Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

Mustawd

Guest
Why not just publish EA on both platforms? Or am I missing something?
 

CyberModuled

Savant
Joined
Mar 31, 2019
Messages
443
Why not just publish EA on both platforms? Or am I missing something?
This is a very particular case (hell, this game isn't even on itch.io but going on) but if a game like Starsector was on Steam when the 2013 EA floodgates opened people would not be pleased with how the developers had long droughts of nothing before an update finally appears. Even once the game did reach the current near completion state (0.91a) it's in this year, it'd always have that stigma of "that game that took over 6 years to release". What I mean to say is that it's possible for some developers to not want to put their game on Steam during a certain stage of development when they can't guarantee consistent updates or even a road map so they put it up on places like itch.io where they can put their game up there with little backlash if they take long to add in features due to how niche the storefront is. Sure, they're making less money by doing that short term but if the game is good then in the long term they'll be able to put it up on Steam when it's nearly finished/1.0 release so they don't need to deal with backlash from a long dev cycle.

Then again, I say this when other games like Project Zomboid are nearly 6 years old, still in Early Access with a playerbase, and holds a "Very Positive" rating so it could be something completely different for other developers.
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Valve is putting an end to free advertisement for Epic exclusives. :incline:

https://www.lowyat.net/2019/193548/valve-new-stipulation-to-steam-distribution-agreement/

A Reddit user has found that Valve has added a new item in the Steam Distribution Agreement. It’s a complicated couple of sentences, but it essentially means two things.

Steam-Distribution-Agreement-Reddit.jpg


One is that if a developer or publisher has not made a Steam page for its upcoming game, then when it does it will have to release the game at the same time as on other platforms. The second is that if a game is already released, then developers and publishers can create a page for it no earlier 30 days before its release on Steam.
That's not how I interpret the second part. If the game has already been released, the developer has to submit a game for release within 30 days from the release on other platforms if they have a Steam store page.
 

Reinhardt

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2015
Messages
29,234
Steam offers lots of things that developers and publishers can, and do, take advantage of in order to market their game and improve user experience and communicate with them. If the game will be exclusive to another platform I don't see why they should use Steam features destined to games that are actually sold on Steam. That sounds really reasonable to me.

Besides Steam is just reacting to Epic playing dirty. They never showed any interest in enforcing this stuff before Epic started stealing games from them, and even then, they took this long to respond. It looks like they put a lot of thought into this before doing it. I'm having a hard time seeing Valve as a bad guy on this one.

Some indie devs complain that they need wishlists to make a decent income once they publish, and 30 days isn't enough to grow that wishlist, if they also want to make EA offering on something like itch.io


Wait, so that means not only "fuck you" to epic but also less rpg maker shit made in 5 minutes on steam? Steam went full incline?
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Steam offers lots of things that developers and publishers can, and do, take advantage of in order to market their game and improve user experience and communicate with them. If the game will be exclusive to another platform I don't see why they should use Steam features destined to games that are actually sold on Steam. That sounds really reasonable to me.

Besides Steam is just reacting to Epic playing dirty. They never showed any interest in enforcing this stuff before Epic started stealing games from them, and even then, they took this long to respond. It looks like they put a lot of thought into this before doing it. I'm having a hard time seeing Valve as a bad guy on this one.

Some indie devs complain that they need wishlists to make a decent income once they publish, and 30 days isn't enough to grow that wishlist, if they also want to make EA offering on something like itch.io
Wait, so that means not only "fuck you" to epic but also less rpg maker shit made in 5 minutes on steam? Steam went full incline?
If i recall correctly Das Geisterschiff from zwanzig_zwoelf also launched on itch.io first, then on Steam. So there are quite a lot good games on itch.io, not just RPG Maker games.
 

Reinhardt

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2015
Messages
29,234
Steam offers lots of things that developers and publishers can, and do, take advantage of in order to market their game and improve user experience and communicate with them. If the game will be exclusive to another platform I don't see why they should use Steam features destined to games that are actually sold on Steam. That sounds really reasonable to me.

Besides Steam is just reacting to Epic playing dirty. They never showed any interest in enforcing this stuff before Epic started stealing games from them, and even then, they took this long to respond. It looks like they put a lot of thought into this before doing it. I'm having a hard time seeing Valve as a bad guy on this one.

