They must be happy with Hades sales
https://www.usgamer.net/articles/su...pic-games-store-democratized-game-development
https://www.usgamer.net/articles/su...pic-games-store-democratized-game-development
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Supergiant about Epic Store: "Competition is good for everybody. It's good for customers. It's good for people working in the industry"
- Thread starter benzopil
- Start date
Or they could be happy with the golden handshake they got to put it on there.
Disclaimer (I have hades on the epic store)
Not only is what Epic doing the opposite of competition, competition isn't always a good thing and it's so bizarre that people have taken for granted that it is.
I love that kind of blanket statement.
Competition is amazing when services gets worse and price gets higher.
Competition is amazing when services gets worse and price gets higher.
And why not? I get that people hate this, but how is it not competition? Just because they're buying exclusive rights after the fact, that doesn't really take away from the fact that they're investing money to one-up the competition.
Oh, the irony. Epic's store is completely reliant on paying publishers and developers to exclude Steam. There was nothing stopping Supergiant from putting Hades on both EGS AND Steam. You know, actually giving customers more places to play it. But those EGS bribes are just too sweet. Yay competition!
I think he meant to say that it's the worst kind of competition. The kind where the competitor doesn't actually try to provide a superior product or service and instead tries to succeed by hurting its competitor(s).
I hope this is sarcasm. Bastion sold over 2 million copies on Steam. Transistor sold over a million. Pyre bombed on all platforms, not just Steam.
Last edited:
It's definitely a good thing when struggling niche developers like supergiant games will finally get their deserved visibility on a curated storefront after their last 3 games had bombed on steam.
Ding ding ding. This is all this thread needs, but I'll add my piece.
Exclusivity is fucking bullshit and anti-consumer garbage that benefits no one.
sure jan
you just took a big check and choose to put your game where 95% of your audience isn't. i'm sure the game will do fine when it eventually hits steam, but don't act like consumers or competition or anything like that was your motivation.
you just took a big check and choose to put your game where 95% of your audience isn't. i'm sure the game will do fine when it eventually hits steam, but don't act like consumers or competition or anything like that was your motivation.
That kind of competition is about which company will get more money. No one cares.
The kind of good competition is about which company will give me the best deal to get my money.
And how do Steam retaliate to buying exclusives ? Buying exclusives too.
Is that really what we want ? Storefront exclusives based on moneyhat ?
Yep. Competition is good. That's why we can buy Hades in different stores, depending on the offers they present to the consumer, so we can choose the one that suits our needs better.
Oh, wait. No. This game is exclusive to the Epic Store. This is not competition.
Oh, wait. No. This game is exclusive to the Epic Store. This is not competition.
The competition they're trying to get is between Valve and Epic. This is all about the long game of trying to get Valve to lower their cut by using EGS to lower Valve's market share.
EGS is not going to succeed unless it can get consumers on board, and it's going to take more than the exclusives they have to do this.
EGS is not going to succeed unless it can get consumers on board, and it's going to take more than the exclusives they have to do this.
I don't know how they'd retaliate. More curation? Better curation tools? Better % to publisher? They could also buy exclusives and give them top billing in terms of advertising. There are several ways to crack an egg. There are many ways I can think of right now that would make Steam's storefront even more attractive. Reasons to keep your purchases in one ecosystem.
Curation isnt the problem here.
And even if they had a 0% cut, you cant beat buying an exclusive with money.
You answer to something with the same thing but better.
Which means buying exclusives. If the vision of the market competition is storefronts paying to remove games elsewhere: It sucks.
Limiting choice is not good for customers and it is not competition. I understand how receiving a big fat check from Epic is good for people working in the industry but forcing exclusivity is against customer interests. No amount of PR and spin is going to convince people that less choice is good for them.
I would have loved if your game hadn't come to one platform at the exclusion of all others.
That's a short term solution. The idea is to do things to disincentivize selling your game as an exclusive to another platform. Right now Epic's giving games top billing from publishers that floundered on Steam a bit because of Steam's multitude of issues.
"more places to play games"
Erm you do know that this is the exact opposite?
Though not surprised. These are the Devs that claimed the EGS store allowed them to build the game with the community suggestions and feedback.... But they use Discord for that instead. If their excuse made any sense, they would be Discord exclusive, not EGS exclusive.
Erm you do know that this is the exact opposite?
Though not surprised. These are the Devs that claimed the EGS store allowed them to build the game with the community suggestions and feedback.... But they use Discord for that instead. If their excuse made any sense, they would be Discord exclusive, not EGS exclusive.
That's not a short term solution. It's the only one.
As I said even with a 0% cut, you cant beat a bag of money. Except with a bigger bag of money.
Or well... Harsher rules like refusing to carry these games. Which none of us wants.
the fact is, the completion is between epic and steam. it's not a dev's job to care about that particular competition. of course they're free to take a money hat and put their game on EGS first, but don't act like you care about the competition because a, no one will believe you and b, you have no reason to care.
it would be like if (for example) the next call of duty launched first on xbox instead of being multi plat and activision said it's because they like competition. that makes no sense, and everyone knows it's because there was a check involved.
it would be like if (for example) the next call of duty launched first on xbox instead of being multi plat and activision said it's because they like competition. that makes no sense, and everyone knows it's because there was a check involved.
A lot of folks here weren't raising all this fuss when Civ V became a Steam Exclusive years ago (that was the death knell of Impulse and Gamersgate as independent services- it was a killshot right to the heart of their niche)
The main complaint I think is people want a monopoly here on game provider- they want Steam to have everything beause it's convenient for them. The issue is that 30% cut is becoming something game publishers are willing to go to war in order to lower.
