Epic's Tim Sweeney Calls Store Exclusives "Procompetitive"

Auer said:
Insulting people is the best way to get your point across.

Especially when you're wrong.
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That's ok, it wasn't meant to get across to you. It was meant for the grown ups that understand why you can't eat ice cream for every meal.
 
sharknice said:
That's ok, it wasn't meant to get across to you. It was meant for the grown ups that understand why you can't eat ice cream for every meal.
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I find it hilarious when older adults think talking down to the generation that buys all their crap is the right way to do things. The future is now old man, we have money and it's entitled to whatever the fuck we want.
 
NickJames said:
I find it hilarious when older adults think talking down to the generation that buys all their crap is the right way to do things. The future is now old man, we have money and it's entitled to whatever the fuck we want.
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The ironic part is that you are acting like the old man afraid of change. The exact same thing happened when steam was new. People boycotted it for the exact same stupid reasons. It will catch on despite your stubborn stupidity and a few years from now you'll use it and like it.
 
sharknice said:
The ironic part is that you are acting like the old man afraid of change. The exact same thing happened when steam was new. People boycotted it for the exact same stupid reasons. It will catch on despite your stubborn stupidity and a few years from now you'll use it and like it.
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Nah we just don't adopt to garbage. If Epic catches up and actually does a good job making a useful platform sure, I'll use it. But as of now they have done nothing to gain my interest outside of being fiercely anti-competitive and for that reason alone they will suffer until our generation deems them worthy. Yeah we're stubborn but we're not stupid. ;)
 
NickJames said:
Nah we just don't adopt to garbage. If Epic catches up and actually does a good job making a useful platform sure, I'll use it. But as of now they have done nothing to gain my interest outside of being fiercely anti-competitive and for that reason alone they will suffer until our generation deems them worthy. Yeah we're stubborn but we're not stupid. ;)
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You act like you're part of the majority here. It's not your whole generation agreeing with you. Most people don't care, they'll download it to play the game they want. You're part of a vocal minority that most people just find annoying like SJWs. You need to feel like you're a part of some noble group fighting for justice.
 
sharknice said:
You act like you're part of the majority here. It's not your whole generation agreeing with you. Most people don't care, they'll download it to play the game they want. You're part of a vocal minority that most people just find annoying like SJWs. You need to feel like you're a part of some noble group fighting for justice.
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You seem a bit too invested over a bunch of kids who just don't like being told how to spend their money in some unnecessary platform war. And if you think I am the minority in this you should probably browse other sites.
 
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NickJames said:
And you seem a bit too invested over a bunch of kids who just don't like being told how to spend their money in some unnecessary platform war. And if you think I am the minority in this you should probably browse other sites.
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SJWs say the exact same thing.

Meanwhile more people are playing Fortnite than every game combined on Steam and don't care at all.
 
Hate to break it to you, but you aren't the sole representative for "your" generation and I think, maybe in the minority, the minority in this case being the ones that hate Epic store; now I'll stereo type and just say you all just like to complain louder.

Sure some of this is seems "anti-comletitve" but if you've taken even one hour of business class this is just basic business, of any industry. Restaurants and other retail do similar practices every day.

The barriers to entry are high, and in order to gain market saturation you have to make deals, these are basic principles (making exclusive deals, etc) .

Ultimately, if this was a bad deal then you'd see developers making the big complaints and avoiding Epic at all cost. I find it very unlikely that Epic would do a big bait and switch down the road.

A lot of these developers answers to stakeholders with more experience in this industry than probably you or I have been alive. If they, in all of their experience thought this was bad for them or the consumer, they wouldn't go with Epic store because it wouldn't make them money.

In the long run, if Epic makes dumb decisions later, guess what, they can go back to steam or whomever.

Presently, you can chose to not buy games through Epic if you so desire, but you're missing out on some incredible content and awesome games. You're either making that choice because you think you know better than the developers and experts in the industry, or because you're for some reason opposed to another store front.

While that is oversimplifying it a bit, it's not a huge stretch.

Change is good and ultimately drives innovation. Get with the current generation and and install Epic, support great developers and play fun games.

I'll continue buying games wherever they are available I don't care what store front as long as I find the game enjoyable, I'll follow the developer onto whichever platform they pick. The extra 50mb of install and ~few megs of ram have no effect on me, or a majority of people I assume.

