Seems like buying games to remove them from your competitor is a scummier thing to do.
If Epic spent half as much money as they are suing organisations and instead funded developing their shop into a gaming community platform like Steam, they’d probably have caught up by now.
its not about making better product for epic. its about removing competition so they dont have to.
I wish they’d just focus on fixing Unreal. It’s a shit show.
You dont like games that look like you have grease smeared over your monitor?
Always has been
Epic Games Launcher would always end up a pile of shit anyway. Tim Sweeney is a fuckhead and he has lots of investors to please.
He’s also Tencent’s bitch too.
“Gaming community.”
Steam and Epic are both malware.
it’s often more risky and expensive to hire, train and develop systems and communities like that, especially when doing it against the tide, than to just try to trip up the competition. It’s not just that it’s dificult and it costs money, but it’s not preferred because investors abhor risks.
Isn’t this seen in global politics all the time. When US says China is too dominant in X and we need to fight it. They are not saying that US will invest in shit that will help them compete. All or 90% of the actions is to try to trip up, sabotage and sanction the competition.
Just a bunch of crabs in a bucket.
To be honest, Epic is doing a good job of tearing down walled gardens in places like mobile, and we’ll probably be better off for it. But yeah, they’ve done a terrible job of competing with Steam.
They only did that because they wanted their walled garden to be there too. Tim Sweeney is just butthurt his walled garden isn’t the biggest
Of course, but…broken clock, you know? A large percentage of personal computers will be freed from Windows in large part because of Valve, even though they profit off of legalized child gambling addiction. And walled gardens in mobile will be broken down in large part because of Epic, which uses dark patterns to trick people out of their money in pursuit of a cultural hodge podge of nonsense that won’t even exist in a few decades.
Epic is trash, simple as
Because Steam is the world’s biggest games store on PC while Epic is statistically insignificant. What’s the question?
Epic is irrelevant because Epic has not given anyone a single solitary reason to use their launcher and platform. Tim Sweeny loves the smell of his own shit in the morning after he takes a big wet dump in the toilet. So much so, he doesn’t even flush for a while.
That launcher of theirs has a knack of sucking out all of your system resources, namely bandwidth and CPU, just to download games. Meanwhile, Valve gives you so many options to work around that.
Why is Epic insignificant?
They launched with a 12% service fee, dropped that service fee to 10%, and then dropped the service fee entirely for the first $1Mn in sales per year.
In June 2025, they released a new feature enabling developers to launch their own webshops hosted by the Epic Games Store. These webshops could offer players out-of-app purchases, as a more “cost-effective” alternative to in-app purchases.
They provide developers with free to generate license keys, and keyless integration with other e-shop stores including GOG, Humble Bundle, and Prime gaming.
They offer a user review system.
They also added cloud saves in July of 2025.
The thing is, they offer none of the other features Steam offers:
- In-Home Streaming
- Remote Play with Friends
- Family Accounts
- Achievements
- Price Adjusted Bundles
- Gifting Games
- Shopping Cart
- TV/Big Screen Mode
Epic launched their service in 2018. It’s been 7 years. The only reason not to offer feature parity (for a company that makes $4.6Bn - 5.7Bn in revenue, and a shop that makes $1.09Bn, you’d think they would be enticing users with the services they want.
What they have done instead is exclusivity deals that plenty of consumers complain about but devs don’t seem to care about so long as they’re getting paid.
So, the excuse that Steam got there first (as if it’s just about that and the reason their market share is what it is is because they have refined, adapted, and improved their service offering over time doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when steam has a significant percent of the market share (79.5% to epic’s 42.3%) but is only making twice the revenue of their rival store.
It makes sense for GOG or Itch.io who’s market cap is smaller by quite a lot to not offer the same feature parity. Each of those platforms has figured out they can offer other things to devs and consumers to make themselves competitive over time.
Sweeny’s attack is basically just a pitry party he’s throwing for himself because he doesn’t want to compete.
Steam isn’t being sued by Sweeny, they are being sued on behalf of 14 million UK gamers.
Also, epic has an estimated 3% to 7% of the market share (not 42 which makes no sense with steam having the other 80%), yet they should be regulated as well. If you stopped bootlicking for half a second, you would realise that this isn’t about who’s the worst but the fact that they are all bad (except itch, bless them).
Your enjoyment of their product doesn’t mean it isn’t having a serious and negative impact on the industry. Amazon is really convenient too, can you defend them next please?
epic is irrelevant because nobody wants it, not because steam is trying to crush competition.
You prefer Walmart instead of Walmart?
Because it’s a patent troll who has attempted this a few times before.
Exactly.
And she’s one of those who is doing it “for the children”. So, one of those disgusting beings who hides behind children to get anything she wants done.
No one gives a flat fuck about epics launcher.
Everyone does the moment steam gets sued by consumers. It’s like the bar is set by epic or something and we can’t expect better things from any of them because of it.
Stupid people do.
Valve is being sued because they are forcing others to follow policies that further entrenches Steam as the largest store.
Since Epic bought the game developer, it only applies to themselves. It is much harder to sue someone over a decision that only applies to something they own. How can a company be sued for not selling their product at a store? Should Valve be sued for not selling their own games on Epic or GOG?
Is Epic’s decision to only sell their games on their store annoying for users? Yes. But unfortunately, there is nothing illegal about. There would be a better chance of a lawsuit of Epic paying other game developers for exclusivity, but that would still not be easy as game exclusivity is still a significant factor on game consoles as well. Albeit much less than in the past.
