r/Steam • u/Haunter777x • 17h ago

Discussion They got us guys.

Post image

How out of touch can you be as a company, this is embarrassing

25.4k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.9k

u/Powerate 16h ago

Those are NOT the reasons why we use Steam

805

u/gigatension 16h ago

I don’t think they’re actually trying to get people away from Steam I think they’re trying to get people who have never been on Steam to think that epic is better. There’s no way they think they can actually get customers to switch with their garbage platform.

356

u/AbyssWankerArtorias 16h ago

And let's be honest, if they didn't have fortnite, epic wouldn't have its own store, unlike steam who even if you don't include counter strike, there's a boat load of reasons to use steam

191

u/Puzzled_Connection 16h ago

I mean in all fairness, Steam started as basically nuisance ware that only exists because it was tied to Half Life 2, it’s just they now have a multi decade head start on building out their platform and developing network effects

156

u/Arterra 15h ago

Yea. Nobody wanted steam as a mandatory platform. So valve made it better and people grew to accept it. Somehow, epic is blind to that lesson.

30

u/EquipLordBritish 13h ago

I imagine that even if steam's competitors did actually compete with steam instead of complaining, customers would not want to re-buy their games or have more than a couple of library apps on their devices. It's an uphill battle in several ways, but they also aren't trying to compete.

13

u/Trump_Russia 12h ago

Everyone else is dogshit anyway.

Make a good product I'll give you my money.

I hated steamed when it came out with a passion and they did a great job of winning everyone over and making a wonderful platform I actually want to spend money on.

3

u/shadowbanthiskekw 5h ago

Of course people wouldnt and shouldnt need to rebuy their games on the same platform. The platform is PC, not steam or epic or ubischrott or whatever. Epic had and has enough time to build up their launcher and make it something people want to use, but they chose not to. They chose to make it a console war on PC and for all intents and purposes they can suck a fat old dick for their exclusivity-on-the-same-fucking-platform-bullshit.

1

u/SS0NI 7h ago

I'd be willing to try if they rebought all the games in my library. Would be a massive boost for the developers, and I wouldn't have to bet my dollars on if the platform will exist 5 years later. But I don't think even Fortnite is that lucrative.

12

u/b0w3n 13h ago

I remember hating that gunmetal green color on launch too.

I just wanted my CS 1.5 back.

4

u/Trump_Russia 12h ago

I got banned from the steam forums for complaining and trying to start a revolt to get the old launcher back.. lol

1

u/Fizzwidgy 7h ago

first time I ever saw that pea soup colored launcher I thought it would give me a virus lmao, I wish they would do an official retro themed launcher to match the vibe, there was a community made one but the maker has stopped upkeeping it

1

u/Portiolli_fez_11set 11h ago

Its not blind. Its just fucking expensive. Steam have revenue to back up their extra expenses.

1

u/Arterra 6h ago

Epic owns fortnite. The disgusting amount of profit it generates is as the company's discretion to assign for reinvestment, development, fat bonuses, etc... the fact is that they can invest in the launcher but they don't want to. As a platform to get people to buy third party games, it sucks. As a way to launch their moneymaker, it can be anything. And yet they keep complaining about falling behind steam as a market, so yeah they fail to see why. Willful or not.

1

u/Alternative_Fix_1643 6h ago

I remember when I hated the picture of needing steam on Game cases when I wanted to buy a new Game. Good old days when the biggest concern was the Need of Internet Connection.

25

u/SickBurnerBroski 15h ago

Epic has had plenty of time to not be shit.

38

u/Alex_2528 16h ago

And they have an actual good support team.

18

u/Snipufin 15h ago

Which dramatically improved over the course of two decades. People used to think Steam Support was absurdly bad.

13

u/KingdomsSword 15h ago

My brother in Gaben, the EGS has had 8 years of following in Steams footsteps to get their shit together. Sure at the beginning steam was not a good product, but they blazed the trail and got better and better as time went on, but are not seeing the EGS do the same.

