I would say more like 'barebones' and 'sometimes not working the way it should work'
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Borderlands 3 preorders on Epic Store have been suspended
- Thread starter LewieP
- Start date
Even their curated library display is atrocious and hurts my eyes each time I open the store to grab that free game. Who decided webm files would be great to have on every single title's page? Why is there no actual catalogue of games neatly shown that isn't various box sizes spewing forth from the depths of hell? Why the hell does being halfway down the catalogue and then clicking store not bring me back to the top?I had a jolly good time showing someone the difference in chat/messenger features yesterday.
There are just so, so many under-developed "features" for this storefront that beg the question of what in the heck are they doing over in Epic's studio. It is an absolute mockery to the bare basics of any functional storefront with them actively asking for consumer and developer time despite all those clear issues. That is some crazy arrogance on their behalf and sheer ignorance on the behalf of those who defend such poor designs.
The sad thing is, these are not new complaints, just previously they were dismissed by people saying "Yeah, but Steam was rubbish when it started in 2004" and "Competition is good". And the latter ignores the fact that bad competition helps no-one.
The real plus-side to this sale being a shitshow is that it proves without doubt to a lot of people that the EGS needs more time, money and effort spent on it, and that buying exclusive games is not a substitute for actual features and UX.
Thanks. I'm not a native english speaker, so i wasnt familiar with that term before now :) I guess it means that its not up to a current standard? I do wonder what the reason is for them leaving out the shopping cart though.
Yeah, the missing shopping cart is what sticks the most out for me, since its a basic feature in an online store. I actually dont think i've heard of an online shop that doesnt have a shopping cart. I mean, its not exactly a feature thats absolutely necessary to get things to work, but i'm just curious why such basic feature is not there from the start.
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Yeah it's pretty close to "not up to a current standard". More specifically it means that it is not suitable for the task it intended to be used for.
What happened to all the sales? I thought it was going to last until June?
John Wick don't cost five bucks anymore, same with TWD Final Season. Quantic Dream's game aren't at 10EUR any more, Shakedown Hawaii as well. What happened?
EDIT. Okay, apparently they changed their store page and it shows the regular price. I have to click on a game to show it the discounted price. Strange, it wasn't like that in the beginning.
John Wick don't cost five bucks anymore, same with TWD Final Season. Quantic Dream's game aren't at 10EUR any more, Shakedown Hawaii as well. What happened?
EDIT. Okay, apparently they changed their store page and it shows the regular price. I have to click on a game to show it the discounted price. Strange, it wasn't like that in the beginning.
Lol.I had a jolly good time showing someone the difference in chat/messenger features yesterday.
Also god damn IGOR is so fucking good.
IMHO this is completely stupid discussion. This isn't a race down to lowest price like some developer stated. If you sell me your game for 12.99 and I in turn offer the game for 2.99 to my customers but I still pay you 12.99 for your game than who cares no one is hurt o don't get it.
Unless you as a developer have some kind of agreement about sales pricing with distribution partners I do not see anything wrong.
Maybe I'm missing something but on face value Epic has done nothing wrong.
Unless you as a developer have some kind of agreement about sales pricing with distribution partners I do not see anything wrong.
Maybe I'm missing something but on face value Epic has done nothing wrong.
You're missing the part where Epic has initially listed the price as 2.99 (using your example), making it look like that was the official price.
They have done wrong in some circumstances, be it poor communication or lack of tools to actually single out chosen titles for sale but the developers have also played foul here. It has just been an overall clusterfuck of crap that could have been mostly avoided had the storefront been designed with modern features and not something from the bare basic early 00's.
Also people have to stop saying Epic is covering all costs of the sale, they aren't. All that Epic is covering is the $10 extra that games are seeing if they are above $14.99. Developers/publishers do still have actual discounts on their games be it a few dollars or $10, and that isn't being covered by Epic.
That's not what I wrote down.
Are those really that popular out there nowadays ?
On Steam, i only buy new games only if they have achievements. It was a big reason why i didn't buy Ghost recon: wildlands on steam. Achievements are quite important to the gamer who clocks hours in a game and wants to see some sort of 'medals' for it lol. Also don't tell me that playstation people don't value their 'trophies' and 'platinums' greatly because they REALLY do that and thats all fine and dandy. Point is a lot of gamers consider achievements as pretty important for themselves.
Yeah, They are. There are several large tracking sites and communities dedicated to Steam achievements alone. Let alone console players.
Wait what? Do you mean new games as in at launch price or just any game without acheivements?
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You suggested that publishers reacting to Epic's totally mismanaged sale by pulling their games etc is not Epic's fault.
Managing their store is absolutely Epic's responsibility.
