That is totally true, I am actually tired of this conversation but I will close with saying, Right now Steam is good, wasn't always like that, Epic isn't good, that can change, and I hope it does, Steam needs to lower there profit share, and Epic need to stop paying developers to leave steam, to join there platform, There is pros and cons to both platforms, I just have an issue with one platform paying the developers to release on their platform, they will get the market share by using those millions of dollars and making a launcher as good, if not better than steam.

Any Stardock games on Impulse you would still have.

Lol I though back in 2010 Impulse was your ( Stardock ) Launcher , silly me ..

I am stil no Fan of Tencent ( the Company behind Epic Games ) however I like Galciv to much to NOT support your Work so I jumped over my Shadow and bought it ( IV ) on Epic 

Time to rework my Fleet ( again ) 

What Steam feature do you think would benefit GalCiv IV?  I mean, seriously, what exactly prevents you from buying games on one store versus another?  GalCiv IV is going to do its own mod thing so it's not as if it's going to be using Steam workshop or something.

I like Steam a lot.  But it does take 30% of our revenue which is an awful lot.  It's not as if people are "discovering" our games on there which was the big benefit back in the day. Steam now releases dozens of games per day.  New releases get buried.  

I could easily make the case that GalCiv IV may never be added to Steam purely for economic reasons.  GalCiv fans and people into 4X will know about GalCiv and frankly, anyone who would try to strong arm me to put my game on some platform without a really really good reason is not someone I want playing my games.   And "because I want my games in a single launcher" is not persuasive.

Like I said, I like Steam.  I prefer it to Epic as a store UX and its general maturity as a gamer.  I am also a pretty big Valve fan in general.  But the 30% cut thing without the benefit of discovery is a problem (go check out the Endless Space 2 page and look at the "other games like this" -- no Distant Worlds, no GalCiv III, but instead we see Heartless Iron, Troy, Middle Earth: SoW).  If you're paying Steam millions of dollars a year in commissions, you'd expect this sort of thing to be nailed by now.

so much dialogue.  I said something.

I dont want another Steam on my desktop.
I have a GoG account, and I hate GoG Galaxy. I Use GoG for no fuss install executables. It started to not be this thing for
newer games and I stopped buying there. For example: BattleTech RPG only got incremental updates on GoG Galaxy, I got
an untimely convoluted mess of executable downloads by not using GoG Galaxy... goodbye.

It's like you're asking an MS-Office user to install WordPerfect or something and use it some of the time instead.

Steam adds value to me as a customer sometimes.

For example, the newest Master of Orion is pretty trash without even the basic bug fix mod. The user community and mod repository is integrated. No fuss, no hassle, everything at your finger tips. Hypothetically, if I bought that on Epic I would have had a very bad time.

Here's something else to think about.
Imagine my pre-order of Mechwarrior 5 wasn't an epic exclusive and it lived on Steam. I'd probably buy the expansion. Does that expansion revenue outweigh the cash that Epic threw at the developer?

I know I am not alone in my ways on all of this. Heck, I even tried Epic once which is more than alot of people.

I'm pretty much a Steam guy, with a bunch of old games on GOG, but I think Brad's note about not using Steamworks for GalCiv IV just convinced me to go ahead and buy the game now from Epic instead of waiting.  

The more I think about it, the idea of Epic charging Stardock only 10% vs. 30% on Steam, is really a more compelling reason to buy now.  I've been playing Stardock games for over 16 years and am a huge fan.  One thing has always seemed to be a constant with the way Brad runs the company, he funds the gaming side of the business way beyond it's contribution.  Games are his passion.  So if using Epic puts more $ in the kitty, I'm confident that Brad will plow a good peice of that back into the gaming development.  That's pretty much a win/win for anyone who likes the games Stardock puts out. 

They are owned by Tencent and they are out to monopolize the PC market in their favor.

They are not Robin Hooding for gamers and making the market fair. Steam's % were the same as Gamestop/EB Games since like forever. They also do sales. Also other vendors sell Steam Keys. They made nothing exclusive. They monopolized ZERO. Allowing places like GoG and GreenManGaming to exist no problem.

Epic is a monopolizing entity. They killed Paragon because it wasn't making the millions Fortnite did, once Fortnite made money. I will not be giving a cent to those bastards.

