News Epic Games Store

ISee said:
What people really mean when they say "I have the right to not buy" is: I don't have an obligation to buy a game.
Independent of its quality, of the financial risk the studio is in, the amount of passion that was put into it, the political inclusiveness, the message or my love for the franchise/studio.
As you said: Does the game interest me (for whatever reason) and am I fine with the circumstances around the game are the only two important factors here.
And yes if Epic would be buying game ideas and help to develop them from day one, this thread would not be as big as it is. But they aren't and they've stated many times that it's their right to buy games as exclusives, no matter how close to release it is. So naturally people answer with, it's my right to not buy it though. It's kind of a good answer to a provocation, because nobody was saying that Epics doings are illegal, they are just shitty. They just came out with this typical, smart-ass answer of: But it's not illegal, you can complain but not stop us. It's a bit childish.

I don't know how fair it is to go down on specific semantics like "having rights to buy or not" tbh. The message behind those words is very easy and clear to understand.
"Your actions might be legal, but you won't force me to buy the game from the store I dislike".
It's good enough of a statement to make imo.
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Ah fair enough, they are entitled to that then.
I misworded my post as I never considered it as a right for me myself. Sorry if my initial response to it came off rude or such.

goat said:
I'm not. If I was, I'd be blunt about it like "fuck that artsy fartsy indie game". I don't dance around and try to hide agendas in my words. I know we are used to places that do that, so no harm, no foul. My entire point, which looks like your point too (just worded differently) is don't whine about not making money or try to place blame on consumers or Steam.
Click to expand...
On that final part we can agree yes.
This is the risk any indie dev has to deal with on Steam and they just need to realize that already, but alas there are those who do not.
 
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Oheao That's what i do, it's the one thing EGSclusives are good for is making sure when the game is released properly next year it'll be a lot more polished. However, I wouldn't bet against someone high-up drafting some new rule to stop devs releasing the game to steam with any bug-fixes made during EA. Given how petty EGS management are it just would not surprise me.
 
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Oheao said:
You guys should just view the EGS period as the beta testing. They make sure all the bugs are fixed and changes are made before the Steam release!
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I see it as a black hole. I'm not supporting devs working with Epic to establish 3rd party exclusivity deals as the norm on pc, so any games involved are move to my blacklist permanently. Devs or publishers lying or being an ass about the exclusivity deal will be blacklisted completely.

I mean, I have dozens of great games in my backlog, and over 200 games on my wishlist. I see no reason to spend my money on stuff I don't like.
 
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If games sold better on Epic over Steam, we'd know about it. Everyone would know about it, Timmy and Sergy would be tweeting non stop about it. PCgamer and the like would have articles every day about the extraordinary success of genre-defining games like Closer to the Sun (Remember that one? Lol, no one does) and Ashen.

The funny thing is morons like this guy really think the fact that Epic are massively subsidising games is the new normal Eating every sale from their we will never have sales sale, spamming massive streaming campaigns for only a select few games will happen for everyone from now on etc... Yet to see any evidence that WWZ sold anymore than it would have on steam, it sold about 1/3rd PC and 1/3 each on the consoles, like most co-op multiplayer games do nowadays. What a success! Outside of Satisfactory's doubtful claims, no other Epic sell out has said a thing, the silence is deafening.

The only way this game sells a million copies is if Timmy buys them all. They poisoned the well with MWO and have now drained the rest with their blatant epic lies.
 
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EdwardTivrusky said:
Oheao That's what i do, it's the one thing EGSclusives are good for is making sure when the game is released properly next year it'll be a lot more polished. However, I wouldn't bet against someone high-up drafting some new rule to stop devs releasing the game to steam with any bug-fixes made during EA. Given how petty EGS management are it just would not surprise me.
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That would be nearly impossible to enforce, and wouldn't put Epic in a good light with devs, the very people they're throwing money at.
They've basically lost the consumer battle or at least have but are still acting as if it's a fight to save face. They lose devs with ridiculous demands, even money won't save their flailing store.
 
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Oh sure, they'd be mad to do it but they're probably being held back by their lawyers. The cynic in me just wouldn't be surprised if they had planned to try it later this year when the first egsclusive is allowed to be set free to roam the world outside of it's walled garden.
 
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Just kinda copying this from an Era thread, though I imagine all this was posted and figured out already;
Dinjoralo said:

...

It's also been mentioned that this is how games are added, as well. It's a manual process that can only be done a few times a week. Same with pushing updates to games, meaning they have to choose between spending time putting games on their servers, pushing updates, and now, adding cloud saves to a game.

