Former Valve employee: "Steam was killing the PC gaming industry, and Epic Games is fixing it"

The confrontation between Steam and the Epic Games Store escalates every week: Tim Sweeney's company announces one exclusive deal after another (the last high-profile announcement was related to Borderlands 3), and publishers and developers often refuse to cooperate with Valve after the appearance of the project page in her store. Most gamers speaking out on the Web are not happy with such competition, but former Valve employee Richard Geldrich (Richard Geldreich) believes that Epic Games is doing everything right.

Geldrich worked at Valve as a software engineer from 2009 to 2014. He had a hand in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Portal 2, Dota 2, as well as the Linux versions of Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2. He previously worked in a similar position at Ensemble Studios that closed in 2009 on Age of Empires III and Halo Wars , and after Valve got a job at Unity Technologies.

The former employee expressed his point of view during the controversy that began with Sweeney's tweet. The head of the company published a link to a USgamer article, the author of which called people “paranoid and xenophobic” who accuse Epic Games of transferring user data of its store to the Chinese government. Other users began to respond to the executive (including Geldrich, who described the espionage allegations as "insanity"), and the conversation shifted to the topic of the consequences of Epic Games' actions for the industry.

“All Epic Games has done is taken, swallowed up all the projects,” wrote TheDORIANGRAE composer and designer, referring to Sweeney. “You are killing the video game industry.” “It was Steam that was killing the gaming industry,” Geldrich said. “A 30 percent tax that applies to everyone [developers and publishers] is unbearable. You have no idea how profitable Steam has been for Valve. Just a virtual printing press. He ruined the company. Now Epic Games is fixing that."

According to the programmer, most of these 30 percent deductions went to "a small number of people who did not care about the industry and working conditions." Epic Games, on the other hand, offered developers "fair conditions", and that is why the company quickly acquired such a number of partners.

“Yes, Steam was the first,” he continued. - So what? At the time, 30% was a better option than 50% for retail games. But now such conditions are ridiculous, they oppress developers. With this attitude, Valve insults partners and employees. She doesn't appreciate them."

"Gamers think the PC is a special platform that is immune to market changes," he said. - This is wrong. For a long time it was monopolized by one greedy store, and gamers are used to it. But change was inevitable. Even if the Epic Games Store fails, there will be another platform. […] Players lose sight of the fact that the PC gaming industry has changed dramatically and irrevocably. Exclusives and competition from digital stores are now commonplace on PC. This is essential for the sector to grow and remain viable.”

According to Geldrich, players will continue to express dissatisfaction, as Epic Games will make deals for another "year or more." Steam will become a haven for "indie studios and second tier companies," while big-budget titles will first appear on the Epic Games Store and other stores. However, he agrees that now the Epic Games platform is devoid of many important features. However, he is sure that the company "hears perfectly" its users and sooner or later the service will become as good as Steam in terms of functionality. “All this negativity about exclusives will cost them not so much - maybe 5-10% of sales,” the programmer suggested.

“It would be great if a full-fledged alternative to Steam ever appeared,” he wrote. “Building a digital store is not that big of a science; you just have to copy the best features of Steam.”

Almost none of the participants in the discussion supported Geldrich, and TheDORIANGRAE even called him "just an irritated ex-Valve employee pursuing personal goals."

In March, Epic Games Store business development chief Joe Krener said that the company "will be looking to avoid" late deals with developers and publishers that cause games to disappear from Steam shortly before release (as happened with Metro Exodus) . But last week, Sweeney clarified that the company would not refuse such contracts if the second party took responsibility.

Source: 3dnews.ru