The only answer with an actual articulate explanation has 30% downvotes because the average gamer IQ is double digits.
Valve isn’t forcing anyone to use their platform.
If Steam’s terms aren’t satisfactory for developers, then they don’t have to use Steam.
There are laws that say that abusing a monopoly is illegal. Steam is objectively a monopoly in pc games. Sure, you don’t have to use it, but it is basically impossible for indie developers to make a living without it.
Now, the question is if valve’s actions are actually abusing the monopoly, or normal business practices.
I would say they aren’t.
Because, they aren’t like Epic, who has been going around and locking games behind exclusivity deals. Name me one game by one developer, who Valve went to and was like “hey, I’m going to give you a $5 Million exclusivity deal. I’d like for your game to be available on our Steam platform for 2 years before you’re allowed to sell anywhere else!”
I’m sure nobody can find that game. Meanwhile, Epic has done this to Metro: Exodus, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 for the PC and outright buying studios going “hey, delist your game on Steam and only be available to our platform.”
How the fuck can that broad be so stupid to not notice that? But it’s all Valve’s fault, somehow.
hey, I’m going to give you a $5 Million exclusivity deal
This isn’t something they need to.do, as they have a monopoly.
…Okay?
looks at Hytale doing quite well without even touching Steam
Hytale has incredible publicity for an indie release and caters to a target group that’s used to a separate launcher. Not comparable to the usual release.
Got any other modern examples than just the one game that had a massive following for the last 7 years of development?
Anything by Blizzard, Escape from Tarkov, Minecraft, Roblox, Valorant/LoL/TFT, Genshin Impact/HSR, Fortnite and more.
Star Citizen I guess. If by “well” it is meant “making lots of money”
But yeah it’s not realistic at all for 99+% of devs/games
Isn’t valve being sued for
-
Not allowing devs to sell steam download codes on other stores, But the ban only applies if they are selling the download code for cheaper than Steam
-
Not allowing devs to sell steam DLC download codes on other stores
I don’t think 1 or 2 puts other stores at any disadvantage. If a store wants to sell steam download codes then Valve has to get their normal cut. If they don’t want to pay the valve tax, then they don’t need to offer a Steam download code.
So the entire problem is about restrictions on steam codes?
It’s a restriction on where you can get a DLC you paid for. The fact that you paid for it at Walmart shouldn’t matter.
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They essentially removed games that I owned and made it so I could no longer play them by drippy Linux support.
This would be like if someone sued Walmart for letting their local store go out of business.
Walmart didn’t let local stores go out of business, it deliberately undercut local stores in order to drive them out if business.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but you get my point.
More like the local store suing Walmart for putting them out of business, but only after they pushed away all of their customers with bad ideas and flashy gimmicks
TIL it was removed from steam. I play it on my deck all the time
Yeah, it’s no longer for sale. If you bought it before it was delisted, you can still download/play it through steam. What is fucking atrocious is that I had to go and make an account with epic to play. Well, they can spam and sell my ‘nannerbanner’sfakeemailforepiccunts@proton.me’ all they want. Fucking cunts. .
What are they being sued for? I guess I missed this?
Also I guess it could be argued they only removed it from new sales whereas people who already owned those titles on Steam still have them on Steam.
They are being accused of price fixing with the whole “can’t sell games for cheaper on other store fronts compared to the steam listing” thing
I’m pretty sure that Amazon also says that you can’t sell things on Amazon for more than you sell the same item elsewhere.
I’ve certainly seen a video claiming that.
Oh well that’s totally fair, honestly.
It locks out real competitive pricing.
It only applies to Steam product keys though, so developers cannot sell cheap Steam keys on other platforms while still taking advantage of Steam’s services.
ah yes, they are price fixing by saying devs can’t set the price on steam (which the devs control) higher than the price on other platforms (which the devs also control)
I think this lawsuit is actually about allowing people to buy dlc from other stores for games that you bought through steam?
As per my understanding (which isn’t saying much), Steam takes a 30% cut of each sale. In UK, someone with a specific agenda claimed to represent gamers as a class and sued reasoning that the 30% cut inflates the price of games globally even beyond Steam’s store, harming everyone.
Did i understand it right? No idea. What’s the actual goal here? Also no idea. Is Steam the “good guy” in all this? Of course not.
Well that’s stupid. If Steam charged less, the price of games wouldn’t change.
Developers and publishers would just pocket the difference.
Is Steam the “good guy” in all this? Of course not.
Too bad a lot of people, even here or in other threads, don’t get it, so they willingly cheer for Valve simply because Tim Sweeney sucks.
I think devs actually get quite a bit for that 30%. Let’s present a hypothetical. What if Valve offered an option where you could list your game on Steam with no restrictions and they’d only take a 10% cut, but the tradeoff is, they won’t promote your game at all? Like, it won’t show up in any Steam storefront advertisements, can’t participate in sales, etc. - it’s still there if it’s linked to from off-Steam or if someone searches for it, but it won’t be promoted, period.
How do you think that would work out for developers? I’d argue not well, especially for small studios.
The promotion those games get applies to the game as a whole, not only through Steam - someone can see the promotion on Steam, then go shop around and buy it elsewhere. Why should Valve promote a game if they aren’t getting a cut of the sales?
Kick them to the curb valve at least until the lawsuit is resolved.
