Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[Drakron]

But maybe since you use their engine they'll want to showcase it anyways?

Unreal engine doesnt need showcase since right now your "off the shelf" engine choices are it or Unity.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Does that mean Colony Ship will be on Epic?

We'll gladly sign up with Epic but not as an exclusive.

Isn't there a chance they won't allow the game on the platform, that they'll curate it out?

There is, of course.

 

[DalekFlay]

It's not about caring but the opposite of that - not caring enough to sign up or visit regularly. What reason did Epic offer them? Can't get this game anywhere else for a year? In an oversaturated market where buying a game in the first year (i.e. highest price, lots of problems and balance issues) is a gesture of goodwill and support it's hardly a problem. Who here doesn't think that Obsidian's Outer Worlds won't be twice as good after a year of post-release support?

Again, I think you vastly underestimate the power of exclusives. Yes a one year exclusive matters when it's a game you're excited about, and history bears this out, but whatevs. If you don't agree you don't agree, we're just repeating stuff now.

Nobody minds a company selling its games on its own client (even though making people intall YET ANOTHER client is annoying as hell). Similarly, nobody is criticizing Fortnite for being on Epic.

1) The morality is irrelevant. I get that people in this thread are very focused on it, but I don't buy that any significant portion of the audience is. What matters to them is the consumer experience, and the "this client sucks!" and "I want everything on Steam!" stuff wears off after a bunch of games come out exclusively there that they want to play. There is absolutely a moral difference with Origin, but effectively for the consumer there's no difference at all. They either want to play the game bad enough to start using the other client or they don't.

2) Epic want to take down Steam, not just sell their games on their client. Though it would have been nicer and more consumer friendly, the tactic of making a bunch of their own games over a period of years and selling them exclusively wouldn't have even resulted in what they wanted. It would have just made them another Origin, which is completely irrelevant outside of EA's games. Think of it from a business perspective, not a consumer perspective, and you'll see the strategy (nice or not). Whether it works... who knows.

 

[Reinhardt]

Again, I think you vastly underestimate the power of exclusives.

If all your exclusives are fortnite and borderlands 3... I don't thing lots of people will visit epic everyday to browse their "amazing" store for new well hidden exclusive indies.

 

[Drakron]

Again, I think you vastly underestimate the power of exclusives. Yes a one year exclusive matters when it's a game you're excited about, and history bears this out, but whatevs. If you don't agree you don't agree, we're just repeating stuff now.

Well ... not exactly since what you said was hype and yes, publishers hype game as much as they can for impulse buys but that is also the problem ... you need a lot of money for that.

And that happens with the big names, like Call of Duty but its unlikely the main publishers will make such titles exclusive to one platform, in fact since we have exclusives on consoles (and EGS is trying the same stratagy of sorts) we seen it fail in several fronts, Nintendo for example have strong first party selling but weak everyone else ... so making games Nintendo exclusive is a risk (unless Nintendo is footing the bill and they do), in the PS2 era despite XBox having Halo and a few other now well known exclusives they failed completely on even denting the PS2 dominance that ended up sustaining itself because the market share of the PS2 was so large that make not much sense to develop for other systems and when the Xbox 360 did eaten up enough market share it caused a situation were it was no longer valid for 3rd party AAA titles to be exclusive to one system since the market share of one system wasnt enough anymore and this is why some titles suddenly got announced for other platforms.

If you want PC history ... also supports my claims, I am not going to bring Anthem but rather Titanfall that had a huge hype campaign, sold nearly a million in week 1 to then just drop out to about 230k in week 2 ... Apex Legends that very popular and have a very strong start ... and nobody really talks about it anymore. Of course being "Origin Exclusive" is not the same but just pointing out that Exclusivity alone does not make a game successful on the post launch run with Titanfall being a very good example of that (even if unintended).

In the end, publishers are in for the money and exclusivity hurts sales ... this is why Epic is offering those deals in those terms because they are "eating" (not really, its a very calculated risk) the costs of those titles only being on their storefront (even if they arent pissing with Microsoft Store because a lot of those Fortnight kids are on the XBox) but so far their "best" exclusive title been Metro Exodus in term of hype and the results were the absolute majority of copies were sold ... on consoles.

