I actually don't hate Epic Game Store

closer · Jul 26, 2019

catswaller said:
So, tim sweeny, like every other billionaire, is a slimy creep who sucks.

But, (and this is related to my posts above,) you should remember that Tim isn't selling to you. Just like there are two main markets for developers, storefronts need to sell to two markets too.

On the one hand, they need to court developers to use their platform, by providing good financial deals, marketing, storefront curation, etc.

On the other hand, they need to sell to consumers, by providing useful featuresets, broad access, lock-in features to create loyalty, and alternate revenue streams like storefront giftcards and grifty marketplaces.

Tim sweeny is positioning himself as saving the industry from steam to sell to developers, not to you. Valve has the opposite focus.

yeah I never understood the consumer vs. dev perspective on this thing, as if they aren't in an intrinsically linked relationship. like I get that the "i want mines" mentality exists and the fear that the pc landscape will shift in a way where the consumer benefits that were standard before may not be standard in the future. but all I read about when I heard about devs is how awful the jobs are, how you should never enter the industry, how crunch culture permeates, and in general how underpaid they are because they should be working off of "passion". as a consumer you always have the final say in your purchasing choices; boycott epic, don't play games that are missing out on features essential to you, and support platforms that meet your needs, they will be there and obviously the demand is there, but devs never had a way to affect their own lifestyle like this before. this isn't a guilt trip, but surely ppl see how this situation is still incredibly shitty for devs involved, where they are finally offered compensation and a breath of air but have to get shit on every moment like they only exist to serve?
I think many that took the deal are hoping that the internet forgets (which they do tend to do), otherwise the loss of goodwill will end them in the future. what a shitty situation, to decide between being compensated and hated or not compensated, keep the good will until the internet forgets, and be done

epic selling some devils deal shit to devs, they really need to not ever tweet because they are leading devs by hand to a really really uncertain place

Jebusman · Jul 26, 2019

morningbus said:
It's wild how many people here show their asses as being racist against the Chinese just because Epic is owned by Tencent.

You better remove that inflammatory accusation or someone else might get banned.

TacoSupreme · Jul 26, 2019

catswaller said:
That's a fair point. My perspective is, whether a developer is saying something you want to hear, or something that you don't, the economic reality of your relationship means that they're saying whatever they need to in order to try and sell their product, not be your friend or tell the truth or whatever.

It's all marketing, and can all be ignored or indulged in at your preference.

And since it is a business relationship, guess what? I'm the one who decides if my concerns are important. Not you. As someone who comes from a shitty economic background, I absolutely loathe the idea of Epic's "trickle down" economics, and the fact that so many developers who take Epic's money try to sell us on EGS as a positive for consumers makes me sick.

If a developer does like Rebellion and comes out to basically say "Epic offered us a fat stack of cash that was too big to say no to," I'll say "thanks for being honest, I'll buy your game when I feel like it." Your attitude? The attitude of many of these developers? I'd rather eat a fistful of sand than ever buy a game from someone like that.

Musubi · Jul 26, 2019

Yeah, EGS is fine. Honestly I'd start preferring to buy my games there if I actually played on PC more but the majority of the time I'm still playing on console. The problem with steam is there is just too much stuff on there. Way... way too much stuff. Hopefully EGS keeps the store somewhat of a gated community and actually somewhat curates their store a problem which is like one of the biggest things wrong with steam right now.

catswaller · Jul 26, 2019

Alexandros said:
Instead I would like to point out that all three of these things share a common characteristic: they won't last.

This is a shallow observation. Specifically I want to talk about paying for exclusives, because curation/etc require specific solutions.

A) Assuming they're selling sales gaurantees, rather than cash up front, the pile of money they have could last a very long time if the store does ok.

B) Obviously, to a point, all of this spend is simply meant to get a real foothold against steam. Rather than the <5% or whatever of the market stores like GOG and Humble have, a real dent in steams dominance. At that point, probably the great deals will go away. But having two major storefronts to sell to rather than a near monopoly will still benefit devs. It won't be like, free money up front, but there will at least be an opportunity to sell to both stores and wedge them against eachother for good deals, like you see in the console market. That future is probably worse for consumers, but it's what developers need to try and hold on to some amount of leverage going forward.

Grayswandir said:
I absolutely loathe the idea of Epic's "trickle down" economics

Yeah, you're entitled to your opinion, I'm just saying that the tendency on this forum to paint it as "greedy devs" rather than "people making a necessary economic decision" is misguided.

RE the quote: It's pretty disingenuous to call it trickle down -- i've seen a lot on the forum do this.

It's not like, "game developers get a big tax break so they'll invest money in giving it to you" reaganomics, which would be ridiculous.

