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I actually don't hate Epic Game Store
- Thread starter Bufbaf
- Start date
Epic launcher isn't bad. I play games not launchers, and epic has been handing out a shitload of good games for free.
Kinda ironic statement in this regard tbh.
Don't get me wrong: people should not receive any blame if they use the EGS. But only using the EGS if it is literally your only chance to play a specific game isn't really supporting or embracing the store. A store can't survive the long run if your audience mostly consists of customers that actually do not like to use your service and only do so because you have removed all other possibilites.
I hope Epic doesn't put ingame overlay into it's launcher. Just another way to make Steam Controller not work well for certain games. I can't even try the new Windows updated Xbox overlay since I have to use so many overlays already (Steam because there's no windows Steam Controller drivers, Riva Tuner, and anything above 2 seem to cause problems with Steam Input). Steam updates even causes problems with steam input. For example, one moment I can play Dragon Age Inquisition without using BPM, then the next I have to use BPM, and again something is changed so both don't allow radial menu to work so I have to leave or enter beta to see if that work.
I can tab out and use the menu or friend list. Leave it at that.
I can tab out and use the menu or friend list. Leave it at that.
If it can't survive then I guess there is no worry then is there. Either they have to improve or they will fade away. Not all game consoles are created equal either.
I don't really care one way or another if EGS is there or not. I don't love moneyhatting exclusives on any console or platform.
Exclusive is ok if-
1. It's using that store or platforms native features (steam online facilities etc, not sure if epic has anything here)
2. In a way I don't mind if they literally like funded the game. Like you get the idea they Nintendo is paying for bayonetta for example. Not just "here's some cash to make this existing game come to us first or only" but "this game may not exist without the funds being paid"
I definitely think the bait and switching with kickstarters and pre orders is bullshit though. But I don't support Kickstarter videogames or pre order anymore anyway.
Exclusive is ok if-
1. It's using that store or platforms native features (steam online facilities etc, not sure if epic has anything here)
2. In a way I don't mind if they literally like funded the game. Like you get the idea they Nintendo is paying for bayonetta for example. Not just "here's some cash to make this existing game come to us first or only" but "this game may not exist without the funds being paid"
I definitely think the bait and switching with kickstarters and pre orders is bullshit though. But I don't support Kickstarter videogames or pre order anymore anyway.
I don't hate it either but if it wants it's money it needs to work for it. If it's a exclusive, it better be something good enough for me to consider enduring the launcher.
Which is why Epic is doing exclusives. If Steam starts competing, sure go for it, not particularly my concern.
Hate is overblown but I'm also not falling in love with them for showering money on devs. I'll just sit on the sidelines.
Which is why Epic is doing exclusives. If Steam starts competing, sure go for it, not particularly my concern.
Hate is overblown but I'm also not falling in love with them for showering money on devs. I'll just sit on the sidelines.
I am asking a straightforward question:
Why would a small developer want to support the Epic Games Store?
My argument is that they shouldn't because the way the EGS is set up and operates is antithetical to what a small developer needs: Access to a large audience that buys games. The Epic Game Store's curation and plans for things such as discoverability and marketing spell absolute disaster for any developer deemed unimportant enough to not make it through Epic's filter.
Now just to be clear, is your answer to this argument that "small developers have nothing to worry about because thankfully Steam will still be around"? I'd like to read your counter-argument that the EGS is in fact a good thing for small developers.
Shenmue fiasco has flamed a deep hatred for epic as a whole. Try to compete with quality Tim. Exclusives they build themselves. A better store etc. Instead they go out there to piss people off by taking away preferred and in many cases initially promised options. Not only that but it's aimed at steam only which makes it even more disgusting and petty.
My problem with epic game store is on a personal level. Appaling behaviour I would find insufferable in any case
My problem with epic game store is on a personal level. Appaling behaviour I would find insufferable in any case
While Steam doesn't curate, its scale pretty much does that. Getting attention on Steam is very difficult. Getting Valves attention to do anything on the platform is incredibly difficult.
If you have a compelling game that Epic is interested in, sellout, get the guaranteed unit offset to be exclusive for 3/6/9/12 months. Nearly every indie dev need predictable revenue to project their financial roadmap pre and post-launch for their game.
Epic is potentially SAVING some indie devs from going broke.
No doubt, but for many developers getting attention on EGS will be literally impossible because they won't be able to sell their product there. If you have a compelling game that Epic is interested in, you're golden. And if you don't? How many do? Out of all the developers currently making games, what is the percentage of those that will have the chance to be offered such a deal? What happens to the rest of them if the Epic Game Store grows and Steam withers?
I don't follow. Because of curation? Epic is a hell of a lot more proactive and receptive than Valve is. If you are early enough and your game shows promise, Epic would at least return emails on opportunities and potentially even provide advice. Valve does nothing of the sort. They rarely reply to emails making them extremely difficult to work with.
