Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[Belegarsson]

Epic Cum Dumpsters™ are STILL going about this shit?

Oh, well, I can play at that game too

May I improve this a bit

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Steam's market share will decrease, but not by a great lot, unless they really fuck up in some major way and/or competition will come up with some ingenious scheme. A portion of players will go back to piracy (epic made me torrent a game last year for the first time since like... 2012 or something). So none of the above options, really.

 

[Kutulu]

If a developer or publisher chooses to release their game via Steam only, then that's their choice.

Getting money from Epic is also their choice. Getting a bribe is a choice. Epic didn't put a gun to anyone's head.
But did any Steamtard ever complain when a company didn't release their game anywhere else? Nope, they didn't, because they didn't care. All the rage against Epic from cucks who like to rent games while pretending they buy them boils down to "waaah it's not in my favurite shop"

it doesn't require (or even seek out) exclusivity agreements with any of the thousands of other developers and publishers who use Valve's platform.

And like I said a million times, it doesn't make any difference to the user. You HAVE to use Steam to get those game. More than that, an Epic exclusive likely ends after 1 year. There are games on Steam that have been there and only there for like 7 years if not more. And I'm not talking only about Valve's own game. There are way, way more Steam-only games and than probably any other platform. Including consoles. So I really can't see how waiting 1 year to get it somewhere else is worse than waiting forever if you don't like the current client/platform it's on.

You dishonest little sack of shit.

This thread is full of people saying that they don't like Steam's monopolistic status, of people that are purposefully not buying titles on Steam because they're waiting to see if they'll appear on GOG so they can buy it there (for keeps, not rent) and of people that were wary (and still are) of Steam as a DRM platform right from the start. In short, people who DO care.

But you dismiss them all outright and brand them as "Steamtards", because you like that Epic Game Store cock so much and you want to show it as being a viable alternative to Steam, or just viable in general. They aren't, and it'll be a cold day in hell when they ever will be.

To quote myself from 60 pages ago to quote myself from 177 pages ago....


LOL BUT YES^^

I will say it again: I, and 99% of normal people, will not install another launcher unless it's a real banger of a game, and then I will promptly uninstall it again once I am done with that game.

The only way you can defeat Steam is by somehow permitting Valve to transfer all your games from there to the other thing - without needing to reinstall them. As that will never happen, any development on gay launchers will only increase piracy.

"I love monopolies, I am a retard".

It's true, 99% people are retarded, so maybe you're right that this launcher will fail.

Why use a launcher that lets devs earn more of your money that you paid them? I see no reason, yep. Let's throw a tantrum instead.

Nobody wanted a single fucking launcher.... ever.

People prefered being able to lend games to their friends and maybe even sell them.
People also really like boxes just like on Vinyl (the covers), and Manuals... they liked manuals as well.


But no, now i have to use launchers, pay the same price like back in the day (even though i dont get a box, manual or physical media) & dont even actually own the fucking game.

EA cant get people to use origin even though they give away AAA games for free every other week, i dont want anymore bloatware by anyone for any reason...

To quote myself from 118 pages ago...

I dont love steam, i hated it, i just accepted it because there was little choice & over time they did improve.
I dont want steams competition to be as good them, i require them to be as good or better.

Epic isnt, epic shat on consumers.


At this point the Epic fairy would have to fly through my window, land on my dick, install epic & grant me free games for enternity.

 

[FeelTheRads]

This thread is full of people saying that they don't like Steam's monopolistic status, of people that are purposefully not buying titles on Steam because they're waiting to see if they'll appear on GOG so they can buy it there (for keeps, not rent) and of people that were wary (and still are) of Steam as a DRM platform right from the start. In short, people who DO care.