Edit: Even if you want to blame the publishers/developers, Epic explicitly said that the purpose of their store was to advance the cause of all developers. By any measure they have failed to effectively do that if developers are reacting the way they are to this sale.
New games at launch price that release but don't have (steam) achievements... but well if its a fairly new game on sale price that counts for me as well.
its pretty damn rare when that happens but often more than not i don't buy them.
You're overreacting. It's not Epic's fault if a developer pulls their game off the store or tries to increase the base price of their game during the sale.
Like I said, the only mistake they made until now (unless there's been some updates I missed regarding Oxygen and BL3) is not talking about the sale to Paradox before its launch.
And I see you still haven't updated your OP regarding Ubisoft...
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Well you're wrong. Of course it's Epic's fault if the sale they have organised has been a disaster.
What is the update on the Ubisoft situation?
So it's Epic's fault if Supergiant tried to increase the base price of their game during the sale ?
Like I wrote down yesterday, Ubi games were pulled off the store before the sale and if you read your OP it sounds like it happened on the first day of said sale.
It's quite possible that due to their exclusivity agreement, Supergiant couldn't pull their game the EGS like the other publishers. I imagine increasing the price like that wasn't something they were keen on doing, but they felt they had no other choice since they're locked into the store by contract. It backfired spectacularly, and they backpedaled pretty quick on it, but Epic absolutely shares some blame in this all.
Even if what you wrote is true, I'm not seeing why they would want to pull off Hades from the store as they were getting the same amount of money than before the Epic Mega Sale for each copy sold. Epic basically boosted/is boosting their sales at no additional cost for them.
Edit: they also fixed the price in Europe so that we could get the Epic discount as well so they had no problem with this sale to begin with. What happened here is very weird.
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Yes it is. If Epic had a proper plan, had a storefront with more robust functionality, and properly coordinated everything with developers/publishers, the situation with Supergiant would not have occurred. As has been discussed in this thread, Steam (for example) have procedures in place specifically to prevent games from having their base price increased during or immediately before a sale. Because Valve know what they are doing and have taken 15 years to refine Steam.
Do I need to quote the definition of "coinciding" again? Something does not require causality to happen at the same time.
Although why are Epic advertising a discount that is not in fact available on this store page?
Well yeah, EGS is pretty bad compared to Steam, everybody knows that. It still needs basic features but you can't expect anyone to have a store as great as Steam on day one.
No you don't, coinciding means occurring at the same time and the Ubi games were pulled off before the sale so it didn't happen at the same time in the end ;)
That page isn't available to anyone if you browse through the store. You only see it if you google it and you perfectly know that.
And this is a store-wide sale by the way, so all games should have the Epic discount on their page.
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So you agree that it is Epic's fault, glad we got that out of the way.
I don't expect the Epic Store to be as good as Steam out of the gate, but the reason to criticise it for it's shortcomings is with hope that it can get better. It has a long way to go, but pretending those flaws don't exist isn't going to benefit anyone.
I don't see any mention of creating a mechanism to prevent this type of manipulative pricing mechanism on their roadmap.
The problem with Ubisoft games is ongoing, and still occurring right now. The Epic sale is running now. Now is the same time as now.
Or you could have bookmarked it. Or you could have clicked on a link that Ubisoft or Epic have shared on social media. Or you could have clicked on a link from an article/forum thread. That page is available to absolutely everyone with a web browser. Why are they advertising a discount that is not available?
No, I didn't... Sorry :P
I agree on that though.
Those games were pulled off before the sale because the Uplay integration wasn't/isn't working. I'm pretty sure they would get the discount if they were on the store right now but they're not part of the sale and never were to begin with.
As has been repeated ad nauseum: yes we can expect that. EGS is competing with Steam of today, not Steam of 15 years ago. New entrants into an existing market don't get the benefit of iterative improvements, because they are entering an already mature market.
I was holdimg out buyung from Epic store but caved wuth this sale. Got metro exodus for 34.95 and a free game and Idon't regret it. But wtf is up with the store having no add to cart button? What year is this!? This store us more bare bones than bones. It's the bare bone without marrow. Jebus.
"you can't expect this new console to support HD graphics on day one"
That's what your argument sounds like, since HD is about as old as Steam. Yes you can.
It's not just bad compared to what Steam is now. It's bad compared compared to what even the Ubisoft store was day one.
I think we should drop the Steam comparisons honestly... this defending of EGS is embarrassing. The store isn't even as good as the uplay or Origin store...Its pathetic and barebones and in beta/alpha state. A big company as epic couldn't even muster to make a storefront/launcher thats even half as good as steam overall and you expect this to be forgivable? Lmao. Now with this blunder of epic's, they've shown that they're not only incapable of launching a proper storefront/launcher that lives upto the current standard of a launcher(e.g. uplay/Origin) but they don't even have a proper back-end network developed or so it seems, they're already miscommunicating important stuff such as informing devs about sale prices... They've got the resources, the money to do it but they always act in haste and in greed. This is what got them. Epic's failures uptil now surpasses even MS's attempts at trying to force itself into the PC market because Epic's been persistently non-budging and pretty damn anti-consumer consistently.
