Tim’s big issue, and it’s reflected in Epic’s entire strategy, and why Valve succeeded and will continue to assuming they stick with it.
Valve is not like innately better or more benevolent. Well, maybe a little, but at the end of the day they are a business, and out for their benefit. Which, in an ideal world, is about making the product customers want at a price they can afford. Epic is doing the same, but the issue is in who their customer is.
For Valve, players are the consumers and the product they sell is access to the developers and publishers. To that end they facilitate things via consumer facing features that better facilitate this.
For Epic, though, the publishers and developers are the customers. This is why all their strategy was targeted at them, lower cuts and all. The players are a resource they want to give access to but they fail to understand cultivating it. They tried brute forcing it with exclusives and free games but lacked even basic player friendly features and to this day are way behind. Their concern is, as demonstrated here, about how these things affect the developer.
Valve’s premise is based in the idea that customers want to know and it costs them nothing. Epic’s is that their customers want to hide it. It’s ‘unfair’ to their customers. Meanwhile, Valve goes after price parity cus it’s ‘unfair’ to THEIR customers.
Once you figure out how a company is oriented this way their behavior makes sense, stripped of moral pretenses.
ele me pediu um nude, mandei um vídeo de todos os chapéus de palha dizendo que o luffy vai ser o rei dos piratas, e ele me bloqueou, dai eu percebi, ele queria um nude do meu corpo e eu, bobo, mandei um da minha alma
"why doesn't Valve just subsidize the Steam machine"
because in their position, that's a direct violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Using the profits from their monopoly position in one sector to vertically integrate or expand into other business lines is illegal
I spent years turning a silly animation idea into a full game.
Now, you can literally play as a Spinosaurus parrying giant bosses with a colossal greatsword.
Dinoblade drops next month on PC!