It's "game developers get a lot of money, and so they will have more money. Which is good if you want them to close and lay off their staffs less often" which, okay, some of those devs are going to run away with the cash, but given the instability and hit driven nature of the market it's ridiculous not to believe that the premise is, on whole, pretty valid.

karnage10 · Jul 26, 2019

Bufbaf said:
..what?

I was literally asking why you can't just start and play games you bought on a different store, as you said you can't in the post I quoted: " In fact if i want to play a game from EGS i either have to add it to steam or install a bunch of programs to do what steam already does. ", in your words.
I chose Gog as an example because they also sell their own keys.
I still have no idea what you meant.

sorry i meant that i use the following features from steam in almost every game:

Steam controllers
screenshot feature
content cloud
cloud saving
BPM
in game FPS counter
In game overlay for friends
Inviting friends for game
Party voice chat
steam workshop
library categorization
library stats
achievements
store algorithm to find my niche games

Those are just the ones i actively remember, if we go deeper there might others that i sporadic use.
To my knowledge you can do most (if not all) of those without steam; problem is that it requires a lot of programs.

[edit] does that make it clearer?

Yarbskoo · Jul 26, 2019

Honestly, if I wasn't so put off by how they do business, I'd probably have it installed by now.

ramoisdead · Jul 26, 2019

Musubi said:
Yeah, EGS is fine. Honestly I'd start preferring to buy my games there if I actually played on PC more but the majority of the time I'm still playing on console. The problem with steam is there is just too much stuff on there. Way... way too much stuff. Hopefully EGS keeps the store somewhat of a gated community and actually somewhat curates their store a problem which is like one of the biggest things wrong with steam right now.

"The problem with Steam is that it's almost TOO GOOD".

Musubi · Jul 26, 2019

catswaller said:
This is a shallow observation. Specifically I want to talk about paying for exclusives, because curation/etc require specific solutions.

A) Assuming they're selling sales gaurantees, rather than cash up front, the pile of money they have could last a very long time if the store does ok.

B) Obviously, to a point, all of this spend is simply meant to get a real foothold against steam. Rather than the <5% or whatever of the market stores like GOG and Humble have, a real dent in steams dominance. At that point, probably the great deals will go away. But having two major storefronts to sell to rather than a near monopoly will still benefit devs. It won't be like, free money up front, but there will at least be an opportunity to sell to both stores and wedge them against eachother for good deals, like you see in the console market. That future is probably worse for consumers, but it's what developers need to try and hold on to some amount of leverage going forward.

Yeah, you're entitled to your opinion, I'm just saying that the tendency on this forum to paint it as "greedy devs" rather than "people making a necessary economic decision" is misguided.

RE the quote: It's pretty disingenuous to call it trickle down -- i've seen a lot on the forum do this.

It's not like, "game developers get a big tax break so they'll invest money in giving it to you" reaganomics, which would be ridiculous.

It's "game developers get a lot of money, and so they will have more money. Which is good if you want them to close and lay off their staffs less often" which, okay, some of those devs are going to run away with the cash, but given the instability and hit driven nature of the market it's ridiculous not to believe that the premise is, on whole, pretty valid.

THANK YOU. People calling this shit trickle down economics have no idea what that even means. Developers getting guaranteed money so they can keep the lights on and pay their staff isn't nearly the same thing as giving rich people tax breaks and hoping that creates new jobs and higher wages.

TacoSupreme · Jul 26, 2019

catswaller said:
It's not like, "game developers get a big tax break so they'll invest money in giving it to you" reaganomics, which would be ridiculous.

It has been DIRECTLY stated by Tim Sweeney that he believes games will get cheaper for consumers due to the EGS. Let's be realistic: Him saying that is an outright lie.

Rickenslacker · Jul 26, 2019

I don't hate it either, I think the attitudes surrounding it are moronic and the discourse has been unbearable and petty. you'd think something severe happened, but no, it's not even full exclusivity, everyone's lost their shit over exclusivity windows. so much energy has been put in being negative about it, finding anything for mockery, when it's really easy to just kind of ignore it and let it play out and see how things turn out, or just fucking buy the games on there if you really want them because it's not actually a big deal. i think what gets me about this is that i always mentally have a knife out towards any given company and don't want to get too comfortable with any, so seeing the shitflinging over being highly attached to a single company has me feeling irksome, no one's out there in your best interests, let them fight.

i just find it interesting that the idea of "features" has never been a big deal until this. when playing on pc was compared to consoles, the advantages were things inherent to the platform, not all the shitty half-baked redundant things found in launchers, but now between the launchers they're suddenly of utmost import, for reasons that seem pretty shallow.

anyways, i'll just end this off by saying tim sweeney is a goon, but don't get lovey dovey over gaben because he knows to keep his yap shut, because when he does open up he gets crucified on reddit for saying things like money is what guides things (back during the paid mods debacle).

