Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

So You Want to Compete with Steam

fortressofdoors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 223 posts

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#91

Post by Lazare »

stock_toaster wrote: post #84
scott_karana wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how much funding Discord has already raised, I bet. Their VCs are generally going to want a massive exit, and I bet the valuations after previous raises are non-trivial. Guessing that Valve is adverse to acquisitions in general too, for their weird cultural reasons. EDIT: $725 million. Not cheap. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/07/discord/

I'm surprised Amazon hasn't bought them. Seems like it would fit well with their twitch property.

Twitch (and thus Amazon) is currently making a big play to compete head to head with Discord. At least among the people I talk to, it's an abject, miserable, flaming disaster, but I think it's a bit early for Amazon to walk away from it just yet. And they might yet pull it off; they have the resources.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#92

Post by on_and_off »

kenhwang wrote: post #74
on_and_off wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So weird you mention all this, in my experience Google Play does a good job with this. The only thing that really irks me is that if an app while you are using the phone, the foreground app should never get updated. Sure, download the delta patch but wait for me to have stopped using it in order to update (or if I am using the app for hours, pick an update message). To be fair nowadays this only happens when I manual…

Mine is set to update on WiFi only. And everyday, without fail, the moment I plug my phone into a power source in the evening (could even be to my computer for debugging), it'll start going through and applying all available updates. The performance impact is always noticeable during the duration of the updates. Other common case is when I pull into my driveway/office and happen to be charging my phone in the car and…

Just my anecdotal experience but Windows stopped me while I was doing something by suddenly rebooting the machine. The update took ages, well, more than 30 minutes, still very annoying.

In the end, the visible change was the addition of Edge and Cortana .. A good way to make me decide to never use these 2 apps.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#93

Post by aeoost »

sergiotapia wrote: post #67

Steam has lost that "discovery" aspect to it. It's now mainly weaboo garbage, early access and PUBG clogging up the trending and leaderboards. I feel like I can no longer discover cool titles or great things people are buying on the site.

You can subscribe to curators whose recommendations will populate the main page.

One I like: 'Weird games for your pleasure' http://store.steampowered.com/curator/7099409-Weird-Games-fo...

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#95

Post by watwut »

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.

The best thing about GOG is that I am actually able to find interesting games I did not knew they exist before there. Discovery on steam is atrocious.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#96

Post by pjmlp »

kgwxd wrote: post #21
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…

No one wants a game that requires a "platform", they just don't realize it or care enough to boycott over it.

Sure they do, this idea is yet another example of how disparate gaming culture is from FOSS.

The identity of belonging to a specific platform, which games are exclusives and social events promoted for gamers and devs alike by the platform holder, are very important facets.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#97

Post by chungy »

drb91 wrote: post #28
joshtynjala wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Movies Anywhere.

How do you transfer from movies anywhere to eg your itunes account? Because otherwise they seem like just another walled garden.

You can connect your Movies Anywhere account to Vudu, Amazon, Google, and/or iTunes. Then your library shows up on those services.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#98

Post by Fnoord »

kgwxd wrote: post #21
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…

No one wants a game that requires a "platform", they just don't realize it or care enough to boycott over it.

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 top of Steam.

If you want to compete with a product you need to compete on price or features. Well, price is zero, so you gotta compete on features. They can't compete on features, so EA enforces you to use Origin. Screw that. I want all my games in one managing app.

The reason Origin and Battle.net exist is because EA and Blizzard want control and keep people within their own infrastructure and offerings. I do get that from Blizzard's PoV. From EA's, not so much.

Plus that only works because they're reasonably big, and I doubt it works on the long term.

Valve, instead, choose to not only distribute their own games but also provide a complete platform for other publishers. They even allow you to import games which aren't on Steam such as Battle.net ones.

GOG specialises in DRM-free games which Steam doesn't.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#99

Post by ndh2 »

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...

Same here, I won't buy Titanfall as long as it requires Origin.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#100

Post by kbart »

kuschku wrote: post #55
c3534l wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

GOG also has no DRM'd games, at all. It's truly amazing, and if possible, I always buy from them.

Yes, GOG is the only place I buy games from. I don't want to have spyware installed on my PC in a form of DRM or be able to play games only while connected to Internet, so I don't use Steam at all.
Post reply on HN