This is probably part of why Epic goes for exclusive games, because they don't have a functional backend that can let them keep up with even just AAA releases.
Click to expand...
 
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Dinjoralo said:
This is probably part of why Epic goes for exclusive games, because they don't have a functional backend that can let them keep up with even just AAA releases.
Click to expand...

I don't think it is a backend problem. I think it is Epic making sure the operating costs stay minimal by limiting the use of cloud saves.

They have a stance opposite to Valve: if a dev wants something, he has to ask them. Some devs do not want reviews (because they think reviews are dumb), or forums (because of harassment), or cloud saves (I mean, even on Steam, some devs do not use cloud saves), etc. Valve gives them everything because they do not want to manually deal with devs' requests ; Epic gives them the barebone features because they work with a minimal store cut and a small store.

Moreover, I don't believe that Epic aims at growing too big. They do not sell their own games on their store. Why? Because of discoverability. So far, one of the selling points of the store (aside from the 12% cut) is that the games are showcased in the news section, or featured on the main store page, and selling their games would decrease the visibility of third-party games.

I would not be surprised if games were removed from the EGS after some amount of time: owners would be able to download them, but the games would not clutter the store page. Maybe the games could be sold on the dev's website with a widget as Humble does.
 
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They may move on to Dreamweaver when they need the flexibility and ease of use later on.
Oh god, Dreamweaver broke my brain, it's all coming back to me now. Well, the sheer bewilderment of trying to quickly throw together a web-page when you're a scripter/sysadmin type.

Open dreamweaver, click menus aimlessly, get confused, close dreamweaver, open Notepad++ or Scite.
 
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Deques said:
I still wonder what kind of work this manual process consist of.
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Well... with Sweeney saying that "usually doesn’t require developers to update their games. "... is it possible that means, for cloud saves, that they are adding the save location by hand for each game on their system instead of making a general use API?

That can't be it.. can it? It would be incredibly stupi.... I mean, shortsighted to make things work this way.

On the other hand... they are probably quite desperate to have the basic functionality in place for the Borderlands 3 launch....
 
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EdwardTivrusky said:
Oh god, Dreamweaver broke my brain, it's all coming back to me now. Well, the sheer bewilderment of trying to quickly throw together a web-page when you're a scripter/sysadmin type.
Click to expand...

Ah, the time when MVC model is still relatively new and everyone still cobbling together bits of javascript, flash video and php all in one page. What a time.

tenor.gif
 
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Blair Witch preorders just got pulled from GOG and everyone who preordered got refunded.

""We regret to inform you that the DRM-free version of Blair Witch won't be released on GOG.COM on the global release day. We expect it to be available later in 2019. As such, we’re refunding your pre-order purchase of the game. The refund will be issued within the next couple of days to the original payment method." "

Possible EGS exclusive? Or maybe they're adding denuvo at launch.
 
Ryna said:
Blair Witch preorders just got pulled from GOG and everyone who preordered got refunded.

""We regret to inform you that the DRM-free version of Blair Witch won't be released on GOG.COM on the global release day. We expect it to be available later in 2019. As such, we’re refunding your pre-order purchase of the game. The refund will be issued within the next couple of days to the original payment method." "

Possible EGS exclusive? Or maybe they're adding denuvo at launch.
Click to expand...

well if they're saying "later in 2019" then it's probably denuvo or something .... i very much doubt Tim couldn't afford full 12 months for this game ... it's not exactly a AAA behemoth
 
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Can they not invest some ... money into their store development? What the hell is wrong with Epic? If you want me, dear Tim, please give me a reason to come/return to your eggsclusive shop. Just a hint, it's not the exclusives.
 
3.5% requested a refund for Mech 5, when yesterdays AMA started.
According to this guy (Dirty Devs: Mech 5 EGS Rant by SidAlpha) the number is now more like 20% (probably even more) and rising.
Won't stop the deal, but it's a good beginning and an interesting message: At least 20% of your audience won't buy if you go EGS exclusive.


