News Epic Games Store
- Thread starter Blizniak
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I wouldnt mind if they revive "Epic Megagames" and start hiring developers to make new original content or reboots of their old franchises.
You did the wrong thing, I am afraid. You buying the game on EGS brought 0$ to the developers. Unless the developer goes above the sales guarantee (and probably 95% don't sell all guarantees in the exclusive window) he will not see one cent of sales from EGS. That's why you don't see any advertisements for the game on EGS when they can advertise on Steam, every sale on EGS is lost money.
If they could mend fences with CliffyB and give him some fortnite moneys to make a proper 3D Jazz Jackrabbit, id be willing to overlook a lot. If they resurrected UT and didnt fill it with mtx, steam who?
They dont seem interested in that at all though, so they continue to receive derision where appropriate.
If Epic is helping fund the games from the start then it’s safe to say that they will be at least timed if not full exclusives.
I doubt it's literal new games (because it would take years), but unannounced games.
This. Epic is probably just money hatting games before they are announced now. People thinking that Epic is done with buying exclusivity can't be more wrong; they've only just started.
Yes, I assume they will go the Netflix way: fund lots of content for their platform. Content that then stays only on their platform...I don't think they've given up on their dream of making the EGS bascially a virtual console ecosystem/their own little walled garden.
I have less of a problem with them funding games that stay exclusive to EGS than I do moneyhatting third parties to keep their games off of Steam for a year for no reason other than a bag of money appeared towards the end of development. One is building up a platform and creating content that people enjoy, the other is just a grubby business deal that only pisses people off. I've hated it when MS started doing it in the console space, and I hate it on PC storefronts too. Epic should invest in their store, not buy fleeting exclusives that much of their target audience have now decided to wait for.
The thing is, there's going to be a swirl of negativity around anything that's EGS exclusive now because of Epic's actions in the first year, even if those games are created, owned and/or published by Epic themselves. They really should've tried other ways of getting customers in than third party exclusives, even if it gave them fewer figures they could manipulate and gloat about.
But as I said earlier, Epic has taught me a valuable lesson: FOMO is bullshit. I've learned to love what I have rather than anticipate the next big thing. I've lost nothing by playing a game 6-12 months later if I really wanted it.
The thing is, there's going to be a swirl of negativity around anything that's EGS exclusive now because of Epic's actions in the first year, even if those games are created, owned and/or published by Epic themselves. They really should've tried other ways of getting customers in than third party exclusives, even if it gave them fewer figures they could manipulate and gloat about.
But as I said earlier, Epic has taught me a valuable lesson: FOMO is bullshit. I've learned to love what I have rather than anticipate the next big thing. I've lost nothing by playing a game 6-12 months later if I really wanted it.
I'd also have a lesser problem, true, but I still wouldnt like it. Especially if that would mean "lifelong" EGS exclusives. But its all speculation at this point, so no reason to worry just yet.
and yes, FOMO is absolute bullshit.
I have no issues with Epic's 1st party games or fully funded games being EGS exclusive.
But again, when Sweeney says "funding", he means "giving devs a sum of money to keep their games away from competing storefronts on pc". While this can be seen as funding, it's still money hatting as well.
pretty sure they're saving everything for GDC (or rather a video reel, now that GDC is canned)
I truly hope they don't do this. I wouldn't want to be in a situation where I'm forced to skip a JJ game due to it being Epic exclusive. I'm better off knowing the franchise is dead than I'd be boycotting it myself.If they could mend fences with CliffyB and give him some fortnite moneys to make a proper 3D Jazz Jackrabbit, id be willing to overlook a lot. If they resurrected UT and didnt fill it with mtx, steam who?
They dont seem interested in that at all though, so they continue to receive derision where appropriate.
While I don't think epic will ultimately be successful using their current methods, I also don't think there was ever a different winning strategy. If their goal is to compete with valve at the top of the PC market, they had a very narrow window of time in which to make a huge splash. Slow rolling it by investing in games at the true ground floor and hoping they pan out was never going to get them there.
