After dealing with the atrocity that is Epic support, this isn't good. Took almost a month and a ton of pleading to even get a response from Epic on a stolen account and tons of searches on Google show plenty of other people too that are completely ignored by Epic support. I thought Valve was bad, but Epic takes the cake on this one.
 
I've not. The fact that he sold out to the Chinese and restructured Epic to specifically focus on the worst video game revenue model so far created puts him on my shit list. The constant scaremongering of Windows he does also doesn't help his case.

Tencent owns a 40% stake in Epic, while Sweeney or Epic or whatever hold the other 60%. So, Epic is still their own boss - just with a lot more money.

"Tencent Holdings has the right to nominate directors to the board of Epic Games and thus counts as an associate of the Group. However, Sweeney stated that Tencent otherwise has very little control on the creative output of Epic Games. Mark Rein considered the partial acquisition by Tencent as the start of "Epic 4.0", the fourth major iteration of the company, allowing the company to be more agile in the gaming marketplace."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games#Games_as_a_Service_and_Tencent_acquisition_(2012–present)


Sweeney's advocacy against Windows 10's UWP and Microsoft's monopolistic practices is a positive thing, IMO.
 
I agree with this sentiment, but I don't think we've ever had someone as big as Epic try to make a well-rounded, competitive marketplace. It sounds like they want to accept any developers on their platform, instead of just games owned by their company (like Origin and Uplay), and thanks to Fortnite, they have an absolutely massive existing customer base that will see this new marketplace every time they go to launch their favorite game. I, too, have been disappointed by the "competition" that people like EA and GoG have offered, but I think if anyone has a chance, someone already as big as Epic is does. Let's just hope they use their power responsibly. If they do this as well as they've done Fortnite BR, then we, the consumers, are in for a good ride.

The amount of money they have and their customer base only tells me that they'll be somewhat successful; not that they'll improve the marketplace. I'll believe that it's helped if I see the normal price for games being lower than Steam. Steam just announced that they were lowering the store fee for popular games but does anyone think that it will improve anything for consumers? I can almost guarantee that we'll not see any changes. For AAA games it's still going to be a launcher for another launcher. It's great that indie studios will get more of a cut but I don't feel that that will translate into lower prices or better games for us.
 
Last edited:
The amount of money they have and their customer base only tells me that they'll be somewhat successful; not that they'll improve the marketplace. I'll believe that it's helped if I see the normal price for games being lower than Steam. Steam just announced that they were lowering the store fee for popular games but does anyone think that it will improve anything for consumers? I can almost guarantee that we'll not see any changes. For AAA games it's still going to be a launcher for another launcher. It's great that indie studios will get more of a cut but I don't feel that that will translate into lower prices or better games for us.

You're right on every count. Epic will need to offer some sort of hook to pull people away from Steam and onto their launcher. They can't rely on people being tired of Steam for move customers over. I'm tired of Steam, but I won't change easily because it's far too convenient and easy to have everything in one place.
My hope is that Epic knows this and has a plan to deal with it. As I said before, if Fortnite BR is any indicator, they'll keep a good eye out and come up with something that works for us and them.
 
The competition will be healthy for devs I believe. The high costs really do hurt indie and upcoming devs so I do think it will help them as there are lots of gems out there and great ideas that people can't afford to make and sell.What might not be good as we go down this road is new pc gamers. With console you just have B&M stores for physical copies, or keys that you redeem on the console. But you have just one library. WIth pc you have multiple libraries through different distribution platforms which I could as something to be confused about.

I do also see that opportunity of a library manager that could hide the different stores from the end user and would search for the best price. (i know there is google). In the end the easier it is to buy and play the games you want is best for the pc gaming platform as a whole. Maybe epic will be a great addition.

My ultimate worry is what if one of these stores starves out another and we lose whole libraries of games. I know as digital we don't 'own' anything but still. I always picture gas stations popping up next to eachother and then one eventually losing the battle and goes under.

