5515

See, here is where you lost me. If there is no financial barrier, that I don’t view it as a platform or platform war. Heck, it’s not even inconvenient to run a game from epic.

I think the above definition is still completely applicable to today’s definition of a platform. It’s why Android users can bitch about apps coming on iPhones, but not Android. Because there is a clear barrier to entry.

It’s why Playstation exclusives suck if you use X Box. There is a clear financial barrier.

It’s why a chromebook just sucks in general. It’s so limited. It’s the only reason I would even consider Chrome a platform (and to be clear, I don’t consider it a platform on my Windows PC. I freely switch between chrome and Edge, depending on what I need).

It’s why it is not a platform situation when I want to buy a table from Target that is only sold at Ikea, even if I have a 10% coupon at Target, and get some sort of rewards program. I am not locked into the Target Ecosystem, just because I have a Target Card (although there might be a financial barrier to Costco or other member ship store, but one could argue that Costco and others are the exception that proves the rule).

The whole Key thing is a red herring to my mind. If keys make Steam a platform (which I don’t think it does), then only Steam is a platform, and all your arguments about being locked in really only apply to Steam. In that case, Epic still isn’t a platform.

This is an important point because one of the main arguments against Epic is the idea of exclusives. They are exclusive to the store, but that doesn’t provide a barrier to entry. That doesn’t cause a financial hardship. It’s not necessary to pick Epic over Steam. That’s the fun of the PC platform, I can have both, or have neither. It’s like you all hate that people (and developers) can make up their own minds which stores they want to support.

A platform needs to be a clear barrier to entry to be truly considered a platform. The smaller the barrier, the more you have to stretch the definition of platform the make it fit. In this case, the barrier to entry is incredibly small (for non Linux users).

Until the Epic program forces me to delete Steam or Steam forces me to delete Epic, I think the whole argument of Exclusives and platform walls is completely bunk. It’s not a war if they are both sitting side by side on my computer, living in perfect harmony.

5516

It was inconvenient if you relied on cloud saves, it is inconvenient if use a lot of mods, etc. All of this has been explained to you before. I’m sure they’re in the first post of this thread, so there’s no need to continue to act befuddled and confused on the matter.

The fact you don’t care about those things and don’t get value from those aspects of the Steam platform just might give you an inkling as to why you’re more positive on the EGS than others in this thread?

You can call it a platform or ecosystem or just a store, the simple fact of the matter is that Steam provides a lot of value to some people here. Epic paying developers to not sell their games on Steam bothers some people because they lose access to those features. Calling it a store instead of something else doesn’t change any of that.

5517

Anyway, getting back to the platform for a second, I’m glad to see on the roadmap that play time tracking is coming soon. I’ve been playing all my games this past 4 days through Playnite though, which has its own time tracking, so I haven’t missed it much. I know I’ve played Rebel Galaxy Outlaw for 6 hours through Playnite, but I don’t know how long I played it through the Epic store.

Most of the features I want are in the long term time horizon though.

5518

The mods thing isn’t a Steam call though. That’s up to developer. Plenty of Steam games don’t allow for Mods or all require you to use a 3rd party service to get them
Look at Dominions or Pathfinder Kingmaker. I think Baldurs Gate EE as well, the mods aren’t on the workshop either. All three have mods, but none of them do mods through the workshop.

Civilization 4 has awesome mods, but doesn’t use the workshop (although that is an older game).

So, of a developer doesn’t want mods supported by Steam Workshop, then it doesn’t really matter if the game is sold through Epic or Steam, does it? Heck, in the cases I posted above, even if the developer does want to use Mods, they still might elect not to go through the Steam Workshop, so there isn’t a huge benefit to being on Steam for the developer or the player.

If the developer is really emphasizing mods and how important they are, then I don’t see what the problem is for that game to be sold on Steam, and not on Epic. That’s the beauty of having two services on the PC platform. Both are available.

If a game isn’t going to make full use of those features, then there should not be a problem (for non Linux users) for that game to be on Epic instead of steam.

