I think you can take what Randy Pitchford says, with a pinch of salt.

I'm kinda store agnostic, except my focus is on DRM-Free.

And so the only reason I kind of like EGS, is due to all the free games they keep giving away. That said, it would have to have harmed other stores, such as GOG, and likely had little impact on Steam overall at this point.

From what I have seen, EGS are playing the long game, which is the only way to tackle the type of monopoly that Steam has. So I don't think Randy Pitchford actually gets it, if he was thinking it is supposed to be giving great dividends by now.

Gamers using Steam is a mentality thing, and that can take a huge effort to change, and won't be done quickly. It is going to take quite a while before the roll on effect, which I imagine is mostly going to be about new gamers, who won't have the same ties to Steam as older customers. At some point in the future a tipping point will be reached, if Epic stay the course.

Whether Epic stay the course though, could well be harmed, if others like Randy Pitchford also lack true grit and understanding, and jump ship.

It is all about what you get familiar using, and where most of your games are.

What will it take for someone to either avoid Steam and just play the many free games they have at Epic, or be willing to use both Epic and Steam? That really is the all important question.

If a gamer has a lot of games at Steam, which they have mostly paid money for, what incentive do they have to also use Epic? Would lots of free games be enough? Or would it take peer pressure etc? Or something of both. Dissatisfaction with Steam is unlikely to play a part, unless you want DRM-Free, but then you'd want to use GOG or ZOOM Platform etc, and not Epic.

In any case, if Epic backed out of the war now, they would lose all that investment money spent, which they were likely hoping to eventually recuperate.

On grounds of forcing the competiion out of existence, if games were sold without DRM you wouldn't need the Steam client for running your games.
So you could shop around on any gamestore that isn't a Steam key re-seller for the best deals which is now not the case for exactly the reasons you said yourself, gamers being tied to Steam for convienience.
But I suppose EGS is crying crocodile tears in this case because of their own DRM and thus are part of the problem, but their problem was that they were too late at the market in order to capitalize on the success and we would now have EGS being the big fish instead of Steam.

Anyway it came as no ones surprise that when EGS opened some years ago that they were going to have an uphill battle to counter Steam who at that time was already uber dominant.

I don't mean to be implying by the thread title and/or OP that Randy Pitchford is a good and/or trustworthy guy.

But as for his words themselves as quoted in the article, they make some interesting points, 100% regardless of whether or not he is a good and/or trustworthy guy.

In other words, this thread is about the points that Pitchford is discussing with his words, but it's not about Pitchford himself as a man.

Hate exclusivity, but I understand that It might be a good way to fight the monopolies of the market.
While its good for the company behind it in the short term, it's terrible for the clients in the same time frame.
Personally I think what he did was a marketing strategy to push EGS back then with shock value "Steam will die in 5 years", because, as explained above, and shown in the article, gave EGS a huge profit margin in the short term.

Problem is that, to maintain long term profits, your service must be more attractive to the customers and give them something that feels better than the competition. In this case, though, EGS was, and, in my opinion, still is, a weird and slow launcher, lacking features that the pc gaming community got used to with Steam for 10+ years.

As I discussed in another topic before, Steam is probably not gonna die, and this generation will not move to other store fronts so soon simply because Steam is a generational divisor for pc gaming. Many people that are, today, Steam consumers, never heard of an era where you had to buy and stack games on Floppy Disks, CDs and later DVDs. With an easy to follow reasoning, if you are born using only Steam, why would you care about DRM-Free gaming and Physical Media? You don't even have the notion of a reality without Steam as a gaming platform. That's why I say Steam is a generational divisor for gaming. It changed how people viewed gaming and how newer generations even, well, understand, games.

For another E-Store to rise above Steam's kingdom, it must be stronger, better, with on pair functionalities and most importantly, be more comfortable to use, that is, be easier in access and give consumers the feeling of convenience.
Epic Games Store launcher certainty couldn't achieve that and the only reason it got so much attention and growth it seems to me, is because of the exclusivity deals, which, again, I despise, although I do understand their usefulness fighting monopolies. Yes. It will not vanish so soon, at least and probably until another kind of gaming emerges with Web 3.0.
But, as Valve is clever and quickly made good use of VR in its launcher, for example as another kind of 'gaming', as we can see with their own game, "Half Life: Alyx", using their most awaited game sequel (albeit is not that sequel) as marketing to sell well and implement VR in their launcher, Valve/Steam will probably also be ready that happens.
Seldom we see a company use a franchise for marketing so well as Valve did with Alyx.
They're good on what they do and that can't be denied, if we quickly place the morality of DRM'd Launcher/DRM-Free aside. GOG doesn't have any hope in fighting Steam - and that's OK.
Why? Because it was never GOG's purpose. GOG can't fight Steam and should not try to.