Another thing, "excitement" is a emotion ... so is dislike, as hype is for people to feel and emotionally buy a product ... Epic managed to make many people downright hate their Store, if you want to argue about emotions then understand as much people feel excitement for a game they will also be pissed if its on a platform they dislike, the Console Wars AIMED at not only creating hype for their exclusives but also to create resentment towards the competition.

The problem with exclusives is that it have to be hyped ENOUGH to offset negative emotions because its a emotional game and simply, EGS have not got something that is hyped enough (besides Fortnight) to make people to use their store ... I dont really care about Outer Worlds or care enough to go over the hassle of creating a account, download and install a launcher for it since its under my radar and that is the challenge of EGS, to make people give a shit and they pretty much have pissed off people so they not only have to have titles people will give a shit but also that offsets the anger people feel towards it.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Again, I think you vastly underestimate the power of exclusives. Yes a one year exclusive matters when it's a game you're excited about, and history bears this out, but whatevs. If you don't agree you don't agree, we're just repeating stuff now.

These are timed exclusives bought with 3rd party money to become online store adverts, we don't really have any significant "history" of that.

But modern PC market is not a console market, where some poorfag kid is wetting his pants in anticipation of his mum buying him one of the five available hyped, exclusive, ridiculously priced games as a Christmas present. The big spenders, people you want to have as your customers, are sitting on enormous backlogs that are tied to steam and/or sometimes gog. In this market waiting a year to get a game with addons, patched and probably cheaper sounds like a pretty enticing deal.

If they got actual exclusives for actually good games and not only some retard magnets, but varied stuff like semi-hardcore strategy games etc that would, possibly, make a difference. But so far they're bleeding money and generating lots of "friendship ended with gamers, now neckbeard hipster developers that cannot into not being detestable are my friend" PR in order to get timed deals for some kickstarter/indie pity-buy tier. Meh.

 

[Tehdagah]

It's not that simple.

(...)

It's very simple. Epic fund their games.

Well I mean, yeah. Valve could kill the EGS at any given moment by biting the bullet and reducing their cut. Of course then you'd have to deal with the spectacle of Tim Sweeney declaring himself the savior of PC gaming for the rest of your life, for having forced greedy Valve to finally change their policy.

And Steam fans praising the benevolent Valve after defending the 30% share for so long ("they deserve it!!!1")

Valve isn't acting because they've been winning the PR war without having to do a thing. Epic generates far more negative press than it does positive press.

And how is this negative press affecting Epic? When you are massive no vocal minority can hurt you.

(...) Instead, they're just offering to pay developers more, which is only an actual draw for the kind of consumers who don't identify as consumers at all (i.e. journalists who don't even pay for games in the first place). Epic doesn't need a boycott for most people to ignore their store, they just need the same games to be available on Steam.

This is why they are buying exclusives.

A smaller developer, however, would be fucking dumb to ignore Steam. Did you know that in the normal, non-retarded world suppliers fight hard to have their product for sale in Walmart or Costco? Having your product in the biggest marketplace is one of the best ways to actually be successful, even if that means considering lowering your per-unit profit. Now, having your product in Wally World also does mean that you should probably be advertising and making sure people know about your product, and that's why a niche product in a niche store can still do alright since the customers already know what the niche means, but for the most part if you produce an item for sale, you ignore big retailers at your own peril. And Valve doesn't even put up a fraction of the hassle to get a game on Steam.

The lower share cut and Epic's funds ends up compensating for the lower sales.

 

[Boleskine]

Signing exclusivity with Epic reminds me of harvesting Little Sisters in Bioshock. The immediate benefits may be appealing, but that comes at the expense of a better long-term strategy.

By the time Epic exclusives reach Steam they'll be old news. Many prospective consumers at launch, who chose not to buy these games on Epic, will have moved onto other titles. The former Epic exclusives will likely have to reduce base prices, offer heavy discounts, and/or get bundled.