I also see people saying "It's either Steam or pirating". Which means they have no problem with buying from DRM platforms where you just rent the games.
I also see people saying that "Epic is dividing the market." Meaning, of course, that Steam is THE market and nothing should touch it.
So, I'd say there's plenty of Steamtards too. Obviously I'm not referring to people who don't use Steam.
I'm talking about Steamtards who wouldn't even give a shit if a game was never released outside of Steam. And those far outnumber the Steam haters, if not here then in general.
Also, if you currently use Steam, and you cry about Epic exclusives then you ARE a Steamtard. Because you have no problems with how it works, you're just making it about some moral high-ground.
If you had problems with how it worked, you wouldn't use it. You could just as well boycott the games there, if you have no problems boycotting Epic games.

But you dismiss them all outright and brand them as "Steamtards", because you like that Epic Game Store cock so much and you want to show it as being a viable alternative to Steam, or just viable in general. They aren't, and it'll be a cold day in hell when they ever will be.

Fuck off, moron. I've said plenty of times that for me they're both the same shit. I will not buy from either of them. But I guess you dismiss that outright and brand me as an Epic cocksucker, right? Because of course, if you don't think Epic is the devil then you must love them.
All I'm saying is that it's the same shit.
And Steamtards refuse to explain this:

So I really can't see how waiting 1 year to get it somewhere else is worse than waiting forever if you don't like the current client/platform it's on.

In theory, I only need to wait 1 year for an Epic exclusive to be potentially released on something like GOG (assuming the devs would release on GOG anyway). But what do I do with games that have been on Steam and only Steam for years and years? Oh right, use Steam Epic cocksucker, why don't you like Steam? It totally didn't divide any market, it just became THE market.
So yeah, that means either Steam or no play.
Kinda like how with Epic exclusives it's either Epic or no play.

No, it's the not the same thing at all.

Yes, it pretty much is. From a moral point you can whine all you want about Epic being the Godfather making offers developers can't refuse (which is bullshit, but OK), however from the perspective of the user this is how it stands: You are forced to use Steam to play Steam-only games. There is no choice. Just like how you have to use Epic to play Epic-only games.
So yes, if you care about morals so much, fine, Steam has the high-ground.
If you care about getting the games, it's the same shit: You get them from whoever has them and you're forced to use their client.

 

[Perkel]

But you dismiss them all outright and brand them as "Steamtards", because you like that Epic Game Store cock so much and you want to show it as being a viable alternative to Steam, or just viable in general. They aren't, and it'll be a cold day in hell when they ever will be.

The Steamtard moniker is great because all reasons people don't hate Epic is like throwing rocks on stone wall. It doesn't matter what your own personal arguments are what matter is for steamtards that i should somehow be "on their side" despite not being on their side since start.

I fucking hate Steam since it was created. From the very moment it broke down on release of HL2 it was always piece of crap for me and no amount of "features" or "stability" won't change that for me because it doesn't allow me to play games without that piece of shit launcher.

So when Epic comes in and gets exclusives which forces steamtards to come out of woodwork and start to argue like retards why Steam should be the only place for games on PC and hail it as "savior of pc gaming" i laugh at them because this is what you should get.

Epic is just another launcher. As long as it plays games there is literally nothing different about it than steam. I really really hope that Epic does improve a lot Epic store to point where they reach feature parity or maybe even more than Steam and what will be left for Steamtards will be some arguments in vein of "chinese company" or just pure hate with frothling mouth that their favorite store in which they invested all of their money on games no longer is the only place where all games are.

Right now i am using GOG launcher 2.0 and i don't even see steam or Epic and they instantly close after playing game.

That is the future we got and i really hope that 10 more EPICs will come on PC market and all companies like Epic, Velve and rest will have to behave like those wallmart and other stores hoping that customer will gladly use their store.

Because this is what they deserve.