Hektor · Jul 26, 2019

catswaller said:
Yeah, you're entitled to your opinion, I'm just saying that the tendency on this forum to paint it as "greedy devs" rather than "people making a necessary economic decision" is misguided.

RE the quote: It's pretty disingenuous to call it trickle down -- i've seen a lot on the forum do this.

It's not like, "game developers get a big tax break so they'll invest money in giving it to you" reaganomics, which would be ridiculous.

It's "game developers get a lot of money, and so they will have more money. Which is good if you want them to close and lay off their staffs less often" which, okay, some of those devs are going to run away with the cash, but given the instability and hit driven nature of the market it's ridiculous not to believe that the premise is, on whole, pretty valid.

If you would have ever actually read anything Epics CEO said (as well as plenty of games journalist), you would see that he is, in fact, arguing the first, bolded statement.

Musubi said:
Yeah, EGS is fine. Honestly I'd start preferring to buy my games there if I actually played on PC more but the majority of the time I'm still playing on console.

How am i not surprised

Alexandros · Jul 26, 2019

closer said:
yeah I never understood the consumer vs. dev perspective on this thing, as if they aren't in an intrinsically linked relationship. like I get that the "i want mines" mentality exists and the fear that the pc landscape will shift in a way where the consumer benefits that were standard before may not be standard in the future. but all I read about when I heard about devs is how awful the jobs are, how you should never enter the industry, how crunch culture permeates, and in general how underpaid they are because they should be working off of "passion". as a consumer you always have the final say in your purchasing choices; boycott epic, don't play games that are missing out on features essential to you, and support platforms that meet your needs, they will be there and obviously the demand is there, but devs never had a way to affect their own lifestyle like this before. this isn't a guilt trip, but surely ppl see how this situation is still incredibly shitty for devs involved, where they are finally offered compensation and a breath of air but have to get shit on every moment like they only exist to serve?
I think many that took the deal are hoping that the internet forgets (which they do tend to do), otherwise the loss of goodwill will end them in the future. what a shitty situation, to decide between being compensated and hated or not compensated, keep the good will until the internet forgets, and be done

epic selling some devils deal shit to devs, they really need to not ever tweet because they are leading devs by hand to a really really uncertain place

Customers and developers (those that received Epic's money) are sadly not on the same side on this. Developers took a deal that directly benefits them while taking away customer choice. They did so willingly and some customers do not want to support or encourage that.

catswaller said:
This is a shallow observation. Specifically I want to talk about paying for exclusives, because curation/etc require specific solutions.

A) Assuming they're selling sales gaurantees, rather than cash up front, the pile of money they have could last a very long time if the store does ok.

B) Obviously, to a point, all of this spend is simply meant to get a real foothold against steam. Rather than the <5% or whatever of the market stores like GOG and Humble have, a real dent in steams dominance. At that point, probably the great deals will go away. But having two major storefronts to sell to rather than a near monopoly will still benefit devs. It won't be like, free money up front, but there will at least be an opportunity to sell to both stores and wedge them against eachother for good deals, like you see in the console market. That future is probably worse for consumers, but it's what developers need to try and hold on to some amount of leverage going forward.

A) The fact that Epic has a lot of money doesn't mean that they will be willing to keep spending it in such a way in perpetuity, especially if sales results are not good enough.

B) The PC market isn't like the console market. Anyone not realizing this has a flawed perspective on how this situation will develop. As long as Epic and the developers that support them refuse to provide strong incentives to prefer the EGS over Steam, in any direct competition the EGS will lose.

Musubi · Jul 26, 2019

Grayswandir said:
It has been DIRECTLY stated by Tim Sweeney that he believes games will get cheaper for consumers due to the EGS. Let's be realistic: Him saying that is an outright lie.

Who fucking cares what Sweeney says? At the end of the day developers are getting paid and able to continue to do their jobs because of the exclusive deals. That's all that matters.

Deleted member 4609 · Jul 26, 2019

Musubi said:
THANK YOU. People calling this shit trickle down economics have no idea what that even means. Developers getting guaranteed money so they can keep the lights on and pay their staff isn't nearly the same thing as giving rich people tax breaks and hoping that creates new jobs and higher wages.

Apparently Tim Sweeney didn't get the memo.

EloKa · Jul 26, 2019

Musubi said:
Who fucking cares what Sweeney says? At the end of the day developers are getting paid and able to continue to do their jobs because of the exclusive deals. That's all that matters.

You can't be serious.

Musubi said:
if I actually played on PC more but the majority of the time I'm still playing on console.

Oh..

GhostTrick · Jul 26, 2019

Bomblord said:
last time I payed 60 dollars for a PC game was Skyrim on Steam. Haven't since then and have no plans to do it ever again. Not on EGS not on Steam.

