Why are we waking up now to exclusives when they have been going on for over 20 years.
Way back in the day EA garnered the rights to label their hockey game as nlhpa,the national hockey leagues player association.No other developer could make a game labeled nhlpa.
The same goes for SWTOR,nobody else could make a Star Wars mmorpg.
Devs often sign licenses to be able to cash in on favorable well known IP's,names,people etc etc while locking out their competitors.Does it perhaps infringe on the FAIR business practices the FTC has set in place as law,well complain to the FTC then or the government offices.Good luck though as those offices are real lazy,they couldn't care less about anyone or your complaints unless they see a tidy financial win fall or someone is complaining about some child abuse related topic.
So now Epic has a few exclusives and all of a sudden is a bad day at the office?
I have a simple answer for you as the consumer.First of all,exclusives is what the developer wants to hopefully ensure a successful product,so in essence Epic is offering what businesses want.Guess what YOUR option as a consumer is?
Yep tell them to shove it if you don't like it,you think gaming is something we NEED to do,think again.You don't like something,stop supporting it,guess who gets the message loud and clear,yep the perpetrator's.
Only thing i don't like is pointing fingers at one entity when it is going on a lot all over the place,not just in gaming.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I see exclusivity as fear in not being able to compete in an open market. I also will never buy an game as long as it is exclusive. Throughout my life there have been many games made that might have been great, but I didn't buy them because they were console exclusive to this or that console. I will not do exclusive on PC the same way I never have on console. It is a personal choice. If your game or platform can't stand on it's on an it has to hide behind things like offering discounts through things like exclusivity then I don't need either. I don't care about the reasons why a dev goes that route either, as a customer I just will not support it.
This is just bitterness talking. When you use logic you don’t come to these conclusions.
As far as I can tell Epic's "exclusive" titles will be on e.g. Steam after 12 months. So this is basically the same deal that e.g. devs have been coming to with Sony PS or MS XB; a time limited period.
And many of their free games have been previously available. Or in the case of e.g. Alan Wake the only thing exclusive about it is that it is free on Epic - or you can pay c. $10 on Amazon etc.
I'll take the anti-Epic store people seriously when they rage against Steam for having thousands of exclusive games only on Steam. Until then, they are a joke just mad their monopoly has a small competitor trying to break it. Nevermind the fact they make false claims of certain games being exclusive when they are on multiple PC game distributors, but just not on Steam temporarily (like Outer Worlds).
ok tell me what game is steam only? who is not valve game? and tht steam only is because steam forced the devs to only drop there
anyway reading all comments, I can undertand most don't know what they are talking about, always nice to read these, always funny
sorry who forced all the games on the epic store to be there? offering someone a lucrative deal they can't look past isn't forcing them... epic didn't hold any guns to anyones heads they chose to go to epic themselves.
Also Atlas is only available on steam, and several physical games i bought int he past i opened up to get a steam key much to my dismay
I'll take the anti-Epic store people seriously when they rage against Steam for having thousands of exclusive games only on Steam. Until then, they are a joke just mad their monopoly has a small competitor trying to break it. Nevermind the fact they make false claims of certain games being exclusive when they are on multiple PC game distributors, but just not on Steam temporarily (like Outer Worlds).
Steam doesn't have any exclusive games other than ones made by Valve and Valve has never paid developers for exclusivity as far as I know. Care to point any out? As far as I know, all the games on Steam are capable of being distributed on other platforms if the developers wanted to.
i mean if the developer wanted to not be exclusive to epic they have that choice....
They're essentially driving up to the front doors of all these smaller developers with a truck load of cash and buying them off. That might be good for the developers but not so good for consumers.
What exactly is "the not so good for consumers" part of exclusivity on a free launcher?
I get that people hate Epic and Sweeny and the fact that Tencent owns a piece or whatever else annoys you about them ,and that some may want to boycott Epic for those or any other reason but I'm still waiting for a persuasive argument that it's bad for us.
I'm still trying to see a persuasive argument there's any benefit at all for consumers, while I easily laid out the inconveniences, however minor you may feel them to be.
When Epic starts saving "me" money, time or provides more convenience then maybe I'll care.
Because yes, it really is all about me you know.
