News Epic Games Store

madjoki

👀 I see you
Sep 19, 2018
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Also enable-secret-features = yes reveals cart coming soon maybe :D


Also hate that Epic rounds achievement stats to full percent. no leak of owners.
 
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sanhora

Baldr Sky
Dec 7, 2018
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Why bother bringing back Alan Wake?

What has been crucial to Alan Wake's return, however, was Remedy taking control of the IP from Microsoft. In 2012, the developer was able to self-publish the game on Steam, and this immediately brought in a new audience and allowed the firm to have a direct relationship with its fans.

It also allowed Remedy to try things that a big company like Microsoft would struggle to see much value in doing.

"Having more freedom with your games allows you to do more of the grassroots work and slowly build the audience" Paloheimo explains. "That kind-of work takes a lot of time and effort, and the return might not seem significant enough to a big company.

"Steam was a big financial success for Alan Wake, but we also went with Nordic Game to do retail for [the PC version of] Alan Wake. And they were also doing 20 or 30 different digital stores that we did not manage. We saw all of those small streams come together to become a river, and it kept growing from there. It took a lot of time and effort, and to Microsoft that would have been too much work for too little return."

Puha adds: "There wouldn't be an Alan Wake without Microsoft. It is completely understandable for bigger companies to move on to the next thing. That's a very different view from our end, where it really is ours and we are ok that the revenue streams are small."
Remedy has ownership of Alan Wake, but the company isn't self-publishing this one. In fact, it is one of the first games to come out of Epic Games' new publishing division.

"It was in 2019 when we got the final piece of the publishing rights back, and that was when we felt we could pursue this remaster," Paloheimo says. "We knew Hector [Sanchez, head of Epic Games Publishing], before he joined Epic. We had a relationship there, and we got a heads-up on the publishing initiative. We contacted him and said 'how about we do something together with Alan Wake?'

"How they view creative studios and talent, and their different approach to publishing, really resonated with us. It was something that we wanted to support and be part of."

Puha says: "At that stage Epic Games Publishing was mostly just Hector. So we were very aware that we were jumping in while they were still building that operation. But the initial meeting went so well. Instead of the deal taking six months, I think the high-level details were thrashed out in weeks."
Seems like it was Remedy that approached Epic.
 
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Jav

Question everything, learn nothing
Sep 17, 2019
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Yup, various parties involved were interested in doing more Alan Wake stuff with Remedy but Remedy looked for Epic almost from the get-go
 
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madjoki

👀 I see you
Sep 19, 2018
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Unlock popup is cooler than Steams. (Seems to be copy of Xbox)
Although it takes way too much space and hides large area from center of screen,
which will be annoying, when it popups during gameplay or cutscene.
 
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Ruvon

Chaotic writer
May 15, 2019
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cabinetdechaologie.wordpress.com
I'm wondering : what about the achievements for the games already on both stores ? And future games that will release on Steam and EGS ?

If devs wants to make the same achievements on both stores, they'll have to comply to EGS rules, otherwise it could mean each version will have its own achievements system.

It limits the achievements to 200 (200 x 5 XP min) so what about games that have more than that ? Ok, it would affect a limited amount of games, but still.
 

ExistentialThought

Coffee Lover ♥☕
Feb 29, 2020
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Yeah, that notification is way too big and distracting, especially with the glow around it. If it was half the size and had no glow, it might not be too bad, but they should allow folks to have the notification elsewhere on the screen (and I assume they would allow it to be shut off).



I mentioned before that Steam could dust off their achievement system. Adding global and per game settings to disable achievements entirely, notification w/ sound, notification w/o sound, no notification (though still earn in the background). Change where the notification is displayed. They could also add options to automatically take a screenshot when an achievement is unlocked. Use custom or developer achievement sounds and/or notifications (i.e. a developer could add a spooky sound for a horror game or Steam could allow the notification box to be modified in simple ways like color/font/etc.).

As far as adding an XP/award for achievements, I think it is mostly sailed ship that would be hard to retroactively add. Plus SAM exists, so it would be trivially easy for folks to just game the system. Even Epic's should be possible to circumvent if folks really want to. A lot of games have easy ways to trigger progress. It just remains the question of whether they will ban folks for it.
 
