparison because you can't change the physical limitations of an object over the air, while a software can be updated from being barebone to being full of features overnight. Just look at Steam on release vs today. Sure EGS could/should have included more features on release, but these things can be added and once it included the basic functionalities to allow people to purchase, install and launch games it was a gamble between leaving money on the table by pushing the release back and losing customers that would be angry enough not to come back because of what was to be added at a later date.
It makes sense if you interpretate "a brick of a phone" as not many software features. Fewer functions is more brick like.
Steam pretty much invented online gaming retail.
Any competitor can and should learn from that instead of starting over from scratch.
As I mentioned elsewhere, better to release a product that has the necessary features to start having an income and then add extra features vs releasing a product full of extra features at a much later date and have to troubleshoot everything at once.
Heck, how many Steam users actually care about cards, achievements, reviews and so on? To me it's Steam that's full of useless stuff that's only there to keep people addicted to the platform and to suck money from whales, there's a reason why they now have the list of suggestions to get you to add games to your wishlist, they can create a profile and adjust the front page to your taste so you spend more money! Super ethical isn't it?
MVP in this market doesn't mean "make an interface that can sell games" because plenty of those existed alongside Steam and they all died: Discord's store, Direct2Play, etc.. Even now many publishers who left Steam are coming back because the shift to their own launchers went very poorly. Why? Because no one wants to have 6+ launchers.
You need to either be more than just a storefront and launcher, or offer something Steam doesn't. GoG did the second by selling old games Steam just doesn't have. To do the first, you'd have to build an integration with other services... like GoG Galaxy. Huh imagine that, Steam's only competition that has lasted is actually trying to do more than just be a store.
Yes and no.
It's not like Epic had to start where Steam started.
It didn't but creating a new Steam costs money and it's better to release a working product that doesn't have all the features you want it to have to start bringing in money while continuing to update it instead of waiting even longer only to have even more features to troubleshoot when the product releases and still bringing in the same amount of money.
It didn't but creating a new Steam costs money and it's better to release a working product that doesn't have all the features you want it to have to start bringing in money while continuing to update it instead of waiting even longer only to have even more features to troubleshoot when the product releases while still bringing in the same amount of money.
And they focused on the wrong things right out of the gate
The wrong things? You would have wanted them to start with cards, forums, achievements but no way to install the games after buying them or something?
That is true for all the community driven stuff like forums and mods, but laying the groundwork and including basic features would've been easier when starting from scratch.
Even the first versions of steam that came with hl2 back in the day were more usable than epic's trash launcher.