So You Want to Compete with Steam • Hacker News Board

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#181

Post by larsiusprime » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #73

wick_works wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. Speaking as somebody who's had to make builds for pc/mac/linux and bundle them up into each special back-end for each store and then test each one for every single patch , multiplying the process by adding more platforms is a hard sell. Why bother with Desura or whatever when 95% of your sales are gonna come through Steam? Especially for the model of early access & building community gradually instead of risking i…

> If it was a numerically advantageous proposition to scout & invest in indies, we'd see more people doing that. Try for a month going through new releases on Steam and predicting which ones are gonna be successes. It's a near-impossible game, much less if each bet cost you tens of thousands of dollars. I think you forget you're posting on YC's forum. YC literally does this (with much higher stakes, by the way). Obvi…

Over 100 new games are released on Steam every week. I hardly think YC invests in that many companies.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#182

Post by Fnoord » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

MagnumOpus wrote: post #167

Fnoord wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know plenty of people who like Steam, including myself. Netflix also does DRM but it Just Works (tm). What sucks is having many platforms. For example, cable TV (from whereever you are from), Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime is 4 already. For gaming, there is Steam, Origin, Battle.net, GOG that's 4 already. If you take a smaller "app store" like Origin the question arises why does this even exist? It brings nothing on to…

> Well, price is zero Except it isn't - Steam reportedly charges a chunky 43% extra on top of what the publisher gets (30% of the retail price you pay goes to Valve). Other platforms try to charge the same, but for a near-zero-marginal-cost good, it is a bit strange that there is no price competition yet...

True, my bad -- it isn't from a developer PoV, and if the developer forwards the cut to the consumer, Steam is more expensive. This actually regularly happens.

The article does mention this, and also mentions a platform who don't take a cut, and explains how it is difficult to compete with these.

I'd argue though that if you self host instead of outsource (to e.g. Steam), this also has costs. So the reasoning that you'd save that 30% would be unreasonable.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#183

Post by lmm » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:35 PM UTC

dataflow wrote: post #175

lmm wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apt/Synaptic got me into this broken state and couldn't get me out of it. I don't know what story you're reading, but it doesn't seem to be what I've been writing. There was nothing for me to ignore. The error wasn't something I ignored; it was the problem. No. Nothing was broken. The updates you had asked for were about to break something if you installed them. The error message was the package manager stopping yo…

> No. Nothing was broken. The updates you had asked for were about to break something if you installed them. The error message was the package manager stopping you from breaking your system. Uhm... two things. First: you see this screenshot? https://askubuntu.com/q/814380 Aside from the actual package names, the bottom part is the same kind of error I got. See how it says "You have held __broken___ packages" ? See ho…

> First: you see this screenshot? https://askubuntu.com/q/814380 Aside from the actual package names, the bottom part is the same kind of error I got.

I actually don't, imgur is blocked where I work. But I know the error you're talking about.

> Yeah, I interpret that to mean I had broken packages. After updating. Not before.

Yeah the error reporting is bad, which is where the whole unix philosophy of small cooperating programs goes completely wrong. (Or possibly the error is correct and the package is broken - Ubuntu maintainers in particular seem to make bad packages quite often. But the package manager isn't the problem there)

> Notice it has >17k views, only 2 answers, and no accepted answer? Yeah, I guess it's not so easy to resolve.

More likely the user who asked it (3 questions, 0 answers) got bored and never "accepted".

> Even if I ignore the above and pretend nothing there is currently broken, a system that cannot be updated is, uhm, broken.

In as much as you now can't use the package manager to update all your programs? I mean I'd agree that this qualifies as "broken", but it's exactly as broken as a system that doesn't have a package manager in the first place. You could still update all the individual programs manually like you would on windows. Which is what I thought you were advocating?

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#184

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:36 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #171

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a better idea: build the system such that dependency conflicts aren't possible. This is trivial by having a stable base system and otherwise including any application's dependencies in the same directory as the application, which of course means not spreading the application all over the file tree (and thus avoiding another non-existent problem that package managers solve). I know, that's really hard for Linux…

On the contrary, the system you proposed has been implemented many times over the history of Linux .. I can think of GoboLinux as an example, but I think NixOS also does this (may be wrong). I prefer to just keep the system stable through careful application of well-curated dependency graphs. I've never run into any issue, having used Linux since the very first day, that I couldn't solve by proper application of pack…

Gobo and Nix do something similar, but they overengineer the hell out of it (largely because typical Linux software is written very inflexibly). What I'm talking about is so simple it requires no management at all. AppImage is the closest solution Linux has, but sadly hardly any applications are deployed that way.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#185

Post by grigjd3 » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:39 PM UTC

mrhektor wrote: post #32

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.

