[Serenity]

No it doesn't. I'd be cynical and say it's because Nintendo want to sell you their own USB to LAN adapter, but they don't make one. I guess they figured it would become redundant the moment you use the Switch in handheld.

[Aptorian]

I mean, what kind of a Savage doesn't have WiFi?

[Serenity]

Starlink Deluxe might have made its way onto my Switch.

Tales of Berseria might have found its way into my Steam library.

[Mentalist]

I did a tally of how much money I spent on games over Black Friday + Boxing weeks. The number is scary.

[JPK]

Briar King, on 04 January 2019 - 08:44 PM, said:

Yes! Found Xenosaga Ep 2 at the used store. $16. Still kicking myself I never bought 2&3 when new.

Gonna be a longggg time before I get around to it. Gotta replay and finish 1 1st.

Hope I can come across 3 so luckily.

I think I still have a copy of that somewhere. I'll check when I get home. If I do, I'm totally willing to ship it down to you.

[Aptorian]

Mentalist, on 05 January 2019 - 04:00 AM, said:

I did a tally of how much money I spent on games over Black Friday + Boxing weeks. The number is scary.

But think about all the money you saved! You'd be losing money if you didn't buy those game. Totally logical investment!

[Mentalist]

Alternative Goose, on 05 January 2019 - 06:37 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 05 January 2019 - 04:00 AM, said:

I did a tally of how much money I spent on games over Black Friday + Boxing weeks. The number is scary.

But think about all the money you saved! You'd be losing money if you didn't buy those game. Totally logical investment!

Well, yes, if I was to add up the non-discounted costs of all those games the number WOULD be basically astronomical, for sure

[JPK]

Briar King, on 05 January 2019 - 05:56 PM, said:

Oh my

Lol. Yeah, I do have a copy. Hit me up over pm with a place to ship it and I can send it out Monday or Tuesday

[Mentalist]

Pre-ordered Metro Exodus today, while it was still available on Steam before making the jump to the Epic Store.

Apparently, so did a lot of people since it was a top seller for a while before getting pulled from Steam.
I do hope Epic crashes and burns. I don't want any exclusivity crap in PC gaming.

[Khellendros]

Mentalist, on 29 January 2019 - 04:18 AM, said:

Pre-ordered Metro Exodus today, while it was still available on Steam before making the jump to the Epic Store.

Apparently, so did a lot of people since it was a top seller for a while before getting pulled from Steam.
I do hope Epic crashes and burns. I don't want any exclusivity crap in PC gaming.

You mean in the way that so many games are exclusive to Steam?

[Aptorian]

As far as I am aware Steam/Valve don't go around buying rights or insentivizing using their platform. They're just the PC platform of choice because of their user base and the tools they offer.

Mind you I don't mind Valve getting some competition.

[Khellendros]

Alternative Goose, on 29 January 2019 - 10:15 AM, said:

As far as I am aware Steam/Valve don't go around buying rights or insentivizing using their platform. They're just the PC platform of choice because of their user base and the tools they offer.

Mind you I don't mind Valve getting some competition.

They don’t because they don’t need to, not out of the kindness of their heart. Which on the surface is good. But the lack of competition has also made Steam a shithole. No, I don’t agree with exclusivity and I do think Epic are making a mistake with this specific move (though all pre-orders are being honoured as well as future DLC), but Steam does sorely need real competition to motivate its own improvement. Hoping that Epic ‘crashes and burns’ because of this strikes me as disproportionate.

[Mentalist]

Khellendros, on 29 January 2019 - 10:38 AM, said:

Alternative Goose, on 29 January 2019 - 10:15 AM, said:

As far as I am aware Steam/Valve don't go around buying rights or insentivizing using their platform. They're just the PC platform of choice because of their user base and the tools they offer.

Mind you I don't mind Valve getting some competition.

They don’t because they don’t need to, not out of the kindness of their heart. Which on the surface is good. But the lack of competition has also made Steam a shithole. No, I don’t agree with exclusivity and I do think Epic are making a mistake with this specific move (though all pre-orders are being honoured as well as future DLC), but Steam does sorely need real competition to motivate its own improvement. Hoping that Epic ‘crashes and burns’ because of this strikes me as disproportionate.

