Let's Talk About Borderlands 3, Epic Store Exclusivity, And An Uncontrolled Market [Jim Sterling]

[Deleted member 48897]

The kind of competition in the industry that people want to see doesn't exist, like, anywhere though.


it remains weird to me that people are interpreting his video as apologism for epic and not a sign that this is an inevitable conclusion of capitalist societies

 

[voOsh]

The kind of competition in the industry that people want to see doesn't exist, like, anywhere though.


it remains weird to me that people are interpreting his video as apologism for epic and not a sign that this is an inevitable conclusion of capitalist societies

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I've been seeing this position of "this is just how capitalism works, we must accept it" more often. I don't think most folks are under the pretense that Epic's exclusivity deals are illegal or something that hasn't been done before in other industries. But somehow this practice has been (mostly) avoided in PC gaming until now. I think it's completely reasonable if consumers want to fight against this by choosing to not use the EGS while they continue making exclusivity deals. If we must choose to succumb because it is not realistic to fight against the EGS, that makes me sad.

 

[Crayon]

The kind of competition in the industry that people want to see doesn't exist, like, anywhere though.


it remains weird to me that people are interpreting his video as apologism for epic and not a sign that this is an inevitable conclusion of capitalist societies

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Oh well allow me to illuminate.

Jim does a nonstop string of criticism for companies poor behavior for years now, but he doesn't jump in with this don't hate the player hate the game angle. He could obviously do that in every single case if it struck his fancy. But what would be the point.

Thus, his commentary on epic so far is notable.

 

[Deleted member 3294]

I've been seeing this position of "this is just how capitalism works, we must accept it" more often. I don't think most folks are under the pretense that Epic's exclusivity deals are illegal or something that hasn't been done before in other industries. But somehow this practice has been (mostly) avoided in PC gaming until now. I think it's completely reasonable if consumers want to fight against this by choosing to not use the EGS while they continue making exclusivity deals. If we must choose to succumb because it is not realistic to fight against the EGS, that makes me sad.

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Speaking as someone who's brought up the point of that this is how things work: my point was absolutely not to say that it should just be accepted.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

Jim's Correct about developers and publishers not giving a damn about them, and it's about time customers return that sentiment.

 

[Ploid 6.0]

I couldn't even buy Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age for anything but Steam's App. Steam gets exclusives by default a lot of the time. Maybe google will start selling all games outside of the streaming service to offer an alternative place to buy games too so games aren't defaulted to Steam app only.

 

[sabrina]

I agree with Jim in the video, but it's a bit rich coming from the dude famous for moralizing Steam and Capcom.

 

[7thFloor]

This is better than his original take on the EGS, but he's still pulling punches because Steam Bad.

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Pretty much, he stated the obvious, not a whole lot of analysis going on.

 

[7thFloor]

Steam gets exclusives by default a lot of the time.

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Plenty of games are available on other storefronts, you can blame SE for that, not Valve.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

I couldn't even buy Final Fantasy XI The Zodiac Age for anything but Steam's App. Steam gets exclusives by default a lot of the time. Maybe google will start selling all games outside of the streaming service to offer an alternative place to buy games too so games aren't defaulted to Steam app only.

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Blame Square. Valve didn't pay to keep it off other platforms the way Epic does.

 

[Omegasquash]

This video comes off as blaming the forest for the trees, to use his analogy.

Yes, it's true that companies don't care about the customer, since they see them as consumers. - They don't have to, and it's shitty that they're doing it.

Yes, it's true that Steam is a behemoth, and competing with it, with the aim of besting them, means competitors can come at them with these kinds of tactics. - They don't have to, and it's shitty that they're doing it.

Yes, it's true that regulation of corporations could have a positive impact for consumers. - They still don't have to act in ways that lead us to consider regulation, and it's shitty that they're doing it.

They're (Epic) is absolutely allowed to moneyhat. It's nothing new. People are allowed to be jerks, too. Nothing in the law that says you can't be a jerk, so go ahead, be a jerk. Just don't be surprised when people call you a jerk, you fucking jerk. Epic claims that what they're doing is good for the industry, but that's only because their goal is to be the leader in the industry. It's good for them, since they see themselves as the new leader. Money does crazy shit to people.