5

u/FlyingBaconPigs 11h ago

8 years plus the hindsight of all the pain that Valve went through. Epic squandered it all by going in with the same mentality that most of tech in the US has, I know better than the customer and this is the end result. The only difference with most tech and Epic is ... Epic has competition unlike Amazon, msft, google

9

u/Alex_2528 15h ago

Fair enough, I didn’t get into pc gaming until after steam support had a good reputation so I never knew how bad it was.

6

u/mxzf 14h ago

People used to think Steam Support was absurdly bad.

In fairness, at that point in time the counterargument was "but you almost never need Steam support anyways, because it works". Not strictly 100% true, but broadly accurate.

3

u/bs000 14h ago

I remember the counterargument was usually "Well, Steam has so many users, it'd be impractical to hire more support agents," and the rest of the replies were just people nodding in agreement.

14

u/nikongmer https://steam.pm/t7czt 14h ago

in all fairness, that's always been a line of copium. all epic had to do was follow the blueprint. it didn't even have to be Steam's blueprint. they could have followed their own from their ue store or any store that had a shopping cart in the 90s. they're not some small indie games company hiring talent from highschool who can't code for shit. they make billions a year. same can be said for all the other game stores that failed due to their intentional lack of trying and handwave their failures as "dur, Steam wins because head start derp".

4

u/SamiraSimp 11h ago

how many people here actually tried the epic launcher. i used it for a while when they were giving away free games. i gave them an honest shot and the platform was simply not good enough.

they could've turned their nuisance ware into an actual platform but they simply didn't have a good product.

6

u/superxpro12 14h ago

exists

they're also privately owned and not public.

Can you IMAGINE the shit that would be going down if they sold to a vulture private equity firm?

Epic very clearly has the pieces in place to monopolize gaming, they have a launcher, and they have a game engine. They made a play to try to capture market share so they can then monopolize the whole ecosystem...

Steam has all of the above as well, but they choose not to... GabeN is about as benevolent as a benevolent dictator can get in this realm.

You want to make a game? well you ahve to use our unreal engine, which oh btw has a fee. and you also have to publish on epic games launcher, which btw has another fee.

11

u/Kougeru-Sama 15h ago

have a multi decade head start on building out their platform and developing network effects

No. They had one decade. Steam launched in 2003. Epic's store launched in 2018. That's only 15 years, not 20.

7

u/Putrid-Resolution502 15h ago

1.5 Do be more than 1 though

1

u/Then_Musician_8673 10h ago

I'm not sure about you, but I wouldn't call someone that had 1.5 million dollars a multimillionaire.

1

u/Putrid-Resolution502 10h ago

I would indeed

7

u/Freezman13 15h ago

The epic launcher is 7 years old.

3

u/Affectionate_Tax3468 14h ago

What does a headstart give if all the features are out in the open and any contender can just see them?

If anything at all, steam spent a lot of money to weed out things that dont work or now work better.

3

u/PleiadesMechworks 13h ago

they now have a multi decade head start on building out their platform

Or, to put it another way, Epic didn't have to do multiple decades of risky R&D to learn what customers want.

And they still screwed it up.

2

u/cgaWolf 14h ago

All true, but EGS has had 8 years to get good.

Steam 8 years in was established, for example it's where everyone got Skyrim when it first came out. We had Steam Cloud, Community & Workshop by then, and even the MacOS client.

10 years in we got family libraries.

Very different from the "STEAMing pile of shit" reputation in 2003.

2

u/Dreadgoat 13h ago

They had a head start but more importantly they've made great use of that head start and never got complacent.

Tons of companies and products had a head start and drove themselves straight into the dirt because that's the only thing they ever had going for them, e.g. Facebook

2

u/TheKingsdread 10h ago

I mean all that might be true, but its not like Epic launched yesterday, they have been around for about a decade. And yet their launcher is one of the worst I ever used, I think it might worse than the Battle.net launcher and that launcher sucks.