Could you give us a few examples of such businesses? Do customers really switch for marginal improvements?

Consumables are pretty easy to dive into but often don't leave room for improvement (already been done). Restaurants are similar. Thing is, these aren't businesses to dive into. The more "free" the customer, the more competition that already exists. Remember, if its easy to eat someone else's lunch, it's easy to have your lunch eaten.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#186

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

zingmars wrote: post #137

c3534l wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not exactly. Quite a few EA games on Steam will give you a license key that can be activated on Origin. In some instances they might use a generic key that might not activate, but you can ask Origin Support to activate it on Origin for you. The hate for Origin was mostly hate for EA's greedy practices and some privacy related stuff that came out when their client was released.

I have found that Origin and Ubisoft's thing scan your HDD and add their Steam games to their respective libraries.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#187

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

ThatPlayer wrote: post #138

StavrosK wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really?! Oh wow, how did I not know this? Thank you!

It's more of a promotional event they have once in a while. https://www.gogwiki.com/wiki/GOG_Connect has a history of games and dates. If you miss the owning that game on that then, and remember to check the website, you miss it.

I rarely use GoG but every couple months when I log in there's a notification that a game or two from my Steam library was added to GoG.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#188

Post by throwanem » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

SolarNet wrote: post #180

throwanem wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well there is your problem. You have the NVIDIA graphics drivers / GL shim "installed". Not in Virtualbox without the guest additions installed. Even with them, it would be a different binary blob. I mean, don't let me get in the way of your profane, unhelpful, and extremely unnecessary rant, but...

I mean. Based off of his posts, he implied he took an image from a physical machine with Nvidia hardware and put it in a virtual machine (on an unspecified system with out guest additions anyway). Are you claiming a disk image of an OS running with Nvidia hardware (that used the acceleration) - with that shim installed - is not going to have that package added anymore if I just stick it in a VM? If so what mechanism…

If your concern is with making Linux on the desktop more appealing, it may be worth your while to consider whether your discursive style, in the role of (presumably self-appointed) community representative, might make it more likely or less likely that people will want to participate in the community you claim to represent.

As it happens, my own experience with the Linux community suggests that you do not accurately represent it at all, at least not when you act as badly as you have here. Someone with no such prior experience, faced with your execrable behavior here and your claim to represent that community in so behaving, could not reasonably be blamed for the conclusion that attempting to engage with that community would be a terrible mistake.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#189

Post by talmand » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:05 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #183

dataflow wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. Nothing was broken. The updates you had asked for were about to break something if you installed them. The error message was the package manager stopping you from breaking your system. Uhm... two things. First: you see this screenshot? https://askubuntu.com/q/814380 Aside from the actual package names, the bottom part is the same kind of error I got. See how it says "You have held __broken___ packages" ? See ho…

> First: you see this screenshot? https://askubuntu.com/q/814380 Aside from the actual package names, the bottom part is the same kind of error I got. I actually don't, imgur is blocked where I work. But I know the error you're talking about. > Yeah, I interpret that to mean I had broken packages. After updating. Not before. Yeah the error reporting is bad, which is where the whole unix philosophy of small cooperatin…

I'm really enjoying this thread where it seems the complainer is saying they clicked a button provided by the system that resulted in breaking the system and the defenders are saying the complainer not only clicked the button wrong but didn't understand how to click the button correctly. Therefore, the complainer should have realized they are too stupid to understand how to click such an advanced button correctly and should leave it to the professionals next time.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#190

Post by talmand » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 3:08 PM UTC

SolarNet wrote: post #158

qznc wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I side with dataflow here. It would have been a "perfectly civil response" without the last paragraph, especially the "Fuck off". Likewise, in your last paragraph above you label him "incapable of understanding" and "delusional". That is not "perfectly civil".

No I said he implied that about other people. When he said they weren't reading what he was saying and were instead talking about some other story. If a person wrote a response exactly about his scenario, then saying what he did in response would imply that he thought that person was delusional. Which is what happened. I quoted it. That was the point I gave up on him being an honest participant.

That's okay, I'm sure many of us gave up on your side of the discussion as well.