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Dinjoralo

None shall remember those who do not fight.
Dec 6, 2018
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I wouldn't be surprised if Steam started updating their achievement stuff sometime around/after the Deck launches, to correspond with Big Picture's overhaul, and possibly the Desktop overlay since that's the last major thing still in VGUI besides the settings window.
 
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meschio94

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Morten88

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Mark my word, they now will try to use EOS like a trojan horse, for data and to gain userbase from some steam games that use EOS, in future they will mandate an EGS account

All the third party launcher to bypass EGS will be cut off in a way or another, but they will never expose themself against it, because they can't afford other bad pr on pc
Sadly you are probably right, i guess i will miss out on many games in the future, cause i will never make an epic account.
 
Dec 5, 2018
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The replies are about as braindead as you'd expect
Against my better judgement I decided to read them.

And there's one argument (from the EGS defenders) that I've never understood. The "The other guy was there before". If a new competitor, in say the car industry, were to appear tomorrow and they released a car that looked and felt like it was from the 50s (and it had the features of a car from the time) nobody in their right mind would accept the argument "the other guys have been at it for longer so we're playing catch up" as a valid answer.
 

gabbo

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Dec 22, 2018
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Against my better judgement I decided to read them.

And there's one argument (from the EGS defenders) that I've never understood. The "The other guy was there before". If a new competitor, in say the car industry, were to appear tomorrow and they released a car that looked and felt like it was from the 50s (and it had the features of a car from the time) nobody in their right mind would accept the argument "the other guys have been at it for longer so we're playing catch up" as a valid answer.
The Tesla Model T - pulled by a team of horses!
I wanted to reply to those people as well, but lack the twitter to do so, with basically that exact same argument. If a company comes into an established market lacking even basic features for that market, it's on them for not being prepared at launch, not a negative on established companies for having put in the work. All other launchers have been compared to what Steam was when that client launched, EGS is no different and deserves no special treatment just because their CEO is an overpromising loudmouth on social media.
 
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Wok

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Not surprising from Randy. :toucan:

I love his way of thinking:
1) I have been a licensee of Unreal engine,
2) and a retail publisher of Fortnite (???!)
3) thus I know a lot about Epic,
4) which brings to the conclusion that Steam could be "dying" in 10 years.

:lul:

Anyway, that was in 2019, and it is funny when you put it next to the achievement system which has come 2 years and a half later! Only 7 years left!
 
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thekeats1999

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Dec 10, 2018
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Half-way-ish reminder

Another one of those threads that I should never read. It just gets worse and worse. It comes across as more a justification of there (at the time) upcoming exclusivity deals.

I find it so funny when he speaks of how trustworthy Epic is and yet the recent courtcase shows that they are quite happy to blow contracts out of the water if it suits there bottom line.

I am going to have a cup of tea and some biscuits now to help me calm down.
 
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Arc

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I'm guessing Dead by Daylight will be a freebie in the near future. It makes sense since the Apple documents showed it was one of the games they were looking to acquire for a giveaway.
 

morningbus

taskmaster
Dec 8, 2018
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Nioh is free on EGS
Not today. Not ever. Not even on the Heroic launcher.

There is nothing that Epic can slide through the bars of this cell to grease these locked gears. No tchotchke they can dangle in front of me to convince me my captors are benign. These scraps that fall from their maw as they masticate on the very sinew of a decent and just society are worth less to me than the dirt from underneath my cuticles, filthy from clawing back towards sanity and dignity.

All the while their jackal fingies swish to and fro like long stalks of corn in a Midwestern field, uncaring to the plight of the people whose very lives depend upon it.
 

Jav

Question everything, learn nothing
Sep 17, 2019
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Not today. Not ever. Not even on the Heroic launcher.

There is nothing that Epic can slide through the bars of this cell to grease these locked gears. No tchotchke they can dangle in front of me to convince me my captors are benign. These scraps that fall from their maw as they masticate on the very sinew of a decent and just society are worth less to me than the dirt from underneath my cuticles, filthy from clawing back towards sanity and dignity.