Best thing to do here is to not buy the game if you don't want to support their methods. I don't have EGS installed, and I don't plan to install it unless there are significant changes in their platform and their practice. Another thing you won't see me do is participate in any of this review bombing silliness. Just as well take your dog for a walk to shit on the lawn of a neighbor you don't like. Don't be an asshole, and don't spend your time or money on something that you don't like.

I don't blame the game. It can run just fine if the players don't act like shitheads. When I play monopoly, I don't sit with the rule book in my lap and play for blood. I roll my eyes and feel sorry for the jerk that plays like that.

 

[Ploid 6.0]

Plenty of games are available on other storefronts, you can blame SE for that, not Valve.

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I'm talking about the steam app where codes from other storefronts lead you to. When something goes wrong you still have to deal with Valve absentee customer service.

Oh this just made me think, what if Amazon got into the storefront apps. I mean they are already started with the twitch store, and I have a lot of games on it now, but if they could get main games like Square-Enix, Capcom, etc. that would be amazing. Their customer service is god tier.

 

[Hentailover]

Very disappointed in this video. While Jim admits that Epic's moneyhats are bad for consumers, he keeps calling it the correct thing to do.

I strongly disagree with that. Companies shouldn't use anti-consumer practices to achieve their goal, whatever that goal is.

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I at first was disappointed with the video, but I think i am getting what he is getting at. It's something he has been building up to adn as a recently turned socialist, I totally get it. He is diverting his audience anger from individual companies to "the system". He is trying to cash in social capital he aquired and dump it onto capitalism.

Being either openly socialist or more or less socialist but maybe not explicitly stating so is kinda the thing with leftist youtubers. Fine for people like me that are already on board, but might seem off for those that didn't see it coming, I guess...

 

[zoku88]

The kind of competition in the industry that people want to see doesn't exist, like, anywhere though.

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What does that even mean? And why should anyone care?

PC games were like that before and now they're not.

Is there some bottled water exclusivity deal somewhere?

 

[Deleted member 28523]

I'm talking about the steam app where codes from other storefronts lead you to. When something goes wrong you still have to deal with Valve absentee customer service.

Oh this just made me think, what if Amazon got into the storefronts. I mean they are already started with the twitch store, and I have a lot of games on it now, but if they could get main games like Square-Enix, Capcom, etc. that would be amazing. Their customer service is god tier.

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https://store.steampowered.com/stats/support

How is Valve's customer service worse then any other company's customer service? No other company is this transparent with their information. One bad experience doesn't mean anything.

 

[Deleted member 3294]

This video comes off as blaming the forest for the trees, to use his analogy.

Yes, it's true that companies don't care about the customer, since they see them as consumers. - They don't have to, and it's shitty that they're doing it.

Yes, it's true that Steam is a behemoth, and competing with it, with the aim of besting them, means competitors can come at them with these kinds of tactics. - They don't have to, and it's shitty that they're doing it.

Yes, it's true that regulation of corporations could have a positive impact for consumers. - They still don't have to act in ways that lead us to consider regulation, and it's shitty that they're doing it.

They're (Epic) is absolutely allowed to moneyhat. It's nothing new. People are allowed to be jerks, too. Nothing in the law that says you can't be a jerk, so go ahead, be a jerk. Just don't be surprised when people call you a jerk, you fucking jerk. Epic claims that what they're doing is good for the industry, but that's only because their goal is to be the leader in the industry. It's good for them, since they see themselves as the new leader. Money does crazy shit to people.

Best thing to do here is to not buy the game if you don't want to support their methods. I don't have EGS installed, and I don't plan to install it unless there are significant changes in their platform and their practice. Another thing you won't see me do is participate in any of this review bombing silliness. Just as well take your dog for a walk to shit on the lawn of a neighbor you don't like. Don't be an asshole, and don't spend your time or money on something that you don't like.

