I think MS bought Obsidion but Outer Worlds is distributed by 2k if true it’s odd how MS got it too.
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Epic Games Announces More Exclusives and Features
- Thread starter cageymaru
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I think MS bought Obsidion but Outer Worlds is distributed by 2k if true it’s odd how MS got it too.
I'm interested in the Outer Worlds but if my choices are the epic or windows store my choice will be c(none of the above). Timed exclusives aren't as big of a deal since I'll just wait for them to hit the bargain bin but it might take twice as long because they'll probably relaunch on steam at full price or close to it.
Every time they pull this shit just makes me even less likely to buy from them in the future, right now their chances are sitting somewhere between "when pigs fly" and "never".
Every time they pull this shit just makes me even less likely to buy from them in the future, right now their chances are sitting somewhere between "when pigs fly" and "never".
Last I knew Unreal games on the Epic store get the discount regardless of being sold on other platforms so it's not anti-competitive.
Devs \ Publishers are choosing not to release on competitors because Epic is flat out paying them large lump sums for exclusivity, its unrelated to their licensing.
Yeah, I didn't want the article to get too long so I stopped trying to add in every detail. Some of the games are only 1 year exclusives. I hope they are $20 or less when they hit Steam. I might buy a few from the Epic Games store over the coming year though. Mr. Sweeney seems to have his stuff together and he has been supporting the PC gaming community for many years with Unreal Engine. Its not like he suddenly appeared on the scene and started throwing money around. I don't like the idea of "exclusives" for the sake of being exclusive. But if you look at Steam; how many SteamWorks games are other platforms? So these companies have been doing it for years where they tie store exclusive features to games so they only appear in one store.
I want to keep an open mind about the Epic Games store. Honestly I'm more interested in how they are going to handle discounted games and DLC. If older games stay near their launch pricing, then I probably won't buy many games from there. I'm cheap and happen to have a huge Steam, GOG, Origin, and Ubisoft backlog. I also have a subscription to Microsoft's Xbox on PC thing. Live? Game Pass? Whatever.So I'm in no rush to add more titles to my backlog unless its a deal.
the same sweeny that accused PC gaming being dead due to piracy ? the same sweeny that proclaimed single player gaming dead?
i dont beleive he deserves the credit you bestow on him as he was one of the main chracters in driving the whole pc is dead mantra.
and now that he sees how wrong he was he is now wanting a peice of that pie.
while overall i think the epic game store will be a good thing. make no mistake that mr sweeny is NOT a friend of pc gamers.
and this is nothing more than an attempt to make up for lost ground due to his billergent and hostile ignorance of the pc being a viable platform.
dark_reign
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It's a bit odd that some game publishers would rather see less profit from selling exclusives on EGS. The better revenue share doesn't mean a lot if you're only selling a tiny fraction of copies compared to what Steam would be selling.
By the time these exclusives hit Steam, many will have forgotten about them, decide not to buy, or will wait for a major Steam sale. Epic fail.
By the time these exclusives hit Steam, many will have forgotten about them, decide not to buy, or will wait for a major Steam sale. Epic fail.
why do you think they do exclusive deals for a year ?
because they know gamers want a better experience and that if they had the choice they would go to steam, so they know very well their store is crap and they know full well that the customer's choice would go where he has the best experience, so they decided to tell you up yours for your experience & choice, you have to come to us even if you hate it, and if customers really decided to boycott and that the normies/casuals arn't enough to make decent profit, the dev can release their games on steam a year later to make money.
Epic is giving the fingers to all gamers and he thinks he gives the devs enough power for them to give you the finger too.
i can't say it enough this store is not for gamers, this store is for developers, if gamers give them money, in 5 years you will be in the mercy of a platform/developers who doesn't give a crap about what you need or want or think, they already think you are a piece of shit, why give them money to call you even worse that.
looks like the only game im buying in the future is cyberpunk2077, because as usual CDprojectRED turned out to be the only pro-gamer studio left.
because they know gamers want a better experience and that if they had the choice they would go to steam, so they know very well their store is crap and they know full well that the customer's choice would go where he has the best experience, so they decided to tell you up yours for your experience & choice, you have to come to us even if you hate it, and if customers really decided to boycott and that the normies/casuals arn't enough to make decent profit, the dev can release their games on steam a year later to make money.
