Funny how quickly dismissed is the one that brings to your attention the chinese problem... Better keep your eyes shut under your pillow, right?

But you're right on one point: China doesn't want to go at war... globally. They don't even need to. Just, as someone mentioned, China holds billions and billions of dollars in shares and obligations on the US market. If one day, China really wants the demise of the USA, they just have to withdraw that money all at once. And boom! no more US economy. Which would actually start a war, military speaking, but for the US.

As for Epic storefront, I fail to see how different it will be from Humble store, so I'm not interested (and I'm wary of Tencent)

but we arent talking about you

gogs irrelevant these days, fail to see the reason for them on your argument.
Competitions always good for customers. Even having several behemoths fighting each others thats superior to having just a single fat complacent behemoth like now

That reality might have been true a few years ago. that aint true these days. These "realities" arent set on stone.

The indie darlings dont count. And yes, those getting that notsoinsignificant amount are the indie darlings. they dont represent indies as whole. theres many tiers of indies. For every indie darling hit, every johathan blow, or camposanto, theres hundreds of bedroom devs that will have to keep their dayjobs.

Being or steam or having zero revenue aint an optimal or meaningful option. And thats the outcome for indies, either on steam, or wait tables. Being "better than nothing" shouldnt be the bar. Steam these days aint much diferent to the appstore or playstore when it comes to revenue for 99% devs.

Funny you add visibitlity, as steam used to have thse "visibility rounds" available to every dev, by which they could use them after their game was released, and well out of the main page, to get new attention to it. It used to be that every round put back their game to the mainstore for several days, getting new trafic and potential customers. Every round got huge trafic spikes to the game's store page.Two years ago, they changed the rounds to be visible only to customers that had the game on their wishlist, crippling their use, as they were now only useful to games with huge wishlists. Visibility for games outside their banner "NEW GAME NOW" these days negligeble.

yes i did. For the past two years after PUBG came out, more than 50% of steams playerbase are asian PUBG players who only play PUBG are only on steam due to PUBG being steam only. used to be even higher % until fortnite took a huge chunk of that playersbase.

Most of those players will only play those games and thats it. Do agree with that you mentioned about the top most played games. They havent changed in years. The 99% are playing the exact games and have been for close to five years now. And those games are more like a lifestyle to those players, much like fortnite, whuch i bet most of their players stick to fortnite only. Steam's fates to become a graveyard of Valve games, indie games without marketing budgets, asset flips, youtuber bait, simulator games, and shoddy shovelware from russian devs.

They are trying to design new methods to play games diferently, unlike the boring "cram a video card on a plastic case" strategy which the competitors have been doing. And should i add, the competitors have copied them more than a few times.

I don't know. Steam recently diminished it's revenue cut for big publishers. And I think that was exactly done because Valve fears competition from other big publishers storefronts. That's why I imagine if competitors will try to make their stores more attractive, it will motivate Valve to stopp sitting on it's ass and actually improve Steam.

I honestly hope that these video game companies do not think that competition is applicable to all the different variety of markets all around the world, at least not to their digital game distribution platforms market. I know that competition does prevent big companies such as Valve in this case from taking advantage over its consumers, but they should also realise that the competition in the gaming industry is encouraged by the release of new innovative games, not new storefronts. If anything else, it is the games that need to develop and grow in number and not the amount of available new storefronts, each with its own DRM and differentiated with their own distinctive features that will surely become insignificant one day. The reason being is because unlike games where each one is classified into different genres and separated by their unique play styles, storefronts are just, storefronts. The room for gaming distribution platforms such as Steam, GOG Galaxy, etc. to grow the same way as their video games counterparts was never a big one to begin with. As these video game companies (Valve, Bethesda, GOG, etc.) strive and come up with newer and newer unique selling points to overthrow their competitors, in the next few years, those USPs will mean nothing as their competitors will now have those features also. (this is talking about their storefronts)

I just believe that any problems that persist in the already existing storefronts should be dealt with internally by their respective companies, since resorting to the creation of new storefronts is actually piquing some or perhaps many of us gamers in the gaming industry. At least that's what I think.

Although competition is always good for customers, I can't really say I'm happy about PC games being spread out across many clients.

Unreal Tournament is not being 'actively developed'

Epic has confirmed that the 'new' Unreal Tournament has fallen victim to Fortnite and its upcoming Steam competitor.

https://www.pcgamer.com/unreal-tournament-is-not-being-actively-developed

"We’ve recently worked with GOG on making classic Epic Games titles available and we’re planning to bring more of them to the store in their original glory."

Will this come with a mandatory client? I know they said they will not require DRM, but requiring a proprietary client would be a dealbreaker for me too.

But if they offer truly DRM-free games that I can download directly through the browser or a downloader of my choice, then I'll check that store out.

https://www.pcgamer.com/amp/epic-games-is-starting-a-store-to-rival-steam/

"One way Epic plans to seduce players from other platforms is by throwing free stuff at them. The store will feature one free game every fortnight throughout 2019, funded by Epic."

Valve reacted to this by lowering its revenue quota.. I wonder if Gog will have (and will be able) to adapt too.

Not sure why this is being made into such a HUGE DEAL (tm). Epic, like Valve, doesn't really seem to make games much anymore. They've not done anything other than Fortnite in a VERY long time, and all signs point to that continuing for the long haul. When Steam started up, it was on the back of Half-Life 2, and Valve made a few other games before finally getting fat and happy off Steam's self-perpetuating success.

Epic needs something that's going to draw eyeballs to their service if they want it to be a player.

Yeah, another fucking digital delivery, DRM-ridden service no one asked for. Give me my DVD-based (or better still BD-based) games back and go fuck yourselves with your on-line "stores".

I mean, it was obvious for a looooong time that they just abandoned the new UT. The series that put Epic on the map is left in the dust and they don't care at all.

Time for me to replay Unreal 1.

As long as they sell DRM free games I would say that a bit more competition is actually a good thing.

GoG has another option though, they can keep their cut the same and raise prices. We pay a premium for some of the DRM-free games here already. Some of the games here are significantly more expensive than they are elsewhere. I see it being very possible that prices go up here to cover the difference cause I think a lot of publishers feel they can soak the customers here cause it's a niche market.

While CDP will keep requiring them to cover the costs of GWENT while they take the profits, seems unlikely.

... Then again, would be the excuse they've been waiting for to eliminate the fair price package.