Publishers pull their games from Epic Big Sale

TEKK3N

It's getting from bad to worse for the Epic Store.
Apparently Epic forgot to ask publishers if they wanted to opt in the Big Sale, and some of them pulled their games from the store while the sale was already going on.

https://kotaku.com/publishers-pull-their-games-from-epics-store-during-its-1834828248

This is probably the first big crack in what I predict will be a failure of epic proportion (pun intended) for the Epic store.
As I predicted some time ago, as soon as publishers see that the sales are not coming in, they will pull out from the store all together.
This is just the first sign of it.

Long live Steam.

bcbully

This is so strange lol. 

Long live Newegg?

TEKK3N

What amuses me is the fact that people think that $10 is such a great deal.

Steam has 2 Big Sales each week.
One during the week and another for the week end.

And usually discounts rates goes from 20% up til 80%.
This week end they have several sale packages:
1) Post Apocalyptic week end (18 games: Fallout 4 at £9.99 = 50% off))
2) Publisher Weekend: Bohemia Interactive  (up to 80% off)

3) Publisher Weekend: Tripwire Publisher (50%-70% off)

4) Publisher Weekend: Dovetail Publisher (up to 70% off)

3) Bits and bobs (No Man's Sky at £19.99 = 50% discount)

Say what you like but Steam is good for gaming and gamers in general.
Maybe Steam is bad for AAA publishers margin (because of the 30% fees), but who cares?
And the publishers don't seem to complain that much either.

Can't wait for the Ubisoft weekend sales when they move their games to Steam.

TEKK3N

Arterius said:

They were pulled into the sale was over. I do agree that Epic is terrible but their only sin was not asking publishers if they wanted their games on sale or not. Which is dumb but nothing that I see being a problem down the line.

The problem is that Epic Stores won't bring enough revenues to justify most games being sold there, this is the first sign that some publishers are uneasy with the Epic Store and its practices.
Keep in mind Epic have the exclusive on most of those games, so if they don't sell there, they won't sell anywhere else.

Epic is a tiny store compare to Steam, and they are not able to offer the same value for money Steam offers on a weekly basis.
See my post above.

adam_nox

TEKK3N said:

What amuses me is the fact that people think that $10 is such a great deal.

Steam has 2 Big Sales each week.
One during the week and another for the week end.

And usually discounts rates goes from 20% up til 80%.
This week end they have several sale packages:
1) Post Apocalyptic week end (18 games: Fallout 4 at £9.99 = 50% off))
2) Publisher Weekend: Bohemia Interactive  (up to 80% off)

3) Publisher Weekend: Tripwire Publisher (50%-70% off)

4) Publisher Weekend: Dovetail Publisher (up to 70% off)

3) Bits and bobs (No Man's Sky at £19.99 = 50% discount)

Say what you like but Steam is good for gaming and gamers in general.
Maybe Steam is bad for AAA publishers margin (because of the 30% fees), but who cares?
And the publishers don't seem to complain that much either.

Can't wait for the Ubisoft weekend sales when they move their games to Steam.

None of those are deals. FO4 has been 10 dollars forever, NMS even lower than 20 for a long while. Steam is garbage.

TEKK3N

adam_nox said:

TEKK3N said:

None of those are deals. FO4 has been 10 dollars forever, NMS even lower than 20 for a long while. Steam is garbage.

They have 100 games on sale this weekend only, which ones are not a deal?
All of them or just the 2 you quoted?
The deal is that you have thousands of games that get discounted every year, sooner or later.
You are missing the big picture.

Maybe you think that way because almost the entire Steam catalogue get discounted at least twice a year, and some games like Fallout 4 gets discounted at least 3 times every year.

I check Steam prices every week and 80% of the time they sell full price.
I have a long whishlist of games, I always keep an eye on prices, and when they get discounted I snapped them up.

I never buy their games full price, because I know they will get discounted sooner or later.

Because of that I have a huge gaming library. Most games I never even played yet, but when you see them at £4.99 or less what can you do?

Last week they had Pathfinder: The Kingmaker at 40% discount and Civilization VI at 65% discount just to name a couple.
But each week there are some great deals.

Only downside of Steam is that not always they have the latest games.
But if you are an avid gamer and you want a big library at a reasonable price, Steam is the place.

MadFrenchie

Rookie mistake by Epic, but it's only two titles (afaik), and only one is worth noting (Bloodlines 2, the other is an indie game that isn't currently very popular).

Could it be any more obvious how surprisingly little businesses seem to learn from the mistakes of their competitors?

Sal1

Steam needs competition. Any business without real competition just sits on there laurels and raises prices.

anemo

I hope Epic does enough to get Valve to wake up.

The most recent gamer culturally related thing they've done is make Artifact.   They've been so successful just sitting on store income, that they haven't needed to really even try at anything else.

