Game News The Outer Worlds to launch on the Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store, only coming to Steam in 2020

[Goral]

I really wanted their game to succeed and buy at least one copy but now I'll just download it on IRC. I just hope that The New World/Colony Ship won't go the same route because I would pirate them too in such case. This:

I really wouldn't want their game to fare worse than PoE or some other Fallout 3.

becomes irrelevant now.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

I wonder if Chris Avellone is going to twitter about this.

:D

 

[HoboForEternity]

 

[HoboForEternity]

i dunno i just stole it from reddit

 

[Ismaul]

Don't get me wrong, I think it sucks too. I just expected people to be more blase about it.

It's bad for us customers. If it succeeds, Epic will be one of many to follow. Other platforms are likely to retaliate with exclusives of their own to attract subscribers. It might even become the new standard. So better denounce it / not support it right away, no?

 

[hexer]

In other news, the Sinking City (along with Detroit Become Human, Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls) also became an Epic Store exclusive


https://techraptor.net/content/the-sinking-city-epic-game-store-exclusive

 

[flushfire]

Whatever. I don't really care what platform I get games on.

Me neither. But this is the Epic that got one of the e-mails I use for testing games compromised.

That e-mail is 20+ years old iirc. I use it for extremely unsecure shit like porn forums or trial software registration. In those 20 years of using it on dirty shit, it never got locked and if someone got access by using the correct password I was never aware of it. Enter Fortnite. I had to make an account to download the installer. Never actually played. Some time later I got security alerts on that e-mail, or I got locked out I no longer remember what happened exactly that made me look up what was happening. Found out it was a massive hacking of Fortnite accounts.

20+ years of using it on extremely unsecure registrations, never got locked out of it once. Only when I registered a Fortnite account. I'd sooner mine for fitgirl than give Epic cc information.

 

[Van-d-all]

That's it. Fuck it. I didn't bend to Epic over Satisfactory & Hades and I won't bend for this.

 

[MurkyShadow]

Epic Excloosivity is a great deal for people with unsteady impulse control like myself.
One year of patches, impressions or seeing if the studio even still exists, before buying.
Without it popping up on Steam and your friend-list. You could even work on your
backlog a bit. Ah, who am I kidding, I'll be doing another run in Underrail and
Age of Decadence. As soon as I'm done with Battle Brothers. Or maybe I
can fit one more go of Expedtions Vikings in between...

Well, nothing is lost in the end.

 

[HoboForEternity]

at the very least we will let the fornitelets beta test games for us.

 

[Tao]

Spoiler

 

[Ruzen]

The most saddening news for me was the sinking city switches the exclusive route too.

There is no value for me to invest in many different stores. I'm really pleased with the current service provided by Steam. Communication between devs is better, the social aspect is better and I can even sell items (I roughly sold 500$ PUBG items in 270 hours of playtime)!
These publisher deals will be the end of PC era I tell you and I'm not talking about in perspective of some "angry boi". The more you thin the community the less value you get out of the games in the long run. Look at the battlefield series as an example. Starwars Battlefront 2 servers are almost empty, BF1, BF5 servers are almost empty! When you look at the Rainbow6's success it was because of the Steam. When you put your game into a platform where average concurrent steam users are 10 million, people will carry your game.

These Epic exclusive deals are initially good for Single Player games; you don't need constant support from the community or people who fill the servers BUT as the time passes and Epic will offer less money but Publishers will continue to pick that early cash. Thus, more copy paste games will be wanted from publishers just to get more of that daddy Epic cash.

The next 5 10 years will be like the 2000s where the PC market stagnate itself.

 

[Infinitron]

It's bad for us customers. If it succeeds, Epic will be one of many to follow. Other platforms are likely to retaliate with exclusives of their own to attract subscribers. It might even become the new standard. So better denounce it / not support it right away, no?

I think this has already happened. In a way it's Epic who are the one who followed after major publishers already started to decamp from Steam to their own platforms.

I wonder if Chris Avellone is going to twitter about this.

:D

It's possible that "Obsidian management" could have taken a stand to prevent this from happening, but this was the decision of the publisher who Chris told us had better instincts than Obsidian management last year: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...rarchies-and-more.121588/page-57#post-5593685

 

[Elwro]

PS4 purchase for me, then.

 

[Wysardry]

What a disaster. I mean, hardly anyone has the Epic launcher installed anyway, as so few people play Fortnite or use UE4, right?

