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Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

Mustawd

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Hypothetical question: If Epic's Store went DRM-free like GOG, would any of you change your mind about it or prefer it to Steam? Is it enough of a feature to change your preferred platform?

If it doesn’t force me to install another program? Sure, why not?
 

J1M

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Hypothetical question: If Epic's Store went DRM-free like GOG, would any of you change your mind about it or prefer it to Steam? Is it enough of a feature to change your preferred platform?

If it doesn’t force me to install another program? Sure, why not?
In this hypothetical you still have to install the launcher to complete the purchase and initiate the download.
 

Mustawd

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Hypothetical question: If Epic's Store went DRM-free like GOG, would any of you change your mind about it or prefer it to Steam? Is it enough of a feature to change your preferred platform?

If it doesn’t force me to install another program? Sure, why not?
In this hypothetical you still have to install the launcher to complete the purchase and initiate the download.

That’s dumb.

I already have a torrent client installed.
 
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unfairlight

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Hypothetical question: If Epic's Store went DRM-free like GOG, would any of you change your mind about it or prefer it to Steam?
I'd change my mind so far as to not hating it and anything to do with it, but I'd still find the paid-exclusivity deals stupid.
I would not prefer it to Steam, as I have hundreds of games on that platform (many of which I have gotten for free), I talk to all my friends on Steam, Epic has no CD key sites which makes it cheaper for me to buy my games and because Steam will forever have a better catalogue of old games.

EGS is not 100% certain if it wants to do the "curation" thing a la GOG which will eventually arbitrarily leave out some really good games (i.e. the recent Grimoire thing on GOG) but unfortunately that is the most likely scenario. Steam isn't perfect either on this front, I may add, as Steam has recently banned and disallowed a fair few anime ecchi visual novels and games without any solid reasoning, going against their previous statement of "we will allow anything on Steam and hand off better curation and filtering tools for those who do not want that content" which is very unfortunate and was supposed to be their entire goal with Steam Direct.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
Seems like retardera did something good for once. They followed up on the above Reddit post.

This is of course entirely in the interest of the consumers and competition. Sweeney and SirGay really need to read up on GDPR.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/de...llect-your-steam-friends-play-history.105385/
nobody could have possibly seen this coming
nope
not at all
just remembered that epic games was acquired by tencent and is therefore effectively an arm of the chinese government
enjoy your chinese spyware
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
Epic's bid to disrupt the PC game sales market and challenge Steam has proved a controversial one, with a raft of games suffering a backlash after ditching Valve's platform for Epic's. In the case of 4A Games' Metro Exodus, the fallout from ditching Steam for the Epic Games store got pretty messy.
The implication that it's a one-to-one comparison is bullshit. Steam never locked their game onto their platform and indeed, many are available on various other outlets such as GoG, itch.io, the developer's website, etc.,
 

Reinhardt

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We, the Chinese Spyware Fanboys, have said like 100x times GOG isn't any real competition to Steam since the overlap in the non-indie market is microscopic.
So you, Chinese Spyware Fanboys, saying there is overlap between Epic and Steam?
You can get lots of games both on Steam and GOG. How many games can you get both from Steam and from Epic store?
 

Reinhardt

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Hypothetical question: If Epic's Store went DRM-free like GOG, would any of you change your mind about it or prefer it to Steam? Is it enough of a feature to change your preferred platform?
Если бы у бабушки был хуй, она была бы дедушкой.
 

Rahdulan

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It's like these people never learn.

Free money is difficult to resist. And given how people can't stick to boycotts or anything such to save their life I'm pretty sure all these devs who jumped ship are simply relying on everyone forgetting they did it in the first place a year from now so they can buy the game on Steam. It remains to be seen if any long term damage to reputations has been done other than people being outraged in niche parts of the internet.

Didn't collect your free copies of Subnautica and Slime Rancher eh? Good man.

What I don't get is there are people who got onto Epic's store for the free games and have no interest in ever using it otherwise. Why not just pirate said games in the first place if that's your intention? For god's sake, piracy has less strings attached than seemingly a legitimate digital retailer does by the looks of it.
 
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I'm not particularly fond of Valve in terms of game development, but as far as Steam is concerned - it's the devil you know, that happens to work fairly well too, so unless you have an unhealthy obsession with brands and buy into the whole "exclusivity is good for the business" shit (which makes no sense from a user PoV unless you are a shareholder) - there's no reason to switch.
 

cvv

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If Epic manages to carve a sizable chunk of the market with exclusive deals, why would it ever stop doing what worked so well and start worrying about features and refund policies?