On the other hand, some developers may come out on top in terms of lost first-year sales vs. higher cut on Epic. Gamers will put up with DRM, micro-transactions, and all that other shit despite constantly complaining about it, so maybe most of the detractors will fold and buy these games on Epic when IGN gives them 9.7/10.

 

[Drakron]

It's very simple. Epic fund their games.

[Trump]Wrong![/Trump]

And Steam fans praising the benevolent Valve after defending the 30% share for so long ("they deserve it!!!1")

I keep reading this "claim" yet I have never seen it posted. in fact this been debuked so many times all you drones just look like parrots.

And how is this negative press affecting Epic? When you are massive no vocal minority can hurt you.

Oh the irony ...

This is why they are buying exclusives.

1) They arent paying developers more, they are paying publishers more ... 4A Games will only see their cut after it goes over Deep Silver because publisher and developer are not the same, in some cases they are but in many cases they are not, Outer Worlds and Borderlands 3 are published by Take 2 and not self published or Control is 505 Games and not Remedy as Satisfactory is Coffee Stains Studio that is ... THQ Nordic that also happens to own Deep Silver.
Ah, how interesting ... I know that Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is self published by Double Damage Games and there is Quantic Dream library PC ports but sure are a lot of games there were the decision come from the publisher.
2) They arent, its timed exclusives and also rather shady in some aspects since they are bulk buying copies (assured sales) so no actually money is given ... in fact at one point potentially Epic makes their money back, its at the same time a risk but a low risk.

The lower share cut and Epic's funds ends up compensating for the lower sales.

As in not considering Epic isnt funding the game, just advancing payment in bulk orders that come with a exclusivity deal attached ... its like a new iPhone being sold exclusively for six months on specific retailer in a specific country because they ordered 50 million units.

 

[ultimanecat]

A smaller developer, however, would be fucking dumb to ignore Steam. Did you know that in the normal, non-retarded world suppliers fight hard to have their product for sale in Walmart or Costco? Having your product in the biggest marketplace is one of the best ways to actually be successful, even if that means considering lowering your per-unit profit. Now, having your product in Wally World also does mean that you should probably be advertising and making sure people know about your product, and that's why a niche product in a niche store can still do alright since the customers already know what the niche means, but for the most part if you produce an item for sale, you ignore big retailers at your own peril. And Valve doesn't even put up a fraction of the hassle to get a game on Steam.

The lower share cut and Epic's funds ends up compensating for the lower sales.

While I don't expect hipster developers, games journalists, and random Epic shills to be sophisticated enough to figure this out, the amount of money you could make selling on one store for higher profit vs more stores for less is a pretty straightforward optimization problem that you'd be learning about pretty early on in Econ courses. And guess what? Even doing some napkin math with some semi-made-up figures that are favorable to Epic, a developer/publisher would have to expect to only lose no more than 10%-20% of all possible sales to make going EGS exclusive make sense. In other words (and I reiterate, with numbers favorable to EGS) they'd have to believe that at least 80% of all potential customers would buy their game on EGS if that were their only option.

Now, while I mentioned that I don't think slapdick blue checkmark developers are smart enough to consider this stuff analytically, I'm pretty sure Epic has - and that's why they offer to straight up sign checks for exclusivity. The numbers do not favor them. I'd say that for all but the biggest AAA games it would be flat out nuts to expect 80% or more of all customers who would ever buy your game to follow you around no matter where you sell. Steam exists, and will continue to do so; for nearly any game releasing on PC it will take Tim Sweeney breaking out his checkbook for it to even begin to make sense to ignore it, and that's not just for now but for as long as Steam is in business.

 

[Ismaul]

Epic isnt funding the game, just advancing payment

This really needs to be stated again. There are no extra funds that Epic is injecting into game development.

Plus, is it really an advance payment or just a minimum sales guarantee? Might be that some devs negotiated advance payment, maybe at the cost of some of their minimum sales guarantee, but AFAIK the basic deal was just the guarantee wasn't it?

Anyways, as far as I can tell, advance payment is only good in those cases:

1. You're a dev and don't have enough money to finish your game.
2. You're a publisher and need to pad your quarterly earnings or want the money now for some tax savings scheme.
3. You think the game is going to bomb and you need insurance to recoup part of the investment.

