I still don't understand why anyone cares. I usually side with gamers on their crusades but I don't understand why anyone would make a big deal out of having to use a different store rather than contributing to Gaben's obese girth and near monopoly on game sales. It makes 0 difference to me what store I use to buy a game. It sucks that EGS doesn't supply forums for their games but that's not a big enough complaint to make me bitch about a game being exclusive to it.
Well, to me at least, Epic's shenanigans are deleterious in two ways:
One, they're bringing the equivalent to the shitty console wars to PC (there were people incredibly mad because some prior console exclusive was being brought to PCs. I've thankfully forgotten which game it was, but the idiocy came to that). Yes, yes, using the client is free an everything. But you know, and I know, that if there's money to be made by limiting access to games in any way, these leeches, the Sweeneys, the Riccitiellos and yes, the Newells of the world, are, sooner or later, going to try to bend people over and ram their greedy hands all the way up the kitty. Let them get away with horse armors, and you end up with today's video game industry. Let them get away with exclusive distribution deals and all that crap, and things are probably going to end up badly, as they always do.
Second, and linked to what I've just said. You know what Epic is doing by giving money to indie developers so they can finish their games, publish them, and commercialize them (exclusively in their own client, of course). They're buying a controlling interest in those indie developers. Granted, not directly, but what is preventing Epic from telling those indies what they should develop and not, what they should add to their games and what not, the next time those indies are in dire straits because they didn't get killed by failure the first time around, since Epic's money saved them, and now they need, once more, to be bailed out by Epic? Do you honestly trust the CEO of a multi billion company with that kind of control over the video game market not to take advantage of it? The way I see it, the only thing preventing such a result is the good will of a person who has achieved his position by being the most psychopathic animal of the pack. The good will of a CEO.
Valve is a bit like the catholic church. They will try to get away with as much as they can (like paid mods), but, after the revolutions of the XIX century, they know what follows when they see the people rolling the guillotine into the public square, and they know how to modulate the bullshit to surf the wave of discontent without actually going under it (it remains to be seen what will happen when Newell finally keels over and dies from the massive coronary that's been chasing him for years of course) . I do not see such modulation with Epic.
Don't get me wrong, I do not abide bitching or harassing (although at times there are those who are literally screaming for it, like the developers of that Ouroboros game of whatever the fuck it's called that wrote that passive-agressive post and managed to piss off everybody with their cuntiness) or having a fit, I simply do not support such practices, choose to spend my money elsewhere, and move on, like a gentleman
, but I find Epic pretty distasteful, and I would like it very much if the sequel to Kingdom Come, a game I enjoyed very much, or any other game developed by Warhorse, was kept as far away from any of this bullshit as possible.