Some indie devs complain that they need wishlists to make a decent income once they publish, and 30 days isn't enough to grow that wishlist, if they also want to make EA offering on something like itch.io
Wait, so that means not only "fuck you" to epic but also less rpg maker shit made in 5 minutes on steam? Steam went full incline?
If i recall correctly Das Geisterschiff from zwanzig_zwoelf also launched on itch.io first, then on Steam. So there are quite a lot good games on itch.io, not just RPG Maker games.
When i open steam and click "rpg" i want to kill someone. And then myself. Everytime.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
That's not how I interpret the second part. If the game has already been released, the developer has to submit a game for release within 30 days from the release on other platforms if they have a Steam store page.
You just said the same thing in a different way. :P Going forward, if you have a Steam page before release, you have to release it on Steam the same day as any other platform. If you've already released it somewhere else before you've even submitted it to Steam, when you do make a page for it, you have to release it within 30 days. No more extended advertising for places where Valve doesn't get a cut.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,232
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.destructoid.com/tommy-r...usivity-deal-a-total-no-brainer--566097.phtml

Tommy Refenes calls Epic Games Store exclusivity deal 'a total no-brainer'
'I don't know who wouldn't take that deal'

When Super Meat Boy Forever eventually launches, the PC version will only be available on the Epic Games Store. That's a growing trend in the PC market, as Epic has made a concentrated effort to ink big-time names to exclusivity agreements. Super Meat Boy Forever was one of the first, with its year-long exclusivity announced shortly after the store itself was unveiled.

Super Meat Boy co-creator Tommy Refenes says Epic's offer was so attractive that he had no problem ditching Steam. In an interview with Destructoid at PAX West, Refenes reminisced on that initial pitch meeting.

"They told me they want Super Meat Boy Forever on the Epic Games Store but it would be a year exclusive. At first, I was kind of like 'Oh...okay," Refenes explained. "Then they said they would guarantee our sales. Even then, I'm kind of like 'I don't even know what to ask for. So, run the numbers and tell me what you would offer.' They did, and I was like 'Yes!' It was a total no-brainer. After I got the numbers, the level of fear of not launching on Steam for PC was immediately alleviated."

That's Epic's appeal. It's mitigating a lot of risk out of video game creation by guaranteeing that developers will break even at a bare minimum. It's a more sustainable model for developers. Refenes says "That's huge. That's huge for anyone in any industry to be like 'When you get done with your work, you're definitely going to make this much.' I don't know who wouldn't take that deal."

Refenes adds that Epic's level of support "is beyond anything [we've gotten before]." The promotion that Super Meat Boy Forever has received is something that generally doesn't happen without a major publisher's backing. "We announced at The Game Awards, and these are things that I'm not going to get anywhere else. To actually have Meat Boy on the screen at The Game Awards is nuts."

super-meat-boy-forever-1-noscale.jpg


That being said, Refenes expected the pushback on the consumer side. "Gaming is a super important thing to a lot of people. It's a part of their lives," he explains. "When something comes up and challenges that, it's completely reasonable for the reaction to kind of assume the worst is going to happen. I can see the passion of having something that's near and dear to you change, and being averse to that change."

He continues "I was completely expecting that, and I was completely expecting people to bring up Tencent stuff. What's unfortunate is that the concerns some people have are reasonable. You have people who are like 'It's not that great of a store' or whatever. But then you have the wild bullshit of Chinese spyware conspiracy theory crap. It's like 'Okay, you people shut up' because the people who have actual concerns are being drowned out, and I think it's a shame. They all get lumped together."

At the end of the day, Refenes seems perfectly happy with his Epic deal and the safety net it affords -- even if he ends up losing some sales from people who refuse to buy on the Epic Games Store. It might not even make much of a difference. "I feel like people are going to buy games on PC because that's what we've done. Steam is a way to buy games, but it's not the only place that sells them and it's not the only place that's successful."

We'll have more from our interview with Team Meat's Tommy Refenes next week.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
Ahhh who is that again,someone important or one of the endless retarded indie developers that made a pixel platformer game??
 

MuscleSpark

Augur
Patron
Joined
Apr 12, 2011
Messages
369
Ahhh who is that again,someone important or one of the endless retarded indie developers that made a pixel platformer game??
The important one (Edmund McMillen) isn't working on this iteration of Super Meat Boy, which is actually two-button endless runner and not a standard platformer.
 

Mustawd

Guest
To sue for compensation over not selling on their store :lol: steamtards, steamtards never change...

I think it takes a special kind of retarded to not realize that reputation can in fact be lost for Steam if games can collect preorders for weeks, if not months, before proceeding to pull out of Steam and making all preorders void.

So yes, this would allow Steam to more easily prevent that occurrence as well as make it easier to sue if it happened again.

But hey, “hurr durr Steamtards”, am i right?
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
But then you have the wild bullshit of Chinese spyware conspiracy theory crap. It's like 'Okay, you people shut up' because the people who have actual concerns are being drowned out, and I think it's a shame. They all get lumped together."
You know it's true because of how they respond to it.
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Hmmm, developer makes fake steam page, collect preorders and get hype going on for their game, lying to their customers, then sign exclusivity deal with epic fucking off everyone that believed on them and even go on Twitter to gloat how smart they were.

