Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[Alienman]

Illegal to be rich, that is rich

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Well, gaming is a business where the service providers can not only get away with some p insane anticonsumer shit, but even get significant number of peeps defending/praising them for it. Of course people like gaming journalists (=literal retards) and various weirdos that devote life to computer games despite not liking them are largely the root of the problem, but it's absolutely no wonder that special snowflakes like the guys from the above posts get used to it.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Saw all that last night and had to laugh.

There seems to be a position coalescing around EGS by the usual suspects that it’s great, mostly because 90% of PC gamers hate it, and anything 90% of gamers hate must be good for the business.

I think some of these people are a bit sentimental about the indie games environment of 2009-2014 where the typical mainstream blogger could hype up their roommate’s game about solving lesbian mysteries just by writing a series of posts and pretending it is the next big thing. Valve would read that as hype (or Project Greenlight would succeed) and let it sell on their store and your choice as consumer was either that or Call of Duty and everyone was happy.

Somewhere along the way Valve opened up user ratings and refunds and then eventually let you buy anime virtual reality sex simulators and suddenly the typical indie developer who kinda hates anyone who doesn’t have a twitter account with a blue check mark can’t make money on Steam any more. This EGS shit is perfect for them, since they get to make money and literally do not have to appeal to a single purchaser to do it. Note how everyone is parroting the point that it’s good for the industry because it provides financial stability to assholes like this developer here who disdain the market.

In reality, this is creating a classic perverse incentive - imagine buying a sandwich that isn’t even cooked properly and is missing ingredients and then being told by the shop that they don’t care if you like it or not because their profit has already been guaranteed by a third party. By propping up a developer no matter what EGS are incentivizing delivering products that are otherwise uncompetitive. Asshole developers and bloggers love it because telling them they can make money and be unappealing fuckwits at the same time is essentially like winning the unappealing fuckwit lottery, even though it’s decidedly not all that great for anybody else.

Snowflake SJW Indies and greedy developers will all flock to Epic and leave Steam untouched by their poison. I will be able to navigate among new games unscathed by the sewer. There is also the fact that Epic will obviously fail. Even a blind man can see that. The schadenfreude will be glorious!

 

[ultimanecat]

 

[iZerw]

Installed Epic Store to try Heavy Rain demo and I swear to God my computer started to work slower. I use Guitar Rig for amp emulation and before presets loaded momentary, now it takes 3-4 seconds. Are chinks mining bitcoins on my pc or something?

 

[V_K]

Basically, real ramifications and fallout of selling out to EGS are still a year away. Will customers at large just forget about everything or hold a grudge?

Youngfags are too youngfaggy to know anything but when Steam started locking single-player games behind their shitty launcher 15 years ago the outrage was WAY stormier than the current one over EGS. People threatened to sue Valve and sent complaints to the FTC. And that was fucking 2003 when the pinnacle of social media was Slashdot. If Valve pulled that shit today, the rage would literally shatter the internet into atoms and Gaben would turn into Forrest Gump, eternally running from armies of angry gamers. Instead, gamer armies today defend Valve with more zealotry than Muslims defending the Ummah.

So, anyone still remembers the outrage over Half-Life 2? Thought so. Epic has just one job - add more features to EGS. In a few years, nobody will remember shit.

Plus all that jazz will be irrelevant anyways because shit like launchers, DRM and even gaming hardware will be rendered obsolete with direct streaming.

The question isn't whether EGS is going to survive though - the question is whether it'll become the big Steam rival it wants to be so badly. And something tells me it won't.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Jason Schreier: It's good that there is someone so wealthy that he can afford to protect me from the realities of the free market.

Also Jason Schreier: Wealth is immoral and should be illegal.

 

[Volrath]

Jason Schreier: It's good that there is someone so wealthy that he can afford to protect me from the realities of the free market.

Also Jason Schreier: Wealth is immoral and should be illegal.

What a fucking moron

 

[Perkel]

Jason Schreier: It's good that there is someone so wealthy that he can afford to protect me from the realities of the free market.