Stardock just lost a fan.

Quoting for relevance...

Howdy all. I'm sure no one remembers me over an old potato, but I worked on Twilight of the Arnor (I did art, planet textures, etc.).  I was just reading through the forums and found this post and thought I'd toss my 2 cents into the ring.  

I'll admit I was surprised not to see GC4 listed on steam, even in alpha/beta. Personally, I think this all boils down to one thing for me... I'm a stubborn old fart now and I like everything in one place.  But you really have to consider all the points here.  Brad is right, the cross promotion with similar games sucks, and the 30% is a major PITA, trust me, I know myself as my career advanced.  

I think something to keep in mind is that it appears none of this is settled yet anyway, so keep in mind that a lot of things may end up being moot points; I guess I'm saying we shouldn't get all crotchety about things. Also, I think you have to look at things from SD's perspective and realize that, yes, pleasing the customer and making an excellent product is always on top of the list, but you can't do that and continue to grow and make new content if you don't keep the business aspect of your ventures in mind. 

SD, and Brad, I'm sure, have weighed their options considerably. It's a balancing act, exposure, advertisement, revenue, quality, etc., you have to come to a decision that best fits the situation, based on sometimes vague ideas of what will occur in regards to your product. Is availability on steam worth the cut in revenue? As Brad said, is there a tangible benefit that outweighs the known disadvantages? I don't know those answers, but if you base a decision on the best information you have at the time and have a logical plan in place then you arrive at your conclusion, inevitably. 

If the logic says that you'll reach a dedicated consumer base in enough quantity, without relying on steam, that you will attain your revenue goals (along with a great many other factors), then you have to come to the conclusion that Steam is more of a liability than a benefit. But reverse the logic, and steam may become a benefit.  It all depends on the information at hand and what you can predict (with reasonable certainty) for the future. 

Personally, I'm no fan of Epic, but I'm also aware that things are never that black and white in the real world, and that GC4 should end up where it's going to do the best for players and its creators, and if that's not steam then it's not. The question is, and I've seen it in the thread, weigh your own choices, do you like the GC franchise enough to deal with a minor inconvenience (in your point of view, and in mine)? If you do, and I personally do as well, then I can deal with the inconvenience. If you can't, then you choose the other path. There's no right or wrong, its your choice. But as a fellow dev (who is no longer associated with SD, so I'm speaking on my own here), I can say with some certainty that expressing your opinion calmly and logically is almost always appreciated, but continuing beyond that can be like beating a dead horse, at best it does nothing, at worst it grows resentment within a community, or between a community and developers (again, I speak for myself only here). 

Anyway, hi again to everyone, and anyone who has a vague recollection of me.   

I get your points, however, you keep saying Valve didn't get Steam to be dominant on merit while then going on to list several things that are of merit that Valve did. To say SteamWorks is meritless is your own "creative history", while a the same time giving one of the major examples of its merit. Valve built several backend services including their networking and matchmaking systems which was at the time wildly beneficial for developers compared to any other alternatives. They didn't "buy exclusives" in the vein that Epic does. Valve built a compelling set of services that had enough merit that developers chose to leverage them rather than build their own or pay licensing for GameSpy (or later use Reactor). Valve didn't require games be exclusive on Steam to use SteamWorks, it only required that Steam be installed.

Stardock launching Reactor a year later after developers had already spent time learning and integrating SteamWorks it seem that history would suggest was too little too late. It's not like you weren't trying to do with Reactor the same thing Valve did with SteamWorks. Stardock required games that used Reactor be sold on Impulse and, while I don't have a copy of the terms handy, I'm sure you also had a "most favored nation" clause in your contracts. You tell me why you giving away Impuls::Reactor for free in exchange for a game bing sold on Impulse didn't pan out (granted selling it to GameStop surely didn't help it) since that is what you're attributing to Valve's success with Steam; as being without merit.

Equating building tools and providing them to developers as a loss leader to buying exclusive distribution rights is disingenuous at best. The latter of which is without merit and why people dislike EGS for doing so.

