If I'm honest, I don't disagree.
I would love for Steam to have **actual competition. Which is difficult, sure, but you could run a slightly less feature-rich store, take less of a cut, and pass the reduction fully on to consumers and you'd be an easy choice for many gamers.
But that's not what Epic is after. They tried to go hard after the sellers, figuring that if they can corner enough fo the market with exclusives the buyers will have to come. But they underestimated that even their nigh-infinite coffers struggle to keep up with the raw amount of games releasing, and also the unpredictability of the indie market where you can't really know what to buy as an exclusive.
Nevermind that buying one is a good way to make it forgotten.
So yeah, fully agreed. Compared to Epic, I vastly prefer Steam's 30% cut. As the consumer I pay the same anyways, and Steam offers lots of stuff for it like forums, a client that boots before the heat death of the universe, in-house streaming, library sharing, cloud sync that sometimes works.
Thanks for the reply, I was really tempted since it went for sale during the steam summer sale. My life circumstances are such that I can’t really justify the money on another game box. My switch still works, I have a decent laptop that can play many of my lower-hardware requirement games. I am currently doing off-grid living and that 600$ is better spent on survival necessities and quality of life improvements or just in my bank as emergency fund. If I were a teen again it would be a no-brainer but my time for gaming is less and less. Saying no to the deck this summer sale was one of the hardest and most responsible things i’ve ever done.
Waiting just means the games you want will only get cheaper! I bet they will have more ridiculous sales for the deck as time goes on as well. Good luck and I hope you can get the stuff you want soon. : )