If Epic was trying to compete with Steam based on the quality of their service and prices, I'd be all for it.

But Epic is targeting developers and publishers, at the expense of consumers. Epic store isn't available in China. Epic store thinks Canada is part of the US. Epic store has no regional currency options for most of Asia and all of Latin America, thus inflating the prices for those users and significantly reducing their own target market.
And it's doing this by furthering exclusivity, which is bad for us. Deep Silver is owned by THQ Nordic. Last year THQ said they'd bring all their major releases to GOG Day 1 (alongside Steam and Origin). I paid more money for Darksider 3 on release day on GOG to support that attitude and hopefully to show more publishers that they don't need DRM to be profitable. Now I'm worried they'll renege on that and Biomutant will be an epic Store exclusive.

Epic is taking the industry backwards. Yes, I want its experiment to fail, because it's indirectly targeted at me as a consumer. I want less of that, and more of what THQ Nordic said they'd be doing.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 29 January 2019 - 04:20 PM

[Khellendros]

Mentalist, on 29 January 2019 - 04:20 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 29 January 2019 - 10:38 AM, said:

Alternative Goose, on 29 January 2019 - 10:15 AM, said:

As far as I am aware Steam/Valve don't go around buying rights or insentivizing using their platform. They're just the PC platform of choice because of their user base and the tools they offer.

Mind you I don't mind Valve getting some competition.

They don’t because they don’t need to, not out of the kindness of their heart. Which on the surface is good. But the lack of competition has also made Steam a shithole. No, I don’t agree with exclusivity and I do think Epic are making a mistake with this specific move (though all pre-orders are being honoured as well as future DLC), but Steam does sorely need real competition to motivate its own improvement. Hoping that Epic ‘crashes and burns’ because of this strikes me as disproportionate.

If Epic was trying to compete with Steam based on the quality of their service and prices, I'd be all for it.

But Epic is targeting developers and publishers, at the expense of consumers. Epic store isn't available in China. Epic store thinks Canada is part of the US. Epic store has no regional currency options for most of Asia and all of Latin America, thus inflating the prices for those users and significantly reducing their own target market.
And it's doing this by furthering exclusivity, which is bad for us. Deep Silver is owned by THQ Nordic. Last year THQ said they'd bring all their major releases to GOG Day 1 (alongside Steam and Origin). I paid more money for Darksider 3 on release day on GOG to support that attitude and hopefully to show more publishers that they don't need DRM to be profitable. Now I'm worried they'll renege on that and Biomutant will be an epic Store exclusive.

Epic is taking the industry backwards. Yes, I want its experiment to fail, because it's indirectly targeted at me as a consumer. I want less of that, and more of what THQ Nordic said they'd be doing.

Epic Store has just started and will, I assume, see gradual improvement on the customer-side. Your reaction is uncharacteristically knee-jerk.

As long as Epic continue to give a greater slice of the money pie to developers than Steam, I want to see them grow, improve, and compete. If ‘anti-consumer’ actually translates to ‘pro-developer’, I’m going to support that. This is not the same as defending their exclusivity deals, which I would hope (perhaps naively) they will put a stop to once enough eyes are on their storefront.

[Mentalist]

Khellendros, on 29 January 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 29 January 2019 - 04:20 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 29 January 2019 - 10:38 AM, said:

Alternative Goose, on 29 January 2019 - 10:15 AM, said:

As far as I am aware Steam/Valve don't go around buying rights or insentivizing using their platform. They're just the PC platform of choice because of their user base and the tools they offer.

Mind you I don't mind Valve getting some competition.

They don’t because they don’t need to, not out of the kindness of their heart. Which on the surface is good. But the lack of competition has also made Steam a shithole. No, I don’t agree with exclusivity and I do think Epic are making a mistake with this specific move (though all pre-orders are being honoured as well as future DLC), but Steam does sorely need real competition to motivate its own improvement. Hoping that Epic ‘crashes and burns’ because of this strikes me as disproportionate.

If Epic was trying to compete with Steam based on the quality of their service and prices, I'd be all for it.

