What exactly do you hate about Epic? Seems like they're out there making deals happen that seem great for developers.
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Epic Games announces multiplatform publishing partnerships with studios behind Control, Limbo, and The Last Guardian
- Thread starter Chairmanchuck (另一个我)
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What exactly do you hate about Epic? Seems like they're out there making deals happen that seem great for developers.
Man, that's a lot of money you gotta piss away and unfortunately, Epic has it at the moment. The deal looks good on paper but like most of Epic's ventures as of late, better to keep it under scrutiny for the time being. Still, congrats to genDesign, Remedy, and Playdead for creating what they want to create due to this deal.
I didn't bring it up, what are you talking about lol? And I'm not really sure it's off topic, there were rumors that Remedy was partnering with Sont, but this news shows that the rumors were false.
Fully prepared for the "anything but Steam" releases already.
I guess this is at least better than moneyhatting games that are mostly done or those already announced for other stores. So uh... good job, Tim? It's progress. It's still probably going to be pretty shitty but at least it's progress.
I guess this is at least better than moneyhatting games that are mostly done or those already announced for other stores. So uh... good job, Tim? It's progress. It's still probably going to be pretty shitty but at least it's progress.
Nah. Maybe if Epic had started with this instead of all the bullshit we got. And a reasonably up to date store. And Tim Sweeney avoiding Twitter. Maybe? But nah, that ship has sailed.
'But devs.' Hard to believe that you haven't gotten the gist of why they're hated by so many after the last 1.5 years. It's not like there's a lack of reading material out there. Or on here.
'But devs.' Hard to believe that you haven't gotten the gist of why they're hated by so many after the last 1.5 years. It's not like there's a lack of reading material out there. Or on here.
Why would it still be shitty? This is great. They're 100% funding the games and marketing and letting devs keep the IP's.
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As a US customer I struggle to see how Epic can induce anyone to hate. This is a 100% sincere question, but if you want to ignore it, fine. I'll just have to make some assumptions about your opinion.
I'm assuming you hate Epic because they sign exclusivity deals with developers that lock their games to the Epic Games Store on PC for a set period of time (and sometimes indefinitely if not permanently, although this seems to be the minority).
I'm assuming this upsets you because you want the "freedom" to purchase the game on other platforms such as Steam.
Since you're not offering any other points, I don't know how to respond to any specific arguments you might have that support your opinion. I'll do my best to rebut the obvious ones until you elaborate further:
Epic Games Store is an application that is free to download, and an Epic Games Store account is free to make. There is a very low barrier to entry for access to the games they sell. I will concede that I have previously heard their regional pricing & local currency support is not great, however I am in the US and can only speak to the standard here. That's not to discount people in other countries who might have a harder time accessing Epic exclusives, it's just to limit the scope of this discussion.
My point is that there is hardly anything "exclusive" about the Epic Games Store. It's a free piece of software that mostly does the same thing as Steam: allows you to purchase games and play them on a Windows PC.
I won't go into detail about how the deals Epic are offering developers are often in their best interests. I'm not a dev and I'm assuming you aren't either, so I guess we should approach this as consumers. As a consumer, I'm not sure how Epic is worse than Steam. Pricing for launch games seems to be the same as it would be on Steam (in the US), therefore I don't feel as if I'm paying an "Epic tax" of any sort. Steam's most important functionality (other than game distribution) is cloud saves, and Epic seems to support those without issue. I'm curious to know what other killer features Steam offers that people feel upset Epic hasn't implemented yet (other than the regional pricing I mentioned earlier).
So why not just sell the game on all store fronts, instead of exclusive to Epic? Because people will just do what's convenient and buy the game on Steam. Epic doesn't have a reasonable way to break into the market otherwise.
At the end of the day I don't see how any of Epic's exclusivity deals hurt me as the consumer and end user of the product. I just see a lot of complaining about exclusivity being somehow bad, without much evidence to support it.
I look forward to hearing your points, however. I had to make a lot of assumptions. Don't just point me to a completely different thread either. Feel free to link me to individual posts if you want, but please don't assume this thread comes with pre-requisite reading.
I dislike Tim Sweeney very much. Tencent's greed is also gross.
I also just like my library in one place and the launcher isn't the greatest to maneuver.
But this a nice start.
Pretty awesome. Loved Control, and I had no issues with Epic at any point so sounds like a big win for them.