Exactly. It's not about convenience or having to use another launcher. No one has been able to point out any tangible benefits these exclusive deals have for the consumer. If I could buy a new release game from EGS for say $40 instead of $50 then they might have a point. Instead, all that extra money developers get from Epic goes right into their own pockets. I know they keep complaining about the 30% Steam takes but clearly modern day devs have no idea what it was like before Steam and other digital distribution systems. In the past, PC games were only available in brick and mortar stores that were taking a hell of a lot more than 30%. It was often more like 50% or more.
Also, Epic's launcher is 100% Gunk (that's right, junk with a G). You would think with all that Fortnight money and looking at what Steam has done over the years they'd be able to come up with something that isn't hot garbage. They want to compete with Steam yet they make ZERO effort to create something even close to what their competitor has even with all the resources and knowledge at their disposal. And we won't even get into Epic's "customer support".
could you stick your head further in the sand while blocking your ears and screaming NAH NAH NAH NAH I CANT HEAR YOU They actually had a platform to show you upcoming features and improvements and have been fairly consistent with doing a good job at hitting those timelines.
I'm not sure what EGS is doing is any different than consoles have been doing from the beginning. I DL'd the launcher a while back (for free) when they were giving away Shadow Complex, and haven't looked back.
I'm not worried about their lack of features, because I don't use any of that shit on Steam either. Let me know when the feature creep reaches an acceptable level, so I'm allowed to play. I'm not blown away by Origin or U-Play either, tbh.
I buy games when they're on sale wherever. I add all these Free weekly games to my Epic Library to play whenever also, and a lot of them were on my Steam Wish List as well, so that saved a lot of money. The same with Twitch. Does Twitch get a free pass on the hate? Do they not have exclusive deals?
I'm def not happy juggling all these services/apps/launchers/etc. but that's our world now until the pendulum swings back down toward more user friendly efficient tech, if it ever does.
I couldn't even understand the argument even if we did have to pay for Launchers, because I'm so used to consoles being this way forever.
I invested a lot of money in a PS4 specifically for all their great exclusives, and I've done the same for Nintendo systems. The investment in this argument is nothing but a few seconds of time, and a short DL, so it's just not the same. Buy the games wherever they're cheapest and nab as many free games as you can from everyone.
Not a problem for me as I only use Steam. There are more good games on that service than any other and I could care less what Epic does, I just do not have time to try them all.
Epic gives developers financial security up to a certain level on units of their game sold, that is why developers go with the EGS. It means a lot of them don’t go out of business so that means more games for us, and in the current climate many companies are indeed struggling. Seems like pretty direct benefits for us.
Steam has completely abandoned quality control when it comes to games on their store so it has turned into an open sewer of asset flips, half translated crap etc. To discover the gems you have to wade through pages of crap, many more clicks than having to pay twice because the EGS doesn’t have a cart yet. Very inconvenient no?
A free game every week. Not free for the weekend or some other glorified demo like Steam has, no, an actual free game to keep. Its not current AAA stuff but there is definitely quality there.
I don’t know, the rest of the reasoning against the EGS simply boils down to ‘not enough sales’ and ‘I don’t like their tactics.’ As to the first argument, the first sale they did was actually amazing. As for the second argument, that is fine and a choice, it doesn’t mean Epic did something bad.
And one other funny thing. Last sale Steam grinded to a halt again, no page loading, not being able to pay etc. etc. It was a mess. No surprise since that has been happening for the last ten years but nobody whined about that, I can’t imagine the shitstorm here had that happened to the EGS.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
What it comes down to is that Epic is subsidising developers from their own pockets.
One way or another they are gonna want to earn that money back someday.
What happens then?
Something else: a while ago I thought I would buy a game there so proceeded to make an account. emailadress, made a password and logged in: hello Srinan(?) from Thailand.
I am from the Netherlands!
You dont think I am gonna leave my creditcard-data on a site like that.
What it comes down to is that Epic is subsidising developers from their own pockets.
One way or another they are gonna want to earn that money back someday.
What happens then?
Something else: a while ago I thought I would buy a game there so proceeded to make an account. emailadress, made a password and logged in: hello Srinan(?) from Thailand.
I am from the Netherlands!