Also Jason Schreier: Wealth is immoral and should be illegal.

What epic does is literally free market. No one forces devs to sign those deals.

 

[cvv]

The question isn't whether EGS is going to survive though - the question is whether it'll become the big Steam rival it wants to be so badly. And something tells me it won't.

I don't expect it either, history has shown that breaking consumer lock-in with platforms like that is almost impossible, unless you offer something radically better. Facebook steamrolled MySpace because it offered revolutionary networking but Google+ went to the shitter because it didn't offer absolutely nothing significantly better than Facebook so people saw no reason to switch.

Epic can't win with better features bc Steam would immediately copy every new idea. They can't win with better prices, they're already running on a thin margin and a few bucks of difference isn't a sufficient reason for people to mass-switch anyway. Epic has its exclusives, that's their only weapon, but if the exclusive period is only a year, most people will comfortably wait.

The best endgame I expect for Epic is gonna be what Lyft is to Uber. A small-ish, moderately successful quirky alternative to a global hegemon.

 

[thesecret1]

In reality, this is creating a classic perverse incentive - imagine buying a sandwich that isn’t even cooked properly and is missing ingredients and then being told by the shop that they don’t care if you like it or not because their profit has already been guaranteed by a third party. By propping up a developer no matter what EGS are incentivizing delivering products that are otherwise uncompetitive. Asshole developers and bloggers love it because telling them they can make money and be unappealing fuckwits at the same time is essentially like winning the unappealing fuckwit lottery, even though it’s decidedly not all that great for anybody else.

It's literally how state subsidies work. To see a for-profit company adopt this approach is hilarious. I get that they're trying (in line with proper chink traditions) simply attack the market with money and literally buy themselves a market share, but they're buying nobodies and creating ill-will everywhere with it, further digging their grave by offering a shit service. Better yet, they're pissing away money on devs that then go on and give everyone even more of a reason not to give a shit about their game.

 

[thesecret1]

Jason Schreier: It's good that there is someone so wealthy that he can afford to protect me from the realities of the free market.

Also Jason Schreier: Wealth is immoral and should be illegal.

What epic does is literally free market. No one forces devs to sign those deals.

That has nothing to do with it. Just like subsidies, this is a pretty clear case of distortion of free market, only instead of a government doing it, it's a company.

 

[Infinitron]

IMO people actually aren't arguing against Schreier's point of view strongly enough.

He says "I want there to be more stability for game developers." What that essentially means is "I want there to be more games".

I think that's something gamers should actually considering being against. They should want there to be fewer games.

https://www.pcinvasion.com/epic-games-store-quietly-delays-most-features-set-for-july/

Epic Games Store quietly delays most features set for July

In our feature on the Epic Games Store launcher last month, we suggested that Epic probably wouldn’t hit the target release window for several features set for July. Yesterday, the managers of the Epic Games Store Roadmap on Trello quietly updated the target release window for five of those features. The release schedule for “Humble Bundle Integration,” “Player Play Time Tracking,” “Improved Patch Sizes,” “Store Video Hosting,” and “Store Page Redesign” all changed from July to August.

Epic delivered only two features out of those initially promised for July. These are “Improvements to Offline Mode” and “Cloud Saves.” However, cloud saves are not actually available for all games. As we can see below, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said on July 25 that cloud saves are only available “for a couple of new games right now.” The Trello board card for “Cloud Saves” also features the following update, added yesterday: “We’ve shipped the V1 implementation of cloud saves. We’ll let you know when it’s available across titles that support this feature.”



Second delay; no announcement from Epic Games
Epic first announced a delay for the release of features in early May, while also flexing some strong sales numbers. According to that announcement, the reason for the delay was that the development team was focusing on supporting online features required for new game launches. The problem is that they didn’t really inform users what those features were. Based on the information we have, that would probably be cloud saves. So, apparently, it took them all of May, June, and July to deliver cloud saves, though it isn’t actually available for most games.

