Steam‘s discussion forums being flooded when there is information to disseminate, regardless of whether the title is on Steam, isn’t an entirely new concept as frustrating as it may be for users of the Steam platform.
The titles in question tend to involve the controversial Epic Games Store, purchasing exclusives comparative moments before they release to try to draw more consumers towards the Epic Games Store. Gauging by how consistently these events occur, the strategy seems to have middling success at best, and acting as a resource sink for Epic at the least.
Regardless, the saga continues between those that argue that EGS doesn’t need to include the host of conveniences on the platform (purchasing with a debit card, a shopping cart, forums, beta opt-ins, and multiple other mechanics that PC players have frankly come to expect from their storefronts with Origin and Steam) while taking full advantage of the functions that Valve offers on the Steam platform.
The most recent annoyance comes from Ubisoft for The Division 2 (an EGS exclusive outside of uPlay) that made an LFG forum thread on Steam yesterday in a bizarre use of external resources that seemed to flaunt The Division 2’s exclusivity to the Steam platform player base.
A weird flex, some could posit.
The thread posted and stickied onto the Steam discussion board was removed shortly after due to the backlash that it received, which echoed of users attempting to use the Borderlands 2 discussion board to troubleshoot an egregious number of errors and try to get the Epic Games Store exclusive Borderlands 3 working.
It should be noted that the Ubisoft employee who made the thread apologized shortly thereafter while noting that the idea ‘went down like a lead balloon’. The employee, by the name of Ubi-Milky, noted that using Steam functions on a title that dodged Steam would result in a few frustrated users.
The palpable irony that a Ubisoft employee reaches out to Steam to help an allegedly flagging player-base brought about by Ubisoft’s decision to only release on uPlay and Epic Games Store is arguably the funniest thing to happen yesterday.
https://twitter.com/Win98Tech/status/1348991102536327175
Valve has recently added to their ToS for their platform, noting to developers that they cannot advertise for titles outside of the Steam platform (i.e. using the platform to attempt to direct traffic towards titles that have received a ‘buyout’), although whether or not Valve will opt to enforce the rules remains to be seen.
If they don’t, even in small missteps such as this, Steam will continue to be the stomping grounds of less than competent stores that are more than eager to let another corporation do the heavy lifting.