But Epic is targeting developers and publishers, at the expense of consumers. Epic store isn't available in China. Epic store thinks Canada is part of the US. Epic store has no regional currency options for most of Asia and all of Latin America, thus inflating the prices for those users and significantly reducing their own target market.
And it's doing this by furthering exclusivity, which is bad for us. Deep Silver is owned by THQ Nordic. Last year THQ said they'd bring all their major releases to GOG Day 1 (alongside Steam and Origin). I paid more money for Darksider 3 on release day on GOG to support that attitude and hopefully to show more publishers that they don't need DRM to be profitable. Now I'm worried they'll renege on that and Biomutant will be an epic Store exclusive.

Epic is taking the industry backwards. Yes, I want its experiment to fail, because it's indirectly targeted at me as a consumer. I want less of that, and more of what THQ Nordic said they'd be doing.

Epic Store has just started and will, I assume, see gradual improvement on the customer-side. Your reaction is uncharacteristically knee-jerk.

As long as Epic continue to give a greater slice of the money pie to developers than Steam, I want to see them grow, improve, and compete. If ‘anti-consumer’ actually translates to ‘pro-developer’, I’m going to support that. This is not the same as defending their exclusivity deals, which I would hope (perhaps naively) they will put a stop to once enough eyes are on their storefront.

My reaction is strong,because I wanted the game to succeed! 4A is a Ukrainian developer, a lot of the people from GSC (the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. people) work there, and I liked the 2 prior games.

But this is a boneheaded decision made by the publisher, that's going to piss off a lot of people. I hoped to see this game on GOG in a few months once the initial sales are done and the Denuvo DRM is quietly patched out. But now the game's confined to the worst digital store out there. Epic doesn't work in China; they offer 12 currencies, and the rest of the world has to deal with markups to the USD price, which puts the game out of price range for many countries; Epic doesn't have basic features like cloud saves, achievements, even a bloody search function. Deep Silver is condemning the game I was looking forward to to infamy for a paycheck of which I assume a pittance will go to the devs and the rest will be the CEO's bonus, since that's how these things tend to work.

THQ Nordic already washed their hands from this mess trying to do damage control. Not sure I believe them, but they'd better give the head of Koch media a stern talking to if they aren't lying.

If this was another case of epic poaching a self-publishing indie dev from steam I'd be annoyed, but ultimately i'd think same as you, "I can bear the inconvenience if a dev gets more money". But there's a publisher involved, so my trust is minimal.

And I don't trust Epic. They've spent years talking shit about PC as a platform, and now they are bringing the worst traits of consoles (exclusivity) in their attempt to create competition. So far, precedent shows that everyone who tried to cut out Steam via exclusivity (Ubisoft, Bethesda, ActiBlizz, Microsoft) did not give 2 shits about the actual quality of their storefront/launcher. Why should I believe that Epic will suddenly be different?

And I don't see a reason to give Epic a pass because their store " just got started". They are one of the richest developers in the world right now. The fact that they saw it fit to release their store in its current barebones format and try to compete with established standards is if anything more insulting and arrogant

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 29 January 2019 - 09:17 PM

[Khellendros]

Mentalist, on 29 January 2019 - 09:05 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 29 January 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 29 January 2019 - 04:20 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 29 January 2019 - 10:38 AM, said:

Alternative Goose, on 29 January 2019 - 10:15 AM, said:

As far as I am aware Steam/Valve don't go around buying rights or insentivizing using their platform. They're just the PC platform of choice because of their user base and the tools they offer.

Mind you I don't mind Valve getting some competition.

They don’t because they don’t need to, not out of the kindness of their heart. Which on the surface is good. But the lack of competition has also made Steam a shithole. No, I don’t agree with exclusivity and I do think Epic are making a mistake with this specific move (though all pre-orders are being honoured as well as future DLC), but Steam does sorely need real competition to motivate its own improvement. Hoping that Epic ‘crashes and burns’ because of this strikes me as disproportionate.

If Epic was trying to compete with Steam based on the quality of their service and prices, I'd be all for it.

