Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[DalekFlay]

It's hardly about the quality of the client. It's much more about force of habit.

The Steam client, whatever you or I might think of it, offers a lot of people a lot of features they genuinely love. In any event, whatever you want to ascribe Steam loyalty to, the point remains the same. Epic seem to be playing the "get people in and then turn them into real customers" game, but I'm not sure how they plan to actually do the second part. I don't think your theory of it all being about new customers holds water, since the exclusives game is all about making people switch from other platforms, and since they've been very open about wanting to knock Steam down a few pegs.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I don't think your theory of it all being about new customers holds water, since the exclusives game is all about making people switch from other platforms,

How is it all about making people switch? New customers also have only one choice if they want that exclusive so they become Epic customers.
And of course they'd want to get customers from Steam too if they can. But new customers count as that too. Somebody who comes first to Epic is one less person that goes to Steam first and possibly stays there.

The Steam client, whatever you or I might think of it, offers a lot of people a lot of features they genuinely love.

It does now. It didn't at the start. And people still stuck with it. If it was never updated, and people stayed there (because they didn't have any other choice) do you think they'd have jumped to Epic if they came up with a better client?

 

[flyingjohn]

I don't think your theory of it all being about new customers holds water, since the exclusives game is all about making people switch from other platforms,

How is it all about making people switch? New customers also have only one choice if they want that exclusive so they become Epic customers.
And of course they'd want to get customers from Steam too if they can. But new customers count as that too. Somebody who comes first to Epic is one less person that goes to Steam first and possibly stays there.

The Steam client, whatever you or I might think of it, offers a lot of people a lot of features they genuinely love.

It does now. It didn't at the start. And people still stuck with it. If it was never updated, and people stayed there (because they didn't have any other choice) do you think they'd have jumped to Epic if they came up with a better client?

You do understand that steam launched in 2003 when none of the modern features were a thing and even then was better then any alternative that existed both in features and usability?
Also Valve didn't have several billions at the bank compared to epic today.
People switched to steam because they were the only ones offering a digital platform and not screaming "PC IS DEAD BECAUSE OF PIRACY".

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Epic's theory is people will use the client to get the freebies and some exclusives and then transition into becoming regular customers. However I see no reason for this to play out in practice long-term unless Epic drastically improves the client (which they're barely bothering to do at the moment), or offer some other consistent incentive. I'd like to be a fly on the wall during their long-term planning meetings, because I have a feeling they're missing the crucial step between "force people to come here" and "everyone switches to Epic!"

The strategy seems to be working according to the infographic T_T posted last page. "Everyone switching to Epic" is not a realistic idea in the short or long term so I imagine the short term is to get a foothold in the market (achieved?) and long term is to become Gaben's biggest headache, and they're improving the client when it becomes necessary.

 

[Silentstorm]

Fortnite and freebies are making people use EGS just to either play or get free stuff, and then hopefully play said free stuff, overtime, i imagine they want to create the habit of using EGS on their users just as people got used to other clients before.

 

[Ismaul]

The Steam client, whatever you or I might think of it, offers a lot of people a lot of features they genuinely love.

It does now. It didn't at the start. And people still stuck with it. If it was never updated, and people stayed there (because they didn't have any other choice) do you think they'd have jumped to Epic if they came up with a better client?

At the start, it offered an easy way to keep your Valve games up to date so you could play with others using the same version. This is what it was made for in the first place, and it was a first.

 

[Drakron]

The strategy seems to be working according to the infographic T_T posted last page. "Everyone switching to Epic" is not a realistic idea in the short or long term so I imagine the short term is to get a foothold in the market (achieved?) and long term is to become Gaben's biggest headache, and they're improving the client when it becomes necessary.

You mean the 251 million spend in a entire year and that is spending, that includes taxes and all that.
It says the majority of EGS revenue was on ... Fortnight (680 vs 251) and they are taking a loss, this was predicted but it also says the current model is NOT sustainable, but hey ... its not like GOG existed or anything and the truth is, NOTHING is too big too fail, I never expected EGS to close within a year but lets see what happens in 3-4 years, ESPECIALLY if the big players all start having their own exclusive stores with their own launchers.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I have not heard anything from Epic that their store is a big success. I think if it was a big success they would want to tell it everywhere wouldn't they.

But even if it is breaking even they pissed off a lot of people when they should have done the exact opposite. Let's say I caved in and installed their launcher now, I would forever feel guilty for having stinking Chinese crap on my computer.

