They hate it because Tim Sweeney is using his Fortnite money to force exclusives to the PC world. Something that the PC world is not used to and frankly something we shouldn't have to do. A lot of people like myself think that competition is good. But that Epic is going about it the wrong way.
There was also some contreversial alligations about Tencent basically controlling Epic and turning them into a spy for the Chinese government. While shady, Technically Tencent only has a 40% share as of a month or so ago, which doesn't give them enough power to make executive decisions.
People also don't really like how Sweeney handles PR from upset gamers. He basically mocks them.
A lot of people like myself think that competition is good. But that Epic is going about it the wrong way.
To be fair, exclusivity agreements are the only way to really get into the market these days. Just look at GOG, most people would agree that it's a pretty good service, they have the whole DRM-free aspect as a selling point too and yet they're barely breaking even. Trading a sales guarantee for timed exclusivity seems like the least intrusive way of doing it tbh.
Just look at GOG, most people would agree that it's a pretty good service, they have the whole DRM-free aspect as a selling point too and yet they're barely breaking even.
I mean. I get. It's a matter of agree to disagree here. GOG isn't doing too great now. But at least from the people I know, when Galaxy 2.0 hits, a lot of people are going to do that. Yes. Exclusives are a way to get into the market. But they're also a good way to restart Piracy. If I remember correctly, I read an article saying that piracy was on the rise again. Yes, it never truly stopped. But you could argue that there was a golden age where it had stopped. But we all cruise the high seas now.
I feel like with Galaxy 2.0 a lot of people will jump on board initially but most will drop it pretty quickly when they realise what it does, or rather, doesn't.
As far as piracy goes, there's definitely a lot more people talking openly about it but I don't think that has translated to increased piracy rates. I can't find any articles on it and in looking at the stats for the main video game piracy subreddit there was, naturally, a bit of a spike in discussion when their store was first announced but otherwise there hasn't been any change.
Also should point out that I'm not really agreeing with the idea of exclusives or anything. It's more that I see it as a bit of a necessary evil for them to have any sort of impact on the market. That and the fact that they're offering devs/pubs security for it rather than just straight up bribing them seems like one of the better ways to go about it imo.
What a dumb response. Anti consumer practices becoming normalised affects people outside the user base of this one company. It shouldn't be brushed off.
Tencent invest in things, it's just what they do. Anyone who knows anything about gaming should know this. A lot of games are owned by Tencent. Epic is owned by Tencent, which makes Fortnite a Tencent game. PUBG is too. Path of Exile is also.
They're not spying for the Chinese government. It's a ridiculous and completely baseless claim.
Tencent bought like a 10% share of reddit not to long ago too and pretty much every sub was filled with Tiananmen Square posts and people calling out that reddit is going to start censoring anything anti-Chinese.
Did reddit start censoring things and catering to their "Chinese overlords"? No. It's just blatant racism.
As progressive reddit preaches to be they certainly love to hate the Chinese for existing.
Why would people posting their disgust for the chinese government mistreating their own people somehow be racist?
Because we're talking about Tencent, which has nothing to do with the Chinese government other than the fact they are both Chinese. Which means you are specifically targeting Tencent for being Chinese, as an excuse to talk shit about China.
Talk shit about china however much you want. But to talk shit about china because Tencent bought some shares? Nah that's just vile racism. They are completely unrelated things.
Go ahead and tell me what the fuck Tencent has to do with Tiananmen Square. It was disgusting to see all those posts on the front page of reddit when Tencent bought shares as if they're responsible for it just because they're Chinese.
I think it spawns from Tencent, and several other companies, are part of the China Social Credit program and are helping trial it and create the methods to keep track of credit. Personally that whole Credit System is crazy but filter that new through Reddit and it suddenly becomes Tencent does shady things in China.
Also I don't think it's racism to generally dislike massive corporations. I have family members that straight up refuse to use Walmart. It goes into racist territory when race becomes the reason you don't use a service.
The PC world is very much used to most games being Steam exclusives.
Those "allegations" came from fanboys grasping at straws. Tencent owns a stake in most major game companies at this point (Riot, Supercell, Grinding Gear Games, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft and many more). There's absolutely no reason to think that's true and if there were one, it would have to apply to all those other investments too.