But if EGS really does somehow crowd out Steam, Origin, and Uplay and force all PC games to cost AAA console prices and never drop price or go on sale I'll cross that bridge when it comes. Might just drop traditional PC gaming completely and stick with emulation on it.

Right. So basically, when it's too late. Maybe that's why it's better to be against it now ?

It's not only about crowding out Steam. It's about that 12% cut. If that becomes the standard, how do you think you'll get discounts on other stores ?

Not on EGS, not on Steam, yet one of those two seeks total control of the way games are distributed.

Deleted member 401 · Jul 26, 2019

Musubi said:
Who fucking cares what Sweeney says? At the end of the day developers are getting paid and able to continue to do their jobs because of the exclusive deals. That's all that matters.

Yeah, who the fuck cares about what the company's CEO, the guy calling the shots, has to say?

TacoSupreme · Jul 26, 2019

Musubi said:
Who fucking cares what Sweeney says? At the end of the day developers are getting paid and able to continue to do their jobs because of the exclusive deals. That's all that matters.

This post is just straight up bizarre. The person I said that to claimed that no one had ever said the money would be passed down to the consumer. But that is in actual fact how the EGS is being sold to consumers. And yet you attack me when I say that, in fact, that is how it's being sold? I just don't understand people who behave this way.

GhostTrick · Jul 26, 2019

Musubi said:
Who fucking cares what Sweeney says? At the end of the day developers are getting paid and able to continue to do their jobs because of the exclusive deals. That's all that matters.

No, that's not all that matters. Can we stop pretending gaming is some sort of exception where it's some kind of charity ?
And can we also stop pushing the false argument that devs are closing shops because of a 30% cut ? Because otherwise, end this fucking industry, as that 30% cut is not only the standard, it's a bigger cut than retail releases, which still prevails on consoles

Alexandros · Jul 26, 2019

Rickenslacker said:
I don't hate it either, I think the attitudes surrounding it are moronic and the discourse has been unbearable and petty. you'd think something severe happened, but no, it's not even full exclusivity, everyone's lost their shit over exclusivity windows. so much energy has been put in being negative about it, finding anything for mockery, when it's really easy to just kind of ignore it and let it play out and see how things turn out, or just fucking buy the games on there if you really want them because it's not actually a big deal. i think what gets me about this is that i always mentally have a knife out towards any given company and don't want to get too comfortable with any, so seeing the shitflinging over being highly attached to a single company has me feeling irksome, no one's out there in your best interests, let them fight.

i just find it interesting that the idea of "features" has never been a big deal until this. when playing on pc was compared to consoles, the advantages were things inherent to the platform, not all the shitty half-baked redundant things found in launchers, but now between the launchers they're suddenly of utmost import, for reasons that seem pretty shallow.

anyways, i'll just end this off by saying tim sweeney is a goon, but don't get lovey dovey over gaben because he knows to keep his yap shut, because when he does open up he gets crucified on reddit for saying things like money is what guides things (back during the paid mods debacle).

Do you have anything to base your argument on other than "I don't care about the things that other people care about"? You don't think it's a big deal, great, but others very obviously do and you haven't provided any reason for why they shouldn't.

catswaller · Jul 26, 2019

Alexandros said:
B) The PC market isn't like the console market. Anyone not realizing this has a flawed perspective on how this situation will develop. As long as Epic and the developers that support them refuse to provide strong incentives to prefer the EGS over Steam, in any direct competition the EGS will lose.

The PC market is fundamentally different, yeah, but a strong storefront can reshape it (as steam did before).

RE: all the other posters quoting me about trickle down:

A- it's still a bad analogy to call it trickle down guys.

B- Of course tim sweeny is a fucking liar the dude is a slimy nerd billionaire. Nobody thinks otherwise.

C- The generous (and i think realistic) interpretation of his comments is that epic has some plans to encourage/pressure/incentivise developers lowering prices to users as part of Epic's sales strategy, which would make perfect sense considering the other moves they're making (and in fact is exemplified in the weird sale they ran without developers consent)

Sankara · Jul 26, 2019

GhostTrick said:
People are right to complain. What conspiracy theory is there to say Epic is pushing for a toxic model ?

With conspiracy theories I'm talking about the tinfoil hate pseudo-racist "the chinese commies are coming and stealing your data!!" that I see outside of resetera

I agree with parts of the rest of your post, but I was talking about how I'm glad developers at least are getting paid tons of money and we still get the games anyway a year later on Steam.

Musubi · Jul 26, 2019

Baron von Loathsome said:
Yeah, who the fuck cares about what the company's CEO, the guy calling the shots, has to say?

Just because Sweeney once said a thing that you could extrapolate out and compare to trickle down economics doesn't mean whats actually happening on the store is actually that at all because its not. Sweeney says dumb shit all the time that doesn't mean any of it is true.