This is a tough question to answer because the key is how you grade or rate something that has potential. If you scale this to every game released on PC, then yeah, the percentages will be low. But if you start looking more at what games are really worth it, that percentage goes higher.
Well Steam isn't going anyplace. Competition isn't a bad thing here. Target has Walmart. And they both compete with Amazon.
Before I comment, please use the quote button under each post because I didn't get a notification of you quoting my post at all. If you want to separately quote parts of a post you can highlight them and press the "quote" button that will appear near the highlighted text.
Yes, because of curation. Right now any developer that wants to release on Steam has a guaranteed place on it (with a few obvious exceptions for games with illegal or inappropriate content). Every developer has guaranteed access to Steam's massive userbase. On EGS you are at the mercy of whoever makes the call that deems your game worthy or not of the store. If you don't get in, you don't get even a chance to reach your audience. You're out because someone decided that your game wasn't worthy and your years of work just went down the drain.
Who decides what is worth it? A few months ago I did some research and found out that out of the 20,000 games that were available on Steam at the time, over 15,000 of them had a 'mixed' or above user review rating. That means that for all these games at least half the people who bought them thought they were good enough to recommend to others.
Now tell me, how many of those games would you cut? How many of those games that did prove that they had an audience would you doom to failure by not allowing them on a store at all? Is it a good thing to kill the livelihood of hundreds of developers so that a handful of them, most of them already successful, can make more money?
So what I want to know is, where do people draw the line of 'worthy' games and how do they determine what is worthy and what isn't?
Right, but let's say that Epic manages to pull a good chunk of market share away from Valve. Would that be a good thing for developers that won't be able to sell their games on EGS? Would it be a good thing for them that their games will be seen by whatever percent less people? What is the benefit of this sort of competition for them?
Not a problem with the EGS, I generally don't give two hoots about the free games, But the whole Kickstarter/Game Pass affair has put me off buying full price games from now on. Having backed Phoenix Point and can understand why are going for money, but the announcement of it being on Games Pass day one along with Wasteland 2 and has pissed me off more as a backer, but I won't have shell out £40 on Outer Worlds as I will be using Game Pass,
I have been using Steam less this year, and I doubt this this will change much.
I have been using Steam less this year, and I doubt this this will change much.
Just being on Steam doesn't do anything. It is such a vast marketplace, that majority of games get lost in the shuffle.
For now. I honestly expect that to change as their marketplace matures.
Honeslty if you have good bizdev people, getting on EGS shouldn't be a problem. Especially as the platform grows.
Also devs honestly need to be smarter to where they bring their games. Steam having a huge user base doesn't instantly make it easy to sell games there. Know your target market and sell on platforms that make the best for you as a developer. Perhaps it is GOG. Perhaps itch.io. It would be a hell of a lot easier to get larger visibility and placement on itch.io over Steam.
Steam owns what, 95% of the digital PC market right now? If EGS got to just 10%, Steam would still have a huge edge. I think most gamers will look to price over storefront. If EGS carries it and it is cheaper, they will buy there. If Steam offers it for less, they will buy it there. It will still be avaliable to those that want it. There isn't anything preventing someone from having EGS, Steam, GOG, Xbox Game Pass, Origin and anything else. What is good for developers, is there is a platform offering a better rate and hopefully other storefronts will follow.
The benefit in competition comes in a couple areas.
1. Better rates for developers.
2. Put a fire under Valve to change their practices/policies/relationship management. Or put some development effort into evolving the platform. Provide better tools. More control for the devs.
Valve is nearly impossible to get a hold of for dev relations. Simple things like release date management, free weekend support, even getting a clear answer on when and where you will be featured. It is a blackhole there.
Epic or anyone putting pressure on Valve to improve Steam at both the consumer and developer side, would be great for everyone.
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I agree that Valve being a bit of a black box isn't very healthy, especially in relation to developers. You tend to read a lot of mixed opinions on how easy/hard it is to get a hold of a representative. Of course not everyone's experience can be the perfect with the amount of people on their platform, but it'd be good to hear improvements on that end. I don't know if it's me just paying more attention to it (quite possible!), but on the consumer end the blog posts they've been seemingly doing more frequently are very welcome as an avid user.
Possibly unrelated because they're hard at work on their new game, but Campo Santo (and Idle Thumbs) seemingly leaving for the dark side of the moon after their acquisition is unfortunate. Hopefully they'll be back with their podcasts eventually!
Possibly unrelated because they're hard at work on their new game, but Campo Santo (and Idle Thumbs) seemingly leaving for the dark side of the moon after their acquisition is unfortunate. Hopefully they'll be back with their podcasts eventually!
I agree with your concern, however I think things will not come down to that eventually.
