Richard Geldreich worked at Valve from 2009 to 2014, and his credits include some of the company’s biggest games, like Portal 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and CS:GO. He’s been publicly critical of his former employer in the past, and now that controversy over the Epic Games store is in full force, Geldreich has some more harsh words for Steam.
“Steam was killing PC gaming,” Geldreich writes on Twitter. “It was a 30% tax on an entire industry. It was unsustainable. You have no idea how profitable Steam was for Valve. It was a virtual printing press. It distorted the entire company. Epic is fixing this for all gamers.”
Geldreich’s comments on social media have been coming in since last week, initially coming in support of Tim Sweeney’s assertion that the Epic store isn’t spyware. That’s a frequent accusation about the launcher which Geldreich agrees is “insane,” adding that “I worked for Valve and believe me they gather huge amounts of data about virtually everything you do with the Steam client.”
In Geldreich’s estimation, Epic store exclusives will continue for the foreseeable future. Epic and other launchers – like Uplay, Origin, and Battle.net – will be the host for triple-A games, while “Steam will be for indy/2nd tier/shovelware/porn.”
The Epic store currently lacks many of the features that Steam provides, and Geldreich concedes that “EGS is currently shit but it’ll get better.”
We’ve reached out to Valve for comment, and will update if we receive a response.
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Geldreich also had harsh criticism for Valve’s corporate structure, as PC Gamer reported when he made those comments last year. Among other things, he called his experience with the company the “worst experience of my life.”