It still blows my mind that these people launched a store that was missing features that hat were common half a fucking decade ago.
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None of the basic improvements to the Epic Store slated for April were released [Update: June Updates missed as well]
- Thread starter AHA-Lambda
- Start date
Don't worry, Epic is holding tight to their republican playbook. They 'll spout a couple lies on twitter for use as talking points for all their idiot followers to repeat. Then they'll get rightfully called out on it, back peddle, then in a couple days say it again anyways. They'll pile up the lies so high so people who don't do their due diligence won't know what's real anymore and everyone will get used to it and stop calling them out as much and the effect will be lessened. By that time they'll have strong armed their way into the market and have done their damage.
The literally hundreds of posts explaining why it isn't just another launcher/store, including the very one you replied to here https://www.resetera.com/threads/no...ril-were-released.114617/page-5#post-20401155 since someone pointed out there is an insane disparity between the 2 stores, and you basically ignored half the argument and implied people were basically making shit up.
Not that it is just a feature disparity even, you also have things like EGS games being more expensive, due to the fact they mostly lock them to their own store, which steam doesn't do, which allows for this thing called competition which actually does drive prices down, even if you don't care at all about having more than 1 launcher for your library, even if you don't care about specific features that are missing from EGS, you are still likely going to get worse prices.
"Epic is promissing stuff that they know they can't deliver in the timeframe they are giving, to redirect critique that their Storefront is barebones."
"Those Fortnite devs have insane crunch, they just take their time and don't overwork their Store workforce."
Era in a nutshell.
Did I do that right?
Corporations can now just overpromise things and people will defend them with the "at least they didn't use crunch" argument, regardless if the devs need to crunch or not. At least we can PRETEND that missed deadlines means no crunch for devs, Right?
This "disparity" means nothing to me. I can buy a game, launch it and then play it. I don't know of or use any other weird launcher or store features. Maybe i'm an old shit... maybe i'm weird... who knows. All i know is those who i game with and know personally are similar in my usage and experience. Store=buy game. Launcher=make game play. If those things do that i'm stoked!
Fair point about price difference; however, that's nothing new, surprising or anything that will ever change. [insert trite line about Capitalism]
You're seeing very charged responses because this is basically the 1000th thread that touches on some of these issues and people come in and make "what's the big deal? It's just another icon to click on" posts regularly. Sometimes it's people who are just confused but other times it's people who do know why coming in to stir shit. You may have noticed a general trend in life which is when you're not mad about something, but someone else is, they seem dumb or irrational. That effect applies here too - people make an assessment, decide it doesn't bother them personally, then come in to dump on people who think it is a big deal. I'm not saying that's what you're doing, to clarify, I'm just trying to give some context. I don't think that the reflexive attacking of people (including you) is fair or acceptable.
It depends, some people care more about GoG than Steam (because they want their games to be DRM free). When epic makes deals, it keeps games off every other PC launcher, not just steam (with a few exceptions where they let it stay on the Windows 10 store, although that's a not much consolation since the Win 10 store is awful). So even if you really love itch.io as a store, Epic is keeping it off there. If you love the GoG DRM free policies, Epic is keeping it off there. If you love the features that Steam provides, Epic keeps it off there.
To give you a sense of some features that Steam provides which Epic to this day does not, you have -
- Cloud saves
- Leaderboard and matchmaking APIs for developers to use
- Big picture mode (i.e. big screen gaming mode for convenient use on a TV)
- Support for all sorts of controllers with rebinds, custom configurations you can share between people (including Steam's own hardware)
- In-home streaming from computer to computer or to Android devices
- Mod workshop (this is actually quite crucial for certain games, particularly strategy ones)
- Surprisingly great Linux support for games that weren't ever released on Linux, making previously complicated WINE setups trivially easy to use
- Suite of VR features
- Family sharing to let people share your library when you're not using it
Epic's launcher is extremely light on features, even six months after launch. Just taking a look at the "recently added features" list on the Trello board should tell you how bad of a state it launched in - the ability to search and preloading are hot new features they've added in. Some totally hot upcoming features include a timer that tells you how long you've spent in a game, a shopping cart, library sorting, and wish lists. Some of these are not projected to arrive until up to six months from now. At least cloud saves might arrive in the next few months, assuming no extra delays. Shame if you needed to use them for the first 9 months of the Store's life with multiple exclusive high profile games attached to it.
EGS is still not available in China (one of Steam's huge growth areas), so if you were a gamer in that region enjoying Steam and suddenly games you were anticipating got pulled to go EGS exclusive for 12 months, then you're sitting that one out whether you want to or not.
People can and have ranted for hours about this, but I don't think some people understand just how far behind not only Steam but most other stores and launchers the Epic one is. Nobody except themselves forced them to launch in this state, and they deserve to be grilled for making that decision.
Whether or not you personally care, I hope you at least understand why some people do.
Why would Epic care? They're not counting on winning over customers by providing a quality service, they're counting on forcing customers to buy from them because they have eliminated every other choice.
It's been shown that when games go exclusive to Epic, the price jumps up 10-15%. I can't remember the time I actually bought a game from Steam, I usually go to Humble or other third party stores because I usually find them cheaper than what they are on the Steam storefront. So yes, games increasing in price is something new with Epic locking down their store.