What GOG achieved success in doing and what we, GOG users thrive for, is DRM-Free gaming.
GOG's niche is not Steam's. If GOG keep focusing on DRM-Free gaming, preservation of classic games, making good deals with companies, convincing huge companies about the importance of DRM-Free releases of their classics*, GOG will not surpass Steam, but will maintain a niche of DRM-Free gamers and possibly, raise awareness to the importance of KEEPING GAMES ALIVE for future generations to come.

*** = (and apparently specially now with Ross's "Stop destroying games" campaign - a huge opportunity for GOG to focus on this topic again more publicly with all seriousness the topic deserves as GOG is also on Europe and is the strongest fully DRM-Free focused store.)

But again... that's just my opinion.

It took Randy years to realize what anyone with half a brain already knew? Bravo...

One does not simply start competing with Steam naturally. You have to try something drastic (like the exclusivity or constant freebies), and you'll still get lambasted no matter what, simply because Steam was first and it's where most customers are already well established.

Nobody cares about "Steam exclusives", because it's the default state of things Steam doesn't have to move a finger for. But woe befall everyone who tries the same. I am absolutely convinced that even if EGS was the most customer/dev friendly store with the most features, most would still tribalistically herd towards the one thing they've been hooked up on for 15+ years now, which is Steam. They'll say otherwise and list all the (valid) things that are wrong with EGS, but I'd put money on it that even if every single thing was solved, they still wouldn't budge.

So yes, the Steam dominance is doomed to continue and most likely will only keep getting worse as years go by. Made even worse by the fact that the following generations, already including the current "Gen-Z", will pretty much know only that PC=Steam.

Similar with Youtube. There won't ever be true competition, just "alternatives".

Who the f,,k belives to Randy Pitchford ?

I need to read the article as that snippet just raises the question: how is EGS more "developer and publisher friendly" than e.g. Steam? Offering better tools and shit, or does he just mean Epic takes a smaller cut from the game sales?

And if EGS is so much better to developers and publishers than Steam, then how is EGS "shooting itself in the foot"?

I always wondered what is EGS angle, how they hope to carve a market out of Steam? To me it didn't really seem they can offer anything over Steam... except apparently giving some perks to those who use the Unreal engine for their game? (I guess that could be a similar selling point to developers and publishers as Steamworks is.)

Well, of course there was and still is Fortnite... I presume that was their main selling point for a long time, not sure how relevant it still is or have Fortnite players already moved on to spending their money on something else instead?

For me EGS has existed only for their free games. I already have quite a sizeable EGS game library... without using a cent on their store lol. Yeah it sure was nice to get e.g. GTA V for free, though. I haven't really been expecting GOG to make a "significant difference" in the market. It will always play the second or third fiddle, but to me that is quite ok, as long as it keeps its head above the water. And even if it doesn't, at least I get to keep all my GOG games. which is the whole point I buy almost all of my games here.

GOG does have its own angle and reason to exist: DRM free installers. You may argue that "very few people care about DRM-free" but apparently enough people do so that GOG is still around after more than a decade.

I guess one could also count "classic games" as another GOG selling point, but frankly I haven't considered that to be their main selling point for a very long time, and it is a drying well anyway. Hoping to make enough cash from selling some old MS-DOS or arcade coin op games... it just can't be that good a business in the long run, especially as nowadays those games are sold on other stores as well. But I am sure GOG still makes something out of releasing e.g. the Resident Evil games etc. on their store.

I read the article, became pretty determined to buy Wukong Black Myth on Epic. Also thought a bit about GoG (and the forum) figured it would hit dirt because of the DRM sentiment

Who does, anyway? This thread is about EGS not being able to do it even with all their money.

I think realistically the only store that could compete with Steam is Windows Store, by simply being the default digital store on all Windows machines, and MS using some dirty tricks to slowly nudge all its competitors, Steam and GOG included, out of its ecosystem (and that is exactly why Valve has invested so much also on Linux support, as the plan B).

But even for MS it doesn't seem to be easy to compete with Steam, but at least I occasionally hear other PC gamers talking about their "Game Pass", which apparently means they are indeed playing the Windows Store versions of some PC games, and not Steam versions.

