Gearbox CEO Declares War on Steam

@Cooper_DF I don’t think that’s the problem here. It’s not where you have to buy it as much as why. The EGS has practically no features compared to steam, as well as having privacy issues. But all this pales in comparison to the underlying problem of game developers and publishers shitting on consumers. Companies like EA and Activision make really scummy business decisions, and we as the consumers are left to deal with it. They treat us like shit and there is nothing we can do about it. The anime industry suffers from this same problem that epic is creating; exclusivity deals are artificial monopolies. I honestly think that this is the straw that broke the camels back, and further up in the comments someone said that they would probably resort to piracy. This is a major issue for the anime industry, and I don’t want to see it spread to gaming. There is literally no reason why they can’t sell it on steam, but they won’t because epic gave them a big ol’ stack of cash so they would only sell it on their store. It creates this environment where no one wins. The consumers are unhappy, they don’t buy the game, and the developers are unhappy because their game isn’t selling. The only reason why this works in the anime industry is because it was part of it from the start. This is a road that I don’t think anyone wants gaming to go down, and quite frankly I’m not supporting it. I’ve waited through 2 years of teasers and leaks, I think I can wait another 6 months.

@sam23694 Do you scream about Horizon: Zero Dawn, or Spider Man being exclusive to PS4? Exclusivity in games has been a thing for a very long time and it's never caused this much issue. People saying exclusivity is anti-consumer are so full of shit their eyes have gone brown, and using exclusivity as an excuse for piracy is really just you trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance of being a shitty person.

@BardicBrad I don't scream about exclusivity in console gaming because that has been a part of the gaming industry since.. well since consoles themselves. Restricting games to separate hardware platforms is an entirely different subject to restricting them to specific virtual storefronts. Especially when that store front is NOT the publisher of the game in question. Hell, games being made exclusive to Origin by EA and UPlay by Ubisoft annoy me as well, but not nearly to the degree of Epic, using scummy busniess tactics to rope in publishers that have nothing to do with EGS to begin with. I could go on and on about how you must be a fucking moron to think console exclusives are relevant in this subject when it is about forced virtual exclusives with third party publishers on a store front, but the number of idiots willing to defend this behavior of the past month has shown me that you are simply ignorant to the facts and totally incapable of understanding anything I tell you anyway. If you can't see how this behavior is anti consumer then you are either too young and thus penniless to be relevant or too stupid to vote with your wallet. And regarding my comment towards piracy, I haven't pirated a game since the days of copying the CDs and floppy disks they came on, ie when I was young and penniless. The comment is to show how likely I am to use their store not to <insert buzz word> about being a shitty person.

@draeoth you mean the publishers, the developers don't make these decisions. also the review bombs is pretty childish of the "pc master race"

@Zachrionalpha but it's pretty much our only effective form of communication. His response and getting upset about the reviews for games that have already come out which are huge successes and you aren't going to lose any money on for the review bombing because you already made it Proves that it works and gets their attention to how we feel regarding things

@woard it's simple though, if the revenue sharing was the problem just make the game more expensive on steam than on epic store to compensate for the revenue share. let people vote with their wallet.

@Blurpleshark you kinda hit the nail on the head. I wouldn't care about it being on Epic or even Borderlands 3 promoting the Epic game store option more but exclusivity contracts are anti-consumer. You aren't competing with Steam if you make it so Steam can't carry the product. You aren't increasing gamer choice by making yourself the only option for a product. It is no noble goal of "improving the industry" and "ending steam's stranglehold on the pc market" if it were they would offer the same games for cheaper giving players a real choice instead of just trying to create a console war without the hardware barrier to entry.

@EthanM. now if epic wants to fund the development of a game exclusively for their store that's all right in my opinion

@Lenel_Devel well sucks for steam users then lol