Epic Games Store

Quote from blackdog

1 hour ago, blackdog said: A place to talk about exclusive releases, offers/sales, your own experience publishing on it... and controversies!

For now the store has made a name for itself only for the latter.

I think it's done a pretty good job on the offers/sales side though. I think it's pretty cool that there's always a free title to grab from their store. Currently it's Slime Rancher. Got Subnautica for free in December and as far as exclusives go I look forward to seeing Journey hitting the store.

I really feel like if Cyberpunk goes to the Epic Store, that's gotta be the big turning point if it happens... if I'm Epic, I'd pay them whatever it takes for that exclusive. Whatever the cost.

As for Borderlands 3, Pitchford literally said that if HL3 was released he would reconsider launching on the Epic store. People act like Valve NEVER had first party exclusives, and it's not true. Steam was built on first party exclusives. What's changed is, they're no longer making exclusives, and Epic is buying the third party titles and making them exclusive. Maybe Epic will run out of money, but they have the high-tech engine that built Fortnite, they can keep pumping out hits, while all Valve has is an aging Source Engine.

Possibly, developers will begin to over-leverage, asking ridiculous fees from Epic because they know Epic wants the exclusives. That might end the bidding the wars.

I'd really like the narrative to change here, obviously being rather invested in the Valve side of things. But they're not really the same company that made Portal 2, it's not clear they still have the talent to do big projects like that. They're investing big in VR. Only problem is, no one cares that much about VR... The big title they invested in to show that "hey, we still make games!" was Artifact, and it bombed HARD. You have to fail to succeed, so it's a good sign in a way, but it's kind of ironic that Valve says "we were really wrong about what our players wanted!" once Artifact failed, but then they said for years "actually, our fans don't REALLY want HL3". It's like, hey uh, your sense of what your fans want seems pretty dogshit.

Definitely seems like Epic is winning this fight, and is going to win in the long run.

I've been gone a month, why is there so much drama over this store? It started with Metro, now it seems like any game that gets released here gets some sort of drama around it?

Quote from [HP]

3 minutes ago, [HP] said: I've been gone a month, why is there so much drama over this store? It started with Metro, now it seems like any game that gets released here gets some sort of drama around it?

some gamers want Steam to be a permanent monopoly because Steam has a lot of great features and because managing multiple launchers isn't that great. Some pretend to care that Epic is "buying" exclusives, but I really doubt your average gamer gives two fucks about that business side of thing. Some pretend to care that Tencent is involved, like it's the Chinese government spying on them or something. Not saying there is no truth to it, but again, I really seriously doubt people give a fuck about that.

Meanwhile, a billion kids are obsessed with Fortnite and a lot of the big AAA releases are moving away from Steam, so I don't think the crying stands a chance of changing anything.

Makes sense, the way I see it, competition is a great thing. Seems like even steam is getting more patched recently now that Epic games launcher is out?

Back in the day, you had to install every game you bought, if a game you wanna play is only available on a particular launcher, download and install said launcher and uninstall as soon as you're done with the game, what's the big deal? lol

Quote from [HP]

Just now, [HP] said: Makes sense, the way I see it, competition is a great thing. Seems like even steam is getting more patched recently now that Epic games launcher is out?

Back in the day, you had to install every game you bought, if a game you wanna play is only available on a particular launcher, download and install said launcher and uninstall as soon as you're done with the game, what's the big deal? lol

it's not a big deal and competition is a good thing. the only chance we see HL3 is actually Epic big dicking Valve and exposing them for the hollowed-out publisher they are.

hate to see it come to this, it would have been a lot easier for them to just stick to high quality game development. But the exclusives have to come from somewhere, if you need to make them yourself, so be it. Worked out pretty well for Portal 2.

Quote from [HP]

11 hours ago, [HP] said: Makes sense, the way I see it, competition is a great thing. Seems like even steam is getting more patched recently now that Epic games launcher is out?

Back in the day, you had to install every game you bought, if a game you wanna play is only available on a particular launcher, download and install said launcher and uninstall as soon as you're done with the game, what's the big deal? lol

Steam did need proper competition. I wouldn't mind seeing Valve feel at least a bit pressured to focus on game development as before, but is that really gonna happen? Even if Epic manages to secure these big name titles, there's still a ton of content out there being sold on Steam. And I thought Jim raised some good points about this. At the moment, that's one thing the Epic store has going for it - it's clean and devoid of all the shit that's amassed on Steam over the years. Will that forever be the case? Are they going to do a better job than Valve and properly curate their store? I don't know, but having proper exposure in the store can make a world of difference to indie developers.