/end long post
 
Legit and good for the business, bad for consumers, period the end, just because you can do it doesn't mean you should unless its your own material.
 
sharknice said:
The ironic part is that you are acting like the old man afraid of change. The exact same thing happened when steam was new. People boycotted it for the exact same stupid reasons. It will catch on despite your stubborn stupidity and a few years from now you'll use it and like it.
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Except Steam got better and sadly became inevitable because it offered a good compromise for devs and gamers with its DRM scheme. People still complain about not having as much control for running game servers. Though that has changed with many games today because it is necessary to offer dedicated servers given the nature of some games design. An upside of Steam for customers has been lower prices on games and lately more price competition. We also have GoG for DRM free games, old and some new games.

Epic offers none of these things like forums, reviews, social groups etc.. They are catering to devs right now along with exclusives to get people to their game store front. Bethesda is doing the same thing, FO76 didn't really help sell that though. Given the current state of the Epic store and Sweeney's attitude I have major doubts they'll be a good platform in 5 years. Exclusives and spying on user's Steam info do not endear them to potential customers. Exclusives for a year mean there is no incentive to be competitive on prices with other games. Good luck with that in an oversaturated entertainment market. Good luck with that when you have developers selling out their backers for Epic's pay off schemes. I can't blame the devs too much for taking the cash, it makes good business sense in the short to medium term. I just resent them and Sweeney telling me its pro competitive and good for me as a customer, when it clearly is not.

But keep tossing out the name calling, the lame rhetoric and keep paying over inflated prices on games. Clearly we're all shills paid off by Steam in achievement cards.

I also stand by that publishers and devs are going this route to try and keep prices higher for longer.
 
The whole argument that gamers are entitled and the vocal minority are just the minority but guess what? It works. EA took a huge step back towards loot boxes. Games have been redesigned to get rid of micro transactions or at least lessen them. Hell we've pushed this fight so hard its even brought the law onto our side. Bethesda tried and failed miserably with their bad games and overpriced market. No one is buying rehashed AAA titles and the reports show. The right to protest is all we're exerting here and that's that. I don't understand why anyone has to complain about us complaining, our complaints are valid and without them how would Epic improve? How would anyone? But then executives do dumb shit like insult our intelligence and tell us "We don't know what we want." or "If you don't like it then don't buy it." it just frustrates us. That's why we're as loud as we are, if you keep insulting us then we just stop buying your shit, it's as simple as that. Treat us like adults, make games we like and give us a choice of how we buy it, its really not that hard. Valve learned this decades ago.
 
The more I think about this, this is like the reverse of support local shop small movement. Steam is the Target of game distribution, sure its nice, it has everything you want and it just works, but meh.

Yes I agree Epics store is hot garbage and has a lot of room for improvement, but by buying your favorite games through Epic you're supporting your community (developers) so they get more money to create more future content.

If all games were equally available on both platforms at the exact same price, would you still buy them on steam because.. Steam?
 
I like Tim Sweeney so I'll try to avoid listening to him talk about things other than engines/programming... not a fan of storefronts and this "procompetitve" whatever but it also doesn't bother me... convenience always seems to win, so they just have a loooooong ways to go if they are trying to compete with steam, right?
 
zrikz said:
The more I think about this, this is like the reverse of support local shop small movement. Steam is the Target of game distribution, sure its nice, it has everything you want and it just works, but meh.

Yes I agree Epics store is hot garbage and has a lot of room for improvement, but by buying your favorite games through Epic you're supporting your community (developers) so they get more money to create more future content.

If all games were equally available on both platforms at the exact same price, would you still buy them on steam because.. Steam?
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when Epic store was announced, i was more than willing to give it a shot once they implemented basic stuff that makes my experience alot less shiety, like being able to play offline, picking up when i left the game on the fly where ever i play, at my pc at my gf, in vacation etc, reviews, good discounts etc.
but then come and say you want to play metro, well you have to come to us and give up all these must have features, or wait a year to play, i was like gtfo you and your game im never touching your store or that game, i went from fervent supporter to geniun hater in matter of weeks.
after all the backlash, Tim's reaction and the way epic is going about this, shows you the state of mind they have at those board meetings, this is a company that i will never trust because my opinion and experience is the least of their concerns, since all that matters to Epic is my wallet, i will happily give it to steam.
 
