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Ooblets will be exclusive to Epic Games Store on PC
- Thread starter fieldafar
- Start date
Not everyone was pissed. I liked Steam from the very beginning. It already had an integrated friends list and server browser which you had to use external programs for before that. Automatic updates were also a godsend. No longer having to go on fileplanet or whatever and download and install everything by hand (after waiting in queue)? Yes please
Of course there were haters but Steam offered great and convienent features from day 1. Pirates complained the most back then
Indeed. And plenty of people have been unhappy about it lacking basic services like cloud saves, local backups, poor social integrations, etc. The thing that gets people coming to it is first-party content -- the same reason I continue to use Origin and Uplay and Battle.net. If Nintendo bought the next GTA, Metro, Destiny, Doom or whatever, you can imagine how plenty of people wouldn't be happy with it because they'd have to play it on a platform with less capabilities, outside their preferred platform, and for no reason other than bought exclusivity -- even if, for arguments sake, it was at comparable fidelity. Some people will be swayed by functions like portability, as with Doom and Wolfenstein, others not. Look back at Tomb Raider. There was no reason for that to be a one year exclusive either. Destiny caught a lot of flak for their platform exclusive content too. And so forth.
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You are still on that one. Sorry to say YOU didn't had any argument on your "Steal the product away", so I am not sure on what to discuss here. You just said :
"The problem is that Epic wants all of the money, yesterday without having to do anything for it. I'm sorry that it's not very defensible and the criticism of EGS is logical and well-earned considering its very damaging impact."
This is a random rant, no argument here.
It's arguable that Nintendo have been the outlier when it comes to console features vs the gaming communities acceptance and standards since the N64 perhaps, and GameCube for sure.
Sure, not everyone, but not everyone are pissed by EGS either.
You are completly right about the server browser and patches, but most complained came from people who wanted to play Half Life 2, a single player game.
The argument is there though, though I'll concede that it's closer to a fact. Epic has nothing of value to add, yet imposes itself on the market while hurting it shamelessly in the process.
The unimpressive argument I made would thus be simplified : Epic's actions are bad and people shouldn't be blamed for complaining.
People complain about the Switch's barebones feature set constantly. It's not true that it only lacks features though, it also has unique features that other systems don't, like the ability to switch between Handheld, Table Top, and Docked mode, or two player gaming out of the box with joycons. Feature differentiation is an enormous factor in why the Switch sold great and WiiU sold like absolute dogshit, despite both systems having a great lineup of first party software.
The exclusives are developed by Nintendo with a very small number of exceptions where it was merely funded by them (Bayo 2/3), or where it uses Nintendo IP (Rabbids) so exclusivity was the only way it ever would have been made. The largest objections to EGS exclusive deals are that they're effectively delaying games that were already near-complete on other platforms, or that they're causing kickstarter type promises to be broken to backers. Near-zero people care that Fortnite is EGS exclusive by comparison, just like nobody cares that Mario Odyssey is Switch exclusive.
You said it has nothing. WHat I read from OP is :
"Because Epic doesn't yet have the same market share as their competitors, they offered us a minimum guarantee on sales that would match what we'd be wanting to earn if we were just selling Ooblets across all the stores. That takes a huge burden of uncertainty off of us because now we know that no matter what, the game won't fail and we won't be forced to move back in with our parents (but we do love and appreciate you, parents!).
Now we can just focus on making the game without worrying about keeping the lights on. The upfront money they're providing means we'll be able to afford more help and resources to start ramping up production and doing some cooler things."
I think this is great for our medium. You, you only see the market. I don't care about the market, I care about the medium.
What pisses me off about EGS is that it didn't have to be this way.
If Sweeney waited until he had at least the base functionality in place before launching it, AND offered something extra to customers value-wise (and not just to developers), AND didn't do the super shady unethical "advertise on steam, pull if off at last moment" and "make crowdfunded games that promised steam keys exclusive to EGS" nonsense, the whole discussion around it would have been very different.
I was positive towards EGS when Epic announced they would be launching it. But then they kept doing shitty stuff after shitty stuff, while offering me NOTHING in return (except those free games, which I personally do not care about since I have those I want already).
Right now they offer worse service for same or more money. What a great deal.
If Sweeney waited until he had at least the base functionality in place before launching it, AND offered something extra to customers value-wise (and not just to developers), AND didn't do the super shady unethical "advertise on steam, pull if off at last moment" and "make crowdfunded games that promised steam keys exclusive to EGS" nonsense, the whole discussion around it would have been very different.
I was positive towards EGS when Epic announced they would be launching it. But then they kept doing shitty stuff after shitty stuff, while offering me NOTHING in return (except those free games, which I personally do not care about since I have those I want already).
Right now they offer worse service for same or more money. What a great deal.
