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Epic Store's way of "competing" is one that actively hurt the market
- Thread starter GhostTrick
- Start date
Hoo boy. So many factual inaccuracies. First off, Deep Silver doesn't own 4A Games. They are simply publishing Metro Exodus. They made a last-minute decision to take Epic's deal, much to the chagrin of 4A Games and apparently THQ Nordic who had no idea the deal was even being offered. Secondly, Steam existed before HL2 came out. It was originally integrated into Counter-Strike in order to allow for automatic updates and anti-cheat/piracy protection.
I'm still baffled by your inability to distinguish between funding an exclusive game and paying for timed exclusivity. HL2 wouldn't exist without Valve. They literally made the game. They didn't throw money at a third-party developer/publisher that was about to ship a finished game in order to make it a Steam exclusive for a year. Nobody is complaining that Fortnite is exclusive to the Epic Store. Why? Because Epic made it. That simple fact makes all the difference.
Paying for timed exclusivity is a shitty way of hurting the competition. The correct way to compete is to create a superior product and/or service. Epic did that with Fortnite and that's why Fortnite is more successful than PUBG. Epic has not done that with their store.
All that needs to be said really. And yet it will bear repeating the next time one of these threads rolls around.
It's good only for a handful of developpers, don't expect every titles from indie and small studios to receive the same kind of attention (or any kind of attention) from epic if it doesn't have preexisting hype, especially as time goes on.
There's also no proof that it's going to be good for developers. If they end up having only a fraction the sales they would normally have had and antagonize their consumer base at the same time, then it might end up being a net negative for them.
And finally, the ones making the decision in this instance were the publishers, not the devs.
I put plenty of blame on deep silver/koch in the other threads. They're just as responsible for the situation as far as I'm concerned.
However, ultimately Epic is the one that put the clause to prevent the game from being released elsewhere since they're the only ones that benefit from it. It's also not the first game they did it with, it's just that this time it's extra shitty because they pulled that shit 2 weeks before release.
Both koch/deep silver and epic are to blame for this and both are on my shitlist, but epic is the one actively pushing for the exclusivity deal and the one who's harming consumer's rights with their shitty practices.
Schrodinger's Steam.
It's also interesting how steam is an evil monopoly that forces everybody into using it, while epic needs to buy third party titles because people otherwise would choose to buy their games on steam and not on the epic store. The only way to break the steam monopoly is to monopolies enough games so that people don't have a choice, I guess.
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"10 years time"
Then dont come to the market. If you cant be good, go home.
The "Steam was in the market for 15 years" is dumb. It took 15 years to get this features not because they were in developpement for these 15 years, but because they weren't to be expected back then.
Yeah, 15 years ago Steam couldn't have VR support. Neither cloud saves. Cause guess what, these weren't a thing.
These features happened not because they took long to developp but because they weren't standard thing to expect.
You don't compete with Steam 15 years ago but with Steam today, which means with things that are now STANDARDS.
Absolutely fantastic post that is unfortunately going to get completely ignored by people stanning for the EGS.
This is an excellent post.
The discoverability problem and the "we are appreciated and gain equal mind space" problem does not go away at all with the epic store for those most negatively affected by the steam sales % split.
It is so obvious now that you mention it.
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Amazing post.
The more the indie market stays blind to their real issues, the less they can work around it.
Discoverability will ALWAYS be an issue. Either you close the doors and the ones whining about their game not selling wont even be allowed to sell their games... Or you open them but then you accept that everyone can be a indie dev and you have to be the best if you want success.
The only thing that EGS fix is giving more money and visibility to the biggest ones.
Well said Durante. Sadly, people will just respond to this that the Epic Store is brand new and Steam was crap 15 years ago as well. It's a battle we can't win.
This is an amazing post. Please become a Forbes contributor instead of these astroturfers claiming that Epic's moneyhats aren't unfair for consumers at all.
I agree, but do you think anyone can just make a better client than Steam?
