What is your opinion on the fact that game devs aren't allowed to have a cheaper price on Epic due to Epic's much lower cut because Steam doesn't allow the devs to?

Isn't that also a net negative for the consumer? The fact that a game dev cant charge $8.20 on Epic vs $10 on Steam or else Valve will ban their game?

I wasn’t aware of a Minimum Advertised Price rule for Steam but such rules are extremely common across industries even if I agree they generally don’t help the consumer.

This is why when you go to buy an Apple laptop or a GoPro or whatever on Amazon that they can’t initially show you a price below the price allowed by the manufacturer. You’ll sometimes need to add the item to your cart to see the “discounted” price which is still allowed under Minimum Advertised Price rules. Cars and many, many other products work this way too.

Once again, not saying I’m necessarily in favor of it but it’s hardly a unique Steam policy. Brands seem to believe protecting their advertised prices helps maintain the value of their brand. For Steam, I guess they wouldn’t want to have a store full of games that cost more. Just like no one wants to pay 30% more to buy a game on iOS instead of PC.

Are any of the exclusives permanent? Because consumers can wait of they really can't stand a second launcher.

I'd say the choice of launchers and stores is fine. Especially with tools like GOG Galaxy which can aggregate them too.

Would consumers prefer paying 30% more for games to stay on the most dominate launcher/store?

Are you sure we'll be paying 30% less, or will they be pocketing 30% more?

You’re exactly right. Epic charges the same for games as Steam usually even if their cut is a bit smaller. Plus they still take a cut so the difference would be about 20% instead of 30%. For larger developers Steam only takes 20% so the difference would be around 10%

Considering the fact that you can easily find iTunes gift cars for 10% off face value (and 15 to 20% around the holidays), I remain skeptical that anyone will be paying 30% less.

Fun fact: Brick and mortar retailers spam the checkout lane with gift cards because they do not pay face value for them.

Epic exclusivity deals are typically for one year.

Steam exclusivity for games like Portal 2 is forever. Of course, Portal 2 was a sequel to a game created by a studio that Valve simply bought outright.

No one expects Steam to put their own titles in a rival store. You don’t buy Halo on Mac

Why should that not be more of an expectation? Sony has started putting out formerly PlayStation-exclusive first-party games on PC. Even Bloodborne may show up on Steam soon if rumors are to be believed.

It would be a good thing if Half-Life Alyx came out on other PC game stores, in exactly the same way that it would be a good thing if a game like Control came out on other PC game stores. Our expectations are socially constructed and we should question them more.

Look I think they’d sell more copies and it’d be good for everyone to have the content more widely available but it’s not always feasible to require it. A PlayStation game doesn’t just automatically work on PC and it probably takes numerous hours to get a PC game ready to submit to the Steam store. I’ve certainly wasted many hours localizing text for iOS app submissions and the like.

With so many different stores to download apps, it gets increasingly unlikely anyone is going to take the time to cross list on all of them.

If we wanted to change how this worked, I feel like we’d need to consolidate on fewer marketplaces. For example, apt-get has access to a huge variety of packages so I don’t find myself using the Ubuntu App Store or random third party marketplaces as much as I do with games.

Epic charges a fee too so I’m not sure why you think the price of the game is going to change drastically to the end user. Epic doesn’t charge less for Civilization 6 than Steam does, the developer just gets a bit more of the sale.