It is known that they will open up the store to everyone. As stated in their store FAQ:
Currently they have the infrastructure up and running thanks to having those tech built for Fortnite, but it is apparent that they have not finished decoupling things and building out streamlined publishing pipeline in order to open it up to all developers, without having to rely on their internal support.
Of course when they actually do, they will face the same visibility problem same with Steam right now. But for now, the developers that are lucky enough to get on their store will benefit greatly from those deals and the rest will still have the dominating marketshare of Steam to sell their games.
The more garbage that comes from EGS and it's stans, the more I see just how much work Valve has put into Steam, and how many features it has compared to any other store including the console ones.
The amount of features that Valve gives free of charge to anyone who puts a game on their store is astounishing.
The amount of features that Valve gives free of charge to anyone who puts a game on their store is astounishing.
Yeah if anything, all this mess has made me appreciate Valve / Steam more. Before this I had concerns about how much (or little) Valve seemed to do, but it turns out they're always very busy behind the scenes working on stuff that benefits the PC platform as a whole for both devs and consumers. They provide so much more than other pc platforms and they don't even take the full 30% of game sales because of keys
There are several contradictions here. First of all, if being on Steam does nothing as you claim then developers have absolutely no reason to launch on Steam, suffer through all these issues that you point out and on top of it all pay Valve 30% of their revenue. The problem solved itself. Everyone should launch their games from their own websites or services or sell through Itch.io, Discord or other stores that provide a better revenue cut than Epic. It seems straightforward enough, if being on Steam does nothing. Would you recommend developers to skip Steam? If Steam does nothing then other stores and platforms should be easily outselling Steam. If that is not the case, maybe Steam does actually do something.
Itch.io, for example, already has a big discoverability issue because of its large games catalog. There is a 17-page thread on GOG's forums about games from small developers that GOG rejected, including some truly ridiculous cases like Opus Magnum by Zachtronics. Visibility means very little if the audience isn't there.
As for the benefits of competition that you seem to so strongly believe in, we'll see. We're talking about future events so there isn't much point in debating which of our individual predictions will come true.
For now, yes. A few people will benefit in the short term. In the long term though I can't see any scenario that ends favorably for small developers. Like you said, either EGS remains an exclusive club that by design will shut out the overwhelming majority of developers or they will open up the store and arrive at the same issue as Steam, only with less discoverability tools and features.
I wish people remembered this whenever they throw a tantrum at some indie developer who is just trying to survive a potential commercial failure.
To me it's not about the store. They could have the greatest features in the universe and I still wouldn't buy games from them. Paid exclusivity on the PC is not welcome at all and I refuse to support it. If it's a game the storefront/publisher has funded development of or if it's developed in-house, then do whatever you want with it. I might not like it, but I'll buy a Titanfall 2 on Origin every now and then. The stuff Epic is doing is toxic garbage for the PC community and I hope their store rots.
Except Epic is almost exclusively money hatting high profile indie titles that have already had a significant marketing presence.
Except Epic is almost exclusively money hatting high profile indie titles that have already had a significant marketing presence.
Why do those "saved" deserve a pillow over those rejected from Epic? To make more potential failures in a crowded market in the future? I guess Supergiant deserves more of a shot at surviving over the Assault Android Cactus dev because reasons?
I wish people remembered that for every Dev given a golden handshake, 20 more would have the door shut in their face and not even get a chance.
I've buy all the games I play.
I preorder games.
I buy games dev 1.
I buy plenty of indie games for their asking price day 1.
I buy DLC games.
I back crowdfunding campaigns.
So I don't feel bad for telling developers, when I have four stores that I feel comfortable buying from (Steam, GOG, Humble, Itch.io), that it's disappointing when they opt for a fifth one, with that fifth being one that really doesn't put the customer in focus. And I really don't feel bad about that, when it's games that have been announced for other stores at first and then pulled, or when it's even been promised in crowdfunding campaigns.
I really don't see myself for being unreasonable there.
And if exclusivity deals with Epic is the thing that makes or breaks a dev, then we're not adressing the real problem with deals like this, are we?
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ok fair points everyone, I just wish we could see the point of view of the developers who take the money and why they do it and what would happen if they did not take money.
Well, are you thinking about any specific devs/publishers, that you think would be on the brink without the deals?
^^^
Sadly enough, this entire EGS exclusivity nonsense, especially the way some developers go about handling it, has made me very much reconsider wether or not i want to go out of my way to support indiedevs at large anymore and the answer i arrived at is... no.
This might be unfar because the majority of indiedevs don't have anything to do with the EGS, but the few very renowned ones are enough to poison the well for me. If i can't even have trust into those, why should i care about anyone.
Where did I say it's a good thing and I'll ask again, how do you know better than those who are making the deals? All you are doing is grandstanding thinking you know better than everyone else while contradicting yourself. Earlier you suggest nobody should use Epic and the next you're worried they will dominate and hurt indie developers because they will have nowhere else to go. It's a ridiculous argument all because you don't want anyone to support them.