You dont think I am gonna leave my creditcard-data on a site like that.
Most likely your credentials were leaked and someone made an account with them(for some stupid reason).
I was excited about Satisfactory And Borderlands 3, thought I would just wait for Steam release, but I already feel my excitement for those 2 games dropping and I probably won't even buy them anymore when they finally do release on Steam.
I see exclusivity as fear in not being able to compete in an open market. I also will never buy an game as long as it is exclusive. Throughout my life there have been many games made that might have been great, but I didn't buy them because they were console exclusive to this or that console. I will not do exclusive on PC the same way I never have on console. It is a personal choice. If your game or platform can't stand on it's on an it has to hide behind things like offering discounts through things like exclusivity then I don't need either. I don't care about the reasons why a dev goes that route either, as a customer I just will not support it.
So how does this work when you buy a game on PC that is only on PC? Exclusives work both ways.
Anyways as for the OP: I tend to agree with a lot of what was said and do think exclusives are a necessary evil for a company attempting to compete with Steam. HOWEVER, I think that the way that Epic has been handling it has been dubious. Epic should buy COMPANIES not games. If Epic bought the company, supported the creation of their games, and made it exclusive to the EGS it would be much more acceptable in my opinion. I do think this is one of the reasons companies like Sony / Nintendo generally get a pass when it comes to their first party titles.
That said, I do understand why a developer would take an exclusivity deal for a PR hit especially when most people will just buy the game anyways despite what they say.
Nearly every industry relies on exclusive products to stand out and gaming is no different.
That said: I am not really about defending the the companies that bail on Steam (Yes, this is not just on Epic, takes two to tango) the last minute for an exclusivity deal. I also think it is absolutely despicable what some of these crowdfunded games have done (Ooblets and that one game sorta like Xcom which I forgot the name of) promising Steam versions and then selling out for an exclusivity deal.
I also think that the biggest problem besides the ones I just mentioned are related to the application itself personally. The program is an absolute mess. If you ever play an Epic title everyone can try to add you to your friends list because it uses your profile name in the game; so you get spammed with friend requests by bots. There is no way to disable videos auto playing in the store, no shopping cart, no achievements, no social profile system, no forums, ect,ect. The store needs a ton of work.
My personal take on this whole thing: I don't really care if a game is exclusive. As long as I can play it I will play it if I want to play it. I will play games on EGS, Uplay, PS4, Switch, ect. As long as I own the hardware capable of playing the game I will play it if I want it. I don't really have some kind of morales when it comes to supporting a company that is being greedy tbh. I mean the reality is, I support companies like this nearly every day. Scumbag corporations that pull shady stunts are terrible, but you probably spend money on them too. (Wal-Mart,Google,Comcast,ect_) It is just the way the world spins unfortunately.
Ultimately more money going to people who actually make games instead of to people who hold up a storefront is a good thing. Most of the complaints against Epic are nitpicks or things that can be substituted in multitude of ways. The only viable problem I can see is people being used to regional pricing for their region and regional pricing for that Region being missing in EGS.
Missing 80% of the customer facing features is not nitpicking. Its a bare bones distribution platform missing the features I need to objectively decide if I want to by a game. Its pretty much just here's a picture of a game with a brief description, give us your money.
Well, a store is a place where you buy things so literally it is doing it's job. Integrated reviews are a nice feature but they are not an essential feature and as such it is something that is still under development for EGS. And it is not like you cannot find a review for the game on alternative sources. I mean how many people are doing written and video reviews? How many sites are there that do game reviews specifically? And if you don't have a favorite reviewer there are at least three review aggregation sites(metacritic, opencritic, gamerankings). So how hard exactly is it to find out if you would like a game or not?
Ever consider, as Red pointed out, that Valve is justified for charging 30% for the features, including targeted marketing, they provide? While epic is I guess justified for only charging 15% since they provide basically nothing but a storefront?
Also add in the fact that Epic basically "pre-buying" your game to guarantee you sales obviously has a catch. What do you think happens if you do not get the real sales to pay them back upon launch, hmm? I'm betting on some nasty "we now own your game" clauses in there somewhere, as Epic is not a charity after all.