 

[DalekFlay]

I see three possible outcomes of this launcher war:

1. One launcher defeats the others, becoming a de-facto standart for all major devs and 99% of indies like steam was until recently. (Steam might also win obv.) That's a meh but acceptable outcome, because it would have to be significantly better and user friendly than the others, so I would just migrate from to it
2. Many new launchers appear and neither becomes standart, many games become %launchername%-exclusive. The worst and most probable outcome, now I would have to keep not one, but several bloated spyware launchers on my PC to play games
3. Many new launchers appear and it makes the genral public boycotting this shit, which leads to one or few major stores embracing the "standalone installer" type of digital distribution (basically what gog does now). That's a :fabulously optimistic: option, no way something as good will happen

EA running back to Steam is pretty telling IMO. When Origina, Uplay and others launched I thought sure we were headed towards a future where every major publisher had their own client and Steam/GOG were used for all the "AA" and indie stuff. With Ubisoft still not leaving Steam though, EA running back to Steam (and Bethesda) and now Epic doing everything they can to be another "mega-client"... I dunno. It's worth noting though that all these companies still have their launchers and force you to use them. It's not like you avoid making and using an account on Origin by buying Jedi Fallen Order on Steam, you just add Steam functionality (and DRM) on top of using an Origin account. Same for Uplay, same for Rockstar...

The only store looking out for consumers is GOG. DRM free with no client if you want it, client and client features if you want them. No one cares though, just like no one cares about one company controlling access to all their games, so here we are.

 

[Viata]

The only store looking out for consumers is GOG

Sadly it has some bullshits on what games it allows to be sold there and what not.

 

[Fishy]

The only store looking out for consumers is GOG

Sadly it has some bullshits on what games it allows to be sold there and what not.

Steam curates its store: "waaaah, Steam is censoring my indie gem!"
Steam allows everything: "waaaah, Steam is hiding my indie gem behind inferior garbage games!"
GOG curates its store: "waaaah, GOG is censoring my indie gem!"

I so wonder what would happen if GOG allowed everything in...

 

[Viata]

I so wonder what would happen if GOG allowed everything in...

It already allows shit VN games, so what is even your point?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Unfortunately, as PC ownership VERY rapidly became more and more accessible to the hoi polloi, the voices of the old guard carried less and less clout. Thus, it wouldn't have mattered how hard the old guard boycotted Steam. It was a boycott doomed to fail.

By the way, about that.
If you think Steam or at least the business model was so hated, but it succeeded because of the dumb masses, why are you so sure that Epic will fail?
Why do you think boycotting Epic would be anything else but doomed to fail as well? Do you think the mainstream is smarter now, or what?
If a product that you supposedly hated made it because of the mainstream, then another can as well.

Thing is, I don't buy the "I hate Steam, but I use it anyway" thing. If you hate it, don't use it. Very simple. Wait for the games to show up somewhere else.
Or, if you like Steam, but you REALLY care so much about people being forced to use a certain client to play games then don't buy any game on Steam until it's released somewhere else as well. I mean, if you really want to be the moral hero. Because if you keep buying regardless then your moral grandstanding is just bullshit. It only shows that what you care about is getting the games where you want them, not about others being forced to use what they don't want to use.

 

[VonHoffenHeimer]

I'm always surprised how it can be a game breaker for people if they have to use a new client. I had to live with copy protection out of manuals. I'm ok with a few downlaods.

 

[Alienman]

Hi Tim.

 

[DalekFlay]

Thing is, I don't buy the "I hate Steam, but I use it anyway" thing. If you hate it, don't use it. Very simple. Wait for the games to show up somewhere else.

Gonna be waiting a long ass time in many cases. Some of my favorite games last decade are available nowhere else, like Dishonored. If you hate Steam it's much easier to just turn off all in-game aspects of it, minimize it to system tray and launch the games from a desktop shortcut. That's what I do, and Steam is pretty much invisible. It's still annoying having to launch it, but it's a minor inconvenience. Now, if you disagree with DRM enough to never buy anything that has DRM, I get that. I'd rather you support the devs and then pirate a DRM free version, but if you can't bring yourself to give money to a DRM'd game, I get it.

