Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[passerby]

You can't say with certainty that if a game were available only on Steam, 98% of people who'd buy it on GOG would have no choice but to buy it on Steam instead. Same goes for Epic.

First I didn't suggest 98%, but rather 90% and sure we have no idea, but I have gut feeling it's no less than that. Even on the codex you can count on your hands people that are vocal about never touching Steam and general GOG population is way less extreme than the codex.

As for Epic the percentage will be high of course, in tens of percents, whether 2K will keep going Epic exclusive 1,5 year from now, or not will give us some clue.

 

[Ismaul]

do you really think the average Joe PC gamer cares whether the exclusives were bought by the company or developed internally? People in this thread keep focusing on this as being a massive difference, but I don't think people care.

There's a question of quantity you keep forgetting. Valve has had a couple of in-house developed games that are exclusive to Steam, over the store's whole lifetime, while Epic Store's business approach itself is to make externally developed games exclusive to their store on release. The Epic Store already has way more exclusives than Steam. In that sense, the customer is much more likely to be impacted by Epic's exclusives than Valve's. Valve who, btw, is pretty much no longer in the business of developing and releasing games, and therefore isn't adding any more exclusives to the store. So there is a big difference there, and we've been focussing on it precisely because you have been putting forward the example of Half-Life 2 as a Steam exclusive, and defended the idea that it made Steam just like Epic.

Now, while you might be right that the average Joe cares more about the games than the store they buy them from -- rightly so, and this goes for any type of product -- there are many reasons to dislike the Epic Store that might make them care. It's Epic's whole anti-consumer policies package, not a single thing, that might make the average Joe consider his options more carefully. And if it doesn't, most likely because they haven't heard of those policies, well isn't it a good thing that some people are vocal about it?

In addition, the juggling multiple game libraries problem might just be the thing that pushes the average Joe to evaluate if the Epic Store is worth the hassle.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Personally I don't buy games on GOG anymore because I disagree heavily with their curation practices, along with them just randomly removing the user-generated game list feature that saw tons of use.

 

[DalekFlay]

There's a question of quantity you keep forgetting. Valve has had a couple of in-house developed games that are exclusive to Steam, over the store's whole lifetime, while Epic Store's business approach itself is to make externally developed games exclusive to their store on release. The Epic Store already has way more exclusives than Steam. In that sense, the customer is much more likely to be impacted by Epic's exclusives than Valve's.

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of games you can only (legally) play through Steam. Yes, none of them were paid exclusives by Valve, but that wasn't my question. We're talking about whether the average PC gamer who likely doesn't care about the background business aspects of these things really cares whether something was paid or not paid to be exclusive. To that person Steam has tons of... I won't write "exclusives" because you will have a seizure, so... games only available to play through its platform, let's say. Customer experience wise, if he doesn't care about the background business stuff as you pretty much agree he doesn't, what would be the difference between Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3? There wouldn't be one, to that person.

I understand you and me are not that person, but I think we're far outnumbered by him, which is my main point.

Now, while you might be right that the average Joe cares more about the games than the store they buy them from -- rightly so, and this goes for any type of product -- there are many reasons to dislike the Epic Store that might make them care. It's Epic's whole anti-consumer policies package, not a single thing, that might make the average Joe consider his options more carefully. And if it doesn't, most likely because they haven't heard of those policies, well isn't it a good thing that some people are vocal about it?

In addition, the juggling multiple game libraries problem might just be the thing that pushes the average Joe to evaluate if the Epic Store is worth the hassle.

Now these I agree more with. I said a couple pages ago I think Epic were right that exclusives were the only thing that would shake up Steam's market-share, but that if they wanted any kind of long-term success with it they had to improve their client, get better PR going, etc. etc. I mean, I don't personally care about most of that client stuff, but a lot of people do. I get that. I'm by no means saying Epic has really won anything yet, just saying from a business perspective I think exclusives were a necessary start. Would have been nice if they funded/developed them, but oh well. They went the quicker route, likely because they have more money than god and easily could.