Just like with consoles it's more likely exclusives will continue. But, just like Richard said, the new competitive environment could bring benefits players have always dreamt about (cross-platform play, dedicated servers, both of which were already announced/leaked) and others nobody can even see yet. That's how markets work.

As for features - https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap.
 

GrainWetski

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The implication that it's a one-to-one comparison is bullshit. Steam never locked their game onto their platform and indeed, many are available on various other outlets such as GoG, itch.io, the developer's website, etc.,
Retards are just painting it as Epic vs Steam because it looks better than what it actually is: Epic vs PC gaming.

They remove a game from GOG and the shills still keep harping on about Steam and Valve. They should try to be a bit more subtle, but when you get all your thoughts directly from Sweeney and gamejournos I guess that's hard.
 

Perkel

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If Epic manages to carve a sizable chunk of the market with exclusive deals, why would it ever stop doing what worked so well and start worrying about features and refund policies?

Because Fornite money is not infinite.
They can fund games, guarantee sales because right now they sit on pot of gold.
But that pot of gold will eventually dry up.

It is also problem of scale. Right now they can fund it but when they will get that sizeable chunk of market and games will start selling well there stuff like guaranteed sales etc will be things that will go into 10s and 100s of millions and that is something even Fornite money can't sustain for long period of time.
The other avenue here that is worth mentioning is that this might push other stores to fund themselves some games.
Velve has minimal cost of operating but they take 30% cut for years upon years. If Epic will start to eat into their business they will have to answer themselves.

Remember when GOG got into market ? They were the ones who started this whole free games on their store every once in while. What happened after that ? Both steam and rest started to do it because they realized it is good strategy to get people using their store.

From dev position it will be really fucking great situation. In current situation Steam doesn't give a flying fuck about you as developer. Meanwhile Epic is behaving like pimp who showers you as a dev with money because by doing that they will grow.
So imagine for a second that Steam and maybe 1 or 2 other join that practice. Suddenly as a small dev you go from 0 support to 2-4 places that would give you something for giving your game exclusivity to their store.

And it is not like PC is console market so regardless of what store you choose your game will be played by everyone who wants to play it.

Also people who believe Steam benevolence: Steam never improved because it wanted to give you great service. They improved because their main competitor wasn't on PC but on consoles. They improved tools, network etc because they wanted to get console people. This is the reason why they introduced Big Picture, Steam Link and other stuff. They also competed with themselves because they knew that by improving their services they can increase market size.

So adding Epic or other big stores just gives Steam even more incentive to improve in long run.
Who know maybe if Epic will have ability to stop updates on demand and stay on one version of patch, Steam will go back to their earlier rules. Praise competition !
 
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Infinitron

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Someone talked about console exclusives which is a stupid comparision because in this case you buy hardware for 400 euro or more to play your exclusive

But...isn't this also the reason why people should be less butthurt about the Epic store? It's just a thing you have to download for free to play some games.

Man I understand how Epic's aggressive moves come across as jerk-ish, but this is another "gamer moral panic", just like Denuvo, just like Steam itself was 15 years ago. It's hard not to become cynical about this stuff after you've seen it happen so many times.

Basically whenever a new company shows up on the scene and says "We're new, we're different, and we're going to change everything!", a segment of the gaming audience freaks out and declares them evil incarnate when they're usually just annoying. People are people I guess, it's something companies have to take into account.
 

Dexter

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Hypothetical question: If Epic's Store went DRM-free like GOG, would any of you change your mind about it or prefer it to Steam? Is it enough of a feature to change your preferred platform?
No, as I've stated before, the main issue with them is buying Exclusivity, the PC ecosystem has existed for decades and Steam has been acting as a Digital Distribution platform since 2005, yet we haven't seen any Digital Distribution platform stoop as low as to pay off/bribe third-party developers and Indies for exclusivity deals and to explicitly keep them off competing platforms. Even EA, Activision and UbiSoft haven't stooped that low.

This practice is console bullshit that has plagued their marketplace since their inception has NO PLACE in PC Gaming and if one party starts with it, others will likely not be far behind. The only worse thing I can imagine is "Game Streaming" actually succeeding. I've opted out of "exclusivity" shenanigans by not buying any major consoles for 20 years, it'll not be hard to refrain from indulging Epic and their bullshit.

Fuck Epic and fuck every Motherfucking Asshole acting like an Apologist for them. Go drink a bottle of bleach.
 
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Mark Richard

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B-but think of the competition against Steam's monopoly! It's healthy for the market!!

Epic goes and buys exclusive rights for a game that would have come out on both Steam and GoG.

