Pitchford addresses 2019 Steam competition tweets
pcgamesinsider.bizThe boss of Borderlands maker Gearbox, Randy Pitchford, has addressed comments he made back in 2019 about the future of Steam.
Back then, the industry vet said that Valve's platform might be a "dying platform" within five or ten years due to the competition coming from Epic Games Store. At the time, Borderlands 3 was launching on the Fortnite giant's storefront as a timed exclusive; now Borderlands 4 is coming to Steam.
Addressing his comments on Twitter, Pitchford says that he stands by the fact Epic could have taken Steam to town if it had "pressed its advantage", but it clearly had not. The Gearbox boss added that Valve is still doing "very little" to earn the 30 per cent revenue share that it takes from every sale, compared to Epic Games Store's 12 per cent.
"I am a Steam customer and Steam developer that will continue to root for and support competition," Pitchford said.
"Borderlands 3 and Wonderlands demonstrated clearly that the customers show up for the games, not the store front. But the industry gives Steam their monopoly because publishers are afraid to take the risk to support more developer and publisher friendly stores. It’s all very interesting and there is a huge amount of opportunity in the PC gaming space for retail disruption, but no one seems to be able to make it happen."
He continued: "I had high hopes for Epic - hopes that were validated in the moment of the Borderlands 3 and Wonderlands launches. But my long term hope (that appeared in a dozen’s long tweet storm I did five years ago) regarding Epic’s store were misplaced or overly optimistic. It’s a cool lesson for me and anyone who wants to learn from my experience. Moving forward, we’ll continue to support Steam (as we have for literally every PC games we’ve launched since Steam came into existence."
Finally, Pitchford said that he hopes that Epic continues to "keep up the fight" and provide more competition in the PC storefront space.
"I sincerely hope Epic keeps up the fight and
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