News Epic Games Store
- Thread starter Blizniak
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Epic CEO: “You’re going to see lower prices” on Epic Games Store
Sweeney says free games, “high quality standard” are leading to quick growth.
arstechnica.com
Looks like it.
Can you blame them or any other company that does this? They only care about their bottom line, they couldn't care less about what happens to their products or whatever hissy fit their fans throw at them. It's all about those sweet sweet short term gains.
Actually, yes. It's perfectly possible to make lots of money without treating your fans like shit.
Of course you can and I'm not advocating you can't. But would you rather get 1M now or have the possibility of getting 2M over the course of 1year? That's the level of financial thinking we're talking about here and given the chance any company, no matter what their business model is or what products they sell, will prefer to take the cash upfront over the possibility of getting more.
My body is ready for FF7R to be Luna or Stadia exclusive next year.
And of course there's sob stories like Annapurna where Epic likely cut off the free money after their Art Games failed to pull in MAUs.
Lack of brand power. Every successful post-EGS release on Steam has had a strong brand behind it, be it the IP or Developer, whereas anything smaller can end up being a dud and/or having to spend the entire check Epic gave them re-marketing the game.
And of course there's sob stories like Annapurna where Epic likely cut off the free money after their Art Games failed to pull in MAUs.
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Who says they aren't? If I remember correctly back when the whole egs thing started every small-ish dev seemed to be bending over backwards to get epic's attention and some of that sweet cash. The only one I remember rejecting the offer was the Darq developer, everyone else jumped in and the ones that didn't were pissed because they weren't chosen. The only difference now is that we're talking about big devs and pubs but, as I believe you know, size isn't a factor all that matters is the money.
There were some pushbacks from players but at the end of the day they got payed and, judging by the sales figures of when they finally stop being held ransom and release in other stores/systems, they get payed again. I wish egs didn't exist and epic kept looking at us as nothing but pirates but from the pure business sense those devs did the correct thing accepting epic's bribe.
And let's not pretend this exclusivity nonsense is something new. This has been going on since the NES era and funnilly enough back then it was also square that took the big pile of cash to keep their games tied to the nintendo system. When sony's money bag got bigger than nintendo's they ditched their fans. Now epic's bag is big. So, I'm sorry, am I supposed to be surprised they are acting this way again?
So did Tiny Tina......
They stopped the pre orders removed the price from the banner of FF7R on EGS, Sweeney must be trying to convince SE to stop with the fuckery. its making EGS look worse, LOL.
EDIT: Aparently they never started selling the thing
EDIT: Aparently they never started selling the thing
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Yeah, probably going to try to "convince" a discount like when they added a last minute discount to Kingdom Hearts after I am sure the preorders were low (I think later they added that Disney+ deal).
There are plenty of strong brands in gaming. Why aren't most of them exclusive to one platform or another? That's what I am asking. Why are multiplatform games the rule rather than the exception? I will give my own opinion in the answer to the quote below.
Same question as above: why are exclusives the exception then? You hear people say "exclusives sell consoles", so why isn't every big or promising franchise exclusive to someone? If exclusives are the win-win proposition the industry wants us to believe they are, why is every other company, even platform holders like Microsoft and Sony, moving towards less exclusivity for their products through PC releases? Why isn't everyone locking down everything?
In my opinion the answer is that companies know the value of getting their games to as many customer hands as possible. The only way to support today's massive budgets and create true megahits that reach the most amount of people is to remove as many barriers as possible between the customer and the product. Exclusives aren't as important as people think. PC gamers proved that by ignoring almost everything releasing on EGS and a console like XSX was still selling out despite launching without any noteworthy exclusives. Very few people outside core gamer circles will buy a console just because of one exclusive game, they are more likely to buy one for FIFA or Madden or whatever.
I know I said I wouldn't bother giving updates on top sellers since they started updating daily, but I will mention that Forspoken did not make the top 25 yesterday.
It goes on sale the first day of their holiday sale. I'm guessing it'll have a launch discount alongside the coupon to ensure it sells well.
After the removal of the price for FFVIIR on EGS, we have confirmation of the price according to Eurogamer.
