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Gearbox confirms Borderlands 3 launches on September 13, 2019; Epic Games Store exclusive

Shifty

Member
For the longest time Steam was the only way to play certain games.

Gamers were okay with that monopoly.
And thus the great argument cycle begins anew.

I feel like we need some sort of EGS OT with refutations to all of the low-hanging gotchas that keep surfacing over and over and over again. Would reduce a lot of noise.
 
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Kadayi

Banned
]Epic is a blessing for pc gamers if only to kick start steam back into progress,

I agree that they're a little slow, but Steams always been in progress. and still is. 2019 objectives here

Also ffs stop pretending EPIC will magically attract steam users with 100+ game collections tied to that platform.
It needs to be aggressive. And lure users with amazing timed exclusives.

I don't disagree, but they'd have a better chance of doing so if their Launcher was competitive on the features front. I realise for some casual types many of these aspects will have little or no bearing on where they buy their games, but aside from a couple of amusing pops, the list below is pretty accurate for those of us who use Steam a lot: -

SynNfar.jpg


And do you think those 2 weekly free games just magically happen to be free for epic?
They need users to build a proper game collection so they are stuck to the platform like steam.

It's pretty common knowledge that they're moneyhatting the whole endeavour, but I'm not entirely sure why consumers should care? If Tim Sweeney has to cut back on the number of ladyboys scrubbing his back when he's holidaying in Bangkok, you can hardly expect your average gamer to be 'poor Tim' about it. versus ' Fuck you, Tim, build a better client you skeezy cunt, then maybe I'll use your shitty launcher'

Is it fair for consumers? NO
Do they need to do this? YES[

I'm sure Epic need to do it from a business perspective (that Fortnite money isn't going to last forever) but given the cash they have on hand, you'd think they'd be able to have come out the gate with a client that wasn't out of 2005, versus wholly relying on exclusives to persuade dedicated gamers to jump ship to EGS.
 
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-hal-

Member
Is it fair for consumers? NO
Do they need to do this? YES

No they don't. It IS a tactic, yes, but it's not a good one for consumers.

You know what WOULD be a good way for them to compete with Steam? Find out what PC gamers want and build a better service. Or fill an underserved niche.

Rolling out a LOL WE HAVE A STORE and then walling off games behind it is not good. It's lazy.
 

sol_bad

Member
For the longest time Steam was the only way to play certain games.

Gamers were okay with that monopoly.

Fuck me dead. How many times does this need to be said?

Valve didn't chase after developers/publishers and pay them to only release on Steam. They chased after Valve and wanted to be on Sream.
Valve did not create a monopoly, they are not trying to control the market.

Epic on the other hand are trying to create a monopoly. They are chasing after and paying developers/publishers to be exclusive on their store.They are trying to control the market.

Anyone who is angry at Valve from "creating a monopoly" really needs to rethink their thinking. It's Epic you should be angry with.
 
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JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Fuck me dead. How many times does this need to be said?

Valve didn't chase after developers/publishers and pay them to only release on Steam. They chased after Valve and wanted to be on Sream.
Valve did not create a monopoly, they are not trying to control the market.

Epic on the other hand are trying to create a monopoly. They are chasing after and paying developers/publishers to be exclusive on their store.They are trying to control the market.

Anyone who is angry at Valve from "creating a monopoly" really needs to rethink their thinking. It's Epic you should be angry with.
Spin it however you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that for many many years Steam was the only game in town and if you as a developer wanted in the game, you pretty much had to be on Steam. Steam didn’t moneyhat,because THEY DIDNT HAVE TO. Make no mistake, Steam used that power. They had draconian policies such as having the power to lock out your entire library and had terrible customer service. Plenty of people, myself included, had bad experiences with that customer service.
For all the hate it gets, it was EAs Origin that started things like refunds and cloud saves for which Steans thankfully followed.

Granted Im not a fan of how Epic is going about this (especially Metro Exodus),but I do enjoy seeing Steam get a bit of a wake up call.
 