EDIT: Googling for it, now I am unsure if "PC Game Pass" and "Microsoft Store" are in any way related, does the PC Game Pass games are in fact Microsoft Store games or how that works...? The PC Game Pass FAQ gives an impression you use a separate "XBox application" to download and play your PC Game Pass games, so is that totally separate from MS Store games then? Both still from Microsoft, right?

I have no idea how successful Galaxy 2.0 has been. The little I've used it, seems fine to me, works pretty much the same as Steam or EGS or whatever.

At least it has made it viable for GOG to release also early access games on their store, and even offer some sort of multiplayer support, and cloud saves and yes even achievements, as some people seem to care about that stuff too. :) It may well be Galaxy has allowed many potential customer to see GOG as a viable alternative to buy and play e.g. The Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk from GOG instead of Steam. If those games were offered only as offline installers on GOG, possibly many people who bought them from GOG would have demanded a refund and bought it from Steam instead (I am pretty sure they have sold much better on Steam anyway, but still).

Oh, so that same Pitchford has in the past (5 years ago) proclaimed Steam would die off in 5-10 years and stores like EGS would take its place?

I wasn't aware of such predictions, but if I had been, I would have liked to know what kind of magic mushrooms Pitchford was taking? What did he believe back then would be the thing that would make all or even most Steam users to switch to EGS over the years? As said, EGS didn't really have much to differentiate itself from Steam, so...

The Youtube comparison that someone used is good. I am sometimes surprised there actually are some other video sites as well (Dailymotion and such?), but if they can't differentiate themselves from Youtube, doing something better than Youtube, then people will just not use them that much.

TikTok is successful as it apparently can differentiate itself enough from Youtube, being more mobile-friendly and all, and now Youtube is even copycatting TikTok with its "shorts".

As someone said somewhere...

"It's not about finding the answers we want,
But about finding the right questions."

So the question is:
What is success to you?

GOG might never be as huge as Steam, and, again, that's not a problem.
As long as it profits enough to maintain its operations, grow and keep preserving games DRM-Free while also achieving the trust of good gaming companies on the market, it doesn't matter.

This is GOG's success goal, or it should be, in my opinion at least. :P

It wasn't initially their purpose, in their early years they even said in so many words that they're not competing with Steam, but they've forgotten that long ago and have been trying to compete ever since, with the obvious result...

i don't know what EGS' plan really was though. it doesn't offer anything different other than free games weekly, which only causes a loss for them.
GOG offers both classics, and (some) new games drm-free. there's a reason to use GOG over Steam but there's none to use EGS over Steam, unless you're a Fortnite addict.
Even their more dev-friendly profit cut doesn't really help because the dev team would still probably make more off of Steam purchases than EGS purchases.

Then again, there isn't much more you can do to make a digital storefront stand out from the others out there.

It's not only Fortnite, Epic bought themselves other pretty popular games including Rocket League (by Psyonix - wich was imediately pulled from Steam, and of course, goodbye Linux version) and Fall Guys. Epic got a freaking metric ton of users with that move.
And if the people I know is any indication, Rocket League is far more popular than Fortnite, played by both children and adults alike (TBF it's actually a decent and dificult game).


Edit: If Epic is not making much money, I feel the problem is the slow adoption on Eastern markets, China being by far the bigger "PC gaming Country" at the moment and where the money is.

If by "competing" you mean GOG wants many of the same games to their store that Steam gets, then I guess they are competing. The days where GOG could realistically be selling "only" games that are not available elsewhere (even on Steam) are long gone. Back in the day it used to mean selling some very old MS-DOS and Windows 95 games, but it was clear that can't be the only way to try to stay profitable.

GOG expanded to indie games and even to some AA or AAA games, so yeah with those GOG is clearly competing also with Steam because people can buy those games either from Steam or GOG or EGS or Nintendo Switch digital store... For many of those games, especially Early Access games, a client is almost a must in order to be able to offer autoupdates, multiplayer support etc. Hence Galaxy. Without it, even less people would be willing to buy e.g. early access/in dev games from GOG, or buying e.g. Cyberpunk or Baldur's Gate 3 from GOG if they had to rely solely on humungous and hard-to-update offline installers.

However, GOG is apparently not going to compete with Steam in a sense like trying to be a complete replacement for it, like with their Steamworks-equivalent of GOGworks, or whatever. GOG apparently still understands they have to have some kind of niche why many people prefer to buy from them instead of Steam, and to many that reason is the extra service that GOG offers over Steam, EGS etc.: DRM-free installers of your games, even if you decide to play the game on Galaxy due to convenience.