From an investors point of view, they will want results now, not in years time when they have built up a features set that rivals Steam
Of course this sucks for consumers, but from a business point of view, what Epic are doing is likely to get quicker gains and make faster inroads into the PC market than trying to replicate Steam
Even if they did replicate Stream, most people would continue to use Steam because it's where all their games are, and it's the ecosystem they're invested in
Yes, what Epic are doing sucks for people who want choice and features on PC, absolutely, this is not deniable, but people seem to want Epic to stop being aggressive and shoot for being number 2 in the market while they spend a decade plus trying to catch up to Steam
That is just absurd from a business point of view. You won't convince investors who clearly want a foothold in the PC market to invest millions into client development and then ask them to wait years and years for a return. It makes more sense to use the money you're flush with at present to aggressively get a foothold in the market
Will it work long term? Maybe, maybe not. Does it screw over consumers now? Yes, unquestionably so. Is it likely to make short term gains for Epic and bring people over to the store? Probably
I agree with everyone (yourself included) that think this sucks, but at the same time I don't believe it makes sense for them to try and beat Steam by making a better Steam, because what Steam has didn't take a few weeks to build, and it won't be easy or viable to pump millions into making Steam but better
I guess we just hope Epic fail with this strategy and investing in all these exclusives doesn't prove viable or profitable in the long run, because if it does prove viable, then a) they'll keep doing it and b) they'll gain a foothold in the PC market
THQ Nordic should have made their own store. People aren't nearly as up in arms about Origin's exclusivity "screwing us over" it seems.
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Yes you can. It was never a matter of being able to. It was always a matter of wanting too. I mean, the same people telling us "Steam is complacent and didnt evolve for years" now are saying "They cant catch up".
What Epic is doing isn't good from a business point. You don't want to FORCE people but to GAIN their trust.
Then again I'm not asking to replicate Steam: I'm asking them to be BETTER than Steam. Yes, it's possible if you want to be serious about it. There's a lot of features they could make that Steam doesn't have yet. Heck, they could have a LOT of ways to make people move over. Heck, instead of moneyhatting these devs for a yearly exclusive... You know what they could do ? Actually WORK with all these publishers so that people with a Steam library can link their Steam library to unlock the game they own on Steam to make the transition to Epic Games Store seemless and EASY.
The idea that it's the only way to compete is dumb. In fact, if anything, history has shown it doesn't work. You know who tried the same strategy, with more money ?
MICROSOFT with Games for Windows Live. And Steam wasn't as big as it was. Games for Windows Live had all the biggest pubs: Capcom, Bamco, Rockstar, Take Two, Warner Bros. They failed totally. Why ? Because they had no customer trust. And Steam was just better so people moved to Steam altogether.
I've never been someone who has claimed Steam has done nothing for PC gamers
I can't speak to how easy adding any specific features would be, that's not my area of expertise, so I'm sure you're right on that
I just think "I know you have all your games on Steam, but buy this one on Epic, we have the same features as Steam!" isn't likely to sway as many people as "Buy our game on the Epic store, as it's either buy it here or go without"
Of course that sucks for most people, but I can see why Epic have gone with this approach, as it is likely to get at least short term results
Competition doesn't mean the game should be available at all the places. That's not how it works.
This is nothing new. We've seen on console 3rd party games being exclusive for 1 platform when they were several platforms before. Street Fighter V or Soul Calibur 3 for example. That sucked if you did not own a PS4 in one case ( or a PS2 in the other ) but that's the way it was.
We've seen that a lot on mobile devices where certain Apps were only available initially on Android or on IOS. I remember when Super Mario Run came out it was only on IOS. As an Android guy, it sucked for me. But I moved on IOS. So that was a smart move from Apple to get that temp exclusive. Epic Store is just doing the same thing here. I have no problem with that whatsoever.
This is nothing new. We've seen on console 3rd party games being exclusive for 1 platform when they were several platforms before. Street Fighter V or Soul Calibur 3 for example. That sucked if you did not own a PS4 in one case ( or a PS2 in the other ) but that's the way it was.
