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[Draugoth]

Sweeney is emailing Gabe Newell and Scott Lynch, and begins by outlining his problems with Apple, before telling them about the imminent launch of the Epic Games Store. This is a direct competitor to Steam and, credit where it's due, Epic put its money where Sweeney's mouth was by launching with a flat 12% platform fee. Sweeney wants Valve to respond to this, mainly because it'll strengthen Epic's hand against Apple, but he's clearly not had too many lessons in the gentle art of persuasion:

"Right now, you assholes are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30% is for the little people,"

writes Sweeney.

"We're all in for a prolonged battle if Apple tries to keep their monopoly and 30% by cutting backroom deals with big publishers to keep them quiet. Why not give ALL developers a better deal? What better way is there to convince Apple quickly that their model is now totally untenable?"

The next day Valve's Scott Lynch simply replies: "You mad bro?"

via PCGamer

 

[violence]

I sure hope that’s true. I don’t want them liking each other.

 

[Elbereth]

 

[Nvzman]

Calling Valve "you assholes" when they are probably the most consumer-friendly software outlet in the tech industry is some grade A moronic bullshit.
Sweeney, the only people using Epic Games are either using it for free games or Fortnite. Nobody wants or likes your shitty storefront. Fuck off.

 

[tusharngf]

how much GOG charge per game?

 

[TVexperto]

Calling Valve "you assholes" when they are probably the most consumer-friendly software outlet in the tech industry is some grade A moronic bullshit.
Sweeney, the only people using Epic Games are either using it for free games or Fortnite. Nobody wants or likes your shitty storefront. Fuck off.

consumer friendly does not mean developer friendly

 

[Embearded]

Sweeney is that chess player with a fantastic strategy in mind to obliterate the opponent, but this strategy is totally based on a specific move the opponent has to do and never does, so Sweeney is mad at them.

Please, change your charging policy for absolutely no other reason than make my master plan move forward.

 

[crackajack]

While I agree that big companies should not get a better deal than Jo Schmo publishing from his mom's basement, and 30% is anyway an arbitrary number, telling your competitor how to do business is just moronic.
Be the better, cheaper whatever store. All the freebies still did not achieve consumers switching in droves, so something is more wrong at his own store than with Valve's.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I launch Epic free games through Steam so the DS5 controllers will work.
Free games are nice but it would be nice to see something other than a store page and a buy button on Epics little (and I mean little) program.

 

[Saber]

Regardless if a company is consumer/dev friendly or not, I don't think one should start a business conversation with "you assholes". Unless it didn't mean to be one.

 

[phant0m]

Calling Valve "you assholes" when they are probably the most consumer-friendly software outlet in the tech industry is some grade A moronic bullshit.
Sweeney, the only people using Epic Games are either using it for free games or Fortnite. Nobody wants or likes your shitty storefront. Fuck off.

Exactly why I’m taking Tim Apple > Tim Epic in the legal platform battles.

Apple absolutely can and should cut their App Store %, but fucking Epic acts like they have a constitutional right to open up their own shop on somebody else’s property because they don’t like the overhead costs.

Get fucked.

 

[Pakoe]

Absolute chad

 

[Nvzman]

consumer friendly does not mean developer friendly

If Steam was so hostile to developers, I wonder why Origin/EA Play, Uplay, the Microsoft Store, or even Epic Games never took off?
Oh wait, maybe Sweeny is completely full of shit and it's not hostile in the slightest, 30% makes sense given how much work Steam puts into its UI and software. From the controller support, VR support, and Linux compatibility work it's very obvious whatever money Valve is getting from the 30% is being put to effective use.
Meanwhile, what the hell has Epic Games done since the store first opened years ago? Last I can recall, they added an "add to cart" button and that's it.

 

[Complistic]

Valve's the best

 

[Snake29]

 

[Chuck Berry]

Based Valve is based

 

[Comandr]

I bet Gabe and Scott had a nice little laugh talking about sending that reply, imagining Tim’s head fucking exploding reading it. Sweeney is such a slimy fuck. He looks like it too. The personification of a scheming little rat.

 

[Gudji]

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

I love a good juvenile trolling. Godspeed.

 

[LordCBH]

I love Gabe’s level of don’t give a fuck lol

Edit: Valves level of don’t give a fuck in general too

 

[Randall365]

Personally, I like Valve being for the gamers rather than the developers. If anything, there is too much dross on Steam - it could do with thinning out a bit, not encouraging more indie developers to dump their trash on it by lowering fees.

There was an indie developer moaning the other day that Steam filled their front page with all the Command and Conquer games being stealth dropped so you couldn't see their nonsense.

It's Command and Conquer FFS - it it's being put out there on a discount, gamers want to know about it!

 

[winjer]

That really shows how much of a idiot Sweeney truly is.
Instead of finding allies, he just insults everyone that doesn't do what he wants them to do.

 

[SoloCamo]

Won't ever buy from Epic anyways. They not only killed any new Unreal Tournament, they flat out removed ALL of the games from being purchasable in any storefront. To think they killed off what got them started in the first place and crapped on it's grave. I log in just to get free games to spite them. Hell I'll buy the same game on steam too just to give Valve the money instead.

 

[Topher]

CEO email fights?

