With the recent announcement of Borderlands 4 at this year’s Gamescom also came the information that the title would be returning to the Steam platform, after Borderlands 3 was only available on PC via the Epic Games Store.
At the time in 2019, Pitchford said: “From a track record point of view, my expectation is that Epic’s investment in technology will outpace Valve’s substantially.
“When we look back at Steam in five or ten years, it may look like a dying store and other, competitive stores, will be the place to be.”
Well, five years later, Steam has barely noticed the presence of the Epic Games Store in the market and is still going very strong, so Pitchford has been in for some jokes from the community.
As fun as it may be to have a laugh at his expense, Pitchford’s sentiment here is ultimately good. His main argument that he favours alternative stores because they better support the artists instead of the retailers is a good one, but ultimately no store supports the consumer as well as Steam does at present, and this has been Epic’s downfall.
Whilst Epic as a company have had huge success with titles such as Fortnite, as a store it’s a bit lacklustre – a business model focusing on as many (debatably unwanted) free games as possible and more (debatably unwanted) exclusives just isn’t doing it for customers who want a good shopping experience and a wide variety of titles. And with Valve having its own cash cows such as Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, and its 30% sales cut, it doesn’t look to be going anywhere any time soon, even if Epic Games does have an equally sizeable wallet to swing around (thanks, PC Gamer).