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Tim Sweeney: ownership of digital items should be a universal notion, independent of stores and platforms
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
It's all just meaningless words. He could have integrated with Galaxy 2.0 in a way that you didn't have to download the EGS launcher. He could have pushed to use GOG Connect for some games, which is about the closest thing you get to a Movies Anywhere type system for games.
If he is for real, I may start liking Timmy again. I've been advocating for a Movies Anywhere equivalent for games. I want it.
???
When did I ever say anything about free keys? Or that I'm against anything in the OP?
Did you quote me by accident?
I remember when people on era were calling me a shill for pointing out Tim's lies and hypocrisy... man, he's earned quite the reversal in reputation!
Anyway, what he's saying sounds nice. But I'm afraid few storefronts will agree to participate in something like this. The recent actions of EGS suggest to me that Epic isnt all that interested in this sort of thing anyway.
Anyway, what he's saying sounds nice. But I'm afraid few storefronts will agree to participate in something like this. The recent actions of EGS suggest to me that Epic isnt all that interested in this sort of thing anyway.
User banned (3 days): Antagonizing another member
This is idiotic. "No-one believes him" in this instance would mean no-one believes we should have a more consumer friendly ownership of our digital goods, which is fucking stupid. This post perfectly encapsulates my point about people being unable to see past their hate boners for the guy and discuss the actual things being said.
Yes, which is not equivalent to "Mah free steam keyz." I mean this isn't complex "Buy once, own everywhere" is clearly not the same thing as "Buy once, get multiple distinct copies of the game."
You stated it was hypocritical to remove RL from Steam if Sweeney believes this. It's not.
Under what Sweeney is describing, you would be able to download and play RL from any linked storefront once you owned it.
I didn't pull that out of thin air, the amount of launchers was definitely a widespread complaint.
I agree that ownership of digital content should be universal but the video games industry has a bizarre consumer base that demands our content to be locked down to just a single platform. I can think of no other entertainment where this mindset would fly and I honestly believe this way of thinking holds back video games.
"Idiotic". "Fucking stupid". "Hate boners". I really don't think that this sort of anger is justified for the post you replied to.
Anyway, it's ironic that you accuse people of not being able to see past their hate boners and discuss the actual things being said. You wrote:
Here is what people are actually saying:
Less than a day later:
Rocket League going FP2 *soon* and leaving Steam (you can keep playing the game on Steam if you already own it, but no F2P version on Steam)
https://www.rocketleague.com/news/rocket-league-going-free-to-play-this-summer/www.resetera.com
Does anyone practice less of what they preach than Tim Sweeney?
Just a few examples. What people are very clearly saying is that Sweeney is right that this sort of platform-agnostic ownership would be a good thing but no one believes that he is actually going to follow through based on his past and current behavior. So with your post you did exactly what you accused other people of doing: you were unable to see past your dislike of the people criticizing Tim Sweeney and discuss what they were actually saying.
like it or not, rocket league being taken off steam has nothing to do with this. sweeney is against steam because of its monopoly and the 30 percent cut, so obviously he doesn't want epic-owned games on there. what he's calling for is for stores to recognize content that was bought on other stores — ie the "i just want one launcher" debate would go away.
you don't have to agree with him or his motives but it's a perfectly logical, unhypocritical argument.
you don't have to agree with him or his motives but it's a perfectly logical, unhypocritical argument.
Sweeney is "against" Steam because he wants a piece of their extremely lucrative pie, not because of any philosophical opposition to the cut Steam takes. And yes, while that is technically what he is calling for and it makes sense, he is a hypocrite because that level of openness on the PC platform is something that he, more than anyone else, has fought to eradicate, and he has taken zero steps with his store to achieve it. He's a hypocrite of the highest order.
I think everyone understands that Tim Sweeney is motivated by the desire to make EGS a player in the digital distribution market. The hypocrisy is arguing for platfrom-agnostic ownership while basing your entire business model on platform exclusivity.
what do you call integrating with GOG and humble purchases, then? i'm not sure valve would be as willing a partner for epic.
obviously the guy wants to make money but i don't think you can say he isn't sincere about philosophically opposing steam's cut. it's a pretty basic position that most people who aren't working at valve or apple would also take. developers are widely happy with epic's terms. what he describes is a perfectly logical scenario in which the only loser is valve, which is what competition and openness are actually about.
again, you don't have to agree with his motives if you personally prefer steam, but i don't think you can second-guess them. there's no hypocrisy here.
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Integration with Humble is same damn integration that they had with Steam and Uplay for years. Integration with GOG is same, only difference is that Epic worked with GOG to deal with parsing and Steam integration is via SteamAPI not with direct work with Valve. There is no any integration that pushes universal license because you still require Epic Store launcher to download and play games.
yeah, i think he's clear that it's early days, and i don't see any reason to doubt that the store will go further in that direction (though you'll always need the EGS launcher, same as uplay etc). it's obviously aligned with his incentives even if you think his incentives amount to little more than "kill steam"
I mean integrating with GOG and Humble purchases is an extremely basic thing that Steam has had for ages, both in Epic's current guise (direct redemption I believe) and the current key redemption mechanism.
He's preaching for openness while everything his store has done has only curbed it. If he imagines a future where I buy a game through Epic and activate it on Steam, despite not being sold on the latter, then by all means build it. I'm not holding my breath.
