Epic Games Store - some thoughts

[Remij 4,682]

Click on this and read the thread

 

 

 

This point especially, is what I've been saying..

 

 

Epic is investing in these games and they have a personal interest in seeing them succeed.

 

Valve has NO fucking interest in making sure games succeed.  They don't invest anything into the games on their platform, they invest in ways of automating bullshit so that they have to deal with developers and consumers LESS...  Valve doesn't give a shit if the average asset swipe game or indie game fails and sells only 20,000 copies.  They take their 30%, and due to the sheer volume of releases they line their fat pockets with it, while developers fade out of existence and new hopefuls fill their place.

 

It's bullshit.  They've flooded their market with garbage which has devalued things.

 

Epic on the other hand, curates their store.  Seeks out partnerships with strong indie devs.. and financially guarantees their success.  This is what a platform holder such as Epic can do.  Valve COULD fund good games on their store, and begin denying completely garbage tier games... but they don't want to do anything.

 

When the client reaches the point that it has most of the important bells and whistles of Steam... then there really is no reason to knock them.  I firmly believe that Tim saw all this shit happening on Steam and decided that he was going to invest in changing the situation and chip away at the narrative that you need to be on Steam to succeed on PC.  Epic has as many, if not more, users than Steam does at this point.  Yes... Fortnite is that big.  It prints money for them, and it's allowing them to take the initial beating and actually reform the PC game store/client model.

[kaz 2,439]

[Playstation Tablet 1,726]

If Steam doesn't get competition, Gabe will just sit on his fat ass doing nothing.

[Hot Sauce 2,734]

31 minutes ago, Remij_ said:

When the client reaches the point that it has most of the important bells and whistles of Steam...

That's going to be a long ass wait at this rate. 

[Remij 4,682]

1 minute ago, Hot Sauce said:

That's going to be a long ass wait at this rate. 

Eh, one day it wont be quite there... then the next it will.  At that point no one will care about the wait.

[Twinblade★ 3,925]

6 minutes ago, Hot Sauce said:

That's going to be a long ass wait at this rate. 

Yeah, im always underwhelmed by how many basic features it still lacks. The fact that there isn't even a basic timer that tracks how long you've played a game for is pretty annoying...

Edited September 15, 2019 by Twinblade

[DynamiteCop 2,086]

EGS has practically no games still, it's easy to be involved and "care" when there's so little to focus on. Why do indie dev's release on Steam? Probably because they can actually release their games. There's a reason EGS has so few titles, they're like Valve was with Steam from 2005-2011, they heavily curated what came to the platform and the result was a mere 1,500'ish games in a 6 year period. What happened when they stopped "caring" and made it easier to publish? The amount of games sky rocketed and with it investment into more platform features, and with all of that more, and more users. 

 

What happened to cost reductions for the consumers? Nothing, publishers are not only hoarding the extra revenue share from a lower platform fee; they're not translating anything to the consumer. That whole Metro Exodus thing being $49.99 was just a launch stunt. Regional cost differences and local fees? Publishers and developers still have to pay those themselves out of pocket for every sale, Valve covers all of that under their publishing with no cost to the publisher/developer. What about the platform features? It's still a bare bones pile of shit with no sense of urgency to catch up with Valve's QoL on Steam. 

 

EGS has only one advantage, and that advantage is doing nothing for the consumer, it comes with other financial issues for publishers and developers, and given the stringent nature of the platform it means if you're a creator chances are you won't be able to release your game with them anyway. 

 

 

[Hot Sauce 2,734]

3 minutes ago, Twinblade said:

Yeah, im always underwhelmed by how many basic features it still lacks. The fact that there isn't even a basic timer that tracks how long you've played a game for is pretty annoying...

They actually shipped that feature earlier this week.

 

But yeah, it's been pretty funny following the store's development on their Trello page. They would have a 1-3 month category with like 10 items, then 3 months would pass and 5 items would get pushed to their 4-6 month category while one item actually shipped. They ended up just getting rid of the time frame descriptions for generic 'Up Next' and 'Future Development' categories, which sums up the Epic Game Store development experience.