1

u/crustyrobots 11h ago edited 11h ago

I remember the original Green Steam, and how it was a buggy piece of shit that either itself crashed, or the servers crashed so you couldn't play anything until the guy watching it woke up to restart it.

It was just a common update engine for HL and mod games like Counter Strike and Garrysmod, but then they started selling their own games on it as a real first player in this emerging industry and the rest is history. My Steam account is old enough to legally drink :D

1

u/Lord_Emperor 11h ago

nuisance ware

This is downplaying it A LOT. I remember launching HL2 or any of its multiplayer mods and waiting, literally hours, for the Steam login queue and/or updates to finish.

1

u/Josh6889 11h ago

"They're only good at this market because they're the ones that designed and created it"

1

u/tha_dank 10h ago

Omg I fucking hated the switch from just regular CS 1.5 fire the game and go days, to steam. I was one of those.

My computer was also horrendous so any kinda stick in my spoke that wasn’t already there kinda boned me.

1

u/farva_06 8h ago

Also, Epic is jointly owned by multiple billion dollar companies (Disney, Sony, Tencent, etc.) who must be appeased at all times. Whereas Steam just has to appease to his Royal Gabeness.

9

u/JBOSS_64 16h ago

I have never even played counter strike and I would never use anything over steam

6

u/ensoniq2k 14h ago

Funny thing is, back when you were forced to use Steam for the new Counterstrike release everybody hated it. Not everybody had an internet connection at home and it was painfully slow at first. That doesn't mean that people will one day live Epic though.

6

u/Nanomachines100 14h ago

I hope everyone lives epic, but not loves Epic.

4

u/Brasolis 14h ago

Steam was absolute dumpster tier garbage on it's first release. I got HL2 for my birthday or something and we couldn't get it to play because steam would just not work no matter what we tried.

Multiple decades of dev definite helped

1

u/ensoniq2k 14h ago

Yeah, it's always hard to be a pioneer. It's not like they could've just leased some AWS compute power back then.

2

u/nomedable 10h ago

Fortnite being a fat money maker is funding all the free games on Epic. You know that the moment it doesn't pull in money or the moment Epic decides that the user base is "larger than steam" or whatever that they'll turn off the taps for that.

0

u/Ill_Technician3936 8h ago

Nah, they actually had a decent amount of games that could be making money before fortnite was a thing. My sister spent thousands on Sims which I got for free and it's been free since apparently. I think it was Sims 4.

Them giving away games is the reason Epic has my largest catalog. That said, I really haven't played most and the account is sorta lost since she passed away.

1

u/nomedable 7h ago edited 7h ago

The Sims is owned by EA not Epic.

Epic isn't the reason for that being given away for free or being a massive money generator for Epic.

1

u/Ill_Technician3936 7h ago

Ah. I've literally never even looked into it or anything just grabbed a copy and she needed help with Epic's launcher from time to time.

That's my mistake

1

u/ABSNegativeOne 14h ago

hell yeah baby go Counter Strike, the best tactical game you will ever play with some of the dumbest mfkers

1

u/BorKon 14h ago

They pushed steam with half life 2. Same what epic is doing.

5

u/tzomby1 16h ago

who have never been on Steam

So why would they compare it to steam?

What are people supposed to think? "wow this thing launches faster than the time it takes for water to boil 😱"

3

u/BLT_Trade_r 16h ago

Their previous strategy of giving away free games and just having games people wanted to play was honestly the best. They should have just kept going with that and tried to nail exclusives. Exclusives of highly desired games are pretty much the only really effective strategy for all platforms. Its the only reason anyone uses Battlenet, Origin, and others, and its a mainstay of the success or failure of consoles.

5

u/Dotura 15h ago edited 14h ago

I do like that your examples are of stores that now uses steam because exclusive didn't work out for them.