It's competition! It's good for the market! Breaking the Steam monopoly!!!!
Generally people who say that aren't referring to immediate positive results. Individually there's nothing beneficial to consumers in these acts of game poaching, but over time they contribute towards establishing the Epic store as a viable platform. When the Epic Store is actually in a position to compete with Steam, then we may see some benefits in the form of competitive pricing, store features, refund policies, etc. But how to get to that stage? Building trust through good service takes years, and Epic only has a small window of opportunity to capitalise on the Fortnite phenomenon before the playerbase moves on to the next big thing. Hence the poaching.

At least, that's what I keep telling myself while curled up in the fetal position at the news of another game going exclusive. I tend not to blame Epic so much as the devs/pubs who're committing to exclusivity regardless of the circumstances (two weeks from release, or a crowfunded project). It's been a real eye-opener seeing how little they think of us.
If Epic manages to carve a sizable chunk of the market with exclusive deals, why would it ever stop doing what worked so well and start worrying about features and refund policies? In fact, it exclusive deals prove to be effective, you can expect Valve and GOG doing the same shit and outbidding each other offering developers and publishers guaranteed payments, which would lead to decline in quality because said developers and publishers would no longer rely on customers to make a living but on the digital stores acting as giant publishers and we all know how well it worked out the last time.
The purpose of digital platform exclusives is to get you invested, to set up roots on the platform. There's a point when the amount of new people being converted starts shrinking rapidly, and it becomes unsustainable to toss briefcases full of cash around in the face of those diminishing returns. If exclusives stick around for the long haul they'll be limited to a very select few. 'Killer apps', 'system sellers', or whatever the kids are calling them these days. Games that would be considered a form of torture on this forum.
 

Strange Fellow

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
And second...yeah. For ANYONE to carve out a piece of the Steam pie for themselves, going with exclusives is PROBABLY the only way.
Because Steam is a reliable source of reasonably priced games. I'm not sure what else anyone wants, apart from a DRM-free alternative, which the Epic Store is not. The issue with monopolies is that it gives the monopoliser freedom to screw over their customers, and Steam doesn't do that. If it starts, there are alternatives. The way I see it, there's no need for preventive measures.
 

BlackAdderBG

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Someone talked about console exclusives which is a stupid comparision because in this case you buy hardware for 400 euro or more to play your exclusive

But...isn't this also the reason why people should be less butthurt about the Epic store? It's just a thing you have to download for free to play some games.

Man I understand how Epic's aggressive moves come across as jerk-ish, but this is another "gamer moral panic", just like Denuvo, just like Steam itself was 15 years ago. It's hard not to become cynical about this stuff after you've seen it happen so many times.

Basically whenever a new company shows up on the scene and says "We're new, we're different, and we're going to change everything!", a segment of the gaming audience freaks out and declares them evil incarnate when they're usually just annoying. People are people I guess, it's something companies have to take into account.

Epic "new" :nocountryforshitposters:
 

cvv

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I'm not sure what else anyone wants

Exactly my point. Consumers rarely know what they want. It's only when someone, as a result of competitive effort, comes up with something new and desirable they suddenly need that. The last 200 years of Industrial Revolution is the history of 9/10 companies thinking "We've done everything, not sure what more consumers want" and the 10th company coming up with something completely new and revolutionary that everyone suddenly can't live without.

When EA came up with Origin suddenly consumers realized refunds of digitally distributed PC games are possible (after Valve fighting this policy for years in the EU). Just 2 months into Epic existence the idea of cross-platform play surfaced as something actually in the cards. And recently it's been leaked Valve could start offering dedicated servers for 3rd party games.

What else do we want? I have no idea. But thanks to competition I'm sure various actors will come up with something that wouldn't exist in a market completely dominated by only one company. To be sure, Valve has been a benign dictator but competition is always better than even the most benign dominance and unlike the console market the price to pay for competition in the PC market is to take 2 minutes to install a small piece of free software.
 
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Strange Fellow

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
That's all well and good, but doesn't apply to Epic at all. Cross-platform play? Get outta here. Wake me up when a new storefront offers something that Steam doesn't. You know, like GOG did.
 

Perkel

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Don't forget that digital cut already went down from 30% to 10-15% across the stores and most of the stores already are in process of lowering that cut. Steam itself already went from fixed 30% to dynamic 30-25-20% based on success.

And there are plenty of things that could a lot change PC space.

Part of the reason why consoles are so popular is because in order to compete with each other Nintendo, MS, Sony, Sega etc etc spend shitload of money promoting their consoles. When Champions league is happening why do you think those Playstation 2/3/4 signs exist ? Because Sony knows that they have competition and they need to do it in order to get players. By the same measure they take away potential players from PC.

When was the last time you saw Steam placing any ads IRL ?
They never did it because they have no competition.

Welcome to real market.
 

cvv

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