The Outer Worlds goes Epic Games Store-exclusive (also Windows Store)

[Prime Junta]

You're right, which is why developers pass some of the savings directly onto consumers when moving to Epic.

I don't want them to pass the savings to consumers.

I want them to pass them to their employees.

Oh, wait.

Spoiler

Even so, a near-monopoly like Steam is very bad. Breaking up the market between several individually nasty services is less bad. Studios setting up a cooperative to distribute games, with profits feeding back directly to them would be better. Collectivising everything would be best.

 

[Alienman]

Thought I read somewhere that it was a one year exclusivity deal for Epic and the Microsoft Store. Which is fine by me. Can purchase it from my vendor of choice after a year when on sale price and the bugs have been ironed out.

Why would they fix anything? No people buying, and everything is already payed for. There is no pressure to fix anything. Maybe some fixes for the console release.

 

[thesheeep]

The game was never promised to be on Steam at release, or was it?

It has been available as an upcoming title on Steam since it was announced, it's the third most wishlisted game on Steam right now.
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?filter=popularwishlist

In that case: Dick move.

Steam is a monopolistic parasite that takes 30% of every sale, yet you swear to defend it to your last torrent. Fucking sheep.

Bribing publishers for exclusivity deals is not opposing monopoly though. A more customer friendly approach would have been offering the game 5-10% discount over Steam that would only effect Epic's cut. Thats the way to "win" customers over an established monopol, not turning PC-Gaming into a console exclusivity shithole.

Honestly, that would never work.
Doubt anyone would use a new store if they gained a 5-10% cut. People that wait for sales wait for real sales (25% or more).
Maybe, if one is very optimistic, I could see it work if EGS was on-par with Steam feature-wise (it isn't, IMO they started this whole thing a year too early) AND the games were cheaper to begin with (taking into account the lower cut).

But even then, you know what wouldn't just give a chance to work? Exclusivity...
I doubt anyone likes it, but so far nobody came up with a better plan, either. At least none that was not "hopelessly optimistic".

 

[Reinhardt]

Epic who ranted for YEARS about how exclusives are bad and harming gaming industry

When Gaben alone was fighting tooth and nail for pc gaming survival, Epic happily abandoned sinking ship and gobbled Microsoft dick for exclusive deal on xbox. Exclusivity is the only thing they know.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I can kinda understand where they are coming from. They never planned to have a store. Then they got lucky, but realized that won't work forever. But if they got the Fortnite audience to continually buy from them, that would be massive. So placeholder store with predatory market penetration. I would have done the same in their position

Buying developers to place their games on their store won't work forever. Sooner or later they'll have to ad functionality so now they are living on a borrowed time. Outer Worlds looks and feels like New Vegas\Skyrim and we all know what that means - mods. Epic store have next to no mod integration. Bethesda's cancerous desire to lock mods to their own software proved to be disastrous.
Should Epic Store fail to add "workshop" analog Outer Worlds will suffer greatly

It looks more like Borderlands and modern shooters. Not many for those. Bethesda games get a lot of mods because ever since Morrowind they are extremely mod-friendly. Their editor is included with the base game, easy to use and their games have mod-loader on release. I sincerely doubt that Outer Worlds will be as mod-friendly as Bethesda games.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I can kinda understand where they are coming from. They never planned to have a store. Then they got lucky, but realized that won't work forever. But if they got the Fortnite audience to continually buy from them, that would be massive. So placeholder store with predatory market penetration. I would have done the same in their position

Buying developers to place their games on their store won't work forever. Sooner or later they'll have to ad functionality so now they are living on a borrowed time. Outer Worlds looks and feels like New Vegas\Skyrim and we all know what that means - mods. Epic store have next to no mod integration. Bethesda's cancerous desire to lock mods to their own software proved to be disastrous.
Should Epic Store fail to add "workshop" analog Outer Worlds will suffer greatly

It looks more like Borderlands and modern shooters. Not many for those. Bethesda games get a lot of mods because ever since Morrowind they are extremely mod-friendly. Their editor is included with the base game, easy to use and their games have mod-loader on release. I sincerely doubt that Outer Worlds will be as mod-friendly as Bethesda games.

They also get a lot of mods because the base games are unfinished, buggy, and unoptimized.

