2994
  1. Not supposed to evoke anything. I noticed the URL didn’t do that fun little preview thing so I just included it from the article for more context.
  2. Maybe not directly relevant, but Tencent has been a frequent topic of discussion in this thread so it seemed like the best fit and didn’t seem worthy of starting a new thread yet. Also every single news source or article about this store has referenced the Epic Game Store as well, so others are making the connection too.
  3. Just a little joke to lead off my post. Tencent owns ~40% of the shares of Epic so have a stake in the Epic Game Store, but now they also have their own store alongside Epic. Will be interesting to see how this develops and what types of games the WeGame X will stock, will they do exclusives too, will there be overlap with the EGS, etc.
2995

Thanks for clarifying. I’m with you now. It’s just a side note.

I don’t think devs who joined the EGS will think much of it either. It’s largely unrelated at this stage.

2996

If I was Epic,and I had to compete with Valve, I’d be doing things the exact way they’ve been doing it, as this is the only way they could gain a real market share and leverage their Fortnite boom long term. That doesn’t mean I like it, or that it will necessarily work. They’ve given themselves the best chance of anyone though- I hope they fail though.

2997

When pissing off a bunch of your fans, the only reasonable position is to double down:

Except… the new algorithm caught the review bombs, did its job, and removed the reviews from the aggregate score.

2998

heh, and they say gamers demand instant gratification. Next Randy might claim he had no idea, no idea, that Valve/Steam had a plan in place because it wasn’t like that wasn’t all over gaming news anywhere.

2999

I wonder if we are ever going to see a AAA release on Steam and Epic Store at the same time. :|

3000

I would definitely do things differently. There’s no reason for long-term exclusives:

  • Make your store awesome, but curated. Focus on the fact that every title you have is high quality.
  • Garner good will from your customers by providing great service. There are many things Steam is doing that could be done better.
  • Talk about the fact that you want developers to make more. Gamers will want to support developers if they’re not forced to buy exclusives.
  • Build the things Epic is planning on doing – free multiplayer services and such. Talk about how Steam locks you into their ecosystem, but you’re providing infrastructure to everyone, including GOG.
  • If you must do exclusives, make them no longer than a month or two.
  • As soon as a game appears on your store, allow people who already own it for a while on steam to get it for free.

This isn’t hard. You don’t need to piss off gamers to succeed. You already have the buckets of cash – all you need is not to be an a*hole.

3001

Randy Pitchford made Colonial Marines. He can go fuck himself.

3002

Except, name any game store that doesn’t have exclusives and survives to turn a profit?

I think I have already made my pitch. If a game is every on multiple services, I’m never not going to buy it on Steam. I’m just not. I know that a ton of stores provide keys and compete on price and it’s convenient. But more importantly, I will want to buy future DLCs for any game I like, and I don’t want to be stuck on non steam service in case one of the the half dozen stores has a key on sale later on.

Hell, I avoid buying games on GoG for that reason. If GoG has a sale on a game, I still wait for a steam key, because I want to be able to snatch the DLCs when they go on sale. The only time I would even consider buy a game that isn’t on Steam is if the vendor is selling the Game of the Year Addition, or if it is exclusive to the vendor.

I’m not sure if I’m unique, but if I’m not, the only way to get me in the door at Epic is to have games that no one else sells… Otherwise I’ll just wait, because my backlog is big enough.

Even if you had a service on par with Steam, how do you undercut them? No one wants to download another app or any sort. How often do we bitch out Origin or some other service?

What you are suggesting is the creation of another Desura or Gamespot. Just another future platform that will never be used.

3003

Only when Epic runs out of dumptrucks-full-of-cash, clearly.

3004

Be awhile I guess…

3005

Hope not. That sort of competition is terrible for consumers. Exclusives are the only thing that push the hobby forward.

3006

Part of the math of competing is making sure your keys are available for free to resellers, just like Steam does. GOG chose not to do this.

This is so contrived. Discord has exclusives and they’re not turning a profit (as far as we know).
What about the millions of Fortnite players we heard about? Why are exclusives even a part of the equation here? Also, Epic already said that the exclusives aren’t making it money anyway, because they’re paying these titles so much money they’re not making a profit with their 12% (or less).

3007

Yup. Gotta figure they’ve got 'em lined up 20 files deep. I guess we’ll see if they can just outright buy an industry before they run out of money.

Indeed, our only hope of salvation from Steam’s anti-competitive practices are Epic’s anti-competitive practices!

3008

I thought they shut it down already.

3009

I guess they didn’t focus hard enough on competing on features.

3010

Or not enough on their actual feature. Discord is a frequent pain in the ass. Why on Earth would I trust a company with more when their target product is a source of issues for me?

It’s kind of like putting all your hopes in dreams in a company that gave PC games the middle finger years ago with somehow saving it now.

3011

Wait, what do you have against discord? It’s been awesome for setting up games. We use it for our RTS tournaments and for Blood Bowl.

3012

I use it roughly 4-6 hours a day.

Now ask me how many times a week someone on the line doesn’t have to screw with something because they drop, or you can’t hear them, or some other stupid thing happens. I am holding-up 0 fingers. It happens all the dang time… so why are we using Discord, because we rotate. was AIM, then MSN LIVE, then SKYPE, then Google Chat… at some point we get frustrated and go find another service. I have four wireless headsets, even more wired. I’ve purchased and sent headsets to others so we can use the same damn hardware and stop having to figure out why they just stop working. I hate Discord. The only thing they’ve got going for them is all the others are worse… at the moment.

3013

Considering that Epic have pissed off a highly vocal subset of their potential users, I’d say they could have done things better.