I had missed this change when it happened, and I suspect that a lot of other people were also unaware that the methodology had changed. This isn't the first time that Valve have made changes to the VR section of the Survey, though; the VR Survey results are the only ones which are presented with the detailed breakdown first, and only then states the overall value, "Steam users with VR Headsets."
One of the few obvious weaknesses of Valve's Steam Deck was support for Easy Anti-Cheat titles. Epic, who make EAC, had already announced that Fortnite will not support SteamOS, apparently just to hurt Valve; Bungie, who make Destiny 2, have also refused to support the Steam Deck, although whether they're taking that stance to ingratiate themselves with Sony (who are in the process of acquiring them), or just to be dicks, is not known.
Thankfully, though, not every developer of an EAC-laden title is so short-sighted. As reported by Jason Evangelho at Forbes:
This is great news for Valve's newly-released handheld PC, because EAC really is the Achilles' heel of the thing. A quick look at ProtonDB's EAC page shows both the problem, and the progress that Valve is making here, but the more momentum that Valve can achieve by convincing developers of EAC titles to support Steam Deck, the better.
In other news, overall progress "Deck Verifying" games is also brisk:
So, I was watching the Broken Silcon podcast the other day, when Tom and Dan's conversation made its way around to the Steam Deck, and I have to say... I had to stop watching.
For the record, here's the video in question:
Here's the product that they spend ten full minutes trashing as being a waste of time, when a laptop can be had for "the same price":
Here are the actual prices of the really-real-world gaming laptops:
And this is what you'll pay for a gaming laptop that can seriously outclass the Steam Deck:
We're still waiting for full benchmarks and reviews, but so far, it looks like the $499 CAD Steam Deck can easily keep pace with $1100 CAD Lenovo (only 220% of its price), and is only clearly beaten by $2100-plus CAD of Alienware (only 420% of its price).
Tom and Dan acknowledge that they may be coming across as too negative about the Steam Deck, but only after spending ten full minutes delivering the stupidest stupidest of stupid takes that I've heard in a long time about any tech product.
Yes, you can buy a laptop for a similar price... maybe. But you won't be gaming on it:
Best Buy has one $550 CAD laptop, and one
$650 CAD model, neither of which looks like a gaming machine of any
description, and both are still more money than a Steam Deck. After that, prices double to $1120 CAD (only 224% of a Steam Deck).
It only took Epic three years of R&D to add the single most basic ecommerce feature of all to their digital store front. Mazel tov, Tim Sweeney! You did it!
the fact that the EGS finally got its long-delayed shopping cart, just days after I'd finally resigned myself to the fact that it wasn't ever going to happen;
the fact that it look Epic Games three years to get this done; or
the fact that they're shouting it to the whole world on YouTube, instead of burying it in a blog post, or something.
No, really, who at Epic thought this YouTube video was a good idea? Are really they so out of touch that they think this is some of flex? They even call this a "giant leap" for Epic Games! The shopping cart itself seems to have been a "Friday night news dump" situation, because it wasn't there on Thursday; why drop the feature in the dead of night on a weekend, only to then make a point of drawing attention to its existence?
BTW, the like:dislike ratio on that video is currently sitting at 68:400 -- that won't be visible for too much longer, though, because YouTube, so clearly what Epic should have done is hold this announcement until YouTube removed the dislike count for them, to at least avoid the public humiliation of being so brutally, publicly ratioed. Why drop the video now?
Also, the comment section of the video is amazeballs:
Seriously, though, knowing that I can finally add both free games of the week to a cart, and then "buy" them with one transaction rather than two, is one for the win column, as far as I'm concerned. All I need now is for Epic to release a Linux-native client, complete with (Valve's) Proton compatibility layer, so that I can actually run some of those free games on my Pop!_OS PC, and I'll finally be able to play some of those games that I've payed absolutely nothing for, and didn't care about enough to buy on Steam.