Second round should be a cage match. My money is on Lord Gaben

 

[ssringo]

Gabe and Scott upon reading that email

 

[Ulysses 31]

 

[kikkis]

Egs could be alternative if they focused on developing its feature set, but sweeney just wants pie for himself through government regulations.

 

[poppabk]

It always surprises me that business involving 100's of millions if not billions of dollars is done with less care and thought than the average Neogaf post.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

when they are probably the most consumer-friendly software outlet in the tech industry is some grade A moronic bullshit.

What’s moronic bullshit is thinking Valve are the most consumer friendly software outlet in the tech industry

 

[SmokedMeat]

consumer friendly does not mean developer friendly

Developers don’t give two shits about you.

 

[BennyBlanco]

You mad bro?

 

[Holammer]

Sweeney needs a publisher vetting everything he writes. Same goes for Elon Musk.

 

[Sonik]

Tim Sweeney is right that the 30% tax is absolutely ridiculous given what these services offer which is not much. Having said that I'd rather have that with a PC gaming industry controlled by Valve than 12% and Epic that neither believes that gamers should have a choice on what they're consuming or is willing to create features that give them opportunities to make informed choices, not to mention it has an uncertain future and could easily fuck this up if they start an IPO and completely ruin the company because as we all know publicly traded companies are cancer

 

[Guilty_AI]

What's interesting about this exchange is that it shows the Epic's issues with the cut were much more about Apple than Steam.

They wanted Valve onboard with them to make a front against Apple, but when they refused he went on the anti-steam evil 30% cut spree we all saw. Does show the pettiness involved.

 

[Zathalus]

What’s moronic bullshit is thinking Valve are the most consumer friendly software outlet in the tech industry

Who is better? GOG? I assume we are just talking about digital storefronts here.

 

[kiphalfton]

Isn't this collusion?

 

[Puscifer]

Calling Valve "you assholes" when they are probably the most consumer-friendly software outlet in the tech industry is some grade A moronic bullshit.
Sweeney, the only people using Epic Games are either using it for free games or Fortnite. Nobody wants or likes your shitty storefront. Fuck off.

Just a reminder that valve literally made drm attractive to the point people moaned at one point if a game didn't use steamworks. Like c'mon, what other company managed to do that?

 

[Deerock71]

 

[Puscifer]

I launch Epic free games through Steam so the DS5 controllers will work.
Free games are nice but it would be nice to see something other than a store page and a buy button on Epics little (and I mean little) program.

Alan Wake 2 was my only purchase and that's cause of their crazy coupons making it 25 Dollars 2 months after it came out

 

[Interfectum]

consumer friendly does not mean developer friendly

Developers seem pretty happy with Valve... even ones that started their own stores have come back.

BG3, Palworld, Helldivers 2, etc developers have to be over the moon with the success Steam has brought them.

 

[skit_data]

Lol, nothing really smart or clever with the reply considering the subject matter but I can't help not to appreciate it.

 

[hemo memo]

consumer friendly does not mean developer friendly

Why do I as a consumer care? They are good to me.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Who is better? GOG? I assume we are just talking about digital storefronts here.

The tech industry is pretty big

When I think of great companies in that space, none of them are glorified walled garden digital storefront beneficiaries that merely take a transactional cut. At least Apple also makes great physical products with great software

Steam could go away tomorrow and the industry would be just fine on some other platform

 

[The Cockatrice]

 

[Drew1440]

Gabe looks to have lost a bit of weight, good for him.

 

[proandrad]

Doesn’t Gabe know business are suppose to fuck the customers and not other businesses. Based Valve.

 

[Midn1ght]

The tech industry is pretty big

When I think of great companies in that space, none of them are glorified walled garden digital storefront beneficiaries that merely take a transactional cut. At least Apple also makes great physical products with great software

Steam could go away tomorrow and the industry would be just fine on some other platform

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Tim Sweeney is a massively unlikeable squinty faced fucking idiot anyway. Whenever anybody says the phrase 'keyboard warrior', I immediately think of him.

 

[Nvzman]

What’s moronic bullshit is thinking Valve are the most consumer friendly software outlet in the tech industry

Hmm, I don't recall any other software outlet:
- Openly supporting Linux to the point of not only developing native Linux titles, but also the most comprehensive, seamless, and functional wrapper to play Windows games (Proton)
- Constantly running fire sales and having such an established key system in conjunction with sites like G2A
- Constantly improving offline play so that the DRM remains uninvasive if Valve has any control over it
- Supporting universally every controller you can plug into a PC (and even fixing extremely niche bugs for users using unorthodox PC controllers like GameCube or Joycons)
- Having all of these capabilities apply to games you don't even have through Steam. For free.
- Having extensive mod support through workshop, which is so much easier than manually configuring mods
- Refund policy that's very generous
- Entire VR mode built around the storefront that is still continually updated

Can you please name any other software that does this?
I like GOG for DRM-free software but it's as basic as it gets.

 

[BennyBlanco]

The tech industry is pretty big

When I think of great companies in that space, none of them are glorified walled garden digital storefront beneficiaries that merely take a transactional cut. At least Apple also makes great physical products with great software

Steam could go away tomorrow and the industry would be just fine on some other platform

Bro really just brough up APPLE as an example of a consumer friendly tech company.

valve makes software and hardware as well. Perhaps youve heard of CS2 and DOTA? Steam deck?