If you think Epic gives a single shit about harassment or abuse you should check what Tim Sweeney's stance on Alex Jones being banned from Twitter was.
I mean, it literally does.
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Epic Games Store changes its refund policy to match Steam's, adds local pricing (on some countries)
- Thread starter KoolAid
- Start date
Sorry but I don't think that's true here. Yes, console makers have to invest way more but they're getting that investment back because they're selling hardware. As for Valve's investment in Steam being miniscule, I'd advise you to look at SteamVR, Proton and Input lately. These are breakthrough in term of not only Steam but PC Gaming as a whole with hardware/software agnostic support for games and hardware.
Wat?
First of all its not a secret that Valve re-kindled PC-Gaming, when everyone pirated games.
China became one of the biggest markets for legal games because of regional pricing thanks to Valve/Steam.
Valve develops VR hardware.
Valve develops in house hardware and software, so you can stream your games to every Android Device and TVs.
Valve helps developing Proton so that Linux gamers can play almost all Windows games.
They aren't just making their investment back on hardware. They make an absolute bucketload off related services like PSN/XBL. Services which mostly include features Steam and other stores provide for free.
that's not even close to the same thing so it's a laughable comparison
I have been very impressed with Epic's ability to rapidly iterate over the past year or so with Fortnite, and so far the same is proving to be true with the Store. These are pretty big changes for a month in, and I'm sure we'll get more over time.
And epics investment is even smaller to the PC market in comparison.
Unless you believe abandoning the entire platform for a decade is monetary support.
These aren't feature changes though but merely policy ones. These are the kind of changes you can make overnight. The refund system was in place already, so was the regional placing for a place or two.
How would you react if an Android competitor released an OS that doesn't support NFC, have no storefront (have to download the apps on the internet) and doesn't support multitouch ?
monopoly was never a good thing,I guess a bit of competition will benefit the customer in the long run(aside from the small nuance of having 2-3 platforms for gaming)
Could I get some current examples? Because, I would love to go download those games right now.
And you're most likely not only one:
Before that, what most people (without rich parents to spoil them) did to play videogames in Argentina was to wait for the new denuvo crack or bear with G2As predatory subcription "service".
I'm halfway there, in fact my brother is saving to buy a Switch and asked me to pitch in, but Switch games cost almost double than PS4 games, it's insane.
I mean, I get why the argument gets thrown around in this thread. "Exclusives" are the console warriors' bread and butter. They cried when they lost FFXIII's, sulked when Tomb Raider pointlessly had it, rejoice when their platform gets one from a third party dev and they can wear it like a badge of honor for all these console wars they've served in, etc. But yeah, I'm still not seeing the benefits here.
Even the bold and new (that's what we call catching up now) regional pricing is more expensive than straight up USD which is something at least in other clients I can sidestep. Thanks for the competition Epic, I guess... This is so good for me somehow. I just hope it was "the end" already so I could see how exactly.
Nah, it's good to be optimistic, but I just wanted to make a distinction between what falls under features and what falls under policies. Refund is a feature. And it was already in place. Refund time or limits are policies.
That kind of disingenuous, they've had a launcher, sure, not a 'Store'.
I wouldn't call a launcher that had like 1 game for sale and a few early access titles a Store. It was always more of a 'launcher for shit Epic Games is working on and Unreal Marketplace'.
Do you have a list of these games?
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here or maybe I missed a lot... I could've sworn my launcher had Unreal Tournament, Paragon, Fortnite and then Shadow Complex as the only game actually for sale for the longest time.
Wait, are you saying I can't make my first plane as advanced as the Wright Flyer and sell it tomorrow for 60 grand? Do I really have to get with the times and release something good for 2019? Damn, these PC threads on Era made me believe it was that easy...
It's nice of so many people in this thread to expose their complete ignorance to the economics that drive the console gaming market.
Yeah, which is why they take a drastically smaller cut of sales.
It's crazy that Gabe Newell can spend a decade bragging about how Steam is a firehose of free money and there are so many people falling all over themselves to justify their brazen greed.
I know his stance, I'm not going to say a billionaire isn't garbage, all of them are. But also a company isn't just a single person and it's possible that after looking at the amount of work it'd take the team handling the Epic Games Store decided not to have forums and such. It could also be because they're trying to appeal to developers, and one way to appeal to them is with the promise of that they won't have to deal with abuse on their platform.
You're exaggerating the effect of a bigger cut on PC sales on the industry, you're not going to get a "healthier" industry when Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo who make the bulk of video game sales still take 30% cut.
It's just laughable that somehow now it's Valve and only Valve's fault and their 30% cut for an unhealthy industry.
Except they literally told Devs to "use Reddit and Discord" neither of those abuse free in the least.
Won't even bother trying to educate you about how Sony & Co earn money because it's obvious why you're in here and it certainly isn't to have a mature conversation, but can I at least see some receipts for this?
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Saying that Monster Hunter is a steam exclusive game because you need to enter a key on steam is like saying that rainbow six siege is uplay exclusive, or that GTA V is a rockstar club exclusive (or what ever their launcher is called).