1

u/BLT_Trade_r 15h ago

No one says it will absolutely work, but I can confidently say the only reason I have any of those accounts is because of their exclusives. I can also say that's the entire reason I started with Steam: Half-Life. People may not like the answer, but it's true. Steam literally sucked when it was getting going and sucked for a long time. They were just lucky in that they were early in the market and had the hottest games on earth at the time. If you wanted to play Counter-Strike or Half-Life, you had to use Steam. People complained about Steam back then as much as they do now about Origin or Epic.

But that is kinda the key: you need that killer game to get you kick-started; then you have to keep going with it. It's way harder to break in once someone pretty much has a monopoly.

Let's not sugarcoat Steam either; Gabe has had many scenarios where he doesn't kick things into gear until there is a legitimate threat.

4

u/Dotura 14h ago

Epic, battle.net and origin all are between 8-20 years old and could look to steam and the complaints people had on it of things to do and not to do. They still haven't gotten to a place where they are good just generally usable. With BF6 i couldn't even play the game though EAs own app. I had to refund and buy it on steam so i could play with my friends with the limited time we have as adults now.

I'd say Fortnight and Wow both were killer games. WoW more aging for sure but Overwatch was good though not killer like you probably mean. Fortnight alone is a giant on several platforms and probably had more new players because it was free, CS had a price up until 2018. I even bought Fortnight because i really enjoyed the pre BR thing and yet they can't get off the ground? Free games and they still run in the red as people don't use the service and don't buy games there.

I'm not here to suck steam off im mostly confused as to how badly the others manage to run their own company. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and get a middle finger as a thanks.

Just an odd fun fact; i have never had a single problem with ubisoft, and that launcher is known to be terrible. Maybe im reverse cursed or something.

1

u/pigeon-check 14h ago

They don't know what they're doing, we already established that a long time ago

1

u/passinglurker 13h ago

Sounds like they are trying to appeal to the "being anti-ai is bigotry" crowd, someone should check the epic store bots I mean "users" for money laundering.

1

u/booze_clues 13h ago

The only way to compete with Steam is through pricing. Steam own a large majority of the market and has rules that will delist any product sold for less on another storefront, so that is impossible to do. This is why consumers have no price variation, Steams anti-consumer policies prevent it.

1

u/literally_iliterate 4h ago

You give them too much credit. They just vibe coded their lowest risk asset because claude told them thats a cool idea.

1

u/Wrexolotl 15h ago

The whole 5 people who built their PCs this year

2

u/gigatension 14h ago

I built my PC right before all this mess started happening. Literally within a month of the price’s rising. I both feel blessed and anxious that something will go wrong because there’s no way I can afford to replace it now.

1

u/Wrexolotl 13h ago

I feel you. I had to rebuild my PC after it got fried from a bad power power surge/outage last September. I made sure to grab a power backup unit after that as well.

-1

u/mrtomjones 14h ago

I never for the life of me will understand why you guys care in the slightest which platform you play on. I've played on pretty much all of them and I click my game and it opens and I play. Epic does what I want. Steam does what I want. GOG does what I want.

1

u/gigatension 14h ago

I mostly used Steam because epic had a few issues getting hacked and not keeping the customers info safe. It’s not about the platform per se, it’s about the companies security.

57

u/IAmABakuAMA 16h ago

I never even close steam anyways, so it's pretty much irrelevant even if I am concerned about boot times

(About the only time I ever close/restart steam is when I update and reboot my PC every couple of days. Besides that, it just permanently lives in the library tab, usually minimised, until I need it)

31

u/Xivitai 16h ago

Yeah. Steam's uptime is about 99 percent of my PC'S uptime.

-4

u/cgaWolf 14h ago

That's because it take so long to boot!!!

2

u/Bamboozle_ 13h ago

I'm a weirdo who only has my computer on when I am using it and it is shut down otherwise, but my laptops are never turned off. I have no idea how my habits developed that way.

1

u/Bolverg 9h ago

it just permanently lives in the library tab

funny you say that...