 

[Ruzen]

What a disaster. I mean, hardly anyone has the Epic launcher installed anyway, as so few people play Fortnite or use UE4, right?

Let's not compare the community differences between Steam (where daily 33 Millions of people comes and mostly who have jobs who can spend money on things) between a launcher which become popular making a F2P game whose users are mostly these


If you think your game can sell well you put on Steam. Don't? Let daddy Epic pay you. Meanwhile we(players), fewer patches will come because of unpopularity and service quality.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I guess it won't be a day one purchase for me. But that's for the better since I will get the game + all DLC in 2020 instead of incomplete game 2019.

 

[Bohr]

As you can see from the replies, many people are upset about this. Patrice Desilets' Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, another Private Division title, was also announced as an Epic-exclusive at the keynote, so it appears to be a publisher decision. If you're an Epic-hater at least you've got the Microsoft Store option, although that means dealing with UWP or whatever it's called.

Although Ancestors is a true Epic exclusive while Outer World is also available in the MS store, so that suggests at least an element of joint decision making I guess - would assume one gets more Epic cash for true exclusives than sharing with another store?

 

[Ainamacar]

As you can see from the replies, many people are upset about this. Patrice Desilets' Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, another Private Division title, was also announced as an Epic-exclusive at the keynote, so it appears to be a publisher decision. If you're an Epic-hater at least you've got the Microsoft Store option, although that means dealing with UWP or whatever it's called.

Although Ancestors is a true Epic exclusive while Outer World is also available in the MS store, so that suggests at least an element of joint decision making I guess - would assume one gets more Epic cash for true exclusives than sharing with another store?

My guess is that when Microsoft purchased Obsidian they made a deal with Take-Two to guarantee The Outer Worlds would (non-exclusively) launch on the Microsoft Store. Then, when Epic came to Take-Two with FortniteBux the latter pointed out they were contractually obligated to release it on the Microsoft Store. Epic said "Whatever, it's not Steam" and that was that, although perhaps they unsweetened the deal a bit too.

The irony here is that Microsoft probably benefits from all this, in that some people who would normally just get it on Steam at release instead get it on the Microsoft Store as a "screw you" to Epic. Not a lot of people, perhaps, but some.

 

[Reader]

Well, at least they will avoid professional Steam reviews

 

[ShaggyMoose]

I don't give a fuck about multiplayer and my backlog can wait 5+ years before I need to buy another game. I am sure this is a problem for someone...

 

[Jasede]

There's so many intelligent people and yet nobody at TakeTwo realized that putting your game in Chinese hands is dangerous?

The Epic Store insurance deal is appealing - if you have no confidence in your game. Why would you take it unless you expect your game to not sell?

The only thing Obsidian can do right now is pull out of the contract. People would root for them then.


My fear is that the Epic Store will be a big success. How you ask? Simple. Each game you buy unlocks unique Fortnite skins and dances you can't get any other way. Yes, the billions of Fortnite kids will buy 70 dollar skins and dances, and get their parents to pay.

Millions of copies sold and unplayed...

 

[DavidBVal]

On one hand, competition is a great thing (and inevitable) in a fast-moving business like this. Steam's "set-in-stone" 30% cut sounds excessive and a drag for indies. It definitely needs to go down, and it will be a positive thing for everyone when it does (including Steam in the long term).

However here there's something else at work, almost certainly coming from Microsoft. if Valve's cut was the big problem here, it'd be as easy as raising the selling price at Steam so their profit remains constant, and letting the free market sort it out; storefronts with higher fees would have to provide excellent service to players to convince them to stay loyal, or they'd need to eventually reduce their fees. But a studio denying the favorite platform of choice for 95% of their potential players means the decisions are being made by suits following corporate strategy, and giving a shit about everything else.

my backlog can wait 5+ years before I need to buy another game. I am sure this is a problem for someone...

Same here; I'm guessing many old-school RPG lovers are not 16yo kids skipping high-school, but reasonably busy people that can wait a couple years to play a game, unless it's something truly exceptional that generates real hype.

 

[Jasede]

Kingmaker was the last game that made me play it obsessively while working. Very rare for a game to do that. Let alone an RPG these days.

 

[Elwro]

I'm surprised more people here aren't considering the disc console versions. If you don't like the game you can resell it since the second-hand market for consoles still very much exists. And I for one refuse to install another crappy piece of software and register another account at some crappy company just to play a game.