Are we pretending publishers not bothering putting their games on every storefront is the same as paying publishers to not put those games on competing storefronts?
Steam was literally forced on those who owned a physical copy of Half-Life and wanted to play it. The dominant position has nothing to do with the service offered by Steam. It was dominant when it barely had any features. GOG competing with it on features and in fact offering the bonus of DRM-free games hasn’t improved its market share of about 0.5%.
Epic: then we have no interest in having you on our service
If anything, the example you brought up proves the opposite. Darq is on Epic and its developer even took money from Epic to make it free, so there is no grudge even past the dev’s publicity stunt.
Their attempt to strong arm an exclusivity deal failed and at some point they relented and put the game on their store.
If they had just hosted in on their service at the same time in launched on Steam it would have been better for their customers and more profitable for Epic. But they are more concerned about trying to force exclusives than do what is better for their customers, even if it loses them money.
Are we pretending publishers not bothering putting their games on every storefront is the same as paying publishers to not put those games on competing storefronts?
The end result is the same for the consumer.
Intention matters too.
Not to me. I just want to play games. Already have multiple launchers. Doesn’t make a difference.
It really isn’t.
In one case a publisher is choosing to publish where the customers are. If consumers don’t like that service they are free to publish somewhere else
In the other case a company is trying to force consumers to use their service, instead of providing a better service that they would want to use.
Either way you install a client and play a game. Already have a few so it doesn’t really matter.
Steam was literally forced on those who owned a physical copy of Half-Life and wanted to play it. The dominant position has nothing to do with the service offered by Steam. It was dominant when it barely had any features. GOG competing with it on features and in fact offering the bonus of DRM-free games hasn’t improved its market share of about 0.5%.
No one is upset about having to use EGS for Fortnite. Their own games that they develop themselves they can do what they want with.
The issue is when Epic approaches other developers, especially those that have already announced a Steam release, and try to get exclusivity out of them: https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7
Epic: We would love to have you on our service
Dev: I’m not interested in exclusivity
Epic: then we have no interest in having you on our service
Having more options for their customers makes their service better, but Epic isn’t interested in being a better service.
If anything, the example you brought up proves the opposite. Darq is on Epic and its developer even took money from Epic to make it free, so there is no grudge even past the dev’s publicity stunt.
Their attempt to strong arm an exclusivity deal failed and at some point they relented and put the game on their store.
If they had just hosted in on their service at the same time in launched on Steam it would have been better for their customers and more profitable for Epic. But they are more concerned about trying to force exclusives than do what is better for their customers, even if it loses them money.