That argument also shows a complete lack of knowledge on how the key system works, keys are created by devs at 0 cost to them (as in valve lets you take 100% of the money you make from the keys despite using their servers), so devs can even make "100%" of the sale, if they sell it on their own website, this allows other stores to sell games that require the steam launcher, at vastly different prices from the steam store as well (which happens all the time, you know like proper competition), which is why you can have things like humble bundles where you might pay literally cents for a game while at the same time the dev is selling his game at full price on steam.
As for the image ignoring the discussion taking place, the discussion taking place is that epic will eventually bring good competition, and I ask where is the proof of that?
Because:
It sure isn't the functionality of the store at launch.
It sure isn't the functionality of the store right now.
It sure isn't the state of the unreal marketplace.
It sure isn't the lower cut.
It sure isn't the idea that epic is the first company to be in a position to compete with steam.
It sure isn't the amount of titles.
It sure isn't the price of the titles.
It sure isn't how multi-platform it is.
It sure isn't the SDKs offered by the store.
It sure isn't how many free titles it is offering.
It sure isn't it being DRM free.
It sure isn't it being accessible to developers.
It sure isn't the userbase.
I am yet to see a single argument that justifies the idea that epic will eventually provide enough competition so that steam will end up being a better service that will benefit the consumer, it is all based on faith that someday somehow epic will be a genuine competitor by doing the same things other stores have already done (and are already doing), so until that day arrives we should totally be ok with epic moneyhatting games to its platform creating the very lack of competition that people are saying is going to help the consumer? This is basically the trickle down economics of digital distribution.
As for the epic store being a worse experience, yes it was to be expected, but the epic store is one of the weakest attempts at providing competition out of the gate, while at the same time locking games down to it, why in the hell should any consumer be ok with that?
People calling valve greedy but defending console manufacturers who charge for fucking Peer2Peer connections in the same conversation are definitely my favorite thing in valve threads.
So by your definition, moneyhatted exclusives and taking choice from consumers make a healthier industry. Gotcha.
I love how platitudes is all you got for arguments, instead of quantifiable direct benefits.
Sorry but they made a point. Yes, Sony/Microsoft spend more... but because they release hardware. Which they sell (they don't give it away). For a small lose at best... and at a PROFIT after. Which they compensate with online paywall. And royalties on physical copies. The storecut though is here for the storefront.
I agree with your statement. I disagree about the roots of that unhealthier industry comment.
First of all, do you buy physical games ?
Second, the digital storefront cut is healthy. Far more than the cut on physical games. Even with the cut on physical games, the industry was healthy. Why isn't it healthy anymore ?
Pretty simple for me: We reached a market saturation. There's just too many games, especially indie games, releasing every week.
Yeah, but also having a Reddit or Discord is optional for them. Having forums on Steam isn't. If the developer doesn't want to deal with moderating a community, they don't need to have one.
It's kind of ironic that Epic started this store with strict curated policies to be more developer friendly at the expense of customers, now they're going to match Steam features and it will end up just being a Steam clone, even after all the years of collecting data on Steam Galyonkin was doing.
Developers don't ever need to use the steamforums either if they don't want to.
Dont quote me on that, but I don't think they're required to participate though ? I feel like basically, the reason they don't want forums is that it's often not a good look for your product when you read the forum to see technical problems there...
The smaller cut of the profits that epic takes is what'll eventually lead to a healthier industry.
This isn't that complicated
It's not greed when my favorite company does it, because reasons.
Except there is no reason to believe that this will happen, because there is no reason to believe that epic will force other stores to change this, before even going into the fact we already have stores doing lower than 30% cut (and in the case of AAA games on steam that cut is already 20%), lowering the cut of games isn't a new thing, even games that use steam keys have this due to the way that steam keys work.
Only if those profits scale accordingly and are accessible to all the struggling participants of the industry. And less choice of purchasing front for consumers might actually restrict the purchasing power across many different territories, which could concentrate less money on fewer, bigger games only, which doesn't sound much healthier for the industry at all.
It's actually a bit more complicated than you are able obviously to discern.
Glad to know that the entire fate of the gaming industry rests on games sold on the Epic Games Store....
They don't, but it still makes any bullshit they'd receive over something they said or put in the game that bothers hate groups way more visible. And while it's not impossible for the reasoning for some developers to be something like "people shouldn't know the problems our game has", Steam's community has more than enough problems for developers' issues to be more something like "can we please not have forums filled with bigots associated with our game".
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Don't the companies putting out the games set the price, and then Valve/Epic takes a percentage of that price?
As a response to epic's actions, valve lowered the cut for massive games (25% for those that reach 10M, 20% for those that reach 50M)
Pretty sure discord lowered theirs after the news came out too.
That's already some impact. Depending on how big the store gets, it'll further the effect
These past few months I've added Destiny 2, Shadow Warrior 2, Lego Lord of the Rings, Anno 1602, Soma, Sins of a Solar Empire, A Story About My Uncle, Full Throttle and several others to my accounts on various stores. That's in addition to the free games (Subnautica, Edith Finch, Meat Boy) on Epic's store.
Not all of them are equally recent, but if you follow the threads here on Resetera you'll get quite a lot of freebies on PC. All the above were posted on here in the last three months, but you have to be fast as offers usually last a limited time.
The amount of free games on PC is something I love. Epic's store is adding to the freebie pile and is absolutely an advantage in that area.