I still have zero intention of paying money for anything on the EGS, incidentally. With Valve releasing their own Linux-based gaming system next year, and Epic only just having barely managed to add a feature to their store that's been standard on web stores since the 1990s (seriously, the 1990s), I somehow don't think that Valve are checking their rear view for EGS.
Sleep easy, GabeN. You're still definitely winning this one.
Among all the languishing and failed VR products, Sony's PlayStation VR stands out as the closest thing VR has to a success story. Sure, Google's Cardboard VR or Samsung's Gear VR may have moved more units, but PSVR has handily outsold all integrated-display VR headsets, combined. The problem is that even those industry-leading sales numbers are far below VR's early projections; worse yet, they were entirely front-loaded, with basically nobody buying in after that first wave of early adopters.
PSVR fans kept showing up for E3, year after year, hoping for a big VR announcement from Sony, only to leave disappointed. The next-gen PS5, which will land in stores only days from today equipped with more than enough grunt for VR, does have a camera module available for sale, but it isn't PSVR-compatible; if you want to use your last-gen PSVR with the next-gen PS5, you'll need an adapter. The only thing that could speak more loudly to VR being low on the priority list for Sony would be some sort of official statement to that effect, from Sony themselves.
And now, as reported by The Washington Post, we have exactly that:
And that, as they say, is that. The most successful player in the VR game has no plans for a next play, anytime in the near-to-foreseeable future. Stick a fork in VR, folks; it's done.
VR apologists will likely look to Ryan's "at some stage"/"in the future" remarks as signs of life, but don't be fooled; that's just the corpse, twitching. Sony has to say something to assure buzzword-sensitive investors that they haven't given up on one of tech's juicier buzzwords, because admitting that VR's years-long campaign is ending in defeat could cause the share price of whoever admits it first to drop sharply, something which Sony would rather avoid.
Of all the companies doing VR business, the only one that might have been making money from VR was Sony. What we've now learned is that even Sony are not making enough money from VR for the tech to be worth any more investment.
Oh, sure, Facebook and Valve have deep enough pockets that they can probably continue to lose money on VR for a while yet, but don't expect that to propel VR into the forefront of the public consciousness; it won't, and neither will the upcoming Ready Player Two (the sequel to VR-advert/movie Ready Player One, which also didn't more the needle on VR).
It's all over save the shouting; how long the likes of Facebook and Valve will keep shouting into the VR void remains to be seen.
I guess that it's time to talk about Epic's war-of-choice against Apple.
For those who haven't been paying attention, here's the Coles Notes version. Epic Games, developers of Fortnite, deliberately breached the terms of the agreements with Apple and Google which allowed them to have Fortnite on both the iOS App Store and Google Play. Apple and Google both acted in accordance with the rules of said agreements, and removed Fortnite from both the App Store and Google Play.
This is when Epic, who very clearly wanted exactly this outcome, launched a well-prepared PR campaign against, primarily, Apple. They clearly intended to mobilize Apple-using Fortnite fans against the Cupertino company, intending to litigate their dissatisfaction with Apple's Apple Store payment terms in the court of public opinion, even as they also filed a lawsuit against Apple seeking an injunction to force their own desired payment terms on them "temporarily," clearly hoping that having those payment terms in place for the years it would take to resolve the lawsuit would essentially make it impossible for Apple to ever go back, whether Epic actually prevailed in court or not.
Apple, naturally, are having none of this. They make billions of US dollars every single year from their 30% cut of App Store transactions, and every incentive to "go to the mattresses" in defense of one of their main sources of revenue. And, as it turned out, banning Fortnite from the App Store was only one way they could express their displeasure with Epic's antics: they revoked Epic's developer license, effectively banning their Unreal Engine, and all games based on that engine, from the App Store as well.
Epic, clearly panicked by this drastic and rapid escalation of a fight that they'd clearly thought would be waged entirely on Epic's terms, filed for another injunction, asking the court to block Apple from killing the Unreal Engine dead. And at the end of yesterday, a federal court judge ruled on both injunctions. The result? Basically, it's a draw. The reasoning behind that draw, however, is quite interesting.
