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[Faenrir]

Can't expect Epic to be able to be competitive without resorting to this stuff.
Steam did the same thing, people have just forgotten (or weren't born).
Tbh, most people are hating on Epic for no reason, it's just a store.

Are you loyal to Gamestop ? Toys'R'Us ? Well i'm not, i'll shop wherever i find the best combinations of service, prices, etc.
If something is only in one store and i really want it, i'll go get it there.
It's not like you're buying hardware, unlike consoles. You just launch a different launcher...it takes around the same time to do so and isn't more of a hassle.
I really don't get why people are getting mad. Epic is making all the right moves, i'm happy to see real competition. Gog is on another segment of gaming so they never really competed with Steam.

Where are all the Steam exclusives?
You have zero logic.

Most PC games are only available on Steam ? Gog is very selective and doesn't accept much games (hand picking) so without Epic, what are the alternatives to Steam if you want a game on PC ?
I'm really curious to know what you think about this.

 

[MMaRsu]

Lmao gog doesnt hand pick. Its obvious you have no clue what you are talking about.

 

[llien]

Where are all the Steam exclusives?

In what way are you "locked down" by Epic client any more than you are "locked down" by Steam client?

 

[Brofist]

Are you loyal to Gamestop ? Toys'R'Us ? Well i'm not, i'll shop wherever i find the best combinations of service, prices, etc.
If something is only in one store and i really want it, i'll go get it there.

This is exactly the problem though. The store that has the best service in most cases is blocked from selling the exclusive game.
And you cant shop wherever to find the best combination of anything because one retailer is making the game exclusive to their store.

 

[Faenrir]

This is exactly the problem though. The store that has the best service in most cases is blocked from selling the exclusive game.
And you cant shop wherever to find the best combination of anything because one retailer is making the game exclusive to their store.

But it happens with shops in real life too...and people still go to those stores.
Sooo i guess it's a case of "slient majority vs vocal minority".
The Epic store seems to do fine, btw and so does Epic so no amount of ranting will change that, anyway.
Especially not after their presentation of UE5 and the fact that UE games will get discounts on their platform.

If your game is built using Unreal Engine, Epic will cover your engine royalties on Epic Games store revenue.

Very, very clever on their part.

 

[yuadesa]

PC gamers worship Steam like a god. I'm convinced part of the reason they hate Epic so much is that they give more money to the people who made the game and have some really good sales and giveaways, so they can no longer claim that only Steam has amazing sales.

if it was 5 years ago maybe, steam sales have been terrible ever since they got rid of daily and flash deals

 

[sendit]

Is this really an issue?

Console Exclusives (Sony Exclusives specifically) - are for the most part, console specific.

PC store exclusives don't require you to buy a new system. The comparison is moot.

 

[theclaw135]

Is this really an issue?

Console Exclusives (Sony Exclusives specifically) - are for the most part, console specific.

PC store exclusives don't require you to buy a new system. The comparison is moot.

Something to think about. Epic isn't paying to keep games off Xbox, Sony is.

 

[sendit]

Something to think about. Epic isn't paying to keep games off Xbox, Sony is.

Lol I hope you’re joking.

 

[theclaw135]

Lol I hope you’re joking.

No joke. Of course I'm wrong if there are games Epic paid to not be on consoles.

 

[Graciaus]

But it happens with shops in real life too...and people still go to those stores.
Sooo i guess it's a case of "slient majority vs vocal minority".
The Epic store seems to do fine, btw and so does Epic so no amount of ranting will change that, anyway.
Especially not after their presentation of UE5 and the fact that UE games will get discounts on their platform.

Epic lost a lot of money fighting a losing battle. They have very little market share and even with exclusives most just wait. They are not doing fine they are bleeding money. Could they turn it around? Anything is possible but they would have to try and actually compete with features. More then likely in a few years they will stop trying so hard and just be a normal store. The only thing they have done is increase piracy again.

