Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: elmapul4- are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam.
yes, ubisoft had an bad time with self publishing, still they are doing it anyway, most triple A companies are doing, epic may have a chance to compete because many companies will give up leaving steam if steam change their cut, the economics of scale will not compensate the cost of self hosting

Games won't become cheaper just because market fees are lower..

i'm not saying they going to be cheaper, i'm saying that big companies such as square enix , capcom etc, may migrate to epic store instead of try to build their own store or keep seling their games on steam.

that will cut valve earnings, wich means they will have less income to side projects like the linux version of steam, proton etc.

They might. But like with lots of networky stuff, there's a potential chicken-egg problem there. Steam is currently the big network. If big game company X sells on this new thing as well as on Steam, most of their sales will just still be on Steam, the new store will stay very small, and Valve will not care. If big game company X sells on this new thing instead of on Steam, then unless they really spend mucho megabucks on the marketing hype train they will lose a lot of sales because nobody's ever heard of this other store. Seeing the debacle, nobody else will follow, they themselves will think better of it next time, and Valve will not care. If they do spend those mucho megabucks, they may realize that they just spent more on extra marketing than the cut Valve would have gotten.

There's ways to maybe get around that, but time will tell whether Epic have the will, the money, or even the intention to pull them off.

that is why Fortnite was the game changer here.
valve used half life to promote Steam, Epic is using Fortnite that the hot thing of the moment.

also, if you make an game using Unreal engine, you have to pay 5% to epic+30% to steam, but if you make an game using Unreal Engine and publish it on their store, you only pay 12% instead of 35%, that may be enough for a lot of companies to publish only on their store or at least publish on both.

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Quoting: BdMdesigN

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: elmapul4- are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam.
yes, ubisoft had an bad time with self publishing, still they are doing it anyway, most triple A companies are doing, epic may have a chance to compete because many companies will give up leaving steam if steam change their cut, the economics of scale will not compensate the cost of self hosting

Games won't become cheaper just because market fees are lower..

i'm not saying they going to be cheaper, i'm saying that big companies such as square enix , capcom etc, may migrate to epic store instead of try to build their own store or keep seling their games on steam.

that will cut valve earnings, wich means they will have less income to side projects like the linux version of steam, proton etc.

If they wanted it, they would have done it for a long time with their own stores and not waiting for Epic. So why they should migrate to epic store? Because i get from Epic 88%? But i don`t get the Steam, Origin, U-Play and what ever Gamer. I think no one will make his titles (EA excluded) exclusive for the Epic store, but we will see.

For a good store counts not only the profit margin (12% for Epic), but the whole service around it
I do not think Epic provides the same support as Valve does with Steam.

On the other hand we will see if Epic goes on Linux or if they do not.

Edit: And i don't think that Epic will help Devs to port a game to Linux, but Valve
makes it.

self hosting may be more expensive than 12% of your income for some companies, including big ones.

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Quoting: Mal

Quoting: elmapul4- are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam.
yes, ubisoft had an bad time with self publishing, still they are doing it anyway, most triple A companies are doing, epic may have a chance to compete because many companies will give up leaving steam if steam change their cut, the economics of scale will not compensate the cost of self hosting

Games won't become cheaper just because market fees are lower..

i'm not saying they going to be cheaper, i'm saying that big companies such as square enix , capcom etc, may migrate to epic store instead of try to build their own store or keep seling their games on steam.

that will cut valve earnings, wich means they will have less income to side projects like the linux version of steam, proton etc.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: elmapulnot having an linux version, but the windows version is DRM free
and:
having an linux version but with drm.

what would you chose?

I stick to DRM-free only, so the first option. Such things actually are not that uncommon unfortunately. There are a number of games that have a Linux version, but it's Steam only, and it has only Windows one on GOG. It's good that at least Windows one is available DRM-free, so I'd prefer that, to not having that option at all.

I.e. for example I can play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II in Wine (GOG release), while Linux version by Aspyr is limited to Steam. If not for the Windows release at least, I wouldn't have played it at all.

At least some other Aspyr games for Linux came out on GOG. But for instance all Linux games by Feral are Steam exclusives. So even when some of them get DRM-free release on GOG for Windows, Feral refuse to release Linux versions there. It's regrettable, but at least those Windows versions can be playable in Wine.

Example: https://www.gog.com/game/xcom_enemy_unknown_complete_pack [External Link]

many windows users are already against DRM we cant fight 2 battles at once and expect to win both.
we barely have enough persons to fight the OS wars, fighting against DRM and against microsoft at once will only make we twice as irrelevant in both battles.

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Quoting: mylka

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: mylka

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: mylka

Quoting: GuestThat explains the recent Valve royalty cut...

Valve is very greedy and lazy. And sadly they don't show signs of improving. They will only really try to change their ways when it is too late, as is always the case...

you say that after all they did for linux (client, steamOS, wine/proton, dxvk, mesa) for free

Well, they're doing it because it benefits them. Yes, it's of benefit to the general GNU/Linux community too, but I wouldn't quite say "free" (Valve would expect something to come of it, or they wouldn't invest). Subtle difference, but important: and no flame wars, this is a good showcase of how a company can invest in open source software for their own benefit, without trampling on user rights.

