With the increasing ease of accessibility to high-end PCs, the PC gaming market is starting to get more and more competitive. Industry giants such as Sony and Microsoft have even begun to port their console-exclusive games to PC. For almost twenty years, Valve’s online store Steam has dominated digital distribution of PC games, but in recent years, rivals have started to gain traction.
For big third-party publishers, the practice of creating a store or launcher which only sells or hosts that specific publisher’s games has become commonplace. EA’s Origin store, Ubisoft’s Uplay store, and Rockstar’s Rockstar Game Launcher are all examples of this.
While it makes sense for publishers to eliminate the middle-man by setting up their own digital store, these publisher-exclusive platforms are practically useless to consumers. On top of needlessly taking up disk space, these stores make it a pain to track your collection and most of the games they offer are already available on other platforms.
Out of all the new digital distribution platforms, the Epic Games Store has probably made the most aggressive effort to break into the market. Best known for developing the hit multiplayer game Fortnite, Epic Games has employed plenty of marketing to make their platform look attractive. Their primary draw consists of giving out free games regularly (including big titles like Grand Theft Auto V and HITMAN) as well as their timed exclusivity deals.
While Epic Games Store is far from my favorite platform, I do admit that their frequent free games practice is appealing. I own about a couple dozen games on the Epic Games Store, and I haven’t paid for a single one of them.
Despite this, controversy surrounds the Epic Games store for their tactic of paying for exclusive games. In other words, Epic Games has often given money to developers in exchange for developers digitally releasing their games exclusively on Epic’s platform. The fact that this exclusivity affected some highly-anticipated games like Shenmue III, Control, and Kingdom Hearts earned some criticism from gamers who refuse to use the Epic Games Store.
The layout and features of the Epic Games Store are fairly lacking as well. While it’s certainly improved, it took Epic almost 3 years to implement basic features like a wishlist. The store’s selection of games is also lacking compared to other platforms, and community features (reviews, gifting games, etc.) are almost completely non-existent.
Another digital distribution platform that’s gained popularity in recent years is GOG.com. Owned by CD Projekt Red (developer of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077), GOG (originally “Good Old Games”) has been around for almost as long as Steam, but the platform has only become serious competition in recent years.
In its early years, GOG primarily sold updated versions of old games that were incompatible with modern hardware. Recently, GOG has started to distribute newer, big-budget titles like Horizon Zero Dawn, Metro Exodus, and Baldur’s Gate 3.
In contrast to Epic Games Store and Steam, GOG has built their brand on DRM-free (Digital Rights Management free) distribution. For those who don’t know, DRM is any kind of software applied to digital media that controls the use or distribution of the files. For example, if you’ve ever bought a digital movie or e-book, you might’ve noticed that there’s a limit on what devices you could transfer it to.
The use of DRM on digital video games has been controversial because testing has shown that DRM can negatively affect the performance of games. Opposition to DRM has been GOG’s main selling point, and it seems to be working.
While I haven’t used GOG extensively, I’ve purchased a couple of games on the platform. The fact that I’ve been able to backup those games on an external drive and quickly transfer them to separate computers has saved so much time and bandwidth that could be wasted on multiple downloads.
While GOG’s DRM-free model is great, the platform does suffer from one glaring issue: limited selection of games. The store does offer many triple A titles like The Witcher 3, but the vast majority of games sold on GOG are old or niche. Even as someone who enjoys these older titles, I can see how a more casual consumer who mainly enjoys mainstream titles like Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed could be off-put by GOG’s catalog.
Finally, there’s the question of whether these competitors stack up to the still-reigning king of the PC market: Steam. In terms of pure variety, convenience, and user interface, I still believe Steam is the best platform.
I’ve been using Steam for around 4-5 years now, and I own almost a hundred games on the platform. The frequent sales, the community features, and the ease of finding interesting, new games have all caused me to continually spend my money on Steam.
Despite all these pros, Steam does have some glaring issues. Quality control is definitely an area that could use improvement. Many bug-ridden, unplayable games find their way onto Steam, and even the front page can get infested with low-budget joke games and knockoffs.
Other flaws include lack of review control and occasional censorship. However, these are smaller things that probably won’t affect a customer’s experience on the whole.
While I will continue to use Steam and freeload off of Epic Games Store, GOG is my personal favorite digital store at the moment. Its DRM-free model is niche, but I do hope that the demand for DRM-free games increases to affect the industry positively.
However, for the average customer, Steam is still the best choice due to its variety, pricing, and ease of use. Many competitors have tried to take Steam’s share of the market, but the store still continues to grow.
If you’ve enjoyed my features reporting from this semester, please check out my WordPress at: https://thecinephobe.wordpress.com/. There, I’ll continue to review entertainment that gets released over the summer and in-between semesters.