News Epic Games Store

Ge0force

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RionaaM

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lol, WCCF at its best.
Reagan would be proud.
They had Unreal Tournament, but dumped that for Fort Nite. What other IP do they have? Jazz? Pinball?
Jill of the Jungle. But I'm way past the point of being excited for a potential new game. Same with Jazz, I don't care anymore.

I'll still do my annual playthroughs of the xmas episodes on December 24th, of course. Don't wanna hate on these fantastic games even if the dev is now trying to ruin PC gaming.
 
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Stone Ocean

Proud Degenerate
Apr 17, 2019
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It's interesting how the media is reporting the fact that Death Stranding isn't EGS exclusive as great news. Some even see it as a defeat for Epic:

The only reason that the Epic Store is still around at all is thanks to Fortnite, and that means Epic has become complacent
Really good article. Feels good to read something wrote by a person that doesn't care all that much about the EGS debacle but clearly understands why people dislike it without downplaying it at every opportunity.
 

Swenhir

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Really good article. Feels good to read something wrote by a person that doesn't care all that much about the EGS debacle but clearly understands why people dislike it without downplaying it at every opportunity.
It's not a terrible article but it still pushes misconceptions and things that are parroted without critical thinking. Case in point :

Say what you like for Steam, but the store is saturated with mediocre content.
Which is a rephrasing of "Steam is filled with asset flips". Between the discoverability tools and Steam's own algorithm, I never stumbled on those. The fact of the matter is that Steam has a massive library and that finding stuff in there is always going to be a challenge whereas Epic has the luxury of being a new marketplace, benefiting from the gold rush of both exposure, lack of competition for sales on the store and the moneyhats themselves.

At the end of the day, as we all know, those things are temporary and if the EGS had to live or die on its own merits, it'd have been under last month.

The article also doesn't address the elephant in the room that is the toxicity of exclusivity tactics for third parties on PC.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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Steam is saturated with garbage, but you won't see it if you don't want to see it. If you keep looking for it then it's your own damn fault that you trained the algorithm to show it to you.

That said, I think Valve could do more to train the algorithm. Even if it's a simple "You've played this for x hours, did you enjoy this game?" question every now and then might be a useful way of training the algorithm. Or even if the store lets you rank your top games ever, even ones that aren't on Steam, as a means of finding other things you may like. Though obviously all of that is a lot of work and we all know Valve does nothing hurr.
 
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Tizoc

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Saturation


A word I associate with 'excess'. There are trashy games on Steam but there are just as many if not far more worthwhile games on there.
Like some have said: if you look for shit and focus only on the shit, then you'll get shit.

But if you have a functioning brain, maybe just maybe if you use it, you can get to see what are popular action games on steam

(Search for Action Tag, then set it to top sellers)

Or what steam has found to be the more popular wishlisted games on the store are
(Scroll Down>Coming Soon>more>Top wishlists>See more)

Wanna know what are some popular new indies are?

Oh wait, those are titles you've already heard of? Well why not use this new Steam Lab feature-
Try your luck. Tweak it until it starts showing something more sensible.
Oh is it showing indie games that aren't lightcore porn, ecchi, and looks genuinely like a good indie game despite its pixel art look?
Well guess what 'game journalist', you just found out games you openly chose to ignore in the first place.
 

Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
Nov 2, 2018
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It's not a terrible article but it still pushes misconceptions and things that are parroted without critical thinking. Case in point :



Which is a rephrasing of "Steam is filled with asset flips". Between the discoverability tools and Steam's own algorithm, I never stumbled on those. The fact of the matter is that Steam has a massive library and that finding stuff in there is always going to be a challenge whereas Epic has the luxury of being a new marketplace, benefiting from the gold rush of both exposure, lack of competition for sales on the store and the moneyhats themselves.

At the end of the day, as we all know, those things are temporary and if the EGS had to live or die on its own merits, it'd have been under last month.

The article also doesn't address the elephant in the room that is the toxicity of exclusivity tactics for third parties on PC.
"Amazon is littered with mediocre content"
That might be true, but no-one is making a stink about it. Or their own hentai section (sex with dinosaurs / monster breeding section)
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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"Amazon is littered with mediocre content"
That might be true, but no-one is making a stink about it. Or their own hentai section (sex with dinosaurs / monster breeding section)
To be fair, Amazon tacitly approving knock offs of products is a legit problem. Buying SD cards and such is a minefield on there because there's a saturation of cowboys.
 

uraizen

Junior Member
Oct 7, 2018
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Steam is saturated with garbage, but you won't see it if you don't want to see it. If you keep looking for it then it's your own damn fault that you trained the algorithm to show it to you.

