News Epic Games Store

Trisolarian

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Jul 12, 2019
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Can't agree more. Sadly, I've already seen too many "I hate Epic's moneyhats, but I'm gonna reward them with my money for moneyhatting this particular game" comments on several sites.

I really hate it when anti-consumer practices work out for the companies involved.
I doubt EGS pulls a profit right now. Right now Epic has serious "Fuck you" money to throw all around with this. Problem? Throw money at it. Kickstarter revolt? Pay for refunds. No games? Buy distribution rights. Need to get the word out? Buy a ton of ad space and sponsorships.

Is it working? They can make it seem like its working for a good long while because they own fornite, unreal and now rocket league. Maybe it makes the jump and their roadmap for features gets filled out/completed, maybe it Epic pulls back and goes the uplay route in five years.

I wouldn't have a problem buying a game (although I don't do much buying of newer games these days) that is PC exclusive on the EGS but is on the PS4. Which lol, good job Epic! You got me!!
 

lashman

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via Krejlooc:

Krejlooc said:
OceanicAir said:
Doesn't epic also give out grants? I read they gave Blender 1.2 mil yesterday.
They do, and so do companies like Ubisoft. Ubisoft is the primary funding behind Omar Cornut's ImGUI, for example.

but the amounts they spend are drops in the bucket compared to valve. When you start stepping into the developer sphere and really start looking at tooling, you quickly learn there are two titans in the PC industry: Microsot, and Valve. Valve's closest competition these days isn't Sony or Nintendo or even Epic. Valve operates these days primarily in the market Microsoft operates in. They develop PC tools, infrastructure, and interface. They have been basically propping up the open source alternative to Microsoft development ecosystem for the past 7 or so years here. Valve these days offers the closest thing anyone has ever come to a "DirectX" alternative. Not just talking about graphics related stuff, but the other things the X in DirectX represents. Except, instead of them being proprietary owned by valve, they are open source and independently owned (like, again, SDL2).

This goes one step further: start looking into the actual git repositories of these open sourced technologies, and you'll find a second pattern: overwhelming number of git commits from Valve employees. Valve doesn't just fund these technologies, they actually work and develop them in-house. People on Era ask all the time, what does valve do if they don't "make games" anymore? What does the workforce actually do? Putting real, actual paid development time from super talented engineers is what they do. They prop up open sourced tools with a workforce that actually matches big companies, which is a massive benefit to everybody. The entire reason people have stuck to Microsoft's tools and platforms (and thus windows exclusivity) is because they put waaaaaay more money into development than Open Source projects could scrounge up. Valve, in the last 7 years, has been using all of its might to close the gap. They fund Open Source technologies, like Microsoft funds windows. That's why, literally in the last couple of years, we've seen a string of "WTF HOW THE FUCK DOES THIS EXIST" type of technologies coming out of Valve like Steam Proton and dx2vk. These are jaw dropping tools, which should be coming out from a giant company like microsoft or a research outlet like MIT, coming out of what appears to be bedroom coder projects, because it's secretly valve working behind them through proxy.

Start talking to the people who make the tools and fundamental technologies that outright powers PC gaming today, and you'll find Valve is secretly everywhere in PC gaming. That's why steam itself can be wholly used as a cross development library to be linked against. Valve bundles nearly every open sourced technology it funds into steam as a single package. If steam is installed on your computer, an entire open sourced platform funded by them is there too, that developers can be assured exists.

There exists a very big difference between how game players view the technology they use and where it comes from, and how developers view the technology they use and where it comes from.

This will probably sound very wrong here, but I'll quote a friend of mine who worked on games like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam who has been a game developer for many, many years: "A million dollars isn't a lot of money for a product like people think it is."
 

xinek

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I do not care about this game at all but i feel sorry this game will do time in the arsehole store.
LOL. I've been imagining dejected games lined up behind bars on a pathetic storefront, sadly waiting for the day when they're finally free and will have a chance to find a person who will love them.
 

Ge0force

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I doubt EGS pulls a profit right now. Right now Epic has serious "Fuck you" money to throw all around with this. Problem? Throw money at it. Kickstarter revolt? Pay for refunds. No games? Buy distribution rights. Need to get the word out? Buy a ton of ad space and sponsorships.

