The Walking Dead: The Final Season Is Now an Epic Store Exclusive

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
Epic has nabbed another exclusive for its recently launched storefront: the company joined Skybound Games this week to announce that The Walking Dead: The Final Season would be “on PC exclusively to the Epic Games store for all future purchases.” Fans who managed to purchase the season on Steam or GOG will receive the final two episodes from those stores as promised, but going forward, the only option is Epic.

“The team at Epic owns a major chapter in the history of the game industry. We’re excited to work together on their latest transformative event with the launch of the Epic Games Store. Epic stepped up to the plate immediately to work with us in order to bring the original team back together and ensure fans will receive the completed season of TELLTALE’S THE WALKING DEAD: THE FINAL SEASON,” said President of Interactive Dan Murray and Skybound Games CEO Ian Howe in a joint-statement.
 
Interesting, nice to see some support to see the game get finished. I'm one of the unfortunates who bought the season 3 pass. It's a shame the Telltale walking dead series never really evolved after the first season mechanics. I liked the second season but like the show its been all down hill. It's shame to have to tell people to avoid everything but the comic and maybe the first telltale season. Walking Dead is one of those things that maybe just will never totally work outside of the source material.
 
I love this series. And all the other Telltale games. It really is too bad for the gaming community that this studio closed down. Hopefully someone will pick up where they left off on the other series as well.
 
I'm really getting sick of this whole exclusive game client crap. Starting to push me back to piracy.

STEAM gave so many games so much more sales and profit because it was first to market and they actually do a really good job with customer service and quality of the platform. Now some are jumping ship because they're greedy.

Well... 1, I game on Linux and STEAM is (almost) the only game delivery service that works fully on Linux and 2, I don't want fifty fucking store front applications FFS.
 
Stopped watching TWD at season 4 near the last 2 episodes. Got tired of waiting, waiting....
 
Epic can blow it out there ass. How many thousands has any gamer put into Steam? Steam was ahead of them all and I don't feel like changing game library companies. Epic quit Unreal series in general. I quit Epic. And fuck Fortnite or whatever the shit is. I hope all the dance move lawsuit have merit and they lose a ton of money. Tim "Weenie" Sweeney is a corporate sellout bitch. Rich one, but still T.W.A.T.
 
I have no interest in this series, but IMHO any company that dabbles in exclusives deserves to be boycotted.
And how are they supposed to win marketshare otherwise? Lazy people will keep buying from Steam and will support the monopoly. They have to offer plenty of exclusives and free offers and bundles and everything they can to get a foothold in this marketplace.
 
And how are they supposed to win marketshare otherwise? Lazy people will keep buying from Steam and will support the monopoly. They have to offer plenty of exclusives and free offers and bundles and everything they can to get a foothold in this marketplace.
By making a better client. Against Steam it really shouldn't be that hard. All the other clients out there do something better than Steam already, but none of them have put in the effort to give us the whole package. Either way, I'd keep away from any new storefront until they've been put through the legal ringer. We already know that they have several issues with the GDPR.
 
Why cant all these store fronts just sell keys that we can claim on where ever we want? I'm all for competition but all these exclusives are getting old. Its going to get to the point where every company has their own launcher and every time you want to play a different game you have to go to a different program.
 
dick move by skybound. also hearing it wont end up on google play, bt on something epic is working on for android. tencent is baaaad for gaming
 
Why cant all these store fronts just sell keys that we can claim on where ever we want? I'm all for competition but all these exclusives are getting old. Its going to get to the point where every company has their own launcher and every time you want to play a different game you have to go to a different program.

Then we would land up with one mega store selling everything as everyone else would get crushed out and left with system where the seller of the keys has the ability to put the screws to the developers. I get it..you only want a system that benefits you...fuck everyone else. It is amazing how people endorse this until they are the ones on the wrong side of the stuck.
 
And how are they supposed to win marketshare otherwise? Lazy people will keep buying from Steam and will support the monopoly. They have to offer plenty of exclusives and free offers and bundles and everything they can to get a foothold in this marketplace.

If they need these kinds of coercive tricks to gain market share then they aren't writing a good client.