Tiller

It's like Epic thought it was still  the 2000s still and we were in the midst of the dotcom boom.

mbrodie

TEKK3N said:

What amuses me is the fact that people think that $10 is such a great deal.

Steam has 2 Big Sales each week.
One during the week and another for the week end.

And usually discounts rates goes from 20% up til 80%.
This week end they have several sale packages:
1) Post Apocalyptic week end (18 games: Fallout 4 at £9.99 = 50% off))
2) Publisher Weekend: Bohemia Interactive  (up to 80% off)

3) Publisher Weekend: Tripwire Publisher (50%-70% off)

4) Publisher Weekend: Dovetail Publisher (up to 70% off)

3) Bits and bobs (No Man's Sky at £19.99 = 50% discount)

Say what you like but Steam is good for gaming and gamers in general.
Maybe Steam is bad for AAA publishers margin (because of the 30% fees), but who cares?
And the publishers don't seem to complain that much either.

Can't wait for the Ubisoft weekend sales when they move their games to Steam.

if you're going to make claims at least make them credible.

$10 off any game over $14.99 with some titles upto 75% off storewide
you don't have to like epic, but at least don't post false information.

AlBQuirky

2 games' pages now return a "404 error" and the sky is falling?

mbrodie

AlBQuirky said:

2 games' pages now return a "404 error" and the sky is falling?

no.. people just want it to fail so badly they cling to anything they can get

Xiaoki

mbrodie said:

AlBQuirky said:

2 games' pages now return a "404 error" and the sky is falling?

no.. people just want it to fail so badly they cling to anything they can get

Like pretending Oxygen Not Included is a major release.

Or conveniently forgetting that the publisher of Vampire Masquerade has already said that the game will be back.

Yeah, the Steam fanboys are a funny lot.

ChildoftheShadows

DMKano said:

Epic is not making much from selling other companies titles at all.

Their cash cow is Fortnite and engine licensing. 

The store was more of an experiment to keep Steam in check - I doubt that Epic store in current iteration will stick around longterm mostly due to it not making so much money to justify keeping it around.

After a while they will revert to just having Epic titles there and it will be just a launcher and patcher and not a 3rd party store front

I don't think talking profits of their store at this time is even something that should be considered. They're spending money to get it growing, so naturally there wont be any profits, but 12% is more than enough to support a store that once complete doesn't need to do much of anything to maintain it. 

I think if they slow down a bit, fix their issues and implement the rest of the features before they screw up again then it's going to be a hit. Most people don't care and are going to get games wherever they have to. People seem to forget that the ones paying attention are only a fraction of the gaming market. That's why MMOs are going to shit and that's why Mobile games are blowing up despite the "actual gamers" hating them.

Tiller

Mars_Orbital said:

Publishers do stuff #woah . When all publishers stop doing stuff, might be a conversattion there.

Well whenever it does happen, I'm sure @delete5230 will be there to point it out, over and over and over and over.............................. and over again

Wizardry

This is really sad for gamer's and the business of gaming.Steam should not own a monopoly on the store front,there should be several entities offering games.
As it stands now ,Steam has become so big that everyone else has to offer incentives and bargains/deals to compete in the marketplace.
Steam is not even run well,there is literally ZERO support,a steadfast SIMPLE refund policy and a boat load of really bad crappy games.I would say you could filter out 95% of Steam and be left with 5% as playable games.

WE are seeing first hand the problem with allowing Steam to get so big,everyone else is just going to copy Steam but offer incentives to the developers but nothing for gamer's.

You want to put Steam out of business,start running the store front properly,offer support to ALL games you sell and don't become a haven for 10,000 real shitty games that take up space and make searching for games very tiresome.

Xasapis

The move was made by 3 publishers, that I'm aware of, and it's not related to specific titles. These publishers removed their games from the store as the only way to opt out of this discount. The pages will be reinstated after the discount is over.
The three publishers I know of are:

• Ubisoft
• Paradox
• 2K games

There is already another thread on the matter, where I elaborated a bit more on the possible reasons those publishers chose to opt out of this particular discount.

Why was Steam mixed in this whole discussion? You can get a 10% discount on any game in the Ubisoft digital store by spending 100 points of their points gained by playing the games. It's another unique discount method, yet again it would be odd to mention Steam as somewhat relevant to it.

AAAMEOW

I'm not a fan on paying 30% commission to google playstore, apple store, or steam.

The OP seemed like it though.

Renoaku

Avoid buying from Epic Games.

Epic Promised no bloatware (They lied)

- Games such as "Anno" among many others are using (Denuvo DRM) which slows your computer while the game is running due to requirement of more processing power especially bad for those who run multiple games or tasks.

- Epic has horrid customer service, they can't even provide a list of games on the store that use a form of third party DRM or Anti Cheat, instead they ask you to contact the publisher which often can't even answer either because they tell you to go to the developer and ask, and you get no response. When fact is it's easier just for Epic Games to require disclosures on the store / product page.