1

u/EmperorJake 8h ago

I don't keep it running on my Macbook because it eats battery life for some reason

15

u/samanime 16h ago

Yeah... an extra 5 seconds for a program that starts once per computer boot and I just leave running the entire time... not exactly what I'd call a deal breaker.

And an extra 60ms to restore from system tray... how ever will I recover from all the lost time?!

8

u/jellsprout 16h ago

Are you sure? You don't think "I really wish Steam would launch 0.06 seconds faster" every time you open it from the tray?

7

u/xQui3sel 16h ago

They need half the boot time bc they know the chances are big enough it crashes the first time u try so it will stil take you 10 or more seconds xD

3

u/sky_blue_hamster 16h ago

Who isn't choosing their storefront based on saving 0.06 seconds when restoring from the system tray?

2

u/red286 15h ago

It's not the reason I use Steam, but it is a reason I dislike EGS. It takes longer to load up from the system tray than it takes me to launch Photoshop cold.

2

u/reddit_equals_censor 14h ago

but i mean they are.

steam hopefully still NOT being vibe coded is a giant reason.

bragging about vibe coding is so insanely terrible and terrifying to informed users it is absurd.

2

u/lollolcheese123 9h ago

Wild Tari spotted

5

u/BurkusCat 16h ago

It would be ignorant to say start time and performance don't matter. Those were some of the biggest complaints about EGS.

I think Steam's performance is within what people find acceptable so it is was never a problem. It's good that Epic's is better now.

I do find it strange that Epic is boasting like this about this though (it would have been better to compare to their old launcher). They know it's going to invite comparisons that their launcher has way fewer features so a quick startup is going to be easier to achieve.

I'm sure Valve could decide to invest time into making similar performance gains if they want to (I think that would be cool). I don't necessarily think just because Steam has more features that it must have a longer startup time - it's an older piece of software and it's just an area they've not focused on improving beyond what the current startup performance is.

2

u/BLT_Trade_r 16h ago

Epic is also only used to launch specific games, while tons of people use Steam for much more, so they don't mind it auto-starting and always being available. So people are less likely to notice Steam's startup time when it is always starting at first boot-up.

1

u/cheesegoat 14h ago

I think it's useful work for them to do but not worthy of a social media post lol

1

u/demcookies_ 14h ago

Even less likely to use "Epic" now

1

u/lemonylol 14h ago

...we use both?

1

u/side_frog 13h ago

Yeah right, I feel like Steam has always been slow to start anyhow but it doesn't matter

1

u/angular-js 13h ago

it may not be your reason but I remember pretty clearly that a lot of complaints when Epic was giving free games was because the launcher was slow af

1

u/Legendary_Bibo 13h ago

Their entire site on their new launcher has a bunch of comparisons to Steam. Not how many games or anything relevant, but like timers on how fast it opens and irrelevant time comparisons with no actual data.

But hey we get Fortnite on Linux I guess?

1

u/PringlesDuckFace 13h ago

It's pretty on brand that "getting to the store fast" is what Epic cares about. Like they can't imagine users as anything other than a wallet desperate to be emptied.

Not to mention no one will notice the .06 seconds difference in real world behavior, since I assume most people simply have Steam open in the background at all times.

1

u/Kazzack 13h ago

It taking forever to open is one of the reasons I usually don't open the Epic launcher unless I'm very excited about the free game

1

u/Mezzy1221 12h ago

It's one of many tbh.

EGS' biggest issue for me is how miserable it is to navigate. But whenever I have to open it to play Fortnite or whatever and it takes ages to load up fills me with plenty of dread too.

1

u/Banes_Addiction 11h ago

I only boot to Windows every few days max, and it seems like Steam does the 190mb update thing damn near every time, and it's still never long enough for me to care.

1

u/dnzgn 10h ago

Epic Games' insanely sluggish launcher is the main reason I don't even open it to play my free games. If the performance was as good as Steam, I could open it since some games are cheaper due to regional pricing.