Is it working? They can make it seem like its working for a good long while because they own fornite, unreal and now rocket league. Maybe it makes the jump and their roadmap for features gets filled out/completed, maybe it Epic pulls back and goes the uplay route in five years.

I wouldn't have a problem buying a game (although I don't do much buying of newer games these days) that is PC exclusive on the EGS but is on the PS4. Which lol, good job Epic! You got me!!
Thanks for reminding me I have a ps4 as well. Haven't used it since God of War but I'm a huge fan of Insomniac so I need to play Spider Man someday. 😊

Epic is not making profit right now, but let's not forget their long term goals: building a user base and making both gamers and devs comfortable with exclusivity deals on pc. Their end goal is to get exclusivity without having to pay for it, and that really shouldn't happen.
 

gabbo

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Thanks for reminding me I have a ps4 as well. Haven't used it since God of War but I'm a huge fan of Insomniac so I need to play Spider Man someday. 😊

Epic is not making profit right now, but let's not forget their long term goals: building a user base and making both gamers and devs comfortable with exclusivity deals on pc. Their end goal is to get exclusivity without having to pay for it, and that really shouldn't happen.
I have my doubts that devs are seeing the kind of sales that would engender long term support for exclusivity just yet. Everyone has had to dance around sales data except WWZ.

If Epic turns off the taps, devs will go where the money is.
 

lashman

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I have my doubts that devs are seeing the kind of sales that would engender long term support for exclusivity just yet. Everyone has had to dance around sales data except WWZ.

If Epic turns off the taps, devs will go where the money is.
we can only hope that's actually the case
 

Le Pertti

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Yet epic gets articles and videos made about them for giving away money. It's a easier headline to write than "hmh valve has been doing something I don't know what for I don't know how long and hmh"

But it's super cool, even I didn't know just how much valve was putting resources into stuff.
 
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CommodoreKong

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Given some of the comments a former Valve employee FinalFlame has said on Era like this I'm thinking Valve's open source initiatives are working towards something. It sounds like they have a pretty major project/initiative on the horizon. I'm thinking possibly their own Steambox running SteamOS and AMD APUs like the consoles but I'm honestly not sure. .
Whatever FinalFlame is talking about I'm looking forward to seeing it.
 

Alexandros

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Given some of the comments a former Valve employee FinalFlame has said on Era like this I'm thinking Valve's open source initiatives are working towards something. It sounds like they have a pretty major project/initiative on the horizon. I'm thinking possibly their own Steambox running SteamOS and AMD APUs like the consoles but I'm honestly not sure. .
Whatever FinalFlame is talking about I'm looking forward to seeing it.
I agree that's what they're building towards. A Valve 'console' makes too much sense to not happen eventually.
 

Ge0force

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I have my doubts that devs are seeing the kind of sales that would engender long term support for exclusivity just yet. Everyone has had to dance around sales data except WWZ.

If Epic turns off the taps, devs will go where the money is.
Pretty sure Tetris Effect will become another 500k seller on EGS. Would it have sold better on Steam? No doubt about that. But Epic will have another game to prove that their moneyhats work. And I still see way too many people claiming that it's just another launcher, Steam needs competition and devs are getting more money. Especially on non-gaming related sites.

On the other hand, r/fuckepic gets hundreds of new followers each week so there's that as well. 😊
 
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InquisitorAles

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I really stopped bothering with EGS stuff, I don't even claim free games anymore, because a few months ago claiming games stopped working through the browser for me and I don't want to install their launcher again, so I simply stopped claiming them completely. As someone who collected tons of free stuff on Steam, GOG, Origin, Battle.net and others, I think I'll be fine with skipping one store that made by arrogant dickheads who have "PC market saviors" complex.
 
Mor's egsclusivity spreadsheet

Mor

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Sep 7, 2018
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Hello, I don't participate in here because, you know, I don't like or care about EGS or any debacle that comes after each announcement but as the creator of the spreadsheet I think it will be, once again, a helpful tool for those that want to wait until the games appear on other storefronts (Steam, GOG, Kartbridge, whatever...)

Ok, so, what's the spreadsheet? when the Store announced at TGA the first wave of exclusives I thought "hey, wouldn't be great to recompile all the announcements and see the status of each one?" as a personal project for fun because I love excel but slowly people were concerned about the status of every game, "is it timed or permanent?" "how long?" and all that and because media didn't say this information I thought it would be great to share it from time to time for a few people, and so I did, the document has been evolving non-stop to make it more dynamic and to enjoy it more while making it.