Epic is giving the fingers to all gamers and he thinks he gives the devs enough power for them to give you the finger too.
i can't say it enough this store is not for gamers, this store is for developers, if gamers give them money, in 5 years you will be in the mercy of a platform/developers who doesn't give a crap about what you need or want or think, they already think you are a piece of shit, why give them money to call you even worse that.
looks like the only game im buying in the future is cyberpunk2077, because as usual CDprojectRED turned out to be the only pro-gamer studio left.
Krenum
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I'm not sure it matters much, they get most of their money up front from the Fartnite coffers. Games sales are just filler.
Flogger23m
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Or you know, maybe the developers are choosing it. Especially since a lot these are Japanese developers which tend to be a bit cheap. Wouldn't amaze me if they did a quick look and said "yeah we might save a few thousand dollars doing this, okay done!". The idea of doing a post launch patch to fix bugs for PC games is a foreign concept to them as an example.
In 2013 almost no one in the US/Europe were buying hard copies over digital. If you were talking about consoles you'd have a point. Fact is this game did well, better than Last Light by a large margin. Sure third game in the series and all that, but we're talking about a 100% increase in sales. If a notable amount of people were that opposed to using the client it would have been a deal breaker and we'd see sales slump by massive margins.
Clearly, this wasn't the case. As I've said before it is mostly outrage largely relegated to reddit/some forums for misplaced reasons.
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Justify it how you want, it's still hypocrisy:
Console manufacturer pays a developer to only release on their platform = no problem
Storefront pays a developer to only release in their store = INJUSTICE!
You think most console exclusives aren't artificial? Especially ones that started off as PC titles and got bought by Sony or MS? How is this any different? If anything, it's BETTER than console exclusives, since you still get to use the platform you want and don't have to sacrifice controls, graphics options, buy additional hardware, etc.
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misterbobby
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I'm just confused as hell about those PlayStation 4 games that are getting released on the Epic store. I never once heard anything about those games ever being released on PC at all. Am I that much out of the loop? Is Last of Us and Uncharted also coming to PC?
DooKey
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It's so funny how people forget how that asshole sweeney pissed on the PC gamer.
HAL_404
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I'm presuming you ment to say "so I don't have to have to cave ..." but I digress
Do you work for Steam? If not then what does it matter what client you have to use or are you like those online who are easily mentally manipulated by what's written online?
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Krenum
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Do you use Windows OS, Mac OSX or Linux? Why? And what does it matter? They all play games.
HAL_404
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Really not good analogy you posted there. Regarding clients I've had zero issues withg Epic so far but I've had not too few problems with the EA client, especially regarding ME2 and 3 and DLC not working, etc
Regarding The Outer Worlds, I just cant seem to bring myself to the point where all those day-glow paint colors sit ok with me
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Krenum
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How so?
lostin3d
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Yeah that 4A engine is funky. Huge fan of both and their remasters. For awhile I saw performance increases with each new GPU I got from 780>2x970's>2x1080's and when I got my RTX2080TI the gains were minimal comparatively in 4k. Someone I know theorized it had to do with the rasters and that we've pretty much hit a wall for the time being. I also think that NV drivers kept drifting further away from being optimal with them. On my 1080TI rig it just feels like they don't play as good as they should. Probably my imagination. Exodus on the other hand performs amazingly well on both TI's.
Meanwhile back at the ranch. . .anyone reporting some epic-ally humble scraping yet?
dark_reign
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True, but their exclusivity deals are a shady way to make money and just poor business sense. Less sales, less profits.