Store fronts and clients should be competing on their own merits. How good are the clients, how easy is it to find the title you want, wjat id the price, how do the launchers and update managers work once the title is bought.

Store exclusives are just plain evil. I should be anledning to buy absolutely every title I want without having more than one client installed.
 
S1 TWD was their flash in the pan moment. It was great, and should have ended on that. There's a reason the studio went to the crashing end it has.
 
Yet another site that will demand an account setup with another password to remember and information to be taken when their database gets stolen. If I had any interest in the product.
 
And how are they supposed to win marketshare otherwise? Lazy people will keep buying from Steam and will support the monopoly. They have to offer plenty of exclusives and free offers and bundles and everything they can to get a foothold in this marketplace.
That's their problem. But exclusives are toxic and won't go over the same way as they do on consoles - they're polarizing on PC and will just turn a lot of people off and get the Epic store boycotted. This is one of the main reasons I boycott the windows 10 store - Microsoft insisting on keeping the few titles they have off other stores.

And its pretty silly to call Steam a monopoly when two dozen other stores already exist. Might want to re-check the definition.

Epic store is going to fail if they think that throwing FortNite profits around at rinky dink developers to keep titles off of Steam is going to get gamers interested. They simply have to do the hard work of innovating and doing everything else better than Steam does things now - better client, cheaper games, whatever. That's their problem to figure out.
 
And how are they supposed to win marketshare otherwise? Lazy people will keep buying from Steam and will support the monopoly. They have to offer plenty of exclusives and free offers and bundles and everything they can to get a foothold in this marketplace.

You're going at this from the wrong perspective.
Large AAA publishers and devs care mostly about revenue, if the number of sales doesn't deviate much Epic will win simply by taking a smaller cut.

Once you're talking millions in net sales the choice of store becomes a simple math exercise.
And let's face it, a lot of people will buy high profile games off any store, a few lost sales won't matter if you save 20% total.
 
Steam only has themselves to blame.

Virtually no support, archaic policies, and not listening to the customer.
 
And how are they supposed to win marketshare otherwise? Lazy people will keep buying from Steam and will support the monopoly. They have to offer plenty of exclusives and free offers and bundles and everything they can to get a foothold in this marketplace.

I wouldn’t call it lazy, more like people might be annoyed running 5x launchers, or have 15 years and thousands of dollars worth of games purchased through a platform.

Either way, will need to plan the next build with 64Gb of ram to support the 10+ options and chrome.
 
A lot of crying here over a client exclusive. There's likely literally hundreds if not thousands of games that are de facto Steam exclusive as it is. This isn't the same thing as a platform exclusive on a console, where you literally have to go buy redundant hardware to play the game. You just use a different launcher, not exactly the end of the world. It's just a different client and honestly it's the smart move for trying to claim marketshare.

A lot of people forget Steam LAUNCHED with exclusive games. How did that turn out for them?
 
A lot of crying here over a client exclusive. There's likely literally hundreds if not thousands of games that are de facto Steam exclusive as it is. This isn't the same thing as a platform exclusive on a console, where you literally have to go buy redundant hardware to play the game. You just use a different launcher, not exactly the end of the world. It's just a different client and honestly it's the smart move for trying to claim marketshare.

A lot of people forget Steam LAUNCHED with exclusive games. How did that turn out for them?
I totally get why they are doing exclusives but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I don't like that Steam does exclusives either but that is my platform of choice so its a little easier to stomach. Sure using a different launcher isn't the end of the world and I already use a few different ones. The way we are headed though, each publisher/developer is going to have their own launcher soon with only their games on their launcher. I feel like its going to get to the point were every time I want to play a different game I have to go to a different launcher. One of the benefits to a program like Steam is having all your games available in one place.

It would be nice if there was a way for them to all have their own stores but have the keys redeemable on whatever platform you choose to use but I don't know if that even feasible and I doubt it will ever happen.
 
A lot of crying here over a client exclusive. There's likely literally hundreds if not thousands of games that are de facto Steam exclusive as it is. This isn't the same thing as a platform exclusive on a console, where you literally have to go buy redundant hardware to play the game. You just use a different launcher, not exactly the end of the world. It's just a different client and honestly it's the smart move for trying to claim marketshare.

