Epic Games Storefront - A Good Incentive for Piracy

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a_skeleton_05

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Ravishing said:
How would it be a monopoly if devs choose to enter into the exclusivity contract? If they don't like it they could try going it alone, or another store. Valve can't force devs to sell on the platform, no matter how large they are. And then valve loses out on the Triple A titles that wouldn't need valve anyway.

You think valve saved pc gaming but really they saved only a piece of it. You still have triple A games from other companies: NCsoft, Microsoft, EA, Blizzard, and the numerous console ports that wouldn't need valve.

And without steam maybe you see more titles from these other publishers, or titles become more popular than they were simply because steam has flooded the market with so much content.
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Steam eclipses every other platform in userbase. Smaller devs simply cannot reach a sufficiently sized market without it. Choosing to not go on Steam is not a choice at all for them. You only need to look at the differences that a platform like Steam and one like Slitherin means for an indie.

The PC gaming industry would be nothing at all like it is now without Valve. They almost single-handedly kept it alive outside of MMO's, incredibly niche one-man games, and a few of the big players. But this isn't relevant to the question I asked. I mentioned it because it would have been even more realistic for them to do through the time-period and a far more damaging act as well.

I worry that you don't see how that's not a monopoly situation, and I question how you could even remotely see it as a consumer-positive situation as well. I know consumer rights is largely an abandoned idea nowadays, but I'm assuming you're well past the age that didn't grow up with these concepts being embraced.

I thought you were just pro-Epic and anti-Valve, but now I'm not so sure.
 
Ravishing

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Dom said:
Steam eclipses every other platform in userbase. Smaller devs simply cannot reach a sufficiently sized market without it. Choosing to not go on Steam is not a choice at all for them. You only need to look at the differences that a platform like Steam and one like Slitherin means for an indie.

The PC gaming industry would be nothing at all like it is now without Valve. They almost single-handedly kept it alive outside of MMO's, incredibly niche one-man games, and a few of the big players. But this isn't relevant to the question I asked. I mentioned it because it would have been even more realistic for them to do through the time-period and a far more damaging act as well.

I worry that you don't see how that's not a monopoly situation, and I question how you could even remotely see it as a consumer-positive situation as well. I know consumer rights is largely an abandoned idea nowadays, but I'm assuming you're well past the age that didn't grow up with these concepts being embraced.

I thought you were just pro-Epic and anti-Valve, but now I'm not so sure.
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Valve is not To Big To Fail and is not a savior of PC gaming.

They created a market that helped a lot of under-funded projects and a ton of content came to market because of them, but they also facilitated flooding and diluting of the market to such an extent that now the paradigm is to push content over quality.

PC gaming has been Niche for a long while, eclipsed by Console & Mobile, and it's not necessarily a market that NEEDS to be saved, if the alternatives are as good or better.

You could argue Steam hurt PC gaming as much as helping.

And your monopoly couldn't exist unless Steam was the absolute only way to distribute PC games, which it could never be. The only anti-consumer hypothesis here is if all devs were FORCED onto the platform, but they aren't, and never could be forced to.
 
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Fight

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Everyone crying about the exclusivity part of this... You realize that you do not have to go out and buy a different $300 console to play the game right? It is a different icon on your desktop, that you downloaded for free. And every time you double click that icon, as agonizing as it might be for you, realize you put more dollars into the pockets of the people that actually made the game.
 
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gshurik

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Ravishing said:
Valve is not To Big To Fail and is not a savior of PC gaming.

They created a market that helped a lot of under-funded projects and a ton of content came to market because of them, but they also facilitated flooding and diluting of the market to such an extent that now the paradigm is to push content over quality.

PC gaming has been Niche for a long while, eclipsed by Console & Mobile, and it's not necessarily a market that NEEDS to be saved, if the alternatives are as good or better.

You could argue Steam hurt PC gaming as much as helping.

And your monopoly couldn't exist unless Steam was the absolute only way to distribute PC games, which it could never be. The only anti-consumer hypothesis here is if all devs were FORCED onto the platform, but they aren't, and never could be forced to.
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Ok this has jumped the pony into realms of absurdity at this point. You're either trolling, stupid or completely blinded by fanboyism. Clearly you have no memory of pre-steam PC gaming, because there's no way a landscape like that could have survived without a company like Valve making PC gaming attractive to third party devs, by providing a hassle free storefront.
 