In a year or two we will see if they are still getting exclusives. Steam may have to change their revenue sharing unless EGS winds up being a dud. Their sale prices on most games are about or the same as Steam.
HAL_404
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game clients like Steam and Epic do not make your PC operate (hence, why Windows and other such programs are called Operating Systems aka Windows OS)
Krenum
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Point is, people have convictions, they like to be able to choose what they want installed and who's business practices they agree with in their mind best suit them, take away that choice and you get very unhappy people. People don't like to be pigeon holed.
HAL_404
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lol we're talking about a game client that will not exist if someone pulls the electric plug but pigeons on the other hand ...
Most of the fortnite playerbase would be too young to know about his history. Really I have little faith in the epic store being around more than 3-5 years so I don’t plan on making any investments into the platform.
Color me skeptical that a significant amount of gamers, who time and again seem willing to pre-purchase games based on nothing but corporate hype despite getting burned over and over again, are going to somehow make a meaningful stand and boycott the EPIC games store. Considering the sheer install base of Fortnite (and thus the EPIC client), perhaps they already have the numbers they need to feel this will be a success.
D
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The gaming industry is going the way of the film/television industry. No netflix, no TV, no hulu, much less propaganda for me; the average schmuck is hopelessly inured with their fix. I'm but one individual, one drop of rain. The tsunami of drops will come. If not, I can put away these games, for something else. Know your masters, money, vanity, and power are almost always THE REASON for why something happens.
D
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There are many people who don't preorder (I did preorder resident evil 2, and there was plenty of data/confirmation to conclude it would actually be quality and not EA shovelware). As the cliche goes there's a sucker born every minute. There are also people who wisen up every minute too- to varying degrees of course.
WorldExclusive
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Epic Games will become EA soon.
Nice ad hominem.
The facts are that the client is vastly inferior to the competition(up to and including galaxy but not windows store), it's much less likely to be around and offering access to any games bought on it in a few years, and they have a questionable privacy policy along with questionable practices. They know they can't compete based on what they're offering even with a discount to publishers so they've resorted to bribing publishers to block competition for certain games.
M76
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Exactly, if I can't get keys cheap, I'll be back to waiting for sales down the line, and I assume epic will use pricing similar to origin or uplay, meaning by the time they discount the games I'll be willing to pay much less for it. It's a catch 22 really. I have games that I wanted to buy for years but the price was never right. I'm fine paying €45-50 for the basic version of a newly released game, I'm not willing to pay more than €20 for a game that is over a year old. Plus of course epic uses the scummy $1 = €1 conversion like steam.
People saying that the haters are steam fanboys can suck a pole, I haven't purchased any new game on steam ever, only trough 3rd party key sites that actually have fair prices.
I don't care what launcher the game uses either, as long as it is not confirmed spyware. What I care about is getting a fair deal. With the epic megastore that seems unlikely. If I have to pay more for games than before I'll inevitably feel ripped off.
Flogger23m
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Epic has regional pricing now. What the developers/publishers decide to sell a game for isn't up to Valve/Epic.
Or... the developers/publishers want as much money per sale as possible. But they know right now moving entirely off Steam will be met with criticism. This is a good compromise. Most gamers are impatient so they will get the initial rush of sales with higher margins. But they do want to put it on Steam for the hold outs.
Yes they can raise the price on Steam to compensate, but if they go over the traditional $60 I think the backlash will be even higher than delaying it on Steam for a year. They're playing the long game. 1-2 years from now, most won't care. Over time the majority of the dissenters will cave in, and when that happens they won't even have to bother with Steam anymore at all. Unless Valve manages to do something drastic to keep developers on their platform this is what will happen.
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M76
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Like metro? $50 = €60 ?
They might as well move entirely off steam. The majority of sales happen in the first month of release. A 12 month old game makes nothing but scraps. Besides the issue is not whether the game is on steam or not. The issue is exclusivity, and monopoly. I'm happy to buy origin keys on cdkeys,or uplay keys on gmg. If the price were right I'd buy epic keys on cdkeys, but it seems they're not going to allow that.