Based on this I've "programmed" a quick Excel Sheet to do some Math:

Estimated Sale Numbers: 1.200.000
Product Price: $59.99
Steam Target Audience: 100%
EGS Target Audience: 80%

If I'm understanding Valves new "share/cut" policy correctly they take 30% from the first $10 mill, than 25% from $10-50 mill and just 20% after $50 mill

Valve

"1.200.000 estimate"Number of UnitsRevenueValve ShareDeveloper Share
30% cut166.694$10.000.000$3.000.000
$7.000.000
25% cut833.472$50.000.000$12.500.000$37.500.000
20% cut199.833$11.998.000$2.397.600$9.590.400
Total1.200.000$71.988.000$17.897.600$54.090.400


EPIC

"1.200.000, 20% ignore estimate"Number of UnitsRevenueEpic ShareDeveloper Share
Total960.000$57.590.400$6.910.848$50.679.522

EPIC should pay you $3.410.848

Let's spin this further

Estimated Sale Numbers: 2.000.000
Product Price: $59.99
Steam Target Audience: 100%
EGS Target Audience: 80%

Valve

"2.000.000" estimateNumber of Units Rev.ShareDev
30% cut166.69410.000.000 €3.000.000 €7.000.000 €
25% cut833.47250.000.000 €12.500.000 €37.500.000 €
20% cut999.83359.980.000 €11.996.000 €47.984.000 €
Total2.000.000119.980.000 €27.496.000 €92.484.000 €

Epic

"2 mill estimate, but 20% will ignore"Number of UnitsTotal Rev.ShareDev
Total
1.600.000​
95.984.000 €​
11.518.080 €​
84.465.920 €​

Epic should pay you 8.018.080€ so you can break even.


But I think you'll loose more than just 20% of your target audience if you go EGS exclusive. Maybe I'm overshooting, but 40% could be realistic. So let's take that.

Estimated Sale Numbers: 1.200.000
Product Price: $59.99
Steam Target Audience: 100%
EGS Target Audience: 60%

Valve

"1.200.000 estimate"
Number of Units​
Rev.​
Share​
Dev​
30% cut​
166.694​
10.000.000 €​
3.000.000 €​
7.000.000 €​
25% cut​
833.472​
50.000.000 €​
12.500.000 €​
37.500.000 €​
20% cut​
199.833​
11.988.000 €​
2.397.600 €​
9.590.400 €​
Total​
1.200.000​
71.988.000 €​
17.897.600 €​
54.090.400 €​

Epic

"1.200.000, but 40% ignore"Total Rev.ShareDev
Total
720.000​
43.192.800 €​
5.183.136 €​
38.009.664 €​

Epic should pay you 16.080.736€ to break even.

At 2 million Epic should pay you 29.134.560€


Maybe I did something wrong with my Excel Sheet, I'm not claiming 100% accuracy here. I did this in 10ish minutes. But if you have a good game, like Mechwarrior 5, you better negotiate hard because going EGS exclusive might cost you 16-30 million bucks.
No matter your share, costumers not buying equals $0. And if you burn enough people, there is no coming back.
 
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also - it's funny (and so ironic) that people are now complaining about this bethnet account stuff in DOOM
(for those who don't know - you HAVE TO create and log into bethnet account when playing DOOM and DOOM2 on the switch otherwise it won't let you past the login screen)

someone should just go into every thread where people are complaining about that and post:
"i don't see what the big deal is ... it's just another account ... it's not like you have to buy a new console to play the game"

:smirking-face:
 
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lol yeah (and a comment like that would probably get us banned), that really is hypocrisy. It just betrays the bias in those kinds of people. Now, if someone's mad at EGS and these other games requiring an account, then that's genuine but if these same people defend EGS then that's obviously hypocritical bullshit.
 
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lashman said:
also - it's funny (and so ironic) that people are now complaining about this bethnet account stuff in DOOM
(for those who don't know - you HAVE TO create and log into bethnet account when playing DOOM and DOOM2 on the switch otherwise it won't let you past the login screen)

someone should just go into every thread where people are complaining about that and post:
"i don't see what the big deal is ... it's just another account ... it's not like you have to buy a new console to play the game"

:smirking-face:
Click to expand...

Please do it! But it is funny that they complain about that. Hell I wouldn't have such big issue with epic if that was all there was to it, meaning I buy a game on steam and then have to log into an epic account for the game, for some reason.
 
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Ge0force said:
Hilarious :D

I've read a tldr of the AMA, and it seems one of the major reason why he took the exclusivity deal is that Epic has data to prove that EGS exclusives sell even better than their sales projections for Steam.

