(((botnet intensifies)))

Hm, we had good b&m stores which had tons of games. When did you stop buying physical? I switched to online stores like Amazon mid 00s (others did so earlier) when physical games were definitely king.

My opinion on this would be absolutely not. Even if not a 30% cut, digital stores would need at least some money to function. One of the best values they provide is storing our games for us, so that we don't accidentally lose our games which could happen due to accidents, computer crashes, bad luck..etc.. if we were to store them on our own.

And in order to actually provide nice things for you, the buyer, like personalized customer support, tons of features and other useful items/functions, more money is required to keep those things alive. A race to the bottom will kill stores. And the ones to survive will highly be the least customer-friendly, as by cutting features/corners they can keep expenses low. I don't know could anyone say that this sort of competition is good for the consumer. Currently, nobody is offering anything better than both Steam and GOG.

Somewhere early 2000's when digital gaming took off. Amazon wasn't really huge here. Amazon.co.uk started back then as well i think but I think it had delivery costs. Either way, I was so done with (noisy) physical media and the tons of wasted space from the spindles/folders/boxes that came with it at the time that i was glad to buy anything i could digitally.

I'm sure being in the Netherlands didn't help much with the offerings. We're too small for 'offer everything' stores. At least at the time.

How did digital gaming take off in the early 00s? I don't know anyone that ever bought a proper digital game this early (or even in the mid 00s). Depends on where you live, I guess. I had all the space in the world for BIG, JUICY euroboxes as well as some burned ones *cough*

Well, you are Swamp Germans after all. They probably expected you to go to proper stores :P

Lars Doucet was so prophetic.

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LarsDoucet/20180119/313283/So_You_Want_To_Compete_With_Steam.php

Note: NSFW games won't be allowed on Discord.
https://twitter.com/discordapp/status/1073629345069973504
Leisure Suit Larry, Hunniepop, and the like will have to stick to GoG and such.

Hmmm. Discord is working on several of Lars' thoughts...

1) Straight up bribe developers to post their games
90% isn't bad... it's really high. This will attract a lot of people both good and bad. Will discord have quality control for posted games or will it be a trash fire waiting to start?

2) Posting games must be zero-friction
Can't vouch for this until it comes out. Just because it says it lets you post and update your own stuff doesn't mean it does it well. This one is "wait and see".

3) Straight up bribe players to use your system
People already use discord for a lot of stuff. Bribing isn't needed here, though may still happen as people running discord chats might use discord games as prizes.

4) Playing/buying games must be zero-friction
Another "wait and see", but it might be doable. If Discord makes it easy to use money earned via discord to buy games this would really help the low publisher split. After all, it is more money staying in Discord's pocket.

Just my two cents on things.

What happened in like th last year to prompt all these launcher/stores to pop up??
I was on the fence about maybe getting an Epic account just for the freebies, but at this point i'm tired and too lazy to check new sites all the time.
The only other site i might still get in on is itch.io.

But for now i'll just hunker down here. Also keeps me wallet from being punished more.

Things are getting more specialized + gamers are slowly forgetting how to play games without launchers (+ "games as a service" only really works with launchers/stores). Big publishers never really needed Steam and the sheer amount of games on Steam allowed itch.io to create a place solely for indies where they get way more exposure. Additionally, there is money to be made.

itch was mentioned: has a 100/0 (or whatever developer wants to) split, AND has the best tools for deployment available. Simply another few percents aren't enough when that's out there.

But yes, Discord (and Epic) are bribing developers. There are few other explanations for their exclusives.

Funny isn't it, If all the different intrusive, system damaging drm wasn't enough to push people to the pirate sites, they now come up with innumerate individual web stores, all reaping the data of their users, making huge amounts of money monopolising games, selling user data, enforcing the various monetisations (like microtransactions).

I'm not sure if this is a good trend for consumers really...

I can't see it actually bringing prices down, so it means more money for Devs, which is good I suppose as they can make more games... But not really much of a benefit for customers.

The downsides have already been mentioned, fragmentation (and while the competition aspect is good, things like store exclusives are less good), poorer support, less security (game stores might close and take your games with them)...

Hopefully it might end up a positive change for consumers but it's certainly not guaranteed.

Well, Tencent's relationship with China wasn't enough to save its flagship Epic game from being banned. Of course Tencent could just ignore the government but that's a good way to kill your company - literally, as in kicking your door down and shooting you in the head cause that's just how the Chinese government rolls (over you with a tank).

With all these new major players cropping up, I think GOG is going to have to do something drastic in order not to get pushed out of the market and go out of business within the next 5 years.

Most especially, IMO GOG is finally going to have to fix its barren multiplayer population which always has & currently still does make GOG an unviable platform for multiplayer games.

IMO the best thing for GOG to do would be for them to cut a deal with Steam or Epic or Discord (depending on big the latter two become) that lets GOG games piggyback off of their multiplayer services, in order finally to bring viable Crossplay to GOG.

On the other hand, I'm not sure how GOG will survive if they continue to do nothing to fix their barren multiplayer population.