 

[acm2000]

Third party timed exclusives are never ok on any platform.....

Anti consumerism caused by greed.

 

[theclaw135]

Third party timed exclusives are never ok on any platform.....

Anti consumerism caused by greed.

Mostly the lack of transparency upsets me. These contracts are made in secret. We don't always know the length, rarely ever the price.

If there must be third party timed exclusives, the companies should be held accountable for it.

 

[Faenrir]

Epic lost a lot of money fighting a losing battle. They have very little market share and even with exclusives most just wait. They are not doing fine they are bleeding money. Could they turn it around? Anything is possible but they would have to try and actually compete with features. More then likely in a few years they will stop trying so hard and just be a normal store. The only thing they have done is increase piracy again.

Oh, really? And you saw all this in your magic crystal ball huh?
Epic is making tons of money, dude.

Epic Games Store Has Hit $680 Million In Revenue, 108 Million Customers

Games signed to exclusivity deals with Epic have driven the majority of revenue on the platform.

www.forbes.com

Not to mention the billions they're making with Fortnite AND the Unreal Engine.
You're aware the UE5 reveal is what impressed gamers the most recently,right?
There's litterally no reason for studios not to use their store...more revenue share, a discount on the engine fees if you use UE, more exposure than on Steam because there are less (crap) games released there.

Steam isn't going away...but the Epic store is a very serious contender.

 

[MMaRsu]

Oh, really? And you saw all this in your magic crystal ball huh?
Epic is making tons of money, dude.

Epic Games Store Has Hit $680 Million In Revenue, 108 Million Customers

Games signed to exclusivity deals with Epic have driven the majority of revenue on the platform.

www.forbes.com

Not to mention the billions they're making with Fortnite AND the Unreal Engine.
You're aware the UE5 reveal is what impressed gamers the most recently,right?
There's litterally no reason for studios not to use their store...more revenue share, a discount on the engine fees if you use UE, more exposure than on Steam because there are less (crap) games released there.

Steam isn't going away...but the Epic store is a very serious contender.

Games are barely selling on EGS.

 

[theclaw135]

Games are barely selling on EGS.

Perhaps but Epic is covering the cost of the lost sales.

 

[Graciaus]

Oh, really? And you saw all this in your magic crystal ball huh?
Epic is making tons of money, dude.

Epic Games Store Has Hit $680 Million In Revenue, 108 Million Customers

Games signed to exclusivity deals with Epic have driven the majority of revenue on the platform.

www.forbes.com

Not to mention the billions they're making with Fortnite AND the Unreal Engine.
You're aware the UE5 reveal is what impressed gamers the most recently,right?
There's litterally no reason for studios not to use their store...more revenue share, a discount on the engine fees if you use UE, more exposure than on Steam because there are less (crap) games released there.

Steam isn't going away...but the Epic store is a very serious contender.

PR spin but laugh away. Of that 680 million of revenue (not profit) only 251 million is from 3rd party games. Also that 251 million 88% would go to the publishers/developers made. Subtract the money Epic paid for the exclusive and/or guaranteed sales paints a much different picture. They also give away free games weekly. You think those are free? More money thrown in the trash.

Direct quote from your article:

"Epic Games CEO and cofounder Tim Sweeney also revealed that 108 million accounts have either purchased a game on the store or downloaded one of the free games offered on a weekly rotation."

The OR is the important part. People are taking the free games and not buying much of anything.

No reason not to use Epic? I can't think of a single reason why anyone would use it. Going exclusive is a PR nightmare and sales are significantly less. Sure you take the free money the first time around but when your sales are crap will Epic do it for a sequel? PC gamers aren't going to forget the stunt you pulled the first time either. Not to mention many devs have trolled Steam users after announcing the exclusive. A 12% cut is nice but Epic themselves say it isn't sustainable. If they actually got the monopoly they wanted it would rise to what everyone else does.