Don't know why anyone though Sony
"keep their IP"
Means zero chance it's Sony. They wouldn't even be last on the list. They wouldn't be on the list at all.
"keep their IP"
Means zero chance it's Sony. They wouldn't even be last on the list. They wouldn't be on the list at all.
you get 50% of revenue after recoup on a storefront plenty of people don't buy from, and plenty of games have had great success after they launch elsewhere from it
seems kind of crappy to hamstring your sales like that but I'm not the ones selling their games so what do I know
Ueda teased his game back in 2018 with this image
I think it will take a loong time, but I'm hyped.
You do understand that they cover the entire cost of development? People like remedy probably JUST broke even, same as PlayDead. This makes total sense to me but correct me if I'm wrong
Ueda teased his game back in 2018 with this image
I think it will take a loong time, but I'm hyped.
looks like another big creature and small player game, which is what i expect from them - but maybe it isnt that simple as i am guessing right now
It's all pure profit though; a lot of people will choose zero risk over the potential for larger reward.
And there's still the potential that EGS will improve it's tech, grow it's customer base, etc. Then you get none of the risk and potentially the same greater reward.
And that's ignoring the console publishing; the 50% cut they get from that might make the potential for lower PC sales completely moot. In fact, it probably makes it not matter whatsoever.
Free piece of software unless you live in Canada where you have to use USD and pay significantly more for games than you would if they were on Steam, GOG, Origin, Uplay, Rockstar, or literally any other 3rd party launcher.
Being forced to use USD instead of CAD is "exclusive" to EGS, you could say.
Here's where there seems to have been a miscommunication. EGS is drastically inferior to Steam. It doesn't have family sharing. It doesn't have universal controller support. You can't stream your games to other devices. There's no integrated mod support. It doesn't work on Linux. There's no support for different currencies, and not nearly as much support for payment methods that are typical in other parts of the world. There are no gift cards.
There are many, many problems we used to have in PC gaming that we don't have to deal with anymore because Steam solved them. By keeping a game off of Steam, Epic is reintroducing those problems.
EGS launched without basic functionality. They didn't even have a search bar at the time. And while they've been gradually improving since then, it's just been a slow series of baby steps. Recently, they finally got around to adding a wishlist. And even that is incomplete. It won't notify you if games go on sale or anything. That's planned for later. Baby steps, toward a long term goal of maybe eventually having the basics down. That's what's so frustrating about all this.
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It does not do the same as Steam as it features far less. Thats like saying the Switch Onlinesystem is the same as PSN/XBL, because "you can go online".
On Steam I can share screenshots with my friends.
I can play games on Linux.
I can use over 100 officially supported controllers.
I can stream the games to my android devices and TV natively.
I can use it on my TV without any hassle (BPM).
I can share the games with my wife, so she can play them on her Macbook.
I can install mods with 1 click.
I can play coop games with a friend even if that friend doesnt own them (Steam Remote Play).
I can stream the game directly with 1 button click.
I can put games in a shopping cart.
Achievements.
etc.
Inb4
"No one is using those features".
While I truly dislike Epic's store strategy prior to this point (locking up kickstarter or essentially already finished games to their store for exclusivity periods) and entirely prefer Steams features over Epic. This deal is simply incredible generous. If you want to entirely fund games into existence, I don't care what storefront you want them to be on, you entirely funded it, that's on you jabroni. Also that it's stupidly generous to the developers is a huge boon. I must applaud Epic for this and cheer them on in the future if they consider funding more games in this way.
Yeah, while I think that Epic's strategy of making exclusivity deals is understandable since there's not really any other way to realistically compete with Steam, people are definitely justified in not bothering with EGS and just waiting for games to release on Steam instead with how bare bones EGS is. Even at this point they're still busy implementing basic features into the store while Steam has made playing games incredibly convenient.
There is 0 downside for the devs here, they get paid for the whole development, and get and adtional bonus from the sales, if the game sells is a minor factor.
IMO this is the first step for Epic to move on from EGS as to try to beat Steam, they gonna Rockstar Launcher it, and move on to prioritize the sales on consoles, and will be just one more publishers releasing subpar PC ports if any.
IMO this is the first step for Epic to move on from EGS as to try to beat Steam, they gonna Rockstar Launcher it, and move on to prioritize the sales on consoles, and will be just one more publishers releasing subpar PC ports if any.
