3196

Oh there’'s at least one, but it’s not you. I am done with his games.

You keep talking about development. That’s the whole problem with this conversation. Storefront, customers, distributions. That’s the focus from the customer perspective. Consumers. People who give them money.

When times got tough. Epic Games walked away. Now that they are flush with cash, and not at risk of going away, they’re willing to spend it. Good for them.

When you enter a market, an existing or a new one, there is usually some effort to get people to come to your storefront, get them through the door, earn their trust, elevate your brand, to want to get people to go there.

They’re not doing that. They want to hand-cuff customers to their store, and at the same time ask why some people resent it. At the same time they want people to believe they’re going to make it better, make it a better store, more features, not always exclusive but what trust are they relying on to have people actually believe them? They have the I don’t care crowd, and the more money developers, but they have given no reason for people to actually believe what they say, and their record is not good. It’s not a record that was made up. It’s just what it is. When it gets hard; they walk.

3197

And that was yesterday, while today Epic clearly invested in multiple recent and current initiatives involving the PC: Robo Rally, Fortnite, and the store, to name a few.

Thus claiming Epic abandoned (and continues to abandon) PC gaming is now false nonsense.

3198

Okay. And? Why is this being brought up? Why do you care? What does it matter? How does this fit into this in any way at all?

You mean they responded to the market conditions and stayed in business? And survived as a company to become a huge part of the success of many other PC games?

3199

This seems to be a running thread repeated by Epic supporters and devs that sign exclusivity deals.

I am seeing a lot of reactions to consumer criticisms by framing it all as toxic gamers and bad apples and really glad that Epic doesn’t have reviews, forums, or really any meaningful dialogue with the very people that purchase one’s games. Perhaps Epic critics are just a tiny vocal minority of the game purchasing population, but I hope it doesn’t backfire on devs that prefer to treat them like noxious mosquitoes (maybe it won’t I don’ know).

3200

More proof Epic invested in PC gaming in the last 1-2 years: Paragon, dev grants to multiple artists and game publishers, and last-but-not least the two decades+, award winning, Unreal Engine!

I could go on, but I don’t need to, as false nonsense claims are easily obliterated with facts.

3201

This thread is amazing.

Carry on.

3202

Hey, I was a huge fan of Epic back in the day. I loved UT1999 to death (still do). I used UnrealEd to make a lot of maps that were played by the community for years. Epic published the original AoW. I loved them as a company and Sweeney in particular was fantastic on the technical side.

That said, going forward they’ve put their foot in it over and over again from a PR perspective. That’s just my opinion of course.

3203

Just seems like an incredibly silly thing to get angry over when Activision and EA are spewing ropes of liquid sheisse directly into our mouths and nobody’s boycotting them.

3204

As someone who has made PR gaffes in public statements, I sympathize with them :) It’s easy to do! Especially these days.

But I also think that taking a quote from many years ago which was uttered in a very different market landscape and applying it to today doesn’t constitute a PR gaffe-

3205

“Epic walked away from PC gaming 10 years ago, here’s a quote saying as much”
“No they didn’t, look at all these things they’ve done in the past two years!”

I mean… what?

3206

Nobody?

Nah, I haven’t bought anything from either in years. I genuinely despise EA.

But par for the course in this thread, of course. Ignore inconvenient facts.

3207

I’m not challenging past quotes, I’m questioning current accuracy, relevance, and usage.

3208

I’m not against another store per se, I will be buying Rebeal Galaxy Outlaw on day one because I really want the game (but not if it’a £50). Price is a worry though, here in the UK I am seeing what I feel is unreasonably high prices on stuff and nowhere to go to get another option from, the usual outlets aren’t selling Epic Store stuff yet and maybe won’t.

For example i was browsing the store today just being nosy and saw plenty of games over £50 which is just not the norm any where else over here, so while I appreciate them giving more cash to the developers they are doing that by charging me a premium to offset the increased revenue giving to the developers, so it’s me paying it not them. not something I am fan off, normally I would expect them to lower the price point to sell more units to offset the price difference.

3209

Obviously somebody is sticking mandarin oranges in their nose right now. Probably someone in this thread. If I were to say “nobody sticks oranges in their nose” it should be colloquially understood to mean that it is a rare and unusual thing to do.

3210

Ditto, I can’t recall the last time I bought something from EA. It may be 20 years.

3211

Because it’s easy for them now. They can afford to throw it all away, and they’re recreating a console market in the PC market.

Well like I said, had everyone done that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We’d be back where we were, articles every other day talking about PC gaming dying and Epic Games sitting in the corner nodding.

I am not hugely loyal to Valve. Almost every pro-Epic, yay for Epic, supporter wants to categorize the group that looks at Epic and says what the hell are they doing as some sort of Valve fan. I am grateful to Valve for helping create a healthy and diverse PC digital storefront that made MP almost painless, gave us a wealth of different games to choose from, for constantly updating their storefront and giving us a community to talk about, enjoy and yes sometimes shout and yell and otherwise fight about games and developers on.

I am not at all a Valve or die fighter. I have a lot of issues with how they handle things, the way they responded to criticism and especially the way it sounds like some basic tools the developers say they asked for are just not there.

Here is what I am not accepting, that in order to have competition in the PC market, we have to create a bunch of closed privileged walls that mimic the console market, that we have to a leader in the market the throws cash at everyone to lure them into the storefront but only the chosen privileged few will be worthy of these storefronts, that the same group that is promising new features, changes to their less than basic storefront is also over here making statements and walking them back the next day and somehow still believes they are showcasing a behavior that should stimulate trust.

I am not going to blame developers for wanting more money, but their behavior towards the customers of their storefront, the people who would buy their game is just adversarial and dismissive which is the same theme you see from their supporters.

What? How do you know what people are doing with them… did you ask?

3212

Also, for all the people that said I had missed their points in this 3200 post long thread, I only see a single meaningful addition to the wiki in the OP, that anyone can sign up with any email address without verification. That just came out today, right?

3213

‘Sure my spouse was abusive, but they promised they’d stop’

I have no animus particularly towards the Epic store, or devs who chose to do business there.

But to pretend they haven’t been slimy, that they haven’t had issues (and the security stuff is real, no matter how much apologists pretend otherwise), that Pitchford is a tool, and that Epic hasn’t earned user trust is to deny reality. It’s all well and good to decide those issues are not deal breakers for you, but to deny them entirely is hilarious.

And you, sir or madam, are a master comedian.

3214

The argument was that they in fact did step away from PC gaming, and your response is that they didn’t because look what they’re doing now, and anyone who claims otherwise is being emotional and has no facts.

e: And to be completely clear, I don’t particularly care that they stopped making PC games for a while. But arguing like past actions never happened, and calling people out for saying that they did is a weird argument.

3215

No, it definitely crossed the news threshold a month ago. And even then I remember thinking it was old news.

The sad reality is that a lot of companies don’t do email verification. I’ve had strangers register Netflix accounts using my email address on three separate occasions.