NickJames said:
The whole argument that gamers are entitled and the vocal minority are just the minority but guess what? It works. EA took a huge step back towards loot boxes. Games have been redesigned to get rid of micro transactions or at least lessen them. Hell we've pushed this fight so hard its even brought the law onto our side. Bethesda tried and failed miserably with their bad games and overpriced market. No one is buying rehashed AAA titles and the reports show. The right to protest is all we're exerting here and that's that. I don't understand why anyone has to complain about us complaining, our complaints are valid and without them how would Epic improve? How would anyone? But then executives do dumb shit like insult our intelligence and tell us "We don't know what we want." or "If you don't like it then don't buy it." it just frustrates us. That's why we're as loud as we are, if you keep insulting us then we just stop buying your shit, it's as simple as that. Treat us like adults, make games we like and give us a choice of how we buy it, its really not that hard. Valve learned this decades ago.
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I'm not selling anything. I'm just here on the side calling out a bunch of idiots.
Crying because they have to click a different icon. Wahh it's so bad for us when they litterally sold Metro at a cheaper price.
Wahhh it scans my steam friends list I'm going to die now. And complaining about so many non-issues like they're the end of the world. Then completely making up false issues and taking evidence that proves you wrong as proving it's truth like flat earth nutjobs.
 
sharknice said:
I'm not selling anything. I'm just here on the side calling out a bunch of idiots.
Crying because they have to click a different icon. Wahh it's so bad for us when they litterally sold Metro at a cheaper price.
Wahhh it scans my steam friends list I'm going to die now. And complaining about so many non-issues like they're the end of the world. Then completely making up false issues and taking evidence that proves you wrong as proving it's truth like flat earth nutjobs.
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the fact that you still miss the point is baffeling, it's not about just another launcher, you seriously cannot be this dense, or you didn't bother reading what ppl say before calling them idiots.
you know that if you happen to move quite a bit and have multiple computers, everytime you want to play to need to start the game from scratch because you don't have cloud saving ?
you know that if for any reason you don't have internet ( vacation, out of data or whetever or epic servers are down ) you cannot play your game ?
you know that that if you live in shiety countries like brazil you pay the game with like 10% of your monthly income ?
you know that if the game is broken beyond belief, you can't even cry about it ? normies who buy the game just from the featured games get scammed into buying a pile of garbadge.
you know if you want to be refund for a game you gonna have to jump off a never ending series of hurdles just to get your money back ?
having friends, chat text/audio, quick stream for them to watch your game, directly join your server, streaming your game to your living room ?
if you are noob and casual enough to not know or not use any of this, countless of other ppl do.
some ppl are unbelievable with their misplaced pseudo righteousness with next to zero understanding of what's going on, to whom any criticism is toxicity, but instead of being constructive with their arguments, they directly go to personal attacks with emotional arguments.
dude that's so annoying.
 
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alamox said:
when Epic store was announced, i was more than willing to give it a shot once they implemented basic stuff that makes my experience alot less shiety, like being able to play offline, picking up when i left the game on the fly where ever i play, at my pc at my gf, in vacation etc, reviews, good discounts etc.
but then come and say you want to play metro, well you have to come to us and give up all these must have features, or wait a year to play, i was like gtfo you and your game im never touching your store or that game, i went from fervent supporter to geniun hater in matter of weeks.
after all the backlash, Tim's reaction and the way epic is going about this, shows you the state of mind they have at those board meetings, this is a company that i will never trust because my opinion and experience is the least of their concerns, since all that matters to Epic is my wallet, i will happily give it to steam.
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I haven't had to think about some of the features such as cloud saves or streaming in a while due to being stationary in my gaming but I can see the frustration on that point.

Admittedly I do use steam to stream my epic launcher to my shitty ultrabook so I can still play my epic games locally from the bedroom :p

Epic is absolutely lacking in features, but give it some time to gain parity, and then I think nearly all complaints will be void I'd think.

Dumb move on their part, they could have easily hired an application developer with their massive amounts of money to develop a nice store, but they do have a road map to get there slowly, unfortunately.

Epic does have offline mode though, and let's be honest, most people use discord or something outside of steam for chat / voice.

I'll give you the quick join on friends to play with them, that is nice.

Reviews are a nice feature, but a majority of them end up spammed with trash, it is nice having the discussion section on the game store page though.
 
theBrownLlama said:
since when did we ALL become developers?

last i checked 99.9999% of us are consumers whom lose out with how EPIC does business.

shouldn't we all prioritize our positions as consumers first and foremost, rather than praising how this and that company can get more profit for their top management?
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We aren't developers, we'll just go where the games go. And the games go where the developers get the best deal.

Valve introduced tiered fee thresholds for a reason. Epic is putting pressure on them and Valve is responding. That is competition.

NickJames said:
Valve has made improvements to Steam constantly for decades, they never stopped. They revamped the review system a couple of years ago to help fight review bombing. They redesigned the Friends system probably a good 3 or 4 times. The shop is constantly going through improvements (for better or worse) and they always add great quality of life improvements for publishers. Competition is good but people blindly defend Steam for a reason, every other digital distribution platform has been an awful pile of shit with the exception of GOG Galaxy. If Epic really cared to make a competitor they would would put the money, time and effort into making the Epic Launcher a platform people want to use not force them into it. I'll even throw a bone at Uplay because they up until Division 2 were at least still releasing their titles on other platforms.
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I can't think of any major changes that were useful in many years unless they were prompted to by competitors. They improved chat only because Discord has become so popular. Although Discord has moved on and is becoming the the spiritual successor to MSN/Live messenger I suppose where as Steam is obviously only for Steam gamers.
 