But Epic is targeting developers and publishers, at the expense of consumers. Epic store isn't available in China. Epic store thinks Canada is part of the US. Epic store has no regional currency options for most of Asia and all of Latin America, thus inflating the prices for those users and significantly reducing their own target market.
And it's doing this by furthering exclusivity, which is bad for us. Deep Silver is owned by THQ Nordic. Last year THQ said they'd bring all their major releases to GOG Day 1 (alongside Steam and Origin). I paid more money for Darksider 3 on release day on GOG to support that attitude and hopefully to show more publishers that they don't need DRM to be profitable. Now I'm worried they'll renege on that and Biomutant will be an epic Store exclusive.

Epic is taking the industry backwards. Yes, I want its experiment to fail, because it's indirectly targeted at me as a consumer. I want less of that, and more of what THQ Nordic said they'd be doing.

Epic Store has just started and will, I assume, see gradual improvement on the customer-side. Your reaction is uncharacteristically knee-jerk.

As long as Epic continue to give a greater slice of the money pie to developers than Steam, I want to see them grow, improve, and compete. If ‘anti-consumer’ actually translates to ‘pro-developer’, I’m going to support that. This is not the same as defending their exclusivity deals, which I would hope (perhaps naively) they will put a stop to once enough eyes are on their storefront.

My reaction is strong,because I wanted the game to succeed! 4A is a Ukrainian developer, a lot of the people from GSC (the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. people) work there, and I liked the 2 prior games.

But this is a boneheaded decision made by the publisher, that's going to piss off a lot of people. I hoped to see this game on GOG in a few months once the initial sales are done and the Denuvo DRM is quietly patched out. But now the game's confined to the worst digital store out there. Epic doesn't work in China; they offer 12 currencies, and the rest of the world has to deal with markups to the USD price, which puts the game out of price range for many countries; Epic doesn't have basic features like cloud saves, achievements, even a bloody search function. Deep Silver is condemning the game I was looking forward to to infamy for a paycheck of which I assume a pittance will go to the devs and the rest will be the CEO's bonus, since that's how these things tend to work.

THQ Nordic already washed their hands from this mess trying to do damage control. Not sure I believe them, but they'd better give the head of Koch media a stern talking to if they aren't lying.

If this was another case of epic poaching a self-publishing indie dev from steam I'd be annoyed, but ultimately i'd think same as you, "I can bear the inconvenience if a dev gets more money". But there's a publisher involved, so my trust is minimal.

And I don't trust Epic. They've spent years talking shit about PC as a platform, and now they are bringing the worst traits of consoles (exclusivity) in their attempt to create competition. So far, precedent shows that everyone who tried to cut out Steam via exclusivity (Ubisoft, Bethesda, ActiBlizz, Microsoft) did not give 2 shits about the actual quality of their storefront/launcher. Why should I believe that Epic will suddenly be different?

And I don't see a reason to give Epic a pass because their store " just got started". They are one of the richest developers in the world right now. The fact that they saw it fit to release their store in its current barebones format and try to compete with established standards is if anything more insulting and arrogant

I think you need to remember how bare bones Steam was when it first came into being. Designing a good launcher is extremely difficult, and many elements might require initial user feedback. Having said that, yes, there are basic elements to Epic’s which should already have been there, and, like with so many games now, you get a sense it was rushed out before it was ready.

As for pricing and money-making - well, the dev/publisher now get a bigger cut of every sale. And on the consumer-side, the game is $10 cheaper than it was on Steam (and yes, because of the much larger cut the makers get, they still make more per game sale than they would have at $10 more expensive Steam). You can of course argue that in terms of overall sales, fewer people might now buy it because it’s on a less well-known storefront, but presumably the publisher took that into account when making the decision. If you’re sceptical about that, then your problem is with Deep Silver, not with Epic.

Finally, you say you hoped to see the game on GOG in a few months time - well, it will be in a bit longer than that. The exclusivity deal is for 12 months.

This post has been edited by Khellendros: 30 January 2019 - 01:13 AM

[Mentalist]

Khellendros, on 30 January 2019 - 01:12 AM, said:

Mentalist, on 29 January 2019 - 09:05 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 29 January 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 29 January 2019 - 04:20 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 29 January 2019 - 10:38 AM, said:

Alternative Goose, on 29 January 2019 - 10:15 AM, said:

As far as I am aware Steam/Valve don't go around buying rights or insentivizing using their platform. They're just the PC platform of choice because of their user base and the tools they offer.