 

[Remij 4,682]

22 minutes ago, DynamiteCop! said:

EGS has practically no games still, it's easy to be involved and "care" when there's so little to focus on. Why do indie dev's release on Steam? Probably because they can actually release their games. There's a reason EGS has so few titles, they're like Valve was with Steam from 2005-2011, they heavily curated what came to the platform and the result was a mere 1,500'ish games in a 6 year period. What happened when they stopped "caring" and made it easier to publish? The amount of games sky rocketed and with it investment into more platform features, and with all of that more, and more users. 

 

What happened to cost reductions for the consumers? Nothing, publishers are not only hoarding the extra revenue share from a lower platform fee; they're not translating anything to the consumer. That whole Metro Exodus thing being $49.99 was just a launch stunt. Regional cost differences and local fees? Publishers and developers still have to pay those themselves out of pocket for every sale, Valve covers all of that under their publishing with no cost to the publisher/developer. What about the platform features? It's still a bare bones pile of shit with no sense of urgency to catch up with Valve's QoL on Steam. 

 

EGS has only one advantage, and that advantage is doing nothing for the consumer, it comes with other financial issues for publishers and developers, and given the stringent nature of the platform it means if you're a creator chances are you won't be able to release your game with them anyway. 

 

 

Epic will always seek out and fund games that they believe will bring users to their platform.

 

All that shit you talked about is being worked on and improved upon.  Devs will get to keep more of the money, and there's less financial risk.

 

Want your game on EGS?  Then release something that looks good and interesting and get your game noticed.  If not... go send it to die on Steam.  That's going to be the narrative of indie and mid sized developers/publishers.

 

There absolutely IS NO urgency to catch up to Steam... because they already have more users than Steam... and most of Steams QoL shit is just worthless and can wait.  They're doing the right thing.. which is poaching exclusives and getting developers they want to work with into their ecosystem.  The games releasing are succeeding... and it's proving you don't need Steam to do it... and Steam doesn't need to be taking 30%.

 

That is the mentality they are working on reversing.  PC gaming was always, and should have always been much more than just Steam.  Obviously Steam ushered in the age of digital downloads and PC storefronts and gaming in general owes a lot to what Steam has accomplished... but it should have never been "the only way to succeed on PC"...  Valve got too complacent..  They could have been publishing PC exclusive games with big budgets.. they could be better partnering and promoting QUALITY games.

 

Give a person all the algorithms to find content they like all you want... it's obvious Valve wants as little to do with the transaction as possible.. because they care more about skimming off the sheer volume of purchases, rather than having a vested interest in seeing quality titles succeed.

[Hot Sauce 2,734]

5 minutes ago, Remij_ said:

They're doing the right thing.. which is poaching exclusive

You aren't a shareholder. Stop carrying the water of that anti-consumer bullshit.

[JonDnD 2,636]

Steam sucks . Its ugly and filled with so much trash . I'm glad egs is punching them in the face over and over and I'm glad steam nerds are getting mad about it 

Edited September 15, 2019 by JONBpc

[Remij 4,682]

5 minutes ago, Hot Sauce said:

You aren't a shareholder. Stop carrying the water of that anti-consumer bullshit.

I don't need to be to understand that for them to succeed in their objective that's what they must do... and I value that objective much more than some shit people think is anti-consumer.  That's temporary shit.  They'll get better.  The Steam situation wont.

 

 

[lynux3 2,099]

Who cares. PosC gaming civil war.

[Hot Sauce 2,734]

1 minute ago, Remij_ said:

I don't need to be to understand that for them to succeed in their objective that's what they must do... and I value that objective much more than some shit people think is anti-consumer.

Keep fanboying a terrible client that's anti-consumer then. I don't care.

[Remij 4,682]

3 minutes ago, JONBpc said:

Steam sucks . Its ugly and filled with so much trash . I'm glad egs is punching them in the face over and over and I'm glad steam nerds are getting mad about it 

The new Library update is coming in 2 days.  It's going to look and be a lot nicer, I'm sure.