Epic are not charity but what they are doing is paying for publicity. If the games don't sell then Epic are at a loss and have no-one to blame but themselves. Epic are not the devil, they don't get your firstborn when you sign a deal with them.
As for Valve charging for features that they provide - they were charging that amount before they provided those features and those features are likely coming to EGS as well.
What it comes down to is that Epic is subsidising developers from their own pockets.
One way or another they are gonna want to earn that money back someday.
What happens then?
Something else: a while ago I thought I would buy a game there so proceeded to make an account. emailadress, made a password and logged in: hello Srinan(?) from Thailand.
I am from the Netherlands!
You dont think I am gonna leave my creditcard-data on a site like that.
thats only if the publisher / developer doesn't reach the minimum sale agreement that they decide on and by all accounts publishers / developers have been more than happy with sales figures on the EGS platform....
not to mention, i'm sure Epic can keep this going for a loooooong time if they are only shelling out a few hundred to a mil or so here and there.
I see exclusivity as fear in not being able to compete in an open market. I also will never buy an game as long as it is exclusive. Throughout my life there have been many games made that might have been great, but I didn't buy them because they were console exclusive to this or that console. I will not do exclusive on PC the same way I never have on console. It is a personal choice. If your game or platform can't stand on it's on an it has to hide behind things like offering discounts through things like exclusivity then I don't need either. I don't care about the reasons why a dev goes that route either, as a customer I just will not support it.
I also think it is absolutely despicable what some of these crowdfunded games have done (Ooblets and that one game sorta like Xcom which I forgot the name of) promising Steam versions and then selling out for an exclusivity deal.
Epics Exclusive deals are timed, other PC platforms will get all the games eventually
I'll take the anti-Epic store people seriously when they rage against Steam for having thousands of exclusive games only on Steam. Until then, they are a joke just mad their monopoly has a small competitor trying to break it. Nevermind the fact they make false claims of certain games being exclusive when they are on multiple PC game distributors, but just not on Steam temporarily (like Outer Worlds).
Steam doesn't have any exclusive games other than ones made by Valve and Valve has never paid developers for exclusivity as far as I know. Care to point any out? As far as I know, all the games on Steam are capable of being distributed on other platforms if the developers wanted to.
Their revenue sharing policy gives incentivizes store exclusives due to it being based on how revenue share is being calculated. At $10 million Valve gets 25% instead of 30% and at $50 million they get 20%. This means that all big games are incentivized to stay exclusive to their store until those marks are hit because revenue split between multiple stores might cause them to miss those and thus receive smaller revenue share from where the majority of the sales would happen on PC(because of Steam's virtual monopoly). Effectively Valve are giving $500 000 for games to stay exclusive on their store until they hit $10 million in revenue and additional $2 500 000 to stay exclusive until they hit 50 million in revenue overall. There are no exclusivity deals - just great exclusivity incentives.
I'll take the anti-Epic store people seriously when they rage against Steam for having thousands of exclusive games only on Steam. Until then, they are a joke just mad their monopoly has a small competitor trying to break it. Nevermind the fact they make false claims of certain games being exclusive when they are on multiple PC game distributors, but just not on Steam temporarily (like Outer Worlds).
Steam doesn't have any exclusive games other than ones made by Valve and Valve has never paid developers for exclusivity as far as I know. Care to point any out? As far as I know, all the games on Steam are capable of being distributed on other platforms if the developers wanted to.
Their revenue sharing policy gives incentivizes store exclusives due to it being based on how revenue share is being calculated. At $10 million Valve gets 25% instead of 30% and at $50 million they get 20%. This means that all big games are incentivized to stay exclusive to their store until those marks are hit because revenue split between multiple stores might cause them to miss those and thus receive smaller revenue share from where the majority of the sales would happen on PC(because of Steam's virtual monopoly). Effectively Valve are giving $500 000 for games to stay exclusive on their store until they hit $10 million in revenue and additional $2 500 000 to stay exclusive until they hit 50 million in revenue overall. There are no exclusivity deals - just great exclusivity incentives.
that aside as i said previously, can someone show me how to buy / install and play Atlas without steam, apparently steam has no exclusives but i can only buy / install and play Atlas through steam.
it's funny how no one ever argues against this point because you can't.... you can't say steam doesn't have exclusives but Atlas is exclusively on steam and is not developed or published by Valve.