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Ravishing

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gshurik said:
Ok this has jumped the pony into realms of absurdity at this point. You're either trolling, stupid or completely blinded by fanboyism. Clearly you have no memory of pre-steam PC gaming, because there's no way a landscape like that could have survived without a company like Valve making PC gaming attractive to third party devs, by providing a hassle free storefront.
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What fanboyism ? Are you dense?
I've been PC gaming since the 80s. What exactly was saved? You telling me there wouldn't be PC games without Valve? Are you high?
Valve created a marketplace that allowed indie devs to get products off the ground easier by bypassing the big distribution chains / physical boxes.
Honestly I miss going to a store and picking up a box, but I love the convenience of digital.

They didn't save shit, PC gaming will have always existed.

What Steam did was Revolutionize PC gaming.

What you're seeing from me isn't fanboyism, it's that I'm not a Steam fanboy. I have MAYBE 3 games on Steam: TF2, NMS and can't think of a 3rd.
I have 0 consoles, I only PC game, and have used Steam for 2-3 games since their inception.

If Steam didn't exist you would have seen Microsoft, NCSoft, Origen, EA, Blizzard, Epic, Take Two, etc etc etc etc etc, still exist and PC gaming would still exist.
 
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Utnayan

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Fight said:
Everyone crying about the exclusivity part of this... You realize that you do not have to go out and buy a different $300 console to play the game right? It is a different icon on your desktop, that you downloaded for free. And every time you double click that icon, as agonizing as it might be for you, realize you put more dollars into the pockets of the people that actually made the game.
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Quit making sense Fight!

Dom are you as adamant about this as you are EA buying the NFL and Disney rights to be able to be the only publisher to make their games? Same thing right? I would consider that worse than what you are debating here.
 
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Utnayan

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Shmoopy said:
Title is a bit over the top but good points about why the current iteration of the Epic store kinda sucks for users. I agree.

Have had Epic launcher installed for years due to work but never purchased a game due to many of these reasons.
  • worse security
  • worse customer service
  • games are more expensive due to epics regional pricing
  • cannot play games offline
  • no social features like chat
  • no screenshots, guides, community content, etc.
  • no controller support
  • no achievements
  • no cloud saves
  • no game forums
  • they pay for exclusive rights to try and force you to use their store
  • refuse refunds even if you meet criteria
  • no users reviews,
  • no linux support
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So just like Steam on launch?
 
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Utnayan

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And the PC Platform wasn't saved by Valve. The PC platform was never in trouble to begin with as the market shifted to and from consoles with a LOT more disparity between graphical quality on PC Vs Console back then. When PC's became more affordable and had an established base market is when PC gaming started to flourish more. If anything what enriched PC gaming was the Internet and faster Bandwidth. PC just evolved to digital faster because of Valve's push and now consoles are doing the same thing. A market shift in distribution and acquire methods and the popularity of that doesn't mean an entire market was out the door if it didn't happen - that thought alone is fucking laughable.

Oh and all you white knighter's for Steam, let's not forget not only did it launch in a shit state and remained so until 2009, they also made exclusive partnerships for distribution with publishers. Where were your battle cry's then? And the only reason they have a refund policy wasn't due to consumer rights, they got fucking sued by Australia and lost a shit ton of cash in fines so they instituted the feature for everyone rather than take the enormous amount of time (And cost and on going legal) to segment refund policies per region and changing laws across the globe.

I can assure you their Attorney staff is well paid.

And ... "Steam has been criticized for its 30% cut on revenue from game sales, a value that was similar to what other digital storefronts charged at the time of Steam's launch, but nearly a decade later no longer scaled with cheaper costs of serving data. Epic Games' Tim Sweeney postulated that Valve could reduce its cut to 8%, given that content delivery network costs has dropped significantly.[328] Shortly following an announcement from Valve that they would reduce their cut on games selling over US$10 million, Epic launched its Epic Games Store in December 2018, promoting that Epic would only take a 12% cut of revenue for games sold through it, as well as not changing the normal 5% revenue cut for games that use the Unreal engine.[329] The chat application Discord followed suit a few days later, promoting only a 10% cut on games sold through its store

Value my ass. They took advantage of being a monopoly of digital distribution and didn't change their cut hiding under "Value" which took 14 years to get there and several law suits in which they just threw up their hands. I do not blame them one bit for taking advantage of their market status what so ever, but the fact a few people in here can claim they are doing this for the betterment of consumers is blatantly untrue if anyone has followed this shit storm since 2003. Get your fact's straight, start understanding business better. Yes consumers around the globe benefitted from some of the policies, but to think some of you think those policies were inacted because Valve has some grand consumer rights mindset in mind is fucking hilarious.
 
