News Epic Games Store
- Thread starter Blizniak
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To be brutally honest, pro-egs folks have not exactly shown to think much about the future beyond "obviously everything will be great, because reasons!".
My favorite part is "it's obvious and undeniable that Steam badly needs some competition" with no further explanation. I don't know how many times I've read this sentence in the past eight months.
I get it, but this point of visibility was actually one I could understand for devs and consumers.
If you know there's only a few articles in the store, each article is more visible. If you add the promises of a "good-games-only" curation, it could mean that you'll only find good games on the EGS, and you'll find them easily. If you put aside the whole exclusivity shit, it could have been a clever idea and could have been the way to compete with Steam by offering something different.
Of course it's not what's happening on the EGS because they just made promises, they didn't bother to work on this properly with effective search tools or tags on the store. Instead they're piling up, mixing objectively good games and "meh" or shitty games and their best idea to browse their catalog is to put everything on one page in small tiles.
But as appealing as it could have been at start, now this whole visibility thing is a joke and I don't get why people deny this fact.
Great post, and summed perfectly my experiences and what I've seen from the market since the 90's
Do you have an alt on this forum called Fernando Pessoa?
Alguma compaixão pelos devs é necessária.
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EGS is just the next big "Indie Fad". A platform with a small catalog that indies flock to because they get a big push in visibility. This shit changes every year or so. First we had the 360, then it was Steam, then it was the Vita, Wii U, PS4, Switch and now EGS.
But unlike the other platforms, EGS games don't find huge success, But since Epic buys hundreds of thousands of copies upfront, it still fits. If Epic still continues to horde up a stupid amount of exclusives next year and beyond, Visibility wont be anything to praise a year or two from now, especially if the store remains as garbage as it is.
Its a pyramid scheme.
People who get in early benefit. REALLY benefit..
And will continue to benefit as every future exclusive continues to send new customers to the store to see their game prominently listed, and forever in the best selling charts keeping them visible.
Way more visible than every subsequent latecomer, who are in turn way more visible than everyone after them, and so on and so forth. With Epic at the tip of the pyramid benefitting the most from everything.
we're pretty much already there ... go to the store and see how long it takes to scroll through the game list
and we're barely 8 months in
they won't if Tim pays them again .... if not - i SERIOUSLY doubt anyone will willingly completely ignore all steam users for the cut alone
... and then it'll all trickle down ...
Yeah. So much for the main argument of Ooblets devs for going on EGS.
We'll know more in a few months, when we'll see how studios who went on EGS are planning their next game (EGS exclusive or not) and if Tim is still throwing cash as fast as he can to secure exclusivities.
I'm geniunely curious about how it will turn out for those studios. But I agree with you, the 12% cut won't be enough if sales numbers on EGS (apart from the cash from signing in) are not as high as expected.
i'm pretty sure Tim will keep throwing money at publishers and developers for as long as he possibly can
fortnite is already on its way down (slooowly, but still ...), so if anything - he'll start throwing even more money around now, while he still has it - to herd as many people to his shitty store as possible before the money's gone
What's this leaderboard technology you're talking about? - someone at Epic
Last time i saw someone talk about it, was at 7.5k entries, I believe was someone at ERA less then a month ago.
Phoenix RISING
A phoenix always RISES!
I'm old enough to remember all the stories about indie devs porting games over to the Switch like Hollow Knight and Wizard of Legend and how they made more sales there than on Steam.
Then before you could snap your fingers, Nintendo eShop was just as crowded, and games just as difficult to find.
It's gonna happen....
Yep, and the everyone was like FUCKING NINTENDO HOW DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN.
It is almost like it is a very difficult problem
EGS is just plainly bad for visibility, orders of magnitude worse than the Switch eShop, which is still rather bad.
The only quality of EGS is that it's objectively pleasant to the eye, but that's just about it.
And, you know, I often debate about this stuff with some Italian game devs, and they always have the presumption and arrogance of replying that I'm not a game dev so what do I know.
Well, when I point out to them that EGS is a bad store for UX reasons and I should know, considering my resume (and btw, I really hate playing the "you don't know who I am" card, it's just in such poor taste, and hasn't ever helped any argument), suddenly they all become top web dev with years of experience.
The only quality of EGS is that it's objectively pleasant to the eye, but that's just about it.
And, you know, I often debate about this stuff with some Italian game devs, and they always have the presumption and arrogance of replying that I'm not a game dev so what do I know.