 

[Spark Mandriller]

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of games you can only (legally) play through Steam. Yes, none of them were paid exclusives by Valve, but that wasn't my question. We're talking about whether the average PC gamer who likely doesn't care about the background business aspects of these things really cares whether something was paid or not paid to be exclusive. To that person Steam has tons of... I won't write "exclusives" because you will have a seizure, so... games only available to play through its platform, let's say. Customer experience wise, if he doesn't care about the background business stuff as you pretty much agree he doesn't, what would be the difference between Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3? There wouldn't be one, to that person.

The average ignorant gamer in your example thinks Steam is the default for PC gaming. He wants all his games on Steam. He's the kind of guy who asks for console exclusives to get Steam ports rather than PC ports. If he hears about Borderlands 3 he'll expect it to be on Steam like the other Borderlands games are, but it's not. So he'll look into it and then see that it's only on Epic's store, even though they didn't have anything to do with its development. It turns out that Epic actually paid to not have the game on Steam, so they spent money to make things less convenient for him. That doesn't really generate goodwill. Maybe it's not a big enough thing to turn him off buying, but it's clearly not the same situation as a game only being available on Steam when that's the only platform he's known anyway.

 

[RickOmbo]

Btw, EGS sucks cause it doesn't have user-generated reviews, which is a real predicament when it comes to games that aren't available on steam.

 

[DalekFlay]

The average ignorant gamer in your example thinks Steam is the default for PC gaming. He wants all his games on Steam. He's the kind of guy who asks for console exclusives to get Steam ports rather than PC ports. If he hears about Borderlands 3 he'll expect it to be on Steam like the other Borderlands games are, but it's not. So he'll look into it and then see that it's only on Epic's store, even though they didn't have anything to do with its development. It turns out that Epic actually paid to not have the game on Steam, so they spent money to make things less convenient for him. That doesn't really generate goodwill. Maybe it's not a big enough thing to turn him off buying, but it's clearly not the same situation as a game only being available on Steam when that's the only platform he's known anyway.

Fair points about how they would perceive it, sir.

I think in the end most of those people give in and get it where they have to get it, but we shall see. I say that because of how exclusives have always worked before, but Steam's grip is very tight, so who knows.

 

[Ismaul]

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of games you can only (legally) play through Steam. Yes, none of them were paid exclusives by Valve, but that wasn't my question.

Stop moving the goalpost. I'll quote you again, so you can see I was responding to you talking about actual exclusives, not simply games only sold on Steam by choice of the publisher / developer:

do you really think the average Joe PC gamer cares whether the exclusives were bought by the company or developed internally?

Games only sold on Steam do not correspond to either criteria you put forth. So, yes, talk about actual exclusives was what your question was about, and you got an appropriate response.

In any case, the reasons to reject the Epic Store are Epic's anti-consumer policies. All of them, not just the exclusives. And they stand no matter what Steam is doing, or any other store for that matter.

 

[DalekFlay]

Fair enough that my question mentioned internal development, but the point was people don't really care why something is exclusive. Only that they have to use X to play Y, and do they want to play Y enough to do so. I just don't buy the idea that buying an exclusive versus developing it really matters to Joe Sixpack, only that it's exclusive at all. Consumers have never really cared about "anti-consumer policies" when they really want to play something, Half-Life 2 and every successful EA, Ubisoft, Activision and Blizzard game for years being an excellent examples of a client being forced on people who didn't want it but the game sold like gangbusters anyway. Hence my bet that Borderlands 3 will sell just fine. We'll see though.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I used to be one of those people that didn't like the steam/drm issue, but once steam started cranking out tons of really cool features, and once i learned that i could find steam keys for 80% off the retail price through 3rd party vendors and could load up old classic games with tons of mods easily through steam workshop, and i could get tons of free games through giveaways and promotions, they earned my trust by providing tons of really pro consumer features and solving problems i had as a pc gamer with a lot of 1 click solutions within the steam platform. They earned my loyalty/trust/benefit of the doubt/etc.