Even their last video reel at the awards contained already announced stuff. It'll just be niche AA stuff and repeats if anything, anything multi platform and bigger will wait for a bigger venue and Epic exclusivity will only be a sidenote. Epic no matter how important they think they are are not going to lead announcements with new consoles coming.
I find this very hard to believe. Sweeney has made it VERY clear that exclusives are his long term strategy to build a userbase for EGS. This also shows in Epic prioritizing the development of benefits for devs over features for us as consumers.
Because of this, I expect MORE money hatting of highly anticipated (A)AA games than last year, plus additional exclusive partnerships with big publishers. To minimize community backlash, Epic will announce this themselves at major gaming events.
I also expect Epic to continue the money hatting for many years. Stopping now would make all their previous efforts useless.
Let's hope they have nothing AAA in store. Let's hope it's all just low key indies we can easily ignore.
I fear that Ge0force will be right, too. Sweeney is not one to give up easily, and in his opinion, exclusives work.
At least Death Stranding is not exclusive to EGS. I was ready to bet serious money on it being the case, because you know 505 Games and Control.
If Epic put 11 million on the table for Control just imagine the cheque they could write for Death Stranding or Horizon Zero Dawn....Easily triple that.
If Epic put 11 million on the table for Control just imagine the cheque they could write for Death Stranding or Horizon Zero Dawn....Easily triple that.
Personally I hope it's the other way around. They can take all the AAA trash they want but leave my indies alone!
AAA games move the needle when it comes to platform adoption. If Epic secures enough AAA deals that will give their store some momentum that indies (no offense) won't.
Hence my comment.
That's the thing. They did 11 million in sales guarantees for control. Even triple that for hzd or ds would be a meaningless gesture. 11mm is like 200k sales, the games would easily fly past that number.
Epic would have to pay real, non-refundable, hard currency to get games like that as exclusives. Not advances, loans, guarantees, etc.
I doubt that would stop them. I suppose Kojipro really wanted Death Stranding on Steam.
I'm not sure Sony would be willing to release on Steam if Epic offered a huge sum.
Because exclusives actually work. At least when Epic keeps buying exclusives for many years. It will lead to an entire new generation of gamers using EGS as their preferred storefront, because that's where the newest and most hyped games are.
Epic knows that they can't convince people like us to prefer EGS over Steam. They don't care. They are playing the long game here.
They don't, not on PC, and not in this late-stage moneyhat scheme. If they did, I think Epic's revenue would be a tad higher.
I think y'all are too pessimistic.
Ultimately this 1 year of epic throwing money around has meant fuck all. The facts are that small games on the egs are sent to die, only the heavy hitters move some amount of copies, but still not anything that causes pubs to shout "this was a success" from the rooftops, exclusivity periods for big games have gotten smaller and smaller and all games launch on Steam the second the exclusivity period runs out and continue to advertise the Steam version going forward, some even changing 3rd party keys to Steam instead.
None of this smells like "Epic is doing great and exclusives have been a success´" and you need 2 to sign an exclusivity deal.
And even than, as C-Dub explained so well, it's all FOMO bullshit. A year is nothing, for every epic exclusive there are a few dozen awesome games launching on Steam and a few hundred awesome games on Steam you haven't played yet.
And we PC gamers especially should be used to waiting, especially if you're a fan of (japanese) console style games. We've had to wait and didn't even know if it got a port at all and it's not been too long sicne things got much better on that front (and it still not perfect). egs timed exclusives are easy mode compared to that.
Just treat the egs like you would a console you don't own and shrug until it's available on a platform of your choice.
Ultimately this 1 year of epic throwing money around has meant fuck all. The facts are that small games on the egs are sent to die, only the heavy hitters move some amount of copies, but still not anything that causes pubs to shout "this was a success" from the rooftops, exclusivity periods for big games have gotten smaller and smaller and all games launch on Steam the second the exclusivity period runs out and continue to advertise the Steam version going forward, some even changing 3rd party keys to Steam instead.
None of this smells like "Epic is doing great and exclusives have been a success´" and you need 2 to sign an exclusivity deal.