Well, when I point out to them that EGS is a bad store for UX reasons and I should know, considering my resume (and btw, I really hate playing the "you don't know who I am" card, it's just in such poor taste, and hasn't ever helped any argument), suddenly they all become top web dev with years of experience.
luckily epic are spending a lot of money on their storefront to help resolve it, not just pissing away cash on temporary bandaids like timed exclusivity deals, so that when the storefront has to stand on its own merits all of the talent they've attracted don't instantly leave again to go to the storefronts that have been spending time and money working on this.
oh wait
Has anyone been collecting all the dev and blogger comments shitting on customers? I have been thinking about building an app for it so people can easily search devs (and their associated games) and "journalists" down the road to see how they treated potential customers (with citations) but I don't want to duplicate effort if there is already a site up somewhere for it.
Well, I'm about to get a ton of hate for the following post. Lawsuits can be PM'd to me.
Free games, August 15th to the 22nd are..... Hyper Light Drifter and Mutant Year Zero.
Two games I was interested in, now free. Thank you for paying for the free games for me Tim! Maybe one day your store will make money....
Is there anyway to solve this? Valve is trying but sometimes I just think the brutal truth is the following; too many games are being made.
This seems a little..... needlessly vindictive.
Free games, August 15th to the 22nd are..... Hyper Light Drifter and Mutant Year Zero.
Two games I was interested in, now free. Thank you for paying for the free games for me Tim! Maybe one day your store will make money....
Is there anyway to solve this? Valve is trying but sometimes I just think the brutal truth is the following; too many games are being made.
This seems a little..... needlessly vindictive.
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Phoenix RISING
A phoenix always RISES!
Mutant Year Zero is free because the expansion just came out. It was also in a Humble Bundle already.
But I agree with you; even if I were still in school and not working full time, I couldn't play all of these games.
The Steam Labs Interactive Recommender is a fantastic solution if the user wants to find games. Now if you're a dev/publisher who wants your games on the front page, well, better bring a money hat.
Hahaha, as good of an idea as that is, I sadly do not.
A compaixão custa, sobretudo sincera, e em dias de chuva.
How is presenting facts vindictive? There would be no editorializing associated with it and only present information citable sources.
I don't cite the exclusives and the bad store and the high prices as much because I think they all fit under much broader concerns.
I would catch all those things with my more general concerns over the spectacular aggression while bringing nothing to the table. I can wait for the games to come on steam and not use their store. I'm not too worried about that. It's just bringing in this, yes, terrible aggression is highly off-putting to me.
Your whole strategy is to put steam users out? I don't like it when companies come in and start irresponsibly smashing things up. I don't want to use products that make me think of that.
But stop. There's something way worse been going on.
There's been a lot of social marketing. And by accident or design it has taken advantage of existing schisms that have formed across the gaming sphere as the hobby becomes further reaching and more inclusive. Taken advantage of the little blogosphere we call our press.
We have an extensive enthusiast press. Let's say you are into hunting, And you're reading a hunting magazine. You're getting your news and ads and reviews of hype new products (fake deer butt scent? I have no idea why I picked hunting for this analogy). You're also getting opinion pieces, features that are thinly-veiled product rollout, letters to the editor. It's enjoyable, it's light and digestible. Really fun reading when you're into a hobby. Enthusiast press. Hired geeks.
Hired geeks are all we have. It's a big business now with big money involved. And now there are these stripes of social change being entwined with the gaming culture. You'd think it would be time for more serious reporting, but mostly we just have this enthusiast press. Reporting is entwined with editorial. Platform oriented outlets sweetin and spin stories to coddle their audiences. Confirmation bias lends flagrantly biased authors a bed of manufactured credibility. By accident or design, this has been turned to epic's favor.
The pre-existing disdains for steam and PC gaming at large are one and the same; simple platform wars. Arguments over valve itself spark gnarly threads all around the internet every day. Criticism comes non-stop, usually in the form of specious arguments about curation or forum moderation. A lot of this comes from console gamers, because steam made PC the best console. Formerly apart from the platform waring, there has been an existing pre-egs undercurrent associating the significant subculture of bigotry that plagues all gaming to PC gamers in particular. By accident or design, these things have been brought into alignment in epics favor.
Look at the way American politics is discussed on social media now. Have a look. It's awful. It makes me retch. A lot of people act a certain predictable way now. The us president can seriously throw the whole world off his tail now by doing something even worse the next day and the day after that. Like clockwork. It exhausts people who care about the truth, it energizes people who don't, and it can be used to normalize bad actions in an accelerated way.
