Beamer wrote on Jan 3, 2020, 18:56:
I'll address the rest, but most of your competitors aren't true competitors. Most offer a very limited selection, rather than being everything stores. Most have smaller ambitions. Even with them, Steam has what, 85% of the market, if not more?

If you're selling the same product as another storefront, that makes you a competitor. If you pull your product from Steam because you want people to buy it from your storefront instead, that makes you a competitor. Steam is the market leader because it provides the most value to customers, developers and publishers alike. However, all the other platforms that offer game downloads are still competitors. They just aren't very good ones (except for GOG whose biggest weakness is the lack of AAA support).

For some reason, EGS defenders/Steam critics (the two are basically interchangeable) think that competition can only exist when all the parties involved have equal leverage. That isn't true. Nvidia and Intel have much stronger market positions than AMD but nobody is going to argue that AMD isn't their competition.

Just like the other platforms I mentioned, EGS is a competitor. Also like those platforms, it isn't a strong competitor. Everything Epic is doing right now (giveaways, timed exclusives, $10 coupons) isn't sustainable and doesn't give customers any long-term reasons to choose EGS over Steam. Once Epic decides that EGS actually needs to be profitable, they'll have to change their strategy. Unfortunately, I don't think they have any long-term strategy. If you want to surpass Steam, you need to offer better prices, better selection and better features for customers and developers. Epic doesn't seem interested in doing any of that.

This comment was edited on Jan 5, 2020, 21:57.