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sol_bad

Member
Spin it however you want,

I'm not spinning anything. It's other people that are spinning the story, trying to make out like Valve are the bad guys when all they truly did was build an ecosystem that everyone eventually wanted to be a part of. Thanks for bring up Origin because that is a perfect example of proper competition and like you pointed out, it got Valve to improve their service. Epic on the other hand is doing absolutely nothing to make Valve want to better themselves.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
I'm not spinning anything. It's other people that are spinning the story, trying to make out like Valve are the bad guys when all they truly did was build an ecosystem that everyone eventually wanted to be a part of. Thanks for bring up Origin because that is a perfect example of proper competition and like you pointed out, it got Valve to improve their service. Epic on the other hand is doing absolutely nothing to make Valve want to better themselves.
I am not making Valve out to be the bad guy, but they're definitely getting romanticized and being treated as some sort of perfect entity by many gamers on here. As I said in my previous post, Steam doesn't have a perfect history and I mention some examples in my previous post. But maybe I am still bitter about the error in 2013 on their end that locked me out of my entire Steam library for over a week and had to go through their long drawn out customer service. I'll acknowledge that.

I'll repeat it again, I am not liking what Epic is doing, but I totally understand their reason for doing it. The way Metro Exodus was done, was inexcusably bad. No defending anybody there. However, the other games are at least getting announced as exclusives before pre-orders go live. In order to compete with Steam, Epic must offer exclusive content. They must do it. The only way Epic is going to make inroads is by offering exclusive content and given the adoption of Steam, they have little choice but to moneyhat. I agree that in a perfect world, that Take 2 would offer BL3 on all launchers and allow competition to choose, but it ain't a perfect world. Despite what some people say, the Epic Launcher isn't terrible. Cloud saves and achievements are the big features I notice it missing, but those will come in time.

One last note, are all these games going Epic exclusive really going to affect the bottom line all that much? Maybe, but I doubt it's anywhere near as much as the sycophants will have you believe. Afterall, the person who spends $1200 on a 2080 Ti is definitely going to want to show off their new card.
 
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Woo-Fu

Banned
Steam didn't have a monopoly on anything. Even if you were to call it a de facto monopoly you'd be wrong. The argument is borderline idiotic anyhow since Epic is the one buying up exclusives. How many exclusives did Steam buy? I can't recall any.

Think I bought Borderlands on direct2drive, wishing this week I had bought it on Steam instead. :)

There's always been other distribution channels available to any developer, small or large. While Steam appears to have been the best alternative for a lot of developers it has never been the only alternative.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Steam didn't have a monopoly on anything. Even if you were to call it a de facto monopoly you'd be wrong. The argument is borderline idiotic anyhow since Epic is the one buying up exclusives. How many exclusives did Steam buy? I can't recall any.

BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO. During those days it was either release on Steam or take your chances with another launcher. Why would Valve pay somebody when they were the de facto number one in town?

I am going to name a couple of games that were exclusive to Steam at the time of release. All the Batman Arkham games were Steam exclusive. Both Deus Ex Adam Jensen games (and pretty much any Square Enix games) were exclusive. Pretty much all Bethesda games from Fallout New Vegas until Fallout 76 were Steam exclusive. Yes, I am aware that NOW at this moment those games are also available on GOG. I am leaving out countless others.

Jesus, so many of those of games are available on exclusively on Steam and yet nobody cares.

I am well aware that moneyhatting sucks, but Steam is long overdue for this sort of competition.

Having said all of that, I do plan on buying Doom Eternal on steam as opposed to the Bethesda Launcher. So there.
 
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sol_bad

Member
I am well aware that moneyhatting sucks, but Steam is long overdue for this sort of competition.

On that topic.
You say that Steam is long overdue for competition.
But what does Epic bring to the table that improves the experience for the consumer?
Even on the developer side, remove the moneyhatting and what does it improve for developers? Keeping in mind that Steam has 90+ million active users and Epic has a potential user base of about 45+ million. There is the 12% cut but most games are lowering their price so in the end they aren't really gaining that extra 8-18% extra revenue.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
While this is technically true, the debate is focusing on the platform differences rather than the 'exclusive' content
On that topic.
You say that Steam is long overdue for competition.
But what does Epic bring to the table that improves the experience for the consumer?
Even on the developer side, remove the moneyhatting and what does it improve for developers? Keeping in mind that Steam has 90+ million active users and Epic has a potential user base of about 45+ million. There is the 12% cut but most games are lowering their price so in the end they aren't really gaining that extra 8-18% extra revenue.
Well for starters Epic is bringing you the means to play games like BL3, The Outer Worlds and Division 2 exclusively.
 

