The Unreal series may have been shelved years ago, but Epic is letting its first two installments live on through the Internet Archive.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      28 days ago

      As much as I like them I don’t think you can call them a competitor.

      I’ve seen games that are available on both platforms that sell hundreds of times more copies on Steam simply because of steam’s reputation.

      A competitor actually has to be able to compete.

        • Glide@lemmy.ca
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          28 days ago

          My experience with GOG is that it is a fringe option, at least in the combined North American (USA+Canada) culture. Plus, the unfortunate reality is that in many cases GOG’s principles preclude it from being a genuine competitor to Steam. Insisting on being DRM free means half of released games never go to the platform, so it will always be the secondary “better if” option.

          I worry about Steam’s functional monopoly on PC game access. It hasn’t been an issue so far, because it has remembered that it is, first and foremost, a service, providing consumer protects through a generous refund policy and supporting devs with easy access to simple matchmaking and anti-cheat systems. But without a healthy competitor, it would be easy for Steam to start milking it’s users and developers alike.