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Flogger23m said:
I can't think of any major changes that were useful in many years unless they were prompted to by competitors. They improved chat only because Discord has become so popular. Although Discord has moved on and is becoming the the spiritual successor to MSN/Live messenger I suppose where as Steam is obviously only for Steam gamers.
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I think that's because that changes haven't been visual. Steam hasn't had a UI redesign in over 10 years although one has been in the pipeline for awhile now, it was announced along with the Friends redesign years ago but it's being released in phases. Outside of fixing the shop or a UI update I can't really think of anything else Steam needs. At this point all the QOL improvements that have been primarily publisher focused or adjusting shop algorithms.
 
alamox said:
the fact that you still miss the point is baffeling, it's not about just another launcher, you seriously cannot be this dense, or you didn't bother reading what ppl say before calling them idiots.
you know that if you happen to move quite a bit and have multiple computers, everytime you want to play to need to start the game from scratch because you don't have cloud saving ?
you know that if for any reason you don't have internet ( vacation, out of data or whetever or epic servers are down ) you cannot play your game ?
you know that that if you live in shiety countries like brazil you pay the game with like 10% of your monthly income ?
you know that if the game is broken beyond belief, you can't even cry about it ? normies who buy the game just from the featured games get scammed into buying a pile of garbadge.
you know if you want to be refund for a game you gonna have to jump off a never ending series of hurdles just to get your money back ?
having friends, chat text/audio, quick stream for them to watch your game, directly join your server, streaming your game to your living room ?
if you are noob and casual enough to not know or not use any of this, countless of other ppl do.
some ppl are unbelievable with their misplaced pseudo righteousness with next to zero understanding of what's going on, to whom any criticism is toxicity, but instead of being constructive with their arguments, they directly go to personal attacks with emotional arguments.
dude that's so annoying.
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You're talking about a lot of stuff they already added, and some features they're still working on, but it's all stuff that isn't even a big deal. You refuse to acknowledge anything positive and simply accept anything negative as truth.
Rational arguments don't get through to you. There is a serious lack of rationality in your hatred and I'm just calling you out for it in the only way you seem to understand.
 
Megalith said:
As controversy continues to mount, Tim Sweeney has returned to social media to justify store exclusives and defend the Epic Games Store from accusations it is bribing its way to the top with anti-competitive practices. Sweeney seems to believe the criticism is unfair because there’s nothing stopping Steam and other storefronts from playing his game, pointing out partnerships are a perfectly legit way of doing business. From where he’s standing, exclusives are “procompetitive,” in that they compel other stores to differentiate themselves.

I get that you guys don’t like store-exclusive games, but that’s a completely separate, and PROCOMPETITIVE issue, compared to closing down platforms like Windows to monopolize distribution, as iOS does, and as Microsoft was trying to do with UWP and locked-down versions of Windows — which failed, and whose proponents are now gone and replaced with great leaders like Satya Nadella and Phil Spencer who are driving Windows forward as an open platform!
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I think the original idea of competition is that companies should compete by offering a better experience to consumers. Not making backroom deals to undermine other companies while pissing on the consumers' interests.
 
Flogger23m said:
Valve introduced tiered fee thresholds for a reason. Epic is putting pressure on them and Valve is responding. That is competition.
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Steam's tiered fees for big AAA's has nothing to do with Epic, and happened before anyone was talking about Epic. They were addressing the trend of big publishers moving firstparty games to their own launchers/distro.

Correlation is not causation, yet you seem to believe any change Valve has made was "forced" by something else completely irrelevant and unrelated. They're not that kneejerk.
 
Flogger23m said:
We aren't developers, we'll just go where the games go. And the games go where the developers get the best deal.

