Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[DeepOcean]

This thing reminds me of the way Microsoft made the Xbone "Let's hear all our friends, at the big publishers, what they think it is the best and make a perfect console for us and them." that of course ended on "Oh, shit, it is the consumers that actually pay the bills, such oppression, I forgot they even existed! Shit, Sony is fucking us, what we gonna do? We know, we will cancel all our interesting exclusives, that will cut costs." of course that ended on "Oh shit, you actually need to have some incentive for people to buy what is basically an overhyped shit PC? Who had thought? I always thought our Xbone was great, look to those rectangular lines, it is a so pretty box, why people would need games to run on it to buy?".

Corporativism on the gaming industry is so ridiculous, of course we won't be able to "harass" the snowflake developers but they will be pretty much be able to harass us with shit buggy products, disgusting low quality writing filled with pedestrian propaganda, false advertisement and unethical monetization practices as much as they want, the only thing they need to do is to pay lip service to any organism that has a vagina, so they are immune to criticism and free to practice the bullshit they want. Only an Exterminatus order can solve the industry problems now.

 

[sser]

Hey if they can compete more power to them. I'll just say that when other publishers have moved to their own platforms I've just completely stopped buying them, partly because most of these ones are nowhere near as good or stable as steam, and partly because I can't be dividing all my shit up across multiple platforms. The sole exception is GOG of course.

 

[Projas]

Q) OK, maybe this is good for developers, but how is this good for customers? (still a monster)

A) From our standpoint as customers, a curated store with a more limited selection of quality games is a plus.

"Why should I use this platform?"
"Well, it has less games."

ebin

 

[DeepOcean]

Curated by no taste libtards that think the world started with the Xbox 360? No thanks, I prefer the garbage deluge on steam.

 

[lefthandblack]

The only good thing about this is steam getting more competition; that being said I still hope the fail Epically.

These Epic cunts have been spamming my email for months with "OMG! You need to enable two factor authentication for your Epic account right now or hackers are going to break into your house and sodomize you!"

The first time I got that email, I changed my password. When they sent it again I changed my password again, this time to something stupid complicated like qz4557jjHUy!aml11*Aj34. The last forty-seven times they sent that email I just deleted it. Sorry Epic, you are not getting my phone number so you can put it in your master's little red book. I won't be buying anything from your shitty store either.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/epic-games-store-exclusives

Steam releases are being delayed – and cancelled – in favour of the Epic Games Store

The Epic Games Store launched last week, providing a brand-new platform for fans to buy their games, and a hefty 88/12% revenue split for developers. Just days after the store launched, the popularity of that split is proving pretty impactful, as several devs have announced that they’re delaying and even cancelling their Steam store releases in favour of Epic.

Among the most abrupt changes was for Satisfactory, the upcoming factory building game from Goat Simulator developers Coffee Stain Studios. In a video posted on Friday, the studio’s community manager, Jace Varley, confirmed that Satisfactory’s page on the Steam store was gone, and the game would no longer be releasing on Valve’s platform.

In the video, which you can watch further down this article, Varley said that the decision was made several months ago, and had not been affected by changes to Steam’s revenue sharing system, or by the studio’s recent purchase by publisher THQ Nordic. But while Satisfactory might be the most abrupt change of direction, it’s far from the only one.

At least three other developers have confirmed lengthy exclusivity periods on the Epic store for their games. Space game Genesis Alpha One will no longer release on Steam on its proposed date of January 29, 2019, as revealed by publisher Team17 in a recent Steam post. Elsewhere, Double Damage confirmed 12 months of exclusivity for their own space game, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw.



Last night, Team Meat confirmed that its upcoming Super Meat Boy Forever will also be exclusive on the Epic store for a year, and will come to Steam in April 2020. Super Meat Boy’s creator, Tommy Refenes took to Discord to discuss the change, saying that the new platform is “desperately needed to get Steam to give a shit.”

The Epic Games store already has its own exclusives. As well as providing you with a means to play Fortnite, it’s also the home of Hades, the new game from the developers of Bastion and Transistor, and beautiful action RPG Ashen.

 

[Alienman]

“desperately needed to get Steam to give a shit.”

About what? Didn't he make bank already on his first game? These indies are as greedy as the big publishers. Who would have thought.

 

[sapetto]

 

[DeepOcean]

Will this thing will even have regional prices? No fuck way I gonna pay for garbage like super meat boy on dollars.