I don't blame the game. It can run just fine if the players don't act like shitheads. When I play monopoly, I don't sit with the rule book in my lap and play for blood. I roll my eyes and feel sorry for the jerk that plays like that.

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His point is though that Epic is playing in a system where what they're doing is the best way for them to enter and have a big presence. With the way things work, it's unlikely to see serious competition against Steam that doesn't come from big companies that are paying publishers and developers to make their games exclusive.

That doesn't mean that what Epic is doing is right, but it is "right" with the way capitalism works.

 

[Ploid 6.0]

https://store.steampowered.com/stats/support

How is Valve's customer service worse then any other company's customer service?

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I'm just going off of experience. My two, and only tickets to try to contact their CS were never replied to, maybe they changed over the years but I try to avoid having to deal with valve since those experience, and I was very cautious and slow to get FFXII TZA when it came out, since I had to get it for steam.

 

[GhostTrick]

I couldn't even buy Final Fantasy XI The Zodiac Age for anything but Steam's App. Steam gets exclusives by default a lot of the time. Maybe google will start selling all games outside of the streaming service to offer an alternative place to buy games too so games aren't defaulted to Steam app only.

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Excuse me to be it this way but your argument is stupid.
https://isthereanydeal.com/game/finalfantasyxiizodiacage/info/
You have 4 stores carrying the game and maybe even more.
"For anything but Steam's app" now that's another point that it is indeed important to tackle:
You're mixing the Steam storefront and the Steamworks API or Steam launcher. The former is where they sell games and make money. The latter is basically a tool they allow devs to use for their games because there's a shiton of stuff Windows isn't doing at OS level for gaming.

Selling on a Storefront is easy. Using different launcher isn't because it means handling multiple builds of your same game. Now, why do they default to Steam ?
Because it's fuckin better. Sure, it could be on GOG. It'd be great to have it on GOG. But GOG's stance is DRM free only, which publishers dont want.
What should they use ? Battle.Net and Uplay aren't open to 3rd parties. Origin is a joke.

So basically you're saying "Steam gets exclusives by default" which is like "Xinput gets exclusives by default". It doesn't make a single sense and just highlight how out of the loop you are in this case.

You're basically complaining that Steam is the best choice as of today in the whole industry. It doesn't make sense. You're basically complaining about "Oh well, it sucks that Square Enix decided to use the best tool they had available and for free on the market".

 

[Ploid 6.0]

To the above, I checked, those are all for the steam app. Also I just want to play the games, not live in the steam ecosystem having that app open all the time. I have problems with it. I love it's controller, but learned big picture mode sometimes decide to eat 30% cpu out of the blue (I did find ways to use it without steam running, but it's required pretty much). I don't rely on steam library to launch my games, but Windows Start icon area where I organize stuff. When Steam Workshop or whatever started showing up in games requiring me to launch steam to play the game that was another annoyance. Steam was slow to me, Origin required me to launch it too, but it was at least fast and light. GOG doesn't need anything running, Twitch store as well, I can launch those games with no app running.

Blame Square. Valve didn't pay to keep it off other platforms the way Epic does.

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Oh I do, it's sad really. They have a store with all their games listed, but the games just direct you to steam or something. You can only seem to buy their online MMORPG Final Fantasy games directly from the Square store. I guess they went with the easy way of selling PC games, give it to steam and call it a day. Look at MS with Halo, Microsoft Store, or Steam, now leave us alone asking for other ways to get it.

 

[Deleted member 14735]

I at first was disappointed with the video, but I think i am getting what he is getting at. It's something he has been building up to adn as a recently turned socialist, I totally get it. He is diverting his audience anger from individual companies to "the system". He is trying to cash in social capital he aquired and dump it onto capitalism.

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I haven't watched the video yet, but going by the posts in this thread, this is what it sounds like to me. I can't imagine he'd be doing this with a defeatist attitude, the implication would be "so maybe we should try and do something about this awful system", no?

I do need to actually watch the video, I will when I'm able to.