 

[Jigawatt]

I see three possible outcomes of this launcher war:

1. One launcher defeats the others, becoming a de-facto standart for all major devs and 99% of indies like steam was until recently. (Steam might also win obv.) That's a meh but acceptable outcome, because it would have to be significantly better and user friendly than the others, so I would just migrate from to it
2. Many new launchers appear and neither becomes standart, many games become %launchername%-exclusive. The worst and most probable outcome, now I would have to keep not one, but several bloated spyware launchers on my PC to play games
3. Many new launchers appear and it makes the genral public boycotting this shit, which leads to one or few major stores embracing the "standalone installer" type of digital distribution (basically what gog does now). That's a :fabulously optimistic: option, no way something as good will happen

Another (IMO most likely) possibility is that most people are indifferent to spyware/performance impacts and just run every client all the time on their machines but actually do the launching via some meta-client like Playnite. As this develops more I'm sure they'll even proxy the storefronts to include price comparison a la https://isthereanydeal.com/

 

[DalekFlay]

GOG Galaxy 2.0 is basically trying to be that too.

 

[Perkel]

EA running back to Steam is pretty telling IMO.

Steam changed their policy toward AAA games and they can now have 20% officially and probably less unofficially. If 10 more like Epic stores will open and they will all ask for 10% instead of 30% then Steam will have to drop completely 30%.

GOG Galaxy 2.0 is basically trying to be that too.

yup, using it atm. Which is why whole Steam vs Epic stuff deoesn't concern me. I just hit play, epic/steam launch and after i am done with game it closes. They lately even added to see status of steam/epic etc friends and what they do atm. Probably chat will go next.

 

[abija]

Another (IMO most likely) possibility is that most people are indifferent to spyware/performance impacts and just run every client all the time on their machines but actually do the launching via some meta-client like Playnite. As this develops more I'm sure they'll even proxy the storefronts to include price comparison a la https://isthereanydeal.com/

Most "normies" I know just click the icon on desktop/taskbar. Pretty sure all these launchers default to autorun on startup.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm always surprised how it can be a game breaker for people if they have to use a new client. I had to live with copy protection out of manuals. I'm ok with a few downlaods.

I also had to live with copy protection out of manuals. That's why I'm sceptical as fuck about clients in general.

 

[VonHoffenHeimer]

I'm not sure i get the correlation?

 

[Valky]

EA running back to Steam is pretty telling IMO.

Steam changed their policy toward AAA games and they can now have 20% officially and probably less unofficially. If 10 more like Epic stores will open and they will all ask for 10% instead of 30% then Steam will have to drop completely 30%.

GOG Galaxy 2.0 is basically trying to be that too.

yup, using it atm. Which is why whole Steam vs Epic stuff deoesn't concern me. I just hit play, epic/steam launch and after i am done with game it closes. They lately even added to see status of steam/epic etc friends and what they do atm. Probably chat will go next.

Back in my day I just made a folder with shortcuts to the executables of my games, still do. Launchers are needless middlemen bloat.

 

[Perkel]

Free Game: Bridge
Next Week. Farming Simulator 2019

 

[Dexter]

Epic Games today offered an update on the growth of the Epic Games Store. Launched in December of 2018, the store to-date has racked up $680 million in spending from 108 million PC customers.

While much of that total can be accounted for by Epic's own hit Fortnite, the company noted that $251 million has been spent by players on third-party PC games.

I find these numbers rather hilarious for what they attempted. Remember they put untold millions into their "Excl000sives" scheme and threw around Free Games every week to try and trick the faint of mind and the results seem to be very disappointing for them. The entire Sales volume for third party games that they managed during their critical first year where they splurged money left and right is lower than what retards paid for Star Shitizen .jpg's. The money they actually made with their 12% cut of that is ~$30 million and they likely paid a lot more into "Excl000sive" deals than they made back, let alone for "Free games".

