Epic Games' big gamble

Having mentioned Epic Games' storefront in passing in my last post, I suppose it would behoove me to elaborate a bit on my thoughts on the issue. Because I'm firmly of the opinion that Epic Games will not become any more a competitor to Steam than any of the other already-existing online storefronts: Origin, Uplay, GOG, Itch.io, etc., for several reasons.

Amazon's Twitch streamers are revolting

I mentioned yesterday, more or less in passing, that Amazon had announced that they were eliminating the ad-free Twitch streaming benefit from the basic tier of Twitch Prime, basically at the same time that Valve were confirming that they would be launching their own streaming service, Stream.tv, in the near future. It seemed like a truly bone-headed move, even at the time, but I was mainly focused on the possibility that the move would leave Twitch vulnerable to competitors in a way that it hadn't been, up until now.

What I didn't take into account was the reaction from Twitch's current user and content creator community. And, oh boy! are they ever double-plus-unhappy about this:

Compared to other online ads, Twitch ads are relatively unobtrusive. But they’re still obnoxious as hell. You tune in to watch your favourite streamer, and then the same 10-second ad plays three times in a row. Unfortunately, Twitch announced yesterday that Twitch Prime will no longer offer an ad-free viewing experience. [...] Twitch justified the decision by saying that this will “strengthen and expand that advertising opportunity for creators so they can get more support from their viewers for doing what they love.” So basically, more money for streamers.

Many streamers take issue with that stance, though, given that they were previously told that they’d still pinch pennies from Prime viewers as though those viewers had watched ads — even when they hadn’t.

“Partners don’t see any direct benefit from the Twitch Prime ad-free removal,” Justin Wong, formerly a Twitch VP of six years, said on Twitter. “There are possibly indirect benefits depending on whether viewers will subscribe to avoid ads. In other words, the ‘benefiting creators’ shtick is BS.”

Some streamers are turning off ads on their streams, while others (who don't have access to that function) are telling their viewers to ad-block. The only other online content creator I can think of who is cool with ad-blocking is Jim Sterling, whose YouTube vids are ever ad-enabled (he supports his channel via Patreon, instead); for content creators to be turning off ads and encouraging ad-blocking on their own content is almost unheard of.

I'm beginning to think that Amazon may have really stepped in it, this time.

Kotaku's article has a lot more detail - it's a little inside baseball, unless you're fascinated by the business models of Twitch streamers, but if you are it's well worth reading.

Updated Steam Play makes every game Linux compatible, paving the way for SteamOS 3.0... and that's just for starters...

Valve Software have a history of "running silent" - they'll make little or not noise, saying almost nothing publicly about what they're working on, only to pop up, seemingly out of nowhere, and make all kinds of news. Their critics (and some of their fans) often find this to be a source of frustration; Valve simply don't fit the mold of most other big players in the video game business, mainly because they're not a publicly traded company, and thus don't have to be unceasingly communicating to their investors, and potential investors. Some days, Valve's silent running mode works against them.

Today was not such a day.

From PCGamesN:

Steam Play – Valve’s name for its cross-platform initiative – is getting a major update, with built-in tools allowing you to run Windows games on Linux. [...] In the most practical terms, this means you can now download and install Windows games directly from the Steam client without any further fuss. Valve is currently checking “the entire Steam catalog” and whitelisting games that run without issue, but you can turn off those guidelines and install whatever you want, too.

[...]

In theory, this should eventually allow nearly the entire Steam catalogue to run on Linux, though it’s possible certain types of DRM and anti-cheat measures could keep that compatibility from happening. [...] Valve’s own SteamOS is built on Linux, and as we speculated when hints of this update surface last week, this could be part of a renewed push for the platform. There are rumblings around the internet about SteamOS 3.0 being on the way, even after Valve removed Steam Machines from the Steam store. At the same time, Valve reiterated its support of Linux and Vulkan for PC gaming – and this update marks a major confirmation of that support.

Combined with the Vulkan API and an industry-wide trend towards cross-platform development, the fact that Valve is about to make the entire Steam library compatible with Linux will be game-changing. Valve's Steam Machine initiative failed to launch because there were too few SteamOS-compatible games to convince people to switch operating systems, and too few people using SteamOS and Linux to make Linux game development worthwhile.

But Linux is about to become a viable gaming platform, virtually overnight, which means that game developers don't have to maintain a separate Linux version of their games anymore, and Linux gamers can play the largest single library of PC games on their own machines with no additional work required. This is great news for any gamer who had been dragging their feet about switching to Linux. Valve just made it easy.

And that's not the only news that Valve made this week.