I appreciate these points. Now we have something testable. I predict that Epic will not stop the exclusivity game for a very long while, and additionally, I expect that practice to spread around the industry. I could very well be wrong – in fact, I want to be wrong.
Agreed.
But, Nesrie, there’s no reason to get so worked up, it’s just another icon on the desktop to launch games. Why do you hate developers getting cookies and cream with no loss to you? It’s just exactly the same game with the same icon! /s
I’ve canceled more posts on this stupid topic than on anything else on the internet. I should join a religion topic instead, there’s bound to be less fanaticism there.
This is why I am worked up. Not this:
Because this:
Is bullshit and didn’t happen.
But this happens all the time when there’s a strong disagreement. You’ll have someone fresh come into the thread and inadvertently stir things up, using absolutes – because from their particular perspective, the solution is simple, since they’re on one side of the argument. And then both sides feel the need to present their case again. And there will always be people on both sides who use languages that’s too dismissive of the other side (accidentally or not) – it’s not like anyone can control who’s on their side of the argument.
This is true, but most of these posts aren’t coming from people fresh to the topic.
EDIT: And to be clear, they’re not in the wrong to not care a lick about any of this stuff! They’re not wrong to want Epic to succeed or to not like Steam or to want developers to get a bigger cut. They wouldn’t even be wrong if they’re an Epic employee and they’re proud of what they’re doing. I just see a lot of arguing that people who do dislike it for various reasons are being unreasonable/childish/dramatic/racist instead of just respecting that different people have different pain points and care about different things.
Fair enough. Maybe someone was just bored. Either way, the limitation is the medium’s – it’s really bad for strong disagreements. The result is going in circles, escalations etc.
I know this is old news at the pace this thread moves at but the following excerpt from the Darq story is interesting:
“They made it clear that releasing Darq non-exclusively is not an option. I rejected their offer before we had a chance to talk about money.”
That is curious since Epic have been quite happy to sell games on their store without that exclusivity agreement such as Cyberpunk 2077, Bloodlines 2, Subnautica, a bunch of Ubisoft titles, Slime Rancher, Outward, Sherlock Holmes the Devils Daughter, City of Brass, Vampyr, The Witness, and so on.
So is it the clout of the developer or publisher that prevents the exclusivity deal (Borderlands 3 is a weird exception)?
There is an intriguing inconsistency here.
I can only conclude that exclusives is successful in getting people unto EGS. So we can safely predict that more of this will happen, as feared.
They can’t bully bigger companies and games that have been out aren’t likely to retroactively go exclusive.
Yeah, I was just saying it devolves into the latter after enough time, especially once the conversation pauses.
+1. It’s not like I didn’t wait years to use Steam too, but it’s not hard to accept that someone who plays games anywhere near launch is going to value things very differently from me.
It looks to me (from that list) that either the games were already out, or were expected to profit well and the publisher would never accept exclusivity.
(beaten by ShivaX, damn you!)
My reading of this is that it’s a punitive measure. “You don’t want to sign? That’s fine, we can go give cash to someone else. Don’t think you can crawl into our store.” They want to make sure that other Indies don’t start getting ideas about trying to modify the exclusivity deal. If they let him onto their store, they’d be giving the impression that turning down the deal is fine with them, and that they’ll still have a good relationship later on and maybe make another offer. By barring the dev from their store, they’re applying as much pressure as they can.
This is not a natural occurrence. There is one person trying to discredit the entire world view of others about their opinions on a digital storefront, and it’s the one that literally tried that yesterday, as well as numerous other times, and somehow thinks he can reverse that stance today and try and pretend others did it to him instead.
And again back to why can’t we talk about EGS like we are able to talk about almost everything else… well because I don’t ever recall someone running around here saying most the community was too rich to be allowed to talk about Steam. This kind of shit doesn’t normally come up.
Meh, the store has limited space by design, and pretty much assures eyeballs. Why should they waste that space on Indies that won’t even be exclusive? Don’t think punishment comes into the picture, they want to be the place to get the game, being a place is less interesting.
I think that’s reading too much into it. It’s pretty simple. Be already famous/successful, or have potential and be exclusive.
They also need to fill slots for the free game thing and that requires obtaining sufficient existing (and therefore non-exclusive) games.
Are you sure about this? My friend had a friend at Epic who would take him touring the Epic’s studios when my friend came to visit. They had monitors showing all the money they were making from various sources and this was close to when the Fortnite f2P was released. I’m pretty sure they were flush with cash before this, Fortnite f2p just expanded exponentially.
They had public monitors showing all the money they were making? That’s some crazy shit.
Anyway, we already covered that above. Yes, Epic has engine licensing, but it’s a whole different amount of money.
Yeah, it’s one thing to be solvent, successful, and secure. It’s another thing entirely to throw around millions to snatch up exclusive deals and build out an entirely new business strategy.
Your friend of a friend lied, Epic’s financial information isn’t (and has never been) disclosed in such a manner.
It’s a smart business move. They’re flush with Fortnite cash on top of an already successful business, but the Fortnite gravy train won’t run forever. They need to capitalize on having such a great revenue stream and having a bunch of eyeballs on their launcher/store.
I just wish they’d spend a little less on exclusives and a lot more on bringing their store up to par. I want to want to shop there and Valve could really use competition.
I’m curious how you can speak to the Unreal Engine’s finances?