Those points are valid, but do you really think having better UI/UX is going to win them over customers when compared to Steam? Like, Steam is such a behemoth. Hypothetical, but if I was still a kid, and my brother had his whole library on Steam, where do you think I’d end up buying most my games? I think good UI/UX is only half the battle in this kind of competition.

Maybe, but EGS is also the driving force behind Unreal Engine 5, which despite everyone hating it really is a good engine.

Valve doesn’t even lease it’s engine out to other devs. I don’t even know if they’re still developing their game engine.

So I do give props to EGS for pushing game engines forward and making them available.

You’re describing how you would compete in a normal competition, but Steam has already had a decade to lock in it’s following. The competition is/was over.

I say that as a Steam user, there’s absolutely nothing a competitor can do to convince me to start buying / keeping my games on a platform outside Steam. Steam just has it all AND that’s where all my existing games already are. No amount of UI/UX improvements will convince me. No amount of sales will convince me because Steam will have the same game. Better cuts to developers doesn’t bring in repeat customers.

Like, Steam would need to take a nosedive in quality and care and I just don’t see that happening.

The argument here is not that Steam is, in the current flawed legal American sense, a monopoly, but that it is a monopoly in the sense that it has cornered enough of the gaming market that it could do very serious harm.

Note that “they’re not currently doing harm” is not a great counterargument here. When my neighbor buys a bazooka, I won’t be satisfied by “don’t worry I’m not currently using it”.

Absolutely this. I’m glad you were able to convey it in a way people understand.

Steam is a blackhole for PC gaming/gamers from a marketing perspective. They’ve capitalized on so much of the market, that once a person buys a game on Steam they are unlikely to buy the same game and/or even future games from a different but similar platform. It is in a sense, locking the consumer in and so many consumers are locked in. Nobody competed with Steam in the PC gaming market for an eternity and it’s not Steams fault at all.

Even if Steam went to absolute shit in the next 20 odd years they’ve pretty much guaranteed that I’ll be coming back to play all the games I’ve ever bought on there. Even if EGS or GoG improves their interface to compete with Steam, I’ve no reason to buy elsewhere (though do support GoG please).

Now to pose a question: How does a competitor even compete with Steam to capture even a % of the market?

Lemme knock out the obvious: Better UI and stronger community / community tools. I think these are a given. That being said, I do think EGS is going the correct route by investing in games / unique games and locking them into their platform. Everybody like free market and availability, but to compete against the goliath that is Steams marketbase, you gotta be the only place where to get some things. It sucks, but that’s what I can’t think of a better, to the point method for anyone to capture a similar market for growth, but what do you think?

More lowkey polymarket advertisements.

Why is it the only place I see polymarket is on Lemmy screenshots?

I literally don’t know the difference.

Is iOS to Android as Windows is to Mac?

Governments should be more or less thinktanks for the Nations issues. They’re not expected to know all the answers, but collectively, they’re in a position where they have access to the people who do. Ideally, they work together to solve a Nations issues.

What is the alternative if not government?

Government should be the balancing act in response to this. Regulations enforced by Governments.

We have a finite time here with finite resources. Multiple things working against our species that could set off mass extinction at any point. If we don’t become a space-faring species we undoubtedly face extinction. It is a ticking clock.

No, it’s a real possibility.

Our species does not have a Moon base, we have barely touched Space in comparison to what we would need to do to thrive. There’s a real possibility that our resources here will run out before we have a chance to become a space-faring race. We may be stuck here with finite resources and finite time.

Capitalism and excess currently runs world economics. It’s not just one country, multiple countries worldwide consume to excess in both resources and production. If worldwide societies continue at this rate, how long do we as a species have until a real man-made extinction level event?

It’s understandable why this is an important endeavor and why pretty much all countries and modern governments are prioritizing it (and for war ofc). LLMs and the pursuit of AI have the potential to outlast us should the worst come to pass, and it can be something we can hopefully, eventually send to space.

LLMs really is the only way we’re going to preserve our existence if we cannot realistically expand beyond our own planet and/or cannot reign in Capitalism tearing our planet apart. #TalosPrinciple

It’s just more attempts at distraction. A blitz of fake information and real information so that we don’t exactly know what they’re planning on doing. It’s both bullshit and “I said I would” at the same time. We won’t know until we know.

It practically is. There’s no reason any sane citizen with no stake would be for going to war against a peaceful ally. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

Does it matter when he can just pay the judges?