The argument "it's only one game" also doesn't count... because 1 game is still 1 exclusive and there are more examples, i just can't be bothered finding out which games.
that aside as i said previously, can someone show me how to buy / install and play Atlas without steam, apparently steam has no exclusives but i can only buy / install and play Atlas through steam.
it's funny how no one ever argues against this point because you can't.... you can't say steam doesn't have exclusives but Atlas is exclusively on steam and is not developed or published by Valve.
The argument "it's only one game" also doesn't count... because 1 game is still 1 exclusive and there are more examples, i just can't be bothered finding out which games.
It is definitely not only one game. I've been asking the same question about Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 2: Remake, Monster Hunter World and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. All of those are sold on the Microsoft Windows 10 store for Xbox but the PC editions are suspiciously missing there.
I see exclusivity as fear in not being able to compete in an open market. I also will never buy an game as long as it is exclusive. Throughout my life there have been many games made that might have been great, but I didn't buy them because they were console exclusive to this or that console. I will not do exclusive on PC the same way I never have on console. It is a personal choice. If your game or platform can't stand on it's on an it has to hide behind things like offering discounts through things like exclusivity then I don't need either. I don't care about the reasons why a dev goes that route either, as a customer I just will not support it.
I also think it is absolutely despicable what some of these crowdfunded games have done (Ooblets and that one game sorta like Xcom which I forgot the name of) promising Steam versions and then selling out for an exclusivity deal.
Epics Exclusive deals are timed, other PC platforms will get all the games eventually
Yeah and that is fair enough I suppose, but I just think it is pretty disingenuous when it is a crowd funded game because people are quite literally giving you money with the expectation that when it is released they will be able to play it on the platform that you originally said it would be on. I don't really think anyone who wants to play a crowd funded game on Steam on day 1 will be very happy if they can't play it on Steam while people who don't mind Epic play it there.
Maybe I should have been a bit more specific though; Using crowd funding as a platform to signal boost your game to the point where Epic buys your game as an exclusive and you no longer need the crowd funding is downright dirty. These companies are essentially using people's good will (donations towards their crowdfunding campaign) towards something that didn't need their support in the first place. If your game is crowd funded and you want to gain additional funding that is something you need to show to your backers while keeping the original integrity of the game intact.(Not changing the original plan for example) It is not something you should be sharing with a 3rd party to get a quick buck while simultaneously telling all the people who helped you get to that point that they will have an extra "We are still making the game, BUT..." in the mix.
I see exclusivity as fear in not being able to compete in an open market. I also will never buy an game as long as it is exclusive. Throughout my life there have been many games made that might have been great, but I didn't buy them because they were console exclusive to this or that console. I will not do exclusive on PC the same way I never have on console. It is a personal choice. If your game or platform can't stand on it's on an it has to hide behind things like offering discounts through things like exclusivity then I don't need either. I don't care about the reasons why a dev goes that route either, as a customer I just will not support it.
I also think it is absolutely despicable what some of these crowdfunded games have done (Ooblets and that one game sorta like Xcom which I forgot the name of) promising Steam versions and then selling out for an exclusivity deal.
Epics Exclusive deals are timed, other PC platforms will get all the games eventually
Yeah and that is fair enough I suppose, but I just think it is pretty disingenuous when it is a crowd funded game because people are quite literally giving you money with the expectation that when it is released they will be able to play it on the platform that you originally said it would be on. I don't really think anyone who wants to play a crowd funded game on Steam on day 1 will be very happy if they can't play it on Steam while people who don't mind Epic play it there.
Maybe I should have been a bit more specific though; Using crowd funding as a platform to signal boost your game to the point where Epic buys your game as an exclusive and you no longer need the crowd funding is downright dirty. These companies are essentially using people's good will (donations towards their crowdfunding campaign) towards something that didn't need their support in the first place. If your game is crowd funded and you want to gain additional funding that is something you need to show to your backers while keeping the original integrity of the game intact.(Not changing the original plan for example) It is not something you should be sharing with a 3rd party to get a quick buck while simultaneously telling all the people who helped you get to that point that they will have an extra "We are still making the game, BUT..." in the mix.