Mind you I don't mind Valve getting some competition.

They don’t because they don’t need to, not out of the kindness of their heart. Which on the surface is good. But the lack of competition has also made Steam a shithole. No, I don’t agree with exclusivity and I do think Epic are making a mistake with this specific move (though all pre-orders are being honoured as well as future DLC), but Steam does sorely need real competition to motivate its own improvement. Hoping that Epic ‘crashes and burns’ because of this strikes me as disproportionate.

If Epic was trying to compete with Steam based on the quality of their service and prices, I'd be all for it.

But Epic is targeting developers and publishers, at the expense of consumers. Epic store isn't available in China. Epic store thinks Canada is part of the US. Epic store has no regional currency options for most of Asia and all of Latin America, thus inflating the prices for those users and significantly reducing their own target market.
And it's doing this by furthering exclusivity, which is bad for us. Deep Silver is owned by THQ Nordic. Last year THQ said they'd bring all their major releases to GOG Day 1 (alongside Steam and Origin). I paid more money for Darksider 3 on release day on GOG to support that attitude and hopefully to show more publishers that they don't need DRM to be profitable. Now I'm worried they'll renege on that and Biomutant will be an epic Store exclusive.

Epic is taking the industry backwards. Yes, I want its experiment to fail, because it's indirectly targeted at me as a consumer. I want less of that, and more of what THQ Nordic said they'd be doing.

Epic Store has just started and will, I assume, see gradual improvement on the customer-side. Your reaction is uncharacteristically knee-jerk.

As long as Epic continue to give a greater slice of the money pie to developers than Steam, I want to see them grow, improve, and compete. If ‘anti-consumer’ actually translates to ‘pro-developer’, I’m going to support that. This is not the same as defending their exclusivity deals, which I would hope (perhaps naively) they will put a stop to once enough eyes are on their storefront.

My reaction is strong,because I wanted the game to succeed! 4A is a Ukrainian developer, a lot of the people from GSC (the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. people) work there, and I liked the 2 prior games.

But this is a boneheaded decision made by the publisher, that's going to piss off a lot of people. I hoped to see this game on GOG in a few months once the initial sales are done and the Denuvo DRM is quietly patched out. But now the game's confined to the worst digital store out there. Epic doesn't work in China; they offer 12 currencies, and the rest of the world has to deal with markups to the USD price, which puts the game out of price range for many countries; Epic doesn't have basic features like cloud saves, achievements, even a bloody search function. Deep Silver is condemning the game I was looking forward to to infamy for a paycheck of which I assume a pittance will go to the devs and the rest will be the CEO's bonus, since that's how these things tend to work.

THQ Nordic already washed their hands from this mess trying to do damage control. Not sure I believe them, but they'd better give the head of Koch media a stern talking to if they aren't lying.

If this was another case of epic poaching a self-publishing indie dev from steam I'd be annoyed, but ultimately i'd think same as you, "I can bear the inconvenience if a dev gets more money". But there's a publisher involved, so my trust is minimal.

And I don't trust Epic. They've spent years talking shit about PC as a platform, and now they are bringing the worst traits of consoles (exclusivity) in their attempt to create competition. So far, precedent shows that everyone who tried to cut out Steam via exclusivity (Ubisoft, Bethesda, ActiBlizz, Microsoft) did not give 2 shits about the actual quality of their storefront/launcher. Why should I believe that Epic will suddenly be different?

And I don't see a reason to give Epic a pass because their store " just got started". They are one of the richest developers in the world right now. The fact that they saw it fit to release their store in its current barebones format and try to compete with established standards is if anything more insulting and arrogant

I think you need to remember how bare bones Steam was when it first came into being. Designing a good launcher is extremely difficult, and many elements might require initial user feedback. Having said that, yes, there are basic elements to Epic’s which should already have been there, and, like with so many games now, you get a sense it was rushed out before it was ready.

