So You Want to Compete with Steam • Hacker News Board

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#11

Post by Morizero » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:47 AM UTC

fellellor wrote: post #5

FussyZeus wrote: post #3

Mind you the USERS don't even want a lot of Steam's competition. The GOG downloader is...okay? Origin is almost universally hated and every time one of these big companies announces $NewNotSteam the collective community rolls their eyes and groans, dreading the new application that has to be installed, and kept running so it can update, to accomplish the exact same thing that Steam, GOG, Origin, and uPlay already acc…

Origin is the worse. While downloading games, it would often roll back the progress stretching the process into hours. A complete piece of shit that.

My girlfriend uses it for the Sims. On at least 3 occasions it's taken over an hour to get the game running due to Origin issues. It's truly garbage.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#12

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

phreack wrote: post #9

There are plenty of businesses where you can just roll up, make a better yet not more innovative version of the leading app, and just take all of the customers. Game distribution is NOT one of them, at all, by any stretch of the imagination, at this point in time. I've saved this article to share every time I hear that pitch.

[deleted]

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#13

Post by c3534l » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:52 AM UTC

The convenience of having your game licenses all in one place over the long term is too great. The only way you could shut down Steam at this point is create an open industry standard that would allow a license to play a game to transfer seamlessly across platforms. No one wants to buy a game from a website that isn't going to exist in a year and will take your game with you. And no one wants to have 10 different platforms on their computer. And certainly no one wants to have different platforms offer different games that can only be accessed from that platform. But of course the gaming industry has an entire business model built on exactly that: console gaming. It's kind of a miracle that Steam even exists and people are going to be very resistant to replacing it with a completely fractured system of owning PC games.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#14

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:54 AM UTC

c3534l wrote: post #13

The convenience of having your game licenses all in one place over the long term is too great. The only way you could shut down Steam at this point is create an open industry standard that would allow a license to play a game to transfer seamlessly across platforms. No one wants to buy a game from a website that isn't going to exist in a year and will take your game with you. And no one wants to have 10 different pla…

GOG links to your Steam Account and will add games to your library that exist in your Steam Library. It only does this for participating publishers but it's still an effective way to copy your library.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#15

Post by c3534l » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:55 AM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #14

c3534l wrote: post #13

The convenience of having your game licenses all in one place over the long term is too great. The only way you could shut down Steam at this point is create an open industry standard that would allow a license to play a game to transfer seamlessly across platforms. No one wants to buy a game from a website that isn't going to exist in a year and will take your game with you. And no one wants to have 10 different pla…

GOG links to your Steam Account and will add games to your library that exist in your Steam Library. It only does this for participating publishers but it's still an effective way to copy your library.

Well, I guess that explains why people like GOG and hate Origin.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#16

Post by krapp » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:03 AM UTC

Really, Steam seems to be the closest thing Windows has to an application/package manager[0].

It's almost kind of a shame that it's more or less entirely for games and game development software - something like it with sourceforge/github integration or an API for general purpose Windows installers would be nice.

[0]notwithstanding whatever Windows 10 might have, because I still refuse to touch that, but it's probably not as good as the Steam client.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#17

Post by discreditable » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:05 AM UTC

wernercd wrote: post #4

FussyZeus wrote: post #3

Mind you the USERS don't even want a lot of Steam's competition. The GOG downloader is...okay? Origin is almost universally hated and every time one of these big companies announces $NewNotSteam the collective community rolls their eyes and groans, dreading the new application that has to be installed, and kept running so it can update, to accomplish the exact same thing that Steam, GOG, Origin, and uPlay already acc…

Really though... other than perhaps Blizzard... is there any secondary store worth looking into? Outside of Windows/Android/iStore... There's nothing worth switching. I've passed up on purchasing games (IE: Mass Effect 3) because it's tied to a shitty NotSteam...

Blizzard's client is pretty but has its own drawbacks. I uninstalled it recently after it tabbed me out of a competitive match with a UAC prompt to update itself. The Bnet forums are full of people complaining about that particular issue.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#18

Post by PostOnce » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:08 AM UTC

What if Steam had to, by law, share your game library with other services?

i.e., just like you can take your phone number to any other phone company, or how banks in europe have to share info, you were able to take your game library with you to any other game distribution service?

Perhaps the same could be done for iOS/Android portability

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#19

Post by grahamburger » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:12 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #18

What if Steam had to, by law, share your game library with other services? i.e., just like you can take your phone number to any other phone company, or how banks in europe have to share info, you were able to take your game library with you to any other game distribution service? Perhaps the same could be done for iOS/Android portability

I've often wished that this would happen for movies / music. When I buy a streaming movie on Amazon I'd like to be able to transfer it to Google Play or vice versa.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#20

Post by discoursism » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:12 AM UTC

This article is full of good observations. A shorter way to say it is that the distance between Steam and "perfect" is not very large, and there isn't enough margin to be had to justify the cost of building something to close that gap. And that's assuming you can identify the features that would bring you to perfect from where Steam is.

I cannot even imagine a game distribution product that would get me to switch from Steam, unless there were Very Important games on it I couldn't get on Steam, or unless the prices were at least 10-15% lower.