EGS deals excel.

So, in case you don't want to watch the document, as for right now:
  1. 45% of games are timed exclusives, 39% are no exclusives at all and 16% are unknown (mostly because I couldn't find official sources with details)
  2. 37% of exclusives are for 12 months, 1% are 6 months, 39% are not exclusives of any kind and 23% are unknown (I couldn't find the detail about this)
  3. Most of the games already confirmed a release on different platforms once the deal is finished
  4. the first exclusive deal will end in 142 days.
And that's it, you won't see me again here (probably) in a long time, but let me tell you something, the main thing here it's time and it's just a matter of time that things expand, I know some deals will affect you directly and that will make you angry but let's be honest, we all have tons and tons of games, just by looking at that document you will see that it's impossible to buy everything at day one, so, if you are not supporting EGS (I'm not for my own very reasons) just remember that the pattern is 12 months and even the most unbelievable game is going to expand in the future. and if you don't want to support the devs because they decided to take this deals, it's alright and that's up to you, but remember that it's all time.

BTW, in case you wonder, the games that affected me are Control and Tetris Effect, and the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the waiting one more year because there is too much content coming out at the same time or making each month packed as heck, but hey, it's just my opinion, don't let this thing make you angry or sad, it's just games

Have all of you an amazing day,
 

Arsene

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I just feel like ive reached a point where I dont care about Epic anymore. Like their E3 grabs were pretty mediocre. So many more games are being announced or released on Steam now I just stopped worrying as much, and if you arent boycotting the Steam releases 2020 is going to be even easier to deal with because as they release new exclusives, their old deals are expiring so we’ll have even more to play on top of the new releases that don’t go to EGS, and I can just use GamePass to play several other exclusives early if I really wanted to.

Also on the topic of Tetris Effect. I bought it on PS4 at launch, beat the story mode in 1 sitting in like 2 hours and never touched it again. It was gorgeous and fun to play but like, its just tetris but slower. The other gamemodes were eh and multiplayer is local only. Tetris 99 and Puyo Puyo Tetris are much faster and feel much better to play seriously. (And also significantly cheaper) Also I only found myself enjoying like 2 of the music tracks which sucked because Lumines and Rez are full of bangers.

It doesnt have the fun challenge of Lumines, or the originality of Rez. Its tetris with pretty lights and vr. I dont care much for the EGS deal because I was probably going to wait for a 50% off discount which would have took a year or two on Steam anyway and if I did buy it on EGS I would have to pay more than I did for a physical ps4 copy almost a year ago (fucking seriously?) But just saying, Ya’ll aint missing much.
 

xinek

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[...]it's just my opinion, don't let this thing make you angry or sad, it's just games [...]
Honestly, when I first saw people posting stuff like this here, I couldn't go along with it. Seeing anti-consumer and all around bad business ruining my favorite medium was so outrageous that I had to get worked up over every insult by Epic. But in reality, the quoted perspective is a much better way to live life. There is exactly nothing I can do about EGS except not spend money there. There are, in reality, so many interesting games released monthly that I couldn't experience all of them even if I did nothing else. I am all around much happier with this perspective. So, many thanks to this forum!
 

lashman

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You'd be forgiven if you didn't notice that The Sinking City released last month. To find it on the Epic Store, you have to scroll past 15 big images promoting other games, some of which aren't even out yet, or search for it specifically. I'm not sure that's what developers who flocked to the store were hoping for.
At the start of the year, I thought Epic would slowly add new games to its budding store, and part of my reasoning came from the design. The storefront, which still looks like it did at launch, is not an efficient way to display a lot of games. It seemed to me that part of the appeal of selling through the Epic Store (aside from some guaranteed revenue upfront) was that your game would become part of a small library that hungry new Fortnite gamers would inevitably be drawn to.

I misjudged, clearly. Halfway through the year, there are now 103 games listed on the Epic Store, and there's still no way to view them as a tidy list, or sort them by genre, or see which just released. There's a section for "Upcoming Games" at the bottom, but there are also unreleased games available for pre-purchase mixed in with the other section.