As for pricing and money-making - well, the dev/publisher now get a bigger cut of every sale. And on the consumer-side, the game is $10 cheaper than it was on Steam (and yes, because of the much larger cut the makers get, they still make more per game sale than they would have at $10 more expensive Steam). You can of course argue that in terms of overall sales, fewer people might now buy it because it’s on a less well-known storefront, but presumably the publisher took that into account when making the decision. If you’re sceptical about that, then your problem is with Deep Silver, not with Epic.

Finally, you say you hoped to see the game on GOG in a few months time - well, it will be in a bit longer than that. The exclusivity deal is for 12 months.

oh, I know that. It'll probably be 2 year, because Deep Silver will want their precious Denuvo to stick around a while after their Steam release.

Once again, the game is only cheaper to American buyers. For everyone else worldwide, it's either same price as steam, or significantly higher (and something like 40 countries can't buy it at all).

Yes, I realize that Epic's store is a rushed half-baked job. That's one of my main complaints about it. I'm not expecting Epic to reinvent the wheel here- but there's a perfectly good example in all the things Steam does right for it to copy, and it hasn't even bothered to do that.

My problem with Epic is the fact that Tim Sweeney explicitly admitted that he is paying developers to make games exclusive to the Epic store- not just giving them a bigger cut of the sales, but actually cutting them lump sum cheques.

that is a practice I don't want to see spreading in PC gaming, because then it becomes a competition between storefronts as to who has more spending money to wow publishers/developers, rather then who can offer better service to the consumers.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 30 January 2019 - 04:35 AM

[Galactic Council]

Mentalist, on 30 January 2019 - 04:32 AM, said:

Khellendros, on 30 January 2019 - 01:12 AM, said:

Mentalist, on 29 January 2019 - 09:05 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 29 January 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 29 January 2019 - 04:20 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 29 January 2019 - 10:38 AM, said:

Alternative Goose, on 29 January 2019 - 10:15 AM, said:

As far as I am aware Steam/Valve don't go around buying rights or insentivizing using their platform. They're just the PC platform of choice because of their user base and the tools they offer.

Mind you I don't mind Valve getting some competition.

They don’t because they don’t need to, not out of the kindness of their heart. Which on the surface is good. But the lack of competition has also made Steam a shithole. No, I don’t agree with exclusivity and I do think Epic are making a mistake with this specific move (though all pre-orders are being honoured as well as future DLC), but Steam does sorely need real competition to motivate its own improvement. Hoping that Epic ‘crashes and burns’ because of this strikes me as disproportionate.

If Epic was trying to compete with Steam based on the quality of their service and prices, I'd be all for it.

But Epic is targeting developers and publishers, at the expense of consumers. Epic store isn't available in China. Epic store thinks Canada is part of the US. Epic store has no regional currency options for most of Asia and all of Latin America, thus inflating the prices for those users and significantly reducing their own target market.
And it's doing this by furthering exclusivity, which is bad for us. Deep Silver is owned by THQ Nordic. Last year THQ said they'd bring all their major releases to GOG Day 1 (alongside Steam and Origin). I paid more money for Darksider 3 on release day on GOG to support that attitude and hopefully to show more publishers that they don't need DRM to be profitable. Now I'm worried they'll renege on that and Biomutant will be an epic Store exclusive.

Epic is taking the industry backwards. Yes, I want its experiment to fail, because it's indirectly targeted at me as a consumer. I want less of that, and more of what THQ Nordic said they'd be doing.

Epic Store has just started and will, I assume, see gradual improvement on the customer-side. Your reaction is uncharacteristically knee-jerk.

As long as Epic continue to give a greater slice of the money pie to developers than Steam, I want to see them grow, improve, and compete. If ‘anti-consumer’ actually translates to ‘pro-developer’, I’m going to support that. This is not the same as defending their exclusivity deals, which I would hope (perhaps naively) they will put a stop to once enough eyes are on their storefront.

My reaction is strong,because I wanted the game to succeed! 4A is a Ukrainian developer, a lot of the people from GSC (the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. people) work there, and I liked the 2 prior games.

