Epic Games Store now open!

Tombstone said:
I'm picking both sides, not fussed about launchers and the only person I punish by choosing a side is me, by depriving myself of playing something for a large period of time.
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I'm lucky in that regard - I never buy games on release. I generally wait for a Game of the Year edition or a low price. The games industry would collapse if they relied on people like me. :p
 
ic1male said:
I'm lucky in that regard - I never buy games on release. I generally wait for a Game of the Year edition or a low price. The games industry would collapse if they relied on people like me. :p
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Impatience and peer pressure are my curses, a combination of I want, I want and all my mates having a great time in a game almost always means that I succumb to purchasing :D
 
What are people talking about things being exclusive for? You alt tab to a different window instead of Steam, it's not a PS4 or Xbox exclusive. Epic gives more of the money to developers as well which means better games in the long run.
 
Roar87 said:
What are people talking about things being exclusive for? You alt tab to a different window instead of Steam, it's not a PS4 or Xbox exclusive. Epic gives more of the money to developers as well which means better games in the long run.
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correction fatter pockets for the shareholders.

I see no evidence of increased profits leading to better games.

gta5 record profits for rockstar yet no single player DLC released.

fortnite etc. bad games.

EA record profits yet they have made almost no single player story focused games for several years.
 
Roar87 said:
What are people talking about things being exclusive for? You alt tab to a different window instead of Steam, it's not a PS4 or Xbox exclusive. Epic gives more of the money to developers as well which means better games in the long run.
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Because it is by it's very definition? If it wasn't exclusive you could pick to buy it on either Steam or Epic, as it's exclusive to Epic you are forced into getting a new launcher just to play specific games.

They may give more money to devs but I've yet to see this translate into being good for consumers.
 
Roar87 said:
What are people talking about things being exclusive for? You alt tab to a different window instead of Steam, it's not a PS4 or Xbox exclusive. Epic gives more of the money to developers as well which means better games in the long run.
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I understand that most of the buyouts are pretty recent and close to release. But from now on if you consider an Epic exclusive release, DON'T CREATE A STEAM PAGE. First Metro Exodus which was number one on my wishlist since it's announcement (until HK:Silksong) and now Outer Worlds.

I am not going to buy from Epic. It's not even the missing features and early stage of development. I'm willing to buy from Uplay if I get a better deal on a Ubisoft game or I am willing to install origin for Apex and the times I want to play Battlefield. I don't particularly like those platforms but I'm fine with them. I will buy games from GOG, because I agree with their stance on DRM. I enjoy that. I feel good supporting that idea. I willingly give up Steams features for that.

Meanwhile I actively dislike Epic. Not their launcher design. But their blatant, direct, almost cynical disregard of me as a consumer. It is almost a joke, like they want to play the villain in this timeline and are actively trying anything to make me dislike them as much as possible:

  • Spying on me and my Steam friends
  • being 40% owned by the censorship branch of the Chinese government
  • Tim Sweeney being an insufferable **** where the only thing he's better at than lying is being a hypocrite
  • and the exclusives which use Steam for advertising and then get taken away
    • (and if your store needs those to be seen as 'competition' maybe overthink the concept of your store???)
https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b3g0ne/stop_advertising_your_game_on_steam_if_you_are
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This guy pretty much sums it up, which is why am against Epic.

I hate how consoles make games exclusive and Epic Games Store is just doing the same, locking the games to their store, giving you the customer no choice to buy from them, that isn't fair competition is it?

When they got called out for that behaviour, they "bit" the hand that feeds them, so I don't want to give these people my money.

I don't mind waiting a year till the game is unlocked and released on Steam or elsewhere, suits me better to be honest, since it be cheaper, likely saving me 50%-75% and performing better because I likely got a new GPU by that time.
 
uncle_rufus said:
Yeah because developers are flocking to Epic store out of choice and not because of massive stacks of cash being thrown at them. What a tool...

He's like a dumb streamer thot - "I'm not a dirty camwhore, I'm a GAMER"
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Thats kind of an admittance the so called competition is not for consumers, he is indeed a tool.

Spoke about this to a friend today, steam has apparently stagnated but the only things I can think off missing from steam probably are.

Game recordings.
Proper skinning, including scalable skinning to 4k resolution.
Better alert system in the launcher for sales. (right now is just a big on/off switch which if turned on spams all sorts of crap at you).
Proper 2FA that doesnt use SMS.

I have no issue with 1st party exclusives so e.g. microsoft games not been on PS4, and vice versa, the practice I dont like is bribing publishers for 3rd party exclusives, and that has been dwindling on the consoles. So this move from epic has set the industry backwards. Their launcher in itself is not competitive, it missing many gaming related features.

In addition the 30% fee from steam is the industry standard, nintendo, sony and MS do the same on their platforms and in addition epic havent even proved its excessive because for the lower fee the quality of their service is lower, no cloud saves etc. Its been subsidised from massive fortnite profits. Would they be releasing a launcher with this smaller cut if they didnt have fortnite money? most probably not.

Origin and uplay launched by publishers with large gaming libraries, GOG only had the witcher games, but their launcher was special, they wanted to show a DRM less model can exist, they are not hostile to steam and other competitors.

If it doesnt already show yes I really dislike epic right now and dont like what they doing.