Age of Empires 2 DE is another example. They will be on the Steam store, but won’t use the Steam Multiplayer System and they won’t use steam mods or Workshop and since the Windows store has cloud saves, you really are only getting achievements from Steam. They could make the game exclusive to Epic, and it wouldn’t impact the player base since the game was never going to use any Steam features in the first place.

If a developer is planning to use the Steam MP, or the Steam DRM, or the Steam Workshop, I would expect the game to be on Steam, but if they aren’t using those features, why not be on Epic instead, all things being equal?

5519

Sure, but many, many, games do and obviously games that are EGS exclusive are never going to have Workshop support because that makes no sense. So you can’t exactly point to lack of Workshop support in EGS-exclusive games and say “See, you’re not missing anything anyway”.

The fact is, most of the games I play do support Workshop and it’s an important feature to me. It’s probably my #1, with cloud saves being important as well (and is why I’ve given Epic props multiple times in this thread for starting to roll that feature out). I’ve played around with mods for ages and Steam Workshop is seriously a ridiculously huge QOL improvement for me. Every time I run into a game that doesn’t have support for it (Grim Dawn was the latest I played) ends up being a frustration for me.

For multiplayer sessions, do you have any idea how much easier it is to coordinate mods through Workshop instead of having to provide instructions to 3-4 people on where to download them, where you extract them (oh, it’s compressed in 7-zip, you’ll need to download that first), and how you get them initialized? And then you have to repeat that process every single time a mod gets updated, which you have to manually keep an eye on?

Compare this to workshop, where they click a Subscribe button or two and they’re done. The mods automatically install, they auto-update, everyone is easily kept in sync.

Because EGS paying them to be a EGS exclusive insures they will never use any of those things. Surely you see that? RGO is going to support mods, but with it being an EGS exclusive how likely do you think it will be that it supports Workshop? That makes no sense. There’s not a 100% guarantee it would have supported Workshop, I’m not trying to make that claim, but it’s certainly a 0% chance now. And that lessens my experience with the game, because Epic paid for exclusivity.

5520

Sure, but as we saw, not everyone is taking Epic up on that offer. And I would expect that games that require some parts of steam to function would be on Steam.

And if they don’t need Steam, why not take the money from Epic.

Again, so many of the games I am playing today have mods, but don’t allow the use of the Workshop. It’s obvious that this is a developer decision, even before Epic comes around with their bag of cash.

So, having Epic around probably won’t impact the games you are looking at.

5521

Hell, Ark: Survival Evolved goes that one better (other games might as well). You join a server, the necessary mods get subscribed and installed automatically. That’s platform QoL I can get behind!

5522

And @legowarrior, let me just be clear here that I don’t expect you to care about any of this stuff. I don’t expect or demand that you dislike EGS because there are many things about it that irk me and that I personally find inferior. The one thing I would ask, if I may, is just understand that people have legitimate reasons (to them) for not liking it. From my perspective, so much angst in this thread is generated from people who have complaints about EGS constantly being told that they don’t have any reason to have complaints. Hell, they’ve been accused of being racists as to the reason they don’t like the store.

5523

Also the fact that you retreated to a definitional argument about the word platform, when the meaning and intent of the usage was clear, shows you understand your argument and counterpoint to that example is weak.

If you resort to a definitional argument to counter a point, you really don’t have a counter to the point.

5524

Yeah, that racist part was weird.

Look, I might be naive, but in my mind, the Developers are going to make the best decision for their game. If they know that mods are going to be a huge part of it, they will either be exclusive to Steam Workshop or they will have some other fix (like AoE 2 DE).

If they don’t foresee mods, they can easily be on Epic instead, especially if it’s single player.

And if it later turns out they will be supporting Mods, well, half the games I play support mods, but don’t support the Workshop because the games are available on GoG or Origin or some other store.

Again, it’s why its okay, or perhaps good, to have two competing stores on the PC Platform.

5525

Okay, I don’t think I understood any of that. So, using a common definition from an outside source is the major flaw in my argument because it is?

Yeah, I am not sure what you are trying to say with that.

On the other hand, I think the counter point was clear. If I can run two games from different stores without using the launcher, then neither store can be considered a platform. It’s just a store.