Compensate for what? They aren't making more money on epic with less sales. It might be a tie, but I doubt they'd ever admit that. So we'll never know. It's not about that. It's about tencent sending trucks of monies to developers to use the epic store only. And I think whoever can be paid off like that is loosing customer trust. Which in the long run is more important than a short term infusion of cash.
M76
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Epic doesn't care if 50 or 90% of gamers boycott them, it's still a win for them. They literally pay the publishers/developers to compensate them for any lost revenue they suffer by becoming exclusives.
Their goal is not to sell games or serve the audience, there goal is to kill the competition, by bleeding them dry. It doesn't matter to them that they operate at a loss too. If they pay 2 million to a niche indie game dev to be on the epic store imagine how much they had to pay to the big dogs?
It is disgusting and anyone who even considers supporting the epic store should be ashamed of themselves.
Here's the thing:
I'd say most of what you said is correct. What makes you think other major corporations are any different? I see them all as bastards. The main difference is Epic gaining power will lead to a less monopolistic environment than we have now (and thus promoting competition) and more money going to the developers. So if they're all bastards, at least the bastards have to compete more with each other and the people actually making the games get paid more in the long term. If you think people should be ashamed of themselves for buying from a company like that, fine. I hope you walk the walk and are also ashamed of buying anything from Amazon, Wal-Mart, most of the food you eat, your internet and phone service provider, etc.
dark_reign
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This doesn't fix the problem since game publishers set the prices. Looking at EGS, their pricing is comparable to Steam. Competition? lulz
M76
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As mentioned before, the only competition is for the developers, not for the customers. It's almost as if the devs are the consumers in this equation and the gamers are the product.
Amazon pays people to sell products exclusively on their site? No they don't. Also they don't have exclusivity deals that prevents a seller from selling anywhere else if they want to sell on amazon.
The other examples you cite are so bad I don't even know how do you think they are the same as epic. As they aren't gobetweens for third party products / services. And physical goods are also a very different breed of animals than digital products.
And if you think the actual guy making the game gets a penny out of this then you're very naive. Whatever is gained will be pocketed by the publisher, or paid out as bonuses for the ceos. The actual devs will be told: no bonus for you, because the game bombed on meta-critic. In this it is completely irrelevant that it bombed because they choose to go epic exclusive.
Okay, multiple points:
First, I was referring more to your statement that Epic was doing this to eliminate the competition. Amazon rose to power by essentially undercutting everyone and not having to pay the same taxes the same time they were in an emerging market. If you sell something on Amazon, they contractually state you're not allowed to sell it at a lower price elsewhere. There are countless examples of major corporations operating at a loss in order to eradicate competition. Hell, even Valve started Steam as a means of capturing the market. If they really wanted to be fair, they would have offered the choice between Steam or offline copies of HL2 wouldn't they? Don't get confused about their motivations either. They've enjoyed a captured market for a decade and a half.
But you're talking about exclusives, fine, I get it, you want choice where you buy your game. I hope you actually stand by your principles then and boycott console games, because they do the exact same thing, only worse. They pay 3rd party developers ALL THE TIME to release exclusives on their platform. Sometimes these are games that start off for the PC, only to get axed. At least Epic games don't require you to buy a redundant platform and remove options to play the same game, it's still on the PC. So if you also boycott Sony and Microsoft, fine, you're being principled, I'll give you props for that. If you DON'T though, you're just being a hypocrite. Which is it?