I agree with your point but there is a big BUT.
Life isn't that black and white, expense happens, things you can't account for arise in the gaming development world, extended development time, needing to hire more people for whatever reason, creditors calling, just life happening it can't be helped and sometimes there is things that happen which are just unavoidable.
I have no reason to believe that at any point they were crowdfunding with the intention of getting picked up with an exclusivity deal with Epic. I also believe that the choice would not have been easy for them and that it was probably a lengthy process for them to say yes to it, they have an idea of how many they need to sell and how many they want to sell and maybe the market forecasting for releasing on Steam wasn't going to get them where they needed to be.
Especially for a studio of 2 people who would have been primarily self funded outside of outsourcing.. it's ok for us to look in and cast judgement but can any of us honestly say if we were in that situation and epic came along saying "hey we will guarantee you X amount of sales on our store and if we don't reach that target don't stress we gonna pay the difference" after looking at our own financials and weighing up what could and couldn't happen we wouldn't take the deal, i can honestly say if i had been pouring my blood sweat and tears into something for x amount of years, i'd want to take the best deal on the table.
I don't think anyone sets out to be disingenuous but we are all human and we're all gonna do whats best for ourselves, at the end of the day anyone who backed it on kickstarter is still gonna get the game, might not be on their preferred platform but you're still getting the game.
Comments
Way back in the day EA garnered the rights to label their hockey game as nlhpa,the national hockey leagues player association.No other developer could make a game labeled nhlpa.
The same goes for SWTOR,nobody else could make a Star Wars mmorpg.
Devs often sign licenses to be able to cash in on favorable well known IP's,names,people etc etc while locking out their competitors.Does it perhaps infringe on the FAIR business practices the FTC has set in place as law,well complain to the FTC then or the government offices.Good luck though as those offices are real lazy,they couldn't care less about anyone or your complaints unless they see a tidy financial win fall or someone is complaining about some child abuse related topic.
So now Epic has a few exclusives and all of a sudden is a bad day at the office?
I have a simple answer for you as the consumer.First of all,exclusives is what the developer wants to hopefully ensure a successful product,so in essence Epic is offering what businesses want.Guess what YOUR option as a consumer is?
Yep tell them to shove it if you don't like it,you think gaming is something we NEED to do,think again.You don't like something,stop supporting it,guess who gets the message loud and clear,yep the perpetrator's.
Only thing i don't like is pointing fingers at one entity when it is going on a lot all over the place,not just in gaming.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This is just bitterness talking. When you use logic you don’t come to these conclusions.
And many of their free games have been previously available. Or in the case of e.g. Alan Wake the only thing exclusive about it is that it is free on Epic - or you can pay c. $10 on Amazon etc.
Also Atlas is only available on steam, and several physical games i bought int he past i opened up to get a steam key much to my dismay
it goes both ways.
I'm not worried about their lack of features, because I don't use any of that shit on Steam either. Let me know when the feature creep reaches an acceptable level, so I'm allowed to play.
I buy games when they're on sale wherever. I add all these Free weekly games to my Epic Library to play whenever also, and a lot of them were on my Steam Wish List as well, so that saved a lot of money. The same with Twitch. Does Twitch get a free pass on the hate? Do they not have exclusive deals?
I'm def not happy juggling all these services/apps/launchers/etc. but that's our world now until the pendulum swings back down toward more user friendly efficient tech, if it ever does.
I couldn't even understand the argument even if we did have to pay for Launchers, because I'm so used to consoles being this way forever.
I invested a lot of money in a PS4 specifically for all their great exclusives, and I've done the same for Nintendo systems. The investment in this argument is nothing but a few seconds of time, and a short DL, so it's just not the same. Buy the games wherever they're cheapest and nab as many free games as you can from everyone.
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
All I care about is convenience and price.
Steam is convenient and any game will eventually be cheap at some point.
Epic gives developers financial security up to a certain level on units of their game sold, that is why developers go with the EGS. It means a lot of them don’t go out of business so that means more games for us, and in the current climate many companies are indeed struggling. Seems like pretty direct benefits for us.
