Armenius
Extremely [H]
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2014
- Messages
- 41,731
If a company makes a poor product or poor business decisions then they should go out of business. Video games is a saturated and booming industry. I will not shed a tear for any developer who fails to compete.I think you missed a couple of points to bring it all full circle:
Without 3 and 6 it's basically just your normal buyer/seller relationship, and both 3 and 6 are totally just opinion: both can cry if they want, but doing so won't change 1, 2, 4, & 5.
- Developers and publishers have a right to sell their product wherever they want.
- Customers have the right to shop where they want.
- Said developers/publishers don't get to cry about customers shopping where they want.
- Companies do not have a right to your money.
- Customers do not have a right to a developer/publisher's product.
- Said customers don't get to cry about developers/publishers selling products where they want.
This is the showdown, and videogame customers have generally shown that they will crack if forced to choose between game and no game...and while there wasn't a pun intended there, the people claiming they will simply pirate the games to make some sort of stand are effectively undermining the pro-consumer discussion by making these arguments:
- If customers don't buy their games, devs/pubs will go out of business!
- If customers don't buy games, customers won't have games to play!
In this case, there is more desire to consume the product then there is conviction to punish the developer for their sales practices - in which case we get two new points:
- Customers have the right to shop wherever they want.
- Developers do not have the right to sell their product wherever they want.
- Customers have the right to the developer's product.
- Customers are therefore justified in stealing the product of the developers if they can't shop for it wherever they want.
- The developer was right to feel confident that their product was desirable and that they could sell the product on their terms; and
- Some consumers will resort to thievery of non-essential things if they are given any opportunity to rationalize it.
Why is the discussion about Epic and not the games?
"X" sucks because of "lists things having nothing to do with X".
"The developers wanted a better split". Ok, that is like saying "I hate X because he went to a better paying job".
If you have no options, then you do whatever you have to do.
If you have options, you calculate which one will give you the greatest about of financial stability and that is what you choose.
And if you are a big company you make your own store and pack your game full of microtransactions and DLCs and make various price point package options.
And if you are waiting for discounts when games hit steam... you probably won't see any. During a sale, sure, or maybe as a launch event.
Otherwise prices will remain exactly the same. That the is the current trend.
Video games are an entertainment product. The industry lives and dies based on the product they produce. This is not a charity. The developers who are going to Epic exclusively tell me that they are not confident that their product will sell, so they are depending on the guaranteed sales or "shares" Epic is buying into them. A company that has that little faith in their own product deserve no financial stability.