DrDeckard · Jul 26, 2019

I don't have any problem with it at all. I do think some of the moves they are making in securing games is a bit off but I'm not too bothered about having other storefronts.

Musubi · Jul 26, 2019

GhostTrick said:
No, that's not all that matters. Can we stop pretending gaming is some sort of exception where it's some kind of charity ?
And can we also stop pushing the false argument that devs are closing shops because of a 30% cut ? Because otherwise, end this fucking industry, as that 30% cut is not only the standard, it's a bigger cut than retail releases, which still prevails on consoles

There are literally developers out there saying the deal with EGS made has provided their studio near term stability. So no this is not false.

Deleted member 4609 · Jul 26, 2019

Musubi said:
Just because Sweeney once said a thing that you could extrapolate out and compare to trickle down economics doesn't mean whats actually happening on the store is actually that at all because its not. Sweeney says dumb shit all the time that doesn't mean any of it is true.

That's... like... the whole point?

You're so bothered with defending the EGS you can't even stop to read anymore.

Deleted member 42472 · Jul 26, 2019

EGS's problem is four fold

People REALLY like Valve for some reason (to be fair, I love their refund policy). EGS is a threat to that (it really isn't) so it must be bad
For a lot of folk, EGS still has no killer app. Once it does it tends to be a similar progression of "Ugh, fine" to "This is barebones, but fine" to "Cloud saves would be nice. But aside from that"
It is lacking a lot of basic shit. Cloud saves are a must in 2019 if your name isn't Joe Nintendo. I would need to check if it is still an accurate statement, but it isn't the best store for certain regions of the world ( admittedly, neither is Steam). And Epic already managed to get a history of dicking over some of their clients (Supergiant). And I am sure there are other straight up problems with it.
This and 1 are the biggies: Most of the EGS benefits are actually for developers. Curated clientbase means you aren't going to get buried by every single mobile port made in unity. Clean store pages means you won't have people associating your "mature and nuanced" game with "Preteen Titty Grabbers 78: EX Edition" and so forth. And lack of social integration makes it less likely you need to pay your community managers to maintain a third party site. A bigger cut per sale is just the cherry on top.

So when you have a store that doesn't provide a lot of benefits to you, the gamer, that your fellow gamers are screaming is evil because Sonic is way lamer than Mario?

And if you get past that bullshit you then run into stupidity regarding fraud alerts due to too many individual purchases during a sale (that is why we have shopping carts) or having to search for where Hades keeps its saves before you reformat or just fucking you over if you are from a region of the world that EGS doesn't properly support.

Which tends to result in a combination of REALLY angry and frothy people screaming how much they hate EGS and a smaller portion of people saying "its not that bad. Its... mostly okay. Look, Satisfactory and Outer Wilds is my jam". And then when you have shit like "Oh em gee, they ruined the kickstarter you backed 12 years ago by changing the store for a year" people go ballistic (rather than realizing that THAT is actually a case of just being another launcher since no transactions are required).

---

What I have found most surprising though is that people pretty quickly stopped mocking it because of Fortnite. Maybe it is just me being out of touch with gamers, but the impression I always got is that Fortnite is Candy Crush or whatever: It is that game which everyone pretends to hate and think is for stupid kids. But that most of those people secretly play anyway. I totally expected EGS to get the "Ugh, it is a mobile game store" style vitriol. But apparently that got skipped. Go figure

TacoSupreme · Jul 26, 2019

catswaller said:
The PC market is fundamentally different, yeah, a strong storefront can reshape it (as steam did).

RE: all the other posters quoting me about trickle down:

A- it's still a bad analogy to call it trickle down guys.

B- Of course tim sweeny is a fucking liar the dude is a slimy nerd billionaire. Nobody thinks otherwise.

C- The generous (and i think realistic) interpretation of his comments is that epic has some plans to encourage/pressure/incentivise developers lowering prices to users as part of Epic's sales strategy, which would make perfect sense considering the other moves they're making (and in fact is exemplified in the weird sale they ran without developers consent)

A: This is just an attempt to handwave the problem with Sweeney claiming that the benefits will, yes, trickle down to the consumer.

B: And you want all of us to ignore this and buy games from his store as if that isn't a shit situation.

C: And yet EGS has, at times, talked about how they don't want to encourage sales like the big, bad evil Steam does. Hmmmm.

GhostTrick · Jul 26, 2019

Musubi said:
There are literally developers out there saying the deal with EGS made has provided their studio near term stability. So no this is not false.