Solomeena

Banned
For the longest time Steam was the only way to play certain games.

Gamers were okay with that monopoly.

Steam never paid for Borderlands to be on Steam. Epic paid Randy a shit ton of money just to be exclusive on the Epic Games Store. You do see the difference right? Or are you just sticking to the script Randy gave you to astroturf with?
 
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Kadayi

Banned
For the longest time Steam was the only way to play certain games.

Gamers were okay with that monopoly.

Enough already. You're confusing having a market majority with being a monopoly. They are not the same thing.

Monopoly Definition OED : -

1 The exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service. ‘the state's monopoly of radio and television broadcasting’

1.1 A company or group having exclusive control over a commodity or service. ‘passenger services were largely in the hands of state-owned monopolies’

1.2 A commodity or service in the exclusive control of a company or group. ‘electricity, gas, and water were considered to be natural monopolies’

1.3 The exclusive possession, control, or exercise of something. ‘men don't have a monopoly on unrequited love’

2 A board game in which players engage in simulated property and financial dealings using imitation money. It was invented in the US and the name was coined by Charles Darrowc.1935.


Steam would only qualify as a monopoly if it didn't allow developers to sell their games elsewhere and locked them into exclusivity agreements. It doesn't.

That Steam was the only player in town for a few years was because they were ahead of the competition in terms of creating a digital storefront. That again doesn't make them a Monopoly.
 
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foreign_peasant

Neo Member
I am not really sure that epic understand the pc gamers. The people who buy games for pc is buying it for pc because for it's freedom. Epic tries to force this people to use their featureless "platform" is just gives me laughs
 

KiteGr

Member
Let me play the Devil's advocate here....

What if...
Epic didn't open the Epic Games Store because they thought "There is an untapped market and we can make tons of Money from it" or "We've got to help our chinise Overlords to take one step closer to world domination", bur instead they made it because they thought "WTF! Steam has a complete monopoly here and charges developers ridiculous amounts to use their platform. What if we use our only chance now that we are at the top of our game and make our own platform to help the little guy." like any teenager who saw and injustice would.
Think of that scenario...

IMO The only viable criticisms against the Epic Store are:
  1. The Spyware! With much of their shares being owned by a Chinese company, where in the Chinese government, privacy maters little, It can be hard to trust them with your information.
  2. Them not allowing adult games.
Of the rest of the problems, most are all fixable within a year!

If developers give temporary exclusivity to Epic, perhaps that's because they actually want to support what Epic is doing and they are not just "being bought out by the Epic Evil Corp". If Epic takes a much smaller cut by default, it's also a good deal worthy of whatever initial loss in sales they might have despite the back lash.

If Epic can charge less that half of Steam's cut on games, despite having a smaller audience and library, and manages to stay afloat, then Steam is a much better candidate for the "Evil corp", that swims in cash by charging tons and have the fans with the established libraries defend it, while they haven't produced a proper game them self's in decades!
 
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Let me play the Devil's advocate here....

What if...
Epic didn't open the Epic Games Store because they thought "There is an untapped market and we can make tons of Money from it" or "We've got to help our chinise Overlords to take one step closer to world domination", bur instead they made it because they thought "WTF! Steam has a complete monopoly here and charges developers ridiculous amounts to use their platform. What if we use our only chance now that we are at the top of our game and make our own platform to help the little guy." like any teenager who saw and injustice would.
Think of that scenario...

IMO The only viable criticisms against the Epic Store are:
  1. The Spyware! With much of their shares being owned by a Chinese company, where in the Chinese government, privacy maters little, It can be hard to trust them with your information.
  2. Them not allowing adult games.
Of the rest of the problems, most are all fixable within a year!

If developers give temporary exclusivity to Epic, perhaps that's because they actually want to support what Epic is doing and they are not just "being bought out by the Epic Evil Corp". If Epic takes a much smaller cut by default, it's also a good deal worthy of whatever initial loss in sales they might have despite the back lash.

If Epic can charge less that half of Steam's cut on games, despite having a smaller audience and library, and manages to stay afloat, then Steam is a much better candidate for the "Evil corp", that swims in cash by charging tons and have the fans with the established libraries defend it, while they haven't produced a proper game them self's in decades!