We've seen that a lot on mobile devices where certain Apps were only available initially on Android or on IOS. I remember when Super Mario Run came out it was only on IOS. As an Android guy, it sucked for me. But I moved on IOS. So that was a smart move from Apple to get that temp exclusive. Epic Store is just doing the same thing here. I have no problem with that whatsoever.
literally cheering on corporations screwing you over.
You can have more competition or less, locking games behind one storefront means less. Literally. There is no reason to consolize the pc experience by making 3rd party platform exclusives, just as there is no reason to force pc gamers to pay for p2p online play.
Then it sounds like you have nothing to worry about, if you're right there is no way they will succeed, no trust means no one will buy their games, so they won't make money, and the store will fail, just like GFWL
So this is but a blip, and the Epic games store will be gone by 2020
Glad we don't really need to worry about this anymore then
Steam bad mmmkaaayyyy.. this sucks but it totes needs to happen because.. It just needs ok!?
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Uh, yes, that's exactly what it means. That's exactly how it works. Except in gaming since it's an industry where the cult of big companies, CEO memes and tribalism has been developped.
Also, stop giving me the "console did it so it's fine". We're talking about PC. People dont play on PC to get the same shtick as consoles. If you have no problem with that, it means you are part of the problem. Online paywalls or mtxs are because of people saying "Well, it's fine, it's been done elsewhere".
This is nothing new, this was always something that sucked. And that had no place on PC.
Of course we have something to worry about. Games For Windows Live have done a lot of damages to a lot of games relying on its backend... And some people just lost some games.
To be fair though, Valve literally did this with Steam at the start. It was even worse because there was nothing to compare it to. There was no established digital platform client that was successful before Steam. It was forced onto all HL2 fans, and there was nothing about gaining trust naturally. It's great that Steam continued to evolve and actually became a good thing, but I remember at the beginning it was annoying, a pain in the ass, offered nothing for consumers, acted mostly as annoying DRM, etc. None of that was good from a business point, but it forced enough people onto a bare-bones experimental client so Valve could have the userbase to test more features including the eventual implementation of the Steam storefront.
So while I think having multiple clients is annoying to me, and I would always choose Steam over anything else, it's hard for me to not see how successful "forcing" people on a platform can be. It actually works and all that stuff about "gaining trust" really just comes later. It's naive to think that consumers would jump on something different without being forced in some way or other.
I think you might wanna read a wikipedia entry about Steam my dude..
Then you don't remember what it was like updating games before steam. Going to fileplanet, hunting down dead links for updates, etc. This is the entire reason steam exist -- to automate updates -- and from day 1 it was a big improvement over old systems. The sole thing Steam set out to do originally, it did well from day 1.
the things people complained about "using steam" back in those days were related to structural problems regarding the internet that we still have today. Things like lots of people logging on to download HL2 on day one, DDOSing their servers in the process. THAT is the whole "steam is so janky" shit people bring up, but outside of the launch period boom where everyone was stressing their servers, steam, as an automated patching tool, has always been way better than what came before it. It offered real benefit to the user from day 1.
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You're right and some people are still annoyed at that. But did they force you to buy through Steam ? No, you could still buy the game where you wanted. And back in 2004, there was nothing like it. So yeah, someone had to create something in the begining. In 2004, you had excuses for a clunky experience. In 2019 ? You have a shiton of alternatives.
Oh I certainly remember. I mean sure, it's more convenient to automatically get updates patched in, but it also meant more regular updates and the inability to opt out of updates. And this wasn't at a point where everyone had unlimited broadband, nor where people used to the idea of regular automatic updates and "living" games as services. We are now, but that wasn't something most people knew they wanted when installing Steam. It was to play Valve games.
My point is that you don't convince people with good intentions and shift the market. You force people first, and whether the thing lasts depends on whether there are good intentions driving it in future.
yes?
i would understand the outrage if dnr was a new thing on PC, but we've had it for more than a decade at this point,steam itself is drm and holds the exclusive of hundreds if not thousands of games even if indirectly and with no real exclusivity contract.
once the system is in place,it's a develper's right to choose where to sell its games
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That's where I disagree because back then as I said, there was no other solution. What was Steam compete against to ? A wasteland in which you had to go to weird sites to download your patches in an early era of Internet.