That said, I think Valve could do more to train the algorithm. Even if it's a simple "You've played this for x hours, did you enjoy this game?" question every now and then might be a useful way of training the algorithm. Or even if the store lets you rank your top games ever, even ones that aren't on Steam, as a means of finding other things you may like. Though obviously all of that is a lot of work and we all know Valve does nothing hurr.
I could see the frequency of which it's played being helpful too. "We've noticed you play _ nightly, so here are some other multiplayer games that are played often by others with similar taste." Even just being limited to multiplayer games would help.
 
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Swenhir

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And people frequently complain about the self-publishing/ebook market in particular becoming saturated with shit. It's actually pretty hard to parse through all the garbage isekai, teen romance, single mom romance, dime novel sci-fi type books on there at this point.
I know that wasn't your point but it's a thing that I find really encouraging on a basic level. People want to create, and by removing the barriers to entry that were being published and fitting in what a given editor and publishing house was looking for, their creations are out there. Sure, discoverability is, if anything, the problem of the decade in that regard. The basic fact that more people can earn a livelihood from writing and the newborn ebook platforms is still really cool, in my opinion.
 

Kyougar

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I know that wasn't your point but it's a thing that I find really encouraging on a basic level. People want to create, and by removing the barriers to entry that were being published and fitting in what a given editor and publishing house was looking for, their creations are out there. Sure, discoverability is, if anything, the problem of the decade in that regard. The basic fact that more people can earn a livelihood from writing and the newborn ebook platforms is still really cool, in my opinion.
I am active in the amateur writing scene and it boggles my mind how some seemingly random people and stories find "success" on Amazon. Fanfiction, Alternate History, Young Adult, Romance, and Sex are the biggest contributors. Even some Self-inserts are freaking doing OK, like the story of an Australian man finding himself in the body of Hitler.

There are 2 main talking points in the writing circles regarding Amazon:
1. Plagiarists are running rampant. Snatching hundreds of free stories and publishing them on Amazon under an Alias. Amazon is slow to react because the original Author has to come forward (and point to a forum post and say "thats me!"...) What is more infuriating: There could be 5 different Authors who claim a dozen stories from the plagiarist which amount to 20% of the total stories that the plagiarist publishes, butmany times Amazon isn't pulling the rest, they let the plagiarist continue to publish the remaining 80% that were not yet claimed.
2. Pulling free stories. Sometimes it is a requirement from the publisher if they have one instead of self-publishing, but sometimes even self-published authors pull the free stories from the forums and story sites. You don't make any friends with that and in 90% of the cases the Author will fall into irrelevance unless s/he had a published hit. The free-reading Audience will buy books from their favorite Author or spend money on Patreon but most will drop them like a hot potato if the Author doesn't conform to the free spirit.
 
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ISee

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Mar 1, 2019
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That's a problem. I'm not a fan of any game streamer. I'd look down on the ones promoting epic, but I don't know any. Even worse: I don't own an epic account anymore.
There is just no way I can participate. Sorry Epic. Nothing I can do.
 

NarohDethan

There was a fish in the percolator!
Apr 6, 2019
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That's a problem. I'm not a fan of any game streamer. I'd look down on the ones promoting epic, but I don't know any. Even worse: I don't own an epic account anymore.
There is just no way I can participate. Sorry Epic. Nothing I can do.
You can put Wario64 in there!
 
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Kyougar

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Nov 2, 2018
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That's a problem. I'm not a fan of any game streamer. I'd look down on the ones promoting epic, but I don't know any. Even worse: I don't own an epic account anymore.
There is just no way I can participate. Sorry Epic. Nothing I can do.
When Cohh played Outer Worlds, he often got the question if he had a link for the creator program so they could support him when they bought on Epic.
He then said he does, "BUT STOP! Don't use it! There is a better deal on MS Gamepass. Use that instead, I won't get any money but you will save 59 bucks."
 