Only the first reason to go for an Epic exclusive seems to be a positive for gamers. And if it's not an advance payment but a minimum sales guarantee, then I see only reason 3 to go with an Epic exclusive. And that means either the publisher or the devs think their game won't sell / is shit.

So if it's not an advance payment, either you go for the Epic exclusive because you don't believe in the game, or for the greater % cut of the profits which will never offset the loss of sales on other platforms. If you're a rational publisher / self-publishing dev, you only go for Epic exclusivity if you think your game will fail and are cutting your losses. That doesn't sound very good to me. If the publisher/dev are betting against their own success, seems highly rational not to buy their shit, no?

 

[Tacgnol]

They seemed to have offered the Ooblets devs some sort of direct financial incentive, though I suspect in most cases they only guarantee minimum sales.

I hope companies that signed up for minimum sales had a lawyer check that particular contract, I would imagine there are a lot of conditions attached.

 

[SiENcE]

I find it suspect that a store also finance game development. I know gog and steam also does his own games, but they didn’t finance other games. Now with Epic it’s a new turn.

 

[Reinhardt]

Well, it's clearly better to get money for 100.000 sales upfront from epic for your walking simulator than to sell only 20 copies elsewhere.

 

[Metro]

Advance payment for indie games usually just means the game is so shitty the devs know it won't make the required sales figures before winding up in a bundle. Outliers like Borderlands 3, you can imagine Epic just backed up the money truck and paid out a huge premium. They were also only able to negotiate a six month exclusivity window versus a full year.

 

[Jezal_k23]

It immediately removes all uncertainty from a release. You release it on Steam, how many copies are you gonna sell? Is it 100k? Probably not. Going with Epic, you already know.

 

[DalekFlay]

These are timed exclusives bought with 3rd party money to become online store adverts, we don't really have any significant "history" of that.

You think there's a large moral difference between purchasing exclusive rights to a title by a 3rd party developer and buying up 3rd party developers to make you exclusive titles? Genuine question.

 

[Mustawd]

These are timed exclusives bought with 3rd party money to become online store adverts, we don't really have any significant "history" of that.

You think there's a large moral difference between purchasing exclusive rights to a title by a 3rd party developer and buying up 3rd party developers to make you exclusive titles? Genuine question.

Yes.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

These are timed exclusives bought with 3rd party money to become online store adverts, we don't really have any significant "history" of that.

You think there's a large moral difference between purchasing exclusive rights to a title by a 3rd party developer and buying up 3rd party developers to make you exclusive titles? Genuine question.

I don't care about "moral" aspect of gaming at all, why are you asking such utterly dumb questions.

The difference I'm talking about is game developed as an actual exclusive from the start to become a console system seller versus what epic is doing, which is obviously a vastly different scenario with vastly different implications, mainly:

1. It's not really an exclusive (timed + easy af, rampant piracy) and the PC market is completely different so the impact of said pseudo-exclusiveness is completely different as well.
2. It creates a lot of bad PR for epic.
3. It carries a general risk of infecting PC gaming with console market retardation. Fortunately, steam is not retaliating so far and I hope it stays this way.

 

[Metro]

You think there's a large moral difference between purchasing exclusive rights to a title by a 3rd party developer and buying up 3rd party developers to make you exclusive titles? Genuine question.

Is this a reference to Valve buying out the L4D, Portal, and TF devs? Pretty sure only Turtle Rock was a somewhat establish developer outfit at the time. Portal's precursor was debuted by students at a career fair and the TF guys were modders (same with DOTA2). Bad analogy. By that logic no developer/publisher should hire students/modders looking to break into the industry.

 

[Ismaul]

These are timed exclusives bought with 3rd party money to become online store adverts, we don't really have any significant "history" of that.

You think there's a large moral difference between purchasing exclusive rights to a title by a 3rd party developer and buying up 3rd party developers to make you exclusive titles? Genuine question.

Huge.