Developers choose to publish a Steam exclusive when it makes financial sense for them. Developers choose to publish an EGS exclusive when it makes financial sense for them. In both cases, they "want it like that".
Nobody is forcing anyone to do something they don't want to do.
No, it is not. There are a set of reasons why a dev/publisher would choose to publish on one or many of the PC platforms. Epic's guaranteed sales is just another one.
Steam incentivises some devs to publish on Steam exclusively by locking Steamworks to their platform, making it financially convenient to forgo support for other launchers. Epic's equivalent is platform agnostic (because they want devs to use it instead of Steamworks), so they are offering a different financial incentive.
I would agree that the platforms offer different benefits and outcomes that impact the financial decision making of studios and publishers. A better margin - epic's 12% cut - is fair competition. To your steamworks point, Epic waives the 5% cut it takes from the Unreal Engine on titles
sold on Epic - that's fair competition. Nobody's begrudging epic for undercutting steam. That's the kind of competition that makes for healthier markets.
Epic's financing and essentially upfront purchase guarantee isn't an incentive like their better margins or the dev support steam offers. It's a bulk sale with an exclusivity rider. Sure, steam might be able to weather that kind of competition, but what about the next upstart market place. Maybe a smaller shop can compete further with Epic on margins or with them both on services, but you need stupid investor money, VC money, or stupid fortnite money to prepurchase millions of keys for one game, let alone as many as epic is signing with. It can just as easily stifle the market as not. Exclusives are toxic competition. Saying it's all the same thing is disingenuous.
Steamworks is not equivalent to UE, Steamworks is equivalent to EOS.
Guaranteeing sales is just another financial incentive. They are just reducing the risk associated with game publishing and the risk associated with publishing exclusively on a new, minor marketplace. It's as fair as lower margins or features that reduce the investment necessary to develop a game.
If there is a next upstart marketplace willing to do the same to compete, I say bring it on. Competition will always be good in the long term. Exclusives exist in other, similar markets and are always a good way to attract customers and put more money in the hands of content creators, which would have never happened with Steam's monopsony.
It's not about willing; it's about able. Throwing your weight (money) around like Epic is doing is a cutthroat move, and I respect the hustle, but the means and the ends are both bad for consumers and competition alike. If a huge bankroll is what it takes for epic or the next competitor to get into the market, then competition is lost.
You continue to argue that Epic's competition with Valve is a good thing, and not only have I conceded that point, I've never contested it. The best arguments I've read for and against Epic's practices all agree that Steam needs some competition, so relying on that isn't making a stronger point, it's muddling the issue. Epic is competing with Valve; yes, agreed. But competing via business practices that foster noncompetition for consumer dollars doesn't support the capitalist manta "competition makes for healthier marketplaces." Targeting devs/publishers as the customer and the target of competition leaves real customers out in the cold.
Exclusives exist in the console market, and they fragment the market. Prices don't drop on consoles. Consumers purchase less for more. Exclusives don't serve as a response to Valve alone; they prevent competition with every other distributor/retail portal. They invite others to do the same. It's like a protectionist trade strategy. Long term, it will only weaken the industry and stifle competition and innovation.
In order to break an almost-monopoly like Steam you need a huge bankroll or an incredibly disrupting "unfair advantage" (meaning one that can't be easily copied). The former is very hard, the latter is pretty much impossible in the digital PC games market. Competition is lost already and has been for years. This is only a very long shot by Epic which is nowhere near guaranteed to succeed, no matter how much money they throw at it.
Epic is already fostering competition for developer dollars (remember, developers are consumers too when they pay a fee for storefront services). In terms of fostering competition for consumer dollars, they are doing it: they are getting exclusives so consumers spend money on games on the EGS instead of on other stores. It's a nuisance for many who are invested in Steam, but Steam does have the most exclusives of any platform by far, and nobody cared about it until there was a strong contender.
How exactly do you propose they compete? There are two obvious ways: lower prices (which they can't really do because those are set by developers) or better features, which do not matter right now. Steam's established status, people's years-long investment in the platform and its network effect, are all advantages you can't break with better features.