Speaking of normalization, I suppose that's just the way it is these days. It's just so ugly. It's at least an outright mean marketing campaign. Maybe even cruel if you look at how things have been going on era. And of course, we're at the ass end of it. Which doesn't feel too good.
I don't think it's a good idea, either. Here's what I'm thinking: sensible EGS skeptics will like it. But insane, death threatening mobs will LOVE it.
Imagine working on that and having it posted by bottom-dwelling harassers over and over again for years.
I would catch all those things with my more general concerns over the spectacular aggression while bringing nothing to the table. I can wait for the games to come on steam and not use their store. I'm not too worried about that. It's just bringing in this, yes, terrible aggression is highly off-putting to me.
Your whole strategy is to put steam users out? I don't like it when companies come in and start irresponsibly smashing things up. I don't want to use products that make me think of that.
But stop. There's something way worse been going on.
There's been a lot of social marketing. And by accident or design it has taken advantage of existing schisms that have formed across the gaming sphere as the hobby becomes further reaching and more inclusive. Taken advantage of the little blogosphere we call our press.
We have an extensive enthusiast press. Let's say you are into hunting, And you're reading a hunting magazine. You're getting your news and ads and reviews of hype new products (fake deer butt scent? I have no idea why I picked hunting for this analogy). You're also getting opinion pieces, features that are thinly-veiled product rollout, letters to the editor. It's enjoyable, it's light and digestible. Really fun reading when you're into a hobby. Enthusiast press. Hired geeks.
Hired geeks are all we have. It's a big business now with big money involved. And now there are these stripes of social change being entwined with the gaming culture. You'd think it would be time for more serious reporting, but mostly we just have this enthusiast press. Reporting is entwined with editorial. Platform oriented outlets sweetin and spin stories to coddle their audiences. Confirmation bias lends flagrantly biased authors a bed of manufactured credibility. By accident or design, this has been turned to epic's favor.
The pre-existing disdains for steam and PC gaming at large are one and the same; simple platform wars. Arguments over valve itself spark gnarly threads all around the internet every day. Criticism comes non-stop, usually in the form of specious arguments about curation or forum moderation. A lot of this comes from console gamers, because steam made PC the best console. Formerly apart from the platform waring, there has been an existing pre-egs undercurrent associating the significant subculture of bigotry that plagues all gaming to PC gamers in particular. By accident or design, these things have been brought into alignment in epics favor.
Look at the way American politics is discussed on social media now. Have a look. It's awful. It makes me retch. A lot of people act a certain predictable way now. The us president can seriously throw the whole world off his tail now by doing something even worse the next day and the day after that. Like clockwork. It exhausts people who care about the truth, it energizes people who don't, and it can be used to normalize bad actions in an accelerated way.
Speaking of normalization, I suppose that's just the way it is these days. It's just so ugly. It's at least an outright mean marketing campaign. Maybe even cruel if you look at how things have been going on era. And of course, we're at the ass end of it. Which doesn't feel too good.
I don't think it's a good idea, either. Here's what I'm thinking: sensible EGS skeptics will like it. But insane, death threatening mobs will LOVE it.
Imagine working on that and having it posted by bottom-dwelling harassers over and over again for years.
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Its better to ignore the known biased journalists and if a dev really messes up, it'll be remembered. Creating an app that logs every stupid thing a dev has said, maybe years and years and years in the past... sometimes its better to just let it go.
Crayon made an excellent point, just concentrating the information leads to shit. Example: There are disgusting, hateful and distributing places that feed off of a bot that logs all posts mad at, another, place. The bot is just a bot, collecting facts right from the source.
For what is worth, I too think it's a bad idea and way too similar to something that's already done in other communities I would rather not be associated with (they also think they have a good worthy reason behind it). As others have already pointed out, it could also be misused to harass people, most of whom have probably nothing to do with what's happening because the choice is made by a publisher or someone else in their team.
A list of "evil" journalists also feels wrong in soooo many ways.
In addition to that I also think it wouldn't be very useful, people against EGS are already informed enough to know what to avoid and those who don't care won't start caring due to a list found on the Internet.
Maniac
As the name suggests. The OG Maniac.
Hahaha, I'm still a backer, don't worry. But for the general gaming populace the feature creep of SC and the constant delays (and ridiculously long at that) of Squadron 42 is making everyone think it's somehow the most elaborate scam on earth, while in reality it's just Roberts acting as a producer and manager which aren't things he was ever good at; he's an optimist and very, very much a creative at heart. That's a financially dangerous coctail.