There is and then you can check the lowest current price and history (this has been off and on over the past few months).

https://isthereanydeal.com/
 
Makes you wonder what happened to Source 2. I recall Valve claiming they would make a modern game engine, 100% free. They could have taken the fight to Epic, but now Epic has taken the fight to Valve.

I think this may be a classic case of a company simply faltering on their own for not keeping up. Valve haven't put out a good game in a long time and they're quickly loosing relevance in digital distribution. Most of their off the wall technology projects have been flops.
 
I have Origin and now steam too, i am torn as to what that make me feel like.
But i think i am happy no one seem to make games i would fancy, ATM i have one game installed and i think thats how it will remain for the foreseeable future.
 
Except where's the revenue in creating such a thing. It would have to be advertising based revenue and we all love that, of course.

When Steam first came out I was very very active on SPUF (Their forums)
When they closed down I went from primarily over there to primarily here.

Kyle already has the community, and if people use the program, they'll visit here. More views here = more ad clicks = more revenue.
 
Isn't that the vast majority of things on the internet though?

That's porn.

The remaining 30% is memes, cat videos, and whining.

As for this, we'll see what happens. I don't even know how many epic games there are.
 
I’m on board for some competition, especially if it makes price drops quicker and sales more often!

What’s the difference between managing a handful of game launchers and managing every single game individually through their own desktop icons like in the old days? I added the battle.net games that I play to Steam as well as a few other randoms like Tarkov just to keep my desktop less cluttered. Anything I can’t manually add to steam I have other ways to access, but I’ve never found it to be an unburdonable inconvenience to launch them through their own launchers.
Well most launchers allow you to put an icon for the game directly on your desktop. So you can just think of origin/steam/uplay as the installer. You don't even see it if it's not on autostart and you start your games by clicking on the icons. So it's not like with streaming where you're stuck with a proprietary crappy player interface for every service.
 
That kind of environment actually encouraged me to go out and buy a bunch of keys for FO76. I just don't trust the average gamer's opinion anymore. Way too much whining at every little thing. At least 7 of us now having a blast together every day.

There are certain reasons I'd whine. Companies coming out with defective hardware that cost a fortune to buy is one. This, I can understand to a point. Competition is good, but a few large places do lower prices overall. Think lots of mom and pop stores vs Walmart. Walmart can provide lower prices because they can buy in bulk. I look at things like Blizzard games, or Call of Duty. You seldom ever see sales for them until years after the games are defunct. But a place like Steam can sort of enforce their will against indie developers to have 80% sales just a few months after those games were released.

As far as gamer reviews, yeah, I'm with you. I don't trust user reviews anymore. Maybe because I'm just getting older, and don't really understand these new popular games.
 
I didn't say it was trash, though I guess comparing it to origin could be considered the same. Let's just say I hope it doesn't turn into another origin.

Origin works very well. I have had less problems with it than with Steam in the past. Both are solid applications though.
 
As someone who has worked for Epic, I can say that they are one of the most developer-focused companies out there. They actually care about the industry and use money to make games, not the other way around.
Bingo!
 
As someone who has worked for Epic, I can say that they are one of the most developer-focused companies out there. They actually care about the industry and use money to make games, not the other way around.
It's awesome to hear a former employee say as much! I very rarely see positive feedback from former employees of most major gaming companies. Might have to give the Epic launcher a little more love than I originally planned to.
 
As someone who has worked for Epic, I can say that they are one of the most developer-focused companies out there. They actually care about the industry and use money to make games, not the other way around.

Now they just need to make a gamer I would like to play. I always preferred id games to Epics' shame the id as we knew it is gone but their games are still good.
 
If the savings are passed onto the customer, that sounds good to me.

I don't play fortnite, any comments on the launcher quality?