If Epic was actually serious about competing they would have features. Make 3rd party games cross play with consoles. Family sharing the same game with multiple people at a time. Stuff Steam doesn't do. Not buy Borderlands 3 exclusive and have your poor cloud save implementation delete people's saves and need Gearbox to fix it for you.

 

[theclaw135]

The viewpoint has merit. Put two and two together it doesn't add up. Why is Epic throwing money around, when they could be earning customer loyalty?
The Steam client software isn't THAT spectacular anyhow.

 

[Faenrir]

PR spin but laugh away. Of that 680 million of revenue (not profit) only 251 million is from 3rd party games. Also that 251 million 88% would go to the publishers/developers made. Subtract the money Epic paid for the exclusive and/or guaranteed sales paints a much different picture. They also give away free games weekly. You think those are free? More money thrown in the trash.

Direct quote from your article:

"Epic Games CEO and cofounder Tim Sweeney also revealed that 108 million accounts have either purchased a game on the store or downloaded one of the free games offered on a weekly rotation."

The OR is the important part. People are taking the free games and not buying much of anything.

No reason not to use Epic? I can't think of a single reason why anyone would use it. Going exclusive is a PR nightmare and sales are significantly less. Sure you take the free money the first time around but when your sales are crap will Epic do it for a sequel? PC gamers aren't going to forget the stunt you pulled the first time either. Not to mention many devs have trolled Steam users after announcing the exclusive. A 12% cut is nice but Epic themselves say it isn't sustainable. If they actually got the monopoly they wanted it would rise to what everyone else does.

Where did they ever say that??? lol.
Talking out of your behind, matey. Also you clearly have no clue how development works. You just can't blindly throw money at something to have it faster. You could put 50000 programmers on it and it wouldn't be faster, actually. So wanting something better than Steam out of the blue when it took Steam 15 years to get there...yeah, not happening, bud.

Sooo let me explain the free games, now. Free games makes people go to their store. Sure, a lot might not buy anything...but traffic is gold, man. Someone is there, has an account now thanks to the free game, sees sales... what do you think happens?
Even if it's a very small fraction that buys other games, still a success.

Steam claims to have a billion accounts, yet only around 100M regular users. Epic has been getting more and more and will catch up, wether you like it or not.
Also you keep forgetting about the "timed" part in "timed" exclusive and the fact that NOT ALL GAMES are exclusive. The 12% applies to all games.

I'm a gamedev, i see absolutely NO reason not to put a game on the Epic store. In fact, even Steam encourages this. A more popular game will sell better on all platforms so it's win/win.
So yeah... i guess you're just too infatuated with a software storefront to think rationally.

And that bit about cloud saves is ignorant at best. The APIs are probably very different (haven't worked with the Epic one yet but i know Steam's) and Gearbox probably didn't implement it correctly. Why blame Epic when other games haven't had the issue?

Games are barely selling on EGS.

Where's your source?

 

[Alexios]

Source is your own numbers, that's a pitiful amount to divide to all those games on there (which isn't even dividing, obviously the most prominent releases only will get the bulk, like Satisfactory, which is among like 3 or 4 games Epic hailed for great sales, which is very indicative in and of itself).

There's litterally no reason for studios not to use their store...more revenue share, a discount on the engine fees if you use UE, more exposure than on Steam because there are less (crap) games released there

And yet, the vast vast vast majority do not use it. And those tiny few in the grand scheme of things that do use it don't do it for any of the benefits you outline but because Epic paid extras for them to get there. And they go back to Steam ASAP (or concurrently for games Epic didn't pay extra for).

How weird is that? All pubs and devs are dumb? Not to mention several of them even had their own stores, so don't need to pay fees and shit to anybody, but they went back to Steam, you think they haven't heard of Epic? Or that Epic curates against them? Microsoft, Bethesda, EA? Lol man!