Of course it is. Those two notions arent the same. Getting 18% more money and being paid millions in advance are TWO different things.

closer · Jul 26, 2019

Alexandros said:
Customers and developers (those that received Epic's money) are sadly not on the same side on this. Developers took a deal that directly benefits them while taking away customer choice. They did so willingly and some customers do not want to support or encourage that.

yes I understand, it is well within their right to not support and I think executing consumer choice is excellent, I just lament how shitty the situation seems to be for devs, some caught between a rock and a hard place shit

for some ofc, I'm sure there are ppl taking these deals just to maximize their return w/o any sense of urgency that they may need it to survive, but I don't judge that either, that was a choice they didn't have before and they are enacting their agency the same way consumers will when they refuse to purchase the game or install egs

honestly to me, I really wish the EGS situation just ends up in mass unionization

catswaller · Jul 26, 2019

Grayswandir said:
A: This is just an attempt to handwave the problem with Sweeney claiming that the benefits will, yes, trickle down to the consumer.

B: And you want all of us to ignore this and buy games from his store as if that isn't a shit situation.

C: And yet EGS has, at times, talked about how they don't want to encourage sales like the big, bad evil Steam does. Hmmmm.

okay a- no dude i just think it's annoying when people use history/politics analogies they dont understand cause im really into those subjects. carry on though.

b- who are you going to buy from instead? gog is the wealthy cdpr creeps. valve is one of the richest men alive whose really into like, collecting knives ? Humble is mostly owned by venture capital or something, right? It's an issue yeah workers should rise up but it's not something you can make a buying decision to solve. None of you people railing against epic store are itch.io only buyers.

c- again this is a selling to developers/selling to consumers divide. Developers don't like sales for specific reasons, epics sale was a (misguided) attempt to circumvent those reasons. The conversation isn't for consumers who don't understand how these businesses work.

Deleted member 41520 · Jul 26, 2019

I'm also very keen on the lower storefront take which EGS offers

To the point I'd rather buy new releases on EGS so the devs get that extra >10% of my money

I've anecdotally heard Valve just sit there and do admin and Steam just prints billions for them per quarter. The idea of them taking 30% for doing relatively little is sickening (although I'm sure they do a lot more than nothing).

Cecil · Jul 26, 2019

Gundato said:
EGS's problem is four fold

People REALLY like Valve for some reason (to be fair, I love their refund policy). EGS is a threat to that (it really isn't) so it must be bad

For a lot of folk, EGS still has no killer app. Once it does it tends to be a similar progression of "Ugh, fine" to "This is barebones, but fine" to "Cloud saves would be nice. But aside from that"

It is lacking a lot of basic shit. Cloud saves are a must in 2019 if your name isn't Joe Nintendo. I would need to check if it is still an accurate statement, but it isn't the best store for certain regions of the world ( admittedly, neither is Steam). And Epic already managed to get a history of dicking over some of their clients (Supergiant). And I am sure there are other straight up problems with it.

This and 1 are the biggies: Most of the EGS benefits are actually for developers. Curated clientbase means you aren't going to get buried by every single mobile port made in unity. Clean store pages means you won't have people associating your "mature and nuanced" game with "Preteen Titty Grabbers 78: EX Edition" and so forth. And lack of social integration makes it less likely you need to pay your community managers to maintain a third party site. A bigger cut per sale is just the cherry on top.

So when you have a store that doesn't provide a lot of benefits to you, the gamer, that your fellow gamers are screaming is evil because Sonic is way lamer than Mario?

And if you get past that bullshit you then run into stupidity regarding fraud alerts due to too many individual purchases during a sale (that is why we have shopping carts) or having to search for where Hades keeps its saves before you reformat or just fucking you over if you are from a region of the world that EGS doesn't properly support.

Which tends to result in a combination of REALLY angry and frothy people screaming how much they hate EGS and a smaller portion of people saying "its not that bad. Its... mostly okay. Look, Satisfactory and Outer Wilds is my jam". And then when you have shit like "Oh em gee, they ruined the kickstarter you backed 12 years ago by changing the store for a year" people go ballistic (rather than realizing that THAT is actually a case of just being another launcher since no transactions are required).

---

What I have found most surprising though is that people pretty quickly stopped mocking it because of Fortnite. Maybe it is just me being out of touch with gamers, but the impression I always got is that Fortnite is Candy Crush or whatever: It is that game which everyone pretends to hate and think is for stupid kids. But that most of those people secretly play anyway. I totally expected EGS to get the "Ugh, it is a mobile game store" style vitriol. But apparently that got skipped. Go figure

That's a lot of hot takes there. Nice way of dismissing valid arguments in #1, and your take on how crowdfunding expecations isn't worth anything was a fun read as well.

catswaller · Jul 26, 2019

GhostTrick said:
Of course it is. Those two notions arent the same. Getting 18% more money and being paid millions in advance are TWO different things.