As a matter of fact, yes. At some point they had manged to silently insert an entry in auto start without ever asking. The new UT is crap and it's not that new anymore. Don't care about Fortnite. Easy choice
 
I wonder if Valve announced their 20 - 25 - 30% tier system as a result from hearing about Epic's upcoming profits-splitting system. Or, if Epic had the idea upon hearing about Valve's change in their system, and figured out that they can outdo it by far.

I don't like having tons of stores and games spread across accounts. However, I think this is a bit exciting. Epic has a positive reputation, and Sweeney is an industry good guy, IMO.

I wonder how Valve and other digital retailers will respond. Because, I think it's inevitable that they will have to.
Valve isn't sweating Epic, there isn't going to be any overnight exodus from Steam simply because of lower fees at a smaller store elsewhere. Steam's reach and exposure is the real value proposition to publishers happy to pay 30%. Keeping 70% of $10,000,000 > keeping 88% of $10,000.

What will work in Epic's favor however is the fact that Valve aren't shitheads that demand exclusivity conditionally to publish in their store. Valve's move to the tiered 20-25-30 is more about the overall slippage of big AAA's that have been splintering off to publishers' own mickey mouse launchers and stores.

Epic does seem like one of the better companies in the industry and Tim Sweeney has been deadly accurate in his assessment of things like Windows 10 being consumer-hostile, so I wish them success--it's going to take time.
 
Last edited:
Valve isn't sweating Epic, there isn't going to be any overnight exodus from Steam simply because of lower fees at a smaller store elsewhere. Steam's reach and exposure is the real value proposition to publishers happy to pay 30%. Keeping 70% of $10,000,000 > keeping 88% of $10,000.

What will work in Epic's favor however is the fact that Valve aren't shitheads that demand exclusivity conditionally to publish in their store. Valve's move to the tiered 20-25-30 is more about the overall slippage of big AAA's that have been splintering off to publishers' own mickey mouse launchers and stores.

Epic does seem like one of the better companies in the industry and Tim Sweeney has been deadly accurate in his assessment of things like Windows 10 being consumer-hostile, so I wish them success--it's going to take time.

It certainly won't be an overnight shift. But Valve has been loosing their dominance for a while. Again, read my post above. A lot of kids getting into PC gaming might not even be using Steam. Some of the most popular MP games aren't even on Steam. Similar to how some kids aren't familiar with PCs anymore because they use their phone 90% of the time. Valve as of late haven't done anything interesting and have essentially been playing "me too!" and catch up. Origin refunds, Discord becoming the gamer's social app of choice are examples.

Valve can certainly turn around but they need to do it before it is too late. Call of Duty, Battlefield, Overwatch, Fortnite - all not on Steam. I half expect next year for Ubisoft to jump from Steam entirely. I believe R6S was the killer app they needed to make Uplay stand on its own. If the next Assassin's Creed game is Uplay exclusive I wouldn't be shocked.
 
Which lets be honest has been around longer than most things besides Steam and is DRM free.

The lack of DRM is holding them back which I don't mind but it will keep most AAA games out of their store.

It certainly won't be an overnight shift. But Valve has been loosing their dominance for a while. Again, read my post above. A lot of kids getting into PC gaming might not even be using Steam. Some of the most popular MP games aren't even on Steam. Similar to how some kids aren't familiar with PCs anymore because they use their phone 90% of the time. Valve as of late haven't done anything interesting and have essentially been playing "me too!" and catch up. Origin refunds, Discord becoming the gamer's social app of choice are examples.

Valve can certainly turn around but they need to do it before it is too late. Call of Duty, Battlefield, Overwatch, Fortnite - all not on Steam. I half expect next year for Ubisoft to jump from Steam entirely. I believe R6S was the killer app they needed to make Uplay stand on its own. If the next Assassin's Creed game is Uplay exclusive I wouldn't be shocked.

Don't forget Bethesda games, fallout 76 might be a clusterfuck but if they also add their other games it will take off, quake champions is also already on there.
 
The lack of DRM is holding them back which I don't mind but it will keep most AAA games out of their store.
This is right. Misconception about Steam is that it's a DRM-only store, and that Valve mandates DRM. In fact it's not, as there are many DRM-free games on Steam.

