3645

It’s also to help me remember they exist so I can go back to them. I mean they have the garden of delights that is Chrome Specforce. This is LEGIT shit.

3646

Well, if you were trying to claim they “abandoned music” I’d tell you that’s demonstrably false. Same way I’m telling you Epic “abandoning PC” is demonstrably false.

3647

I agree to disagree.

They absolutely abandoned that store.

3648

Is whether Epic abandoned PC gaming 9 years ago a major factor influencing your decisions today?

  • Yes, this is essential information informing my choice whether to use their store.
  • No, and can we stop talking about this already? It is draining my will to live.

0 voters

3649

Bad poll. Who said it was major? Remember the list? It’s not one thing. Stop misrepresenting.

3650

If it’s not a major factor, why do you keep relitigating it?

Please take this as constructive criticism, but you have a great deal of difficulty not sweating the small stuff.

3651

Did you see the reply to me?

You and several others seem to have a hard time understanding that there is more than one component to decision making and opinions here. You put up a troll poll and then tell me I sweat the small stuff? What are you doing exactly?

3652

I get it, it’s a factor for you, just not a big one. So lets move on to something else.

3653

I’ve found this thread a lot better by ignoring what a few people are posting as it’s either misrepresenting reality, ignoring established facts, or some weird anti-consumer slant… and you got dragged back into the semantic abandonment argument by one of them. Just saying.

3654

If you follow the chain back I was talking to stusser when you jumped back in.

3655

She’s not re-litigating it. She is saying “they abandoned the market,” and people are arguing with her that it didn’t even happen.

She’s also not re-litigating that it is the most important issue, EVAH, or even placing some type of weight to how important abandonment is. She’s literally just saying they abandoned the market, and people won’t even admit to that.

I’m not sure why you’re going off on her, versus the people giving odd dissertations on abandonment not being abandonment if at some point dad reenters your life in your mid 30s or some other odd shit that they’re trying to argue.

I’m also don’t get why you’re focusing on her “sweating the small stuff.” My guess is that the discussion would have ended long ago, if not for people trying to argue that Epic didn’t actually abandon the PC games market.

It’s not like she’s screaming “They abandoned it!” in a vacuum of no one arguing against her.

3656

Yes, you need multiple people to argue on the internet. Since nobody actually cares about the issue they’re arguing about, lets just let it go.

3657

It’s almost like there is evidence that directly contradicts the claim being made!

3658

Hey guys, I got a new idea for a new PC gaming store. The premise is everything is 5 bucks. That’s it. All games. Five dollars. If you want to sell games more than 5 bucks…or less, you are shit out of luck!

3659

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

3660

I think both statements here can be accepted without some sort of logical breakdown:

  1. In 2008, the principal owner of Epic believed there was insufficient revenue reasons, due in no small part to piracy, to continue producing games in the PC space, but felt there was sufficient revenue to continue supporting engine sales in this sector.
  2. In 2018, the principal owner of Epic believed there was sufficient revenue potential in opening an online PC store and launching application to pursue the market to a degree that he directed his company to invest tens of millions of dollars into it.

PC gaming in 2019 is not what the PC sales space looked like in 2008 and anyone who thinks piracy wasn’t a significant thing in the 2000’s clearly doesn’t remember the era.

If the argument is that someone isn’t allowed to change their mind in the face of changing data then okay, I can’t help you and we’re going to have to agree to disagree on pretty much everything because revising my position based on new data is central to my personal ethos.

If instead the argument is that because Sweeney ‘abandoned’ the PC space once and therefore might do it again, then you’re right, he might. Largely I agree that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour; but I don’t think assessing said ‘abanonment’ is the behaviour under examination here. The true behaviour we’re seeing is an ongoing assessment of the PC market space and this new evaluation is absolutely consistent with previous behaviour. At risk of being accused of mind-reading, my view is this: he’s trying to make money and he sees this as an opportunity.

Flowing naturally from this argument is that if Epic is only chasing revenue, then should the PC space contract again, they might abandon it again. I think that’s a logical conclusion, but it’s disingenuous not to apply that to the entire PC store space. In fact, should a retailer/service provider not reevaluate their position in the face of a changing sector, then I believe this indicates that the retailer isn’t acting logically; in which case all bets are off and they’re potentially operating without any sort of ongoing assessment. Following that, they could close shop tomorrow or next year for any reason. It’s a crapshoot.

But yeah, let’s focus the hate on someone who has demonstrated an aptitude for reevaluating their position based on new data.

3661

I know you’re joking but underlying a lot of the Epic hand wringing seems to be this OCD/gamer sensitivity to price increases. Don’t ask me why but gamers tend to be quite illogical and emotional when it comes to price sensitivity, since the same gamers that might Panic at the Disco over $10 shelf price difference will happily spend hundreds of dollars on skins.

It’s the same as the people who happily buy grey market keys from shady resellers because they might save 5% over GOG or Humble or whatever, whose voices are amplified by the internet and don’t reflect the majority.

I just saw an ad for Transistor on the Epic store on YouTube, btw.

3662

Would you say it’s less of an issue now? The 2000’s saw games like Word of Warcraft and other “games as a service”. although a lot of them were subscription based instead of F2P. Are single player games any less piracy prone today than 2004, in terms of technology? Denuvo was the new hotness, but games shipping with it at being cracked in a 3-4 days after release now, IIRC. Multiplayer games have the advantage of being able to authenticate, but they were able to do that then too.

Honestly, IMO what changed was Steam. Similar to what happened with the music industry, it took some wind out of the pirates’ sails by making buying games so convenient and easy. It’s bad when pirating music/games is both more convenient than buying them and free.

When Steam was really taking off, the alternatives sucked for me. I had a hard time just finding a game anywhere. None of the stores were carrying PC games, and those that did just had a small dusty shelf tucked somewhere in the back. After driving around or calling around town with no luck, it’s no wonder that people turned to piracy – not to mention that if you DID find the game, then you had to deal with all the DRM shenanigans that the pirated versions didn’t. Remember StarForce? Yikes.

I think that’s where Steam earned some loyalty and where you’re going to get some pushback here. Because instead of giving up on the market and moving off to consoles like Epic did (good business decision or not), they invested in it and it exploded.

3663

Steam absolutely saved PC gaming, to be honest, because retail PC was dying hard and fast and none of the other publishers like Microsoft or EA really had a solution, and Microsoft at that point was happy to push gaming to its console.

To them online downloading of games looked like somehow enabling piracy (what if they crack our game? /handwringing), and even today Microsoft’s own online store is incompetent at best. They also were terrified of repeat bandwidth costs and/or game sharing and so came up with all kinds of inane “solutions” to limit downloads. And i remember buying games from small publishers like Shrapnel and GamersGate (in the past), which had all kinds of barriers, limitations and headaches to installing downloaded games. They would have much preferred to send you a CD ROM and never hear from you again.

Steam’s relatively painless requirements and no-questions asked approach just blew everything else away. And it’s basically the Steam model that all current online game stores follow, if not by choice.

OTOH ignoring that Epic basically became the engine of gaming is also missing the forest from the trees when complaining that they “left” PC gaming.

3664

Piracy isn’t any more or less of an issue than that time, but publishers did a lot more customer-harming DRM policies back then. For however much people may (probably rightly) hate Denuvo, I still don’t have to keep a disc in my drive and pray the game recognizes it as such.

In other words, the statement is technically true because it was made self-fulfilling.