Not really dude. When you're looking at sales projections and deciding which store to go for, flat money is deeply intertwined with the decisions about store cuts. Why do you think indie games go console exclusive even those consoles are way harder to develop for? Why do you think some sell only on personal sites or itch, even though there's way less traffic? It's all just projections about money, in big chunks or in small sales.

Lothars · Jul 26, 2019

Gundato said:
Which tends to result in a combination of REALLY angry and frothy people screaming how much they hate EGS and a smaller portion of people saying "its not that bad. Its... mostly okay. Look, Satisfactory and Outer Wilds is my jam". And then when you have shit like "Oh em gee, they ruined the kickstarter you backed 12 years ago by changing the store for a year" people go ballistic (rather than realizing that THAT is actually a case of just being another launcher since no transactions are required).

---

What I have found most surprising though is that people pretty quickly stopped mocking it because of Fortnite. Maybe it is just me being out of touch with gamers, but the impression I always got is that Fortnite is Candy Crush or whatever: It is that game which everyone pretends to hate and think is for stupid kids. But that most of those people secretly play anyway. I totally expected EGS to get the "Ugh, it is a mobile game store" style vitriol. But apparently that got skipped. Go figure

You have no idea what your talking about, That's the whole thing I get from your post.

closer · Jul 26, 2019

catswaller said:
Not really dude. When you're looking at sales projections and deciding which store to go for, flat money is deeply intertwined with the decisions about store cuts. Why do you think indie games go console exclusive even those consoles are way harder to develop for? Why do you think some sell only on personal sites or itch, even though there's way less traffic? It's all just projections about money, in big chunks or in small sales.

to add to this, customer vitriol is definitely considered when taking an epic deal but still leaves the ppl taking the deal in a state of uncertainty since this shit is so new and the reactions to it so intense, I really do think the ones taking the deal are hoping that ppl forget or simmer down before their next release

voOsh · Jul 26, 2019

Jiminy said:
I'm also very keen on the lower storefront take which EGS offers

To the point I'd rather buy new releases on EGS so the devs get that extra >10% of my money

I've anecdotally heard Valve just sit there and do admin and Steam just prints billions for them per quarter. The idea of them taking 30% for doing relatively little is sickening (although I'm sure they do a lot more than nothing).

Is this sarcasm? Valve has done more good for PC gaming than anyone else in the past 20 years.

TacoSupreme · Jul 26, 2019

catswaller said:
okay a- no dude i just think it's annoying when people use history/politics analogies they dont understand cause im really into those subjects. carry on though.

b- who are you going to buy from instead? gog is the wealthy cdpr creeps. valve is one of the richest men alive whose really into like, collecting knives ? Humble is mostly owned by venture capital or something, right? It's an issue yeah workers should rise up but it's not something you can make a buying decision to solve.

c- again this is a selling to developers/selling to consumers divide. Developers don't like sales for specific reasons, epics sale was a (misguided) attempt to circumvent those reasons. The conversation isn't for consumers who don't understand how these businesses work.

So basically your whole argument boils down to "BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHER BADPEOPLE?" and "Also, you're ignorant."

Great argument.

Rizific · Jul 26, 2019

Yeah i don't mind it. It's literally just another launcher to me.

Alexandros · Jul 26, 2019

catswaller said:
The PC market is fundamentally different, yeah, but a strong storefront can reshape it (as steam did before).

RE: all the other posters quoting me about trickle down:

A- it's still a bad analogy to call it trickle down guys.

B- Of course tim sweeny is a fucking liar the dude is a slimy nerd billionaire. Nobody thinks otherwise.

C- The generous (and i think realistic) interpretation of his comments is that epic has some plans to encourage/pressure/incentivise developers lowering prices to users as part of Epic's sales strategy, which would make perfect sense considering the other moves they're making (and in fact is exemplified in the weird sale they ran without developers consent)

Trickle-down economics is the perfect analogy. Epic's and its developer partners' whole sales pitch is "we know this sucks for you now, but if we make more money then someday in the future you might get somehow better games". This is trickle-down economics to a tee.

closer said:
yes I understand, it is well within their right to not support and I think executing consumer choice is excellent, I just lament how shitty the situation seems to be for devs, some caught between a rock and a hard place shit

for some ofc, I'm sure there are ppl taking these deals just to maximize their return w/o any sense of urgency that they may need it to survive, but I don't judge that either, that was a choice they didn't have before and they are enacting their agency the same way consumers will when they refuse to purchase the game or install egs

honestly to me, I really wish the EGS situation just ends up in mass unionization

It's not a great situation for customers either. We all love games and we want to support the people creating them but that can't happen when they go against customer interests in such a cold and blatant way. A line has to be drawn somewhere.

catswaller · Jul 26, 2019

closer said:
to add to this, customer vitriol is definitely considered when taking an epic deal but still leaves the ppl taking the deal in a state of uncertainty since this shit is so new and the reactions to it so intense, I really do think the ones taking the deal are hoping that ppl forget or simmer down before their next release

Yeah, I mean, gamers aren't the easiest market in the world to sell to. I'm sure this is very priced in, but compared to the risks of an otherwise promising, very good game flopping on an uncurated store most devs (unless theyre in a very specific slice of the market) would gladly take the gauranteed money and risk the outrage.