 

But it's taken them literally forever... For a company who's entire business revolves around it... it's sad just how little it has changed over the years.  I can only assume things are happening as fast as they are now because they actually have competition.

[Remij 4,682]

2 minutes ago, Hot Sauce said:

Keep fanboying a terrible client that's anti-consumer then. I don't care.

I'll keep playing games and not caring that "my time wasn't calculated "... and that Epic wont give me forums to post on and a review section to bomb games!!! Anti consumer  

 

 

 

[JonDnD 2,636]

Where is the shopping cart  I need a shopping cart for the games I won't buy  only 2 free games this week ? What a RIP off 

[Remij 4,682]

Just now, JONBpc said:

Where is the shopping cart  I need a shopping cart for the games I won't buy  only 2 free games this week ? What a RIP off 

LMAO they really do need a shopping cart though  

 

Getting a temp purchasing ban because you had to buy each game separately is dumb as fuck  

[DynamiteCop 2,086]

3 minutes ago, Remij_ said:

Epic will always seek out and fund games that they believe will bring users to their platform.

 

All that shit you talked about is being worked on and improved upon.  Devs will get to keep more of the money, and there's less financial risk.

 

Want your game on EGS?  Then release something that looks good and interesting and get your game noticed.  If not... go send it to die on Steam.

 

There absolutely IS NO urgency to catch up to Steam... because they already have more users than Steam... and most of Steams QoL shit is just worthless.  They're doing the right thing.. which is poaching exclusives and getting developers they want to work with into their ecosystem.  The games releasing are succeeding... and it's proving you don't need Steam to do it... and Steam doesn't need to be taking 30%.

 

That is the mentality they are working on reversing.  PC gaming was always, and should have always been much more than just Steam.  Obviously Steam ushered in the age of digital downloads and PC storefronts and gaming in general owes a lot to what Steam has accomplished... but it should have never been "the only way to succeed on PC"...  Valve got too complacent..  They could have been publishing PC exclusive games with big budgets.. they could be better partnering and promoting QUALITY games.

 

Give a person all the algorithms to find content they like all you want... it's obvious Valve wants as little to do with the transaction as possible.. because they care more about skimming off the sheer volume of purchases, rather than having a vested interest in seeing quality titles succeed.

They most assuredly do not have more users than Steam overall, not even fucking close, and their concurrent player count peak EVER is fathoms lower than Steam's business as usual day. You're conflating the playing of a free game, and a statistical peak of 10.7 million players during a special event leveraged across 4 platforms with that of one platform. 

 

Fortnite is popular but it's not enlisting people to actually use the platform, it's merely an access point for Fortnite for most, and 10.7 million concurrent people at peak during an event across 4 platforms 3 of which have nothing to do with EGS versus 16-17 million on one is laughable. How many people were on EGS during that event, maybe 4 million?

 

You talk about caring and helping developers, cutting developers out isn't helping them. Sure Steam gets some trash but at the same time they get good games that Epic would never allow on their store. Valve also enlists Early Access so prospective titles can get off the ground if a developer can't exactly afford to do it themselves, they allow them the opportunity to pitch and publish, it's a veritable Kickstarter contained in their storefront. 

 

Furthermore you completely ignore the regional costs leveraged at the head of publishers/developers which are then translated to increased consumer cost. Due to the unsustainable nature of of EGS and its 12% cut these costs translate directly to the consumer instead of falling under the veil of the platform which means regional purchases cost more in every instance, that's not appealing.

 

QoL is also important, security in licenses is important, a community is important, extended software outside of gaming is important, a mod community and market is important, individuality and a profile is important, achievements are important. EGS has none of this, you're just being dumb and you've become intolerable to even talk about in regards to any of it. 

 

The funny part is these games release on Steam anyways, because EGS is not only unsustainable for Epic themselves, it's unsustainable for publishers and developers so they sign limited contracts. 

[JonDnD 2,636]

3 minutes ago, Remij_ said:

LMAO they really do need a shopping cart though  

 

Getting a temp purchasing ban because you had to buy each game separately is dumb as fuck  

I did get a fraud alert on my CC from them  but steam still sucks