Nothing precludes the use of one or the other. In addition is no barrier to entry, so again, there is no exclusiveness to the device I am running the games on. It’s all just windows PCs. The sole platform.

Anyway, I think you might have glossed over all that in your haste to make a (possible) witty retort.

5526

Day 12 of having the Epic Game Store on my machine.
Monitoring shows no evidence of demonic infestation or extra-planar invasion.
Analysis of system logs reveal no incidents of hostile activity or moral corruption.
Conclusion: While early, it seems likely that the EGS is relatively benign, though we will continue close monitoring.

5527

Day 12 of Epic Game Store incursion into TheWombat’s machine.
Subject shows no sign of recognition of nature of incursion.
Subject appears oblivious to deleterious effects incurred so far.
Subject has engaged in pathetic analysis of systems logs in attempt to detect possible deleterious effects - measures easily defeated.
Conclusion: Subject’s overconfidence and oblivious nature confirms initial analysis that subject is an exceptional host candidate - continue incubation process with subject machine.

5528

8 moar pc exclusives announced. We knew about Ooblets already.

Ooblets
Wattam
Alto Collection: Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey
No Straight Roads
The Eternal Cylinder
Airborn Kingdom
Superliminal
Manifold Garden

5529

Hell, I’ve had it installed ever since Coffee Stain announced Satisfactory as an exclusive. Nothing bad has happened so far except that I got to play a few games for free that I’d been meaning to try.

I really do think we need another Epic store thread where we can talk about the interesting games we’ve been playing and that are upcoming. There’s a lot of typeface here spent rehashing the same arguments:

  • The Epic store doesn’t have a mod workshop, play time tracking, gifting, wishlisting or trading cards.
  • The UI is more like a physical store than a digital one: configured for browsing rather than searching.
  • They use exclusives to drive traffic to their store, which is anti-consumer, I guess.
  • They steal games from other storefronts and Kickstarter by promising a better split and guaranteed revenue for the developers.

So yeah, they’re bad and evil. I guess since I bought a PS4 so I could play Bloodbourne and have been dealing with Sony’s shitty UI, store, security, and lack of customer service for years I just don’t have a lot of rage to spend on this. I’d rather play games. I’ve really enjoyed Satisfactory, The Outer Wilds, Observation, and Ancestors: A Humankind Odyssey over the last few months. I also played Moonlighter, The Last Days of June, Enter the Gungeon, and a few others that I got for free. And I got awesome deals on a couple of games, like Subnautica: Below Zero.

So, anyone else playing Ancestors?

5530

Hmm, maybe I need to activate Double Secret Protection!

5531

Chrome is clearly a platform. Most web developers create pages that work great on Chrome and don’t care if it’s slower or a little uglier anywhere else. Chrome implements a functionality, designers rush to use it and everyone else has to implement it. It’s not as bad as in the IE days, but it’s not that far off.
Youtube is a lot slower in Firefox because the team jumped at Chrome implementing version 0 of a future spec, which turned out to be completely different from the final one.

You don’t get to redefine a widely used software industry term for an argument. Steam is a platform because it provides many services to others, from Single Sign-On to multiplayer. You might (and did) argue that the functionality doesn’t matter all that much, which, fair enough, it doesn’t in a ton of cases (for players and developers), but it’s still a platform.
Again, it’s fine that you don’t put much value in what it offers, it’s a fair point for many.

Not really, no one’s bitching at tbaldtree. But he didn’t pretend that it isn’t about the money, which, again, fair enough.

5532

Why would you need a thread for games on EGS? You’re making it sound like a platform. :)

Joking aside, why not just make a thread for a game if it’s interesting?

5533

THIS! And I make sure to do my part making ones for games I am interested in. And at the least making a mention in the indie games worth knowing about thread . :)

Sad to see Airborn Kingdom go EGS for a year. But I can wait. :)

5534

I’m two years behind in that thread. The nice part is, when I follow along from time to time now, as I read the thread, the game they’re talking about has been out for a while, and is fully patched or completely abandoned.

Edit: I loved that trailer with the 8 new games. I do appreciate the curation part of this EGS process at least. I’d never heard of any of these games, and several of them look worth checking out.