Steam has completely abandoned quality control when it comes to games on their store so it has turned into an open sewer of asset flips, half translated crap etc. To discover the gems you have to wade through pages of crap, many more clicks than having to pay twice because the EGS doesn’t have a cart yet. Very inconvenient no?
A free game every week. Not free for the weekend or some other glorified demo like Steam has, no, an actual free game to keep. Its not current AAA stuff but there is definitely quality there.
I don’t know, the rest of the reasoning against the EGS simply boils down to ‘not enough sales’ and ‘I don’t like their tactics.’ As to the first argument, the first sale they did was actually amazing. As for the second argument, that is fine and a choice, it doesn’t mean Epic did something bad.
And one other funny thing. Last sale Steam grinded to a halt again, no page loading, not being able to pay etc. etc. It was a mess. No surprise since that has been happening for the last ten years but nobody whined about that, I can’t imagine the shitstorm here had that happened to the EGS.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
One way or another they are gonna want to earn that money back someday.
What happens then?
Something else: a while ago I thought I would buy a game there so proceeded to make an account.
emailadress, made a password and logged in: hello Srinan(?) from Thailand.
I am from the Netherlands!
You dont think I am gonna leave my creditcard-data on a site like that.
So how does this work when you buy a game on PC that is only on PC? Exclusives work both ways. Anyways as for the OP: I tend to agree with a lot of what was said and do think exclusives are a necessary evil for a company attempting to compete with Steam. HOWEVER, I think that the way that Epic has been handling it has been dubious. Epic should buy COMPANIES not games. If Epic bought the company, supported the creation of their games, and made it exclusive to the EGS it would be much more acceptable in my opinion. I do think this is one of the reasons companies like Sony / Nintendo generally get a pass when it comes to their first party titles. That said, I do understand why a developer would take an exclusivity deal for a PR hit especially when most people will just buy the game anyways despite what they say. Nearly every industry relies on exclusive products to stand out and gaming is no different. That said: I am not really about defending the the companies that bail on Steam (Yes, this is not just on Epic, takes two to tango) the last minute for an exclusivity deal. I also think it is absolutely despicable what some of these crowdfunded games have done (Ooblets and that one game sorta like Xcom which I forgot the name of) promising Steam versions and then selling out for an exclusivity deal. I also think that the biggest problem besides the ones I just mentioned are related to the application itself personally. The program is an absolute mess. If you ever play an Epic title everyone can try to add you to your friends list because it uses your profile name in the game; so you get spammed with friend requests by bots. There is no way to disable videos auto playing in the store, no shopping cart, no achievements, no social profile system, no forums, ect,ect. The store needs a ton of work. My personal take on this whole thing: I don't really care if a game is exclusive. As long as I can play it I will play it if I want to play it. I will play games on EGS, Uplay, PS4, Switch, ect. As long as I own the hardware capable of playing the game I will play it if I want it. I don't really have some kind of morales when it comes to supporting a company that is being greedy tbh. I mean the reality is, I support companies like this nearly every day. Scumbag corporations that pull shady stunts are terrible, but you probably spend money on them too. (Wal-Mart,Google,Comcast,ect_) It is just the way the world spins unfortunately.
As for Valve charging for features that they provide - they were charging that amount before they provided those features and those features are likely coming to EGS as well.
not to mention, i'm sure Epic can keep this going for a loooooong time if they are only shelling out a few hundred to a mil or so here and there.
it's funny how no one ever argues against this point because you can't.... you can't say steam doesn't have exclusives but Atlas is exclusively on steam and is not developed or published by Valve.
The argument "it's only one game" also doesn't count... because 1 game is still 1 exclusive and there are more examples, i just can't be bothered finding out which games.
Life isn't that black and white, expense happens, things you can't account for arise in the gaming development world, extended development time, needing to hire more people for whatever reason, creditors calling, just life happening it can't be helped and sometimes there is things that happen which are just unavoidable.
I have no reason to believe that at any point they were crowdfunding with the intention of getting picked up with an exclusivity deal with Epic. I also believe that the choice would not have been easy for them and that it was probably a lengthy process for them to say yes to it, they have an idea of how many they need to sell and how many they want to sell and maybe the market forecasting for releasing on Steam wasn't going to get them where they needed to be.