Epic Games Storefront - A Good Incentive for Piracy

  • Guest, it's time once again for the hotly contested and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and fill out your bracket!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Once again, only you can decide!

Wintermute

<Charitable Administrator>
2,361
655
Announcing the Epic Games Store

For the past five years, we've been building tools enabling Epic to bring our games directly to players. We built the Epic Games launcher on PC and Mac featuring Fortnite and Unreal Engine; we built a worldwide digital commerce ecosystem supporting dozens of payment methods; and we gained great economies of scale thanks to Fortnite's growth.

As developers ourselves, we wanted two things: a store with fair economics, and a direct relationship with players. And we've heard that many of you want this too!

Soon we'll launch the Epic Games store, and begin a long journey to advance the cause of all developers. The store will launch with a hand-curated set of games on PC and Mac, then it will open up more broadly to other games and to Android and other open platforms throughout 2019.


All Engines Are Welcome
The Epic Games store is open to games built with any engine, and the first releases span Unreal, Unity and internal engines.

UnrealEngine_News_Announcing+the+Epic+Games+Store_EpicGamesStore_InfoGraphic-1920x1080-df66848...jpg



Taking Fortnite's success and turning it into a way to get into the game sales market with attractive revenue share is the way to do it.

More competition is always good IMO.
 
  • 10Like
Reactions: 9 users

Punko

Macho Ma'am
<Gold Donor>
7,912
12,564
I'd rather pay 10% more on steam then get it elsewhere which is less convenient.

In fact I think everyone that buys games on steam is already doing that.
 
  • 6Like
Reactions: 5 users

a_skeleton_05

<Banned>
13,843
34,508
I'd rather pay 10% more on steam then get it elsewhere which is less convenient.

In fact I think everyone that buys games on steam is already doing that.

This is pretty much the mentality that we've all had for quite some time for obvious reasons. It's not however the mentality of the youngin's playing Fortnite. This won't destroy Steam by any means, but it's another player in an increasingly competitive field that will take a chunk out of a stagnanting Steam run by lazy uncoordinated developers.
 
  • 5Like
Reactions: 4 users

Vandyn

Blackwing Lair Raider
3,641
1,373
Competition is always good. The issue is for a vast majority of PC gamers, we are so invested in the Steam ecosystem (game libraries, workshop, etc.) that it's almost impossible to fully get into another platform. I have a decent amount of games on Origin that I've gotten for free at one time or another but I couldn't tell you the last time I fired up that client. Now that being said, most consumers are going to go where the sales are best. I'm just not enthusiastic about firing up yet another client (Steam, Battle.net, Origin, etc.).
 
  • 5Solidarity
  • 4Like
Reactions: 8 users

fanaskin

Well known agitator
<Silver Donator>
55,845
137,945
If someone invented some kind of simple program that let you browse every game library system at once this would be more tolerable.

Discord kinda does that but only for launching games. a hub that would plug into steam, origin, gog and epic and browse buying games all at once would be kinda hot, make the game platforms compete against eachother more spotting more discounts with ease.
 
Last edited:
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

a_skeleton_05

<Banned>
13,843
34,508
If someone invented some kind of simple program that let you browse every game library system at once this would be more tolerable.

Discord kinda does that but only for launching games. a hub that would plug into steam, origin, epic and browse buying games all at once would be kinda hot, make the game platforms compete against eachother more spotting more discounts with ease.

Would have happened by now if it was possible. It's not possible exactly for the competition aspect: They don't want to play in the same sandbox as the other guys.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Soygen

The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
<Nazi Janitors>
28,311
43,092
Would have happened by now if it was possible. It's not possible exactly for the competition aspect: They don't want to play in the same sandbox as the other guys.
With more competition, though, it might open up the possibility of an open API allowing for front-end software that facilitates consolidating your libraries. Steam definitely has no reason, thus far, to even entertain the idea.
 
  • 4Like
Reactions: 3 users

Ravishing

Uninspiring Title
<Bronze Donator>
8,452
3,577
I think it's pretty big they say they'll support Android eventually too.. Another F-U to google after the whole FortNite app bypassing the Play Store and Google publishing a vulnerability before giving Epic a chance to fix it.

