I feel that it’s the exact opposite. Now the information is decentralized rather than having a single player who can control the flow, be a single point of failure and/or censorship.
Dozens, try hundreds. I am not going to sign up for some indie forum to juggle a couple hundred forums. I am simply not going to do it.
It’s a huge step back. I am more likely to just not buy the game.
Uh oh, I can see we’ve distracted Travis from Outlaw again! Sorry, Travis! ;)
I’m surprised that this is such an issue. I already have hundreds of logins, adding a hundred more is no hardship. There are already tools to manage this (see Bitwarden - https://bitwarden.com/) and/or single sign on as mentioned by @cliffski2
I cannot believe that on the eve of the year of our lord 2019 there is a debate going on about what a financial and logistical catastrophe - not to mention an affront to consumers - it would be if devs hosted their own forums.
Truly this thread is cursed.
If you’re just looking for a post with a solution to the same problem you have you don’t need to create any account at all.
FWIW my stats suggest that at least 99% of buyers & players never even post on forums. So even if you really want to die on the hill of only buying games where there are steam forums, you are an absolute rounding error compared to an extra 18% income for the dev :D
But everyone posting those solutions do.
Not a big deal, but a step forward for me personally? No. Ideal? Also no. Rage worthy? Definitely no. :)
Actually this isn’t true. You see Paradox, for awhile I am not sure if they stop doing it because I don’t have to sign up for their forums due to Steam, used to lock their technical topics away from not only people who didn’t have Paradox logins but people who didn’t have a key of that game registered to them.
My behavior and opinion was not formed in a vacuum. Customer service in gaming is piss poor, and it’s known. I have a much better chance with asking a large community, and it should be large and not fragmented, to help me with my problem… better chance to get help and actually play the game that month.
I am not dying on a hill nor am I lacking content. I’ve got a backlog like everyone else. If it’s not on Steam or discussed here I’ve probably not heard of it anyway.
If people who purchased the game on Epic’s store are posting questions on Steam, so what?
They’re still customers who purchased the game. It implies the developer is also selling the game on Steam anyway (otherwise they wouldn’t have a forum). Heck, the developer could even create a sub-forum specifically for people who bought the game on Epic’s store.
It’s weird, sure, but I honestly don’t see the big deal here.
Well other than Steam players not being especially nice to them 99% of them can’t get help there. The number of Epic people there isn’t very big.
Consoles, Steam, GOG version, Humble, you see them posting there infrequently due to activity mostly found there, especially when it comes to mod locations and mods working on various (steam version is usually more of a problem in that area actually).,… but only one storefront came out of the gate decrying how awful and negative Steam’s forum is and then didn’t really put much effort into directing their players to where they should get help.
Unless, you know, the developer delisted their game from Steam and is selling it exclusively on the Epic Store.
It’s an insignificant number right now, but I bet Valve isn’t too keen on subsidizing support costs for a direct competitor.
If you just go to browse the Steam forums for a game, yeah, you can run across crap. But if you are looking for a particular answer, either a technical issue or a question about a quest, or how do something in a game, I find the Steam forums pretty valuable. I’ve gotten the answers to all sorts of gaming questions on Steam.
If something so small is a blocker for you, you didn’t really care about that game anyway.
There’s certainly something to be said for making customer engagement as frictionless as possible. Epic should offer some sort of OAUTH authentication for third-parties, and the token should include which games they bought from the developer requesting that authentication. That isn’t a particularly difficult thing to do.
Well of course I didn’t. It’s not my job to care about the games I haven’t heard of; it’s their job to make me want to care about a game enough to buy it. I can’t tell you how many games I’ve encountered for no other reason than it came up on a Steam sale or list and a quick glance at the Steam forum told me there weren’t really any big red flags with it. I read the forums right before I buy it.
I have no idea why you guys think people should have to work hard to find games and pay the developers in some specific way they want to be payed. It’s their job to get it in front of me, not the other way around. I’ve played more Indie games due to Steam information, sales and forums than decades of tiny throw away articles on gaming news sites that sounded more like some fan gushing over his latest crush than a meaningful presentation of a game that’s not even out yet.
I agree. It is not my job to find a game. It is the game’s job to find me.
Steam takes 30% (at most). Epic takes 12%. This means that a game has to sell about 80% as many copies on Epic as it would on Steam to break even. 80% is a high hurdle to overcome.
Steam has an exceptionally high profile and massive user base. We all know that. But also consider that reach is extended since it includes sites like Amazon, GMG and Fanatical which carry Steam games. That is an even more massive user base to try to attract and it is difficult to believe that 80% of the users of all of those sites will migrate to Epic or even hear about exclusive titles on that store. Perhaps those same sites will start carrying Epic games but until they do the customer base of Epic looks like a pea compared to Steam’s Sol.
Epic’s refund policy is 14 days without any play time limitation whereas Steam stops the loss also at 2 hours of playtime. So I can buy a game on Epic, play it for 50 hours over 2 weeks and return it without an issue. Putting a game like The Walking Dead on such a platform is exceptionally risky because the game will be finished inside 10 hours. Play it twice and return it for nothing; it is easier than pirating a game and entirely legal. This further increases the risk to potential developers.
Then there is no forum, no community, no reviews; I have relied on all of these in the past to make purchasing decisions. The decided lack of community could be a significant issue in moving potential customers to make a buying decision. Is it good? I do not know. On Steam I can quickly look at 10,000 user reviews as an aggregate and get a decent feel on whether a game is good or not. I may know very little about the Crypt of the Necrodancer or Brigador but I can glance on Steam and see that these titles are overwhelmingly liked. I can not do so with few or no reviews and to make a buying decision I then have to go invest time in watching videos from various YouTubers. It is yet another buying hurdle.
IMO the developers who are banking on Epic seem to be doing so to avoid competition and get more exposure. Perhaps a game like Hades would get lost in the shuffle on Steam but would garner front-page exposure on Epic. It is possible but great games always seem to rise to the top. Titles like Slay the Spire, Stardew Valley and Banished did not have great exposure prior to launching on Steam yet all have sold in quite considerable volume. Are they exceptions to the rule? Are there thousands of outstanding Steam titles that are just awaiting discovery by a larger audience? It is possible but in my experience I quite doubt it. When buying bundles I rarely find a game that captures my attention for very long. The cream seems to rise to the top.
It is a considerable risk to go exclusive on the Epic store. I wish the best for anyone doing so but there is no way I would do so. 20% per sale is not enough to overcome so many unknowns. I might be able to get prime product placement at a cooking store in a small town but I think I would rather get that product put in every Walmart in the country even if I only got 80% of the same margins while doing so.
Steam has had 15 years to work on its feature set and increase its reach. Epic Store has had… what, 2 weeks? :)
Of course it will lack features compared to Steam, it will take time to reach parity.
Natural experiment. We get to see soon. But competent store competition is, ultimately, good.
Once again, I wish all those on Epic’s store the best. I see you there Travis ;)
I know it’s fun to armchair quarterback and all, but it’s weird how seldom people think -
“huh, these developers have been succeeding consistently for quite some time, are very familiar with this business and its vagaries, know how to continuously operate without disaster, and are doing this thing that I don’t immediately grok. I wonder if maybe they know something about this that I don’t? Perhaps they have experience and information that is informing this decision?”
But mostly, it’s
“nah, they’re probably blindly stumbling around like morons”
I mean there is risk in everything, but that’s also how you succeed beyond just clawing for survival. You do it in a controlled and reasoned way.