Also consider sony and MS charge for online gaming, so they get more revenue per consumer than steam.
 
Malevolence said:
I don't think you quite get why people detest the Epic launcher. Protip: It ain't having an extra icon or launcher on their system.
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Honestly I don't understand the issue with the epic store.

Competition has to be good right?

Whether they increase a digital footfall to their launcher with exclusives or lower prices or better deals for the distributors it has to trigger a reaction from valve surely.

Valve will have to bring something back to the table..

Lower prices? A better deal for developers and distributors? A better deal for consumers with an enhanced experience? (customer support is shocking.

Hell perhaps valve will go back to their origins and develop great games again.

All epic have done is shake and question the monopoly.
 
Rifte said:
Competition has to be good right?
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Absoluteley, but this isn't competition...The only thing Valve could do to "compete" with this would be to say "Epic are offering you guaranteed 500k sales for exclusivity? We'll give you 1M" but why would they want to do that? Complain about them all you want but Valve are undeniably pro consumer at heart

It's a slippery slope this too. If Epic succeed in what they are trying to do it sends a clear message - if your pockets are deep enough you can throw it at publishers to grab the big titles and hold them to ransom. If it's proven to make good money then who's to say another even bigger fish with even deeper pockets won't take the opportunity? Amazon, Google, they could likely double or triple Epic's cash offerings without breaking a sweat, if they believed that gamers would simply fall in line and flock to whatever service is being pushed

What happens then? Well once you end up with several huge companies all trying to grab exclusivity then all of a sudden the publishers are in demand more than ever before. How long until they start trying to maximise profits by going... "Well, we don't want to give you full exclusivity, but what we can do is promise that we'll carve out a special set of DLC or missions within the game that are exclusive to your platform, how does that sound?"... and just like that these companies will have found a way to try and force gamers to buy multiple copies of the game on the same hardware platform if they really want to have access to everything in the game
 
It also removes the incentive to make a good game, you dont need to worry about people buying it if a store owner just pays you upfront for 500k sales.
 
Rifte said:
Honestly I don't understand the issue with the epic store.

Competition has to be good right?

Whether they increase a digital footfall to their launcher with exclusives or lower prices or better deals for the distributors it has to trigger a reaction from valve surely.

Valve will have to bring something back to the table..

Lower prices? A better deal for developers and distributors? A better deal for consumers with an enhanced experience? (customer support is shocking.

Hell perhaps valve will go back to their origins and develop great games again.

All epic have done is shake and question the monopoly.
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consumers already get a better deal on steam with enhanced experience.

cheaper prices (via key resellers)
cloud saves
achievements
review system
auto refund system
offline launcher mode
broadcast mode
streaming mode

You talk as if steam have decided to get lazy or something, yet they have been adding features to their client continuously.

As a gamer I couldnt give a toss about the publisher, they are not my family, they a business entity which I may buy their product if I like it enough. Likewise the publisher wont care about me, I am just a potential customer out of many.

I have yet to see a game on epic for a lower price than steam other than metro which was for Americans only and actually charged more to the EU.

Also based on feedback shown on reddit EPIC customer support is worse than steam.
 
All I know is I'm not gonna pay full price for a game with locked down DRM unless it's beyond exceptional (eg Odyssey). Certainly for EGS they've shown themselves to be exceptionally incompetent when it comes to account security & abysmal at CS, so a hard pass from me. Quite frankly I don't even want Steam anymore but it's at least a far cry from this abomination. I bought 0 games on the windows store, 0 on origin, 1 on uplay and will buy another big fat 0 games on this one. Got over 500 on Steam and dozens on GoG and I've pretty much transitioned to only buying on GoG anymore. And if the industry overall wants to transition to even crappier stores like this one, and crappier services like streaming, then thank you for saving me money - I already have enough games to play again for 3 more lifetimes.
 
The problem is what if Valve responds by doing third party exclusives instead??

Edit!!

The next Borderlands is definitely going to be an Epic Store exclusive it appears.

Saw this post by an Indie dev:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoi...astic_forum_post_from_an_indy_dev_explaining/

Free key generation for my title, so that I may sell on other marketplaces and take advantage of their sales periods and consumer base. Valve does not make a profit off of any of those keys, so I could use those to earn up to 100% of the revenue depending on where customers buy my game from. This ranges from storefronts like Humble, Greenmangaming and Amazon to clients like Itch.io. At no point are users forced to buy through Steam exclusively.
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Extensive sales opportunities not just through the main store, but key resellers and developers' personal sites as well if they offer Steam keys as part of the purchase.
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Valve have got such a hold on the pc gaming market that this is pretty much the only way that they can bring consumers to their platform ... by tieing in exclusives.

Every platform seems to have its thing...

1)Titles unique to a specific developer (uplay and origin, Bethesda )
2)Drm free.... Gog galaxy

Let epic spend their fortnite money and shake this up because before this unless you played by valve's rulebook you were finished as a pc gaming developer

As a consumer have I been impacted by any of this? At the moment only positively :

1)free games every 2 weeks
2)cheaper metro

Negatively

1)Too early to say yet but nothing that springs to mind.

The comparison between steam and the epic launcher is also a little unfair at present Steam is undoubtedly better in every way, even established launchers like Origin dont come close.

I am not bashing valve by any measure but the hold they had on a market and a developer was far from healthy.
 
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