You know who tried to force people later ? GFWL. That didn't end well.
The main "valve games" before HL2 were Half Life, and Counter Strike, both of which regularly updated. I'd posit nearly 100% of the market that wanted to play "valve games" were familiar with the idea of updates and living games as services.
In the marketplace of ideas, Steam wasn't forced on people, and it naturally caught on. The idea that steam was forced on people because of one game doesn't make sense. The "PC market" was much more than valve and half life 2. Valve was nowhere near the biggest entity in PC gaming at the time. I'd wager the vast, vast majority of PC gamers did NOT experience Steam first with HL2.
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So Steam bad and it needs to go. While worse launcher and storefront needs to thrive no matter the costs because... Epic good?
I know, I was being facetious, I'm worried too, but I'm worried because I think it might work, and I'm worried that could open Pandora's box and leave us with loads of different stores, all with exclusive games
My only really issue is academic, and that is that I don't believe it's viable to start with making Steam but better, or if it is viable, it's likely to takes years to get to that point, so I can understand why investors have gone with buying exclusives at a strategy, even if I agree that sucks for consumers
Am I wrong or some games were just exclusive to Steam ? I don't remember people complaining about it.
I see this Store competition evolving like the stream movie services competition. Look at Netflix, when they started they were like Steam. Then you had more competition like Hulu or Amazon Prime. However Netflix is still the leader. But we know Disney and Apple are coming. I think we will see in the future other big players coming after Steam ( one of the GAFA ? ).
Yes, you do. Steam's success is a testament to that and, as others have already pointed out, Steam was a useful service even back then. The only problem with Steam back then was that it had issues in practice. Its concept, its reason for existing was very much worthwhile. The pre-Steam process of updating a game was total garbage.
I can buy every game on steam at multiple stores.
You know I can buy nearly every game on steam, on amazon, right?
But by the same token, in the marketplace of ideas the Epic Game Store isn't being forced on people. It's only being forced on people who specifically want to play those games which are exclusive, and only if they want to play those games on the PC. There are still a bunch of other choices. Uplay and Origin suck donkey nads too and no one is switching en masse because of Ubisoft and EA games. We just complain about how bad they are.
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It is viable.
I can give you 3 simple steps:
- Make it better looking/have more features (such as local coop online through streaming or emulating a distant gamepad).
- Make incentive to buy on their store instead (cheaper price or free games when you buy a game. For exemple: Metro is 60€ on Steam. Make it 50€ on EGS + You get Metro Redux Bundle when you preorder)
- Work with publishers to link their Steam library with EGS to unlock their games in the EGS store so that people can transition.
Yes, it's not easy to do, I know. But who said it should be easy ? This is a strategy that works if you want to be in the landscape in the next decade.
What they're doing is good if you plan to be there in the next 2 years.
did you even read my post? ò_ò
i just said that once you accept drm as a thing on pc, then you are giving the right to publishers and developers to choose through what of those stores they want to sell their games.
All good suggestions, and all things Stream can quickly match, to therefore nullify them as viable selling points
You know what Stream can't do that Epic can right now?
Sell you Metro Exodus
Once again, we switch between talking about Steam, as a technological platform, and steam, as a store. Steam, the store, was never forced on people. Half Life 2 was available at multiple retailers. Myself, I did not buy Half Life 2 on Steam, I bought it at Walmart. I never entered into steam, as a consumer portal, through half life 2. I had -- and still have -- other options to play said game. If I wanted to play Half Life 2, from day 1, I had multiple options on how I spent my money.
The Epic store, by contrast, absolutely is forcing people to use their store. Their store is intrisinically tied to these games.
I use uplay and origin to buy games when they are cheaper than elsewhere, which is actually pretty often. When I use their stores, it's because i elect to. I use Steam when it's cheapest. When I pay money to steam, it's because I elect to use their store. I use amazon when it's the cheapest. When I pay money to amazon, it's because I elect to use their store.
This is completely different from how Epic is trying to get it's customers.
So you meant "DRM" in your post? If so:
A) This isn't related to DRM at all
B) Steam is not DRM