So? Why do you care if it’s easy for them or not? And no, this is not recreating a console market. Those have a consumer cost barrier - i.e. hardware. This does not. There is no monetary consumer cost. And it seems clear that these exclusives are designed to launch the store, not to be an ongoing expense to sustain it. That would not make any sense.
I still, again, see no reason why this contributes to any arguments about the validity of a store.
OK, fine, as I said, if that’s the basis for your argument, you don’t like exclusives, you don’t think it’s required - fine, I don’t agree, especially regarding your idea that it is mimicing the console market - but I’m not trying to disabuse you of that.
What do any comments about Epic’s previous console deviation, or how ‘easy’ it is for them to launch a store have anything to do with your argument? ‘Abandonment’ of PC gaming in the past? That’s the sole reason I am addressing those points - they are unrelated and make it feel like a tribal argument, instead of one based on specific grounded issues.
Nobody is arguing that they didn’t. What they are arguing is that somehow that constitutes ‘abandoning’ PC gaming in a way that is relevant to any current discussion.
Alstein
3218
That last part is because the folks who do boycott have boycotted them long enough that their hate has gone to indifference, and they just don’t talk about it.
EA hate has been around for over a decade now. Acti hate is a bit more recent.
Nesrie
3219
Why is it related? Ask me about the state of my Impulse games? Ask me about what happened when you had someone rail against Steam over and over again, against the evil SteamFront. Now ask me happened when that company decided they didn’t want to play anymore, took their ball of cash and went home. Oh I know. The market changed. Just did what was right for the company. I get your position.
Now ask me about my D2D games.
It’s almost like developers and Epic Games supporters believe that most gamers haven’t played in other store fronts before. Like we’ve never seen a storefront go down, didn’t experience Gamespy, didn’t have anything on Impulse or D2D…
It’s like pretending history didn’t happen is somehow convenient to excuse any behavior now. Those storefronts largely didn’t do the exclusive thing, so we chose to buy from those and when they walked away, kind of not great, but I know. That’ the customer experience and we don’t care about that anymore… right?
As for hardware, PC gaming has more competition than ever. Hardware is often a consideration, especially in the world of 1k+ phones.
Note that Epic is specifically encouraging games to be DRM free on the Epic Store.
We are.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the storefront. It does not correlate to consoles and separate storefronts in any way.
Epic did not abandon PC gaming, even if they once claimed they would focus on consoles.
But that won’t matter to those spouting unsubstantiated nonsense.
Shadari
3223
And let’s say in the future PC-gaming tanks again, should I simply forget Epic’s past actions?
What would their ‘past actions’ mean to you? What bearing could it possibly have? What are you worried about happening?
Some Steam users are scared that Epic’s success will eventually shut down Steam. I believe both stores can, and will, co-exist, but some people don’t believe in competition and can only see as far as their Steam wallets will let 'em.
Okay, let’s put the abandon argument aside for the time. It’s not that critical anyway.
Steam enjoys the large market share it does today since there was a time that Valve faced little meaningful competition in the PC digital distribution space. So perhaps no one entity entirely ‘abandoned’ the PC gaming space, but a vacuum of sorts existed in the space due to most companies prioritizing other markets.
Yeah, that was a big thing for Impulse too. The thing is, trust matters for consumers when it comes to digital storefronts. Right now, for many folks, Epic has precious little of that. In a few years, that could change. We’ll see. If it does, and if they earn my trust, I’ll start using their store. Let’s first see if they have any commitment to fixing their security issues and have any staying power as a market place.
Nesrie
3228
And why should I believe anything Epic Games says at this point? You can’t trust what they say. You don’t think other guys gave assurances too? You think anyone stood at the front of their store and said come on board, don’t worry if the ship goes down we’ll take you with us. Of course they didn’t.
I don’t trust the words coming out of Epic Games. They keep getting caught in lies, misinformation and walk-backs. And they don’t have a good enough history to bouy that up.
And no, I don’t believe in magic Steam fairies either that will somehow keep my library of games all cozy and tucked in should Valve go down.
Well you brought up hardware, I didn’t. The point is Epic Games is mostly taking a our way or the highway approach except they don’t seem to acknowledge the highway is actually there.
To dispel the misconception that Epic supporters keep throwing out there with no proof at all.
- I don’t worship Steam or Valve, hell I have never even played half-life and I don’t like TF
- I have used several storefronts in the past, been screwed by more than a few.
- I use Steam forums for FAQ and technical support because the alternatives are worse
- I don’t really buy Activision / Blizz games, I can’t even remember the last one
- EA’s not much better. I followed Bioware but I didn’t buy their last 3 game or so
- This means it’s not some sort of grudge against Epic Games. I don’t think I’ve even played their games since early UT. The behavior and attitude I saw when they left PC is kind of seen in how they address people now though.
- I don’t blame developers for wanting more money
- I find what they did with Metro completely unacceptable and disgusting, and their ownership of that is non-existent since they walked back their apology.
- They didn’t just scan steam friends info, they copied it. And this hugely weird and does not add to trust
- This topic gets riled up every handful of weeks because some Epic supporter likes to jump in here to either claim they don’t understand what the problem is, which usually just means they didn’t care enough or read or are really just dismissing it, or they try to boil down the objections to a single statement that isn’t true at all.
- Dear lord, the e-mail /account problem is not helping but it does explain why occasionally someone tries to take my account.
- I don’t care about Tencent. There is a lot of foreign investment in a lot companies, most people just aren’t aware of it.
- Lucky 13. I don’t hate Fortnite!
Shadari
3229
Their past actions are that they stopped making PC games when the market wasn’t very strong. So assuming the PC market isn’t so great in the future, my worry is that they’ll abandon their store. And there goes my game library. Yes, this could happen to Steam as well, but it seems less likely to me for what I hope are fairly obvious reasons.
And I respect that immensely and you have no argument from me.
Which is great! It’s a shame about literally everything else. There are quite a few forms of DRM I’d be less hesitant to install than Epic’s client.
I brought up hardware because you said that Epic was trying to make a ‘console-like’ ecosystem.
Because they clearly are not.
Console-like exclusivity is based on hardware - i.e. you must have THIS hardware to play this game.
That hardware comes with a cost. I can’t play God of War if I’m an XBox One owner without buying a PS4.
That clearly does not apply to this situation.
I mean, that’s clear, right?
Nesrie
3233
Not exactly. The cross-platforms these days are pretty big. There are some real exclusives but… it’s loosening up while PC decides to jump right back in int. (PS4 and XBOX, not switch).
Exclusivity means there is a barrier of some sort. I don’t see it.
Those are by definition NOT EXCLUSIVE.
We’re talking about exclusives. Otherwise, what are we even talking about? What is the ‘console-like’ part that you are bringing up?