The difference between Steam and GOG is that Steam provides publishers a DRM "on/off switch" for their titles. It's up to the publisher to enable it or not. GOG doesn't provide that opt-in, and their catalog will forever suffer for it. Most gamers don't care about OCD-copying their games to DVDs and storing them in a vault for the apocalypse.

This, btw, is my biggest gripe with the windows 10 store and why it's such cancer that, thank god, hasnt taken off - there are six layers of mandatory DRM to everything in there - even the f'ing freeware.
 
Last edited:
As someone who has worked for Epic, I can say that they are one of the most developer-focused companies out there. They actually care about the industry and use money to make games, not the other way around.
Then why can't I remember any epic game since unreal tournament 2003?
 
The amount of money they have and their customer base only tells me that they'll be somewhat successful; not that they'll improve the marketplace. I'll believe that it's helped if I see the normal price for games being lower than Steam. Steam just announced that they were lowering the store fee for popular games but does anyone think that it will improve anything for consumers? I can almost guarantee that we'll not see any changes. For AAA games it's still going to be a launcher for another launcher. It's great that indie studios will get more of a cut but I don't feel that that will translate into lower prices or better games for us.

Less Government handouts= less taxes which means you don't pay more for games.
 
Makes you wonder what happened to Source 2. I recall Valve claiming they would make a modern game engine, 100% free. They could have taken the fight to Epic, but now Epic has taken the fight to Valve.

I think this may be a classic case of a company simply faltering on their own for not keeping up. Valve haven't put out a good game in a long time and they're quickly loosing relevance in digital distribution. Most of their off the wall technology projects have been flops.

Exactly

As someone who has worked for Epic, I can say that they are one of the most developer-focused companies out there. They actually care about the industry and use money to make games, not the other way around.

Are you freelancing now or did you end up at EA, Ubi etc?

Valve isn't sweating Epic, there isn't going to be any overnight exodus from Steam simply because of lower fees at a smaller store elsewhere. Steam's reach and exposure is the real value proposition to publishers happy to pay 30%. Keeping 70% of $10,000,000 > keeping 88% of $10,000.

What will work in Epic's favor however is the fact that Valve aren't shitheads that demand exclusivity conditionally to publish in their store. Valve's move to the tiered 20-25-30 is more about the overall slippage of big AAA's that have been splintering off to publishers' own mickey mouse launchers and stores.

Epic does seem like one of the better companies in the industry and Tim Sweeney has been deadly accurate in his assessment of things like Windows 10 being consumer-hostile, so I wish them success--it's going to take time.

I Disagree for AAA GameDevs Steam is nothing but a glorified file hosting service, they already have reach on their own, its not like Valve writes Drivers, Windows OS, has an actual
QA department fully staffed by humans, non robotic customer Service, Actual Curation, they don't even design hardware nor market anything, unlike Apple, Sony and Xbox who earn their 30% per sale, even GOG help with QA and Will help you with Marketing, unless you are a purveyor of Shovel Ware and Unity Asset Flips, steam is nothing but a useless cesspit that serves to dilute your brand.
 
To each his own. It'd have to be a spectacular deal on a game that I really wanted to play, right now, to get me to install another store. And given that most of the games I buy on steam are already cheap (and often go unplayed), I don't see much motivation to install other stores. If others do, that's fine.

Currently I have most major stores installed on my pc and honestly and also to my surprise, steam is the one is used the least this last year. Been mostly playing wow, overwatch, destiny 2 on Battle.net, the division on Uplay, quake champions on Bethnet and SW battlefront 2 and bejeweled 3 on Origin, on steam some POE and Grim dawn, and started a replay of Doom 2016.