But this is a boneheaded decision made by the publisher, that's going to piss off a lot of people. I hoped to see this game on GOG in a few months once the initial sales are done and the Denuvo DRM is quietly patched out. But now the game's confined to the worst digital store out there. Epic doesn't work in China; they offer 12 currencies, and the rest of the world has to deal with markups to the USD price, which puts the game out of price range for many countries; Epic doesn't have basic features like cloud saves, achievements, even a bloody search function. Deep Silver is condemning the game I was looking forward to to infamy for a paycheck of which I assume a pittance will go to the devs and the rest will be the CEO's bonus, since that's how these things tend to work.

THQ Nordic already washed their hands from this mess trying to do damage control. Not sure I believe them, but they'd better give the head of Koch media a stern talking to if they aren't lying.

If this was another case of epic poaching a self-publishing indie dev from steam I'd be annoyed, but ultimately i'd think same as you, "I can bear the inconvenience if a dev gets more money". But there's a publisher involved, so my trust is minimal.

And I don't trust Epic. They've spent years talking shit about PC as a platform, and now they are bringing the worst traits of consoles (exclusivity) in their attempt to create competition. So far, precedent shows that everyone who tried to cut out Steam via exclusivity (Ubisoft, Bethesda, ActiBlizz, Microsoft) did not give 2 shits about the actual quality of their storefront/launcher. Why should I believe that Epic will suddenly be different?

And I don't see a reason to give Epic a pass because their store " just got started". They are one of the richest developers in the world right now. The fact that they saw it fit to release their store in its current barebones format and try to compete with established standards is if anything more insulting and arrogant

I think you need to remember how bare bones Steam was when it first came into being. Designing a good launcher is extremely difficult, and many elements might require initial user feedback. Having said that, yes, there are basic elements to Epic’s which should already have been there, and, like with so many games now, you get a sense it was rushed out before it was ready.

As for pricing and money-making - well, the dev/publisher now get a bigger cut of every sale. And on the consumer-side, the game is $10 cheaper than it was on Steam (and yes, because of the much larger cut the makers get, they still make more per game sale than they would have at $10 more expensive Steam). You can of course argue that in terms of overall sales, fewer people might now buy it because it’s on a less well-known storefront, but presumably the publisher took that into account when making the decision. If you’re sceptical about that, then your problem is with Deep Silver, not with Epic.

Finally, you say you hoped to see the game on GOG in a few months time - well, it will be in a bit longer than that. The exclusivity deal is for 12 months.

oh, I know that. It'll probably be 2 year, because Deep Silver will want their precious Denuvo to stick around a while after their Steam release.

Once again, the game is only cheaper to American buyers. For everyone else worldwide, it's either same price as steam, or significantly higher (and something like 40 countries can't buy it at all).

Yes, I realize that Epic's store is a rushed half-baked job. That's one of my main complaints about it. I'm not expecting Epic to reinvent the wheel here- but there's a perfectly good example in all the things Steam does right for it to copy, and it hasn't even bothered to do that.

My problem with Epic is the fact that Tim Sweeney explicitly admitted that he is paying developers to make games exclusive to the Epic store- not just giving them a bigger cut of the sales, but actually cutting them lump sum cheques.

that is a practice I don't want to see spreading in PC gaming, because then it becomes a competition between storefronts as to who has more spending money to wow publishers/developers, rather then who can offer better service to the consumers.

All those criticisms are legitimate. So here's hoping Epic store improves in the ways we would like to see, rather than morphing into something we don't want to see, or, indeed, crashing and burning entirely

- Khell

This post has been edited by Galactic Council: 31 January 2019 - 11:23 AM

[Mentalist]

yeah, here's hoping, but the more think about it, the more pessimistic I feel about the whole thing.

Epic's ideas are highlighting a conflict between the people who make games and the people who buy games. The Steam model creates a buyer's market- devs' ability to generate free keys and sell them to various distributors creates a situation where various retailers are competing and undercutting each other to sell me know functionally identical Steam keys. It's great for consumers and is in large part responsible for the insane sales and the fact most players have so many games in their backlogs that they physically can't play them all, ever.

There are loads of problems with Steam, and some of them affect developers in significant ways, I get that. There's certainly demand for what epic is offering. But this demand and the system epic is creating in response goes directly against the interests of the consumers (who are the beneficiaries of the current status quo). So gamers are siding with Steam, because it's basically a foundation of a system that's been benefitting gamers for over a decade (albeit at developer's expense). While Epic is (seemingly) trying to create a system that puts the developers first (at the consumer's expense). This leads to conflict by definition. And I'm not seeing an easy solution here.