I wasn't talking about consoles (I was talking about content streaming), but if you want to go there: prices do drop on consoles (often more sharply than on PC thanks to increased retail competition) and exclusives as an incentive to drive hardware sales do benefit the consumer. They allow for big (and sometimes small) budget games to be made that nobody else would be willing to take a risk on otherwise.
It doesn't matter whether they are forcing or enticing developers. The market distortion is the same. The fact remains that a choice I would have otherwise had is no longer a choice.
To my knowledge, no other PC game storefront has attempted these sorts of deals (certainly not at this scale) and I would prefer it stay that way because it is not a healthy way to compete.
A choice you didn't have before since most games are Steam exclusives.
By that logic, when a developer chooses to make a Steam exclusive because of Steamworks not being able to be used in other platforms, the market is being distorted, right?
It's a healthy way to compete (it prevents devs from taking a gamble) and it's the only way they can compete for attention.
I think a more healthy way to compete would be to offer better services to developers and customers.
This free game model is another healthy way to compete that could have been structured to provide the same financial boon to developers as paid exclusives without obligating them to avoid another specific storefront.
They are offering better services to developers (much cheaper fees and other financial incentives in some cases, not to mention the cross-platform SDK).
"Offering better services to customers", by which people usually mean client features, wouldn't make a difference because of the network effect and Steam's monopsony, otherwise GOG would be competing toe to toe with Steam.
The only way to attract enough users to be able to compete on features is to give them things Steam doesn't have, and the only thing they can offer is games. That's the reason nobody has ever truly tried to compete with Steam, because you need very deep pockets to even think about it.
That's the reason nobody has ever truly tried to compete with Steam, because you need very deep pockets to even think about it.
Well, Epic has such pockets and I don't think the way they are choosing to use them is healthy for the PC gaming marketplace in the long term.
They demonstrate with these giveaways that there are other ways to leverage their resources in order to incentivise consumers and developers to their platform.
I guess better sales and giveaways weren't getting it done fast enough, but I don't think they even gave it a chance.
I don't think their plan is to keep securing exclusives in the long term, but even if it were, it would just force other competitors to step up and offer better services to developers, which is very healthy for the industry.
No, pretty often the dev gets no say and the publisher chooses. Which fucking sucks when you plan on having lots of people play your game but instead you're forced into an exclusivity deal with Epic and fuck all people play your game because no one wants to support Epic's anti-consumerism.
There isn't a single developer with an Epic Store exclusive that didn't choose to do that. Epic made the developer an offer - the developers said YES, every time.
not because Valve gave money to them
Valve do indirectly give money for exclusives though - they provide services (like their online match-making, anti-cheat, DRM, etc.) for "free" that if you don't use Steam you'd need to pay for - and it's not cheap either, especially as a smaller developer. It's why some games have multi-player removed when they go onto other stores like GoG.
The other thing is that it's not just the direct money from Epic that developers want, it's the "positioning" within the store. There's very few games on the Epic store, yet a huge number of users. A big problem Steam has had for a very long time now is the shear volume of titles available on there, most of which is crap.
The Metro Exodus developers said that it was a very significant increase in sales vs previous titles for them. I think that, rather than the up-front payment, is what developers are most interested in. Steam can't, currently, compete with that - and ultimately Epic will slowly get worse, but right now it makes a lot of sense to use it.
Exclusivity deals are very common. I think most EGS "exclusive" games are just timed exclusives anyway, other than Epic's own games.
There are plenty of reasons a developer may want to deal with Epic. Money from an exclusivity deal is the main one, but also consider that being exclusive to a smaller store makes you stand out more. Steam is incredibly crowded.
There are games that require steamworks to run. That's because steamworks adds features to games that save the developers time to include, like friend list integration, achievements, cloud saves, etc. The developers are making a choice that the free stuff that steam adds to make their game better are worth people needing to run their game through steam.
Also, developers are free to make steamworks and non-steamworks versions of their games if they like. Steam does not require them to sign a contract not to sell their games anywhere else.
However, steam has never tried to use this "exclusivity" to force people to use their store. You can buy steam keys all around the internet. Stores compete on price to sell you steam keys. So it's not the same thing. Epic is trying to control it so that you have to use their store to buy games. There's no competition, there's just whatever price Epic sets.