All the while their jackal fingies swish to and fro like long stalks of corn in a Midwestern field, uncaring to the plight of the people whose very lives depend upon it.
Mood
 
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Arc

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Did they run out of money, new free stuff isn't that great
The free games are certainly lower profile this year compared to 2020. Of course, it's impossible to top something like GTA 5. Here's a list of games Epic gave away in 2020 and in 2021 (so far). There have been 57 games given away this year so far while there were 75 at this point last year.

Maybe the Google trial will leak some new documents and we can see how much they're spending on exclusives and giveaways nowadays. :upside-down-face:
 
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yuraya

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May 4, 2019
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Half-way-ish reminder


The funniest thing about this take is that over the past 3 years the stuff Valve has done with Alyx, SteamVR, Proton and Deck is more impressive than anything Epic has done with Fortnite/EGS. imo. So whatever bullshit he is talking about in terms of technology investment isn't there.

Even Unreal hasn't been all that impressive as of late. In fact the last time I played an UE game that blew me away visually was Arkham Knight 6 years ago. And that was a large + talented team at Rocksteady more than anything else.
 

gabbo

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Dec 22, 2018
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The funniest thing about this take is that over the past 3 years the stuff Valve has done with Alyx, SteamVR, Proton and Deck is more impressive than anything Epic has done with Fortnite/EGS. imo. So whatever bullshit he is talking about in terms of technology investment isn't there.

Even Unreal hasn't been all that impressive as of late. In fact the last time I played an UE game that blew me away visually was Arkham Knight 6 years ago. And that was a large + talented team at Rocksteady more than anything else.
But Epic took on the monolithic Apple and has created an entire Metaverse! Think of the implications of those two things!
Think of them!
 
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Phoenix RISING

A phoenix always RISES!
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The funniest thing about this take is that over the past 3 years the stuff Valve has done with Alyx, SteamVR, Proton and Deck is more impressive than anything Epic has done with Fortnite/EGS. imo. So whatever bullshit he is talking about in terms of technology investment isn't there.

Even Unreal hasn't been all that impressive as of late. In fact the last time I played an UE game that blew me away visually was Arkham Knight 6 years ago. And that was a large + talented team at Rocksteady more than anything else.
Yeah, Steam Deck is probably gonna put Valve on the map in ways we've yet to see, if the Switch's popularity is any indication.

That's an ice-cold take, but he's transitioning out of that role.
 
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Arc

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Some rare information about the number of copies claimed for a free game. Troy Total War had 7.5 million redemptions in the first 24 hours, but that was an outlier since it was a brand new game and was only available for a day. Also I think Star Wars Battlefront had 19 million copies redeemed while Among Us had 15 million copies in a week.
 

Arsene

On a break
Apr 17, 2019
3,271
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Some rare information about the number of copies claimed for a free game. Troy Total War had 7.5 million redemptions in the first 24 hours, but that was an outlier since it was a brand new game and was only available for a day. Also I think Star Wars Battlefront had 19 million copies redeemed while Among Us had 15 million copies in a week.
Should be noted Epic owns the publishers of this game, which is probably why we got numbers for it.
 
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ExistentialThought

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The sad thing is, I don't think he's joking about world domination.
Honestly, I do not think he is joking in some sense...

Everyone trying to create their METAVERSE™ are hoping they will have a captive audience of folks within an ecosystem they own, control, and profit from. Facebook, Epic, and others can spin it as something empowering content creators, providing a virtual world we can all come together and connect, and whatever other feel good explanation. Ultimately, the goals are to ensure folks spend their time and money within their world. Sure, it is not as glamourous as actual world domination, but it is far more feasible of a goal I suppose haha.

How anyone could have looked at something like Ready Player One, consider the dystopian reality of the metaverse, and still think it is a good idea to strive towards, is beyond me. Then again, I have long since realized the problem with something like Bethesda's horse armor wasn't that it was $5 dollars for cosmetic content in a single player game, it was that it was not $20 dollars, turned your horse into Epona, sold for a limited time, and able to be shown off to others. Given this, I suppose the prospect is too good for these companies to concern themselves with whether they should, rather how they should.