As for philosophically opposing the Steam cut, no I think it is completely fair to second guess the man who abandoned the PC platform when it didn't suit him, come crawling back when Valve proved there was a market, and pay to bring console-style platform timed exclusives to a previously open ecosystem.
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Tim has habit of claiming that Epic is first do do something when it's not true. This is perfect example, nothing he said pushes needle towards universal license because things Epic did so far are things that are part of the industry for entire decade. Real power move would be granting free licenses on Epic Store for some games that people own on Steam (read GOG Connect). Or at least buying game on Humble from now on grants you license on any platform where game is available. But that will never happen because Epic doesn't have games outside Epic Store and they can't make publishers do that.
This guy is trippin hard these days. He's the main culprit contributing against his own statement. Usually people don't bother like this, but this guy is a real piece of work.
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Position he is in does allow him to genuinely do something about his idea / opinion, but he would need to care more about that than Epic's current model and bottom line.
Maybe he is working on this behind the scenes, but I personally don't believe he is or ever will.
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You have been able to link Steam account to GOG Galaxy 2.0 since closed beta started so..?
The difference today, between the official EGS integration and the Steam community integration, is barely noticeable.
If anything, the Steam integration is actually more impressive, with Steam having more features, that are visible in GOG as well.
Easiest way to do this would be some sort of DRM downloader from a publisher website, where if you buy on Epic, you can go to, say, Activision's game website, register your Epic account and GoG account, download some installer plugin thing to tie the game to GoG and decouple from Epic.
I don't see this as being able to buy on Steam and then log in to Epic and have the game there.
I don't see this as being able to buy on Steam and then log in to Epic and have the game there.
Valve is super generous with Steam, allowing stuff like basically unlimited key generation which allowed the developers of Griftlands to give anyone who bought the game on EGS a free copy on Steam. Allowing developers do something like this with Steam feels like Valve is actually putting their money where their mouth is, while Tim is all talk.
Agreed. There's nothing stopping Epic from implementing a system that allows developers to give customers and Epic key a game purchased on Steam.
Even using they steam API, they could scan a steam account and give customers additional copies on Epic (assuming developers ok'd it).
Ultimately I think offering DRM free copies of games that can be launched from any launcher and receive all of that launcher's benefits is a more achievable future than a unified backend system.
PC gamers: "If you think about it though, isn't a defacto monopoly with a single player controlling all access to digital games pretty much the same as having DRM-free digital ownership? Close EGS now, Tim!"
You think Tim Sweeney, of all people, will push for DRM free ownership of PC games with his history of bullshit and hypocrisy?
I don't get some of you, what he's talking about has nothing to do with availability of games on different platforms.
It's about actual ownership of these games, rather than just buying a license to use it.
In the EU, it's already been ruled that resale of digital goods is allowed, it's just that platform holders have yet to offer a mechanism to do this.
It's about actual ownership of these games, rather than just buying a license to use it.
In the EU, it's already been ruled that resale of digital goods is allowed, it's just that platform holders have yet to offer a mechanism to do this.
Yes I too remember the dark days of 2018 when the fields were barren and the children went hungry. I hiked forty miles to the nearest company store with a whole year's scrip to pay the first downpayment on a new videogame. Valve controlled all access to these, you see, there were no other means of electronic enterainment, and therefore no human on earth had any choice but to use their store, so they commanded the whole market, jacked up prices month after month and never improved anything.
I share Mr Sweeney's goal but there is a commercial impact of this on individual stores.
When you pay a store for digital content, part of that money goes towards funding the ongoing storage and network infrastructure to allow me to download the content now and in the future - and these costs are not insignificant. Now if all my cross-platform Steam purchases are now valid for PlayStation 5 running backwards compatible PlayStation 4 games and I hit PSN to download 20 games and download 1.5Tb of games, Sony is paying for that with zero monetary recompense. I think the industry needs to solve this issue before the idea of universal content can get off the ground.
When you pay a store for digital content, part of that money goes towards funding the ongoing storage and network infrastructure to allow me to download the content now and in the future - and these costs are not insignificant. Now if all my cross-platform Steam purchases are now valid for PlayStation 5 running backwards compatible PlayStation 4 games and I hit PSN to download 20 games and download 1.5Tb of games, Sony is paying for that with zero monetary recompense. I think the industry needs to solve this issue before the idea of universal content can get off the ground.
He speaks of ownership but mentions nothing about resale. It seems to be focused on the distribution side, i.e. that buying on one store would mean access across all stores, and a central database or blockchain or whatever would be necessary to facilitate this end. But really, nothing he speaks of is really intrinsic to ownership in the sense you are, of having true ownership of the digital good to do with as you please, as opposed to just, say, "you have purchased a license to use this software under specific conditions, you can't resell it or do anything else with it". Perhaps he has opinions on those, but they're not elucidated in these tweets.
Universal recognition of ownership is cool but it's very clearly something that favours big stores over little ones, because distribution of the good and maintenance of the server is not free. Or perhaps he wants to go a step further and say that all stores will just be doing API calls to each other and acting as a front end entirely removed from the back end, like a very atomised Playnite situation where each store becomes more invisible. Whatever the case, it's strange to complain about stores trying to lock people into their ecosystem and fragmenting ownership to the four winds when that's his entire modus operandi.
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First thing is you can't have cross platform ownership if games are not available on other platforms. What's the point of his words if Epic games are only available on Epic Store?
Second thing is that games are excluded from that EU regulation. You can resell your AutoCAD license but not game.
He can start by providing EGS keys to all the games that debut on EGS and is now on Steam.