A lot of people forget Steam LAUNCHED with exclusive games. How did that turn out for them?
Big difference between a publisher creating their own firstparty exclusives for their store, and paying off other developers to keep their titles off other stores - the latter is what EPIC and Microsoft have engaged in, something Valve has never done.

I have no problem with Epic having FortNite exclusively on their store, or Microsoft having Halo/Forza/GoW, or Valve having HL/Portal/L4D, but when someone starts paying third parties NOT to sell a game elsewhere as Epic has been doing, I boycott that store and publisher.
 
Last edited:
So when it's finally all said and done, with they end up as "The Really Dead Dead" 'cause really that's all I give a fuck about, I'm so sick of zombie this, zombie that, geez. :D
 
Whats not to like about a cute girl with a big blade. :whistle:

BYW i never read any walking dead comics, watched the TV series or movies if they made one, and i am amazed why my brain can crank out so much fact ( i think ) about something that have no interest of mine.
 
I totally get why they are doing exclusives but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I don't like that Steam does exclusives either but that is my platform of choice so its a little easier to stomach. Sure using a different launcher isn't the end of the world and I already use a few different ones. The way we are headed though, each publisher/developer is going to have their own launcher soon with only their games on their launcher. I feel like its going to get to the point were every time I want to play a different game I have to go to a different launcher. One of the benefits to a program like Steam is having all your games available in one place.

It would be nice if there was a way for them to all have their own stores but have the keys redeemable on whatever platform you choose to use but I don't know if that even feasible and I doubt it will ever happen.
I guess I feel like we're already there and if one is emerging with a split more favorable to the developer, all the better. The thing is, you really don't want a monopoly, no matter convenient it is. It makes things ripe for abuse in the future. The only way it could work the way you describe it is to either have a monopoly so ALL PC gaming is under Valve, or else have a neutral 3rd party system that doesn't profit off favoring one company over another. Since the latter has a snowball's chance in hell, fragmentation is likely the only way for now.

Big difference between a publisher creating their own firstparty exclusives for their store, and paying off other developers to keep their titles off other stores - the latter is what EPIC and Microsoft have engaged in, something Valve has never done.

I have no problem with Epic having FortNite exclusively on their store, or Microsoft having Halo/Forza/GoW, or Valve having HL/Portal/L4D, but when someone starts paying third parties NOT to sell a game elsewhere as Epic has been doing, I boycott that store and publisher.
I get where you're coming from, but I think you're not looking at the larger picture. This is the only way to break out of the loop. Steam has a de facto monopoly on 3rd party PC games and that's not going to be broken playing on equal footing. Of course it makes sense for Epic to be competitive, but look at it from the developer standpoint too:

Say you have a game people want. If you sell it on Epic store AND Steam, Steam gets all the attention, already has the playerbase, the entrenchment, so it gets the lion's share of the sales. So Epic will maybe get 10% of the sales with Steam getting the rest. The thing is, Epic only takes 12% of the cut, while Steam takes 30%. Since Steam has all the entrenchment advantages, it will be the majority of sales and not a damn thing changes. Even though Epic is the better deal per company, they won't get the attention because everybody is buying it on Steam because that's what they're used to. But then, if you make it EXCLUSIVE, then people have to buy it through Epic. They'll still get less sales than Steam, but not such a dramatic difference. The more publishers agree to it, the larger it grows, the more it makes the platform attractive for non-exclusive developers, because they can realistically choose to forego Steam once the competitor becomes big enough.

Without exclusives, it's an endless chicken and egg loop where 30% cut remains the standard and Steam continues as a de facto monopoly. Another way to look at it: you're asking everyone to play fair while one side is leveraging a massive advantage. An analogy would be a flat tax rate. 20% of income is trivial to one person, while it leaves another one homeless. Sure, it's all "fair" in it takes the same percentage, but it doesn't take into account the other factors already at play. Equal free market rules don't work when one side has monopoly influence.
 
Screw Tencent. Soon as I learned Tencent had any hand in Epic I immediately uninstalled anything from Epic. I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell anyone who trusts a Tencent related company to not screw them over
 
Back
Top