I mean, maybe they no longer have your funds have gone into production, you know?
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Shenmue III is timed exclusive to Epic Games Store, backers PC code redeemed on EGS & no refund (See Threadmark) [READ STAFF POSTS BEFORE POSTING]
- Thread starter vestan
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I mean, maybe they no longer have your funds have gone into production, you know?
Firstly, understand that when people talk about steam, and the epic game store, they're actually talking about two different things at the exact same time. It's confusing to people who don't intimately understand technology, but these things, launchers are some call them, are a combination of store front, and technology suite. I'm sure you've heard of things like OpenGL or DirectX, those are technologies that help make games, specifically those technologies are middlewares that drive graphics cards. They make up a standard language so a game developer can target a "virtual" openGL or directX card, and the people behind OpenGL and DirectX (Khronos and Microsoft) then take care of making their "virtual" card work with physical cards. So from the perspective of a developer, you write for one "virtual" card, and the makers of that "virtual" card spend lots of money making it work with lots of real, physical cards. This is called interfacing.
Steam, the client, has a store bundled with it, but it is also a suite of tools. Steam, the client, can be thought of like DirectX, it does lots and lots of things beyond merely selling you the game. For example, there is this thing called Steam Proton which is an automatic translation layer for linux. With steam proton, you can run any windows game in linux, something thought absolutely impossible years ago. Steam is brimming with technologies like this, like Steam Input, which is how things like Dual Shock Controllers work.
You don't have to buy from Steam, the store, to use Steam, the client's tools. When you buy a game from, like, amazon, the sale goes entirely through amazon, and valve doesn't take 30% because they didn't actually facilitate the sale. But when you buy that game from amazon, or target.com, or where ever, they give you a special "installer" that you can pop into the steam client, and it'll use all the steam client features.
The Epic Games Store is, like the steam client, both a store and a suite of tools. But as a suite of tools, it's anemic. Not a fraction of what steam, the client, does. But worse than that, Epic is relying on people's confusion and inability to understand the difference between a store front and a suite of tools to muddy the picture. Were, for example, Epic Game Store just selling Steam Client installers, like Uplay does, nobody would have a fucking problem at all. But they don't. Instead, when something is "epic store exclusive," that means epic paid to both keep the game off of Valve's technology suite, AND keep it off of every other store besides their own. When something uses steam's technology, they are NOT exclusive to steam, the store. But people who don't know the difference think everything using steam's technology is the same as being exclusive to steam, the store.
By making things exclusive to epic games store, not only are they limiting the number of places where a buyer can purchase from (which has the demonstrable effect of raising game prices), it also cuts features from certain games by keeping them from using steam technologies.
In short, when things go "Epic games store" exclusive, they are limiting the places one can buy from, limiting the feature set of said, usually raising the price of said game, for absolutely no benefit to the consumer at all.
And, as an indie developer, Epic itself creates this division between games it allows onto the store, and games it does not. For games that are not allowed onto the store, it creates an unfair stigma, like those games are somehow lesser games, that actually hurts bottom lines. I don't want to use a specific example by name, because the specific dev got harassed when they made this known, but there was a well known, well reviewed game on steam that got denied a spot on epic game store, and after it got denied, the narrative on twitter turned into "something must clearly be wrong with the game if it got denied a spot on the store" and their sales actually slumped. One of the best features of steam, the store, from the perspective of small developers, is that it puts everyone on equal footing. A dude in bedroom can make a game and it's sold right alongside games made by 1000 person studios with million dollar budgets as though they were equals. EGS creates a division of haves vs have nots that hurt small developers.
EGS is bad for PC gaming all around.
I guess I better call my bank tomorrow and see if I can get my money back.
I've seen a couple of posts like this, but surely it's not clear cut as it seems. As technically you're backing or investing into a project with your money, not buying a product. The product is a thank you for the initial investment. Isn't it?
not really. there would still be complaints and 'outrage', and it would still be largely justified, but EGS and its history are unique and have given PC gamers plenty of reason to dislike this move beyond the mere fact that they aren't +1-ing their Steam library.
Your bank or your credit card company are your best bet for anything involving refunds/chargebacks, even if those have time limits, they're far more interested in helping you than Fangamer, the devs, or Kickstarter ever would be
No bank is going to issue a refund for a charge that is two years old.