 

[Reinhardt]

I can kinda understand where they are coming from. They never planned to have a store. Then they got lucky, but realized that won't work forever. But if they got the Fortnite audience to continually buy from them, that would be massive. So placeholder store with predatory market penetration. I would have done the same in their position

Buying developers to place their games on their store won't work forever. Sooner or later they'll have to ad functionality so now they are living on a borrowed time. Outer Worlds looks and feels like New Vegas\Skyrim and we all know what that means - mods. Epic store have next to no mod integration. Bethesda's cancerous desire to lock mods to their own software proved to be disastrous.
Should Epic Store fail to add "workshop" analog Outer Worlds will suffer greatly

It looks more like Borderlands and modern shooters. Not many for those. Bethesda games get a lot of mods because ever since Morrowind they are extremely mod-friendly. Their editor is included with the base game, easy to use and their games have mod-loader on release. I sincerely doubt that Outer Worlds will be as mod-friendly as Bethesda games.

They also get a lot of mods because the base games are unfinished, buggy, and unoptimized.

You mean like almost every Obsidian game in history?

 

[PrettyDeadman]

You don't say. Now if you were to guess, what % of the gaming market Epic has?

https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-says-m...pic-store-than-metro-last-light-did-on-steam/

I'd call this a HUGE fail. Metro Last Light only sold ~20.000 copies on steam (according to steamspy). 50.000 copies is a joke. Their last games on steam Metro Last Light Redux and Metro 2033 Redux both sold between 2 million and 5 million copies each. So far (according to the article) Epic sales was 1% of steam sales. LOL. Is Epic really going to compensate them MILLIONS of sales they lost because of exclusivity contract?
POE2 sold like 500 000 copies of steam. 1% of it is 5000 copies. Is this the result Obsidian wants?

 

[Jarpie]

Even so, a near-monopoly like Steam is very bad. Breaking up the market between several individually nasty services is less bad. Studios setting up a cooperative to distribute games, with profits feeding back directly to them would be better. Collectivising everything would be best.

Just one word for you: Valio. That turned out so well for the dairy farmers. You are a fucking naive dimwit if you think that they wouldn't screw over the others the first fucking chance they'd get. All commies are so fucking naive about the real human nature.

 

[soulburner]

I wouldn't mind Epic Store exclusives if they were only a few days long, maybe even up to a few weeks, but not a whole year... Valve will probably have to adjust their pricing model on Steam to remain competetive, so maybe some good will come out of this in the end.

 

[True Ukrainian]

You don't say. Now if you were to guess, what % of the gaming market Epic has?

https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-says-m...pic-store-than-metro-last-light-did-on-steam/

I'd call this a HUGE fail. Metro Last Light only sold ~20.000 copies on steam (according to steamspy). 50.000 copies is a joke. Their last games on steam Metro Last Light Redux and Metro 2033 Redux both sold between 2 million and 5 million copies each. So far (according to the article) Epic sales was 1% of steam sales. LOL. Is Epic really going to compensate them MILLIONS of sales they lost because of exclusivity contract?
POE2 sold like 500 000 copies of steam. 1% of it is 5000 copies. Is this the result Obsidian wants?

Obsidian wants the advance from Epic. It has already been explained in another thread that even if an exclusive on the Epic store bombs, Epic would still make back the money in 2 to 3 years. The dev also would not care about how the game sells because the deal with Epic means a certain level of income from the game, effectively a guaranteed payday for the dev instead of the need to roll the dice on Steam.

Epic is apparently offering enough money for a mid sized studio to stay afloat for the next few years. That is more than enough money for those studios to give Steam the finger.

 

[Drakron]

I wouldn't mind Epic Store exclusives if they were only a few days long, maybe even up to a few weeks, but not a whole year... Valve will probably have to adjust their pricing model on Steam to remain competetive, so maybe some good will come out of this in the end.

I dont understand why people keep going over this, Valve changing that would change nothing.

What Epic is doing is offering "assured sales" meaning they are telling publishers that they will meet a projected line in return for a exclusivity deal, the only way for Valve to "counter" that would be offering the same deals but this hurts customers because that particular bucket is given to them, exclusivity means no price competition in relation to digital stores as the customer will be expected to carry out the deal cost.

This is not capitalism, its COMMUNISM .

 

[Jimmious]

That's one of the stupidest statements in here and that's not an easy thing to accomplish, kudos

 

[PrettyDeadman]

That's one of the stupidest statements in here and that's not an easy thing to accomplish, kudos

Are you a communist?

 

[Thonius]

Member Origin and Uplay?