I've faith we'll get something great eventually though. So I wasn't trying to drive-by troll
It's true enough the relative revenue levels have been more or less the same, but the important thing to note is that the revenue is stable whilst the amount of games projects has increased vastly.
But it could be the same as we have going on with Steam and the general gaming landscape; dev is so easy and cheap to break into now that there's more good games than there's dollars in our pockets.
I think you guys are misunderstanding the intent and, more importantly, the actual functionality and feature set of what I am talking about here. Regardless, I won't mention it in this topic again so things don't get too offtrack.
I don't know about everyone else, but I'm open to talking about it a bit. I don't know much about your idea, after all. So far just heard the elevator pitch, and it gives me a knee-jerk "no!"
Unless you really don't want to talk about it. I'm just saying that I wasn't trying to tell you to get that out of here or anything like that and I'd totally hear you out.
The funny thing is that it doesn't matter what the devs think of the store UI and functionality. They aren't the ones searching for and buying the game there, I am. So if the store doesn't work like I want it to, or is a disorganized mess or whatever, I will not find their game there, or won't even bother looking for it. So yeah, they could be the most experienced devs of human history, but that won't make me use a store I don't want, or make it any easier for me to find the stuff I want.
And so are the influencers and enthusiast press.
They don't "experience" the Stores. They just get it all freshly delivered to them without any cost.
The same with searching for games. No big Influencer (YT or twitch) or gaming press person will open a store and look for a cool game to play. They either know what they are playing next, have a little support staff who do research, or especially for streamers, they interact with their fanbase and get bombarded with suggestions on what to play next.
Can you hack Shopping Cart into Epic Store?
You know since it has shared some of code with UE marketplace, what would happen if you used shopping cart from there?
Did this in one minute...
You know since it has shared some of code with UE marketplace, what would happen if you used shopping cart from there?
Did this in one minute...
Can you hack Shopping Cart into Epic Store?
You know since it has shared some of code with UE marketplace, what would happen if you used shopping cart from there?
Did this in one minute...
I've suspected that they're purposefully not putting the shopping cart in because they believe that seeing big numbers in the cart as your items add up psychologically dissuades you from making that big purchase. So they'd rather you buy individual games at a time thinking it'll trick you into spending more.
Hahaha, I'm still a backer, don't worry. But for the general gaming populace the feature creep of SC and the constant delays (and ridiculously long at that) of Squadron 42 is making everyone think it's somehow the most elaborate scam on earth, while in reality it's just Roberts acting as a producer and manager which aren't things he was ever good at; he's an optimist and very, very much a creative at heart. That's a financially dangerous coctail.
I've faith we'll get something great eventually though. So I wasn't trying to drive-by troll
It's true enough the relative revenue levels have been more or less the same, but the important thing to note is that the revenue is stable whilst the amount of games projects has increased vastly.
But it could be the same as we have going on with Steam and the general gaming landscape; dev is so easy and cheap to break into now that there's more good games than there's dollars in our pockets.
I really don't want to derail the thread. I'll just say that my opinion is that while CIG has amazing artists, engineers and even system designers, their game designers have yet to prove their mettle and, in my opinion, are failing every day they let shit like Hover mode past QA. Anything else will be a PM
.You make a good point about the amount of game projects but do you have any hard data to go with it? It's not that I don't believe you, it's that this is the kind of thing that can be very surprising.
YOu don'T liek Epic Gaem StorE/? WHat? YOu Liek Suport Monopolies oR somethin? I thouT U werE anti-Capitalist MAAAAN!!!
Reading the announcement from Double Damage back from December - the tone in this one is also almost crossing the line.
Aw man waiting for this game is going to be hard...
Aw man waiting for this game is going to be hard...
YOu don'T liek Epic Gaem StorE/? WHat? YOu Liek Suport Monopolies oR somethin? I thouT U werE anti-Capitalist MAAAAN!!!
I'm not even sure if it's funny or sad how many self-proclaimed "socalists" have been outed as perfomative twats by this whole charade.
I'vee seen so many people on ERA, Twitter etc. post "fuck capitalism" in one thread and then in an EGS one they'll argue how free market competition will lead to better, cheaper products and better working conditions, while the additional generated wealth will trickle down to the consumer and labourers as well.
Also, calling valves revenue share a "tax" which, apart from being whack, is a rethoric that only works if you believe that taxation is a bad thing.