That will probably happen to Ubisoft too eventually, for now they're hoping to have just their own store like EA did once before going back to Steam, and take Epic's money on top knowing they're not real competiion so they got nothing to lose on that front, their games will mostly sell on UPlay.

Fortnite money sharing to ensure releases occur and less (let's ignore the less crap games, that was clearly fud, loads of shit games already on EGS despite Epic claiming they'd only have good shit curated early on) games = more visibility are temporary, you can't base long term business on it.

That's before getting to things like how the store is actually set up horribly and how easy it is(n't) to find and arrange things on it in any way outside Epic itself promoting this or that on the front page.

You even admit Steam isn't going away (even though it doesn't offer any of those aaawesome things you claim Epic does, how weird is that too?!) so how are those "less games" not competing still with the "more games" on Steam to be "more visible"? They still are, negating one core argument.

Lol @ others claiming Epic brought much needed competition, more like they brought shitty competition and practices that thankfully other pre existing stores don't adopt and still try to attract customers and developers by features and service, not bribes to accept far lesser quality.

Might as well say Stadia is successful because they pay for timed exclusives like Samurai Shodown too :d

Edit: you quoted me but posted bs in return. Don't translate what I said into your moron speak, it's right here and you misrepresent it on purpose, how the f can you claim I don't know EA, MS and Bethesda have their own stores when the point was they too went back to Steam and not EGS, lol?

 

[MMaRsu]

Source is epics own numbers

 

[D.Final]

The community

 

[theclaw135]

One thing Epic could do, is fund PC ports that otherwise wouldn't be made. Being proactive in bringing games to the PC would have less ire than what they're doing now.

 

[RokkanStoned]

I mean, I don't get the point here. Anyone remembering this generation remembers all of us calling out Microsoft with Dead Rising 3 and NuTomb Raider 2.
The whole GTAV thing, I honestly didn't know it was exclusive, but if it is it's of course bad and adding onto the pile of Sony doing shitty shit. Still hardly comparable to new titles though. So I don't get the whole Epic comparison. Both are bad? Okay? No one likes companies buying to keep a title off another platform. If they help develop it, then it's fine to reap the benefit of platform exclusivity of course.

 

[Faenrir]

Source is your own numbers, that's a pitiful amount to divide to all those games on there (which isn't even dividing, obviously the most prominent releases only will get the bulk, like Satisfactory, which is among like 3 or 4 games Epic hailed for great sales, which is very indicative itself).
And yet, the vast vast vast majority do not use it. And those tiny few in the grand scheme of things that do use it don't do it for any of the benefits you outline but because Epic paid extras for them to get there. And they go back to Steam ASAP (or even concurrently with other releases of theirs).

How weird is that? All pubs and devs are dumb? Not to mention several of them even had their own stores, so don't need to pay fees and shit to anybody, but they went back to Steam, you think they haven't heard of Epic? Microsoft, Bethesda, EA? Lol.

That will probably happen to Ubisoft too eventually, for now they're hoping to have their own store like EA did once, and take Epic's money on top knowing they're not real competiion so they got nothing to lose.

Fortnite money sharing to ensure releases occur and less (let's ignore the less crap games, that was clearly fud, loads of shit games already on EGS despite Epic claiming they'd only have good shit curated early on) games = more visibility are temporary, you can't base long term business on it.

That's before getting to things like how the store is actually set up horribly and how easy it is(n't) to find and arrange things on it in any way outside Epic itself promoting this or that on the front page.

You even admit Steam isn't going away (even though it doesn't offer any of those aaawesome things you claim Epic does, how weird is that too?!) so how are those "less games" not competing still with the "more games" on Steam? They still are, already negating your one primary argument.

Lol @ others claiming Epic brought much needed competition, more like they brought shitty competition and practices that thankfully other pre existing stores don't adopt and still try to attract customers and developers by features and service, not bribes to accept far lesser quality.