 

[Tacgnol]

What Epic is doing is offering "assured sales" meaning they are telling publishers that they will meet a projected line in return for a exclusivity deal, the only way for Valve to "counter" that would be offering the same deals but this hurts customers because that particular bucket is given to them, exclusivity means no price competition in relation to digital stores as the customer will be expected to carry out the deal cost.

This is the bigger reason for all these exclusives. Epic is basically giving devs free money in return for hosting their game on EGS.

This isn't a longterm sustainable model, but I'm guessing Tenc Epic is banking on having a sustainable base by this point.

I predict the 12% cut increasing to at least 15% once they've hooked people in, followed by an excuse about the cost of maintaining the platform.

 

[jf8350143]

What Epic is doing is offering "assured sales" meaning they are telling publishers that they will meet a projected line in return for a exclusivity deal, the only way for Valve to "counter" that would be offering the same deals but this hurts customers because that particular bucket is given to them, exclusivity means no price competition in relation to digital stores as the customer will be expected to carry out the deal cost.

This is the bigger reason for all these exclusives. Epic is basically giving devs free money in return for hosting their game on EGS.

This isn't a longterm sustainable model, but I'm guessing Tenc Epic is banking on having a sustainable base by this point.

I predict the 12% cut increasing to at least 15% once they've hooked people in, followed by an excuse about the cost of maintaining the platform.

My bet is they will increase the price of the game, or charge other stupid kind of fees. They will try to milk the monye from consumers instead of publishers.

 

[Prime Junta]

This is not capitalism, its COMMUNISM

no

 

[Reinhardt]

My bet is they will increase the price of the game

Why you guys don't want to pay more to support scammers and backstabbing developers?

 

[Drakron]

That's one of the stupidest statements in here and that's not an easy thing to accomplish, kudos

Capitalism is entirely opposed to monopolies, Communism is monopolies.

What the market does is any game success and failures is entirely up to the consumer base, what Epic Store does is offering "assured sales" meaning the "success" of the game is subsidized by every other game on the store or to be blunt, Fortnight microtransactions that are redistributed among the Epic Store titles.

In short, the way the exclusivity deals are being made is the same as "assured sales" and that is redistribution of capital and that is communism.

 

[Yosharian]

Member Origin and Uplay?

Both were awful, and Uplay was buggy as fuck.

That's not to say there weren't decent games on there, though.

 

[Wesp5]

But if they got the Fortnite audience to continually buy from them, that would be massive.

Hm, this really reminds me of the beginning of Steam. It seems most people have forgotten or are too young, but Valve did exactly the same at the time: If you wanted to play the most popular MP game, Counter-Strike, you needed to install Steam. Also claiming no Steam exclusivety is a joke, all Valve games were always Steam exclusive! Also most PC games were before Origin, Uplay and GOG appeared. I have retail games on DVD who need Steam to run! Steam still sells game that won't run on modern PCs unless you use third party software like my Bloodlines patch because Valve just don't care. They bloated their store with shitty Early Access, Greenlight and Steam Direct games and even tried to monetize mods, because Valve's greed is endless. Maybe the Epic store has issues right now, but it's just a few weeks old. They will be fixed and after that I'll say, the more competion to Steam the better!

 

[Infinitron]

Member Origin and Uplay?

Both were awful, and Uplay was buggy as fuck.

That's not to say there weren't decent games on there, though.

Why are you using the past tense? Both Origin and Uplay are alive and don't appear to be going anywhere.

The Flight From Steam(tm) didn't start with Epic. It was an inevitability once publishers finally realized that PC gaming wasn't a sideshow and that there was as much money in it as there is in consoles.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

That's one of the stupidest statements in here and that's not an easy thing to accomplish, kudos

Capitalism is entirely opposed to monopolies

Now, this is completely untrue. Monopolisation is the natural end result of capitalism. Democratic governments have to implenet a number of invasive measures to ensure that more successful companies won't destroy all of their competitors or use their competetive advantage to establish unbearable conditions for the consumers and employees.

 

[Flou]

Just one word for you: Valio. That turned out so well for the dairy farmers. You are a fucking naive dimwit if you think that they wouldn't screw over the others the first fucking chance they'd get. All commies are so fucking naive about the real human nature.

Didn't Valio work just fine for the longest time, but eventually the farmers who started it got sidelined and human greed took over and farmers paid the price when Valio had a monopoly position in the dairy business.