Have I mentioned lately just how crazy it makes me, every single I hear someone describe Microsoft's "Netflix for gaming" Game Pass subscription service as the "best deal in gaming?" Because it really, really does, and it keeps happening.
Just fucking Christ... People, it's real talk time.
For most gamers, Game Pass is not a good value.
That's not just my opinion; quite simply, it's the math. So, let's look at that math. Specifically, let's look at the average attach rate of a videogame console.
And, yes, it has been only that long since Epic Games announced the very first EGS-exclusive title: Supergiant's Hades, an early-access game that announced at the Game Awards in December of 2018, and released the same night. That was only a few months after Epic declared that Fortnite: Battle Royale for Android would be side-loadable only from their own digital distribution channel, rather than just making the game available on Google Play like every other developer with an Android app to flog.
Tim Sweeney's Epic Games would go on from there to declare themselves to be so deeply opposed, on principle, to everything about Valve Software's Steam service that they just had to launch a competing service... which offered absolutely nothing to consumers that Steam didn't, and was actually missing a whole bunch of stuff that Steam users were used to. No worries, though, because Tim Sweeney had a plan: to embrace exactly the same platform exclusivity deals that he'd once called evil, back when Microsoft and Sony were profiting from them, and not him.
The message from Epic to gamers was crystal clear: fuck you, pay me. And gamers got the message; they heard Epic loud and clear... and, en masse, gamers refused to pay.
It wasn't too long ago that I'd posted about how Ubuntu seemed well on its way to becoming the top choice distro for basically everything, including gaming. That was before Canonical shat their own bed, though, announcing that they were dropping support for the 32-bit libraries that PC gaming generally, and Steam particularly, depended on. Valve, which had been recommending Ubuntu as the preferred distro for Steam, withdrew that recommendation; and while Canonical apparently walked back their decision on those 32-bit libraries, Valve's recommendation was not restored.
And now, just a few months later, we're starting to get a good look at exactly how much damage Canonical/Ubuntu did to their own cause with PC gamers, thanks to a great post at Boiling Steam, which sums up the trend with this chart:
Having gone on at length about the problems with Epic's storefront, and with their profoundly consumer-dismissive approach to... well... everything, it's only fair to spend some time and words on the issues that Steam actually does have, which GabeN should probably attend to. Because after 16 years in service, it's fair to say that Steam's pipes have some rust and corrosion on them, and really could use a good cleaning.
Gabe! Buddy! My nearest and most excellent friend (that I've never met in person, and who doesn't know me from Adam, but whatevs don't@me)! I have some advice for you; a five-step process that will clear a up a whole bunch of that embarrassing clutter that's causing so much agita, lately. Take these ideas, and use them in all good health.
This is just baffling, even for Microsoft. I can see bringing the new Chromium/Edge browser to Windows 7; Microsoft have a significant number of large-volume license-holders to whom they're trying to sell additional years of Windows 7 support ($300 USD per PC for three years, and only if you have a volume license), so adding new functionality to the platform for them makes a certain amount of sense. But WoW players? In a year in which they're trying desperately to convert individual Windows 7 users into Windows 10 Home (or Pro) users, for Microsoft to be giving those same individual W7 users additional reasons not to switch makes no obvious sense.
Oh, and these same PC gamers, who've mostly rejected both of Microsoft's ecosystems, i.e. Windows 10 and XBox Live? Microsoft has more goodies in the bag for them, too, even if they don't play WoW.
When Epic announced that their digital storefront would be opening itself up to games from other publishers in a bid to eclipse Valve's Steam service, the general reaction from developer-friendly games media outlets was positive. People who spent a lot of time talking to developers, and none at all talking to average consumers, were convinced that Steam was desperately in need of a new competitor, one that would somehow succeed where GoG, Origin, Uplay, and even Microsoft's built-in Windows 10 storefront had not.
