Steam Facing An ‘Epic’ Battle

Well, it seems that Steam’s glory days are well and truly gone. What it now has got is a battle with Epic Games’ own store to see who reigns supreme. A few years back, maybe this notion might not have existed that there would be an emergence of a challenger to the largest PC game distribution platform, or at the very least, that a new platform would make life hard for Steam so early into its existence. Yet, here we are, and it seems that Steam will be having a mighty tough time trying to fend off its rival. Steam now has a fight on its hands to defend a crown that has not been tested since it launched 15 years back, even with the presence of EA’s Origin store, Ubisoft’s U-Play or CD Projekts’ GOG.com.

Steam had been established by Valve Corporation, the studio behind legendary titles such as Counter Strike and Half-Life, in February 2003. At that time, there would be issues with games such as CS, which necessitated that they develop a system to provide automatic updates to their games, while also providing stronger anti-piracy measures. From then on, it was a smooth sailing for the platform, aided by the fact that there was no distinct competition for them. By 2017, reports suggested that the platform had ringed in money to the tune of $4 billion for its parent company Valve, and this amount is discounting the presence of downloadable content, as well as in-game purchases, which make up for another sizeable sales amount. Valve, for years, monopolized this sector; however, in 2018, out came Fortnite, and Steam had a genuine challenger.

Fortnite, the battle royale online game where players fight either in co-operative mode (4 players), or in a last man standing scenario (a la PUBG), announced itself to the world in July 2017, and from then on has went from strength to strength. With engrossing gameplay and a strong community, with its epic celebration moves, the game has transcended from just a game to a cultural phenomenon. With more than 125 million players (10% of India’s population) as its base, Epic Games finally had the monetary ammunition to take the fight to Valve. CEO Tim Sweeney has for a long time been a vocal critic of valve’s practices, primarily the share that it receives from the game developers, amounting to 30%. With the Epic Store, he challenged it by bringing down the revenue cut to just 12%, with extra incentives provided certain other conditions were met.

The fight has however, turned ugly. It started with 4A Games’ Metro: Exodus, which had its digital release scheduled through Steam, only for it to back out and become exclusive to the Epic Games store. Steam users were highly upset with this development, and review bombed the game on Steam. Another recent incident involves the release of the much anticipated Borderlands 3, which again has announced an exclusive deal with Epic’s store, once again leaving a lot of PC Gamers fuming. With Steam not regulating the content that is distributed on its platform (the isometric shooter Hatred generated a lot of negative press), Epic Games has found an opportunity to upset the Apple cart, and interesting developments lie ahead.