£65/$70/€80.
www.eurogamer.net
£65/$70/€80.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade's standard edition will cost £65/$70 on PC
While we already knew that Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is coming to PC via Epic Games Store next week, 16th Decem…
www.eurogamer.net
Let me preface by saying I never said exclusives are a win-win proposition, especially when you take in consideration the customer side, and I believe you and I advocate the same things and feel the same way regarding this subject. That being said:
- It should go without saying but it bears repeating ad nauseum, exclusives are never a good thing for the consumer, no exceptions. The best thing will always be to have choices and being able to choose where, what and when you want to play any given game.
- On the flip side exclusives are always a good proposition for whoever is selling the product, be it a game, a movie, a soap or a house. By seller we're talking about the proprietor of the thing, in case of games the dev/pub, because for the middleman the deal isn't always lucrative, at least in terms of pure cashflow but they might get other advantages.
This is the only point I was talking about, that given the chance taking the exclusivity bribe is always a good choice businesswise and since, in our fucked-up economic system, it seems businesses only care about short term gains and solutions, what was a good proposition becomes the best. - As for why exclusives are an exception and not the norm, well I'm not an industry insider so I can't be 100% sure but since it's a business like any other I'm pretty sure the answer is simple, money.
Let me expand a little, from my understanding exclusivity deals are triggered by the middleman/storefront/platform holder and not by the developer, and there's so much money they can throw around to garantee exclusives. In an hypothetical scenario where money was infinite I'm pretty sure platform holders would be more than happy to secure exclusive rights to every single game in existance and devs/pubs would be more than happy to get those deals.
Other than that there might be other variables like the pedigree of the developer, the success of their previous games or the platform holder's yield from previous deals, just to mention a few, butI'm pretty sue the main reason is money. - Regarding how open everyone seems to be:
- Nintendo keeps doing their own thing and will most likely never open up.
- Sony seems to be starting doing something but how much still remains to be seen honestly. You can say they are opening up but so far we had a handful of ports of old games from dead consoles. Unless they start doing day 1 ports I don't think it's really fair to say they are opening up and dropping exclusives, rather they are dumping old stock on pc hopping to extend the sale tail of their, aging, products.
- MS is the odd one on this subject but I believe they are mostly buying their time to take advantage of the massive widespread of windows PCs. Call me jaded but after what they did with gfwl and most recently how they treated the windows store in general, and their games files in particular, I'm not too confident they won't try something else in the future. For now we can enjoy relative peace.
Because they can't afford to pay them all off and wouldn't benefit the same from all of them if they did pay them all off. Alternatively if paying for exclusives doesn't matter and doesn't help a console sell then why did they ever do it at all these past decades and not just have a multiplatform machine with, hell, not even first party development studios, what silly ways to waste money for no benefit, they could just put a pc in a box on store shelves with their brand name & locked storefront and people would buy it. There'd probably be some anti-consumer/anti-competitive legalities to deal with if one company did try this.
Maybe the market's changing, maybe we're moving toward a future where people will not care to buy individual consoles because there will be devices in the house they acquire for other reasons by default and alongside their daily use and entertainment and whatever else they also do gaming fine enough to not care about consoles because indeed third party offerings are by now enough to waste all your time and energy to, so they all move toward a different model, like selling software and services for all devices. It doesn't mean they could have done that 30 years ago or even last year and still sustain the company for that long. It will also probably be a while yet, even with portable devices of the android and iphone mould having penetrated pretty much every household and also providing gaming at a pretty reasonable quality, somehow Nintendo and its exclusive output still get people to buy their stuff at a pace that for them appears to beat trying to sell their content alone by putting it up, on equal terms, against the very different big money makers on mobile. Still, if that's the direction the world is going maybe we will eventually have every house with a Deck-like device of any brand that does everything they need and streams to every display and just runs separate Nintendo/Sony/Capcom/Microsoft individual apps or services or storefronts, the big ones swallowing smaller ones, at will, who knows.
As for storefronts on PC, well, exclusives probably do still matter alongside other factors. If EGS or any other platform did provide a service on par with Steam, why would one start using it even in that case if not because a game was only available on it, or cheaper on it or similar? Would gog ever take off if it didn't rely on the niche of offering good ol games, initially exclusive to them (and now that they've attempted to move away from that initial endeavor and be like any other store, even with some pretty good services on their end, they seem to be failing hard). Etc. Steam gets many exclusives by default by what it does good without paying for it too, and has done so for decades, even with smaller competitors appearing here and there in the past like Stardock. Didn't they all add value?
