The whole idea sucks. You know what would be worse than Steam having a monopoly on PC game stores? Five different megacorps each as untrustworthy as Epic dividing the market between them, each with their own exclusive deals so that people who want access to most things need to sign up for all of them. Like with the streaming services it would only drive people back to piracy.
This is kind of a wild take on the fediverse. If Epic is a megacorp, then what is Valve? I get that fracturing the marketplace could lead to a worse outcome for consumers, but surely praying for benevolent billionaires isn’t a winning strategy.
Steam is just as much of a problem as EGS.
If Epic is a megacorp, then what is Valve?
It’s a marginally less problematic megacorp. Being stuck with three or four of them instead of the current one or two would not solve any problems and would make things substantially more annoying for their customers — both publishers and gamers. There’s currently no way for enough of them to exist in that market to provide meaningful competition. It’s the type of service where consolidation and market concentration is inevitable when they’re run the way they are now. You can’t reasonably be expected have 50 different equivalents to the Steam client on your PC; having both Steam and GOG is already a bit of a stretch.
Speaking of the fediverse though, if all the PC game stores were somehow federated such that listing your game on one automatically made it available on the others as well, and they could thus be constrained to compete fairly in a well-regulated market based on the fully interoperable services they provide, that would be a better world.
Sorry, I’m a bit too used to the average take everyone has that Steam somehow gets a pass and Epic is the peak of tyranny. Pardon that, I largely agree.