- Epic is Anti Consumer, in many ways by not informing people of third party DRM's like Steam, and Review Censorship.

- No Cloud Saves, or Controller support.

- No Genere listings like Steam.

- Friends List isn't that great.

- Download speeds are slower than Steams.

Over-All the quality of experience goes down when using Epic Store though they promised improvements but at them only taking like 8% I think it was you can't expect AAA Experience, or the company to list games that use 3rd party DRMs which are Anti Consumer.

Epic Maybe in violation of EU Laws by not clearly disclosing third party drm, and software usages for each game.

For now I am sticking with Steam.

Xasapis

AAAMEOW said:

I'm not a fan on paying 30% commission to google playstore, apple store, or steam.

The OP seemed like it though.

If the OP is not a developer, he's not paying a commission in either case.


To the guy above, lets be fair here, Denuvo is not a bloatware pushed by Epic. Rage 2 on Steam had Denuvo while the Bethesda digital store version did not. Denuvo is 100% a publisher choice.

Also, I'm not aware of any EU laws that dictate that publishers must disclose the means that they use to prevent tampering and cheating. 

My only issue with Epic digital store is that on one hand have this soul crashing overworking cruch culture in their Fortnite team, while at the same time they seem to put a half arsed effort into their digital store (which seems to only improve due to backlash).

AAAMEOW

Xasapis said:

AAAMEOW said:

I'm not a fan on paying 30% commission to google playstore, apple store, or steam.

The OP seemed like it though.

If the OP is not a developer, he's not paying a commission in either case.

You buy a game for 50$, 15$ goes to steam...  

You buy 50$ pokicoin for pokemon go, 15$ go to google...

That is ridiculous how much we pay for "just a plateform".

cmacq

Sorry folks. I can do my own research. I like that it's convenient on Steam but I owe them nothing. If the price is better elsewhere that's where I'll go.

mbrodie

Renoaku said:

Avoid buying from Epic Games.

Epic Promised no bloatware (They lied)

- Games such as "Anno" among many others are using (Denuvo DRM) which slows your computer while the game is running due to requirement of more processing power especially bad for those who run multiple games or tasks.

- Epic has horrid customer service, they can't even provide a list of games on the store that use a form of third party DRM or Anti Cheat, instead they ask you to contact the publisher which often can't even answer either because they tell you to go to the developer and ask, and you get no response. When fact is it's easier just for Epic Games to require disclosures on the store / product page.

- Epic is Anti Consumer, in many ways by not informing people of third party DRM's like Steam, and Review Censorship.

- No Cloud Saves, or Controller support.

- No Genere listings like Steam.

- Friends List isn't that great.

- Download speeds are slower than Steams.

Over-All the quality of experience goes down when using Epic Store though they promised improvements but at them only taking like 8% I think it was you can't expect AAA Experience, or the company to list games that use 3rd party DRMs which are Anti Consumer.

Epic Maybe in violation of EU Laws by not clearly disclosing third party drm, and software usages for each game.

For now I am sticking with Steam.

really because steam sold Rage 2 on their store with no DRM listed then about 4 hours after the game was playable the steam page updated to "Denuvo" for DRM, mind you they took all the preorders etc.. without providing that information.

Now that being said like 4 days later bethesda patched it out of the steam version anyway.. but thats just as bad in my eyes.

You can't have double standards

- Cloud saves are coming in one of the next EGS Patches
- Genre Searches are coming in one of the next EGS Patches
- It's a friends list it shows your friends and works what more is there to it

https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap 

seeing as features are so important to you, here is the tracking board for upcoming and recently released features along with target dates.

They are actually actively improving the platform.

AlBQuirky

Xiaoki said:

mbrodie said:

AlBQuirky said:

2 games' pages now return a "404 error" and the sky is falling?

no.. people just want it to fail so badly they cling to anything they can get

Like pretending Oxygen Not Included is a major release.

Or conveniently forgetting that the publisher of Vampire Masquerade has already said that the game will be back.

Yeah, the Steam fanboys are a funny lot.

I'm certainly not a "Steam Fanboy", but the Epic Store has me conflicted. I appreciate what they're trying to do: offer another choice besides Steam. The way they're going about it is all wrong for me, personally.

They are fighting against Steam's "alleged" monopoly by doing what? Exclusivity! My head is shaking at this "strategy"...

For clarity, I long for the "old(?) days" when game stores were not connected to a continuously running "launcher." For my money, GoG has it right. You download the actual games and if you want a launcher, use their Galaxy app

I live the USA where Internet access is NOT a given. My provider goes down at LEAST 5 times a month (that I notice), usually not for an extended period of time, but there have been times when hours were involved. I also can't wrap my head around continuous internet connection for single player games. I'm facing the fact that the "future of gaming" may well leave me out of the picture.