Another thing that's brought up in the video is how Epic doesn't really want to compete with Steam. If it were a proper competition, you'd have these games available on both stores and the people would determine which is best suitable for them. However, as you asked @[HP] what's the big deal? The big deal is that people are heavily invested in Steam and they don't want to change. At this point there are people who've been on Steam for over 10 years and some have built a significant library of games. Everything has been in one place and it was convenient. Is that stupid, to be invested in one platform to the point where it becomes a monopoly? Maybe, but at the core people don't want to change after they've become comfortable, not without a good reason. And this is something that Epic is aware of. That's why the cut they're taking from sales is so low and that's why they're doing these exclusivity deals. They are essentially making a deal that the developers can't refuse in an attempt to force the people to use their store if they want to play the games and not wait six or twelve months.

In a recent article on PC Gamer https://www.pcgamer.com/40-percent-of-…ont-have-steam/ Epic said they now have 85 million users and that 40% of them don't have Steam installed on their systems. How did they find that out? Well, it must have been one hell of a survey.

Personally, I don't know what to think of this yet. As I'm getting an instinctively negative reaction when I see these exclusivity deals, I wonder if that's normal on my part. But I have to say these are interesting times.

Anybody remember this .gif?

[Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/tvungbD.gif]

I remember this one

[Blocked Image: https://steamusercontent-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/910170891033723718/12222DD16FA0D8460AC90751C26689DA1EDF6772/]

I don't get the hate Epic is getting. I'm so used to having multiple launchers on my computer now that it doesn't faze me at all.

• I've got Steam for most my games
• Origin for anything EA
• Battle.net for anything ActiBlizz
• GOG for old games
• UPlay relunctantly
• EGS for Unreal 4 and now some of the big exclusives.

Of course I'd love all my games in one place but that's not going to happen anymore. Everyone wants a piece of the pie Valve has been hogging for 15+ years. Steam isn't what it used to be either.

Quote from blackdog

1 hour ago, blackdog said: On the subject of Valve, I dunno how or why anyone would come out saying what has been reported, is just bollocks. Sounds like cheap damage control. If they cared about making a successful game, they would have made Artifact for mobile, it’s my understanding card games are quite successful there.

Not entirely sure what report you are referring to specifically but I don't see anything wrong with testing out the waters on PC first and distribute via their own platform where their core audience is. Then tweak the game and add a layer of complexity later by porting it to mobile. Basically what Blizzard did with Hearthstone. Valve is not a mobile-first company and saying that the game would have been more successful there because card games are popular on the platform (just taking your word here) is a giant leap. Also, imagine what the gamers' reaction would have been if they had made a DOTA game for mobile first/only ? (actually no need to imagine just see last year's blizzcon).

Quote from blackdog

3 hours ago, blackdog said: @FMPONE CDProject came out to say they won’t go Epic exclusive, so I wouldn’t even talk about that. Plus they have GOG, if they were ever going exclusive would be on their own platform… like Valve did!

~

On the subject of Valve, I dunno how or why anyone would come out saying what has been reported, is just bollocks. Sounds like cheap damage control. If they cared about making a successful game, they would have made Artifact for mobile, it’s my understanding card games are quite successful there.

Ultimately it seems to show that the hyped flat structure doesn’t really work, at least can’t solve problems across such a wide spectrum of interest (google is pretty flat and I think there’s quite the parallel with Valve, how many projects have they killed because of poor engagement from the audience?)

CDPR probably are one of the few companies that can guarantee a very, very successful Steam launch nowadays. The platform is so bloated that for most companies it probably makes more sense to take the sure-fire cash injection from Epic. Even then, if Epic offers enough, it’s just so much better from a risk perspective to take their upfront cash. I wonder if Valve will start being very punitive with companies who dabbled with the Epic store and try to come back to Steam after their deals expire?

Valve says they’re going to try to fix Artifact... it’ll be interesting to see whether that’s sincere, or they call it quits and realize whatever logic lead them to make a card game, wasn’t logical at all. Artifact is a really tough one. As a Valve fan, I would have rather seen that game succeed so that they would feel more secure venturing back into game development. Now, I can totally see them turtling up and refusing to do any more game dev for a while, bringing us back to square one.

Agreed on the flat structure. It’s like a lot of walls closing in on them at once as a company, fighting so fiercely over a minuscule VR market, getting broadsided by Epic in the publishing game, having their most recent game launch do so poorly. Feels like the flat structure has been Valve’s problem for the last 10 years, but now the dam has broken and there are legitimate challenges that can’t just be ignored or handwaived because “hey, Steam is huge.”

Quote from Beck

1 hour ago, Beck said: Of course I'd love all my games in one place but that's not going to happen anymore. Everyone wants a piece of the pie Valve has been hogging for 15+ years. Steam isn't what it used to be either.

I bet someone out there is working on some kind of hub software as we speak. A program that regroups and launches games that are on any game launchers...

Quote from MikeGon

3 minutes ago, MikeGon said: I bet someone out there is working on some kind of hub software as we speak. A program that regroups and launches games that are on any game launchers...

Bring back Xfire!

Quote from MikeGon

3 minutes ago, MikeGon said: I bet someone out there is working on some kind of hub software as we speak. A program that regroups and launches games that are on any game launchers...

Something like this?

There you go, problem solved ?