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Razer Game Store Closing Feb 28, Less Than Year After Launch (variety.com)
The Razer Game Store will close on February 28 at 1am PST, the company announced in a blog post. This comes less than a year after its launch last April. From a report: The shutdown is part of "the company's realignment plans," according to Razer. "It has been a privilege for us to recommend and deliver great digital game deals to you. We have been extremely fortunate to have you as part of our awesome community," the post reads. "Thank you for the support and making all this possible. We will be investing in other ways to deliver great content and introduce game promotions through Razer Gold, our virtual credits system."
That would be great if Steam had been abusing their position as the only real digital game retailer since 2004 but they haven't. New games cost the same $49.99 or $59.99 if you buy it on Steam or buy it anywhere else. Steam also has more a lot more sales with deep discounts than any of their competitors have over the last few years. Sure you can point here and there to a lower sale price on PLATFORM X but in general Steam usually sells games for the same price as any competitor that has popped up and it was their normal price. It wasn't like they were reacting to competition and slashing prices to try and match Origin, GOG, or anyone else.
I have over 1000 games on Steam. Steam uses almost 200mb ram. Origin uses 200-300mb, Epic store uses 300+mb ram. To keep your installed games updated you have to keep the software running all the time. If you don't you will have to wait for a 200mb to 1GB+ update when you open the launcher and try to play a game. I would rather just buy my games on Steam and not have my system using resources for 10 different game launchers.
If Steam was screwing customers over and raising prices I would have an issue with them. Their current business model is to basically just sell games for the same price (or lower) than you can get them anywhere else.
I really liked video streaming 5 years ago. Everything was on Netflix and Hulu. I had 2 subscriptions and could watch whatever I wanted. When networks realized streaming was getting popular everyone wanted to launch their own streaming service for $5 or more a month. Now video streaming is fragmented and if you want to watch all the stuff you used to get for $20 on Netflix and Hulu it's going to cost you at least $70 a month and you have to manage subscriptions to 10 differen't places. So I said fuck it and went back to pirating whatever wasn't on Netflix, Hulu, or included with my Amazon Prime membership. I'm willing to pay for entertainment but I'll be fucked if I'm spending money for subscription services to watch one show on it.
Most of us don't want the fragmentation in the streaming market like we have now. I certainly don't want gaming to go the same route. I'm not buying the new Metro game even if it does come back to Steam and I own all the previous games including the remasters. They fucked up by doing this, especially at the last minute before release. That developer and certainly the Epic store is not getting my money going forward and I buy a metric shit ton of games. I don't like exclusivity to a certain store even if it's for 6 months. The PC gaming market will just end up like consoles, Xbox vs Playstation with stores competing for certain exclusives. It's not "competition" it's greed by multiple companies colluding to force consumers to do what they want instead of what the consumer wants. That is an anti-competitive tactic by definition. So don't bring out the competition is good for everyone argument because this isn't about competition. Razer is a peripheral company. Why they thought it would be a good idea to open a game store is beyond my imagination.
Competition is great for consumers. In this case consumers didn't want to buy games from a company that makes mediocre gaming peripherals but charges premium prices for them.