No doubt Epic is only talking about games like Satisfactory and WWZ, but still, this proves my point that I was trying to make yesterday: by buying games in Epic's Store, you are actually helping Epic to succeed with their moneyhatting strategy, resulting in even more exclusivity deals!
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Actually I'm pretty sure he's talking about Metro Exodus "outselling" Last Light, which would be insanely hilarious considering how fudged and out of context that claim even is lmao
 
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Nabs said:
Good luck to Piranha. I don't know how Tim convinced them that they'd sell as well, or even better on EGS.
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might've been because MWO isn't exactly setting the steam charts on fire

but that's mostly their fault anyway ... not only is the game pretty shit, but they also put it on steam like 3 years after it came out (and you know what they say about online games that come to steam years after release)
 
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Nabs said:
Good luck to Piranha. I don't know how Tim convinced them that they'd sell as well, or even better on EGS. Listening to the AMA was really rough. I hope the deal was a good one.
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What's insane is that they seem to believe the game will reach 1 million sold copies. Unless they are including inclusions in a humble bundle one day or whatever, it's a straight up delusional sales target for this title.
 
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Nabs said:
Good luck to Piranha. I don't know how Tim convinced them that they'd sell as well, or even better on EGS. Listening to the AMA was really rough. I hope the deal was a good one.
Click to expand...

The fact that this guy claims that going EGS exclusive will give his game more exposure than a multistore release, proves how full of shit he is. Piranha joins Annapurna, Deep Silver, Private Division and Raw Fury on my blacklist.

 
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BernardoOne said:
What's insane is that they seem to believe the game will reach 1 million sold copies. Unless they are including inclusions in a humble bundle one day or whatever, it's a straight up delusional sales target for this title.
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He was so confident that every bit of this decision made sense. Not even a bit of doubt in his voice. I need to know what kind of magic Tim has.

The fact he was so sure he could sell a milly got me wondering if Tim even had to offer him that much.
 
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BernardoOne said:
What's insane is that they seem to believe the game will reach 1 million sold copies. Unless they are including inclusions in a humble bundle one day or whatever, it's a straight up delusional sales target for this title.
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I mean, think of all the kids playing Fortnite (on mobile). There's at least 3 million of them just waiting to buy Mechwarrior.
 
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Nabs said:
He was so confident that every bit of this decision made sense. Not even a bit of doubt in his voice. I need to know what kind of magic Tim has.

The fact he was so sure he could sell a milly got me wondering if Tim even had to offer him that much.
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It's crazy. It's a franchise that has been dead for almost two decades. The most harcore fans of the franchise already bought the preorder, and they only ammounted to 20K sales. And they're now pissing off a significant portion of these 20K. How the fuck this dude thinks he'll get the other 920K sales? The magical EGS visibility hasn't managed to do that even once, not even with games like WWZ that are ub a very popular genre.
 
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BernardoOne said:
It's crazy. It's a franchise that has been dead for almost two decades. The most harcore fans of the franchise already bought the preorder, and they only ammounted to 20K sales. And they're now pissing off a significant portion of these 20K. How the fuck this dude thinks he'll get the other 920K sales? The magical EGS visibility hasn't managed to do that even once, not even with games like WWZ that are ub a very popular genre.
Click to expand...

i wonder if it was Tim who actually promised them they'll sell 1 million copies or something ....

because if that's the sort of bullshit he's peddling to all the devs/publishers then no wonder everyone is jumping on the bandwagon
 
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Nostradamus
  • Index
    • What I'm not convinced of is if the developers and publishers fully realize how taking the Epic deal taints the eventual Steam release.

    In most cases, you'll be launching a year later and would be crazy to launch at full price. You may have also killed interest in your game as a year is just too long to wait and people will have moved in.

    Fully expect PC Gamer to run articles about how all these games end up with terrible Steam launch numbers and watch them pivot to saying the Epic deal was justified. The PR spin on this will always be on Sweeney's side.

    For real, bookmark this post and come back a week after Metro launches on Steam. I'll gladly accept my insider-exclusive verified check mark.
     
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  • Index
    • morningbus said:
    What I'm not convinced of is if the developers and publishers fully realize how taking the Epic deal taints the eventual Steam release.
    Click to expand...