Remember how games were supposed to be cheaper on EGS because of the smaller cut?
Really bad idea and nothing positive will come of it. No rational people will use that to help them make a decision but people will use it to justify harassment, You are making a big mistake if you think consumers who care dont know who they are consuming from, most dont care. use your skills
for exposing things that matter, games just are not that serious to potentially end up assisting in harassment campaigns even if you didnt plan on your app being used that way, some might say it was obvious and you could also be perceived as complicit and end up a potential target yourself.
Its just not worth it.
instead of amplifying negativity build an app showcasing devs with great relationships with consumers instead.
Epic is using an old school retail trick, people buy more when forced to browse.
Thats why retail stores are laid out in the worst way possible so you end up traversing the whole store, lol.
I think its just a skeleton team, and UI and UX is always low pri, compared to other things that are easier to map business impact to.
I imagine the egs as a truck full of money that continuously throws out some of that money to get new select passengers on board.
Also the truck is burning and driving through an oilfield and is leaving behind a flaming inferno and scorched earth.
Also the truck is burning and driving through an oilfield and is leaving behind a flaming inferno and scorched earth.
i'll just post this again:
remember how games were supposed to be cheaper in digital distribution because of the smaller cut?
that's actually a GREAT idea!
If you ask 10 different people what the 'problem' actually is, you'll get 10 different answers. And 10 different answers need 10 different solutions.
Yes, there probably are too many games being made to form a sustainable business for everyone making games; that to some extent is a self correcting problem, because people showing up thinking their retro inspired pixelart platform puzzler, backed by VC money, will be a huge success and that they can then sell off their business in a multi million dollar IPO and be a silicon valley millionaire... are in for a horrible, horrible, horrible surprise.
And yes, some of those people are going to shit talk valve on their way out for not making them as rich as they deserve to be in their heads.
There isn't actually any solution for people who are uninformed about the industry only having a cold dose of reality when it's too late; but you can exploit those people by telling them all of the mistakes they've made aren't their fault.
Look how much money that shop took!
Look at how many other products that shop sells!
Look at how that game that's extremely like yours did better than you did, but don't analyse the whys too closely!
Look at my store! Look how little money I take! Look at how fewer other games you're competing with! Look at this suitcase of money I will give you right now!
From a Customer standpoint, there are not too many games. There are still dozens of genres and subgenres who have untapped potentials or just wait for a revival.
Here are a few suggestions on games that are ripe for clones or reimaginings:
X3/X4
Factorio
Mount & Blade Warband
Victoria II
Aurora 4X
Eco
Supreme Ruler
World in Conflict
Port Royale
Anno
Nexus, the Jupiter Incident
Haegemonia
Homeworld
and many more.
but, you know, the millionth Metroidvania or 3d puzzler is easier.
You forgot Twinsen's Odyssey and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. I need more wacky action/adventure stuff and psychological horror masterpieces.
I mean, next X is being made, there are plenty 4X strategy games, Anno keeps getting sequels, Mount&Blade has a ton of mods/clones/expandalones and is getting a sequel, etc. Ok RTS are not doing so hot (but there are still various indie stuff). I love (good) metroidvanias and (good) pixel art, it's silly to generalize such traits as negative. It's not easy to make such (good) games, if some devs couldn't make a good one they'd fail at another game/genre for similar reasons.
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I mean, "its like this old game, but probably not as polished" isn't the type of game thats going to struggle to get attention from rose-tinted reviewers going through a pile of upcoming titles to signal boost in a way something new and weird probably is.
It's your Pathologics and your Solium Infernos that really need a light being shone, and the more click driven or console centric the reviewers get, the more important the discovery tools Valve are obviously spending a ton of time and money on become to help those bubble up.
It's your Pathologics and your Solium Infernos that really need a light being shone, and the more click driven or console centric the reviewers get, the more important the discovery tools Valve are obviously spending a ton of time and money on become to help those bubble up.
It is not about too few or too many. Or good and bad.
It is about choices and whiny devs who think Valve and customers owe them something.
If you tried to make a good World in Conflict clone or spiritual successor and you fail saleswise, yes you can rightfully be sad and angry. For all intents and purposes, it shouldn't have failed.
But if your Metroidvania fails? Who are you to criticize the Store or your Audience when there are hundreds of better games.
just look at Kenshi, Underrail, Stardew Valley, Age of Decadence, those titles didn't succeed because they looked pretty or had good, bugfree programming under the hood. They should have bombed, but they did not. Because they are delivering games to an untapped market.