The assumption, one which even Epic seemed to share, was that Fortnite had given Epic a large enough base of customers that could be leveraged to take market share away from Steam, while their richer-for-developers revenue cut would necessarily pull disgruntled indie devs away from the more established platform. I have doubts about both points, of course, but it turns out that we're didn't need to wait all that long for the loyalty of Epic's customer base to be tested. The test has come in the form of a competing game: Apex Legends, which combines Battle Royale and Hero Shooter gameplay into a package that's become the top game on Twitch, dethroning Epic's Fortnite less than a week after its launch.
This is the customer base on whose loyalty the success of Epic's storefront depends, already abandoning Epic in favour of a newer, shinier game that is every bit as finished and polished as Fortnite, but with the more conventional look and gameplay of the Titanfall series. These are the customers that are supposed to abandon Steam, which they've been happily using for years, and buy into yet another ecosystem, even though that ecosystem offers nothing by way of features that are absent or inadequate on the platform they already use.
I tripped over this video on YouTube, and couldn't help but think of the recent Epic/Valve drama. The video, by Dan Olson a.k.a. Folding Ideas, was all about aspiring YouTube competitor VidMe, but made some pretty salient points about how a young, growing platform needs small content creators in order to add content and value to their platform, but that the interests of those small content creators diverge from the interests of the platform owners as the platform's popularity grows.
I couldn't help but think of Epic Games' pitch to indie developers, with revolves entirely around giving them a bigger cut of revenue, but proposes nothing by way of structural codification of those developers' actual needs vis-Ã -vis better long-term discoverability and promotion of their games. Epic Games are doing for video games exactly what VidMe was attempting in the online video hosting space: it's effectively providing a clone of Steam with no additional functional or structural improvements beyond, effectively, a tip jar.
The fact that Epic are already struggling with customer service, refunds, and other basic functions that any online competitor to a well-established digital storefront is expected to have in place at launch is...a bad sign, frankly. To paraphrase Olson's video, the most charitable reading is that Epic are unprepared, which is already not a good look.
Less charitably, it makes Epic look like grifters, deliberately exploiting vulnerable indie developers to grow their own market presence, all the while knowing full well that the promises of better discoverability and long-term partnership are hollow, since Epic's storefront isn't going to be any more beholden to any single indie developer than Valve's is, or Nintendo's.
Steam has a very loyal customer base, who will not be happy if strong-armed into buying into any other ecosystem. Nobody uses Microsoft's storefront, either, remember.
Individual indie games, no matter how good, are simply not big enough to act as system-sellers. Yes, having indie games on their platforms did wonders for Steam (and later for the PS4 and eventually Nintendo Switch; even Microsoft's XBox division belated came around to the need for them) but no one indie title or indie developer was responsible for that, and none of them are individually essential to any platform's success.
The sole possible exception to point #2 would, of course, be Fortnite... which launched on Steam, and arguably owes its success to Steam's existence. It's also the only reason that Epic Games have a hundred million or so customers with Epic accounts, customers who don't want anything from Epic except more Fortnite.
The fact that Fortnite players are likely not looking to Epic to satisfy their hunger for varied, non-Fortnite gaming experiences, something which Fortnite can't offer many of anyway, was a clear weakness that Epic needed to address, so it's no surprise that they were actively trying to lure other developers to their storefront, up to and including "poaching" them away from Steam after they'd already announced planned Steam launches. None of those early indie exclusives had moved over to Epic after already selling their product on Steam, but it really was the obvious next move.
It should be no surprise that Epic found some greedy indie dev willing to screw over their Steam customers in an ill-advised "hardball" power play, but I will admit to being slightly surprised that the makers of Metro:Exodus volunteered to be exactly this kind of test case so soon. The problem? Up until five minutes ago, the game was being advertised as a Steam launch, and has been available for pre-order on Steam.
