Yeah it’s gonna be a clusterfuck for sure. Honestly I don’t know how they’ll resolve this, I guess stapling an instruction sheet on the box itself before they ship?
Post-it note on every box. :D
I find it convenient to have my games consolidated to one storefront, but I really don’t get why you people are so upset about this. They’re PC games. You have a shortcut on your desktop or start menu. You run the shortcut, the launcher starts the game, you play it, all is well. Seems like a silly thing to argue about.
I don’t have a problem with store exclusives either, generally speaking, but what they did with Metro, removing it from Steam right before release after people already bought it there, really isn’t consumer-friendly.
If the various storefronts had the ability to compete against each other on price that would be a different story, and exclusives would be awful for consumers. But that really doesn’t happen with digital copies.
Even if we wanted to argue over whether the Epic store is not worth going to because some people hate Fortnite, who would take the other side of that argument? On one side, we’d have you, saying look, Fortnite is successful because it’s a good game, and you should get over being resentful that it’s such a huge success and not punish the Epic Game Store for your resentment. But since no one is saying that at Qt3, who will argue the other side of your argument? We would need someone at Qt3 who actually stands up and says, no, you’re wrong Dave, we really should be resentful about Fortnite’s success and we should take it out on the Epic Game Store.
I know that makes us guilty of groupthink, since we don’t have anyone like that here, but that doesn’t change the fact that we don’t. And to have an argument, you need two sides to actually argue their positions.
This stupid community groupthink has everyone behaving appropriately toward Fortnite and it’s tearing us apart!
Is that what he was arguing about above? Got to admit my eyes defocused. That some people, just nobody on Qt3, are rejecting the Epic Store because they resent Fortnite for being popular with children?
Maybe that’s true and maybe it ain’t. If it is, it’s an interesting observation but not sure where to go from there.
The only concern I have with multiple stores is DLCs and expansions. Buying a game on one store, but having the DLC on sale on another would be lame.
This is really going to be decided at the publisher level. It’s going to come down to titles that - by and large - the somewhat casual gaming community is going to buy wherever they are (because those gamers care less about things like game consolidation, because they don’t have huge libraries, they just have the top tier titles). With Division 2, they kind of have a game like that. Metro, less so, but it’s another one that leans in that direction. If they can grab a few more big titles like that - titles that the community will follow, regardless of where they live, they’ll be set, as long as those games do indeed sell well on their store. If they do, word spreads, publishers will see the bigger cut, and will go to the Epic Store.
This won’t be decided at the developer level. I know that they’re presenting it as “More money for the devs!” That’s just PR. They’re locking up some indie, smaller titles for the PR. And it won’t be decided by the super core gamer enthusiast audience (although the sentiment there will definitely have an impact, we just don’t know if it’ll be enough). It’ll be decided by those big title publishers and the promise of more money. It has a decent chance of working if they can nab a few more big titles that customers will follow anywhere.
And since we know that Valve\Steam make most of their actual revenue off of those few big titles per year, if Epic gets a few more of those from under their noses, we’ll see Valve react. Their reaction will be targeted at pubs. Not gamers, and not devs (although they may pay lip service to that).
I’d be happier with Steam as de facto default system if it did a good job of presenting my collection. It’s defeated by volume I guess. Uplay and Origin do better with their limited offerings.
Agreed. I find I can beat it into something resembling submission now that their categories work reliably provided I also maintain a ‘current’ games list for stuff I’m playing right now. Exploring what I own for something newish to play is bit of a nightmare though. I almost need a curated marketing campaign to show me what I could be playing from my own library.
What the hell, man? No, many of us have been having a discussion about the pros and cons. A lot of people here like the Epic store. Travis Baldree made some great posts from his perspective as a developer who has signed an exclusivity agreement with Epic. Rod Humble is a fan of the store and he and I had a back and forth about the current state of the store pages just yesterday. This thread has near 1300 posts arguing back and forth, you don’t get that if all there is is “groupthink”.
I realize I’m an outlier but I really wish game launchers (Steam, Epic etc) would just leave my damn games alone. As in, I want the launchers to be as unobtrusive as humanly possible.
I want to be able to start my game without needing to run the launcher
I want to choose exactly when my game is updated
I want my games to have NO DEPENDENCY on any launcher
I think a big problem with Steam (and possibly Epic store in the future) is vendor lock in (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in). Where a game becomes dependent on store features and switching to others is costly/problematic.
EDIT:
I want a launcher agnostic, open source library that provides achievements and other store features in a launcher agnostic fashion. So I can plug it into my game and get these features across all stores/launchers.
Just wanted to let you know you’re not alone.
I have hundreds of games currently installed on my PC, so it’s not an issue of too many applications. But when I browse online/“Window shop” for games, my time is precious and therefore I won’t comb through each and every avenue to find games I’m interested in. There’s a very real (albeit fuzzy) upper limit to how many storefronts/platforms/whatever I’ll look at, and I doubt @meeper and I are the only ones. So while I appreciate the ostensible benefit having more storefronts will provide the consumer, there’s a part of me which is a little sad because it likely increases the odds I’ll miss out on something.
It should be noted I do have an Epic account and I’ll at least be getting Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, so it’s not like I’m a “hater” or whatever. Rather, just trying to explain how at least my tiny part of the consumer base tends to deal with this stuff.
People are not happy about this because this is, afaik, first time that this console-like artificial exclusivity has been done on PC with third party games. Valve have never paid any third party dev to restrict their game to steam store, and in fact have always encouraged developers to put their games everywhere, to the point where they let them generate free keys to sell wherever without giving Valve a single cent from it.
We simply do not want to see a future where every game is only available on a single store and there is no pricing competition, and we have to use the worst, most featureless platform.
You are wrong about the lack of ability to compete on price between storefronts. I don’t understand how you could type that. Of course stores compete! It is why it is often possible to buy games 25% off on GMG and other places at launch. Because they can lower their margin to attract customers and, you know, compete.
You’re describing what I view as the future. Long-term, feeling locked into a store client will feel as archaic as being locked into a videogame console.
Here in the present, I’m just mystified I’m still being lumped into some stereotype about Fortnite haters. There are so few things that surprise me on the Internet. This is one of them.
We also don’t want to see a future where we have to use a single platform because of vendor lock in. More platforms = more win.
I think we all are. I don’t care about Fornite, one way or another. I know people who play it. Good for them. They love it. So what? It has nothing to do with Epic trying to lock other games into their storefront, an inferior one at that.
Those sites are just selling Steam keys. They aren’t competing stores.
Is buying a steam key all that didn’t from buying Steam Bucks for slightly less?
Only if those platforms are actually good and compete on quality and pricing, instead of restricting customer choice. Nobody has ever complained about GOG the way people are about Epic, and there is a reason for that.
How does that matter though? Valve gets nothing anyway, while gamers get the benefit of the best platform on the market.