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I think Square Enix' confidence in their brand has turned into outright megalomania at this point, I have no other explanation for what they're trying to do here.
I guess 70$ might somewhat work for some US folks, but these games will probably (and hopefully) flop everywhere else.
The game may do well enough on EGS thanks to the coupons.
Microsoft as well. Digital Xbox games are €70 here. Although they lowered the price on Steam to €60 for 1st party games.
True. This said, Sony's games are usually €64.99 in Belgian retail stores. It's extremely weird that digital is so much more expensive, and that so many people actually tolerate the price increase because digital games are "convenient".
I definitely hope so. Both Square and Epic can fuck off as far as I'm concerned.
Thing is some console games got a price bump in europe last gen (60€ to 70€) but for some reasone it never materialized on pc (except for some MS and most of KT games) while in the US there wasn't any price bump.
However now the us gets a price bump (60 to 70) and europe gets another (70 to 80) and on pc now we get both at once.
Maybe, but moving the price from 80€ to 70€ doesn't sound that appealing (that was basically the launch price of the ps4 version).
So apparently Stranger of Paradise is also EGS exclusive, which went under the radar.
My heart goes out to all three people looking forward to that.
My heart goes out to all three people looking forward to that.
The whole SE-EGS affair along with the ridiculous price hike is both sad, frustrating and entertaining.
And will probably lead to another Tim's defeat.
And will probably lead to another Tim's defeat.
For some reason I thought we already knew Stranger of Paradise was EGS exclusive (isn't Nomura involved?).
Or maybe I just assumed.
I was one of those three people. I will probably rent the base game on console and get it on Steam in 2023 with all the DLC at a deep discount.
I wish I could consider this entertaining as well. For me, it only resulted in another AAA publisher that I dislike so much that I don't want to spend my money on their games anymore.
It's so strange; in theory, PC gaming is better than ever, with so many great games and MS and Sony bringing 1st party games to PC. But in the meantime, I haven't been so disappointed in most of the other big publishers since they started ignoring the PC in the beginning of the x360 era. I'm not sure where this is gonna end up for me...
By ignoring those shit companies you kill two birds with one stone. You spend your money on developers and companies that deserve it and you gain peace of mind.
That game being EGS exclusive was announced in early October, it isn't surprising either since it's yet another Nomura project, and so far only Nomura projects have been EGS exclusive when it comes to Squeenix.
I have generally started a new guiding system for EGS and future purchases.
1) exclusivity deal, but immediate release on Steam after deal and a decent launch discount. I am in. See control.
2) as above, but no discount. I will base the game on how well received, how much I still want to play it. Otherwise wait for a discount.
3) completely piss me about, take exclusivity deal after deal. Then heavy discount and that's if I am still interested. This is things like Nomura games, Tetris Effect and so on.
There are just too many good games out there. Games that haven't made me run about or second guess where and when I can play it.
1) exclusivity deal, but immediate release on Steam after deal and a decent launch discount. I am in. See control.
2) as above, but no discount. I will base the game on how well received, how much I still want to play it. Otherwise wait for a discount.
3) completely piss me about, take exclusivity deal after deal. Then heavy discount and that's if I am still interested. This is things like Nomura games, Tetris Effect and so on.
There are just too many good games out there. Games that haven't made me run about or second guess where and when I can play it.
Yeah this is where im kind of at. Im waiting on Hitman3 but it will have to have a pretty good launch discount if im to pick it up, otherwise ill wait.
Some games have completely gone onto my shit list though and i probably will never buy, or only will for dirt cheap. Phoenix Point is one, Tetris effect another.
I have a similar treatment to products related to EGS exclusivity deals: At least below € 20, and often much less than this, and bought elsewhere.
I will not mind if a game has it's development funded with Epic as the publisher, i see it as the proper thing to do. I often halt purchases from publishers heavily associated with the asshole like Ubi where i recently bought AC Revelations for € 6 and my last purchase was Odyssey some years back.
They will not miss my money but i also will not miss their games.
Also, no money on EGS. Thanks for the freebies but seriously Epic go screw yourself.
I will not mind if a game has it's development funded with Epic as the publisher, i see it as the proper thing to do. I often halt purchases from publishers heavily associated with the asshole like Ubi where i recently bought AC Revelations for € 6 and my last purchase was Odyssey some years back.
