I don’t think “pro consumer” is mutually exclusive with “because of competition”. In fact, I would say the two necessarily overlap. If a company does something pro consumer that isn’t driven by competition, then it’s just charity, not “capitalistic” at all. The point I’m making is that, Epic often seems to be on the other side: taking actions that are driven by competition, but not good for consumers. As I stated above, the linux push by valve is the same fight that Epic is battling in courts vs Apple and Google; the difference is that consumers benefit from the linux push, whereas mostly just Epic benefits from their court battles (and maybe some other companies).
I don’t think steam refund was driven by EA offering refunds on EA-exclusives. It was in direct response to Early Access titles being posted that were just obvious scams, with no recourse once you’ve purchased the game (maybe you read EA as a motivator somewhere and assumed Electronic Arts rather than Early Access?)
I agree valve could afford to take a smaller cut. I do believe Epic is directly to thank for all the Sony exclusive ports to PC.
linux support is 100% motivated by valve’s business interests, but also, it’s good for consumers
I’d need to know specifics about reviews over the years. I don’t read reviews, but I know they have to make a deliberate effort to prevent review bombing. “Curators” are a waste of everyone’s time.
TBH I feel like the Steam UI changes at a glacier’s pace compared to almost any other UI. It’s really not that different from what it was 20 years ago.
Yeah, the key/lootbox stuff is a valid criticism. I don’t like any digital economy that’s clearly fishing for whales.
AFAIK, steam’s price parity policy only requires that free steam keys not be sold off the platform for less than what they’re sold for on the steam store. Which makes sense, as that would open the door to just freeloading your game on the platform. I could post my game on steam for $1,000,000, never sell any copies through steam, then generate free steam keys, and sell them over on my own site for $30, keeping 100% of the profits. If allowed, every dev would just do that, and no one would ever purchase through steam. But it sounds like their policy would allow for a game to be $50 on steam, and $40 on EGS.
Meanwhile, EGS is constantly signing exclusivity deals on their platform, preventing them from selling on any other platform at all, which is very clearly anti-consumer.
The fact that Valve can just charge 30% even if a developer didn’t use “any” steam feature
The fact that the Valve is facilitating streamlined distribution of the game (and any updates) to thousands, or millions of players at the same time alone means they are already taking advantage of steam’s features. That is a huge amount of bandwidth savings and complexity that the developer just doesn’t have to think about.