Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[The Fish]

If Epic takes a smaller cut then how come consumers don't pay less?
rly makes u think…

I was under the impression that steam doesn't allow you to list games if they're being sold for cheaper elsewhere.

 

[ultimanecat]

If Epic takes a smaller cut then how come consumers don't pay less?
rly makes u think…

I was under the impression that steam doesn't allow you to list games if they're being sold for cheaper elsewhere.

Steam definitely doesn’t let you list games that are exclusive to the EGS, but somehow those games still seem to cost $60.

It’s ultimately a silly question, because at no point has anybody argued that the EGS is good for customers. Tim Sweeney, a handful of devs, and journalists have all argued it’s good for devs and publishers, but nobody’s going to tell you that you’re going to get anything positive out of the deal as a consumer. Remember:

 

[rusty_shackleford]

If Epic takes a smaller cut then how come consumers don't pay less?
rly makes u think…

I was under the impression that steam doesn't allow you to list games if they're being sold for cheaper elsewhere.

Steam definitely doesn’t let you list games that are exclusive to the EGS, but somehow those games still seem to cost $60.

It’s ultimately a silly question, because at no point has anybody argued that the EGS is good for customers. Tim Sweeney, a handful of devs, and journalists have all argued it’s good for devs and publishers, but nobody’s going to tell you that you’re going to get anything positive out of the deal as a consumer. Remember:

That's the kind of statement I'd expect from a person licking the boots of a publisher.
Which describes Schreier perfectly.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It’s ultimately a silly question, because at no point has anybody argued that the EGS is good for customers.

You want to tell me it only happened on the codex!? Damn, at least our retards are really special.

 

[ultimanecat]

It’s ultimately a silly question, because at no point has anybody argued that the EGS is good for customers.

You want to tell me it only happened on the codex!? Damn, at least our retards are really special.

Well, you will get the occasional “By giving McDonald’s more money, you’re helping McDonald’s give you more of the garbage food you love in the future!” kind of shilling. Or the “I don’t care who had the opportunity to spit on my hamburger while it was made, I just like hamburgers and don’t care how they end up in my mouth!” kind. But those people are, indeed, either shills or retarded.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I've never been able to figure out why in gaming in particular, people like to whine about entitled gamers expecting x, y, z. Like at what point do any of these shitty companies deserve my money? Either give me something I want or eat a dick and go broke. That's business.

So in this case, Steam provides a large catalogue, friends lists, forums, etc., etc. EGS provides... Charity to devs? I still can't figure out why I'm supposed to care about that, especially when I wouldn't buy half the crap on there in the first place.

 

[J_C]

while Valve made $27.000 profit from selling all those copies and taking their cut (30%) while they have very little overhead on listing and providing services for that specific game.

Where do people get this notion of Valve spending almost nothing on Steam? Staff, servers, R&D is not free. I know it is hard for Epic to grasp that, since they literally only provide a server and a basic storefront, but I think there is much more work on Valve's part.

 

[deuxhero]

J_C
Calling EGS's storefront "basic" is overselling its features a tad don't you think?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I've never been able to figure out why in gaming in particular, people like to whine about entitled gamers expecting x, y, z. Like at what point do any of these shitty companies deserve my money? Either give me something I want or eat a dick and go broke. That's business.

So in this case, Steam provides a large catalogue, friends lists, forums, etc., etc. EGS provides... Charity to devs? I still can't figure out why I'm supposed to care about that, especially when I wouldn't buy half the crap on there in the first place.

Gamers carry guilt for liking electronic toys so they compensate by shaming those who act in an immature manner (making demands, complaining about not getting exactly what you wanted or being selfish). The dissonance comes from how those are also normal consumer behavior, which leads to situations like Schreier's quote above. But that's just a theory

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I have over 15k games on Steam on ignore now (which is apparently roughly half of the entire Steam catalogue.) I'd imagine I'm probably in the top .1% — if not even higher — of most games viewed by users on Steam.
From going through all those games I've realized one thing: Most games are awful. I'm not skipping over your game from a lack of exposure, I'm skipping it because something about it sucks. There is no algorithm in the world that can fix most games being complete shit.
This especially applies to games that possibly don't actually suck but I'm tired of seeing rehashes of. 2D "souls-like", metroidvanias, etc., There's so god damn many of them and they all look bland as hell.

Just in case anyone was thinking this was an unexpected development, solely because of Steam and its environment, allow me to give a little perspective.

The top three 8-bit home computers of the 1980s (the Commodore 64, the Sinclair Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC, in that order) had limited lifespans. The Spectrum was the oldest with 12 years of official support, the C-64 managed 11 years and the Amstrad only 8 years. And yet they have 15000+ titles released for them. Each. The Spectrum alone has 27000+ entries. And this during an era where was no digital distribution, no internet and I think only the C-64 supported modems and such.