Ge0force

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That's a problem. I'm not a fan of any game streamer. I'd look down on the ones promoting epic, but I don't know any. Even worse: I don't own an epic account anymore.
There is just no way I can participate. Sorry Epic. Nothing I can do.
When I discover that a streamer is being paid by the developer to praise a certain game, I will probably stop following him/her. In that case, there's no way to know if he actually likes it or not.

This is another one of Epic's ideas that benefits developers, but not us as consumers.
 

Swenhir

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I am active in the amateur writing scene and it boggles my mind how some seemingly random people and stories find "success" on Amazon. Fanfiction, Alternate History, Young Adult, Romance, and Sex are the biggest contributors. Even some Self-inserts are freaking doing OK, like the story of an Australian man finding himself in the body of Hitler.

There are 2 main talking points in the writing circles regarding Amazon:
1. Plagiarists are running rampant. Snatching hundreds of free stories and publishing them on Amazon under an Alias. Amazon is slow to react because the original Author has to come forward (and point to a forum post and say "thats me!"...) What is more infuriating: There could be 5 different Authors who claim a dozen stories from the plagiarist which amount to 20% of the total stories that the plagiarist publishes, butmany times Amazon isn't pulling the rest, they let the plagiarist continue to publish the remaining 80% that were not yet claimed.
2. Pulling free stories. Sometimes it is a requirement from the publisher if they have one instead of self-publishing, but sometimes even self-published authors pull the free stories from the forums and story sites. You don't make any friends with that and in 90% of the cases the Author will fall into irrelevance unless s/he had a published hit. The free-reading Audience will buy books from their favorite Author or spend money on Patreon but most will drop them like a hot potato if the Author doesn't conform to the free spirit.
That's horrifying to hear. How do you even figure out that you've been plagiarized? As for free, I kind of understand. You have to cultivate your initial audience, in other words?
 
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Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
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That's horrifying to hear. How do you even figure out that you've been plagiarized? As for free, I kind of understand. You have to cultivate your initial audience, in other words?
Most of the time users or other authors make a thread or contact the plagiarized authors directly. Some use crawlers or manually check the blurbs if they are the same, but other than that, I don't know how they find such plagiarists in the first place, Most of them will never be found probably (or in a timely manner)

Authors who want to make it big (but won't get a publishing deal for whatever reason) underestimate the amount of readers who read the stories years after the creation and think that having your most recent stories free until a specific point is the best of both worlds. Yes, the active community who read and comment on the stories are your most loyal followers, but they are most likely a fraction of the overall audience. you can't survive on the live-readers alone if you want to make it financially. If 90% of your story is behind a paywall, not many will buy it just to know what happens in the free section.

Just look at Wildbow. His first novel (1.7 million words) "Worm" was a moderate success when he wrote it weekly. But it only blew up a year or two after it finished. He is now the biggest western Web-novel writer and makes $5.000 to $10.000 a month just on his Patreon. Fanfiction for his first Novel Worm is blowing up for years, it basically took over the scifi Forums "Spacebattles" and "Sufficiant Velocity" It has one of the biggest novel story count on fanfiction.net, probably more than 95% more than the published novels.

Patreon could also be a good sounding board for game developers, if you have a tiny dedicated fanbase who is following your game, just make a Patreon instead of early access. Instead of getting a 1-time sale from your loyal fans, you could get monthly donations from them. Most people who pay people on patreon have the excess money and want to make sure that the thing the person is making, will get made, or more of it.


PS: read worm!
 

Swenhir

Spaceships!
Apr 18, 2019
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Most of the time users or other authors make a thread or contact the plagiarized authors directly. Some use crawlers or manually check the blurbs if they are the same, but other than that, I don't know how they find such plagiarists in the first place, Most of them will never be found probably (or in a timely manner)

Authors who want to make it big (but won't get a publishing deal for whatever reason) underestimate the amount of readers who read the stories years after the creation and think that having your most recent stories free until a specific point is the best of both worlds. Yes, the active community who read and comment on the stories are your most loyal followers, but they are most likely a fraction of the overall audience. you can't survive on the live-readers alone if you want to make it financially. If 90% of your story is behind a paywall, not many will buy it just to know what happens in the free section.

Just look at Wildbow. His first novel (1.7 million words) "Worm" was a moderate success when he wrote it weekly. But it only blew up a year or two after it finished. He is now the biggest western Web-novel writer and makes $5.000 to $10.000 a month just on his Patreon. Fanfiction for his first Novel Worm is blowing up for years, it basically took over the scifi Forums "Spacebattles" and "Sufficiant Velocity" It has one of the biggest novel story count on fanfiction.net, probably more than 95% more than the published novels.

