This article originally ran under a different banner/website in January of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!! LEND ME YOUR EARS!!! FOR, I, THE DOOMSAYER, WANT TO TALK ABOUT WAR!!! War. War never changes. Since the dawn of PC gaming, when our fathers first discovered Doom and Quake, numerous companies tried to create a marketplace on PC: from Electronic Arts to Ubisoft to Microsoft. It’s the year 2003, after years of free reign, Valve developed the digital distribution platform known as Steam. The PC marketplace was consumed by Valve’s child, but it was not, as some had predicted, in harmony. Instead, numerous contenders jumped into the ring to take a piece of Valve’s pie. Over the years, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Microsoft, and even Bethesda would develop their own digital distribution platforms; not to provide a better service than Steam, but to have full control over their content. As a result, none of these platforms were able to overthrow Steam. The only one to come close is the GOG store, offering older titles not on Steam, and promising they would be DRM free, but war… war never changes.
A new contender is emerging to wage war against Steam. Backed by Fortnite money, Epic Game has decided to challenge Steam for the title of best digital distribution platform on PC with their own storefront: Epic Store. Along with being less flooded than Steam, Epic vowed they would do more to help developers by promising developers a larger profit cut. This also results in games being cheaper on the Epic Store. They also promised they would do more to prevent customers harassing developers, unfortunately, that meant removing user reviews and forums. While I do agree some developers are unfairly harassed, I don’t believe taking away customer service tools is the right answer. Nonetheless, I was still willing to give the Epic Store a shot, mainly due to the free copies of Jackbox Party Pack, Subnautica, Super Meat Boy, and What Remains of Edith Finch. I personally, welcomed this competition to Steam. I still think Steam is in desperate need of some quality control and a rival with a cleaner store could inspire Valve to change. Unfortunately, they were nothing compared to the bigger moves that Epic had planned.
On January 9, Epic announced they would be partnering with Ubisoft to bring The Division 2 to the Epic Store. With this announcement, they also announced The Division 2 would not be coming to Steam. Cries of outrage echoed throughout the internet. I will admit, I dismissed many of the concerns, because buying Ubisoft games on Steam resulted in Steam opening Ubisoft’s client Uplay to play the game. Would have almost better off just buying The Division 2 on the Uplay store. On January 28, Epic announced they landed an exclusive deal on the new survival horror shooter, Metro Exodus; the title will be only available on PC through the Epic Store. Fans of the Metro series were not pleased. While initially, unaffected by this news, I decided to take a moment off my soapbox and see why the people were outraged by this news.
I soon learned how woefully unprepared Epic is in taking on the task of rivaling Steam. For starters, Epic is incredibly irresponsible with consumer data. Not only does Epic have terrible security with over 80 million accounts hacked over the past weeks. Epic is also owned by the Chinese company, Tencent, known for selling customer data. Epic’s store also does not comply with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). I, for one, remember that year that Steam had the data leak on Christmas of all days. The swarming hate for that fiasco is nothing compared to what Epic would receive if people who purchased Metro Exodus had their data leaked. On top of that, it appears Epic is embarrassingly unfit to handle any data leak they might have. With a simple Google search, I was able to find numerous stories of Epic customer service unable to do anything about a customer’s data being leaked. Epic’s client is also in no better shape. As I mentioned earlier, taking away user reviews and forums to protect developers seems like a misstep, especially when Epic users had to go to Steam forums to solve problems with Subnautica. Throw in no offline play, no screenshots, no controller support, no achievement, and no cloud saves and start to feel that Epic has no right to have the exclusive rights to Metro Exodus.
I can’t help but recall a quote from Valve co-founder Gabe Newell. He was asked about piracy and he simply stated that to beat piracy, you just have to offer a better service than the pirates. With the way Epic is handling Metro Exodus, I can’t help but feel that Epic is not offering superior service, but a disservice. Instead of highlighting the reduced costs and the higher percentage of the sale going to the developer, they are essentially saying you either play with us or don’t play at all. They might have been better off not landing the exclusive deal, but still, offer the product on their store at a reduced price. I would have given it serious consideration knowing my wallet and the developers would benefit from me buying Metro Exodus through the Epic Store. Frankly, I think the competition between Epic and Steam can be good for consumers. I, myself, have been trying to purchase more games through Humble Bundle and GOG to help encourage competition. That still doesn’t take away from the fact that both Steam and the Epic Store need some massive improvements. Valve seriously needs to clean up their storefront of all the games unable to launch or are asset flips. Epic should consider using the money they acquired from Fortnite to improve their store before considering snatching up PC exclusive deals. We, as consumers, need to start demanding more from our storefronts. We should demand quality be released onto the store and not broken products. We need to demand ours protects be free of DRM. We need to demand better data protection. Our storefronts need to be better or else the end will be nigh.