And even than, as C-Dub explained so well, it's all FOMO bullshit. A year is nothing, for every epic exclusive there are a few dozen awesome games launching on Steam and a few hundred awesome games on Steam you haven't played yet.
And we PC gamers especially should be used to waiting, especially if you're a fan of (japanese) console style games. We've had to wait and didn't even know if it got a port at all and it's not been too long sicne things got much better on that front (and it still not perfect). egs timed exclusives are easy mode compared to that.
Just treat the egs like you would a console you don't own and shrug until it's available on a platform of your choice.
You've missed the part where I wrote "many years".
For new pc gamers who don't have a huge library on Steam, EGS is probably already their platform of choice because they own most of their games there. After only a single year, we aren't talking about many people, at least not compared to Steam's user base.
But if Epic can keep this up for another 5 years, we're talking about millions of people who own the majority of their games on EGS. This, combined with Epic's lower cut, royalty-free DLC and Unreal Engine, MAY be enough for devs and publishers to prefer EGS over Steam. Which is Epic's ultimate goal. Sweeney litterally said so.
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I think this is the right take, at least as of today. Even after all the obfuscation, PR, and outright lying, the numbers just don't add up. Especially now that we're seeing what actually happens after an exclusivity period ends.
Many devs have also claimed that due to exclusivity payouts, they can spend more time improving their existing games and work on new stuff. I'm guessing that in the long term, this will prove to be total bullshit. It's so easy to burn through money when working on a project, and ongoing good sales is realistically the best way to fund development. Maybe some devs will do amazing things, but most will probably end up releasing the same kind of stuff they would have done if they'd released on Steam in the first place.
It's all speculation, though, for all of us who aren't insiders or directly involved.
I do. Most of us do. But people on this forum are much better informed than the absolute majority of pc gamers. Epic is sponsoring streamers, influencers and popular game sites in order to convince people that the hot games are on EGS. This DOES have a huge impact on mainstream gamers. I only know 2 people irl who bought games on EGS. Both of them did so after watching their favorite streamer play it.
yeah, I know, a 1 year wait isnt really long, so Epic will probably aim for longer periods or even lifelong exclusives (one such example already exists, btw: . Hence my Netflix comparison. Those films and series that Netflix funded, they will stay there and only there, forever (although Netflix sells some stuff outside of their service too, but your main way to watch the content will be Netflix).
Randy from Gearbox claimed he envisions Steam in 5 years as "a dying platform", and I'm sure Sweeney would love that and will do much in his power to achieve that. They had some setbacks, and they are quiet right now, but I'm certain they have something nasty in the works.
Randy from Gearbox claimed he envisions Steam in 5 years as "a dying platform", and I'm sure Sweeney would love that and will do much in his power to achieve that. They had some setbacks, and they are quiet right now, but I'm certain they have something nasty in the works.
Randy's been sour on Valve since OpForce, he's going to sing praises for anything that isn't steam pretty readily and publicly shit on Valve and Steam where he can. He's not an arbiter of quality by any stretch. Even with permanently exclusive games, it doesn't mean EGS will be embraced any further than it already is. People have to want games to buy them, if EGS continues on its current path, it'll be seen as a death sentence for any game not revealed to the public already.
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I was so bummed out when I saw an Epic sales video from KatherineOfSky, a female Youtuber who specializes in strategy, 4X, and city-builders. She had also closed comments to the video, so she knew what her viewers would talk about.
Playing the games for youtube or streaming them (with or without an affiliate link), I can understand, but partnering with Epic, making a sale and then closing the comments? Dunno, if I will continue watching her.
Don't think you quite got what I was saying, I never said they were giving up. Without a doubt some games will still be taken from Steam, but people round here are acting like the sky is falling just because Epic claim to have a "big announcement" coming up. When was the last time they announced anything of real note, a few crap games from Big Ben, one that has completely disappeared? Versus Evil selling their portfolio for probably peanuts? A devolver game from a dev that no one will miss? The weirdly unpromoted half-arsed followup to Mutant Year Zero? At the Game awards they announced 3 games taken from steam, one a blatant Dead Cells copy, two EA games and they re-announced that vapourware Shark game for like the 3rd time.