Patreon could also be a good sounding board for game developers, if you have a tiny dedicated fanbase who is following your game, just make a Patreon instead of early access. Instead of getting a 1-time sale from your loyal fans, you could get monthly donations from them. Most people who pay people on patreon have the excess money and want to make sure that the thing the person is making, will get made, or more of it.


PS: read worm!
I'm looking at it and quite amazed at what happened to him. It's encouraging, thank you for the little story. The lesson you'd take from it if you want to try writing is that Patreon is the model to go with, I suppose? Worm seems interesting.
 

sk2k

Steam New Releases Warrior
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Lol Epic. It looks like that games in Early Access on EGS are not eligible for that suport-a-superstar-event-coupon. They stated that nowhere.
 

madjoki

👀 I see you
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The examples on the event page are about how much a creator gets for certain games.

The coupon does not work for Satisfactory or Subnautica Below Zero. EDIT: Maybe they count them as pre-purchases? Who knows.
Oh I misunderstood. I thougth you don't get coupon from those. Not that you can't use on them.
 
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Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
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I'm looking at it and quite amazed at what happened to him. It's encouraging, thank you for the little story. The lesson you'd take from it if you want to try writing is that Patreon is the model to go with, I suppose? Worm seems interesting.
Patreon is a great support model if you write and post continuously. It is basically like streaming in that regard. if you "show up" semi-regularly (and you are okay to good), you will have a dedicated fanbase who will financially support you,
Not so much if you write a novel for months/years and release it in one go. It is much better for serials/web-novels or novels you have finished but release it (bi)weekly while working on your next one.

And Worm is an Experience. It is the grimdark version of grimdark DC/MCU
 
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sk2k

Steam New Releases Warrior
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Bee Simulator is out tomorrow. I checked the EGS page for it. The publisher do not want anyone to buy the game? No gameplay video, short and meaningless description and screenshots that show nothing. Overpriced.
 
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MJunioR

MetaMember
Mar 13, 2019
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Bee Simulator is out tomorrow. I checked the EGS page for it. The publisher do not want anyone to buy the game? No gameplay video, short and meaningless description and screenshots that show nothing. Overpriced.
One of the few reviews (if not the only one) gave it a 2 / 10. Epic and Bigben probably will just pretend it doesn't exist once it launches.
 

Tizoc

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I have a feeling that this TGA, Dim Swiney and EGS will be getting acknowledged and rewarded.
My reaction to this will be a combination of
+


Let EGS have their rewards, pondering what games to get this Winter Seal is more important. Ain't got enough money or time for all these danged indies and AAA game pubs :sweaty-blob:
 

lashman

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Sep 5, 2018
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Bethesda Softworks has opened a new development studio, Roundhouse Studios, in Madison, Wis. Roundhouse Studios is staffed by the team from the recently closed Human Head Studios. Therefore, the studio will immediately begin work on unannounced projects at Bethesda.

Chris Rhinehart, Creative Director, Roundhouse Studios, said:

“Sadly, we had to wind down the business of Human Head Studios and close its doors. This was particularly devastating due to the passion and creativity of the team we’d assembled. We reached out to our friends at Bethesda for help, and they saw that same creativity and passion in our team. With the formation of Roundhouse Studios, Bethesda offered every employee of Human Head a position at the new company. We are excited our team will remain together, pursuing the work we love.”
As the press release reads, the developers at Roundhouse Studios represent more than two decades working together on a variety of games and genres. These genres include RPGs, shooters, action-adventure games, and more. Roundhouse Studios also has the original developers of Prey, something that may please some fans. Moreover, some of its devs have worked on Dead Man’s Hand, Rune 1 and 2, and Lost Within. Its devs have also contributed to blockbuster releases like Batman: Arkham Origins and BioShock Infinite.

Todd Vaughn, Senior Vice President of Development at Bethesda, added:

“While sorry to hear of their challenges as Human Head Studios, we were excited by the opportunity to bring under the Bethesda umbrella this talented, established development team. We are delighted that the entire staff will remain together and is now part of the Bethesda family.”
i'm very very confused right now o_O
 
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