I can only answer "it's not about the people who take the deals, it's about what it means for everybody else" so many times. You still refuse to answer the question: why would a small developer want to support the Epic Game Store? It is a completely straightforward question that you keep ignoring, again and again. It makes me think that you know the answer can't support your argument. You know that the EGS is meant to increase profits for a handful of already successful developers while everybody else is excluded. You know that if these developers and Epic continue with the "fuck you, got mine" mentality and become successful they will push out hundreds, maybe thousands of developers out of the market.
I was neutral about the service until the whole Shenmue 3 bullshit happened. Still no completely on the rolling Epic store hate train, but the PC shenmue 3 situation is fucking dirty.
Remind me of that one, because what I read was that the deal made it possible for them to add a couple of months of development time, and add additional localizations.
And this is how they communicated the deal: "Our partnership with Epic Games store allows us the opportunity to make sure MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries meets our internal goal of creating the best MechWarrior game possible. "
I don't read that as the deal being a make or break for them.
the developers have stated that the game is make or break for the studio, at least for a long time. its their biggest project yet. therefore, they need the game to be successful. taking the egs deal increases the chances of that and gives everyone a better game that eventually will be on all platforms.
You're the one who created your own argument so why would I need to answer something I never posed in the first place. The only answer out there is because they think it's a good deal for them. They are the developer, not you, so they think they know whats best when making these deals. Like I say, all you are going is grandstanding trying to create issues for them without actually being in their shoes.
Now speaking of not giving answers you continue to dodge and deflect. I asked you how can you on one hand suggest there is no reason why a small developer would work with them and then do a complete 180 and tell everyone that you are actually being seriosu they will have nowhere to go if Epic takes off? It makes absolutley no sense when Steam is such a dominant force and nothiong at all suggest they won't continue to be. You are creating your own issues to try and enlighten us all not to support them now because in the future big bad Epic will otherwise rule the world. It's a ridiculous proposition all because you have issues with anyone, wether that be developers or consumers, to support the Epic store.
So the same reasoning as the Phoenix Point devs had, for letting their PC backers down.
And yeah, they're probably true about that. But what they're saying there is true for most studios about any projects.
I'm not going to fault any studio for their aim to secure their future, but:
1. In the cases where they already have taken money from their customers, they need to be held accountable for that. That's something that we as customer should never ever excuse, based on financial reasons that we have pretty much zero insight into.
2. They're not really maximizing potential sales, or growing their userbase with this, so it's still kinda backwards.
3. We as customer still don't owe them any sales. If they want to reach us, sell the game where the customers are, and don't expect the customers to be willing to jumpt through extra hoops to get to your game, when there's so many to chose from.
4. They're not really solving the problem of the industry being so insecure, but are really putting a patch on the problem, that won't necessarily be available the next time.
Why would anyone 'hate' EGS?
The need to 'hate' a PC game store/client/platform just sounds so stupid.
I can understand someone will consider EGS as their 'least preferred' platform but 'hate' is such a big word, and anyone that genuinely 'hates' EGS probably needs to get their priority check.
The need to 'hate' a PC game store/client/platform just sounds so stupid.
I can understand someone will consider EGS as their 'least preferred' platform but 'hate' is such a big word, and anyone that genuinely 'hates' EGS probably needs to get their priority check.
1. mechwarrior devs refunded anyone who wanted and they got to keep their preorder bonuses
2. we or you do not know that. read the mechwarrior thread about the reasons for epipc. the reasons for epipclike visibility, a lower cut (12 procent versus 35 procent)
3. sure, but the game will come out where the customers are any way, so...
4. maybe, but they are choosing to do what works for them now. the future problem would still be the same even if they chose steam
LMAO at linking this trashy fan blog that can't even get basic facts right
Great, but I want to know what you think. Do you think that a small developer that isn't likely to receive an offer from Epic should be supporting the Epic Games Store?
Where exactly is the contradiction in that? I am saying that small developers should not be supporting EGS because its success would be a bad thing for them. I have no idea what is supposed to be contradictory about that.
Valve doesn't take a 35% cut. Nor does anyone else for that matter.
1. They should do what's best for them. Of course you will say it's a cop-out answer but in reality they need to eat and survive so how can you blame them for taking money or some other deal?
2. Again you are grandstaning acting like you know better. Here's a thought, go make your own game and see if you can be successful at it. Coming to the forum acting holier than thou and suggesting to everyone what they shouldn't do is not only arrogant but misleading. Not every small developer has a success story even if they put their games on Steam only. You're just trying to dramatize things to get your point across (by suggesting Epic will take over and Steam will fade away) and it's becoming embarassing frankly.