 

[LQX]

I remember a time when it was aggravating we had to wait months and years for some consoles games to hit PC now I'm seeing some being okay with essentially the same fuckshit we rebuked years ago when it came to third party games. I just don't get it as a long time PC gamer, and more perplexing is the amount of gaming media and even PC gamers that have come out of the woodwork to seemingly form a defense force for Epic. I also wonder what there stance will be if we start seeing exclusives deals relating to Streaming. Google might think Epic is on to something and buy streaming rights to major releases thus freezing out Sony and MS with certain titles. Amazon might feel the same but as it relates to streaming gameplay and decides to buy streaming rights to say Borderlands 3 where the only place you can see streaming content is on Twitch thus freezing out sites like GiantBomb. Just a rabbit hole they will be complicit in allowing to get deeper and deeper.

 

[GhostTrick]

To the above, I checked, those are all for the steam app.


Oh I do, it's sad really. They have a store with all their games listed, but the games just direct you to steam or something. You can only seem to buy their online MMORPG Final Fantasy games directly from the Square store. I guess they went with the easy way of selling PC games, give it to steam and call it a day. Look at MS with Halo, Microsoft Store, or Steam, now leave us alone asking for other ways to get it.

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Of course they are. And I explained why. What's the problem with using the Steam app ?

 

[Dick Justice]

He seems rather defeatist when it comes to the Epic Store, a stark contrast to most of his output. Which is interesting to say the least.

 

[Ploid 6.0]

Of course they are. And I explained why. What's the problem with using the Steam app ?

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I edited more, I just want to play the games in short. Personal preference, no need for cards, achievements, or forums.

 

[RPGam3r]

I will not hold exclusives against Epic the same way I don't against many services for movies/books/music and even physical stores when they get exclusives. Exclusives are a great way to get people in the door.

 

[Deleted member 48897]

What does that even mean? And why should anyone care?

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I mean that this is an inevitable result of profit motive / capitalist economies, as companies with moderate success gain increased market share and are able to choke out other companies as a result of scale and the ability to run at short-term losses. This is how Amazon and Wal-Mart are basically the general retail options at this point. Come in, centralize (convenience factor -- Wal-Mart sells more than the mom and pop shop), sell at a lower price, become the only game in town, do whatever you want. Of course "do whatever you want" usually entails "charge more to customers and pay less to workers", neither of which are particularly healthy practices. Control consolidates and all but a small handful of people have much of any money, more resembling a feudalist/colonialist system than a market economy.

In the sense of capitalistic monopolies being a precursor to feudalism, the Epic moneyhatting is almost funny, because it's just a slightly more aggressive system of patronage like would be seen in feudal eras.

PC games were like that before and now they're not.

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The open PC market basically stopped being a thing not long after Steam took hold, so it's not like Epic caused this to happen. The shareware market that existed through, like, the 90s certainly hasn't been a thing since then. What did Steam do? Come in, centralize (the place to buy all manner of PC dowloadable games), sell at a lower price (the infamous Steam sales), become the only game in town, hats and trading cards and other lootbox-adjacent things that aren't exactly consumer-friendly either.

Epic may be particularly noteworthy in how they court devs for exclusivity, but I remember people complaining in similar ways when it came to stuff like La-Mulana coming out on Play-ism first despite the fact that they weren't doing the whole moneyhat-exclusive thing.

Is there some bottled water exclusivity deal somewhere?

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So let me tell you about this company called Nestle and their goals for public water supplies...

 

[Ragnarok Flames]

"we want a competitor to steam"

"no not like that tho"

 

[Plywood]

People should be concerned about Tencent and EGS as spyware. "But it's just another launcher!!!" Doesn't cut it anymore.

 

[Midas]

Jim spitting the truth.

 

[KDR_11k]

I think moneyhats for exclusivity are technically anti-competitive. Dunno what it'd take to trigger antitrust laws though, I know Intel triggered these laws when it moneyhatted retailers not to carry AMD hardware.

 

[Ragnarok Flames]

like steam didnt moneyHat things like Rocket League. so that GOG couldnt have them.

 

[DixieDean82]

Thinking about this, I'm surprised that MS never tried to buy a load of exclusives when they re launched the Windows store.