Epic and PC don't get to control the narrative of big games, consoles do.
Judging on their twitter alone, their userbase is Fortnite players, trolls and people that only want free games anyway.
Sounds nice, but I do not think Twitter is a valid metric to help with any kind of EGS performance or acceptability ratings. The vast majority of people do not actively take part in this discussion.
Depends on how you define "real note". Because if I follow your argument that only consoles control the narrative of "big games" than nothing real big has been announced in the first place.
Epic is not necessarily aiming at the biggest AAA games. They are a bit more clever and aim at games with potential (like successful KS) and franchises with long term, passionate fan-bases that were sometimes starving for a new iteration. It's diabolic, because Epic didn't help to develop or bring stuff back to life. All they did was look for nearly done projects with enough starved out, excited fans and then hand out bribes. Thanks for nothing Epic.
And that's why some of us are careful. A "big announcement" could very well be something that will "hurt" a lot of people, for many reasons. It won't be a big thing according to your criteria though. It's all a matter of perspective.
I think we can all agree that Epic won't make the sky falling, at least not as long as devs and publisher see Steam as the platform where the biggest userbase is on pc. My only point was that Epic isn't done with money hatting big games. I expect some big announcements on popular events like E3. Despite several big publishers speaking out against exclusivity deals, Epic does have the loyalty of several other big publishers like 2K, Embracer Group, Take 2, 505, Ubisoft and Sony.
This is absolutely false. Epic's (potential) user base exists of millions of casual and mainstream gamers, who don't give a f*ck about money hatting or the open nature of pc gaming. Even a significant part of the hardcore pc gamers doesn't mind buying games from EGS. People like us ARE the exception. But it's also a fact that people like us buy the most games, especially in niche genres.
I seriously don't understand why, after these first 18 months of Epic's moneyhatting bullshit, it still scares some of you so much. During their first year they went all out, both in money-hatting and media presence. What did they achieve? The biggest games from most publishers are coming to Steam, the rest are unavailable to Epic. 99% of AA and indie games are coming to Steam. How will Epic manage to create a generation of people with more of their library on EGS than on Steam when the games that launch on EGS are a tiny, tiny minority of each year's important releases?
Epic tried to starve Steam of big releases and failed. They tried to force people to buy only from them and failed. Whatever bullshit they want to try next, they'll fail again. I've said many times that I have complete faith in the PC gaming community and it has never let me down.
Epic tried to starve Steam of big releases and failed. They tried to force people to buy only from them and failed. Whatever bullshit they want to try next, they'll fail again. I've said many times that I have complete faith in the PC gaming community and it has never let me down.
I hope you are right.
But I would not say I'm scared. But cautious. I dont trust Epic further than I can throw them.
For me, future exclusives that are not announced depends of the exclusive period. If they are fully Epid exclusive (which I doubt, but you never know) I am okay with buying on EGS, if the exclusives are for over 1 year I might cave in.
I find 1 year hard enough for games Im super interested in, but I still can do it, but over 1 year might be too hard.
Epic should just have gone with the coupons, mega discounts and free games from the start without the exclusivity bullshit and I might have used the store.
Emracer Group/THQ Nordic didn't accept the Metro Exodus deal, that was all Deep Silver. Embracer Group owns Deep Silver, but Deep Silver acts on their own, they are like an arm on your body that does whatever it wants to do (almost).
Same goes to Coffee Stain, they kinda act on their own.
I find 1 year hard enough for games Im super interested in, but I still can do it, but over 1 year might be too hard.
Epic should just have gone with the coupons, mega discounts and free games from the start without the exclusivity bullshit and I might have used the store.
Emracer Group/THQ Nordic didn't accept the Metro Exodus deal, that was all Deep Silver. Embracer Group owns Deep Silver, but Deep Silver acts on their own, they are like an arm on your body that does whatever it wants to do (almost).
Same goes to Coffee Stain, they kinda act on their own.
Does anyone here actually feel like anything Epic does, in a strictly games related sense; could 'hurt' them? I know you put it in quotes for a reason, but I still feel like we've maybe internalized this EGS thing a bit much? They're just games at the end of the day. And at this point, we're scared Epic might be funding games we don't even know exist?