Might as well say Stadia is successful because they pay for timed exclusives like Samurai Shodown too :d

Wow...all that text and nothing interrsting.
Devs and pubs aren't using Epic Store? No, no, it's the other way around. The store is curated, like gog. They don't allow all games on there.
And Bethesda, EA, etc. do have their own stores...they sell their games on those. Donyou even game lol. You've never used Origin, Uplay, Battlenet, etc. ?
Nothing to do with the Epic store though.

That rant about Steam and less games made no sense btw. Not sure what you meant.

Anyway, vocal minorities usually shut up after a while when they realize they're not stopping that train.

Oh and gotta love the "they're losing tons of money" becoming "but but but they're not making a lot of money". What's the next step??
"But but but, exclusives, they're mean...mommy!!!"

 

[Graciaus]

It's rare to see someone be this big of a shill.

 

[theclaw135]

It's rare to see someone be this big of a shill.

Immoral or not, it's achieving whatever it is Epic wants. Their investors aren't putting a stop to it.

 

[Vawn]

Third party timed exclusives are never ok on any platform.....

Anti consumerism caused by greed.

Lol. It's called business. If you're a CEO of a business and you aren't greedy, you're a crappy CEO.

 

[acm2000]

Lol. It's called business. If you're a CEO of a business and you aren't greedy, you're a crappy CEO.

And thus it's anti consumerism, which was my point.

 

[theclaw135]

And thus it's anti consumerism, which was my point.

The objective of any business, even if non-profit, is to remain a solvent going concern.
Pro consumer behavior is only sound to the extent it's financially beneficial.

 

[Bonfires Down]

I am very much in favor of Epic trying to force a lower platform holder cut for the industry. But I am disappointed in how they have handled it. I think it’s fine to buy exclusives but I don’t think it’s very effective. Had they opened up the store to all developers instead I believe they would be more successful. People come for the free games and the discounts, not primarily the exclusives. They needed to have games like PUBG and Rust on the platform long ago.

There’s also the issue of how slow they have been improving the client. 1,5 years and still no achievements? At this pace it will take 10+ years before they match current Steam in features.

 

[theclaw135]

I am very much in favor of Epic trying to force a lower platform holder cut for the industry. But I am disappointed in how they have handled it. I think it’s fine to buy exclusives but I don’t think it’s very effective. Had they opened up the store to all developers instead I believe they would be more successful. People come for the free games and the discounts, not primarily the exclusives. They needed to have games like PUBG and Rust on the platform long ago.

There’s also the issue of how slow they have been improving the client. 1,5 years and still no achievements? At this pace it will take 10+ years before they match current Steam in features.

Well said. Steam's inconsistent policies are something Epic ought to take advantage of. The shifty removal of games like A Kiss for the Petals Maidens of Michael is a sore spot for Valve.

 

[MMaRsu]

 

[MMaRsu]

I am very much in favor of Epic trying to force a lower platform holder cut for the industry.

Lmao that was never Epic's intention no matter how hard they may yell it, it's only to shit on Steam for no good reason other than to pretend they 'care' about Developers so much more.

 

[Ten_Fold]

I have no problem if epic made some more games that’s only on the epic game store or at least fund afew games.

 

[llien]

So I don't get the whole Epic comparison. Both are bad?

Somehow I do not recall threads about Sony/MS being assholes for buying exclusives (I recall outrage about Epic)?
Yet most of the exclusives shown by Sony were "bribe them" sort, I was told.

And it goes on:

Rumor - Sony paying for many AAA timed exclusives (Previously associated with Xbox)

Segment starts at 11.18 Quotes industry insider Imran Khan.

www.neogaf.com

 

[Starfield]

Epic has bought exclusivities weeks before the release of a game, it's not the same as announcing a game and already have the deal in place. Both are shit, but one is worse

Word up. I bought the limited edition of Metro Exodus were it was promised I'd get a steam key. 1month before release they revealed it to be a one year times egs exclusive and in my box there was a sticker with epic game store key put over the steam logo