I know this is an older article, but EAC has had compatibility with Linux for years at this point. Linux is also really easy to compile and develop for compared to MacOS. They just don’t want to because there aren’t enough players to justify the cost, most likely. Also might have some incentive to keep their game off the hardware of their biggest competitor.
Actually, I think they don’t want linux gamers, with their higher technical savvy. Some game dev companies love how 90% of their bug reports come from 10% of their users (and even brag about it). Other companies would rather just not get those 90% of bug reports.
i remember playing fortnite in its prime, bugs were never fixed, they stayed there for years. Cosmetics on the other hand where added daily …
That’s a valid development strategy. It seems to have worked out for them. I suppose it kind of makes sense as long as nothing is breaking.
I don’t even know if it’s still a popular game as it’s a bit hectic for me. But it’s had a good run.
It’s probably a good thing because your average Joe Public can’t write the bug report to save their life.
You get titles like “It’s broken and not working”. If you are very lucky you’ll also get a screenshot where everything looks absolutely fine and with absolutely no context as to what the problem supposedly is. The reason technical savvy people can write good bug reports is because they disproportionately work in IT and see terrible support tickets everyday, and know what not to do.
For example, if you’re reporting that outlook will not load it’s possibly a good idea to give a phone number and not an email address for contact purposes. Just a thought.
The article I had found on the topic suggested linux users provided higher quality bug reports, in addition to more bug reports.
The real issue is that some game companies don’t want bug reports because they don’t want to fix bugs.
I think most Linux gamers understand they’re not going to get official Linux support. And most of the cases it’s also not necessary because the compatibility layer is pretty good. The only big hurdle is anticheat and that’s where epic would have to do the bare minimum of adding their own native EAC client to Fortnite.
Now the argument that it would increase cheating in a hugely popular game like Fortnite is somewhat legitimate, but I think it’s more likely Sweeney would rather let leopards eat his face than support anything related to Valve.
I think the argument of increased cheating has some merit, but less so in hugely popular games like fortnite. Because no anticheat is actually perfect and people who want to cheat will just use whatever method works. In a popular game like fortnite the demand is high enough that someone will find a way to cheat regardless of Linux support
Also if the typical Linux user is like me they’re never spending a cent on a free game. Which invalidates their whole business model.
This from the man who thinks he’s “competing” with Valve?
Valve is figuring out how to run games they didn’t even develop on Linux, while Epic complains it’s too hard to do for even their own games…
That’s rich.
A terrifically hard audience to serve given the variety of incompatible configurations.
If your game doesn’t work with my fully functional operating system (while others do), isn’t it literally your game that’s “incompatible?”
Plus it isn’t like there aren’t tons of compatibility issues with all the versions of hardware on PC.
My kids, unfortunately, love the game, so I’ve kept up with performance a little bit. It seems they’re trying their best to make it run like trash. They can’t even support the few operating systems it does run on. I haven’t noticed any mind blowing graphics updates, but fps is around a third of what it used go be. Such a garbage company.
The cartoonish artstyle might hide it a bit, but Fortnite is basically Epic’s showcase of all the newest Unreal Engine tech. The move to UE5 a couple years ago brought with it all those new features and a huge leap in graphics. Fortnite has been around for a long time now, so the minimum performance targets are probably changing as tech and average system hardware improve. I don’t actually play it, but it’s pretty much a different game now compared to when BR mode was first released.
That explains the consistent decline in performance. Thanks for the info.
Okay, now give me another free game Epic. I’ve got over 100 probably on you wacko store and have not paid for a single one.
You say that like you’re getting one over on them. But they’ve successfully got you to download their shitty software. You think they aren’t aware of what they’re doing?
They know what they’re trying to do, which is to bait people into spending money on their platform so they can have revenue numbers to show developers to get them to release on their platform to get people to want to spend money with them without bait.
Taking the bait but not getting caught in the trap isn’t quite pulling one over on them, but it’s also not what they were hoping for, so it’s not not taking advantage.
This is where the Heroic Games Launcher comes in, it only downloads the game itself, no Epic Games Launcher to be seen
Step 1: Redeem games through my web browser.
That’s it, there is no step 2.
So you don’t actually play the games? You just redeem them?
Not the other guy but I download them through heroic, install a crack, repack, store on my NAS. That is, if the game is one I’d like to keep for the future.
So yeah some of us are absolutely taking those free games AS free games without downloading their software. A couple of mine have been “loaned” to friends and family, even.
Same here, download everything through Heroic
Correct. Fuck Epic. They’re awful.