EDIT:

Also regarding your economic points of using Steam for distribution:

You can manage your own store and sell direct and have 100% of the purchase price that I pay

You can choose to exclusively sell on EGS and have 0% of the purchase price that I haven't payed

You can choose to also sell on Steam and have 70% of the purchase price that I pay

Stardock required games that used Reactor be sold on Impulse and, while I don't have a copy of the terms handy, I'm sure you also had a "most favored nation" clause in your contracts. You tell me why you giving away Impuls::Reactor for free in exchange for a game bing sold on Impulse didn't pan out (granted selling it to GameStop surely didn't help it) since that is what you're attributing to Valve's success with Steam; as being without merit.

This is not true.  Impulse::Reactor did NOT have a most favored nation clause.  It did not require the Impulse store to be distributed.

Steam succeeded because of merit.  But merit is a prerequisite. 

It became an effective monopoly because it played hardball with Steamworks back at the time.   Developers didn't choose distribute the Steam store because they wanted to.  They were forced to because of Steamworks.  And Steamworks had no technical reason to require the distribution of the Steam store.

The alternative to Steamworks were expensive third-party libraries.  So in effect, Steamworks was payment in kind in exchange for distributing their store.  In addition, they blocked Impulse::Reactor games from being on Steam even though it did not require the Impulse store to be distributed.

Two specific examples:

1. Take 2 chose Steamworks (on behalf of Firaxis) over Impulse::Reactor because Valve said they would not allow an Impulse::Reactor game on Steam.  We know this because they told us.  We were deep in discussions with Take 2 in 2009/2010 on this very topic.
2. Dawn of War 2 (I think it was that one) had fully implemented Impulse::Reactor including all our hosting stuff when they switched to Steamworks for the same reason: Valve said no Impulse::Reactor games on Steam even though Impulse::Reactor did NOT require Impulse to be included.  It was just a set of DLLs.  So they actively had to tear out their integration at Valve's behest.

In short: Steamworks wasn't chosen because it was better. It wasn't. It was by any measure, substantially inferior to Impulse::Reactor and developers wanted to use Impulse::Reactor (and is still lacking features that Impulse::Reactor had that devs could make use of) and were until Valve told them that they could not put their game on Steam with it at the time. 

BTW, when Civ V did come out exclusively for Steam (and still exclusively requires Steam) it got review bombed on Amazon.com because, back then, people hated Steam. 

Now, as for Tencent, they own pieces of lots of companies including Paradox. So I'm not really sure the issue there.  

BTW, I *like* Steam. A lot.  If I have to choose between Steam and Epic, I choose Steam also for the reasons other described here.  I like how benevolent Steam has become culturally.  The people we work with at Valve have been universally pretty awesome.  Valve has a really really good culture over there.   

I am skeptical of Epic's long-term success with their store because it is a competitive landscape and Valve's employee culture is so much more in line for the needed elements to succeed.  Look at how long the Epic store took to get a cart.  It still doesn't support multiple branches.  Steam and Steamworks are objectively superior to Epic's equivalents today.

So for me, as a consumer,  it's a lot like Egghead vs. Amazon.  If I can choose, I go to Amazon because I like that storefront much better. But on the other hand, if it's only on Egghead, which is sometimes the case, I don't really mind buying it from there (Even with their skeevy RMA stuff that came out recently).

But in 2022, there are a lot of other factors to keep in mind that Steam lags behind on.  There is, imo, no excuse for Valve to be taking 30% of our revenue anymore.  My game project that took 4 years to make gets crowded out by 10 semi-porn games in a given day.  Steam reviews are an abomination of abuse.  

And at the end of the day, if someone doesn't want to buy our game on Epic, that's fine.  It's a free market.  I don't have any issue with someone waiting until it shows up on their favorite store be it Steam or GOG or MS Game Pass or whatever.

I actually very rarely use Steam anymore ... I have so many awesome games on Epic that it is my launcher of choice now!  And super stoked that Galciv4 is on it!

Those people moaning and groaning about not wanting to use multiple launchers should just use GoG Galaxy ... it combines all of your launchers into 1 place ...

I actually agree with the "grow up" comment earlier ... sick of hearing the whining and moaning ... don't buy the game if you don't think it's worth it.  I chose to buy the game because I want to support the developers, and Epic is the platform that will give them more of their dev dollars back!

So I will have to wait a year to get it on Steam? Fine, I will wait.  Most of the bugs will be removed by then and some nice DLC's will be added as well.