    you know ... i think they are all just assuming that everyone who REALLY wanted to play those games will buy them on egs, and everyone else will just buy when they finally release on steam (with very few if any "lost sales" due to being 12 months late)

    thing is - i don't think most of them considered all the new-new games that will also be releasing during that time, so i'm guessing that most of the people who buy games regularly will just stick to buying the new games, instead of 12 months old re-releases ... and let's face it, most of the people who would've bought it day one won't be so "hyped" about those games anymore ... in a vacuum it shouldn't really matter when you play a game, but the truth is - once the game is released and someone who was super-hyped for it didn't buy it immediately, the hype goes away pretty much instantly ... so my guess would be that people will just keep buying the new-new games (because hype) and mayyyyyyybe consider buying the late steam releases on sale much later down the road (probably at a steep discount too)

    morningbus said:
    Fully expect PC Gamer to run articles about how all these games end up with terrible Steam launch numbers and watch them pivot to saying the Epic deal was justified. The PR spin on this will always be on Sweeney's side.
    Click to expand...

    oh, this is ABSOLUTELY going to happen ... i have ZERO doubt about that ... in fact - i'm fairly certain Tim is actually counting on this ... i would even bet they intentionally made the exclusivity period this long because of it

    and yeah, at this point in time - Tim can do pretty much whatever the fuck he wants, he's not gonna get any bad press (see: how INCREDIBLY fast pretty much every outlet stopped caring about papa Tim grinding down his own devs to dust ... and it's not like they just stopped caring about fortnite either ... because they sure as hell keep posting every little bit of news about that game, including guides and 50 other articles every single week)
     
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    I've said it once and I'll gladly repeat it. 1 million Mechwarrior 5 sales would have been achievable on Steam and GoG.
    20k (not 50k d I initially understood) pre orders, on a shitty website, without any kind of marketing, from a tainted developer is still rather a lot.
    Of course the game would have needed to be good in the first place, but you all are underestimating the brand recognition factor here.

    The last wing commander game didn't sell as well and I bet most of you don't even know the games. Still, the thirst was real once the father of wing commander announced a spiritual, bigger successor: star citizen.


    Something similar happened with mech warrior online. People bought into it. Not as big as star citizen of course, but mwo is also of much smaller scale, Russ is terrible at marketing and it's just PvP. Of course the community began dwindling down after release, it's not a great game after all. And still, the support it received was enough to keep the studio alive and to fund a new SP game that everybody was screaming after from day one.

    Also sorry for brining this point back, but a turned based Mechwarrior strategy game was able to sell 250k in two weeks last year. Do you all think an action oriented iteration, with all the graphical bells and whistles like RTX would have sold less?

    But now that it is on EGS? Even Star Citizen would loose a mayor part of its audience with this move.
    Mech 5 might really be dead on arrival.

    Edit
    Elite Dangerous is another one of those successfuly revived old computer franchises.

    Or what about Baldurs Gate? Google seems to think it's could enough to carry some weight.


    What I'm trying to say: just because you never played it and heard of it doesn't mean that it's unimportant and dead on arrival (normally)
     
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    morningbus said:
    What I'm not convinced of is if the developers and publishers fully realize how taking the Epic deal taints the eventual Steam release.

    In most cases, you'll be launching a year later and would be crazy to launch at full price. You may have also killed interest in your game as a year is just too long to wait and people will have moved in.

    Fully expect PC Gamer to run articles about how all these games end up with terrible Steam launch numbers and watch them pivot to saying the Epic deal was justified. The PR spin on this will always be on Sweeney's side.

    For real, bookmark this post and come back a week after Metro launches on Steam. I'll gladly accept my insider-exclusive verified check mark.
    Click to expand...
    I totally agree.
    I've been saying that this is a similar situation to late PC ports of console games. Back when we still had somewhat useful SteamSpy numbers, the general pattern was that they did fine but sold vastly less than on console launch and compared to simultaneous releases, with the occasional exception that did great (i.e. MHW).
    I mean it is totally obvious: shadow-releasing a game on a platform that has like 20 releases a day without much marketing (because marketing was focused on the console launch) and hype is not as effective as doing a simultaneous release where all versions of the game share in the marketing/hype boost.
    This is also incidentally why we see more and more of those japanese companies pivot to simultaneous releases whenever possible. Because it makes sense.

    It's admittedly a bit different with 🥚🥚 because the barrier of entry is less, i.e. you don't need to buy a console, but the platform barrier still applies - i.e people have their libraries on Steam and Steam is a vastly better service. Add to that the negativity epic is cultivating and yeah.
    I think devs will have an unpleasant wake-up call when Steam-day arrives.

    And yes, I fully expect those "gaming bloggers" to spin this as 🥚🥚 good, Steam bad.
     
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    Talking about EGS and the media, I still believe that once Epic launches their influencer program some of their shills in the media will feel alienated and start throwing some more-or-less negative pieces about EGS. Nonetheless, November and December should be interesting months regarding this.
     
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