I'd be surprised if we get most of those features by the end of this year. Tim and Epic management seem more concerned with removing games from other storefronts than improving their own shit storefront.
I mean if consumers are stupid enough to reward such behaviour why waste revenue and man hours on fixing their store?
Just buy more exclusives! Much more easier! 🤑
I mean if consumers are stupid enough to reward such behaviour why waste revenue and man hours on fixing their store?
Just buy more exclusives! Much more easier! 🤑
But get ready to get criticized for not caring about Steam's "pro-consumer" features!
Yeah what kind of idiot poor cares about paying more on average for things. Just get a job stupid
Thanks for taking the time to lay all of that out!
I was being honest when i said, "what am i missing?". I appreciate you trying to elaborate on why you think emotions seem to be running higher than logic warrants. To an extent i understand better now. It doesn't affect me at all but with the features you've listed... i can see how some could be very invested in those. That is a bummer then if those are things you've grown accustom to or really want - i get that now. Do i still think that everything is a little blown out of proportion - completely. Regardless, thanks again for the meaningful discourse!
Or any other PC storefront. Really stupid, I know, who needs features?
This is not how modern service-oriented software development works. Again, you build and ship the minimum viable product (MVP).
This means that someone at Epic determined that the launch feature set was the bare minimum they needed to launch, and went with it. The ideology here is that the additional time and resources spent developing beyond the MVP do not account for the lost revenue and learnings from simply entering the market faster.
Now, this speaks nothing of their post-launch development, but without insight into what's going on at Epic, the kind of speculation in this thread basically amounts to the "lazy dev" argument.
Honestly the argument was disingenuous even when people were making this argument regarding fornite, about how people would complain if epic crunched to deliver updates, and complain if epic didn't crunch and didn't deliver updates, since it basically assumes a few things, first that epic as a company (not individuals) is crunching to satisfy users, which boy do I have a bridge to sell to people that believe this, and second that crunching will actually stop users from complaining about things.
It is never an argument that makes sense, but yeah having it apply to timeframes that epic itself gave out, for features of an already heavily under featured store, that were used as reasons why said feature disparity wasn't particularly important, is something.
It is fine to not particularly care about certain features, steam has plenty of features I would not be upset if they disappeared, even big ones like they could for example remove linux support tomorrow and my amount of care about it would be only related to gaming potential future independence from windows, it is however not fine to not care about those things, and then say that people that care about said things are creating a self fulfilling furor.
Not to mention a feature you don't use today doesn't mean it isn't a feature you won't use tomorrow, of which steam has a whole lot of them for me, like yesterday I played Dakar 18 due to professional curiosity, and ended up using steam streaming feature to show some problems with the physics model of the game (like cars gaining speed backwards without any acceleration) to another dev, is that a feature I particularly care about? Definitely not, but it was there and it was useful yesterday, much like I have ended up using many steam features a couple of times and then never again.
Also say that you don't use or believe you will ever use the missing features, now even if you were paying the same (which you aren't EGS is more expensive), it would still be perfectly fine for users to criticize paying the same for a store that has less features, since it is perfectly rational consumer behavior to want more bang for buck.
Ok, so what's the nature of the accusations in these threads then?
Seems like a brain and reading comprehension :)
Just joking man, people are just cheesed off with people saying it's just another launcher.
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That Epic published a monthly roadmap of upcoming store features and failed to deliver on all of them?
Yes, but roadmaps are internal information, not for public release. Epic was very naive to give a roadmap to the public. Saying in the next update is best than missing a date.
One thing does not exclude the other. If they missed the deadline does not mean they did not crunch, it simply means that they failed to deliver.
The solution to tht would be more work, so either crunch or more crunch. Make up your mind. Either developers should have their time or crunch is fine, you can't have both. Epic now is 500 plus people, asking for more jiring is just not an option.
Don't forget they were putting out the message of (paraphrasing) "Just wait a month! we'll be adding in a bunch of features, we promise! Here's our roadmap to show how serious we are about adding functionality if that is what you want!"
That's a statement of fact. Posters in this thread are clearly implying other things, like:
- Epic doesn't care
- Epic only put it out for PR and had no intention of working on it
- Epic only crunches on Fortnite and doesn't work hard on EGS
- Epic is only interested in spending money on acquisitions and not on development
This isn't even funny anymore. This is becoming a hugely contentious situation that's upsetting a lot of people.
No one put forward the roadmap for their store but Epic.
If this was suppose to be internal as a guideline, it should have stayed internal.
Not released publicly so Epic could point to that when braced with criticism of their lack of features.
Epic clearly put out the roadmap for PR. For EGS defenders the feature roadmap is as good as feature complete. Cue two years from now: "Cloud saves take time especially when they had to reprioritize. They'll get there."
At what point is criticism for lack of features valid? Since they want us to use their store now I think now is perfectly fine. But give me your take on this.