If this is anywhere close to true they might have made their Sales guarantee money back on the Top 4-5 titles which are also responsible for the bulk of their profits, but everything else was them essentially subsidizing developers (and also waiving their Unreal Engine licensing fees, losing even more money in the process) for near to no personal gain whatsoever while wasting lots of cash and pounding sand (which might explain why we haven't heard about many new "Excl000sives" lately): https://wccftech.com/borderlands-3-sold-an-estimated-two-million-copies-on-epic-games-store/

Also consider that these numbers allegedly include Pre-Orders, Retail copies and Key Redemptions, which might be a large part of the likes of Borderlands 3 or Metro: Exodus Sales, for which Epic likely gets nothing. It also tells us that games like Control, The Outer Worlds, as well as many other games like Journey, Ancestors, Operencia, Rebel Galaxy, The Sinking City, Phoenix Point, Ashen, all the Quantic Dream shit (Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, Detroit: Become Human) etc. were massive flops not only for Epic that bribed their developers, but for the devs themselves that would have likely sold a multitude more during the critical launch period of these games if they had launched on Steam instead, since there were dozens of Indie games that sold Borderlands 3/World War Z/Metro: Exodus numbers over there (and even those would have likely sold a lot more there). Developers that don't think their game is doomed and will not sell anything will also be a lot less likely to take these deals going forward.

I predicted that the Epic Store will likely stick around for a long while, but seeing this I'm not so sure anymore, it might well go the way of GfWL. It'll depend on what they'll do in the next 2-3 years till their Fortnite money runs out, but they can't be too happy with the results given what they've put in and are splurging on more Game Giveaways out of desperation. LOL at all the people that were panicking and saying stuff like "STEAM NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING NOW!" or that the "Fortnite audience will swoop in and save Epic!" though.

 

[Belegarsson]

... @@ did Goose Game really sell only 151k copies??? Based on how widespreaded the memes were, I legit expected it to do Cuphead's numbers. Same with Outer Wilds, the kind of sleeper hit indie that Youtubers won't shut up about so it blows up with the audience.

On the bright side, we have ammunition for The Outer Worlds Sale Analysis thread now

 

[Perkel]

One side of looking at this is that this is failure because they didn't sell more games than Steam.
The other way of looking at it is that they sold millions of games in just first year of their store thanks to their policies, promotions etc.
The whole point of EPIC money splurge is to force users to use their store. I don't think they targeted being 1st in first year of their store.

I wouldn't trust that data though.
Data is supposedly taken out from XBOX API.

The obvious question is what does XBOX API has to do with some of those games which don't log into xbox or use any xbox api stuff.


Edit:

Also 2mln copies sold on EPYC of borderlands kind of proves that exclusivity works. I don't think Steam version would do 3-4 mln in such short time frame at 60$.

BL2 has is between 10 and 20 mln on steam but that game was released years ago and was sold for as low as 3-4$ multiple times.

It will be interesting to see Steam sales after BL3 period ends with Epic.

 

[Fishy]

I predicted that the Epic Store will likely stick around for a long while, and seeing this I'm not so sure anymore

Imho they're here for the long run. Fortnite is Sweeney's Facebook: a huge, insane money spinner that ensures he can throw as much cash as he wants at his problems. And at the end of the day, gamers can very much be bought over. It's just a question of time, and they're playing it right. They already have a huge userbase with accounts that will grow up and start spending their own money in a few years, and with their continued giveaways, they ensure that your average gamer has a vast pre-existing Epic library which will make them less unlikely to purchase additional stuff there. GOG was super smart in sort of doing this with Connect, but Epic's wallet is just so huge it's a behemoth that will hardly stop. I have no doubt they'll secure their share of the market. The only thing that could stop them is Sweeney suddenly deciding (again) that only consoles are worth investing into and pc gamers are all pirating paupers.

If I were an impoverished teenager, you can bet I'd have an Epic account with 30+ free games that include some absolute gems. It's a no-brainer if you don't have the cash.