For one thing, those wouldn't be moneyhatted, they'd be partly developed/funded by Epic. Annoying but perfectly acceptable in the same way Ubi games or EA and MS games were (before they came back). And another thing is what Alexandros said above, they made little headway in the past 18 months and that was the big splashy way, now they're resorting to throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, I don' think we need worry that they're going to suddenly find the one game that will topple all of pc gamedom and leave them the kings of the smoldering heap.
I can only speak for myself but to me the crux has always been exclusivity, and I care about this in an emotional way because I care about computing in the most abstract way and its best current incarnation that is the PC.
I agree with you that it's not reasonable to let yourself get personally affected too much by what Epic does because, in the end, you need to keep your happiness in your own hands.
On the other hand, I would never limit the severity of the problem to it just being "games". It's about more than that. User control, and the PC remaining an open platforms are important to me, and I believe really do matter. Games are a huge driving force in the consumer market and one area where that battle hasn't been lost like say, on mobile devices that are utterly fucked today.
It doesn't scare me (anymore). But it still annoys me. Epic is making money hatting a permanent part of pc gaming, and is throwing loads of cash around to make consumers accept it as the new norm. I've always hoped that this wouldn't happen on pc, but here we are;
Making people "cave in" is the reason why Epic keeps money hatting more games I guess. Having hundreds of games on my backlog and wish list makes it very easy for me to keep ignoring every game involved in Epic's exclusivity deals completely. I've made peace with myself that I don't have enough time to play every game I want to play. You'll know what I mean when you have a house, wife, kid and fulltime job yourself.
You're right; it was the Koch Media CEO who was happy with Epic and their business model:
Koch Media CEO: "We should welcome Epic and their business model"
The first major publisher to spark controversy for signing exclusively with the Epic Games Store has said it may well s…
www.gamesindustry.biz
Making people "cave in" is the reason why Epic keeps money hatting more games I guess. Having hundreds of games on my backlog and wish list makes it very easy for me to keep ignoring every game involved in Epic's exclusivity deals completely. I've made peace with myself that I don't have enough time to play every game I want to play. You'll know what I mean when you have a house, wife, kid and fulltime job yourself.
It's not a moneyhat if they fund a game from the start or about halfway through?
I dislike that "about halfway through" technicality because it starts to blur the line. Next thing you know, they are throwing in megagrants in there trying to make it pass that purity test of whether the game would have existed without them or not. I haven't seen a single case where Epic's word could have been trusted without data to back it up.
So far, all of Epic's moneyhats have been late in the game and aimed at removing Steam from the consumer's options. I wouldn't speculate too much about what particular brand of exclusivity we are okay with unless we know what the specific cases are. Evidence from the past 18 months suggests Epic isn't in this to create game and establish themselves as a fully-fledged publisher. They just want to remove products about to be on the market from the competitors.
Yeah, I agree "halfway through" blurrs the line between game funding and moneyhat.
However, I think people will be negative to any Epic exclusive no matter what, Epic can say they completely funded a game which is why it's exclusive, but due to their exclusivity history, people won't see that and they will be negative.
It's a problem Epic has started on their own.
From the start: no.
Halfway through: problably.
Let's say I consider it a money hat when Epic pays for exclusivity for a game, that still would have been made (and released on other storefronts) without that payment. I believe this applies for most (if not all) EGS exclusives so far.
Agreed. I still wouldn't buy a fully funded game on EGS because I strongly dislike many things that Epic is doing with that store (money hatting, no/optional user reviews, giving away dozens of free games etc). But that's a personal decision.
Completely agreed. Brand management isn't rocket science and this is a wound self-inflicted out of hubris and greed. I actually think the distrust wouldn't be misplaced. The negativity surrounding them is here for a reason after all
.Brand management isn't rocket science and this is a wound self-inflicted out of hubris and greed. I actually think the distrust wouldn't be misplaced. The negativity surrounding them is here for a reason after all
What are you talking about? According to PC Gamer, the anger over the Epic Store already subsides...