The promise of EGS, getting Fortnite players who don't play other games playing PC games was incredible. They could've done a TF2-style thing, offering Fortnite skins when you pre-purchase games on the EGS. They would've expanded the PC gaming audience, and might've even lured some otherwise Steam players over if they'd done that. Would it have been as big as Steam? Not on day one, but Fortnite is huge and they could've leveraged that to get people engaged on their platform for the long term.
Instead, all they seem to want to do is hurt Steam and upset Steam users. And I don't see how this is going to help them once Fortnite's fortunes begin to fade, and it will one day. As said above, the brand is toxic to me now. While Epic technology in games is hard to avoid, I will definitely not be buying anything that they make, and I will be thinking twice about paying full price UE4 engine games.
As for games that sign exclusivity to EGS, I won't be buying them on any platform in the near future. If I do get them, it'll be bargain basement sales on Steam at this point.
that's pretty much where i'm at as well ... sadly
in this capitalist hellscape we're living in right now all they have to do is keep doing their bullshit PR ... combine that with infinite money, and they pretty much already won
I try not to be defeatist about this. The 250k for WWZ is bad news, but how much would that game have sold on Steam?
Plus we're all assuming that Valve doesn't have a plan to deal with this issue. They may not be very communicative, but I doubt they're ignoring this. That could lead to bad things (Valve buying up exclusives in some sort of fucked up arms race), or maybe they have another plan. At the very least, they need to repair their reputation with game developers, because regardless of whether it was their fault or damaged by wreckers with an ulterior motive, developers aren't as happy with Valve as they used to be.
But irregardless, the way I see it, Epic can't keep buying exclusives forever. Yes, they have a massive Fortnite warchest, but there will be pressures on that money. Tencent will want its dividends soon, if it isn't already asking for them (and I reckon that's no small amount), plus what money Epic does have to spend they need to spend wisely. Buying Psyonix is probably their best move yet, because it's buying an IP and a team and everything they make in the future. I have less of a problem with that, so long as they don't screw over people who have already bought the game.
Buying 6-12 months exclusivity on one title is dead money if you're not gaining anything from it. I see it akin to either paying rent or paying a mortgage. You want to be paying the mortgage, right? Epic's exclusivity deals just feels like paying rent, and they'll have little to show for it in the long term. They're clearly trying to buy marketshare in the offset, but if the money is, in general, poorly spent then they will try other avenues. Plus, until they can make people feel okay about using Epic rather than defaulting to Steam the second a game is on multiple stores, then the exclusives are really all for nought.
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