For me; terrible forums and achievements no one really cares about. C'mon. Cloud saves are the only thing worth complaining about.
Kickstarter really isn't to blame here , but in the end they're going to be ones who suffer the most from this- as this one is going to be a pretty high-profile screwjob that involves a hated company.
He's given up over four years of his life to sleep in his office working mad hours, and not seeing his family. He has absolutely nothing to prove as a developer, had multiple cushy consulting and teaching posts to get by, and for years privately said he'd not make Shenmue III unless the conditions were perfect. He threw that all away because no matter where he went, people asked about Shenmue. For years, and years.
Usually the first words out of his mouth when trotted out at events like the PC Gaming Show is how much he appreciates the fans and thanking them for their patience and support. He's made time for multiple Shenmue fan outlets over the years for hastily scheduled interviews despite being heinously jet lagged, and there are people on this very forum who have met him over the years, and at least one who has even cultivated a personal friendship and can attest to his character as someone determined to do right by the fans. Trying to make a pantomime villain out of Yu Suzuki is not going to help, and stands completely against the facts of how this project even came to be in the first place.
I get people are pissed at this decision but it's very, very unlikely Ys Net has their ear to the ground enough to know what the reaction to EGS exclusivity would be. Deep Silver would, however, and could have quite easily pitched it as a straight win - which in the context of waiving engine licence fees and getting a higher sales revenue cut, is easy to do if you don't understand the ins and outs of the digital distribution platform wars. Ys Net would have had a say, but it's not guaranteed they understood the repercussions if the publisher is only telling you the upsides.
I care a lot about achievements and the time tracker. It's one of the reasons I don't play multiplats on Switch
I doubt Yu Suzuki even gets the issue tbh. His advisors let him down here. If given the chance for more funds, I can see why he would have said yes but without the luxury of actually understanding the problem with fucking over Steam orders to EGS. The no refund thing is peak shit housery though.
Yu Suzuki owns Ys Net. Ys net is refusing to offer refunds to the people who made their game possible after taking away the version they promised. So yeah, I'm comfortable saying that Suzuki is treating his fans like shit. Unless he comes out and reverses course on this and gives full refunds to everyone who asks for one, I don't think I can ever forgive him.
Gonna be honest, its Epic Games' arrogance is what prevents me from ever giving them a dime of my money. They have so arrogantly tossed around their money and assumed that I could be bought with their free games and exclusives, but I won't. It's a matter of principal for me, and I stand by my convictions. Call me stupid. Call me petty. Tell me that I'm hurting myself by not getting to play some of these "amazing" games RIGHT NOW, and I'll tell you there are hundreds of other amazing games out there that will make me just as happy, if not moreso. And a lot of those amazing games aren't even on Steam.
I've had EA on my Blacklist for almost 10 years, and I just installed Origin on my PC last week. I subbed for the XBox Game Pass for PC just because I could. But I will never touch the Epic Games Launcher.
I didn't know you talked for everyone. Things you don't care about might be pretty important for others. A novel concept, I know...
Yeah this is my thoughts as well. I would not be surprised if it's Deep Silver who championed this mess
This is ransomware, you're trying to lock up my computer and encrypt it unless I read a PDF outside of business hours
I would rather die
Forums can be extremely useful for things like bug reports. There's a lot worth complaining about as the big ass informative post on this very page can perhaps demonstrate.
You know what will REALLY suck? The loss of Steam Workshop support. No more mod support built right into the client.
Yeah, although the Steam forums can often be a cesspit, there have been multiple times where I encounter some weird technical issue getting an older game to run on my machine, and the Steam forums already have someone explaining exactly what to do to avoid it.
Well they're definitely minimizing exposure with that November release date.
can't count how many times steam's helped me with this exact thing.
im a pretty big fan of the buck stops hereing and as the face of the franchise i don't blame people for pointing at suzuki
this is obviously a big deal to a large amount of the backers and fans of this project
he can own it and fix it, or he can see his legacy being sullied because some business partner made an incredibly short sighted decision
or maybe he can't i dunno
this is obviously a big deal to a large amount of the backers and fans of this project
he can own it and fix it, or he can see his legacy being sullied because some business partner made an incredibly short sighted decision
or maybe he can't i dunno
But that one dude a little farther up on the page said he doesn't care about that stuff, so, I mean... ?