They will not miss my money but i also will not miss their games.
Also, no money on EGS. Thanks for the freebies but seriously Epic go screw yourself.
I don't need policy, cuz I would just forgot games existed
Just like my uplay & gog library.
Just like my uplay & gog library.
My policy is to place all EGS exclusives on ignore when their store pages are available and to either buy them on heavy discount, through Humble Choice, or skip entirely.
Yeah, I generally forget the game even exists. When a game goes Epic, I just assume there's something wrong with it. Alphas from known devs, like Hades and Griftlands is a lil' different.
These days I also more or less forget the game released on EGS. If it's something I really wanted it might take a few days
If it's good enough to make a "splash" after ending the exclusivity deal I might consider buying it at a good price/discount, but the "barrier" for doing so is way higher. Of course that's only if the developers didn't say anything stupid. Thankfully that's a lot more rare now.
But honestly, if there is one good thing I can say about EGS, it's that it helped me deal at least a little with my FOMO when buying games... well, that and the stupid regional prices almost every big release has now.
If it's good enough to make a "splash" after ending the exclusivity deal I might consider buying it at a good price/discount, but the "barrier" for doing so is way higher. Of course that's only if the developers didn't say anything stupid. Thankfully that's a lot more rare now.
But honestly, if there is one good thing I can say about EGS, it's that it helped me deal at least a little with my FOMO when buying games... well, that and the stupid regional prices almost every big release has now.
A game going exclusive to EGS just means my money goes to another game that fills that spot on Steam.
I used to get annoyed when something went Epic Exclusive, but then noticed how other games would pop up and quickly take their spot on Steam - while they vanished on the EGS.
I used to get annoyed when something went Epic Exclusive, but then noticed how other games would pop up and quickly take their spot on Steam - while they vanished on the EGS.
For me I simply just can't bother to open up the launcher. I have claimed almost every free game and I have received multiple promo codes for games (stopped awhile ago because I couldn't bother opening the launcher) for games like Eternal Cylinder, Arcadegeddon, JETT, Grindstone (this one I have played a bit because I really like puzzle games), Godfall and some others.
My Steam backlog is simply so gigantic that I can't bother using EGS unless for something special to me like Alan Wake 2 whenever that comes out.
The launcher is "tiring" to use that I don't really care about it anymore. Plus, again, I have so many Steam games I wanna play and due to me working full time, I don't have time for anything than my Steam games, other than certain console exclusives (Switch, PS5).
My Steam backlog is simply so gigantic that I can't bother using EGS unless for something special to me like Alan Wake 2 whenever that comes out.
The launcher is "tiring" to use that I don't really care about it anymore. Plus, again, I have so many Steam games I wanna play and due to me working full time, I don't have time for anything than my Steam games, other than certain console exclusives (Switch, PS5).
This is ridiculous. Valve shouldn't allow devs to advertise EGS on Steam.
This for me as well. I don't like Epic's money hatting so I won't support it in any way.
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I'm not sure how accurate this is, but from what I read, Unreal Engine based SDKs have to be distributed through Epic so my snarky post was misguided. Still kinda funny that the SDK is on EGS but the game isn't (yet). I know Mordhau has been in Epic's database for months and I had assumed it would be a free giveaway by now. I assume that Epic didn't want it to compete with Chivalry 2 and it's currently in the Humble Monthly, so it might eventually become a giveaway title next year.
Yeah, Epic forces you to distribute UE mod SDKs on their store. Even before EGS existed.
I noticed that the website for NARAKA: BLADEPOINT removed the link to the EGS page at the top of the website:
Last month, it listed Steam, Epic Games Store and their own store at the top of the page. This month, it only lists Steam and their own store. The only link to EGS is at the very bottom of the page.
NARAKA: BLADEPOINT - NEW HERO: CYRA OUT NOW
Dive into the legends of the Far East in NARAKA: BLADEPOINT; team up with your friends in fast-paced melee fights for a Battle Royale experience unlike any other. Experience a unique fighting gameplay, combining fast movements in a large environment and a deep and intense melee combat system...
www.narakathegame.com
Last month, it listed Steam, Epic Games Store and their own store at the top of the page. This month, it only lists Steam and their own store. The only link to EGS is at the very bottom of the page.