I like the move. I am not a game enthusiast in the sense I buy 10's or 100s of games. I target a few games at a time and dedicate lots of time to just those games. So that said, I already don't use Steam. The last games I played on Steam were TF2 and No Man's Sky.

I see the appeal of Steam but I'm definitely NOT attached to it at all. I think a lot of the younger gen will use Epic over Steam for sure.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

...

Goonsquad Officer
5,600
13,420
ahh yea that is true. I do think competition to steam is a good thing. them getting other games on their platform is a good idea.

I just get annoyed when they pull games off of steam to sell them in their company app. I end up basically buying less of their games is the net result.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Punko

Macho Ma'am
<Gold Donor>
7,912
12,564
This is pretty much the mentality that we've all had for quite some time for obvious reasons. It's not however the mentality of the youngin's playing Fortnite. This won't destroy Steam by any means, but it's another player in an increasingly competitive field that will take a chunk out of a stagnanting Steam run by lazy uncoordinated developers.

The young folks playing fortnite don't have a budget worth mentioning.

Its the next bubble.

I guess its too complex to explain like that, but teens have the attention span of a gnat and little expendable income, so fortnite is going to die before star citizen stops generating income.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,016
2,230
The thing is Steam is much more than just a storefront for developpers, it comes with a lot of tools to monitor and analyze your selling data, it comes with a bunch of things to support your game like online matchmaking or modding and obviously it being Steam, it comes with more reach than other stores to sell your game to people who might not have heard of your game otherwise. And then for the user, Steam does a lot of cool stuff that no other store does, or does poorly, like refunds, family sharing, offline mode, gamepad support and so on.

But now all these cucks making pixel art shovelware indie games that kept whining about how "Steam's not worth the 30%" can go fuck themselves off to the Epic Store and see how it works out on another store.

And it might lead to good things eventually.
 
  • 10Like
Reactions: 9 users

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
<Silver Donator>
6,351
4,634
Time for Movies Anywhere but for games. Let me buy them at participating storefronts and play through any of them.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

...

Goonsquad Officer
5,600
13,420
this is only partially related but...all these companies that payment processors keep deplatforming. why don't they just sell something on steam? an animated gif of a frog jumping?
 

Sentagur

Low and to the left
<Silver Donator>
3,825
7,937
Didnt steam have an option to add non steam game to their launcher?
I have not used that option i a while but i remember adding some physical box games i purchased into the steam launcher few years back.

A third party option that just lets you enter your credentials for all the different services like GOG, Steam and Origin and such and then displays them in the consolidated way would be pretty awesome.
In regards to mobile games, whats the pont when you are using the mobile software installer anyway also mobile games are "teh Debil".
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Vandyn

Blackwing Lair Raider
3,641
1,373
The thing is Steam is much more than just a storefront for developpers, it comes with a lot of tools to monitor and analyze your selling data, it comes with a bunch of things to support your game like online matchmaking or modding and obviously it being Steam, it comes with more reach than other stores to sell your game to people who might not have heard of your game otherwise. And then for the user, Steam does a lot of cool stuff that no other store does, or does poorly, like refunds, family sharing, offline mode, gamepad support and so on.

But now all these cucks making pixel art shovelware indie games that kept whining about how "Steam's not worth the 30%" can go fuck themselves off to the Epic Store and see how it works out on another store.

And it might lead to good things eventually.

It might eventually but it'll take awhile. Steam has upwards of around 100 million users and they are not going to magically disappear from the platform if some small time dev decides to jump ship. You have to wonder how much business sense that makes, to shut out basically 90% of the market by going exclusive on another platform. For big companies (like Blizzard/EA) they can get away with it because they have the capital and license fees to sustain their own titles on their only platforms but what about the little guys? That's a lot of money being left on the table for an extra 10-15%.

It may work out in the long run (where you can make comparable sales on say Epic). If they put in on both (Epic and Steam) then what makes the Steam user buy it somewhere else?
 

Fucker

Log Wizard
11,406
25,660
Whoever has the best sales wins. I don't care where I get what, because I already have all the clients installed.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user