Keep going Epic. GOG never got the traction I was hoping they would so I guess Epic can be the next best thing.
In my eyes Epic Store will be competitive when they will add the family sharing like steam. Do it!
I think you're thinking of this far too narrowly, but I understand your frustration.
The argument being made is that "competition is good for customers". The moneyhats that Epic is throwing around might be competition in the business sense but customers are interested in competition that provides benefits to them. Competition that is good for customers.
In what way have services got worse and prices got higher? In the case of the recent Metro Exodus "fiasco," the service got better (Epic added regional pricing, including for regions never before covered by any other store) and the price of the game went down.
I still don't understand all the salt from these exclusive PC gamers. Admittedly I haven't looked into much of the discussion beyond more stores popping up and shifting titles around. I would bet that my point of "it's all on PC, what are you bitching about" must have some matured rebuttals by now.
Apart from deliberately trolling shit like Rape Day and Bolsomito, how does that help anybody? Indies complained about Valve gatekeeping Steam, no wthey want it walled off again. For everyone but them, I guess. Don't give a fuck, wouldn't help me as a consumer any.
That would be nice, but I doubt the effectiveness.
Valve already did that, based on units sold. They might go lower for everyone, but doubtful they would match Epic's 12% as even EPic can't quite seem to cope with that well in some regions.
Yes, I want more exclusives, that's why I am on the PC. Jesus wept.
Not if you live in Worst Europe; eastern wages, western prices.
Is that what's happening? Because that is not how I would describe it. I see less places to get the Epic Store exclusive games. I can't buy them outside of that storefront. I have no consumer choices for these games. I don't see any competition that can drive the pricing down (which would be the way consumers actually benefit from competition).
I see another alternate place to get my game on my PC, another place to give my personal data, another place to store my credit card information, another place to put a piece of my digital game collection. Honestly, the last thing I wanted was to fragment my collection over a variety of different services. I'd rather just choose a service and have my games on there in one convenient place. That would be consumer-friendly.
How are there less choices? Its on the PC, you can buy it on your PC.
Indeed it has. Search for previous Epic-related threads and you'll find all the information you want.
Not sure what you mean, but I know their pricing system still has kinks to work out. Still, describing the situation as worse services and higher prices is hyperbolic
1. Services : No cloud saves for Metro Exodus. No library sharing for Metro Exodus. No Steam Input support for Metro Exodus. No Linux for Metro Exodus. No Big Picture Mode for Metro Exodus. No community guides for Metro Exodus. No Screenshot sharing for Metro Exodus.
2. Prices : Before EGS deal, the game was sold for 45 to 60 euros on 15 stores. After EGS deal, the game is sold for 60 euros on 1 store. In Europe we pay the game 15€ more, a nearly 50% increase in price.
In USA, it's cheaper than on Steam it's true. 50 dollars vs 60 dollars. But it's also more expensive than what it was on Razer Game Store which were carrying the game for 45 dollars + a 10 dollars voucher for a 20 dollars purchase.
The service got worse. The prices raised.
Steam's ecosystem with its freely generated keys and expected 30% storefront cut allowed for a lot of key resellers to pop up, offering games for cheaper even during the period before the customary price drop. Epic's 12% cut and no keys make that impossible. SO when before you could check several stores to see if you could get a nice discount (and the answer was generally yes), now you are stuck with whatever the game is priced on Epic. People tend to dislike that.
Oh no, that's the system working as intended. The entire EU generally has the same price (or similar for countries that can use their own currency on steam and not default to Euro, which is not my case anyway), but the various countries have different income levels. So if you live in eastern EU you get all the games priced the same a sin Germany but you are only paid a fraction of what you would be paid if you were working in Germany, so the game is comparatively more expensive for you. This is not really Epic's problem tbh, I just wanted to vent.
You can curate without exclusion; curation entails guiding. Beyond that, the idea to is to make the platform more attractive for publishers who are constantly complaining about low sales or getting lost in the shuffle. And it's easy to see why: the storefront is a mess. They've taken measures to curate, but they're disjointed affairs or don't quite work out. Once their business model is under fire, they may have more incentive to get their act together.
But I don't have much faith in Epic making a real dent.
Last edited:
Obviously we shouldn't be naive about why they are saying this, but it doesn't have to be interpreted as supportive of how the Epic store currently works but rather a general statement of more high profile competitors in a market can more more innovation and benefits for the consumer (but not always).
I'm not a PC gamer so I can't say I've been keeping a real close eye on this, but how the Epic store is now isn't how it will be in five years assuming there is still an Epic store. It feels like some are bothered by this and instead of pushing for positive changes or being hopeful that the competition of Steam and GOG and other storefronts will cause Epic to change for the better they just want Epic store to cease existing. Maybe that would be better, but maybe Epic changes for the better and becomes another competitor that pushes Steam and introduces some good or cool feature of idea that becomes industry standard?
I'm not a PC gamer so I can't say I've been keeping a real close eye on this, but how the Epic store is now isn't how it will be in five years assuming there is still an Epic store. It feels like some are bothered by this and instead of pushing for positive changes or being hopeful that the competition of Steam and GOG and other storefronts will cause Epic to change for the better they just want Epic store to cease existing. Maybe that would be better, but maybe Epic changes for the better and becomes another competitor that pushes Steam and introduces some good or cool feature of idea that becomes industry standard?