What they should be focusing on is to fix their backend to make adding games to the store not a fully manual process that forces them to prioritize what to add. That Tweet from the Team Spy dude on why old UT games are not on EGS was a facepalm moment. WTF, you can't get to adding your own games without bouncing another one back? How many games do they add to that store per week? 1 or 2? And they still can't find a gap of time to get UT out of Steam and into EGS? The store is so half baked it even affects their own ability to be efficient... Is only 1 person working on it?
Epic is effectively stating: "Our old games sell so poorly it's not even worth our time to put them on our own storefront." Amazing and further proof the bottom line rules all.
Sure! But consider this:
- Capps, Sweeney and CliffyB all made the statement about piracy on PC justifying not making games for PC anymore and moving to consoles. They didn't say "digital media is being pirated a lot", they said "there's too much piracy on PC so we are making games to consoles only for now".
- Which, similar to what you say, is not a bad thing in itself. But then comes the present and Sweeney comes with this messianic store where they'll be able to save PC gaming from the clutches of Valve's 30% cut... while they ignored PC gaming for years and Valve worked its ass off on making it a good market and lessen piracy by offering a good service.
- This includes being extra aware of each country/region needs and culture in buying games (and stuff in general), which lead them to offer hundreds of regional payment options and regional pricing, which EGS does not and is completely oblivious about. Valve made markets considered lost causes and drowning in piracy like Brazil and Russia into viable consumers. Again this is completely ignored to fit the EGS narrative of the 12% cut being the best thing ever and Valve's cut being the "biggest problem PC gaming faces".
It's completely valid to call Epic out on giving its back on the PC crowd years ago and now coming to sow the fruits of someone's else work while acting like neither happened.
Roadmaps are not just for internal use. That's fucking silly. Company I work for is a pretty damn small software company that only just broke 100 employees after 3 years. The published roadmaps per quarter are entirely what keep some of our customers paying hoping to get those features eventually. There's engineering updates that go our weekly and shit is moved every time because that's the nature of it.
No one should look at a roadmap and take it at face value 100%, especially when the disclaimer explicitly tells you dates are subject to change.
There's no one here saying you can't criticize EGS for its lack of features. It's also pretty clear that PR is a major reason for why they (and anyone) puts out a roadmap. What I'm railing against are the implications that there's anything more sinister going on, or that they're lazy.
I never understood this line of debate. Why do they have to have contributed to PC's current state to reap its fruits? It's not like they're trying to take credit for it.
This is all true, but it's not a good look when the dates only changed after they got called out by Reddit for missing their own goals.
They absolutely do not have to, of course!
But there's the little context of their narrative of saving gaming from Valve's awful clutches and literally everything else my post mentioned.
I see what you're saying.
I personally don't interpret their messaging in quite the same way. What they're doing is presenting developer-facing messaging to the consumer, which is kind of stupid, because it assumes that consumers can sympathize with developers and publishers.
From a consumer-facing point of view, as many have already pointed out, Steam is kind of an angel, so this is a losing battle.
Welcome to software development and why companies don't like to share roadmaps.
Been in the gaming and tech industry for over a decade and I would say average delay is 3-6 months from most "roadmaps".
Now you too get to wonder "is this feature shipping or did we cut it?"
Been in the gaming and tech industry for over a decade and I would say average delay is 3-6 months from most "roadmaps".
Now you too get to wonder "is this feature shipping or did we cut it?"
Sure, but the music industry didn't say that a lot of media was being pirated, they focused on their industry; music. Game developers and publishers are going to highlight the games. That seems completely natural. But furthermore, if they were right about what they were saying (by your own admission), and then the market became more worthwhile financially over time, isn't it a good thing that they opted to come back and didn't stay rooted in that opinion?
The notion that anyone is acting like Valve didn't tremendously help to fix the situation doesn't seem correct to me either, else why would they have come back? Furthermore, even during that non-PC era, they still shipped UT3 and Bulletstorm on PC and supported UE3 and UE4 development. The notion that they aren't aware of what Valve did just seems really disingenuous considering how important a company Epic has been for the last couple of decades. It just feels like a handful of people took it really personally when Epic heads said that piracy made it challenging for them to make money and even over a decade later don't want to let that go.
Again, Tim said "Our competitors who were shipping games were almost going out of business, because for every copy they sold there would be like 10 pirated copies. As a result, PC was not growing as a viable platform for the scale of game that we wanted to build".
Why anyone would take that as a mean statement calling every PC gamer a pirate is beyond me.
Small companies do that since their services and update gives clients reassurance of their investment. Big companies dont offer roadmaps other than security fixes or small patches. I work for a very big multinational company, and believe me, for the nature of the my job I know very well how many of the big IT companies handle roadmaps.
But they chose to share it as a marketing gimmick. Now they have to deal with the consequences of that.
They couldn't hire more people to work on independent features of the store? They have piles of money that they're throwing around like water. Could they consider spending it on their store?
And to note, it isn't some of the features that got delayed, possibly due to triaging what they could release. None of the features made it
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I would say their messaging is pretty clear, but you do you.
Getting a dev and throwing them at a feature doesn't work that way. It's not like building a house.
I am extremely aware of how modern software development works. Not an excuse to putting out a product so far behind that people's only frame of reference is one from 15 years ago.