An ex-Valve employee has claimed that Epic Games is trying to save PC gaming while all Steam is doing is more harm than good to the industry. Richard Geldreich is an ex-Valve employee who was caught between all the Epic Games Vs Steam drama on Twitter and he shared his views about Steam doing more harm than good to the industry and that Epic is fixing everything for gamers.
Geldreich left Valve in 2014 after joining in 2009 but still, he was speaking against his ex-employer which is what most of the ex-employees would do normally. Fans were quick to point out this as well and stated that this sounds like a simple grind for an ex and did not take him too seriously. Richard replied to another Tweet where he stated this claim.
He mentioned that Steam has a very high tax percent which is 30% and it is unsustainable in the industry. He said:
If it wasn’t for Epic the entire industry would still be crunching away to support Valve’s 30% revshare.
According to him, all the burden was on developers and the consumers while Valve was printing money with Steam. You can check out Geldreich’s Tweet below.
Steam was killing PC gaming. It was a 30% tax on an entire industry. It was unsustainable. You have no idea how profitable Steam was for Valve. It was a virtual printing press. It distorted the entire company. Epic is fixing this for all gamers.
— Richard Geldreich (@richgel999) April 5, 2019
The whole conversation was actually based around Tim Sweeney’s comment on USGamer’s article which was about Epic Games Store collecting user information like spyware. Of course, Tim Sweeney would defend his own store and the conversation attracted a wide number of people from around the world including Geldreich.
The war between Epic Games and Steam has officially started and we can only wait to see who comes out on top. Epic is continuously nabbing more timed exclusives for its digital store such as Metro Exodus and Borderlands 3. It also struck a deal with Ubisoft though which all future Ubisoft titles will be released through Epic Games Store.
In my opinion, throwing so much dirt on Steam just because it asks for a bigger cut is not fair. Steam singlehandedly battled against the console invasion back in the days and it is the reason why PC gaming is still alive today. Where was Epic Games when Steam was trying to keep PC gaming alive through its platform? No other company was willing to launch its own client back in the early days but Valve continued.
It stuck around for PC gamers, giving them options to stick to PC gaming. I’ll say if Steam is asking for more share today then they truly deserve it for all the hard work it did back in the days because of which Epic Games is today sitting so comfortably on. Epic Games should thank Steam for sticking around for so long that it made it possible for them to release their own gaming store.
What do you have to say on this on-going battle between Epic Games and Valve? Let us know in the comments section below.
