I know it’s a weird position, but I’ll take the word of someone that actually worked there over someone commenting from the peanut gallery.
Not sure where you are getting that from. Facebook was using React on their production systems prior to the official 2013 release (back in 2011 on FB and 2012 on instagram), so I’m not sure how you think it was only stable in 2015. React native was released in 2015 with a ton of excitement (not just in the startup scene) so it was obviously mainstream before 2016.
That’s not my argument though. Mysterial is clearly saying that years ago they created a store system to facilitate sale of engine plugins and art assets and most likely they built on top of that already existing system (with a new game store specific UI and API) to facilitate game distribution. So it’s not unbelievable that a significant portion of the code is based on years old database schema and existing code that is being adapted to a different use case.
You don’t have to take my word for it. The Epic Store as an engine content/plugin marketplace has existed for years now. Most indies working on UE4 know that because it has a bunch of good free starter stuff in addition to paid pieces from various studios. Unreal Tournament posted a couple content pieces on it 3-ish years ago in what was clearly a testbed for that game if not for the store as a whole. It’s not really a leap from that to anything else I’ve said.
I should probably get out of here before I get myself into trouble.
I dunno the particulars of the thing, but I do know that someone thought having a cart was not a need to have to launch a web store in 2019, and then proceeded to have a deep sale.
And I can’t quite grasp how the reasoning went…
Maybe they didn’t expect people to buy more than 1 game?
In normal conditions, maybe, but there’s a deep sale going on. And we’ve had Steam for a bit. You don’t do a Steam like sale in the expectation that people will buy just one game.
Great secutity feature, if they hadn’t put he cart before the horse. It’s still a good “failure”, I’d say.
Well, that explains the delays. From my understanding, that’s far too complicated for a simple web store, but even if not, it certainly takes time to implement.
React is kinda the standard for a while, though, as far as the web has them (so, like, 20-25% of web apps?).
They clearly didn’t put the cart before anything, since the store doesn’t have a cart. :D
At least we solved the age old riddle, what came first the store or the cart.
I meant no offence, just a friendly jab (I’m looking forward to your game fwiw) :). But you’re defending an indefensible position here. I’ve done quite a bit of internet shopping in my lifetime and even if I were a clumsy lumberjack I’d have too many fingers to count the number of stores that had the functionality as basic as EGS.
At best it’s poor optics for Epic, at worst it’s lost sales.
What I find funny is the people who seem to think you were bashing epic, rather than just offering an explanation for why things might take longer than expected.
It’s not like someone familiar with the industry is going to be shocked and appalled by someone getting bitten by a bit of tech debt…
No worries.
I don’t think it’s an indefensible position though.
Here’s how it breaks down for me.
1)Limited window to launch based on Fortnite audience size. Time is at a premium.
2)Refactor what you can refactor and get the product moving, capture the audience while you have an opportunity to do so.
3)Nothing will ever be ideal about that situation, so you move hard and fast, take your lumps, learn, adapt, and iterate.
4)Get an MVP out, try to find the pain points fast, do what you can to ameliorate and put your effort squarely on those points without wasting it on extraneous stuff.
5)Mistakes will be made, the ride will be bumpy, but waiting til later is almost guaranteed to lose you effectiveness and success.
You do the best you can, prioritize the best you can, a hundred things blow up in your face, and you adapt, and people give you flak.
So. Software.
As someone who used to work on a digital store, some features like this have much more complexity than you might think up front.
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Some stores tie their downloads directly into purchases. Carts might require functionally which doesn’t exist yet to trigger multiple downloads simultaneously, or provide the user with an option to select which to download immediately and which to not download
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Some store pages are for individual products, some might be for bundles. Carts need to handle both situations. A cart full of individual products + bundles have a lot of complex mechanisms to sort out.
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Preorders have all sorts of legal restrictions on delivering something to users in some amount of time if you’re taking money, and those restrictions differ per region / country. That alone is complex to manage, but it’s even more complex if you need a cart which can handle both released and preorder goods in one purchase.
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Adding on to the previous item, you legally need to require people to cancel preorders. But if an order had a released item and preorder, then you need to build the ability to just cancel part of an order instead of the whole thing.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Probably many other scenarios I’m overlooking.
None of this is groundbreaking stuff of course, and it’s all easier if all you’re selling are released digital goods, but workflows involving purchases of many different types of items are one of those huge cans of worms that take a lot of effort to fully support. Especially when it comes to taking people’s money.
I can totally understand why Epic would deprioritize it to start with.
It’s funny. This is the way of IT-/new technology’s success… And it only works if enough money’s backing you up. Do this as a noname rookie without investors betting on you… and that’s the end.
I’m not sure if I like this: where’s the money there’s the success no matter… if the product is shitty to start with. E.g. facebook was an awful software back in the days. And the idea wasn’t that new. But there was a lot of money.
Software gets so big now that nobody can afford to go off and build some service in isolation and hope they didn’t make bad assumptions…
You’ll always make bad assumptions.
Also, people expect a lot MORE out of their software than they used to in days of yore.
Yep, I get it and it makes sense. I just wanted to point out that this way of doing and releasing stuff is highly dependent on your back up…money. Hence a thing like EGS can come off as arrogant as they can and do take their time to adapt/fix stuff.
Just came back from the year 2047. I didn’t see any Epic Store available on the FutureNets. It must have died during the great Canadian Yeast Wars of 2034.
Is CNN still available? And what about The New York Times?
Thanks for the update, Mr. Titor.
Good to have you back again.
Sorry to inform you that Art Bell has passed away since you were last here.
PlayStation Store has never allowed preorders to be added to a cart, for example.