And yet the song remains the same: 95% of the games on these systems are awful. There's about a few dozen games on each of these systems that rank as "must-play", twice that number of "good, entertaining games", twice that number of "fairly good games" and finally there's thousands of crap games not even worth mentioning except for nostalgia's sake, at best.

On the consoles the story is a little better because some form of curation takes place there, but ultimately the end result is the same though the numbers may differ a bit.

 

[deuxhero]

Unkillable Cat
I have yet to hear of a single great or even good Spectrum exclusive that came out during its official lifespan (and that caveat is only because of that Castlevania fangame). All the good games I hear of on it have better versions on other systems.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I have yet to hear of a single great or even good Spectrum exclusive that came out during its official lifespan (and that caveat is only because of that Castlevania fangame). All the good games I hear of on it have better versions on other systems.

Neither have I to be honest, though I have hope that at least one such game exists. I do know of a couple of games where the Spectrum version is the best one, odd as it may sound.

 

[deuxhero]

Unkillable Cat
What are the games best on Spectrum?

 

[MuscleSpark]

Steam does nothing to earn their 30%.

 

[someone else]

Is there a thread about Epic's free games giveaways?
Currently it is Surviving Mars and 2 dlcs.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

That's the kind of statement I'd expect from a person licking the boots of a publisher.
Which describes Schreier perfectly.

I actually loathe the term "consumer". I'll always refer to myself as a customer.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

That's the kind of statement I'd expect from a person licking the boots of a publisher.
Which describes Schreier perfectly.

I actually loathe the term "consumer". I'll always refer to myself as a customer.

It was a deflection, something you'd expect from an employee working PR at EA.

 

[Alienman]

I prefer myself connoisseur.

 

[Junmarko]

Timestamped at Sweeney's response.

"I'm looking forward to Tencent hearing about this and then Sweeney's whole statement being redacted".

Lol.

 

[Mojobeard]

Tencent owns 5% of Activision Blizzard. But apparently their 40% ownership of Epic doesn't mean anything. And pigs fly.

 

[Ismaul]

I prefer myself connoisseur.

I prefer myself too.

 

[passerby]

Tencent owns 5% of Activision Blizzard. But apparently their 40% ownership of Epic doesn't mean anything. And pigs fly.

It's not about company shares it's about a potential of loosing a growing market, since they were constantly being threatened with ban on this market.
This is a decision purely by Activision Blizzard leadership and they sold these 5% to Tencent only so they would lobby for them in the Chinese government in the first place, they sure didn't need these money at any point to grow their bussiness.

Unless you represent a majority shareholder all you can do, is to camplain on the board meeting, or to sell the shares.
Which Epic wouldn't mind at this point, since they don't need money anymore and don't have much more shares to sell without loosing control, so dropping share price would only be an opportunity to buy some shares back.

When any of these companies bend over to Chinese, it's because of the Chinese growing market, Tencents 40% share ownership is actually a bigger leverage for negotiations with the Chinese goverment, since market ban would be damaging to a major Chinese corp at this point.

 

[Alienman]

I prefer myself connoisseur.

I prefer myself too.

My inner Yoda came half way out.

 

[Dexter]

while Valve made $27.000 profit from selling all those copies and taking their cut (30%) while they have very little overhead on listing and providing services for that specific game.

Where do people get this notion of Valve spending almost nothing on Steam? Staff, servers, R&D is not free. I know it is hard for Epic to grasp that, since they literally only provide a server and a basic storefront, but I think there is much more work on Valve's part.

How much do you realistically think it costs Valve to specifically list J_C 's game on their store and provide people that have purchased it with the ability to download it? Do you think it's more or less than Megaupload hosting it for free or imgur or whatever hosting a bunch of Screenshots from it?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

while Valve made $27.000 profit from selling all those copies and taking their cut (30%) while they have very little overhead on listing and providing services for that specific game.

Where do people get this notion of Valve spending almost nothing on Steam? Staff, servers, R&D is not free. I know it is hard for Epic to grasp that, since they literally only provide a server and a basic storefront, but I think there is much more work on Valve's part.

How much do you realistically think it costs Valve to specifically list J_C 's game on their store and provide people that have purchased it with the ability to download it? Do you think it's more or less than Megaupload hosting it for free or imgur or whatever hosting a bunch of Screenshots from it?

You'd have to factor in the cost of Steam building up their massive user base and infrastructure for 16 years so that he can enjoy his game being accessible to such a massive audience.