 

[voOsh]

like steam didnt moneyHat things like Rocket League. so that GOG couldnt have them.

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I haven't heard of this before. Can you provide a source?

 

[deadman322]

like steam didnt moneyHat things like Rocket League. so that GOG couldnt have them.

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or ya know the rocket league devs didn't want to release a drm free version. you do know that gog is exclusively drm free right?

 

[GrrImAFridge]

I'm just going off of experience. My two, and only tickets to try to contact their CS were never replied to, maybe they changed over the years but I try to avoid having to deal with valve since those experience, and I was very cautious and slow to get FFXII TZA when it came out, since I had to get it for steam.

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They have. Steam support is mostly outsourced these days, and response times are much better than before. E.g. When I inadvertently triggered Steam's anti-fraud system near the end of the 2015 Winter Sale, my account was restored less than 24 hours later.

like steam didnt moneyHat things like Rocket League. so that GOG couldnt have them.

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The reason multiplayer games generally skip GOG is that there's no network API for developers to use, so they have to cook up their own solutions. This is why, for instance, the GOG version of No Man's Sky didn't support multiplayer until the end of last year.

 

[GhostTrick]

I edited more, I just want to play the games in short. Personal preference, no need for cards, achievements, or forums.

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That's fine but that doesn't change the facts. It's also a better API for the developpers. Your personal preferences, aka a minimal experience, is out of touch with the market. Devs need a backend to integrate all these modern stuff.

like steam didnt moneyHat things like Rocket League. so that GOG couldnt have them.

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GOG couldn't have Rocket League because GOG wants every games to be DRM free. While it is a good thing, it's not a stance devs want. Also, Rocket League started out of nothing.

 

[SteveWinwood]

like steam didnt moneyHat things like Rocket League. so that GOG couldnt have them.

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what

 

[Ploid 6.0]

That's fine but that doesn't change the facts. It's also a better API for the developpers. Your personal preferences, aka a minimal experience, is out of touch with the market. Devs need a backend to integrate all these modern stuff.

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It's just best for me to have alternatives, and I'm on the side of everyone getting to play on whatever app that provides games. I'd be more in favor of things like Square or Microsoft taking a bit longer to por.. make games available to other apps as well. I would have waited 6 months to a year to get FF12 TZA on GOG (oh boy, the dream), or Amazon Twitch.

 

[TheBryanJZX90]

Consumers are far too shortsighted, and anything that shifts the amount of money in this system from middlemen, whether that be Gamestop or Valve or Epic, to the people actually working to make the games is a plus in my book.

 

[ussjtrunks]

The way Epic are doing things are going to result in one of 3 things happening 1. People actually eventually cave and buy games on epics store 2. More Jack Sparrows running around 3. People buying the game on console or waiting for the steam version. Personally I think people will hold out for awile but when Epics store has basic features like cloud saving etc then more and more will start to use it ala origin / uplay / battle.net etc. Saying that I know alot of people going option 2/3 so in the short term Epic are probably doing quite badly.

 

[GhostTrick]

It's just best for me to have alternatives, and I'm on the side of everyone getting to play on whatever app that provides games. I'd be more in favor of things like Square or Microsoft taking a bit longer to por.. make games available to other apps as well. I would have waited 6 months to a year to get FF12 TZA on GOG (oh boy, the dream), or Amazon Twitch.

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It'd be best indeed. But it's also additionnal work as opposed to just selling on multiple storefronts. In the case of GOG, it's not happening since Square Enix absolutely wants Denuvo or any form of DRM while GOG doesn't... as for Amazon Twitch, it's whishful thinking because their launcher is barebone. Of course ideally, they'd use it or Microsoft Store. But it requires to make some effort to support a solution that is inherently worse and that you have to keep updating as well. Instead of having 1 PC build, you now have 3 if not more.

 

[Deleted member 45414]

He's not wrong, but that video did not need to exist, it basically just says capitalism is fucked and being mad about it will do nothing...

So what are we supposed to do then? Just eat shit and say thank you? Shrug and say: Oh, it's just capitalism?

 

[Wumbo64]

I'll be honest.