Full transparency though, I’ve played precisely one game on epic games store, Alan Wake 2 because I like Remedy as a developer and want to support them. Alan Wake 2 will never come out on any other platform and I’m not buying a console to play one game.
Okay but redeeming the games doesn’t actually do anything. Epic doesn’t care. You’re not messing with them by just having an account if you don’t use it
Epic is subsidizing the sale of the games. It costs them money and muddies their metrics.
Oh no, not the metrics!
I’m sure they’re fully aware that some percentage of people will redeem the games with no intent of actually playing them.
The whole point is to generate word of mouth for their store. You’re out here doing their job for them, talking about how many free games you’ve gotten from them.
I’ve got like 400.
Think I only paid for Outer Wilds plus the DLC, and Untitled Goose Game out of all those, because everybody should play Outer Wilds.
Not that I give a crap about Fortnite, but what an asshole.
Yeah, Timmy’s had a hate-boner for anything related to Valve and Linux for years. He’s been lying through his teeth non-stop whenever either topic comes up.
Thank you, Tim Epic
Why is a 2 year old article being posted now?
Good call out. So rage bait here has hit lemmy
Maybe there should be a feature that warns us if the article is more then 6 months old. Our maybe a bot could do it.
Good catch I was just wondering he doubling down all of a sudden.
This would be news if it were current. At 2 years old it’s just clickbait
“We don’t have enough developers to support Linux!”
- Tim Sweeney promptly fires 700 developers
Look, it’s just that the engine they use doesn’t have Linux support… Wait no that’s not true
Why tf would you post this without at least putting a date on it lol
Linux users are not your audience. Owners of the Steam Deck are. I’d wager the vast majority of Deck users do not have a computer that runs Linux. You don’t really need to know how to do anything in Linux even in desktop mode. The environment is so similar to mac and windows for most tasks.
He’s just pissy about the idea of designing anything that would benefit Steam; the heavyweight he has tried and failed to emulate.
Sweeney generally has a hate boner for Linux. It’s nothing really new.
And it represents so few people that the investment isn’t worth it, especially as most of them have a hate boner for Epic.
This is why I don’t give Epic and any exclusives on it’s store any money. I know 0% of it is going back into making linux gaming better.
I will happily take advantage of their free giveaways, though.
Nope. Fuck them, don’t give them any market share.
I don’t give a rats ass about their market share, epics never going to pass steam, but they still have to pay devs to give away those games, and with a lot of the games being indie titles, I’m perfectly happy for some free money to go into a devs pocket
To add on to this: steam was dog shit before epic came along. A lot of people are either unaware or have forgotten how bad steam actually was until it got some real competition
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And if you only care about playing your games then Epic’s launcher has the shortcut right in your face when it starts while Steam has it in a separate page with a popup in the way.
People can praise Steam all they want, for new it’s just bloated as fuck.
The data they take from you still gives them recurring revenue.
Not if I don’t play the games then
If you ever start the launcher it can start stealing data.
Some would say not having Fortnite on Linux is a feature…
No. I don’t care for them game, but I want people to be able to play it on Linux still.
He can go fuck himself with a 6" railroad spike.
At least Gaben is pushing the Linux gaming community forward!
BUT 30%!!!
Yeah, that 30% means I can ditch Windows. At least it’s being used for good and not just* yachts.
Anyone who actually complains about steam’s cut is either misinformed or lying.
…what? Yeah, 30% is the standard when there are higher costs and higher risks. Why would it not follow that Steam using the same percentage - with lower costs and none of the physical-based risk - is simply greed?
If you look at the overall cost of running a platform though, especially one that does several things, you can see where that 30% becomes viable.
A few things to highlight are, long-term storage and availability of purchases. There is not a single game I have bought on Steam in close to 20 years that I can’t still download and play to this day. Many of those are games that are no longer available for sale on the storefront yet valve as a content provider keeps them available to me and likely will in perpetuity.
There’s an argument to be made that storage is cheap but they are also storing other people’s things that are no longer generating revenue for them. Also, they are providing the bandwidth for us as users to download those games whenever and as many times as we like without concern for how many copies of title sold or who the initial publisher or developer was.
When you look at something like a console provider such as Nintendo or Microsoft who will completely shut down legacy stores, it makes the value of valve taking a unilateral 30% all the more attractive. Anything I buy on Steam I will be able to download and play in perpetuity. That 30% goes to making sure this isn’t just for big-name or the current hot shit. This is for everything ever put on their platform.
Sure, in a vacuum 30% seems like a lot but when you consider the overall maintenance costs and the fact that they have seemed to be pretty pro-consumer all along, The intrinsic value in what they’re offering becomes a lot easier to see.
