Update your consumer benefits comparison infographics! Two more in the Epic column!
What? They made the refund policy more restrictive.
How so? Epic previously only allowed two refunds, ever. As in lifetime. Or so I thought?
Kids need rules!
It was initially 2, plus another 1 each year (but they did not accumulate). The new policy is definitely more liberal in general.
It depends on how you look at it. The Epic policy two weeks ago was two refunds per account with any purchase within 14 days. However you can always create multiple accounts so it was pitifully easy to get free games on Epic. Create an account, buy a game, play for 14 days. Do the same for another game. Create a new account. Repeat. With few features to tie a user to want to keep a particular account, why the heck not create a new one? Epic’s old refund policy was a legal way of renting games for free. Now with the two hour restriction it is not.
Not that I have much of an interest in doing so. I have enough free games I have not been able to play the ones on Twitch that I got for free never mind getting more on Epic. But the new policy is more restrictive if someone intended on legally (albeit immorally) abusing it.
Oh, interesting. I didn’t see “easily-abused refund policy” in the positives column for Epic in the infographics. They must’ve forgotten.
They are going to have to re-do the front page eventually, it can’t just be an infinite scroll of jpeg links to games you can buy. Imagine 500 games on an infinite scroll. Not alphabetical, and no way to sort price or release date.
Nintendo seems happy with their infinite scroll solution for the eShop on Switch, and like 20 pieces of crap launch there every week.
I am not happy with it.
Regional pricing, sigh. That’s the reason I barely buy on Steam now that they made it regional and pricematched to physical stores. It’s about 10-15 dollars more per (non discounted) game than it used to be.
So far prices on epic are still in USD, here’s to hoping they keep it that way and ignore the existence of my silly country.
Which is probably why they changed it. Too restrictive for the decent customer and too easily abused for the unscrupulous one.
You are on fire today. Stop making me laugh out loud at work!
He is talking to TimJames.
But don’t feel too bad, I’m laughing at you.
hah, if there is one thing Epic store has done, it’s made Valve be more open and proud about what they actually do when it comes to Steam, hence article overview like this
They’ve been busy.
Interesting they explicitly avoid the elephant in the room. The unilateral cutting of UA impressions by Steam for new games.
So yeah the “hey look we removed the biggest reason you should pay us our cut, but here are all the baubles we did instead” doesnt really answer the criticisms.
A far cry from when Steam was growing and they proudly guaranteed one million or more impressions for each game. Now thats gone they need to earn their cut another way and “discovery algorithms” dont help.
Isn’t this a logical and inevitable consequence of opening up the platform to everyone?
I dont see why it would be. Steam has a lot of UA impressions to throw around. Its gonna be a long time till new game releases would eat up that massive pie.
However if it is the case that they just dont have the clout to help new games anymore then really its just Steam saying they cant support any new partners. So those partners should go elsewhere if they want launch support.
But like I say I think Steam still has a LOT of headroom on the partner UA side.
Just so we are clear, by UA impressions you mean a view of game store page by a unique customer or something else?
Correct, although it doesn’t have to be unique.
Really its just the broader issue. Obviously devs want UA/launch support. Thats the primary function of a digital store from a sellers perspective. Nothing else really matters.
Its why you have seen such a change in attitudes against steam recently If you are not going to promote games on your service then its not surprising that games will leave.
I mean if I want to just sell a game with zero UA support on a great service then I can put it on Itch today and they take an appropriately lesser cut. If that makes sense?