You can always direct your message to your own agenda, in reality All companies are evil and selfish, some more than others. But what i dont like about epic is they are trying to introduce a element of competition that will be counter responded With war mentality, This sort of competition is unhealthy for the open nature of the pc marked. How can anyone think that less functionality is a good outcome for a platform. I can reasonable understand, hardware limitations will produce exclusivities as its not as easy a task to produce to different system structures.
However i believe that epic could be a good alternative if they get a link with your already owned steam library of games. And stop With the exclusivity deals. After all games are not owned, we just Pay for a digital access, but you either have a donkey full of money or you are born less intelligent to double dip on epic store already owned steam games. It just makes No sense at all. And collectivisme is a huge part of our dna some are more subceptible to it than others. Or they have a Even more expensive collection they are managing but for many people there purpose is filling There digital libraries with games. Valve know this its a existentiel part of many people to collect and gather things for storage.

I hope something can be done digital platforms are becoming pests for our society, No one knows what to do With them and the profits are massively directed to one location in the world in a few hands its largely unhealthy for the entire market if it will continue this way much longer.
 
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DGrayson

Mod Team and Bat Team
Staff Member
If I get the Xbox One version will I be able to transfer my save/characters to the Steam version later?
 

KiteGr

Member
You can always direct your message to your own agenda, in reality All companies are evil and selfish, some more than others. But what i dont like about epic is they are trying to introduce a element of competition that will be counter responded With war mentality, This sort of competition is unhealthy for the open nature of the pc marked. How can anyone think that less functionality is a good outcome for a platform. I can reasonable understand, hardware limitations will produce exclusivities as its not as easy a task to produce to different system structures.
However i believe that epic could be a good alternative if they get a link with your already owned steam library of games. And stop With the exclusivity deals. After all games are not owned, we just Pay for a digital access, but you either have a donkey full of money or you are born less intelligent to double dip on epic store already owned steam games. It just makes No sense at all. And collectivisme is a huge part of our dna some are more subceptible to it than others. Or they have a Even more expensive collection they are managing but for many people there purpose is filling There digital libraries with games. Valve know this its a existentiel part of many people to collect and gather things for storage.

I hope something can be done digital platforms are becoming pests for our society, No one knows what to do With them and the profits are massively directed to one location in the world in a few hands its largely unhealthy for the entire market if it will continue this way much longer.
For the record, I haven't even installed the Epic store on my PC, let alone have an account on it. I almost exclusively play on Consoles, with the exception of some ports of indie games and classics like YS, where Steam is the only variable option to have access on the whole series, and GW2 that isn't available on ANY of the digital stores. As a console gamer, I find platform exclusives perfectly normal, and it this case you don't even have to buy another hardware to gain access to it. PC, unlike consoles, is an open platform, and if you wanted it to be closed, then you would had been buying your games from Microsoft's Store that is the platform maker.

The only reason I've entered the argument, is because I was baffled by the overly negative response to the store. Like most, I also didn't like the idea of having my small PC library potentially split in the future, but: having another store appearing was something to be expected, as much as it was expected for that new store to try and draw us with exclusives and deals, and it's also expected to lack futures at launch.
This particular store also appears to run in favor of the developer the company has a long history in PC Gaming. So unlike EA or Ubi (that I wouldn't trust them to mop my floor), I find them a much better candidate manage a competitor to steam.

Sure it sucks for PC gamers to split their games with another store that "Currently" lacks some futures, but that is the norm for all of Gaming, and only now they got a real taste for it.

If Steam REALLY wanted to destroy Epic's store, all they have to do is reduce their cut on game sales by half....
 

kuddin

Neo Member
Hmmmm
They should actively remove them.

Who should have the power to say what is wrong or not? Should they give the power to remove reviews to devs so they can remove all the negative ones?
Not all negative reviews during the review bombing was a "fuck you epic" post... For the new Borderlands GOTY Enchanced there were people posting about the bugs they had in the game and some of those were thrown in the same pile as the review bombs.
 

sol_bad

Member
Who should have the power to say what is wrong or not? Should they give the power to remove reviews to devs so they can remove all the negative ones?
Not all negative reviews during the review bombing was a "fuck you epic" post... For the new Borderlands GOTY Enchanced there were people posting about the bugs they had in the game and some of those were thrown in the same pile as the review bombs.

