Former Valve Employee Speaks Up About Steam Versus Epic Games Store

Players have voiced their opinions about developers choosing to go with Epic Game Stores. A former Valve employee offers his view in a Twitter discussion

Former Valve employee Richard Geldreich took to Twitter some time ago to defend the recent exclusives popping up on the Epic Games Store.

Back in December, Epic Games announced their game store and how it would feature more payment to developers, attempting to help them as they used their store platform to sell their game. For many developers, this deal was hard to pass up. As a result, over the past few months, several companies have come forward and announced that for a set amount of time they were going to feature their game exclusively on the Epic Games Store. Some of these games are triple-A titles, such as Metro Exodus and Borderlands 3.

These announcements have forced many players who usually stick to Steam having to choose between making an Epic Games account or wait until the game is no longer an Epic Games Store exclusive and finds its way to Steam. Unfortunately, many players have chosen to respond by review-bombing games on Steam, in an attempt to sway the developers to remove the exclusivity. Richard Geldreich, a former Valve employee, decided to throw his two cents into a Twitter discussion about the topic. Here’s a notable response, 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

Geldreich attempts to defend the Epic Games Store further, detailing how other stores also have exclusives, and yet people are okay with it.

It’s another storefront. All of them have exclusives. Apple just announced Apple Arcade, which consists of exclusives, yet nobody says a thing. The funding from these exclusives goes to supporting the game devs that create the games you love, so they can make more games.

— Richard Geldreich (@richgel999) April 5, 2019

The discussion continued. Geldreich held his ground and never shook away from his stance of feeling developers were tired of Valve’s treatment of them, and with an alternative available, they took it.

Because the Epic Games Store is still brand new, it’s difficult to say how much their offer to give more back to developers is going to be. It’s also difficult to tell if Valve plans to adjust how much they give to developers, based on recent feedback and the mountain of exclusives heading to the competition.