It isn't blind loyalty, they earned it by investing a lot of resources into their product to solve my problems as a PC gamer.

The moment they stop doing those things and some competitor comes along and solves my problems better, is the moment I'll consider an alternative. Right now one doesn't exist though. And its not even close.

So... what big problems with old games do you think Steam solved for you except putting them up for sale?
Because Steam literally did nothing for old games compatibility or anything like that. It's all up to the devs/publishers that put those games on Steam.

At least GOG actually does something. Most of the time it's copy/pasting fanmade content or a half-assed DOSBox config. But sometimes they have their own fixes. And it's actually GOG doing it and giving you the "1 click solutions".
Meanwhile Steam is working on hard of trading cards and other very important "pro consumer" features.

But I'm guessing it's not as easy to find 80% off GOG keys, therefore they don't solve that particular "problem". So the conclusion is that the quality of the client is dictated by the amount of 80% off keys you can purchase on the grey market. Cool story, bro.

 

[Ismaul]

Fair enough that my question mentioned internal development

for rational discussion.

Consumers have never really cared about "anti-consumer policies" when they really want to play something

This I'm not sure about. Some people don't care, I'll admit. Most people are uninformed, and that's the main factor I think -- hence the value of showing how Epic's policies go against their best interests. If they knew, would they still not care?

Here we enter psychology territory. Form the point of view of the consumer's interest, there's an opposition between instant gratification (getting the game right away) and taking the long view (not buying because it would help out a company acting against your best interests). On that basis alone, it's likely that instant gratification would win for most, we're short-sighted like that despite being the animals with the most awareness of the future. But the impulse for instant gratification is also balanced by there being a lot of other games, and huge backlogs, so maybe the consumer has extra reasons to temper his excitement and wait.

Another aspect in this decision is convenience. If the consumer already uses Steam and is familiar with it, Epic is simply extra hassle, and not a known trustable quantity at this point. Wait and see is not only the logical approach, but also the inertia approach, and the lazy one. So that adds reasons to wait. There's also the issue of aesthetics of order: people like having their goods (digital or not) neatly sorted -- to different degrees depending on the person I'll admit -- and that adds another reason to go with Steam if they already have most their games there, this reason being stronger the higher their OCD is triggered by non-unified libraries.

Then, there's the fact that social animals have evolved to be very wary of cheats and betrayers, and react strongly to it. Yes, even chimps and rats have great sensitivity to unfair situations (Frans de Waal and Jaak Panksepp among others have researched it). And it happens that Epic is playing unfair, by their own design: with bribes they've taken away the consumer's right to decide where to buy, they've taken away their ability to rate and comment and defend it as a good thing, they've even said they're against reviews and comments because consumers are toxic, they've sided with publishers rather than consumers, I can go on. All this has strong psychological impact, for those aware of Epic's policies. So that's another visceral reason why consumers would wait rather than buy at Epic, and even boycott them.

How will all that factor in? We'll wait and see. But the more people know about the shit Epic is pulling, the less likely is it to go Epic's way.

 

[Edija]

"I promise I deleted it, bro :D"

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/brgq8p/reddit_user_requested_all_the_personal_info_epic/

Tencent has it anyway bruh, why do you care for one more guy if a billion chinks have it?

 

[Vault Dweller]

First I didn't suggest 98%, but rather 90% and sure we have no idea, but I have gut feeling it's no less than that. Even on the codex you can count on your hands people that are vocal about never touching Steam and general GOG population is way less extreme than the codex.

It's not about some ideological opposition to Steam or Epic. It's about exposure and most sales being impulse sales (meaning people would buy it if they see it in front of them but won't go out of their way to buy it or seek it elsewhere). That's why repetition is the most important factor in advertising (most people don't react to a message they've seen once or twice).