I don't really get the argument about Steam being shitty when it started out 15 years ago somehow exonerating EGS being shitty today.
I remember very well how people were pissed at Steam back then for forcing their buggy client and DRM - but this doesn't mean that we should be fine with EGS practices. Why does EGS mishaps have to always turn into a Steam vs EGS debate. Regardless of what you think of Steam, EGS entered the market in the worst possible way and no historical Steam transgressions justify that.
I remember very well how people were pissed at Steam back then for forcing their buggy client and DRM - but this doesn't mean that we should be fine with EGS practices. Why does EGS mishaps have to always turn into a Steam vs EGS debate. Regardless of what you think of Steam, EGS entered the market in the worst possible way and no historical Steam transgressions justify that.
And all that without locking away third party games from other platforms! See, it can be done. A couple of good in-house games and desirable functions like docking/undocking the system is all it takes. Great example.
If GOG can afford to develop a desirable service to sway people like myself to go there, so can Epic.
Yeah, here, in the Era buble. Doesn't change the fact people are buying it.
Since you want to move to a larger picture, consider that the medium's best works in recent memory have been created and allowed to exist thanks to the PC ecosystem's openness. Hurting that ecosystem, in turn hurts the medium. To put this into more real terms, kickstarter has never been in as bad a shape as today. Nobody trusts a kickstarter anymore because of Epic's actions. Kickstarter is also what has allowed some of the best gems in the last half-decade to exist. You can follow the logical conclusion of Epic's overall impact on the medium here.
I understand you are seeing a few dev's good fortune in a positive light, but their financial windfall comes at the expense of everyone else's. Look, I'm not a reactionary asshole - to the best of my knowledge. I love games, we both do. But I see the impact of what Epic is doing and I can't ignore it. I know and understand how the PC's open nature has helped nurture so much of gaming's innovation and darlings. I am now concerned when I see Epic wanting to turn the screw on that with exclusivity and naked greed.
If they hadn't relied on exclusivity, I would have applauded them eagerly. Their cut, their indie grants, waving the UE4's licensing fee? That's damn good in my book. Sure, I can wait for their launcher to become a platform under these conditions, because I can still trust that they want to do the right thing.
Edit : It dawns on me that you can also make the point that Epic isn't allowing anything new to exist. They aren't funding games from scratch. They aren't making something that didn't exist before come into existence. They are poaching them from the market as they near completion, and/or when they have proven that they have a captive audience which is the single biggest hurdle to overcome in this industry. If Epic was funding unknown indies or studios operating in stealth mode, then it would be a little closer to being a positive thing. 3rd party exclusives would still be wrong, but it wouldn't be so disney-villain-obvious. Right now, the only positive aspect for the medium is that they allow the games to be better finished and polished.
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What am I supposed to look at? How much time have you spent in PC threads?
The market can affect the medium. The most objective example is this:
EGS is a curated store with Epic hand-picking what games they sell. This is their right, but means that they are actively hurting some developers by turning them away from the store, when what would be most beneficial is allowing developers to sell there and giving consumers another choice over where to buy their games. Some of these developers may not sell enough to create another game. Therefore, the medium suffers.
The same argument is often used when GOG refuses to sell a well-known game, so it's not specific to EGS.
You're the one making a claim that GoG is struggling to profit. You think eating the costs of regional pricing differences wasn't hurting them in a big way?
Here are some quotes from the announcement:
"We got some cash money upfront from the deal so we can make the game we always wanted to with fewer compromises."
"That takes a huge burden of uncertainty off of us because now we know that no matter what, the game won't fail and we won't be forced to move back in with our parents (but we do love and appreciate you, parents!)."
"Now we can just focus on making the game without worrying about keeping the lights on. The upfront money they're providing means we'll be able to afford more help and resources to start ramping up production and doing some cooler things."
"The investment we're getting upfront from Epic will allow us to ramp up our development resources which will lead to faster development in the long run, but it might also delay our initial launch a tad because it takes some time to ramp things up and because we won't have as much financial pressure to prematurely shove something we're not happy with out the door."
There's nothing about the PC ecosystem, but they specifically said that this deal should result in Ooblets being a better game - they have funds to hire additional help, they can work in a less stressful environment (which helps people work better & be more creative), and they no longer have to rush to launch.
It's basically Stardew Valley / Harvest Moon meets Pokémon with cute 3D graphics. It's got hit potential written all over it.
Epic is still putting money back into the PC gaming industry whether you agree with how they do it or not.
The part where you talk about Kickstarter is where I disagree with the most. Nobody trusts it because there is no accountability. We see way too many games that never release on proposed dates that are not months but years off. Some of them never even come out either. Then I see something like Star Citizen and wonder how they are able to get away with what they are doing. They are still collecting money for bloody sake, so how do you actually have a release date if the funds keep coming in? There was also a lot of questions brought forth about Fig and how their business model works.