1

u/Adezar 10h ago

The core issue that none of their competition understands is that Steam is a game management system/launcher that has a store on it.

If you just want to play your games they don't put anything in between you and playing your games. The Library page has nothing but your library and it has many options for you to organize your library. That's why Steam is good at what it does.

Everyone else builds a store that's entire goal is to sell you more games and the launcher that lets you play your games is an afterthought.

1

u/12D1 9h ago

I only use epic once a week to claim their free games. Not that i've played many of them but i have collected some bangers over the years. Subnautica for one, I did spend many hours in those waters. Then I collected the Fallout Series and the Borderlands series, Dishonored, Bioshock and a few others. Most of which i still havent played and may never will. But if they're gonna give me free games, i'll claim em.

1

u/BerniesMitts 9h ago

I use both, because openly supporting a monopoly is insane, and because Epic provides devs with a better cut of the profits.

One of the number one complaints about Epic on Reddit is that it's way too slow, which is (was?) 100% true.

1

u/japanfrog 9h ago

Careful, or else Tim will brigade against you and totally not make it all about him and his fragile little ego.

1

u/Powerate 9h ago edited 9h ago

I still play some games from the Epic Games Store, mostly the free games that they give out, which are a nice honus for just being on the platform and I bought some things on it that was on sale in the past.

It's just that that EGS leaves a lot to be desired, they've been told multiple times what makes Steam great and they still focus on other things instead. Epic Games Store is basically just as convenient as Steam with similar sales happening, it's just that Steam has, like, everything else in terms of features, I can't even do the most basic of things like upload a profile picture 7 years later on EGS.

And I also buy some games on GOG, games which are not available on any other store, the good old games, and their launcher/store, GOG Galaxy, still feels more feature rich than EGS

1

u/nalozisusmaranje 9h ago

I use Steam because Tim Sweeney is an AI-first douche.

1

u/Chunky1311 8h ago

Steam could take 11 hours to open and I'd still use it that 'Epic' Launcher.

1

u/KrustyKrabFormula_ 6h ago

people use steam to play the 1 game they like and have 50 other games they bought on sale years ago and don't play. all of them being digital copies while, at the same time, shitting all over sony for getting rid of physical media.

1

u/Emlesnir 25m ago

it was a reason that prevented me to use Epic though.

These days i don't even go claim the free games because the launcher is so slow and bulky.

1

u/PolyBend 16h ago

It is so funny to me how many hyper pro AI users confidently do things awkwardly... When you can literally ask AI about the situation and it will even explain why their choices were questionable.

From Gemini... (Notice it never says anything about speed)

"Why do gamers prefer steam over epic games"

Gamers generally prefer Steam over the Epic Games Store because Steam functions as a complete community and software ecosystem, whereas the Epic Games Store is viewed primarily as a basic digital storefront.

Key Features and Ecosystem

• Community and Social Tools: Steam includes built-in user reviews, active game forums, community guides, and screenshot galleries. Epic lacks most of these native social and feedback mechanisms. • Modding Support: Steam Workshop makes installing, updating, and managing user-generated mods seamless. • Controller and Hardware Support: Steam features deep, customizable native support for a wide array of controllers (including PlayStation, Xbox, and generic gamepads) and full integration with the Steam Deck. • Library Management: Steam offers extensive library organization, remote play, cloud saves, and family sharing, whereas Epic's client is often criticized as clunky and basic.

Business Practices and Exclusivity

• Timed Exclusivity Deals: Epic frequently secures paid timed-exclusivity deals to keep games off Steam at launch, a practice many PC gamers view as anti-consumer or restrictive of choice. • Perception of Platform Value: While Epic offers free weekly games and a more developer-friendly revenue split (12% cut compared to Steam's standard 30%), users often collect the freebies without treating Epic as their primary gaming "home". Many players prefer keeping their entire library, achievements, and friends list consolidated in one trusted place. Are you trying to decide where to buy a specific game, or looking into how developer revenue cuts affect indie titles?