It's telling that THQ didn't brag about the sales numbers whereas they did in the past:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/metro-redux-sells-1-5-million-copies/1100-6426640/
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/metro-2033-was-profitable-sold-over-one-million-copies-on-pc-alone/

Recently, the CEO said that the absolute majority of copies were sold on consoles, which is interesting, considering that the absolute majority of Metro 2033, Redux, and Last Light were sold on PC. We can expect, of course, that the new Metro game would do better on consoles than in the past but there was no reason to expect the PC audience to shrink so dramatically. The game should have sold over a million copies on PC by now but the 'absolute majority' comment indicates it's not the case, otherwise it would have sold 4-5 million copies overall and THQ would be bragging about it non-stop.

 

[DalekFlay]

How will all that factor in? We'll wait and see. But the more people know about the shit Epic is pulling, the less likely is it to go Epic's way.

Good points in a solid post. I could debate some of them and the "people want choice" thing still triggers me because I don't have any choice over hundreds of games being Steam only, but I think we've all aired our views at this point, and I think we both have solid footing. In the end it's going to be typical consumer behavior of wanting the big new game now versus the annoyance of using Epic's store and bad worth of mouth around it. I don't think Metro and other random shit carried quite the cultural cache to prove much, but Borderlands 3 does. Once we see how that sells through 2K's likely tricky wording press release then we'll know more where consumers are going with it.

 

[RolePlayer]

I used to be one of those people that didn't like the steam/drm issue, but once steam started cranking out tons of really cool features, and once i learned that i could find steam keys for 80% off the retail price through 3rd party vendors and could load up old classic games with tons of mods easily through steam workshop, and i could get tons of free games through giveaways and promotions, they earned my trust by providing tons of really pro consumer features and solving problems i had as a pc gamer with a lot of 1 click solutions within the steam platform. They earned my loyalty/trust/benefit of the doubt/etc.

It isn't blind loyalty, they earned it by investing a lot of resources into their product to solve my problems as a PC gamer.

The moment they stop doing those things and some competitor comes along and solves my problems better, is the moment I'll consider an alternative. Right now one doesn't exist though. And its not even close.

So... what big problems with old games do you think Steam solved for you except putting them up for sale?
Because Steam literally did nothing for old games compatibility or anything like that. It's all up to the devs/publishers that put those games on Steam.

At least GOG actually does something. Most of the time it's copy/pasting fanmade content or a half-assed DOSBox config. But sometimes they have their own fixes. And it's actually GOG doing it and giving you the "1 click solutions".
Meanwhile Steam is working on hard of trading cards and other very important "pro consumer" features.

But I'm guessing it's not as easy to find 80% off GOG keys, therefore they don't solve that particular "problem". So the conclusion is that the quality of the client is dictated by the amount of 80% off keys you can purchase on the grey market. Cool story, bro.

I said steam solved problems for me as a PC gamer. I initially used the service reluctantly, but in hindsight, dealing with Steam's DRM turned out to be a small price to pay for all of the other features/benefits they released on the platform. These are some of my personal favorites:

- You don't ever lose games once they are activated on steam. As someone who moves a lot with limited space, it's refreshing to have my entire library saved in a cloud ready to download anywhere and anytime. So long as you have a computer and internet access, no matter where you are, you have access to your library of PC games.
- I have a crappy onboard graphics on my laptop but a really high end desktop -- being able to use steamlink to play games on highest settings/highest resolution on my notebook through my home network sourced from my desktop has been game-changing for me.
- Being able to activate/install mods through the same platform that launches games and not need any 3rd party tools
- All game patches are auto installed directly from the platform for any game that is updated in the library
- All of the social features for online multiplayer games. You can instant message anybody in any game from the platform (if im playing rust, and my friend joins dota 2, I can message him to say hello and then join his game with 1-click regardless of what game im currently playing). If you run or are apart of a gaming clan/team, the ability to create sub communities/message boards directly on the platform and keep track of all of the members is also awesome.
- Cheap steam game keys from third party vendors (this is something steam could easily block/not support but they allow it because it benefits customers and they have a long-term business model in mind).
- The ability to pull in reviews from 3rd party review sites into the product pages on steam. I can sort list of games to shop for based on what "curators" i'm subscribed to. RPGcodex is one of them. And read their reviews/comments about the game directly from the steam product pages.
- Free speech, little to no censorship, you can cuss, you can change your online name to c0ck sucking nigger faggot, you can say whatever the hell you want in reviews, you can tell users how much the developer/publisher sucks nigger c0ck right on their fucking product pages etc. etc. etc. given how censored/filtered the video game industry has become (especially online) this is super refreshing.

