> And they've done far more for gaming over the past decade than Valve, which hasn't been able to successfully innovate in the last two
Uhm, what?
Epic has delivered Unreal Engine 4 – good for them. They've also released a successful battle royale, piggybacking off of other developers' success and rolled out a crappy store/launcher, a straight downgrade from every single competitor, that they actively force on people by literally buying their portfolio. Nobody would ever install EGS if the monopolist didn't bully their way onto the market.
Meanwhile Valve has been pushing VR, extending Steam (with Proton, Remote Play etc) to the point where it's actually an added value over the games you buy on it, attempting (successfully or not, depending on who you ask) to revolutionize gaming controllers... what exactly did Epic do for gaming, other than release the next iteration of their already successful engine?
I mean we can debate this until the cows come home, but Unreal is much more significant to the development of new gaming (and recently, other) content than anything Valve has ever done. Valve is a middleman, Epic creates values.
For example, there's no VR for them to "push" without companies like Epic giving out engines to develop VR content for free.
Personally this statement:
> a straight downgrade from every single competitor
I strongly disagree with. Steam is awful on every machine I have it installed on, and it does everything worse than other programs. Browsing the store is faster and has fewer bugs in Firefox than it does in the Steam client. All my chat is in discord. I play several games that don't play well with a 4k resolution available and have to change my display resolution pretty regularly in between launching games, for this to work in steam one must manually kill all the background processes and relaunch steam. Never mind that in 2020, they're shipping a 32 bit binary.
Proton is cool and admirable. Steam is not. Origin, Epic, etc are all pieces of software that "just work." I can browse my library, buy new games, and launch them just fine. Everything else is better handled by other programs anyway, and Steam is so bug ridden that they don't need to buy exclusives for me to pick Epic over them.
> I can browse my library, buy new games, and launch them just fine. Everything else is better handled by other programs anyway
That's part of my point – EGS (and Steam, arguably) does nothing that you actually need for gaming itself. It may have some extra features, but that's not the core idea. We've been buying and launching games forever without them.
Now they're forced upon us however, and it's worth looking into what kind of value they give us. When I buy a game on Steam I can refund it if I don't like it, I can share it with my family when I'm not playing (not as good as a DRM-free copy, but closer than others still), play it on Linux even if it's unsupported, play it remotely from a weaker computer or a phone.
EGS in comparison provides me with a negative value. Not only it doesn't provide anything worth paying for (it's 2020 and "it's a downloader" is not really a selling point anymore), it's actually a negative value imo – were I to pirate the game I'd at least not have to install any additional crapware on my computer and open yet another account which will probably hoard my personal data forever.
I'm not saying Steam has the best client as a software – yes, it absolutely sucks. Galaxy or itch.io (and possibly EGS) have built far better working software – but it's still the software I don't need. With Steam the extras are at least compelling enough to justify using it over the alternatives. You do actually get more from it than you do from piratebay – something I can't say about EGS.
> Valve is a middleman, Epic creates values
I'd put it differently – Valve innovates, while Epic iterates. Epic built another engine. Another successful BR game. They're forcing yet another launcher. Their only positive impact on gaming is their engine – making them the "middleman" you mentioned. I'm excited for VR, and what HL:Alyx will inspire people to create. I'm not excited for yet another game on Texture Popping Engine 4.
Uhm, what?
Epic has delivered Unreal Engine 4 – good for them. They've also released a successful battle royale, piggybacking off of other developers' success and rolled out a crappy store/launcher, a straight downgrade from every single competitor, that they actively force on people by literally buying their portfolio. Nobody would ever install EGS if the monopolist didn't bully their way onto the market.
Meanwhile Valve has been pushing VR, extending Steam (with Proton, Remote Play etc) to the point where it's actually an added value over the games you buy on it, attempting (successfully or not, depending on who you ask) to revolutionize gaming controllers... what exactly did Epic do for gaming, other than release the next iteration of their already successful engine?