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A comment on It's VHS vs. Beta all over again, but worse. Parent comment

Re:It's VHS vs. Beta all over again, but worse by sebazzz on Sunday April 07, 2019 @02:18PM (#19598753)
Difference is that it doesn't cost you anything to use Steam, Epic game store, or Origin. You buy the game, you have the game. You can install 5 game stores on your computer and that's it.

For movies or TV series you need to have a subscription. That is the thing that costs money, even if you don't use it. People don't want to have 3 or 4 subscriptions, so that is why they pirate.

This is not a problem I see happening for games.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:It's VHS vs. Beta all over again, but worse by errantspark on Sunday April 07, 2019 @03:17PM (#19599218)
It's still annoying to deal with any distribution platform that isn't Steam. I understand why things are this way, but it doesn't make it any better from my point of view. I hate having to add my friends on another platform to play Ape Legs or the new Unreal. I don't want to deal with another login, another stupid launcher that wants to be on all the time with incessant updates.

I'm not going to end up pirating games because I mostly play F2P hat simulators, and the singleplayer games I care about are all available on GoG.

It still all feels quite user-hostile. I can't think of a solution though.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:It's VHS vs. Beta all over again, but worse by meditate on Sunday April 07, 2019 @10:24PM (#19601453)
The solution is to support single-sign-on and to allow data importing/export. These are solved problems, but companies don't receive enough pressure to do them because they are more interested in building moats.
[ Parent | on HN ]