Oh, and the move to Epic came with a $10 price drop, which wasn't immediately offered to customers who'd already bought the game on Steam.
And then there's the fact that the makers of Metro:Exodus are still advertising the game and its DLC on Steam, even though neither the game nor its DLC can be installed from Steam.
Screwed-over Steam consumers are, naturally enough, pissed, and threatening to boycott the game's launch entirely... which, in a world where The Pirate Bay exists, means that they're planning to play the game anyway, but just not pay for it, because fuck Epic and fuck the makers of Metro:Exodus for this egregiously anti-consumer bit of bullshit. All of which has the makers of Metro:Exodus threatening to boycott PC gaming entirely in the future... because that's going to help, isn't it?
Once again, MacOS (a.k.a. OS X) and Linux were the big gainers, with MacOS 10.14 and Ubuntu 18.10 both showing strong results; the newbie-friendly Linux Mint, a distro that doesn't even register among OS users in the broader marketplace, appears to have gained a significant share among Steam users. Weirdly, only Windows 7's 64-bit version lost Steam users, with Win7's 32-bit version gaining ground alongside all other Windows versions except XP; Win7 64-bit's decline was enough to put Windows in the red overall, though, with a 0.58% overall drop which is only slightly slower than the decline seen in the overall OS market.
In isolation, this sort of behaviour among Steam users could be interpreted as resulting from Valve's Steam Play/Proton initiative, but given that Windows' decline among Steam users is actually less than that seen in the larger OS market, it's difficult to describe this as anything other than just a part of the overall trend, with Windows-dependent PC gamers actually lagging slightly behind everyone else. Whether Steam Play/Proton changes those users' decision-making calculus in the coming months is, of course, anyone's guess. It does seem to be making it somewhat easier for gamers to join the shift away from Windows, though, meaning that Microsoft shouldn't be counting too hard on PC gamers to be a backstop against the overall loss of Windows users.
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.
Do you remember the Universal Windows Platform? The new paradigm for Windows software distribution, which Microsoft has been pushing since Windows 8, when it was called Metro, and which Windows users have been resoundingly rejecting ever since?
Metro, and Windows 8 with it, was so unpopular that Microsoft was forced to allow OEMs to install Windows 7 instead on machines whose purchasers were paying for Windows 8 licenses. Valve's Gabe Newell saw Microsoft's attempt to seize control over software distribution as so profoundly anti-competitive, and anti-consumer, that it birthed the Steam Machine initiative, whose SteamOS has since given rise to Steam Play/Proton, which is well on its way to making Windows irrelevant for gaming. And UWP-exclusive titles are virtually non-existent, since they can only be installed via Microsoft's storefront of desolation, while basically the entire PC gaming industry distributes their games through Steam.
That is the legacy of UWP for Microsoft: repeated failures, alienated consumers, and a well-deserved reputation for monopolistic bullshit. Well, apparently Microsoft still see UWP as their key to global domination, because it's baaaack!!!
As one of the relatively few people who actually owns a Steam Link, it's with a certain sadness that I learned that the pseudo-console device has been discontinued by Valve. As reported by arstechnica:
It remains to be seen whether Valve will continue to sell the Steam Controller, after both Steam Machines and Steam Link failed to make an impact on the market; the Controller is currently 30% off, which might just be a Black Friday special, or might be the start of a sell-off of that inventory, as well.
The fact that Valve is, in fact, still working hard on Linux gaming serves to ease some of the sting from this news, but even so... I can't help but wish that things had gone differently. Farewell, Steam Link. We hardly knew ye, and you're gone too soon.
Lest we forget, Valve Software isn't only working on separating their
primary business, the Steam storefront, from Microsoft's Windows OS.
They're also devoting significant resources to VR technology, an R&D
spent which apparently includes Valve-branded VR hardware, likely
iterating on HTC's Vive designs, and supporting software, including a
sequel prequel to Half-Life 2.