Of course, epic cucks will respond to this bullshit with their usual "mah Steam DRM" argument, imagine if this kind of "Logic" was applied on court?

"That guy over there has shady practices and the other guy has shady practices AND is a recurrent anti-consumer fraudster but because the other guy has shady practices, we wont prosecute the recurrent fraudster."
 

Squid

Arbiter
Joined
May 31, 2018
Messages
536
I'm kinda curious to who on the Codex even uses Epic? Does anyone that argued here for Epic even use it? Do they plan on buying all of their games there or just the ones they can't get anywhere else for a year?
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
But then you have the wild bullshit of Chinese spyware conspiracy theory crap. It's like 'Okay, you people shut up' because the people who have actual concerns are being drowned out, and I think it's a shame. They all get lumped together."
You know it's true because of how they respond to it.
While I believe there isn't concrete proof on the chinese spyware thing but it is a possibility, people many times forget that the Chinese government isn't bounded by laws like on western democracies and routinely interferes on the internal workings of private chinese companies and by interfering, I mean, they can demand what the fuck they want, if the chinese goverment demands something from a company, it can't just say no like it happens on western democracies. Do you people really believe that Tim Sweeny would not sell private data for the chinese if that was a condition to get a boat load of money? Zuckberg was fine with it for years. If tencent decided to have a credit card company? Would you guys buy that credit card? I wouldn't, anything coming from chinese companies is suspect by definition.
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
Super Meat Boy co-creator Tommy Refenes says Epic's offer was so attractive that he had no problem ditching Steam. In an interview with Destructoid at PAX West, Refenes reminisced on that initial pitch meeting.

"They told me they want Super Meat Boy Forever on the Epic Games Store but it would be a year exclusive. At first, I was kind of like 'Oh...okay," Refenes explained. "Then they said they would guarantee our sales. Even then, I'm kind of like 'I don't even know what to ask for. So, run the numbers and tell me what you would offer.' They did, and I was like 'Yes!' It was a total no-brainer. After I got the numbers, the level of fear of not launching on Steam for PC was immediately alleviated."

That's Epic's appeal. It's mitigating a lot of risk out of video game creation by guaranteeing that developers will break even at a bare minimum. It's a more sustainable model for developers. Refenes says "That's huge. That's huge for anyone in any industry to be like 'When you get done with your work, you're definitely going to make this much.' I don't know who wouldn't take that deal."

That model used to be called signing up with a publisher. Epic is taking up the role of a faux publisher for Indies, but without the oversight. Assuming all the risk, but relinquishing control, like Epic does, doesn't seem very sustainable.
 

passerby

Arcane
Joined
Nov 16, 2016
Messages
2,788
I think it takes a special kind of retarded to not realize that reputation can in fact be lost for Steam if games can collect preorders for weeks, if not months, before proceeding to pull out of Steam and making all preorders void.

This could be a basis for a lawsuit with no new ToS points needed, but it's not what neither our exchange, nor ToS point is about ?

It's about for example taking down Metro Exodus Steam store page down, if it's not for sale on Steam anymore, which I agreed is perfectly reasonable.
 
Last edited:

Tehdagah

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
Messages
9,235
Does this also means developers can't release uptades for their games first on other platforms? This is the kind of monopolish policy a company like Disney would make.
 

Kutulu

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 3, 2015
Messages
1,376
Location
ger
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex
Steam offers lots of things that developers and publishers can, and do, take advantage of in order to market their game and improve user experience and communicate with them. If the game will be exclusive to another platform I don't see why they should use Steam features destined to games that are actually sold on Steam. That sounds really reasonable to me.

Besides Steam is just reacting to Epic playing dirty. They never showed any interest in enforcing this stuff before Epic started stealing games from them, and even then, they took this long to respond. It looks like they put a lot of thought into this before doing it. I'm having a hard time seeing Valve as a bad guy on this one.

Some indie devs complain that they need wishlists to make a decent income once they publish, and 30 days isn't enough to grow that wishlist, if they also want to make EA offering on something like itch.io
Wait, so that means not only "fuck you" to epic but also less rpg maker shit made in 5 minutes on steam? Steam went full incline?
If i recall correctly Das Geisterschiff from zwanzig_zwoelf also launched on itch.io first, then on Steam. So there are quite a lot good games on itch.io, not just RPG Maker games.
When i open steam and click "rpg" i want to kill someone. And then myself. Everytime.

lCWspV8.png
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom