Steam vs. Epic store. when both list the same game for same price without any discount

[bssunilreddy]

The psychological aspect of "free" things is that - people tend to less appreciate things that come to them for free.

Case in point, Epic doing free giveaways for almost 3 years now and still not even close to Steam in terms of revenue/market share. The thing is - when you've built your audience on free things - they are less likely to purchase anything.

However, Steam did do some massive giveaways circa 2010-2015, when it was still growing. I remember getting L4D2 in 2012, Spec Ops The Line in 2013 and Sniper Elite V2 in 2014. Moreover, back then during sales (when Steam Flash sales were a thing), Steam used to hold game giveaways based on your wishlist once you crossed a certain spend limit.

Even few years back (Winter Sale 2019), Steam held a massive game giveaway (this was when the Epic Games Store had just launched and was at the height of its popularity) where if you had completed certain tasks during the sales, you had the chance to be gifted with games based on your wishlist (ranked) games. Few of my friends got Cyberpunk 2077 as preorder gifts from Steam.

Also, the last freebie coupon from Steam was during the Chinese New Year Sale in Feb 2020. Value was 120 INR off.

So, yeah, COVID changed a lot of things, but the fact is - Steam also followed the same route back in its earlier days, albeit not as generous as Epic. They realised that their platform is their main USP, so people will automatically come back doesn't matter if they give freebies or not.

Seems to be that Gabe Newell became miser these days.

It's like Steam can boast of its great history nowadays but it needs to step up the competition a bit.

Looks like you are saying about Steam is what Jio followed the same technique.

Once the end users get addicted to the product they won't go back seems to be the game of the day these days.

 

[blitzkrieg96]

The one thing that I believe any of the competitors cant beat is the thriving economy of the steam marketplace. Couple that up with the excellent friends and social management system, steam is unbeatable for the foreseable future no matter what epic does. Only way I see steam losing is if its flagships like csgo, dota and pubg die out with their economies while simultaneously steam itself stays stagnant in its offerings.

 

[AINDRASIS_GUPTA]

Seems to be that Gabe Newell became miser these days.

It's like Steam can boast of its great history nowadays but it needs to step up the competition a bit.

Looks like you are saying about Steam is what Jio followed the same technique.

Once the end users get addicted to the product they won't go back seems to be the game of the day these days.

Miser? Definitely.

However, there's no denying that Steam has pushed the PC industry forward. At a time when Epic backed out of the PC business in 2008 because of Gears, Xbox and blaming everything on piracy, Steam held its own. I have been using Steam for the past decade and the evolution of that platform has nothing sort of amazing.

And with the recent releases such as Valve Index, HL Alyx and Steam Deck, Valve is again doing what they're good at. Have seen countless console gamers (especially the handheld Nintendo crowd) trying out PC gaming because of Steam Deck. It's pretty remarkable that they've been able to create this cohesive system of both the software and hardware.

The one thing that I believe any of the competitors cant beat is the thriving economy of the steam marketplace. Couple that up with the excellent friends and social management system, steam is unbeatable for the foreseable future no matter what epic does. Only way I see steam losing is if its flagships like csgo, dota and pubg die out with their economies while simultaneously steam itself stays stagnant in its offerings.

As long as Steam stays as a private company with GabeN at its helm, it'll remain a behemoth. Not sure what will happen after GabeN steps down.
Valve will need a proper successor CEO like Tim Cook who can drive the company to even greater heights.