Lothars · Jul 26, 2019

Musubi said:
There are literally developers out there saying the deal with EGS made has provided their studio near term stability. So no this is not false.

Because they dropped a whole bunch of money for them, There is no guarentee that studio's going egs exclusive is a good thing for them other than short term and long term it's all up in the air because from the silence from epic and most developers sales are not there on the egs store. Will there be a huge rush of sales once they are not exclusive? I doubt it.

catswaller said:
Yeah, I mean, gamers aren't the easiest market in the world to sell to. I'm sure this is very priced in, but compared to the risks of an otherwise promising, very good game flopping on an uncurated store most devs (unless theyre in a very specific slice of the market) would gladly take the gauranteed money and risk the outrage.

The effects long term are going to be some of the most interesting because that will tell us if it paid off for devs that signed the deal and what happens after exclusivity ends.

catswaller · Jul 26, 2019

Alexandros said:
Trickle-down economics is the perfect analogy. Epic's and its developer partners' whole sales pitch is "we know this sucks for you now, but if we make more money then someday in the future you might get somehow better games". This is trickle-down economics to a tee.

this is the most facile possible understanding of the reagan era. Comparing consumer products to jobs is also wildly missing the point of how economies and like, people's whole lives, work. The analogy has no place in game sales, but if anything, it's somehow closer to the open storefront "the market will spend enough to keep developers from getting laid off" than it is the egs money.

edit: but whatever misuse the phrase however it's not really that big of a deal i'm just being a nerd everybody understands what you do mean.

catswaller · Jul 26, 2019

Lothars said:
The affects long term are going to be some of the most interesting because that will tell us if it paid off for devs that signed the deal and what happens after exclsuvitiy ends.

Yeah, I agree. You could, however, say this about anybody trying to sell a game on steam in the last few years -- as somebody who's been paying attention to the indie games scene, the number of good games (especially followups/sequels) that vastly underperformed is staggering. It's not hard to see why developers are interested in alternative revenue models. Everything has a lot of risks in this industry.

Mitth'raw'nuruodo · Jul 26, 2019

Alastor3 said:
Yes, there are good and bad stuff about Epic Game Store, but it seems ERA only care about the bad stuff

Even the worst game might have some nice things, but it's still a bad game for a lot of people.
What are the features and benefits of the EGS for the consumer so that people should care more and be happy with loosing features EGS does not offer?

As mentioned many times EGS should stand out by features and competition. As long as the EGS only eliminates choice and offers less features it's not an improvement or competition in any shape or form. And the kickstarter problem comes on top of that.

Musubi · Jul 26, 2019

Grayswandir said:
So basically your whole argument boils down to "BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHER BADPEOPLE?" and "Also, you're ignorant."

Great argument.

Nah the argument is that y'all have such a hate boner for Sweeney but will gladly do business with all these other storefronts where the people in charge equally all have their own issues but those are swept under the rug for "reasons"

catswaller · Jul 26, 2019

Musubi said:
Nah the argument is that y'all have such a hate boner for Sweeney but will gladly do business with all these other storefronts where the people in charge equally all have their own issues but those are swept under the rug for "reasons"

ya although I want to clarify -- it is very good to hate tim sweeny. You should just hate every unaccountable loser lording over hundreds of employees and tens of millions of consumers.

LaTasse · Jul 26, 2019

Watching this thread, it appears it is the console players who like the EGS the most.
I don't mind it as a PC player. They give money to smaller devs, that's cool. Maybe I'd like them to fund a brand new game from scratch rather than paying one year exclusives.

Lothars · Jul 26, 2019

catswaller said:
Yeah, I agree. You could, however, say this about anybody trying to sell a game on steam in the last few years -- as somebody who's been paying attention to the indie games scene, the number of good games (especially followups/sequels) that vastly underperformed is staggering. It's not hard to see why developers are interested in alternative revenue models. Everything has a lot of risks in this industry.

I agree but it's also a risk to alienate your audience that doesn't want to support egs. Maybe it will be worth it for the devs that made this decision but maybe it's just going to sour people on your game and your studio.

LaTasse said:
Watching this thread, it appears it is the console players who like the EGS the most.
I don't mind it as a PC player. They give money to smaller devs, that's cool. Maybe I'd like them to fund a brand new game from scratch rather than paying one year exclusives.

If they did that than it would make it better for everyone, It's the buying exclusivity that really soured me on them.

I actually don't hate Epic Game Store

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