(BTW Ready Player One was terrible :fingergunsblob:)
 
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xinek

日本語が苦手
Apr 17, 2019
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Honestly, I do not think he is joking in some sense...

Everyone trying to create their METAVERSE™ are hoping they will have a captive audience of folks within an ecosystem they own, control, and profit from. Facebook, Epic, and others can spin it as something empowering content creators, providing a virtual world we can all come together and connect, and whatever other feel good explanation. Ultimately, the goals are to ensure folks spend their time and money within their world. Sure, it is not as glamourous as actual world domination, but it is far more feasible of a goal I suppose haha.
[...]
I'm disappointed in myself for not seeing this coming -- the Epic store catering to publishers/developers instead of end users was a glaring symptom. Can't wait to see the end result of this metaverse made for game peddlers and influencers. It's pretty dystopian, really.
 
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Alextended

Segata's Disciple
Jan 28, 2019
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Did CliffyB ever publicly discuss why he left?
Had nothing bad to say about Tim. But it's also clear he wasn't in on Epic's then new direction (yet on his comeback tried to make a gaas too, times change).
Cliff Bleszinski, Epic’s protégée game maker and the face of the popular Gears of War franchise, had grown frustrated with the development process for retail games. Jaded about the game industry and recently flush with cash, he had simply stopped going to work at Epic.

“I tried to renegotiate my contract and we couldn’t come to terms,” Bleszinski says. “A lot of jadedness happened. I was so fed up with the development process. I felt like I needed to retire.”

Bleszinski, who started working at Epic when he was 17, retreated to his beach house along the shores of North Carolina, seemingly stuck between his desire to make games and an increasing sense of unhappiness.

“Tim Sweeney called one day and said that we needed to talk,” Bleszinski says. “I told him that I was down at the coast and he said, ‘I’m down here too.’”

Sweeney came, but not as Bleszinski’s boss and not to antagonize him. He came as a concerned friend.

“He’s always been a big brother to me,” Bleszinski says. “We went for a stroll on the beach at night. He told me where Epic was going and said, ‘You either need to call it or get back to work.’”

Bleszinski says he slept on it: “The next day I woke up and wrote my resignation letter.”

Despite being a sort of phoenix, a company fueled by semiregular immolation, reinventing itself each time to become something bigger and better, Epic still seemed to stagger a bit under the most recent evolution.

Bleszinski says money was certainly involved in his ultimate decision to leave.

“I sold a bunch of stock and had a bunch of money,” he says. Faced with his own burnout surrounding the process of making games and the upcoming shift from making boxed games to creating “living products,” Bleszinski says he decided to leave.
 

Niosai

Guy Who Just Found Out This Place Exists Today
Oct 14, 2021
7
8
3

Unlock popup is cooler than Steams. (Seems to be copy of Xbox)
Although it takes way too much space and hides large area from center of screen,
which will be annoying, when it popups during gameplay or cutscene.
I'm actually really digging that notification bubble. Super clean.
 

Arc

MetaMember
Sep 19, 2020
2,644
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The top sellers list updated for the first time since October 4. Far Cry 6 is #1 and AAA games like B4B and Battlefield are near the top. Honestly the most interesting thing is that the Kingdom Hearts games seemed to jump up quite a bit. I wonder if Sora being announced for Smash Bros helped boost their sales.

The most popular games list is a bit more interesting. PC Building Simulator overtook Rocket League as the most played (non-Fortnite) game on the platform. We know 4 million copies were redeemed in the first 24 hours (not the same as 4 million players though), so it must be pretty popular.
 

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
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The top sellers list updated for the first time since October 4. Far Cry 6 is #1 and AAA games like B4B and Battlefield are near the top. Honestly the most interesting thing is that the Kingdom Hearts games seemed to jump up quite a bit. I wonder if Sora being announced for Smash Bros helped boost their sales.
Both Sora Smash and a Sale that just ended, yes.
TWEWY is MIA tho, confirming once again that NEO bombs everywhere.