But I don't feel I have to install it to play this game with the apes or the one that have already turned out to be shit like Genesis alpha one or Sinking City

 

[Valky]

I never expected EGS to have any sort of long term staying power. Unlike other stores, they aren't a publisher who makes their own dozen IP games a year or had a pre-existing foothold with a specific niche. They are literally just "zoomers bought fortnite our one shit wonder, and with the lots of money we made by peddling decline, let's try starting a store". Fortnite itself is another gutter trash timepiece with no staying power, pure fad popularity, which is why EGS has been aggressively bribing developers for exclusivity deals and throwing free games at people, because they are desperate as all hell to gain a customer base, because they know that once Fortnite stops being the hip new piece of shit that 16 year olds are interested in playing, their entire revenue stream evaporates and they will be left with a half baked store that will need to generate enough revenue to pay for itself.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

429M for Fortnite seems really low, that game is everywhere, seriously i have passed through toy aisles in stores where 99% of toys or even just Funko Pop stuff is Fortnite, there is a TCG, it's mentioned all the time and last i checked, it was the most played game on the planet.

Then again, it is F2P and not everyone wants to pay, i just assumed it made more money than that, still, if flyingjohn above me is right, then...

Fortnite's market share dropped sharply in 2019.

The most troubling part about the above statement is that I don't know to which game that missing market share went to.

 

[Hirato]

429M for Fortnite seems really low, that game is everywhere, seriously i have passed through toy aisles in stores where 99% of toys or even just Funko Pop stuff is Fortnite, there is a TCG, it's mentioned all the time and last i checked, it was the most played game on the planet.

Then again, it is F2P and not everyone wants to pay, i just assumed it made more money than that, still, if flyingjohn above me is right, then...

Fortnite's market share dropped sharply in 2019.

The most troubling part about the above statement is that I don't know to which game that missing market share went to.

Probably went back to minecraft, if my youtube feed is any indication of any trends.

 

[fantadomat]

LoL all those games on epic must be hurting. 200 mils split between them all is like selling 5 copies each. Also most likely half of those shit was borderlands3 and the nu metro. It seems like a place where kickstarters go to die.

 

[Reinhardt]

I see FeelTheRads still riding that "B-but steam client was shit 15 years ago!" horse.

 

[Citizen]

Fortnite's market share dropped sharply in 2019.

The most troubling part about the above statement is that I don't know to which game that missing market share went to.

What happened? Why did playerbase drop?

This is what google comes up with. Are they really losing players because of balance changes or what?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

It's hardly about the quality of the client. It's much more about force of habit.

The Steam client, whatever you or I might think of it, offers a lot of people a lot of features they genuinely love. In any event, whatever you want to ascribe Steam loyalty to, the point remains the same. Epic seem to be playing the "get people in and then turn them into real customers" game, but I'm not sure how they plan to actually do the second part. I don't think your theory of it all being about new customers holds water, since the exclusives game is all about making people switch from other platforms, and since they've been very open about wanting to knock Steam down a few pegs.

i despised steam (under many aspects i still do), i avoided it for years. i began using it when i saw all the x-com series for 1 dollar. it was impossible to get otherwise back at the time, and manually setting up dosbox was still a nightmare. i didn't buy anything else for months, maybe years. i started spending with the 1-2-3 dollars sales, with the bundles, with the 90% off offers. nothing i can foresee in epic client's future. then all these goodies stopped, and guess what? i stopped spending too! surprise surprise!
but never underestimate stupidity in large numbers, so we can only hope either fortnite kids are not as retarded as they look, seem and act, or that in the meantime they'd grow up and realise "how the fuck am i wasting my youth on this shit?" and move on elsewhere.

 

[FeelTheRads]

You do understand that steam launched in 2003 when none of the modern features were a thing and even then was better then any alternative that existed both in features and usability?
Also Valve didn't have several billions at the bank compared to epic today.
People switched to steam because they were the only ones offering a digital platform and not screaming "PC IS DEAD BECAUSE OF PIRACY".

What exactly of what I said goes against anything of that?
I only said that the client was shit but the people still stuck with it, so I don't think it's as much about the quality of the client as it is about the force of habit.
I even acknowledged that they probably stayed because there was no alternative, but after this much time, it's simply force of habit and it would have been the same even if the client remained shit.
So, please spare me the "waah waah but valve was so poor and saved pc gaming pls leave valve alone" tears. This was not an attack on Valve.

Therefore:

I see FeelTheRads still riding that "B-but steam client was shit 15 years ago!" horse.

Butthurt moron. Learn to read. This wasn't "B-but steam client was shit 15 years ago!" in any way. But rather "people will learn to like shit". As in, someone who goes first on Epic won't know about the Steam features they're missing and will more likely stay there since it was their first platform. It goes the same either way. So calm down, fanbot, again, it's not an attack on Valve. This time.

But hey I see that Steamtards are still riding that "Steam doesn't have exclusives because games that are only available on Steam are somehow not exclusives" wave.

 

[Tehdagah]

Fortnite will die just like Call of Duty. Ie: never.

Fortnite's market share dropped sharply in 2019.

The most troubling part about the above statement is that I don't know to which game that missing market share went to.