Then again 2018 was a lousy year for PC games imho
 
I found all the gabe followers on the forum. >.<

Epic is the only other "game company" out there that has the raw cash to do this. All the other game stores out there are small potatoes compared to Steam. If they go after this hard for 3-4 years then steam WILL have a competitor because a) the unreal engine does not suck b) the 12% max versus the 30%-35% for steam (+unreal) is a huge difference for a developer. Furthermore, stop thinking the world is still in Win95; launchers these days are fairly bullet proof. If my neighbors who do not actively engage in PC tech can figure this stuff out in a less than an hour...pretty sure the demographic they are targeting can do it with no issues.

Regardless, with this model a developer can sell a game for $45 on EPIC vs $60 on steam and still generate more revenue per unit sale. If you do not think this will encourage people to use this new service....ahahhahahah. Maybe for $5 or less I would stick with steam for a purchases..but for $15....I can easily waste an hour on a new/store launcher.
 
Last edited:
Regardless, with this model a developer can sell a game for $45 on EPIC vs $60 on steam and still generate more revenue per unit sale.

In all likelihood they will sell the game at the same price as steam, just make more profit. Which I'm fine with, but let's not kid ourselves and expect savings will be passed on to us.
 
I hope it flies, competition is good.

In my dreams Valve is put under pressure and forced to diversify. They even try making their own fucking games for a change.
 
give_a_fuck.gif
 
In all likelihood they will sell the game at the same price as steam, just make more profit. Which I'm fine with, but let's not kid ourselves and expect savings will be passed on to us.

I doubt it. Basic economics says that a lower price will generate more sales. There are many more games I would try at $45 vs $60 and the new store makes that a ZERO COST to to developer. For example, I will not buy darksiders III @ $60. It is not a $60 game TO ME. However, many who have player and/or reviewed it would agree it is a $40-$45 game as do I. This very differnce between a 12% cut and 30-35% gives a dev who creates a stellar AAA game the ability charge that typical $60 and reap the profits and those who come up just short still a chance to make solid sales and try again.
 
I DIsagree for AAA GameDevs Steam is nothing but a glorified file hosting service, they already have reach on their own, its not like Valve writes Drivers, Windows OS, has an actual
QA department fully staffed by humans, non robotic customer Service, Actual Curation, they don't even design hardware nor market anything, unlike Apple, Sony and Xbox who earn their 30% per sale, even GOG help with QA and Will help you with Marketing, unless you are a purveyor of Shovel Ware and Unity Asset Flips, steam is nothing but a useless cesspit that serves to dilute your brand.

You're kind of all over the road here but unfortunately your personal opinion doesn't change or even relate to the facts I stated.

I'd recommend emailing that rant to the big publishers on Steam - I'm sure they'll find it convincing.
 
Last edited:
As someone who has worked for Epic, I can say that they are one of the most developer-focused companies out there. They actually care about the industry and use money to make games, not the other way around.

As long as they don't turn out like Valve. Once upon a time they made cool games for gamers too.
 
I doubt it. Basic economics says that a lower price will generate more sales. There are many more games I would try at $45 vs $60 and the new store makes that a ZERO COST to to developer. For example, I will not buy darksiders III @ $60. It is not a $60 game TO ME. However, many who have player and/or reviewed it would agree it is a $40-$45 game as do I. This very differnce between a 12% cut and 30-35% gives a dev who creates a stellar AAA game the ability charge that typical $60 and reap the profits and those who come up just short still a chance to make solid sales and try again.

So did EA sell their own games for less when they pulled them from Steam and switched to Origin? Does Ubisoft sell their games on Uplay for less than they do on Steam? Is Witcher 3 cheaper on GOG than it is on Steam? Do the indie studios that sell their games directly do it for less than they do on Steam or GOG or another store?
 
I didn't realize the cut that Valve takes per sale. An average 30%! That seems like highway robbery to me.
 
I didn't realize the cut that Valve takes per sale. An average 30%! That seems like highway robbery to me.

That is alot but I suppose it's to keep the servers funded along with all the space for screenshots saves and game data along with paying employees.
 
Back
Top