Anyway, Valve have done plenty of shady things as well. Let's not forget the paid mod fiasco. They've steadily reduced their own effort in managing their own marketplace (trying to make it community run basically means they don't have to do anything except gather the cash). That point is going to stir a few emotions I'm sure, but it's good business sense really: get others to do the work for you. I wouldn't put it quite to the extreme of greedy and lazy, but neither are Valve going to put in more effort than they have to.

Oh, and Valve do try improve because they know that if they don't, the success with Steam that they've had won't last. They've been working to give themselves a direction, a way out of stagnation. I think there's even a video of Newell saying that somewhere.

Please please please people don't read this as attacking (quite often people do). I'm not. Valve aren't golden heroes, but neither are they murky villains. They're just doing good business, and obviously GNU/Linux is, or Valve believes has the potential for, good (desktop) business.

i dont think they make the big bucks with linux
of course they wont lose money with their linux support, but if linux would be so profitable, than gog, ea, uplay, and epic already had linux support for their clients and/or their top sellers like witcher 3, battlefield, call of duty, assassins creed, fortnite, etc

so dont underestimate the effort, because the other big players just dont care about linux

Valve needs Linux, because it's bound to be open. No one can own Linux and shut it down like Windows walled gardens. So Valve invested in openness! Maybe Epic sees that now too...

i get it, but whats the point of openness, if no one uses linux? as i said. if MS makes games unplayable tomorrow, what would pc gamers do? switch to linux, mac, or buy a console?
i cant tell.

Quoting: elmapuli think an stronger valve will be better for us in the short time, then in the long time we will need competition for then.

they cant compete with microsoft in the OS right now, they need to be stronger to do that, but i dont see they geting any stronger

it is not that easy.
1) they have to make a linux client
2) they need proton, or else they wont get the linux gamers.
3) they just have 1 game as a selling point. fortnite. i dont play fortnite
4) are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam. if it is not MUCH cheaper and they dont have more exclusive titles, why would i leave steam?

we are far away from competition

1 and 2, i think you didnt understand what i said, i'm not saying WE will migrate to their store, i'm saying the general gaming audience may migrate to their store and that will make valve weak, if valve gets weak we will have no one to help make us stronger.

just think about it, the reason why microsoft was able to enter in the console market is because they were near an monopoly on the desktop Operating system market, that gave then huge profits that they could use to try to enter in other markets.

the reason why google was able to enter in the mobile phones market was the google search engine wich gave then huge profits.

valve dont make as much money as microsoft, they dont have an monopoly and they will only get weaker and weaker.
you cant reduce the margin for profit in a market without being in another market to compensate and expect to have the same earnings.

3-for now they only have that.

4- are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam.
yes, ubisoft had an bad time with self publishing, still they are doing it anyway, most triple A companies are doing, epic may have a chance to compete because many companies will give up leaving steam if steam change their cut, the economics of scale will not compensate the cost of self hosting

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i think an stronger valve will be better for us in the short time, then in the long time we will need competition for then.

they cant compete with microsoft in the OS right now, they need to be stronger to do that, but i dont see they geting any stronger

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nvidia was the last company that i thought i would see open sourcing something, and here it is!

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Quoting: ShmerlI quite doubt Google would be running Android on the server for gaming purposes. What for? Android can't run existing Linux games (thanks to its completely incompatible Surface Flinger) and normal glibc Linux works much better with Wine.

i dont know how good surface flinger is, but but x.org is outdated, everyone knows that and is trying to replace it with wayland but failing.
google has an bigger install base with android's surface flinger than x.org and wayland ever had, so why should they care?
they probably will make those games streaming only, then port it to chromeOS only and not give a shit about the rest of the linux world.

we are already busy fighting against each other (gnome x kde x etc) we dont have energy to compete against then (as if we could anyway)

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: elmapulubisoft never relase their games DRM free, streaming is just an stronger drm for then, but if they still make the game avaliable offline, then, nothing will change.

Well, then good riddance. I don't care about any recent Ubisoft games. They did release some older games DRM-free: https://www.gog.com/games?search=Ubisoft [External Link]

wow, i didnt knew that (i should have guessed, after all gog is drm free), good to know!

ok, let me rephrase it, they will not lauch it drm free, they may make it avaliable offline as drm free in the future.

in any case we have to chose what battles to fight first in order to won that war.
for example, if you have to chose between:
not having an linux version, but the windows version is DRM free
and:
having an linux version but with drm.

what would you chose?

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the youtube integration will very likely be used by streamers, and be an killer feature against twitch

Quoting: ShmerlGoogle pushing big publishers to make Linux/Vulkan games? That's big. As long as Google won't make an exclusivity requirement. It will make perfect sense for these publishers to release their Linux versions in digital stores for Linux gamers.

Personally, I'll only find such gaming acceptable if these games will be released DRM-free alongside their "streaming" releases. Otherwise it will become DRM squared.

ubisoft never relase their games DRM free, streaming is just an stronger drm for then, but if they still make the game avaliable offline, then, nothing will change.

and xbox being the failure it is in the current gen is the proof that you cant demand gamers to be online to be able to play their favorite games.

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