I also really like the steam API that allows awesome tools/websites like this one to exist: https://steamdb.info/ (this type of transparency in the modern video game industry is unheard of). I also like the steam user generated reviews with all of the filters that allow you to really drill down to the information you want. This cuts through a lot of the big publisher manipulation/deception that runs rampant through the online communities. These features put power back into the hands of gamers. Steam product pages remind me of Amazon product pages...there's no deceiving potential buyers all the data is there to make informed purchase decisions. It forces publishers/developers to be accountable to gamers.

 

[Mustawd]

DalekFlay , what benefits have consumers reaped by Epic’s actions to this point? Serious question. I honestly don’t see any.

If you just dislike Steam and Steamtards you should just be honest and say so.

 

[DalekFlay]

DalekFlay , what benefits have consumers reaped by Epic’s actions to this point? Serious question. I honestly don’t see any.

Never claimed they received any really. Don't understand your question.

 

[Mustawd]

DalekFlay , what benefits have consumers reaped by Epic’s actions to this point? Serious question. I honestly don’t see any.

Never claimed they received any really. Don't understand your question.

You just spend a lot of time defending EPIC’s practices. And I’m wondering what net positive there is to the consumer. Are you saying you think there are none at all? Then you’re arguing for what? Arguments sake?

 

[Metro]

It's the Codex, argument-for-argument-sake is the glue that holds this place together.

 

[DalekFlay]

You just spend a lot of time defending EPIC’s practices. And I’m wondering what net positive there is to the consumer. Are you saying you think there are none at all? Then you’re arguing for what? Arguments sake?

I've said multiple times I hate having to use all clients, so why would I defend Epic's actions? Some of you read it that way because you can't interpret comments like "exclusives make sense for them from a business perspective as a way to compete with Steam" any other way. Saying that shit doesn't mean I'm happy about it.

 

[Mustawd]

It's the Codex, argument-for-argument-sake is the glue that holds this place together.

Sure, but I’m just wanting to understand, so I can easy button and skip his posts on the topic.

 

[passerby]

I know it wasn't directed at me, but...

What benefits have consumers reaped by Epic’s actions to this point? Serious question. I honestly don’t see any.

I could easily pirate any game, so I consider buying them some kind of patronage really. So the fact that companies responsible for creating games get bigger cut there is a positive for me.

If you just dislike Steam and Steamtards you should just be honest and say so.

I like Steam, it's the best store, I just care about the product more then about the store, or my small inconvenience. I dislike steamtards, though.

 

[Metro]

Whenever you attack DalekFlay a wild passerby appears! Also it's kind of funny passerby registered back in 2016, only has 500ish posts but of the last 100, at least 95% are in this thread. Rest are either related to the Epic v. Steam debate or just general GD shit-posting.

makesyathink.gif

 

[Silentstorm]

I've got it, back in 2016, Epic was already preparing to make EGS a thing and they knew their methods would piss off gamers, so they would need someone on the inside, bots or users that would talk about how great they are, but they couldn't just appear when people started getting mad, that would make it too obvious, oh no, the infiltrators would start by going to forums and communities some years before EGS would come to fruition and become part of the communities so that their opinions wouldn't be disregarded!

By the way, i am just kidding.

 

[Metro]

I mean... I always question any poster, regardless of forum, who spends 90% or more of his time in one particular thread. It's fairly telling.