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Pyros

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Utnayan said:
So just like Steam on launch?
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That's a terrible fucking argument. That's the exact same argument as people defending shitty mmos because wow launched the same way forever and a half ago. "Well you can't expect to make a product that's as good as their direct current competition, but you have to remember that 15years ago, that competition was in the same state, so it's ok". Guess we just have to wait 15years and then we can compare Epic to current Steam.
 
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Delly

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I don't have a problem with Epic Games Store, but I would hope people are cautious and use a wait and see approach until they add more features for consumers. I don't even have a problem with exclusives as long as I can play multiplayer with anyone that owns the game, if not, then it seems like it goes against Epic's approach of connecting everyone, even consoles.

What I do have a problem is advertising and selling your game on Steam and then pulling the rug from under them at the last minute and going exclusive with another platform. I don't care if its Epic or someone else, its a shitty move. For the Metro team and Epic team to think that a last minute switch wouldn't look like a dick move is either extreme greed or stupidity, probably a combination of both.

Pyros said:
That's a terrible fucking argument. That's the exact same argument as people defending shitty mmos because wow launched the same way forever and a half ago. "Well you can't expect to make a product that's as good as their direct current competition, but you have to remember that 15years ago, that competition was in the same state, so it's ok". Guess we just have to wait 15years and then we can compare Epic to current Steam.
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Also at Steam launch we didn't have a decade or so of user reviews, chatting, search functions of the store, a refund policy, and really just everything else that should be a standard now. At least the very least Epic should give us a timeline for these things to build trust.
 
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Utnayan

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Pyros said:
That's a terrible fucking argument.
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I am not defending anything. Epic Store is a disrupter to the market, and as such, any disrupter to a previously established channel segment NEVER has feature parity with the embedded market. Hence the post. Epic reacted quickly to PR and saw an oppoprtunity to take advantage of it.

It took Valve a HELL of a long time to develop feature sets and some of those were forced due to legal. As the epic store evolves you will see closer feature parity. For now? Their main agenda is to get people using the Epic store and it's solely a distribution platform that cuts distribution percentages by over 50% across the board. Time will tell if those percentages increase based on any value added features - some will be forced due to the business model / legal globally just as Valve's hand was forced. Is Metro Exodus an example of being able to drop prices due to percentages taken from the distributor? HIGHLY Unlikely. Publishers will keep the profit. We aren't dumb. I could be wrong, but I highly doubt this percentage will be passed on to consumers in the long haul.

Delly Delly I agree and that remains to be seen. They may spend the money to segment refunds per region and global changes and allocate the cash to do so. It's way too early to lambast these guys based on what they are attempting to do to enter the distribution market. For now, I find it shady as fuck that only after Epic lambasted Valve's charges in a market that has shifted costs to much lower than what they were, Valve only responded then when they could have responded to that years ago. If they had done that rather than their shit called out so they made ONE concession on less % (Not sure how much they discount that take over $10 million) for revenue topping $10 million on a product, THEN I would agree they are ethical.

Again, I do not blame Valve for riding that status for revenue generation as long as they could. Everyone does until competition moves in and starts calling out their shit.

In the meantime, Epic is now here like it or not, and they have deep pockets - so Valve better come back with something to maintain their value aside from Millions of users with a library of games. Steam won't be going anywhere. However, Valve's revenue could take a massive hit if they don't adjust to the new competition.
 
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Fight said:
Everyone crying about the exclusivity part of this... You realize that you do not have to go out and buy a different $300 console to play the game right? It is a different icon on your desktop, that you downloaded for free. And every time you double click that icon, as agonizing as it might be for you, realize you put more dollars into the pockets of the people that actually made the game.
Click to expand...

Its been pointed out multiple times what the problems are: terms of service, returns, reviews, friends list, etc. etc.
 
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Delly

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Dauntless has been planning to join them for awhile now. The subreddit is exploding with negative posts about it, even though its been known for like a month.

Other than the general hate for the Epic store, Dauntless can only hope to gain from such a move. Though I wish they would have went with Steam.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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Dauntless is an Unreal game (even lower cut if I understand the revenue share correctly), they'd have to compete against MHW on Steam, and they have a somewhat similar aesthetic to Fortnite so they might get some of that crowd that way. Pretty obvious move for them I think.

And yeah, it's nothing like the Exodus situation. It was a single platform game before and it will be after the move. It's not artificial exclusivity.
 
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