Valve introduced tiered fee thresholds for a reason. Epic is putting pressure on them and Valve is responding. That is competition.
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That is the wrong kind of competition. They are not competing for consumers, but competing for developers. While developers are competing for the investors good graces. But who cares about the gamers? Nobody. If this trend doesn't stop there could be a major implosion of the gaming industry.
 
sharknice said:
You're talking about a lot of stuff they already added, and some features they're still working on, but it's all stuff that isn't even a big deal. You refuse to acknowledge anything positive and simply accept anything negative as truth.
Rational arguments don't get through to you. There is a serious lack of rationality in your hatred and I'm just calling you out for it in the only way you seem to understand.
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what did they add ? a broken refund system ? half baked offline mode they themselves say they need to work on in their roadmap ? talking about opte in reviews by developers ? sorry please list me these features i must have missed the memo, and don't talk to me about a roadmap, because they are forcing ppl now not in 6 months or a year when the store is half decent, if they even get there, because let's be honest what's the point of adding features to the store if they buy all 3rd party exclusives anyway, it's a waste of money that they can buy another game with.
no one can have so much bias unless he is a dev or somewhat related to this, this can't be all '" i am better than you mentality "
 
sharknice said:
If Epic doesn't do exclusive deals their store would be ignored and never get big, just like every other Steam competitor.

If you can't see how that's bad for you you've got a lot of growing up to do.

x -> y -> z

That extra z step is one step too many for a lot of your brains. So you cry like a baby about having to click a different icon.

The Epic Store has already improved the market for gamers. It's forced Steam to give developers a larger share of the profit which means they can devote more resources to development.

It's hard not to think of people against the store as idiots or assholes.
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Well said.
 
NickJames said:
Nah we just don't adopt to garbage. If Epic catches up and actually does a good job making a useful platform sure, I'll use it. But as of now they have done nothing to gain my interest outside of being fiercely anti-competitive and for that reason alone they will suffer until our generation deems them worthy. Yeah we're stubborn but we're not stupid. ;)
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It's a game launcher. What else do you even want? You're the one resisting change ... Like an old man yelling at clouds. Steam was crap when it came out and required an always on connection. It is responsible for us not owning our games today.
 
Staples said:
What is with everyone hating on capitalism?
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Since when is locking out price competition by exclusives on PC capitalism? Its creating an artifical monopoly of access to drive people to your brand new, half baked storefront with less features. For pete's sake, Epic was bragging about how they would have no forums or reviews for "entitled gamers" to cry on and annoy snowflake developers. Oh, but you could like direct email the devs or something to get support. It was/is laughable.
 
zrikz said:
The more I think about this, this is like the reverse of support local shop small movement. Steam is the Target of game distribution, sure its nice, it has everything you want and it just works, but meh.

Yes I agree Epics store is hot garbage and has a lot of room for improvement, but by buying your favorite games through Epic you're supporting your community (developers) so they get more money to create more future content.

If all games were equally available on both platforms at the exact same price, would you still buy them on steam because.. Steam?
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A company owned by the largest media company in the world is analogous to a mom & pop shop?

It's funny that you really believe that developers will take the extra cut they get from Epic to put toward a better product. That is a very naive view of the world.
Youn said:
I like Tim Sweeney so I'll try to avoid listening to him talk about things other than engines/programming... not a fan of storefronts and this "procompetitve" whatever but it also doesn't bother me... convenience always seems to win, so they just have a loooooong ways to go if they are trying to compete with steam, right?
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Tim Sweeney has always been an idiot. He probably hasn't touched a piece of code in 15 years.
 
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Armenius said:
A company owned by the largest media company in the world is analogous to a mom & pop shop?

It's funny that you really believe that developers will take the extra cut they get from Epic to put toward a better product. That is a very naive view of the world.

Tim Sweeney has always been an idiot. He probably hasn't touched a piece of code in 15 years.
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Not even the majority share holder but good try.

Not really equating it to mom and pops, but the principle stands that the developer gets more money, whether they do or don't reinvest the additional funds is up for debate, but statistically speaking, if they have more money and profit they are more capable of continuing future development/reinvestment , this is common sense.

That's not a naive view at all, that's just common business acumen which you apparently don't have. If you have more money, you can make more product.

Sure not all developers will reinvest, they may be one and done, or some CEO gets a fat bonus, but that's pure speciation for us to assume that, and would be poor business practice to waste it.

Sure I'm speculating some that they will reinvest additional profit, but that makes sense, if they didn't, there wouldn't be developers making multiple games.


I agree he's not the brightest in some instances, but let's be real here, he's smart enough to make a few billion more than we'll ever see.
 
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zrikz said:
I agree he's not the brightest in some instances, but let's be real here, he's smart enough to make a few billion more than we'll ever see.
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There's book smart and then there's actual intelligence. He only managed to pass one of those. I'll give him a pass because he actually built Epic from the ground up but man do CEOs not know when to shut up.
 
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sharknice said:
why you can't eat ice cream for every meal.
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Someone say Ice cream /yum
Shit I wouldn't skip meals if Ice cream was part of each one lol

Actually haven't had ice cream in a year now. such withdraw but at a healthy weight now
 
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