The fact is this whole industry has issues, that's not to say Epic doesn't deserve criticism. Just look at the impact on game consoles and the deals that still go on today. Those deals are far more reaching and impactful than the impacts Epic has on the PC platform.
Valve forced us a lot of years ago in order to play VALVE GAMES. Epic did the same recently with Paragon, UT and Fortnite and nobody was crazy about that.
I think you don't want to understand the problem.
Why are you lying? The blog post specifically refers to the notion that it's "just another launcher," and they chose to double down on to the extent that they posted literal alt-right rhetoric.
I'm not lying, every single quote I posted is directly copy/pasted from their announcement article: https://ooblets.com/2019/07/we-did-the-thing/
I do remember what they said, it was the standard-fare EGS announcement but thank you for going through the effort of sourcing it. The gist of the value it provides is a more polished game, in exchange for everything else.
As you said, they provided no mention of their impact on the PC ecosystem. Make no mistake, if people don't have to live in anxiety, that's a great thing. It's however also something that comes at a price for other people that have to live and thrive in the same space. I think a lot of kickstarter projects and studios that rely on gamer goodwill are having unkind thoughts toward Epic.
This is complex matter but one thing is for certain : this fuck you, got mine mindset and the deliberate attempts to be abrasive aren't helping elevate the conversation. So far, I think you can safely agree that the group of studios selected to be Epic Exclusive haven't really helped in that regard.
Edit : For example, the full announcement quoted below. Or the Shenmue III debacle. Or Randy Pitchford's comments. Or most of the communications justifying EGS exclusivity deals that flat-out insulted out collective intelligence, which is no small feat.
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Just saw the whole thing about the 'REEEE' meme and, fuck, that definitely deserves a thread. Noone should be able to just walk away from using rhetoric that has helped to bring the conversation regarding those in the ASD back and that shit 100% needs to be called out.
And that announcement article also has this entire section:
And that announcement article also has this entire section:
I stop to read after this, honestly. You make a lot of assumptions here and some are really wrong.
you have a greatest hits box set you're quoting from or something?
If it is availabale elsewhere on the same platform, I don't see how this hurting those devs.
GoG is a bad guy or a good guy, I see different opinion here.
incidentally all those are from the one paragraph that i would have kept from the original announcement. the messaging was on point there. can't say the same for the rest of the announcement.
It's pretty standard logic. I'd love to hear which assumptions were wrong.
A lot of people was crazy about having to use Uplay and Origin.
Yes, timed exclusives exist on consoles. They suck there as well. Nintendo didn't need them to make the Switch appealing, did it? If that's your point. Not really seeing what you're trying to get at.
And console users despise it, so what's you're point? If it happens on consoles, it's okay to happen on PC?
You're completely ignoring the fact that the number of exclusives Epic's securing completely dwarfs anything seen on consoles. Honestly I wish Epic would build a console and start buying up exclusives the way they are on PC, because the tone around here would change drastically.
At least with a console exclusive I can still buy the game at any retailer. Epic game store exclusives by and large can only be purchased directly from Epic. There's very few exceptions, and even those we're strictly speaking Humble and GMG. You can't buy an EGS game at GameStop or Amazon. So every single time EGS buys an exclusive, a PC user sees their options disappear. Epic controls everything, and as someone who plays primarily on PC - it's unacceptable.
There was a lot of discussion about that here earlier. The developer said that he didn't realize it was a meme mocking a specific group and later unliked the tweet. I personally had never come into contact with this meme before this thread.
I'm thinking the last thing we need is yet another Ooblet controversy thread.
Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant that the article didn't really have anything arguing as why this move would improve the PC ecosystem. They did have arguments as to why an Ooblet fan might be pleased with the announcement (more polished game, happier devs). You're free to think that EGS exclusivity deals are a negative.
That's fine, but it's the refusing to apologise part that should be called out because that shit is 100% harmful to those under the autistic spectrum. I've made it very clear that the thread's about calling out alt-right/ableist rhetoric from a well-known indie developer instead of this controversy.
Tbh that does seem rather pedantic, but you are technically right there.
The biggest one was on the trust about Kickstarter.
And no, it is not logic. It is not because you are making an assumption and draw a conclusion than it become logic.
Since your thread was rightfully locked, I'm going to ask you here, too:
Where does he "refuse to apologize"? He liked the meme. He explained, after being asked in a good-faith manner that he didn't know what "reee" meant and in what context it was being used. After being made aware, he took back the Like.