What can you do? I've never done something like that so far after the fact.
I'm not surprised you don't want to inform yourself before posting about something you don't really undestand. I gave you the tools.
I'm not going to get into the weeds on this, but if it makes you feel better to take it as a black and white issue go ahead.
But it's still not a reflection of the man, or his character, or the fact he basically put himself through hell for fours years to make this game happen for fans. Absolute indisputable fact, and it doesn't matter what you're comfortable saying.
If you are the director of a project it is incumbent on you to choose useful, adequate partners to see your project to completion. If Suzuki saw fit to choose a partner who was willing to take these options it is a reflection of his managerial aptitude, which is fit for criticism. Likewise, incompetence in choosing a publisher is tantamount to malice.
Again, incompetence is tantamount to malice. Reasoning matters little to results.
You know what I wanna read when I wanna relax and wind down the night
A concentrated dose of stuff I already see every day
(I've already read this multiple times)
Definitely not an actual tool though, it's outdated, if it was a real PDF it would have FINAL_PROOF_FINAL and then the date three times
Yeah, he put himself through hell for years to make this game happen. And then he decided to dick his most loyal fans over at the last minute. Regardless of who made the call to go with EGS, not offering refunds reflects incredibly poorly on Suzuki. He threw away two decades of good will for some money, and the absolute least he could do would be to offer money back to the people who were screwed over.
I'm not sure if this one will, given it's not coming to XBox either; for all the fuss of Metro exclusivity not meaning much when it's also on the Windows store, I think at least part of that comes from the fact it's also on XBox.
Your recourse is with content creator, not with the platform. The ToS is fairly clear in those regards as well, that KS is not a store.
The good thing is, the company that is fucking people over should have $$
I think the better course of action is seeing if Ys net violated KS terms of service, because I would think that is something that could be actionable.
This is a nice explanation, thank you. I only dabble in PC gaming and I never really understood it like this.
I've been playing a couple of games through Proton recently and I really appreciate it. It's definitely a shame to lose that feature especially.
While I agree the game does not look good, there are literally 43 pages discussing how there is "more to this". People paid for one thing and are getting another after rallying around a cult release that people have been waiting for for nearly 20 years.
It's unfortunate no matter how small the affected contingent is.
Call and explain the kickstarter situation and ask for a charge back. And if they ask I'll even provide documentation of all this fuckery. Will not hurt to try.
Exactly. Hey, at least I don't have to say it anymore. Beforehand when you called this guys character out you would have people that didn't know any better assuming you were just being mean. But in this case.... its much better when these people show their ass on their own. Now there can be no doubt about it.
Honest question.
Let's say hypothetically Ys Net / Deep Silver we're in dire straits behind the scenes with this. Not unreasonable to think considering how many times this has been delayed.
Let's say this deal got them to the finish line so that the game could be released, period.
Is this a fair trade for that piece of mind, or would you rather they didn't do the deal at the risk of no one having ANY version of this, with EVERY backer getting screwed in the process?
For me, given the delays and given the uneven dev cycle that usually means trouble, it's a fair trade.
Let's say hypothetically Ys Net / Deep Silver we're in dire straits behind the scenes with this. Not unreasonable to think considering how many times this has been delayed.
Let's say this deal got them to the finish line so that the game could be released, period.
Is this a fair trade for that piece of mind, or would you rather they didn't do the deal at the risk of no one having ANY version of this, with EVERY backer getting screwed in the process?
For me, given the delays and given the uneven dev cycle that usually means trouble, it's a fair trade.
So, uh, usually? Most banks and credit card companies will do the chargeback deal, but there's limits to this stuff, and most of these pledges are from YEARS ago
tldr; who fuckin' knows
I did not license my name to this website please cease and desist immediately or I will go Brie Mode
there are lots and lots of features built into steam that are really cool. Steam Input, for example, is incredibly deep, take a look here: https://www.resetera.com/threads/mouse-cursor-onscreen-even-when-using-controller.35670/
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