This is basically epic giving devss a HUUUGE bone but at the expense of the customers on PC because its gonna be exclusive to EGS and EGS as we all know is soo barebones and well trusting epic with your games when you already have given up physical rights to that game and epic's low priority on the customer part..its actually a detriment to the customer. Those of you who don't give a shit about how your games might end up in the future or don't care about features and just 'think of steam and other PC clients as launchers', good for you i guess..
Also I don't think epic are doing this just for the kindness in their hearts for devs after all they mostly don't take games on EGS until its at least exclusive to their store for a year.. they just want these devs to make EGS exclusive versions of their games and promote the store. Locking them down to exclusively developing on PC is gonna cost a lot so imo thats why they didn't enter an exclusive contract.
Steam is this all-in-one-place digital platform on PC while epic lacks the bare minimum features and quirks of what a standard launcher and storefront on PC has..not to mention they have NO forums(they are pretty gotdamn useful for fixing user fixes and reporting bugs directly to devs), no reviews for the most part, NO SHOPPING CART(just think how lowly they prioritize the end-user experience) while steam has not only got the basic features for a competent launcher/storefront in place but also has a plethora of other quirks and features that make steam a whole other ecosystem INSIDE the PC platform.
- Steam Marketplace for in-game items
- Steam Input - Native support for ANY type of gaming controller and it can be used not only for steam games but also non steam games
- Inhome streaming
- Broadcasting your game and have others watch you play for it has a whole section dedicated to it
- Forums
- Reviews
- A community hub for each Steam game that has walkthroughs, achievement guides, etc
Now can you seriously call steam just a launcher?
Now this s not for you.. but
Honestly the people who are veterans to PC gaming and yet call steam a launcher only show themselves as uneducated, ignorant people on the matter who just don't realize whats infront of them and yet they just call it as they wish lol.
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Just like I said last night before the reveal, the fiscal offer is outrageously generous as a publishing deal. Doesn't mean I won't be grumpy if "not exclusive to our store" means either a) it'll be on consoles but exclusive on PC or b) It'll be everywhere except steam. To be clear this is at least a meaningful developer relationship, not a last minute swoop-in-and-delay-the-other-versions deal, so it's substantially less bad in that sense, but that's still my preferred platform.
If it truly does mean there's no exclusivity arranagement in any sense, then I strongly approve without reservations.
If it truly does mean there's no exclusivity arranagement in any sense, then I strongly approve without reservations.
I am not convinced that there is no other way to compete with Steam. Steam got where it is by constantly making great improvements, and generally making things better for us. Other companies could try to do the same. Instead of making such a barebones launcher, make a good platform. Make something that we actively want to use. Try to reach parity with some of Steam's most important features, like controller support, and better yet, find something Steam doesn't do, and do that!
Here's one. Consoles have a button you can press to save a video of the last few seconds of gameplay, retroactively. I really wish I had that. Something hilarious happened in Half Life Alyx last night and I was sad that I couldn't record it.
Bottom line: Steam is so popular because it lets us do things that we want to be able to do. Other companies could try to compete by also doing things we want to be able to do. Maybe even different things, so that there would at least be a tradeoff between Steam and EGS instead of Steam having all the advantages and EGS having all the drawbacks.
Another way to look at it is that if Epic wants to succeed at this long term, then they really need people to start buying games that aren't exclusive. Which means they need a way to convince people to do that.
But at the end of the day, nobody has ever actually seriously tried to compete with Valve on functionality, with the possible exception of GOG, which does have at least one good thing going for it. Steam got so far ahead of everyone else because everyone else stood still for years. Everybody jumps to "it's impossible to compete with Valve unless we just rely on exclusives" but nobody ever actually tries.
I'm rambling now, but you get the point.
But Epic is funding 100% of the development and marketing. Epic is paying the salaries for the devs. There's no risk even if they don't sell well on PC which I'm sure they will. Console releases will be the main source of sales anyway. It's a win win situation for the devs.
Let's not act like the games wouldn't be successful because of no steam release. Many successful games aren't on Steam. If the games are good, people will buy them no matter which launcher they're on.
So after launch no revenue until all dev costs are recouped? Good luck to them.
Living from deal to deal isn't a life I would wish for anyone.
Sometimes you are Double Fine and despite never having a hit you somehow manage to survive until you get bought out.