What initially seemed like a feature of the store—that it was so exclusive a simple grid was all it needed—has become an issue due to Epic's aggressive growth strategy.

Still, Epic's 103 games is dwarfed by Steam's volume of more than 34,000, a number which has made discoverability a big challenge for Valve. Recently, it launched a 'recommender' that tries to guess what you'll like, and 'micro trailers' to help you see more of what the platform offers.
Because games on the Epic store are hand-picked, I doubt it'll ever need anything like that. Automated game submission has made digging for surprises part of the experience (and perhaps fun) of using Steam, whereas we all have a pretty good sense of what Epic offers: popular, glossy new games from well-known developers.

While Epic's probably right that most discovery will happen off-platform, it's not exactly unreasonable to ask for a list view. It's coming, eventually.
According to Epic's roadmap, "library improvements" are supposed to come within the next three months, adding "sorting, filtering and different views to the library." Presumably those improvements will be applied to the store, as well—it wouldn't make much sense to build sorting solely for the library, where there are fewer games listed than on the store.

I'm not really worried that these basic tools won't come. They will, along with the other planned accouterments such as cloud saving and an overlay. I'm just shocked at how quickly Epic expanded its library. How many games will it be hosting exclusively or non-exclusively by the end of the year? The weekly free games Epic has been doling out will add to that pile.

With libraries becoming increasingly split between launchers—not just Steam and the Epic Store, but also Battle.net, Origin, and so on—GOG has seen an opportunity in uniting them, and the closed beta for GOG Galaxy 2.0 actually comes pretty close to pulling it off seamlessly. You can even sort games by which store you own them on.

Given how quickly the Epic Store is growing, GOG's efforts may be invaluable in a year's time. While Epic said at one time that it would eventually stop making deals for timed exclusives, it's not giving them up soon.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when Epic's timed exclusives start appearing on Steam next year. Even for those who have seen waves of criticism directed at them, the scenario may end up being a win-win for developers: a successful Epic Store run followed by a late bump from the holdouts who waited for a Steam release.
 

m_dorian

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May 22, 2019
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It must be an honour and a privilege to be able to report how awesome Epic Store is
I have this foolish notion that the people at PC gamer often accidentally find envelopes full of cash or something very close to this.
 

Swenhir

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This feels like looking for the silver lining in dumpster fire with frenzied despair. Also, justifying, edging on praising, the store's lack of features.

I just would like to post a friendly reminder that buying EGS exclusives as they come on steam legitimizes and sanitizes the practice. It reinforces the data pointing to its viability. I won't.
 

Ge0force

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This feels like looking for the silver lining in dumpster fire with frenzied despair. Also, justifying, edging on praising, the store's lack of features.
Yep, it's Tyler shilling for Epic again, even in an article meant to criticize the lack of library management. And Tyler is a huge fan of Epic's exclusivity deals. It's incredible.
 

ISee

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It seems like Mechwarrior 5 is preparing to go EGS exclusive soon.
Their FAQ has been cut down, no more steam, beta or other store mentiones.

This is getting a bit depressing for me. I've played endless hours of Mechwarrior 2 and mech 2: mercenaries.
Bought a matrox mystique card for the game (early, rather not good 3d acceleration but with an awesome mercenaries version) back in the days. I played the games for months and they were on my harddrives for years. I even supported the, rather mediocre, online iteration for quite some time because I didn't want the franchise to die. I was happy when they announced a true, single player sequel in the spirit of mech2: mercenaries.
But no, not like this.

:(

Fuck epic and every dev and publisher involved in this. My distaste is reaching dangerous levels of never being able to recover.
 

Ge0force

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It seems like Mechwarrior 5 is preparing to go EGS exclusive soon.
Their FAQ has been cut down, no more steam, beta or other store mentiones.
This was to be expected since it uses the Unreal engine. I don't really care about this game but I feel sorry for you. And I understand how this kind of news hurts your motivation to play games on pc.

But I'm afraid Sweeney is right about one thing: exclusives are working. It seems more than enough people don't care about Epic's anti-consumer strategy, and are happy to use EGS for exclusive games. Even worse, I still see plenty of people defending Epic's strategy. Hell, I even see people who hate Epic's strategy caving in and using EGS anyway.

You can hate Epic and the devs taking their bribes as much as you want. But in the end, the people supporting all of this by using the EGS are the real problem. These people are actually voting with their wallets that they are fine with what Epic and these devs are doing.
 