I personally want to see the Epic store get better and I personally don't have any issues with their practices. That being said, it isn't hard for me to understand why millions of already satisfied Steam users are upset. People are entitled to those opinions and should feel empowered to express them (reasonably) to the powers that be. Folks like Jim Sterling aren't accomplishing anything productive if their discourse essentially boils down to complaining about others complaining.

The people making a stink about this already understand how capitalism works.

I wanted to go to Star Wars Land when it opens, but I would have to register for a reservation to even have a chance at getting in. Either that, or I book an 800 dollar minimum hotel room (all of which are long-since booked) for certain admittance. I get that Disney can demand those terms, but it doesn't make them any less bullshit to me. So you know what I do? I bitch about it to my friends and on social media. It's a way I can express myself, emotional process a topic, and do something within my otherwise limited scope of powers about it.

In a way, Tim Sweeney at least replying to Tweets addressing concerns about the store is more productive than Jim reminding us how reality is shitty and our instincts get us riled up.

 

[Faabulous]

I get it. Being leftist scum just like Jim, I think his objective was to steer people that way. Maybe be angry with the system that encourages these shitty practices and all that, but I don't think the message was clear enough for people who are not like him.

 

[7thFloor]

like steam didnt moneyHat things like Rocket League. so that GOG couldnt have them.

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Please don't make shit up.

 

[Crayon]

I mean that this is an inevitable result of profit motive / capitalist economies, as companies with moderate success gain increased market share and are able to choke out other companies as a result of scale and the ability to run at short-term losses. This is how Amazon and Wal-Mart are basically the general retail options at this point. Come in, centralize (convenience factor -- Wal-Mart sells more than the mom and pop shop), sell at a lower price, become the only game in town, do whatever you want. Of course "do whatever you want" usually entails "charge more to customers and pay less to workers", neither of which are particularly healthy practices. Control consolidates and all but a small handful of people have much of any money, more resembling a feudalist/colonialist system than a market economy.

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What makes this such a poor angle of attack is the way that valves actual behavior undermines your premise that this sort of aggression is inevitable.

Valve has done nothing to crush the little guy or squelch competition. Quite the opposite. Nor have we any reason to believe that they would do that, even if anyone had taken an interest in the burgeoning market back when they were establishing the business model.

 

[Detail]

What makes this such a poor angle of attack is the way that valves actual behavior undermines your premise that this sort of aggression is inevitable.

Valve has done nothing to crush the little guy or squelch competition. Quite the opposite. Nor have we any reason to believe that they would do that, even if anyone had taken an interest in the burgeoning market back when they were establishing the business model.

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Valve have, if anything, welcomed competition, the fact that they take 0% cut from third party key sellers and allow that to happen is pretty telling in that regard.

Steam hasn't done anything to stop companies like GOG existing by saying "we want these older games exclusively so people can't have them DRM free"

If anything you could argue that Valve work against Jim and his anti-capitalism outlook because for such a massive company that makes huge sums of money they don't behave like one that wants to crush competition by any means necessary, quite the opposite
actually, that's why I don't understand Jims hatred for Steam, it makes no sense, other than his issues with curation (which I think is overblown personally) why is he actually angry at Valve?

Epic on the other hand, well, for someone who hates greedy corporations that wish to limit choice and corner the market, he should absolutely despise what they are attempting to do.

 

[A New Beginning]

I wonder what would be the estimated amount of money Epic pays for this type of deal and is the caliber of game such as Borderlands 3 reason why it's only 6 months and not a whole year.

 

[Yukinari]

He seems rather defeatist when it comes to the Epic Store, a stark contrast to most of his output. Which is interesting to say the least.

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Its cause his original video about Epic vs Steam was literally just "Steam is not curated properly so what Epic is doing is ok".

Now hes realizing that its not mutually exclusive.

 

[Deleted member 48897]

Valve have, if anything, welcomed competition, the fact that they take 0% cut from third party key sellers and allow that to happen is pretty telling in that regard.

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Sure, but it still relies on developers putting their games on the Steam marketplace in the first place, which is something they still charge to do.