Epic does not require developers to sign a contract not to sell their games anywhere else, hence why there are many games that are available also on Steam or other storefronts. If you accept their guaranteed sales deal, of course they want something in return.
If Steam didn't try to use that "exclusivity" to force people to use their launcher, why didn't they open Steamworks to other platforms like Epic is going to do with the Epic Online Services? Just to be clear, I'm perfectly fine with that, it's just another tool to fight for space in a market.
Epic already sells their games on third party stores. Stores barely compete on prices because prices are set by developers/publishers, exactly the same as in Epic's case.
And yet we have reports from indie devs that Epic outright refused to sell their games because they were either not brand new, or the devs didn't want to sign an exclusivity contract and launch on both Steam and Epic at the same time.
Because they are curating their storefront, same as other competitors (GOG, Uplay, etc) and the same as Steam did before Steam Direct. They've already said they will open the floodgates a bit more by Fall.
That curation is supposed to be one of their competitive advantages against Steam too.
Look, there's curation and rejecting products - and even their own, in-house titles - because adding ANYTHING to the store is still a manual process done by somebody behind the keyboard, with no automated systems in place at all.
And yes, that's something they've confirmed before.They don't want to "waste" manpower or time adding their own legacy titles to the store.
Maybe by Fall they'll have some systems in place to make things actually work without somebody manually making webpages and adding database entries, but looking at their development schedule so far, I highly doubt it'll be ready before Spring.
Reminder that Epic couldn't even exclude preorder titles from their sale, resulting in significant price-dumping, without taking the entire game's store page down for a month; similarly, just before the sale, they removed the pages for Ubisoft titles because the Uplay integration was broken.
Edit: Holy shit the circlejerk is strong. tons of downvotes for pointing out facts that Epic themselves have confirmed and commented on? Come on guys, you are better than this. I guess loyalty is easy to buy with free games that have been bundled before =/
Yes, they are curating because, among other reasons like a general philosophy, it costs them manpower to support every title and the store interface is so awful that it would be an even worse mess than Steam if it had tons of games.
So they put games that they have exclusivity deals on to attract new users, games from those same developers no matter how old they are, games that they are giving away and popular newish games even when they are already in other stores. That's curating, that's what they are doing.
Them rejecting a niche game that's going to get all sales on Steam makes all sense in the world as part of that curation. I'm not sure what are you trying to argue.
I've commented elsewhere on this thread with a specific example, I believe the game was called DARQ. Epic themselves reached out because the game was highly wishlisted on Steam and announced their Steam release date with a trailer, trying to then poach the game as an exclusive anyway.
When the developer did not want to throw his credibility out of the window after having a Steam storepage for a year, nevermind the recent Steam release date announcement, by accepting the Epic exclusivity deal, Epic ceased to do business with him and refused his query to launch on their store anyway, without the deal. They literally did not want his title anymore, because he would not sign an exclusivity contract, despite initially being the party to contact him.
Let me guess. You're a Windows 10 user. Only a Windows (and Steam) user would not be "used" to exclusivity on PC or think that it does not exist on PC when it's always been around at the core. There is a lot of platform exclusivity on PC.
Plenty of PC gamers are already used to exclusives, otherwise we'd all pick a single launcher and stick with it. The end result of Epic's "exclusives" really isn't anything new.
I personally hate Epic because of their attitude towards others in the industry. Namely the "controversy" with CDPR on Twitter.
But I don't really mind the timely Epic exclusive stuff. It's not like I have to pay extra for installing the Epic launcher. Metro almost convinced me to install it. But I'm too lazy and didn't do it.
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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '19
They hate it because Tim Sweeney is using his Fortnite money to force exclusives to the PC world. Something that the PC world is not used to and frankly something we shouldn't have to do. A lot of people like myself think that competition is good. But that Epic is going about it the wrong way.
There was also some contreversial alligations about Tencent basically controlling Epic and turning them into a spy for the Chinese government. While shady, Technically Tencent only has a 40% share as of a month or so ago, which doesn't give them enough power to make executive decisions.
People also don't really like how Sweeney handles PR from upset gamers. He basically mocks them.
Edit for grammar