It's the battle of the online stores currently. Steam, the long-time market leader for online digital games platforms, has slowly started to see competition from the Epic Games Store, whose exclusives often irk gamers, but undeniably lure them to it's platform. Devolver Digital's co-founder, Graeme Struthers, want's to see that conversation 'reset', however, in an interview GameSpot this week.

He stated he wished the conversation to be 'reset' on the issue, stating that it 'never really took place' - he has defended the influence of Steam on the industry, and highlighted the positive impact it has had on the industry since going live in 2003, noting that game publishers are now paid much more accurately, regularly and on a regular schedule compared to the old days of physical retail media.

While admitting the 70/30 revenue split compared to Epic's 88/12 may seem noncompetitive currently, he did also state that it was "transformative" for publishers at the time.

He does believe however that the two platforms have fundamental differences, and it's not possible to compare them apples for apples currently.

You can't compare the two things however as like for like. Steam has invested I don't know how many hundreds of millions of dollars in their platform; Epic have yet to do that. I'm not saying they won't, and hopefully they will. In terms of the features and in terms of the toolsets for developers, there's a ways to go. But competition is good.

While the Epic Games store offers a better revenue split, it doesn't offer the same toolset and features as Steam's mature platform. Combined with an overall smaller games library, and has a relatively basic interface compared to Steam.

On the subject of exclusives, Struthers suggested that such complaints are unfounded, as Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft have been doing exclusives on consoles for many years. 

What are your thoughts on the Epic vs. Steam debate? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.