Second, as for competition, yes, it applies for the customers too. Epic has given out half a dozen free games. Valve gave out some too in the same timeframe. That probably wasn't a coincidence. The competition comes from Steam and other stores having to offer something additional in order to attract more customers, or rather NOT do shittier things and get away with it. Pretend all the 3rd party stores didn't exist and it was just Steam. What would stop them from RAISING prices? Just because Valve has mostly been good so far, I think you seriously underestimate what monopoly power can do. All it takes is Gabe to retire, Valve going public and Steam becomes a shitshow. Imagine having to pay a monthly fee to access your library for example. Having competition between storefronts helps prevents that. If you really think it adds NO competition for the customer, I think you're naive as to how bad things can get. Hence why things like internet access are over twice the cost in USA than they are in Europe.
Third, as for money not going to the creators, it depends on how big the game you're talking about is. For AAA games, yes, you're right. For indie games? Not the case at all, every dollar counts. If Epic's presence causes more money to go to them in the long run, that's a good thing.
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Bankie
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Steam was the front-runner; most people didn't even think it was possible at the time. Once it was proven viable and the risk was removed other companies started clamoring to get in. Other stores haven't caught up because Steam kept working on their store client with updates and new features that had never before been seen in the market.
Not comparable. Why would anyone that cares about PC gaming want console market tactics to come to the PC? The EGS as it sits is a redundant platform and by making a game exclusive to their store they're already removing options to play a game since you're forced onto their inferior platform with inferior features.
By buying exclusivity they're not bringing competition. By supporting EGS you're telling "other stores" that they can't compete without throwing bags of money at the developers that they themselves previously supported. EGS will worsen the market for PC gamers as they gain more influence. Steam has yet to act like a typical monopoly while EGS is already aiming to be one.
EGS exclusivity will cause me and others (admittedly likely a minority of PC gamers) to give 0 dollars to one of those devs.
The bottom line is that if you support a company that functions in this way when they come into the market you are personally responsible for the bullshit tactics and anti-competitive behavior that will become common place.
I'm presuming you "ment" to say meant but I digress.
It matters because Epic is being shady AF getting games pulled from Steam and paying publishers to avoid other platforms. It has nothing to do with the technical merits of their client. If they released their service with the current terms without the behind scenes shenanigans, I would have no problem with them.
I find two things strange about all this:
1) I find it really strange that people react more negatively to PC store exclusives, than they do to console exclusives.
With a console exclusive, you can't get the game at all if it is on the other console. It's a total lockout.
With a PC Store exclusive, you just have to visit a different digital storefront... Which is a tiny inconvenience in comparison.
2) Why did it take so long for other publishers to recognize what a gold mine Steam was and chase a piece of that pie.
I wrote earlier in the post that I hate console exclusivity even more than PC platform exclusivity. That aside, the biggest reason this is an outrage is because it's honestly the first time we've seen a huge push by a company to make PC exclusive games that aren't made and owned by them or a company they own.
Personally, I could deal with the exclusivity if not for 2 factors. 1. Tim Sweeney is a dick. Not as an employee of Epic, but as a general person. He's actively taunting customers and criticizing users, and just being generally dickish to anyone who dares question even the most reasonable things to question from Epic. 2. Security. I've received (no exaggerations) 15 emails about people from other countries attempting to access my account, despite having 2FA (2-factor authentication) and a strong password.
It's not really the first time a publisher has taken content off of Steam in an attempt to take some of that pie. It's not even the first time we've seen people taking a cut of digital distribution from Steam. On my first point, Origin has taken anything published by EA onto their own platform. Origin is an okay client that gives decent functionality, and isn't an active security risk, so I'm okay using it, even if it's slightly less convenient. On my second point, Steam has actively encouraged competition on the digital distribution market by allowing publishers and developers to create and distribute steam keys for their games. That's why sites like Humble Bundle, GMG and even the gray market are able to exist, providing direct pricing competition to Steam, while still allowing users to reap the benefits of Steam. You can even nearly completely avoid all Steam fees by selling a game solely on your website and activating it via Steam Keys.
TL;DR: What Epic is doing is not cool. I'm in no way opposed to competition for Valve, and I always think competition is good for the consumers (which is me). However, what Epic is doing is a brute force tactic that's doing little for their PR, and less for consumers.