[Silencer]

Mentalist, on 31 January 2019 - 01:24 PM, said:

yeah, here's hoping, but the more think about it, the more pessimistic I feel about the whole thing.

Epic's ideas are highlighting a conflict between the people who make games and the people who buy games. The Steam model creates a buyer's market- devs' ability to generate free keys and sell them to various distributors creates a situation where various retailers are competing and undercutting each other to sell me know functionally identical Steam keys. It's great for consumers and is in large part responsible for the insane sales and the fact most players have so many games in their backlogs that they physically can't play them all, ever.

There are loads of problems with Steam, and some of them affect developers in significant ways, I get that. There's certainly demand for what epic is offering. But this demand and the system epic is creating in response goes directly against the interests of the consumers (who are the beneficiaries of the current status quo). So gamers are siding with Steam, because it's basically a foundation of a system that's been benefitting gamers for over a decade (albeit at developer's expense). While Epic is (seemingly) trying to create a system that puts the developers first (at the consumer's expense). This leads to conflict by definition. And I'm not seeing an easy solution here.

I would add to this - there's a lot of references to Epic being beneficial for developers. But is it? Or is it actually beneficial to publishers, who do not wish to see the kind of benefits Steam brings to the end user. Are those benefits for gamers Ment is talking about above really at the developer's expense, or is it just making games more reasonably priced, and therefore reducing the amount of profit publishers can make from them by 0.000000001% - which is unacceptable to them?

I want there to be competition for Steam. But if it comes at any expense to the consumer, right now, in this market, it is unacceptable. Games are becoming increasingly exploitative, manipulative, and downright anti-consumer by nature, and it all comes down to corporate greed. The only silver lining at the moment is that, thanks to platforms like Steam, base game prices are down (though, overall, prices are up due to the digital deluxe preorder alpha platinum edition effect). Don't get me wrong - Steam is no paragon of consumer rights or anything, but by and large their model has helped more than it has hindered. And bringing in platform exclusivity any more than the uPlay and Origin bullshit has done, does nothing but add more barriers to entry.
I for one, don't want my digital downloads to be platform specific. I don't need another login, another launcher, another third party holding my payment information for potential breach, when I don't need to. As Ment notes above, the ability to buy a key on one site and redeem it on Steam is brilliant. Though honestly they should all go back to just having regular old downloads, but hey, that's a bridge too far in the modern age of "we own the content and are just giving you a completely discretionary right to use that software" jackassery.

The point is, Epic needs to realise that their sole justification for doing this platform exclusivity bullshit is business based. "We need to entice users to our platform to grow our business". That is all stick and no carrot from a consumer perspective, and they should expect the criticism that has arisen from that kind of move. Their real approach to gaining users could have just been challenging on price. But now they have added in something that punishes consumers who don't want their platform in an active manner, rather than a passive one. They're forcing you to use their service if you want their game, instead of offering you a cheaper alternative and letting you decide. THAT is #1 why there is so much backlash on this right now. It's about removing choice.
It's the same reason Microsoft got slammed over the "always online" rubbish for the Xbox One, and it's the same reason Sony got slammed over removing the Linux install feature from the PS3. It's not about whether the end result is what we all would have done anyway (I mean, most of my Xbox library is digital, so I can't play it without connection to Xbox Live, for example, and very few people used the Linux thing on PS3), it's about choice.

And leading with an option that removes choice, that focuses only their own business goals, out of the gate? On what basis should anyone trust them to fix that later? On what basis are we all giving them the benefit of the doubt, when there has been no indication by Epic (AFAIK) that exclusivity deals will be a 1-2 year only thing, that will then stop? They're a business. They don't get the same sort of goodwill "maybe they won't stab us in the back" mentality that a random person on the street gets - because their basic motives are inherently opposed to helping consumers. Until they prove that is something they can be trusted to act in good faith on, why believe them? It costs nothing to be skeptical of their motives and point out that the behaviour is problematic. If anything, it would hopefully speed up the process of them behaving in a manner that is more beneficial for their consumers.