I also wanted to add on a recent experience I had that highlights this even more so.
I was going through old archive drives and found a digital copy of “The Club” that I had purchased from Direct2Drive. I don’t know if anybody remembers them or not but, they were one of the early digital storefronts that focused on PC digital downloads.
Anyways, I had the installer and my provided key in the directory so I installed the game and attempted to launch it only to be met with an activation screen. When I attempted to activate those servers had long since been decommissioned so I was dead in the water. Feeling that sting that one gets when they can no longer play something they legally purchased I started searching around for information on workarounds before I grabbed a crack. I found a thread from the company that had purchased the rights to all direct2drive purchases that had a workaround for doing the authentication through an alternate method.
I tried all the steps listed including performing a recovery process for an account that I had long since lost the login information for only to be met with a failed authentication once again. By this point I had invested close to an hour maybe an hour and a half of my time trying to get some shitty old game to work and decided it wasn’t worth it.
I hopped over to Steam and saw that I was able to purchase the game directly from them for $5 and download it immediately without any need for additional authentication steps or trying to track down who had purchased the rights to give me access rights to the thing that I had purchased 15 years ago.
Sure, my one experience may be anecdotal but I think it highlights some of the greater issues people might not take into consideration when talking about what valve’s cut is and what that represents to us as the users of the services they provide.
If their revenues were close to their running costs Gaben wouldn’t own multiple yachts, stop defending a company that made a billionaire out of its owner while you’re making less a year than he burns in a day on his boat.
I don’t begrudge him running a successful business. And I didn’t give a shit about who you feel I can or cannot defend. Lol.
Two issues, you can download and play your games in ‘perpetuity’ so long as Valve continues on the current operating model.
And Valve has not been particularly consumer friendly in the past.
They were found to be violating consumer rights in Australia at the very least and had to put a large notification on their storefront to disclose exactly what they had been wrong.
Valve were forced into providing a refund model and even then it often conflicts with consumer interest. Though admittedly bad actors will always try to abuse any refund model on digital products.
It’s still the market standard for digital stores, and if steam was greedy they could absolutely charge more with their market dominance.
For comparison audible has audiobook market dominance, and takes a 75% cut. If you agree to make your audiobook audible exclusive, they’ll “only” take 60% of the profit, and many audiobook authors take that deal because getting an extra 15% cut on audible is worth more than the sales from other audiobook stores.
Audible is what you get when a greedy corporation has market dominance, in comparison Steam’s cuts are very tame for all the benefits they give.
Or maybe they were as greedy as they could be without risking another company coming and taking their place, they also protected themselves against that by including a clause that prevents selling games cheaper on other stores so even if someone comes and tries to compete the devs are stuck because they need to choose if losing access to Steam’s monopoly is worth it to be able to sell their game cheaper to end up with the same amount per copy in their pockets.
they also protected themselves against that by including a clause that prevents selling games cheaper on other stores
Is that even a real thing? Other stores sell games cheaper all the time. Even when buying steam games it’s usually cheapest to buy the steam key from another store, because someone else will have it on sale for cheaper.
It’s part of their contract, Wolfire Games is suing them for anti competitive practices.
Why would it not follow that Steam using the same percentage - with lower costs and none of the physical-based risk - is simply greed?
Most of the retailers mentioned in that article were also digital only and had the exact same or less risk. Steam certainly does a lot to try and get people’s money, but they aren’t just greedily fucking over Devs for that 30%, that is in fact industry standard.
I also have no doubt that Epic will enshitify itself and raise its rate closer to 30% after growing.
Just because there’s an outdated industry standard doesn’t mean it should be perpetuated, let alone supported, for eternity. Valve’s server hosting costs on a per-installation basis have fallen substantially since they first launched Steam, so there’s no reason why the 30% cut is still necessary; even 20% would leave them a sizable profit margin. I’m not a fan of the Epic Game Store for bribing companies to not release their games on Steam for a set amount of time, and choose not to use it as a result, but it’s time that the 30% industry standard be dropped. In purchasing a game I want to support continued development of that franchise, and $15 of a $50 purchase going to the storefront is not only excessive and inflationary, but harms developers as well.
I guess you wouldm’t be complaining if they never improved efficiencies then, since decreasing costs should apparently be passed on to distributers. Shame on them for improving their business sonthey could use those profits to create the steam deck and other benefits for gamers instead of propping up the profits of game companies!
Should game companies lower their proces based on volume of sales when they make ‘enough’ profit?