 

[Dexter]

Member that Steam never forced developers into "exclusive" distribution contracts like console manufacturers often tend to do. They had ample chances and opportunities to do so when they had a de-facto monopoly and were the only big players around, and the potential to suffocate other stores like GOG or similar and even hit Xbox/PlayStation would have been huge, they might even have put some real pressure on some smaller publishers that thought of opening their own stores like Paradox and whatnot by leveraging their userbase. But they never did, even as other corporations like Microsoft started doing it with their Windows Store or Facebook/Oculus with VR, they stood by it and allowed devs to hawk their wares on their own website or store, on competing storesfronts and platforms and even on third-party platforms like Humble and whatnot where Steam doesn't get any cut.

One of two things will happen here. Either they do indeed get additional attention by articles like the above that might translate to consumer interest and action. Or they just signed away their prime PR/eyeball and attention time and 1+ year launch period on the biggest digital distribution store on PC to appear on yet another storefront that almost nobody will want to use. Either they turn out to be the belle of the ball (which they certainly hope to be), or they turned up at the unpopular kid's party and are stuck there with no ability to leave.

 

[Delterius]

i look forward to not using this service

 

[Trithne]

I wonder what Epic is actually offering to get all these devs to jump ship from Steam like this.

It's surely not just the smaller cut doing it - they have to know that they simply aren't going to move as many units as they would on Steam.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

The more competition, the better for the consumer is what I would normally say. Keep in mind though that digital distribution providers are not comparable to a normal store (except gog who could shut down tommorow and you would get to keep all your games if you bothered to make backups).

The whole games as a service shit is bad enough as it is, but at least Steam is „too big to fail“ for now, so for all practical purposes, I don’t need to worry about out loosing my (small) collection there. No way I’m gonna split my games library across several SaaS providers.

I don’t know how important these kind of considerations are to normies (who treat games as a throwaway product, not something that should be preserved like movies), but judging from comments on Twatter and reddit, they’re not too happy with the idea of splitting their games across a whole marketplace of Service providers.

It’s going to be a uphill battle for Epic, and as many pointed out correctly, they don’t really seem to offer anything of value to the consumers.

 

[markec]

Good start for Epic will be the Christmas sale, offering better deals then Steam will surely give them lots of exposure even with small catalogue.

 

[Outlander]

The more competition, the better for the consumer is what I would normally say.

I don't think locking games behind exclusivity deals is 'competition'.

 

[deama]

I hope steam will always have a monopoly, because I'm fine with what they're doing right now, and I really don't wanna split my library.

 

[Rahdulan]

I wonder what Epic is actually offering to get all these devs to jump ship from Steam like this.

It's surely not just the smaller cut doing it - they have to know that they simply aren't going to move as many units as they would on Steam.

Tencent has a big bag of money to go around.

 

[Turjan]

I hope steam will always have a monopoly, because I'm fine with what they're doing right now, and I really don't wanna split my library.

They never had one, and many of the larger publishers have jumped ship already quite a while ago.

In the end, they all hope to strike it big on their own.

 

[Kutulu]

Ohh one of the games i wanted: Ashen, is now exclusive on Epic.


Fuck em, im not installing anymore bloatware, im not happy with the shit im already using....

 

[Viata]

If I have to install another launcher, that would the launcher of another Bittorrent client so I can give my finger to epic games store while downloading their exclusive games twice. At the same time.

 

[Venser]

Sure it's convenient to have all the games at one place but monopoly isn't good. Maybe this will force Steam to adjust their prices to be more fair toward developers.

 

[Viata]

Funny the "first payment card". Which you can completely forget after some years if you changed your credit card.

 

[Viata]

Sure it's convenient to have all the games at one place but monopoly isn't good. Maybe this will force Steam to adjust their prices to be more fair toward developers.

I'm not against more places to buy the game, I'm against having thousands of launchers because every other dev wants to have their own store. One day you are going to buy a game on Steam and you'll have to download a launcher that will download another launcher and before you know it, you have to open 10 launchers to play the game. But yeah, fuck monopoly.

 

[Dickie]

Funny the "first payment card". Which you can completely forget after some years if you changed your credit card.

That second image can't even be real, right? Date you created your Epic games account, locations where you made purchases on the account, names of PlayStation, Switch, Twitch, and XBox accounts connected to your Epic games account and the dates when they were connected, etc. I wouldn't be able to remember any fucking dates and all the locations I've made purchases. Also, you only get two refunds forever?

First article I could find was eurogamer saying the same shit, though.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-12-10-whats-the-deal-with-the-epic-games-stores-refunds

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

It's temporary until an automatic system is developed, they officially said so.

You people are making me lose faith in humanity with your toxic shit.

"Nyah you didn't release your game on the launcher that I feel entitled to play on, so I'm gonna pirate". Surreal shit.