Was in the middle of creating my own thread when I saw this one. Here's what I put:
So.
This is
Satisfactory.
Satisfactory was due to be released on Steam until 2 days ago, as per the
SteamDB entry, where it can be seen that it was removed:
- Removed Release Date – Coming Soon
- Removed Categories – Single-player, Multi-player, Online Multi-Player, Co-op, Online Co-op, Steam Achievements, Partial Controller Support, Steam Cloud
- Removed store name – Satisfactory
It
seems like Epic money-hatted it away to be a full exclusive, or at the very least a timed exclusive. Whilst it
is entirely possible that the developers decided the 88/12 split was better than a concurrent Steam/Epic store release, it raises questions about how "competition" will work in this. On another thread, I posted this:
Competing on games is not competing. It requires the consumer to make a choice, but making a choice is not equal to choice itself.
Example: Sony and MS are are competitors, but they're not competing,. There is no game on the XBone I want. I love Bloodborne. So, to me, they aren't competing, I've just made a choice to buy a PS4, because it has Bloodborne. But if Bloodborne were on the XBone, I would have to make a choice about which system to get, based on controller preference, UI/UX, 4K BR support, Backwards Compatibilty, etc.
But, since Bloodborne isn't on the XBone, I'm forced to buy a PS4, regardless of if I want anything else related to it.
Now apply that to Epic/BNet/MSStore/Origin. See how they're not really competing with Valve, they're just vying for the consumer's wallet.
I have absolutely no problem with a competing store, but I do have a problem with dragging in console-style tactics to the wider PC market. I fear that a diverse range of third-party games being exclusive to this store or that store will harm discoverability - as customers won't be able to find certain titles without a tremendous amount of effort - confuse customers - for the same reason - and ultimately hurt developers and publishers. Exclusives
just about work on console because of the limited selection of competitors - Sony, MS, Nintendo - but on PC, there is now:
Battle.net
Epic
Origin
Uplay
GOG
Discord
A fragmentation which I feel will just confuse the customer, and incline them to just hedge towards one store more than the other even more than they are now. Few people are truly "Steam or bust", but having a dizzying array of stores/client with a number of titles being unavailable on their competitors is, I feel, going to push people into choosing a favourite and shrugging their shoulders at the titles they know they're going to miss.
Finally, a simple question: If a game that had
until two days ago been set for release on XBone and PS4 was suddenly moneyhatted by one or the other for some unknown amount of time, would it be okay?