Neither was he asked to apologize, nor did he "refuse" to apologize. He made a mistake, made it clear that it was a mistake and reversed the mistake, making it clear that wasn't his intention. Somehow, you turned this into "REFUSED TO APOLOGIZE"?
Did you miss the part where he said "just seems like a bunch of people looking at things to get angry about,"?
And saying you're ignorant is not the same as apologising.
Kickstarter is all about trust. Can't see what there is to disagree about that?
someone pointed it out to the dev, and he said something along the lines of "this is just more manufactured mob anger". tbf, he was being defensive about everything.
I guess I have been dreaming all those questions and paranoia of backers regarding potential EGS deals, or the general climate with more devs poisoning the well as they swore they wouldn't take the deal, only to do it. Mechwarrior 5 comes to mind.
But in a way, you are right! It'd be great to have a metric for Kickstarter's funding success rate prior and post-EGS's exclusivity deals, if there is at least a correlation between the two. I'd love to see if my empirical observation is backed by fact. I guess that by the end of this year, we'll know.
Epic Game Store started end of last year, right? Kickstarter funding for videogames has been way down for at least a couple years now. It's a big deal when a VG KS manages to break 6 digits now. I'm guessing it's due to a combination of Early Access being a better fit for many game types and high profile games like Mighty No. 9 poisoning the well.
If you look at what happened here, then proceed to open a thread like you did and willfully mischaracterize it in the way you did you absolutely are looking at things to get angry about and, further, to encourage others to get more angry too, keeping alive the now weeklong harassement campaign this single dude has been put under for daring to advice people to chill out.
It was a mistake, he made it clear it was a mistake, he took it back. Somehow turning this into an outrage, IN THE MIDDLE of an ongoing harassment campaign that seems to get worse daily is irresponsible and absolutely makes you part of that campaign, no matter if you see it that way yourself or consider yourself better than those other people. OF COURSE this is being immediately used by the huge group of harassers to further discredit him and framing him as an ableist asshole who actually deserves what's coming to him. OF COURSE this is being used mainly by people looking at further things to get angry at him about and make his live a living hell. How could you possibly deny that. Thousands of people would see that thread title you thought up and immediately save that information. "Oh, yeah, I heard somewhere the dude makes fun of authism and is an active 4chan user himself". And in light of that, further playing into that narrative is absolutely a harmful action to take.
anecdotal, but i've been hesitating funding the unexplored 2 fig campaign because they're not ready to commit to a platform. they've been upfront about it though. I'd say it can have an impact, especially among early adopters/enthusiasts
Several high profile games jumped to Fig as well. Basically all of those studios have now either sold to Microsoft or taken EGS deals, which is a good indicator of just how fiscally viable AA development was despite the pseudo-renaissance we had there for a little while.
Sorry, but calling out shitty alt-right rhetoric and a developer who brushes it off as 'oh no I was just ignorant! You're looking for things to get mad about!' is not the same as harassing a developer and I'm incredibly offended that you would even imply such a thing. I made that thread because I care about autistic people and wanted to spread awareness of harmful memes that have been hurting that community (and many others) for years and not because I was "looking for things to get mad at." I'm not going to sit back and let people demean others and then refuse to apologise simply because awful people who aren't myself might use it as ammunition; especially if those same people don't even need that shit to be awful in the first place.
Honestly this is the second time this thread where me calling out shitty language has been dismissed simply because I am on the 'other side' of the debate. Is it really that baffling to people on this site that someone might actually care enough about those with ASD and mental illness that they'd be willing to call shitty rhetoric surrounding them out? Might as well say I'm virtue signalling at this point because that's basically what such rhetoric is implying.
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Can you people please stop asking to many of us to feel guilty about some "harassment" we had absolutely no part in?
Unless we are going once again to reinforce the idea that any form of voiced malcontent is "harassment", any criticism is "toxicity " and any refusal to accept their conditions and bend over is "entitlement".
I agree. So the EGS tactic is about: Hey, I give you funding for your game, if you only sell it on my store. Makes sense: it's just Epic wanting to secure it's investment.
I think I understand people who wants an ideal free market, where every pc game gets sold in every store, but personally I'm only interested in games as they are (and that's why I think EGSs "free games per week" it's a really good offer), and I don't really mind If they're sold in one store or the other... With one exception.
For example, I love the idea of itch.io giving you the opportunity to give every penny to the developers. That's amazing and I like it. I did in fact buy some games there (from which they gave me a steam key version of their game, which is also cool, because I have a huge library on Steam).
If EGS Isn't really being competitive, I guess the market will respond and it will get obliterated by Steam at long term. Right?
Needless to say that I sympathize with Ooblets developer, in both their decision to accept Epic's offer and their recent harrassment that they received, which is sad.
That Kickstarter trust wasn't great before because of a lot of dead projects or backers felt betrayed.