EvaUnit02 on 22/10/2022 at 18:37
Overall I'm indifferent to it these days. I login to get the weekly free games and that's it. The one time I tried to buy a game off it, Far Cry 6 at launch, the game wouldn't boot so I got a refund.
It relies on the weekly free games to get people to pay attention to it. It's proven to be a "marketing blackhole".
[video=youtube;uxufgFFC_wU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxufgFFC_wU[/video]
If you're going to launch a MP-focused game, Epic exclusivity can be a DOA kiss of death. I.e. you likely aren't going to get any significant playerbase (unless you have cross-play with consoles). On the other hand I can definitely see a MP game developer anticipating that they'll have a flop on their hands, so they'll take the Epic bribe to recoup some of their investment (I strongly suspect that Evil Dead game as an example of this).
Smart developers have learnt to take the timed exclusivity bribe money and use for a game's early access period. Eg Hades, Darkest Dungeon 2. Other games with rough launches benefited from "second winds" gained from later Steam releases, eg MechWarrior 5 and Phoenix Point.
Nameless Voice on 7/10/2023 at 23:58
I don't know about those specific titles, but Epic always said they were going to open up the store, right from the very beginning? A lot of people in the early days were clamouring for that because the initial selection of games on there was so limited.
Their initial announcement also said they expected people to find their games from outside the storefront itself (though they
did say they'd be curating it initially.)
Epic's "thing" was "we charge less money so developers get a bigger cut" - and their biggest failure is that they didn't push hard to bring some of that price reduction to customers to get them on board as well.
Curation is more GOG's thing.
From 2018, when the store first launched:
Quote Posted by "Tim Sweeney"
We'll have an approval process for new developers to go through to release a title. It will mostly focus on the technical side of things and general quality. Except for adult-only content, we don't plan to curate based on developers' creative or artistic expression.
Epic will manually curate the Epic Games storefront rather than relying on algorithms or paid ads. We believe the ultimate vector for players to discover new games will not be our storefront but creators. Viewership of creator channels has greatly outgrown any storefront.
We're in the planning stages on the mechanics of opening up more widely and will release those details at a later date.
((
https://www.eurogamer.net/fortnite-maker-epic-takes-on-steam-with-its-own-pc-games-store))
WingedKagouti on 8/10/2023 at 09:43
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
Epic's "thing" was "we charge less money so developers get a bigger cut" - and their biggest failure is that they didn't push hard to bring some of that price reduction to customers to get them on board as well.
They tried with their first sale and got heavy pushback from the publishers even when the extra cut came out of Epic's store fee.
demagogue on 8/10/2023 at 16:10
Things that turned me off of Epic early were: first, the account under my email had already been created and linked to Thailand the first time I tried to make it. Then it didn't have near the services Steam had like ratings and reviews; and my games were already fragmented over GOG, which at least includes other platforms in its queue.
Then the selection was low, but their use of exclusives to counteract that didn't do much for much for me because by that point I'd often get games two years or so after release anyway. I was happy to take their free games, but that didn't really help, for one because if it was a game I really wanted to play, I would have already bought it, and if it wasn't, then it wasn't. Then both of those last two problems are connected to the fact I have an insurmountable backlog, so I already feel about 2 years behind as it is.
Although some things improved, once you're off of it, it's hard to get on.
I guess I'm just repeating what probably everyone's thought about.
I have bought a lot of things on the Unreal Marketplace under that same account though, but that's because making scenes in the Unreal Engine suddenly got really fun with the coming of UE5, but you gotta have good assets.
heywood on 9/10/2023 at 12:24
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
They tried with their first sale and got heavy pushback from the publishers even when the extra cut came out of Epic's store fee.
Does Steam have some kind of anti-competitive clause in their agreement that prohibits publishers from selling elsewhere for a lower price?
Ultimately, it seems publishers decided it wasn't worth rocking the boat to get a bigger cut.
WingedKagouti on 9/10/2023 at 12:37
Quote Posted by heywood
Does Steam have some kind of anti-competitive clause in their agreement that prohibits publishers from selling elsewhere for a lower price?
Last I heard on that was, yes Steam has a clause that prohibits lower sale prices elsewhere. It was revealed either during one of the many lawsuits in the gaming space or by a developer/publisher when questioned on the subject after EGS was launched.
And yes, that is a highly questionable tactic when used by a de facto monopoly. But Steam apologists will either claim that Steam is no where near a monopoly because it only sits on around 80% of PC game sales or that developers should just succeed without Steam if they don't like the clause.
heywood on 9/10/2023 at 14:46
I guess that explains the initial focus on exclusives.
Nameless Voice on 9/10/2023 at 16:56
The clause is only supposed to be for selling Steam Keys for cheaper elsewhere. At least, that's what they say publicly.
The other thing would be highly illegal.
From what I understand, major publishers feel that selling the game for a lower price on Epic devalues the game, and so they'd prefer not to do it.
EvaUnit02 on 4/11/2023 at 12:58
Youtube algorithm pointed me to this video. EGS is apparently swamped with crypto pyramid scheme shovelware games.
[video=youtube;iJdCbSohWdI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJdCbSohWdI[/video]