In the second case, you actually fund the development of the game in part or in full. You are responsible for development costs, you make the existence of the game possible, and so can be justified in how you sell your product. But Epic is doing none of this by buying up exclusives with minimum sales guaratees or advance payment on future sales. The dev gets no additional funding than it would normally, unless the game is a bomb and it is self-published (otherwise money goes to a 3rd party publisher).

And then Epic has the gall to say they're helping out the poor devs. Yeah there's a moral difference. Epic are cunts and try to make it look like they're morally superior, making them hypocrites too.

 

[DalekFlay]

I don't care about "moral" aspect of gaming at all, why are you asking such utterly dumb questions.

If in reading through this thread you don't see people making moral arguments against Epic then I don't know what the fuck you're smoking.

Is this a reference to Valve buying out the L4D, Portal, and TF devs?

No, I was more thinking Sony and Microsoft where such a thing is extremely commonplace. Not everything is about a Valve vs. Epic war. It's also pretty normal for them to contract a 3rd party developer to make an exclusive on their dime, like Bloodborne. I was just asking if you guys saw a big difference between these things, as I was genuinely curious.

 

[RNGsus]

that deflection

 

[Drakron]

If in reading through this thread you don't see people making moral arguments against Epic then I don't know what the fuck you're smoking.

Pretty sure *I* made economical ones, these type of exclusivity remove choice and thus decrease competition were choice is affected by several factors such as price, I can damn well claim that EGS is a worst option when it comes to regional pricing and payment options, I know for example that EGS accepts PaySafe but makes the buyer pay the extra transaction cost (they arent the only one) as Steam and Origin do not.

No, I was more thinking Sony and Microsoft where such a thing is extremely commonplace. Not everything is about a Valve vs. Epic war. It's also pretty normal for them to contract a 3rd party developer to make an exclusive on their dime, like Bloodborne. I was just asking if you guys saw a big difference between these things, as I was genuinely curious.

Oh you mean a reviled tactic? I remember Valkyrie Chronicles that was at first a Xbox 360 then a PS3 game before it ended up on Steam ... or Mass Effect that appeared on other systems after Bioware being Elevated to EA.
The difference being that in ME case the whole thing was bankrolled by MS, people fully understand why games are locked to a console as exclusives since usually they are also paying for the development ... there is also wierd shit like BDO that became a timed XBox One timed exclusive despite being on PC for 2-3 years when announced? Now that its period is off its going to the PS4 as well ... WTF was MS even thinking?
Sure its "a tactic" but trying to boost your game library with timed exclusives on consoles is a incredible stupid one ... its always been about proper exclusives as "you want to play Zelda? only on Nintendo", Bloodborne was not "here, take a load of money so your announced title its exclusive to our system", Sony approached FromSoftware to do it and payed for its development ... same with Demon's Souls, nobody is complaining specifically about that, thats part of the game just like EA and Origin but then again ... you are like a broken record, we gone over this many times and you keep trying to go back into it as if you keep using the same argument at one point they became true.

Nobody likes exclusives, we understand why they exist but there is a world of difference of what happened with Mass Effect and what happened with Metro Exodus.

 

[passerby]

The world of difference is another hardware platform vs free launcher. Using Epic launcher is less of a hassle than purchasing and downloading DRM free installers from developpers website, or DRM free physical retail.
The only thing that stops you is brand loyalty and valuing "store experienece" more than the product - the most retarded consumerist values.

Epic doesn't force anyone, it offers and motivation for third parties to consider this offer is the same as for first party Origin and battle.net exclusives and these are the only valid comparisons.
EA, Activision and recently Ubisoft with The Division 2 stopped releasing their games on Steam, apparently they came to conclusion that bigger cut will offset lost sales.
It's not impossible that Epic user base will eventually reach the same level as battle.net, Origin and Uplay.

Others have about as much right to try to keep their profits to themselves, as Valve has to take their 20-30%. Both sides are equally responsible for all these launchers, why do you complain only by one side ?
In the end there are only 5 now with exclusives and managing your games with them is still way less of a hassle than it was before the launchers and thanks to 12% cut on Epic, there won't be more.