Alexandros

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This was to be expected since it uses the Unreal engine. I don't really care about this game but I feel sorry for you. And I understand how this kind of news hurts your motivation to play games on pc.

But I'm afraid Sweeney is right about one thing: exclusives are working. It seems more than enough people don't care about Epic's anti-consumer strategy, and are happy to use EGS for exclusive games. Even worse, I still see plenty of people defending Epic's strategy. Hell, I even see people who hate Epic's strategy caving in and using EGS anyway.

You can hate Epic and the devs taking their bribes as much as you want. But in the end, the people supporting all of this by using the EGS are the real problem. These people are actually voting with their wallets that they are fine with what Epic and these devs are doing.
That's not new or unexpected and I would argue that it's not an indication that exclusives are working. Sweeney moneyhatting tens of exclusives and a couple of them catching on with the mainstream doesn't mean much. Galyonkin said it himself in one of his Steamspy blog posts, a small part of the userbase buys a large number of games. The rest might buy a couple of games each year, if that.

It's that core part of the userbase that despises Epic and what it represents and as long as that part stays true to its convictions, Epic will fail.
 

Le Pertti

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I think this might be a perfect micro example how easily people can do shitty things for money. Everyone involved with egs at this point know how much they are fucking over their customers. Now imagine if it was way way more money but instead they fuck over the environment or get people sick. No wonder rich people are pushing so immensely for "climate change is a hoax", "health is a personal responsibility" etc, it's the top tier "just another launcher" pushing the blame on the customer.
 

lashman

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Was hoping for a Metro Exodus situation, but yeah. This will go down the Shenmu 3 road. It is, actually, quiet foreseeable. You're right.
Metro situation was only this way because they already had preorders DIRECTLY on steam .... keys and promises mean fuck all
 

Ge0force

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Metro situation was only this way because they already had preorders DIRECTLY on steam .... keys and promises mean fuck all
Pretty sure Epic is going after Kickstarter games to keep their store under attention in the media. They must assume that negative attention is better for them than no attention at all.
 
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lashman

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Pretty sure Epic is going after Kickstarter games to keep their store under attention in the media. They must assume that negative attention is better for them than no attention at all.
MW5 wasn't kickstarted ... was it?



looks like they're getting ready for the shitstorm:

 
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Trisolarian

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I got Torchlight for free, just to have a I guess. Limbo isn't doing anything for me, I got through that one like 8 years ago. I'd recommend to anyone who hasn't played. Idk how they keep getting new free games to release each week... like eventually their entire library will have gone free at least once? lol.

No, I know that isn't the case, seems like publishers are dumping their older titles for free.
 

Digoman

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looks like they're getting ready for the shitstorm:
Well, at least they thinking about the refunds before the announcement this time :p
And wait, you can't refund if you used a... Discord Server invite?

I don't know if EGS is going harder after kickstarter games or not, but they do appear to be targeting games with a more dedicated fan-base (like VR games and this one). Probably not a bad strategy for them, but it's hard to tell if it's on purpose or not because a lot of things they do appear so random... maybe more "Tim thought this looked shinny so he wanted it".
 
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Ge0force

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MW5 wasn't kickstarted ... was it?
You're right. I meant games were Steam keys were promised or already being sold, but for some reason I wrote Kickstarter :p

I got Torchlight for free, just to have a I guess. Limbo isn't doing anything for me, I got through that one like 8 years ago. I'd recommend to anyone who hasn't played. Idk how they keep getting new free games to release each week... like eventually their entire library will have gone free at least once? lol.

No, I know that isn't the case, seems like publishers are dumping their older titles for free.
These free games are usually tied to an upcoming exclusivity deal. It's almost certain that Torchlight Frontiers will be EGS exclusive. Not that I care since it's a F2P MMO, but still... that's what's going on here.

The fact that Epic gives away free games every week also indicates that many more exclusives deals are on their way.
 
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lashman

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You're right. I meant games were Steam keys were promised or already being sold, but for some reason I wrote Kickstarter
ahh, right ... in that case - yeah

although, honestly - i think they're just going after devs who use UE4 .... because then they don't even have to seek them out, they already have the full list, contact info and know exactly what all of them are working on
 
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