I mean the "fuck you Epic" reviews should be removed. The ones criticizing the game should stay.
 

Tesseract

Banned
For the longest time Steam was the only way to play certain games.

Gamers were okay with that monopoly.

shrug, that's not how monopolies work

steam ground its way to the top with fantastic tools for developers, an overlay 15 years before anyone had considered it viable, and a storefront that contiguously iterated with fantastic deals
and specials

the 30% cut has been a small price to pay for such profound growth, what was otherwise a dying platform

before steam pc gaming was basically on its death bed

getting sick of this revisionist history of steam, making valve the bad guys
 
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Kadayi

Banned
Yup Valve basically saved pc gaming from falling off a cliff so yeah

Yeah, a lot of people either weren't around or don't recall just how much Xbox and PlayStation were basically hustling out PC gaming in the retail space in the mid 2000s. It used to be that you'd go into your local game store and there would be hundreds and hundreds of different PC titles to choose from, but increasingly over time, more and more space was being given over to console only titles and the PC shelf space became smaller and smaller. I can vividly remember wandering into one Game Shop and the PC Gaming section had been reduced to a turntable rack, and if you wanted anything that wasn't a Sims or Sims expansion you were pretty much SOOL.
 

Sygma

Member
whats funny is that its people who mostly cant afford games at their normal full prices who are all up against Epic's ass

you'll never see them complain about having to download a separate launcher to play a Moba, since it's free. Like if you think we can't see the "gamers" who cant afford games at their historically lowest entry price you're fucking delusional, its the only valid reason for all that false debacle around steam and egs. Tl dr : you're broke, try again
 
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PhoenixTank

Member
whats funny is that its people who mostly cant afford games at their normal full prices who are all up against Epic's ass
you'll never see them complain about having to download a separate launcher to play a Moba, since it's free. Like if you think we can't see the "gamers" who cant afford games at their historically lowest entry price you're fucking delusional, its the only valid reason for all that false debacle around steam and egs. Tl dr : you're broke, try again
Hahaha poor people amirite? I too enjoy it when things cost more than they used to - almost as much as I love gatekeeping.
 

Croatoan

They/Them A-10 Warthog
It would make my day if all this crying actually made 2k give Epic permanent exclusivity to all of their games, including RDR2.
 

Sygma

Member
Hahaha poor people amirite? I too enjoy it when things cost more than they used to - almost as much as I love gatekeeping.

its just tiresome to see that it all revolves around the same shit, which is discounts. Its transparent as it gets. competition is about pre ordering your game at 50$ top on 3rd party website months in advance

so yes indeed, if you're broke, dont cry, its life
 
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Shifty

Member
whats funny is that its people who mostly cant afford games at their normal full prices who are all up against Epic's ass

you'll never see them complain about having to download a separate launcher to play a Moba, since it's free. Like if you think we can't see the "gamers" who cant afford games at their historically lowest entry price you're fucking delusional, its the only valid reason for all that false debacle around steam and egs. Tl dr : you're broke, try again
So this is an argument about the 1% now? :pie_thinking:

Someone hasn't been reading the discourse.
 

Sygma

Member
So this is an argument about the 1% now? :pie_thinking:

Someone hasn't been reading the discourse.

Because you got data showing that 1% of current players actually are in the capacity to buy their games ?


Outside of the features, which is a legit point, this is absolutely the main reason that people dont wanna engage with EGS. And despite that, BL 3 is already on track of being the highest grossing game of 2019 judging by preorders alone
 

sol_bad

Member
whats funny is that its people who mostly cant afford games at their normal full prices who are all up against Epic's ass

you'll never see them complain about having to download a separate launcher to play a Moba, since it's free. Like if you think we can't see the "gamers" who cant afford games at their historically lowest entry price you're fucking delusional, its the only valid reason for all that false debacle around steam and egs. Tl dr : you're broke, try again

So are you for or against competition? Because in my books, competition is being able to get the product at its cheapest possible price while being offered as many features as possible.

There are a lot of games out there, I have 980 games on my Steam account and another 500 on my wishlist it's just not economical to buy every game at full price.
 
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