Strangely enough, the announcement suggested that users should be “on the lookout for future updates and regularly check out the ‘Recently Shipped’ section of the Trello board.” And that’s what we’re doing, except there is very little progress happening. And what’s worse, there is no transparency to what’s going on with development. So far, there’s been no announcement on the reasons for the delay. We hope to see an official announcement from Epic that explains the reasons for it soon. The company owes the users of the Epic Games Store that much. Otherwise, it could keep alienating its customers for no good reason.

What do you think of this delay? Do you think Epic will keep delaying features and delivering very little results for all of 2019? Drop your comments below and tell us what you think!

 

[cvv]

That has nothing to do with it. Just like subsidies, this is a pretty clear case of distortion of free market, only instead of a government doing it, it's a company.

An economic expert in da house.

 

[fantadomat]

Fuck,people install this cancer and then i have the dumbfuck tag.......we live in society.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

That has nothing to do with it. Just like subsidies, this is a pretty clear case of distortion of free market, only instead of a government doing it, it's a company.

An economic expert in da house.

Methods are the same, but difference is Epic dont have guns and cant make selling on EGS mandatory so the market will be ok and their most likely failure will not drain money from taxes, just fortnite skins. Also I'm pretty sure Valve could sue Epic for tortious interference for games that showed Steam logo in promotional materials, but probably don't care enough and will create bad PR.

 

[Infinitron]

Somewhere along the way Valve opened up user ratings and refunds and then eventually let you buy anime virtual reality sex simulators and suddenly the typical indie developer who kinda hates anyone who doesn’t have a twitter account with a blue check mark can’t make money on Steam any more. This EGS shit is perfect for them, since they get to make money and literally do not have to appeal to a single purchaser to do it. Note how everyone is parroting the point that it’s good for the industry because it provides financial stability to assholes like this developer here who disdain the market.

But of course in reality it's not artistic indie bluechecks who have been getting Epic bux, but various "mid-core" titles like Phoenix Point and The Outer Worlds. It'll end in tears.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

What epic does is literally free market. No one forces devs to sign those deals.

Epic is trying to make a profit in the long run, but their develops are parasites that are afraid of poor sales and player’s negative reviews. Epic will fail and the games released under this platform will be completely trash because they are designed in an unhealthy environment.

 

[ultimanecat]

IMO people actually aren't arguing against Schreier's point of view strongly enough.

He says "I want there to be more stability for game developers." What that essentially means is "I want there to be more games".

I think that's something gamers should actually considering being against. They should want there to be fewer games.

It should be clear from Schreier's other galaxy brain comments in that twitter thread that he has no interest in broadening the market (he's spouting "Hi twitter I just learned about socialism what is this?" anti-capitalism nonsense right now).

 

[cvv]

Has anyone done a study yet about why is socialism correlated so strongly with low T, underdeveloped face features and lisp?

 

[Drakron]

But of course in reality it's not artistic indie bluechecks who have been getting Epic bux, but various "mid-core" titles like Phoenix Point and The Outer Worlds. It'll end in tears.

Of course, EGS is after big names and that is why they gone after The Division 2 since they could rely on Ubi to make the marketing but this is also the problem, Ubi have their own store and from the "main publishers" only Activision lacks their own launcher and store and Activision isnt going to take a bite unless EGS would eat the losses and at this point the push is for "game as services" so smaller install base means smaller profits.

EGS main bet have to be "second tier" publishers that still dont rely on microtransactions and are within Epic payolla range, for the really small ones EGS is both good and bad ... good in the sense its draining Steam from competing titles and thus raise their visibility but bad because it can trigger a second Indypocalypse since the second tier publishers will suffer when EGS stops their payolla and that will trickle down the chain.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Activision has battlenet

 

[Belegarsson]

It's pretty amusing that the Ooblets dev's attitude is a stark contrast to the game's aethestic.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Shouldnt that be 'potential consumer', and isnt that fuck supposed to be a consumer advocate not some fucking mouthpiece?

Is kotaku getting bags of cash from sweeney or does this fucking tard do it for free?

 

[V_K]

It's pretty amusing that the Ooblets dev's attitude is a stark contrast to the game's aethestic.

On the contrary, it's a perfect match: