So basically like every semi-competitive multiplayer game that doesn't use intrusive kernel-level anti-cheat, then. There's a good reason cooperative multiplayer games gain traction easier at the moment.
That literally has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about. Overwatch doesn't have intrusive kernel-level anticheat and it isn't plagued by bots. There are many many more games that don't have the same issue without any deep rooted anticheat. There's absolutely no correlation between those 2 things.
Simply releasing one F2P game and pouring all resources into it is an awfully low bar for "consumer-friendly." Valve gave away indie games all the time before F2P was really even a thing, not to mention marketing the hell out of them at a time when nobody else was. Warframe is on Steam for a reason, after all.
Cool. Now who's supporting black market gambling to children ? Again, I can enjoy and acclaim Valve for doing some of the best stuff we've seen on PC, but they also have done some of the worst, they have been pioneers when it comes to garbage micro transactions among others and I'm not going to forget that whatever good they do. Almost everyone forgot about selling Steam keys in boxes that had a cd slot lol. Same with paid mods.
The point I was making is that Warframe basically made the same system as CSGO (you pay to open something random that you can sell to other players against a premium currency) but retracted it because it was predatory, Valve doesn't care. When it comes to monetizing games, Valve is not as bad as some, but to say it's not possible to be more pro-consumer is getting way too far. Releasing a single game and pouring resources into it has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation we're having, it's about what they did vs what they could have done.
You can't hand-wave away the features Steam provides or how much it's been improved over the years if we're talking about Valve's history of consumer-friendliness.
I'm saying they're doing the bare minimum to stay relevant and you mentioned EGS, which is just another subject. The bare minimum isn't the same for each company, since Valve relies so much on community support and on the Steam ecosystem, they do have to be pro-consumer in some sense but they try their best to not be too much, just like any other company.
Again, you wouldn't have refunds if it weren't for Europe. Same for sharing. They recently lost an antitrust lawsuit for geo-blocking in Europe. It's almost a challenge for them to break european rights.
Steam is obviously not doing the bare minimum for a PC launcher when it comes to features, but that's because the scope for EGS and Steam are so much different.
Epic's business model is getting kids to use their parents' credit card to buy V-bucks, so yeah, obviously their business model isn't the same.
I don't want to sound rude but you'll excuse me, I do find this take quite ignorant. We could replace that by Valve using the black-market targeting kids very easily. That's just the classic « only kids play Fortnite ».
I'd rather have kids paying for a battlepass that gets refunded everytime they complete it (pretty easily) than having them on virtual casinos trading virtual knifes then cry because they got scammed. That also doesn't describe how any company expect to grow.
The amount of money they have in the bank would mitigate any stupid decision they could possibly make.
Totally agree. The requirement comes from them just not wanting to start loosing money. That's what I call a requirement. A company that starts bleeding may recover but it'll never be the same, Blizzard knows that.
The Wii U era says differently
You said it, it was about hardware. The issue is that everytime they canceled a Smash or Splatoon event, they got away with it. It's like boycotting Nintendo is impossible for some.
The thing with Nintendo is that they have a very very passionate fanbase but most of their customers are people who don't know or care. So they can do anything they want to their passionnate fanbase and it'll be fine when it comes to sales. I feel like a company that is in a similar situation would be Rockstar.
I still hate the fact that SwSh had the best launch for a Pokemon game. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been possible if people who were vocal about everything around the games had canceled their preorders.
Team Fortress 2: Source 2 DMCA
