Quoting: TobyGornowGeez... I never said Valve asked or paid for exclusive, they worked as a mandatory gateway for consumer without needing to pay a dime for it thanks to their quasi-monopolistic position, and Yakuza was just a prime example that I bought on Humble. If I have to register my game on this platform, only this platform, and I don't have a choice about it if I want to play it, it become an exclusive for this platform in my books, Valve paying for it or not, am I right ?

IMO nor Epic nor Steam is the culprit here, Deep Silver is the filthy prostitute, is that clear ? But you can't blame Epic to take action in order to get a slice of the pie, it's just simple business, they are paying to get a product the others don't have in order to get more customers, again & again & again you are right 100% about the disgusting move but it's business 101. Valve didn't have to pay or ask for exclusives in their store, they were coming by themselves (hence Yakuza 0 example), Tencent is just cranking up the heat and it's just fair game, if valve wants exclusive they will NOW have to pay for it.

Please, I beg you, stop saying Valve is nice or nicer than Epic it hurts. They are crooks with their 30% cut, Quasi-monopolistic positon for years, they killed physical distribution with more than aggressive pricing, Steam can be considered as a DRM locking down pc gaming to their platform, and let's wait and see if source 2 Engine games will be distributed outside Steam, announcement has been made 2 years ago when they were still undisputed. Unreal Engine is free to use too don't know about their distribution politics tho.

Let's time decide if Steam is a lesser evil than Epic. And again I'm on your side, I hate exclusives, I was pissed when I learned that Bloodborne was not coming to PC. :wink:

There's a difference between a developer independently choosing to release exclusively on the platform with the largest customer base, and being paid for exclusivity. One is a regrettable but legitimate logistical decision, the other is an active effort to harm the customer for a cheap buck.

Yes, it's bad that Deep Silver sold out their own customers for bribe money, but Epic is also bad for offering the bribe, something you seem unwilling to condemn them for. They're BOTH at fault here.

You also seem to begrudge Valve just because they're large. But they got to that point on their own merits, by building up a quality service, not bribery. Stronger competition would be good to keep Valve from getting complacent, but it should be by offering a legitimately better service, not by dragging the market through the mud.

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Strategies for competing with Steam:

• GoG is DRM-free.


• Humble gives to charity.


• Itch is open-ended.


• Epic takes hostages.

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Quoting: GuestWow, seems I've stirred things up with the fanboys. Cool down folks.

I've been one-click installing games through Steam, via wine, for years. With no troubles. Apparently I baked a wonderful cake quite some time ago.

"Proton" has never run a single game for me that didn't run through vanilla wine. In many cases, vanilla wine runs a game that "Proton" won't. I don't see that being in favour of "Proton".

Semi-support from Valve has already proven to not fully work anyway.

...and you know who you are, trying to pass an insult off as a joke is silly. Please drop it.

Now, it seems many have troubles that I've never seen. As in, I could do everything with a button click already. What stopped that for others before?

I find your continued indignation at kuhpunkt's comment rather galling considering your persistent dismissal of and condescension toward anyone who finds Steam Play useful.

I could easily counter your anecdotes of your experiences with Wine with my own of Steam working poorly under Wine and Far Cry 2 crashing with Wine but working fine with Steam Play without any fiddling.

Nobody's trying to stop you from using what works for you, but you seem hellbent on shutting down anyone whose experiences don't match your own.

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The Turok remaster has a pretty solid Linux port, but it doesn't include the editor. I can use the GoG version in Wine easily enough for mapping, but any time I want to upload to the Steam Workshop I have to boot into Windows to use the Steam version of the editor so it can hook up with my Steam account (I've tried running the Windows version of Steam itself in Wine before, but didn't have much luck). This one little edge case is pretty much the only reason I ever boot into Windows anymore, so it'll be really fantastic if I can just use Steam Play for this now.

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Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiT1. Epic Store
Why do you get so crazy about it? It's basically a launcher that allows you to buy games. Nothing more, nothing less. Many publishers do have stores. Many of them have exclusives.

2. Valve exclusives
All of their titles are exclusives, aren't they? Why do you never complain about that?

Epic is paying other devs for exclusivity. That's a lot more outwardly aggressive than just making their own games exclusive. That'd be obnoxious enough on its own, but add onto that the fact that Epic has no plans to support Linux, and that means they're also effectively paying devs to not support Linux.

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A lot of people seem to be taking a fairly dismissive attitude toward Epic, but I hope Valve doesn't get complacent. Earlier this month the developer of Defender's Quest posted some rather worrying survey results [External Link] of developer attitudes toward Steam (I recommend looking over all the graphs and tables, if not reading the whole thing -- there's a bit more to it than just the revenue split). Players may be disinclined to deal with yet another storefront/launcher, but if devs really are itching to jump ship things could get ugly (especially for us, as every Epic exclusive is now confirmed to preclude Linux support).

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Quoting: ssokolowSince nobody else seems to have mentioned it, this sort of thing is apparently against Kickstarter's terms of service.

https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/accountability-on-kickstarter [External Link]

That blog post does make it sound like they're legally obligated to provide refunds for anyone on linux or mac, but if you look at the relevant part of their actual TOS [External Link]:

they offer to return any remaining funds to backers who have not received their reward (in proportion to the amounts pledged), or else explain how those funds will be used to complete the project in some alternate form.

(emphasis mine) it seems to me that offering backers to pick a different platform would be considered "completing the project in some alternate form."

However, there are other requirements I don't think they've met:

• they post an update that explains what work has been done, how funds were used, and what prevents them from finishing the project as planned;


• they work diligently and in good faith to bring the project to the best possible conclusion in a timeframe that’s communicated to backers;


• they’re able to demonstrate that they’ve used funds appropriately and made every reasonable effort to complete the project as promised;

Their "challenges of supporting middleware" explanation is meaninglessly vague, and they've given no assurance that this "middleware" issue wasn't due to a bad faith decision to use middleware that didn't support their promised platforms.

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Quoting: melkemindMaybe I'm just hoping for the best, but this seems like just an omission or maybe bad English. Why would they need to offer you the option to change your platform if the alternative option wasn't a refund? If there were no second option, the wording would be, "Mac and Linux users will receive the Windows version instead." I could be wrong, of course.

The other options besides Windows would be the various console versions.

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I also have a confession to make, I have still never played Psychonauts. Am I mad? Should I seriously set time aside to play it?

It's worth it for the milkman conspiracy alone.

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A Hat in Time is a very pleasant surprise. I'd mostly given up hope on that one.

Quoting: Naibooo nice!!!
My daughter is sort of getting to the end of Yooka-Laylee and while Psychonaught2 would be great, its delayed. A Hat in Time looks a perfect free-world platform game

Poi is lovely if you haven't already heard of it.

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