And sometimes you are Telltale and you truck along from deal to deal until one falls through and everything crashes down in a matter of weeks.
Living from deal to deal isn't a life I would wish for anyone.
Sometimes you are Double Fine and despite never having a hit you somehow manage to survive until you get bought out.
And sometimes you are Telltale and you truck along from deal to deal until one falls through and everything crashes down in a matter of weeks.
Yes - in 2004, when I was on dial up connection, by a company of very insignificant size and not much infrastructure, doing something new and unavailable for PC gaming previously.
Yep these scenarios are completely correlating /s
Feels like there's a lot of history revisionism going on here. Steam wasn't always a launcher that people actually liked to use. It got plenty of criticism when it first launched, and it took a long time for it to get to the point where it's at now. People didn't use Steam because it was a good launcher, people used it because they had to to be able to play Half-Life 2 as well as other Valve games. And eventually it was required for other games as well. On top of that, the PC game marketplace Steam launched in was completely different from what it's like now. Steam launched when the switch from physical to digital games really started to happen. Origin, Uplay, GOG etc. didn't exist yet. There wasn't really much competition. It's true that Steam got a lot more goodwill over time as they added good features and had massive sales (and also because people generally forgot about the questions of game ownership), but it's not entirely true that it's why they're as big as they are now. I'm not sure if Steam would still be the norm for digital PC game stores if it wasn't the first.
And right now, I don't know if there is a way for something like EGS to compete against Steam with features alone, aside from maybe time traveling to back around the time Steam launched and starting then. It'd take a lot of development time to start a store/launcher with half the amount of features Steam has now.
EDIT: To be clear, I don't mean to say that Epic is justified in making their store so bare bones. They should at least try to compete with features as well. But it is incredibly doubtful that a PC game store now could compete with features alone.
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Wait so was there any additional clarification on this article which says "not necessarily exclusive"? Did they literally just mean consoles?
Some things need to be taken into account here.
First, Epic isn't competing against 2004 Steam. They're up against modern Steam. New car companies are compared to their peers, not to the model T. Nintendo gets a lot of flak for bad online, and nobody is saying they should always be expected to be X years behind Microsoft. When you launch a product that's going to compete directly with an existing product, it's important to look good next to that. I can't even think of one other instance where people insist on comparing the merits of one company's product to a very old version of their competitor's product instead of the current one. That only ever seems to happen in discussions of Epic.
Please correct me if I'm wrong there. I would love to have a direct point of comparison.
Second, Steam has had competitors all along, and it succeeded by generally just being better, even back then. Remember Direct2Drive and its activation limits? Who wants to put up with that? Yes, people installed Steam originally to play Half Life 2, much like people install EGS to play Fortnite. But they chose to stay and buy non-exclusive games there, because Valve found ways to make it appealing to do so.
Third, we need to remember that Steam was breaking new ground. Epic doesn't have to do that so much. They can look at what has already been done, and decide how best to catch up with that. Epic doesn't need to solve the problems of family sharing from scratch. Valve already has an active and accepted version of that policy, and Epic can learn from it. They can use their competitor's existing work as a model in lots of ways. Which functions of controller support are most significant? How should TV-oriented interfaces be handled? Etc. As long as the answer isn't "we don't need any of that stuff whatsoever" then they should be able to work with this. It took 15 years for Valve to break new ground build everything from scratch. It shouldn't take nearly as long to get a significant subset of those features up and running now that the ground has already been broken and lots of important questions have already been asked and answered.
As things are now, they took well over a year to get around to adding a very incomplete wishlist system. This pace leaves much to be desired, and I am very confident that they can do better.
Probably, though haven't a few EPIC Store "Exclusives" been anything but Steam? So maybe they'll leave other PC stores as a option, but given they are fully funding them I'd just assume EPIC Store and probably consoles.
Yeah, I think that Epic needs to do better than this. Not trying to say that they shouldn't. But also at this point it takes more than features to be able to compete.
And not to say that Valve didn't put in the work, just the situation for them was completely different than that of any company trying to launch a store/game launcher now. Their best competition being the likes of Direct2Drive and Games for Windows Live doesn't really change my point all that much since Valve mostly just won there by just.... not doing the bad things those stores did. Stuff like activation limits weren't really a feature they had to develop, it was just an obviously bad decision they had to avoid making.
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