Valve could still operate as it currently does, including having sufficient profits to account for R&D and long-term costs, at a lower cut of platform sales (as another commenter mentioned, Gabe Newell’s billion dollar yacht collection is demonstrative of the platform’s profitability, especially when one considers how much it costs to maintain ships). Products such as the Steam Deck make money for Valve too, as Steam Deck users (myself included) statistically buy more games on Steam as a result. I don’t support profiteering efforts by game publishers either, such as the Factorio price increase attributed to inflation, $70 game releases attributed to inflation when digital releases have reduced their costs, and micro transactions in general. In any case, however, given that cost increases are always the consumer’s responsibility, cost decreases should not simply be a means for companies to bolster their profit margins.
I am fine with someone who set up and runs a successful business that is in no way predatory and is a benefit to employees, consumers, and the companies that use their product to have an excess amount of money. They are doing capitalism the right way and actually earned the benefits.
Games going up to $70 are not becsuse of the 30% cut. They wouldn’t go down if that percentage dropped either. I play multiple games that were always sold at $40 or less as full games and they have been massively profitable.
So it’s not predatory to let games become more expensive while also reducing running costs? Because if you run the numbers it means they’re just increasing their profits by charging the same % and forcing devs and publishers to increase the cost of games to compensate for development costs increasing. The only winner here is Valve, maybe you should start defending your own interests instead of defending the interests of a billionaire.
You’re the one that ends up paying for it though, games could be cheaper, instead Valve just increases its profits.
I am getting my money’s worth.
Ok, that’s just idiotic…
There’s the weakest defense of a capitalistic business practice you could come up with…
“It’s the industry’s standard!”
Ok, if the standard was 50% and someone came along and said “Know what? We can do the same thing for 20%” would you be defending those charging 50%? What if it was 75%?
The reality is, they’re taking 30% because their position allows them to do so and people don’t care enough about those actually doing the work to create games to push Valve to change their ways. Valve is as greedy as any other company.
Remember folks, Gaben is a billionaire that owns multiple yachts, he’s not your friend, he’s making a fuck load of money instead of making sure you get the most from your money, Valve could lower their cut by a whole lot while still being extremely profitable.
30% is the standard. And it’s absurd. They all do it because they all have their own walled garden territory, and it doesn’t benefit any of them to lower prices.
You’re telling me that Steam does 30% of the effort to create and publish a game?
They distribute games, which is something in addition to creating and publishing.
Whatever percentage they use is based on an average across wildly different games. A large game with frequent updates doesn’t need to pay steam for the work on steam’s end each update. They don’t need to pay for each tine someone downloads their game, or for the ongoing costs to upgrade steam over time to continue supporting their game. They have a set percentage per sale so they can easily calculate how many units they need to sell to break even.
If the game’s sales die off they don’t need to pay for steam to continue support. At any time they can use the popularity of a new release to renew interest in past releases without any extra requires work. When game sequels blow up, the publisher doesn’t need to do anything to get sales money from new sales of the prior versions. The prior games are just there, waiting to make the publisher money.
How much value do you think any distribution platform provides?
Steam would be profitable at 12%.
Pretty sure Gaben has a yacht too.
A bunch of them, he’s just another billionaire but people can’t help defending him.
Uh, not to take away from your point about Steam making it possible to ditch Windows, but that money is absolutely being put towards buying yachts. Gabe Newel owns $1 billion worth of yachts, 6 of them in total. Like, good on Valve for making Linux accessible, but the money is still quite literally going towards Gabe’s yacht collection.
that money is absolutely being put towards buying yachts
Did anybody claim that Valve’s entire earnings go into Linux gaming? Of course it’s only a tiny fraction but that tiny fraction is more than anybody else put into Linux gaming.
Also, Gabe Newell also owns an Aston Martin sportscar team called Heart of Racing, so it’s not just yachts. They’ll compete in Le Mans next weekend in case anybody cares.
I’m not sure I follow. The comment I was replying to said Valve’s 30% cut isn’t being put towards buying yachts, but it is. Apparently racing teams too. Whether they’re doing good things for linux gaming or not, Gabe is still a billionaire and he sure spends the money like one.
Yeah, I meant to throw a “not just yachts” in there but my brain don’t work right. We all have our passions. At least the guy looks out for the industry through the eyes of a consumer and doesn’t behave like a pissbaby.
Only if we ignore that a lot of Valve’s pro consumers practices are things that were legally imposed and that their 30% cut is driving up costs for consumers and that they actually use anti competitive tactics to prevent other platforms from actually competing.