What happened? Why did playerbase drop?

This is what google comes up with. Are they really losing players because of balance changes or what?

Season X was... controversial. But Chapter 2 put the playerbase back on track.

 

[Valky]

Fortnite will die just like Call of Duty. Ie: never.

Fortnite's market share dropped sharply in 2019.

The most troubling part about the above statement is that I don't know to which game that missing market share went to.

What happened? Why did playerbase drop?

This is what google comes up with. Are they really losing players because of balance changes or what?

Season X was... controversial. But Chapter 2 put the playerbase back on track.

If Fortnite is so good how come there isn't a Fortnite 2 huh?

 

[DalekFlay]

I only said that the client was shit but the people still stuck with it, so I don't think it's as much about the quality of the client as it is about the force of habit.
I even acknowledged that they probably stayed because there was no alternative, but after this much time, it's simply force of habit and it would have been the same even if the client remained shit.
So, please spare me the "waah waah but valve was so poor and saved pc gaming pls leave valve alone" tears. This was not an attack on Valve.

You're right that Steam sucked at launch. People sometimes forget that everyone hated that thing, and were only using it because Half-Life 2 forced them to. However Steam improved pretty quickly, and within a handful of years people were mad when games weren't Steamworks. Valve did that by making Steamworks games cheaper and more convenient. Cheap and convenient is always what average consumers flock to, time and time again. Now, after a decade of basically no competition, the "convenient" aspect also applies to "everything in one place." It's more convenient to just use Steam as your entire game hub, and ignore everything else. You can call that "habit" if you want, but it's a loyalty that came about because Valve earned it and cultivated it over time.

That is what Epic is competing against, and while exclusives do work in gaming, and freebies do work in general, I don't see their long-term plan.

 

[Rahdulan]

You're right that Steam sucked at launch. People sometimes forget that everyone hated that thing, and were only using it because Half-Life 2 forced them to. However Steam improved pretty quickly, and within a handful of years people were mad when games weren't Steamworks.

Most people hated it because they saw Steam as something akin to Valve adding this unnecessarily cumbersome system to replace what worked - simple CD key authorization. Now you needed a separate client, hoping it would actually work 100% of the time, etc. It was breaking new grounds and logically anything similar requires some time for customers to get used to it and see the benefits.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

You're right that Steam sucked at launch. People sometimes forget that everyone hated that thing, and were only using it because Half-Life 2 forced them to. However Steam improved pretty quickly, and within a handful of years people were mad when games weren't Steamworks.

Most people hated it because they saw Steam as something akin to Valve adding this unnecessarily cumbersome system to replace what worked - simple CD key authorization. Now you needed a separate client, hoping it would actually work 100% of the time, etc. It was breaking new grounds and logically anything similar requires some time for customers to get used to it and see the benefits.

It was bloated as fuck and a system hog that raped my budget build, its less so now either due to better code or higher end components. I think I relented and joined when they shut down the WON network and forced me onto steam to play TFC and DoD. I remember being salty over that.

 

[moraes]

I first installed Steam after getting the Orange Box as a gift from my girlfriend. I hated the thing and only kept it installed while playing Half-Life. Then, the combination of 90% off sales with the strongest brazilian real in history made me a regular purchaser and I retired (most of) my pirating ways. The formal brazilian PC gaming market probably sprang out of nowhere because of Gabe Newell and Lula da Silva.

This end-of-year sale was better at the EGS, at least in brazilian prices. The combination of sales and the renewing coupon made the prices quite a bit better than Steam. Also, the free games. If Epic can keep this up for a couple more years, I suspect they can put a dent in Valve's quasi-monopoly.

 

[Valky]

Steam drove me to 100% piracy of all steam exclusives that I'm interested in.
Gabe was right when he said piracy is a service problem. I will not pay for a service that forces me to install and 24/7 run third party software unrelated to the game I'm trying to play. DRM is the single greatest service problem with video games.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Gabe was right when he said piracy is a service problem. I will not pay for a service that forces me to install and 24/7 run third party software unrelated to the game I'm trying to play. DRM is the single greatest service problem with video games.

They could've done that GOG does* and offer separate installers too, but still keep DRM games on the client only, so they can have the big publishers sell games on their platform. But nope, instead they essentially gave free DRM to everyone.
So Steam effectively increased the usage of DRM. With Steam any piece of shit poorfag can get free DRM on his shit game.
And of course Steamfags swallowed it and liked it, because you see, having to install a client and use it to play the game is not DRM according to them. Kinda like how a game only available on Steam is somehow better than a game that's only available on Epic.

*Well, STILL does. At least until they figure out that keeping separate installers is probably not worth it for the few people who still care about it.

 

[DalekFlay]

They have no incentive to offer offline installers because they want you to boot up Steam. They want you to have Steam running 24/7.