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There's a very good chance this sale violated the presale pricing agreements with big retailers and it caused the publishers issues.
Best Buy offering a $10 preorder credit is different than advertising $10 off a game. Most likely caused BB, target, etc to throw a fit and forced the pubs to either take a $10 hit on their retail sales or pull for duration of sale.
Best Buy offering a $10 preorder credit is different than advertising $10 off a game. Most likely caused BB, target, etc to throw a fit and forced the pubs to either take a $10 hit on their retail sales or pull for duration of sale.
I said much the same in the PC Gaming thread, but actually went further, and I think to really understand how bad the EGS is, we need to go further.
We should not compare EGS to Steam. We should not compare it to Origin or UPlay. We should compare it to general retail: Amazon. Bestbuy. John Lewis, Waterstones, etc.
A store went live without a shopping cart; without gifting; without a way to exclude items from a sale outside of removing them from the store; without release date information being mandatory (something that could even be against the law in Germany); without regional-pricing; and then, for their first store-wide sale, neglected to inform at least one major publisher that their title would be discounted.
Would any single one of those things be acceptable in general retail, let-alone a specific aspect of retail, like clothes, books, comics, or auto-parts?
Why defend what is so obviously amateurish? No-one benefits from the defence of the EGS store, as people will simply lower their expectations, rather than expect a multi-million (billion?) dollar company to do better.
Ok, which new entrants launch a store as good as steam nowadays ?
How bad was Ubi ? I didn't follow that.
Why are you putting words in my mouth ? Some of you in this thread and other PC related threads have been pretty weird lately...
10 years ago yeah. But I guess Switch still doesn't have 720p minimum so that's out of the window.
A store went live without a search bar (and stayed that way for 3 months).
Don't make the perfect the enemy of the extremely annoying.
Also, imo neither preorders or UPlay should exist. So at least at that level, I sympathize with Epic.
This is the saddest part, knowing that the store is utter shite yet still rewarding Epic for their fuckery because they are having a sale they never wanted to do in the first place. What this sale has no doubt shown Epic is that if they throw enough money around and bribe enough people then features no longer matter, only price cuts. Sad state of affairs.
You are here comparing EGS to steam here right? You stated this yourself, iam not the one putting words in your mouth tbh.
Because the store was not originally concepted as a store, it's based on the original Fortnite launcher. That's why all of the basic stuff is missing and they have manual processes to add games.
They really should just rip it up and rebuild it from the start as a proper store platform.
Not sure why you're surprised by this. We do it all the time, whether it be shopping on Amazon and the elimination of retail jobs or buying cheap/easy to use game consoles for their exclusives regradless of their third party predatory practices. It's the nature of the beast. Of course the Epic store will improve and add more features but prices matters a lot more to some.
The only thing really holding me off is I have a hard time buying games that come out of the gate with multiple versions.
That post was my answer to OP, I didn't compare them in the first place.
And my previous post was an answer to you saying among other things that I was pretty much defending Epic and that's not what I've been doing in this thread: I'm just not as biased as you are on that subject (eg. "they always act in haste and in greed", "Epic's been persistently non-budging and pretty damn anti-consumer consistently").
You saying we should drop the comparisons with steam and then dunk on Epic nonetheless was hilarious though.
Ok i get that you were just replying to the OP's comment there but this whole situation is not about being biased really. EGS lacks pretty basic features and it still went on to conduct such a mega event such as a month long sale. Epic's actions uptil now clearly have shown haste tbh... throwing money around to make 3rd party games exclusive to a half baked store is pretty much 'acting in haste and greed' and making a quick & early buck out of it really... idk what else you can call that. A big company such as epic could've VERY easily take their sweet time in building a Class A competitor to steam.
The difference being if a competitor for Amazon launched with a bare bones store lacking important features they would get laughed out of town. We've seen so far that the EGS has been an absolute shambles. It's a rushed store that is trying to brute force it's way on to a platform that doesn't need them. Epic are taking a loss during this sale just to drive customers to their store, problem is once the sale ends there is nothing to keep these new customers from going elsewhere because of how badly the whole store has been mismanaged. They aren't trying to build a customer base but rather buy one and it's not something we should be rewarding.
If Epic was greedy and consistently anti-consumer, the Epic Mega Sale wouldn't be a thing.
I agree on your very last sentence though.