All’s fair in hype and e-commerce.
The only effective way to respond, though, is to not buy the game, period. Which of course is 1) hard for fans of the genre/series, and 2) has the unintended effect of punishing the developers along with the publisher. But really, bitching on a forum will have zero impact. Bitching on social media will have marginally more impact, but still near zero. The only thing that will send a message is pretty much the game tanking totally. Which will mean probably no more Metro games or similar products for the PC from the developer.
In this case, it’s possible to not buy the game on Epic’s store and still buy it when it comes back to Steam. That might send the intended message without tanking the franchise overall. Then again, just not buying stuff doesn’t really tell the publisher anything about why you didn’t.
The whole super heated kerfuffle with Epic and Metro Exodus hasn’t been so heated for no reason. Yes, the real way of protesting this is not buying the game. That’s in fact the intended way of doing it in a capitalist market system.
Thing is… people WANT to play the game! Because surprise surprise, writing on Internet how EA is evil and Battlefront is infested with mtx and calling a boycott on it is very easy when people really didn’t have the intention of buying the game. But when people really want to play the game, they feel so conflicted on what to do, if support (and play!) Metro after all this, and in the Epic store, or boycott the Epic store and stay Metro-less. They really dislike BOTH options, so that’s why they are venting so much on Internet.
I would say Malkav is right, if they see the Steam sales on the first week being several times higher than the first week on the Epic store, despite releasing one year later, they should estimate that what Epic paid to them wasn’t worth it. Maybe they aren’t stupid, they know already it isn’t going to be worth it, because they didn’t imagine this strong reaction from the community, but now it’s too late to go back, the contracts are already signed since months ago.
People who must have the game will get the game anyway possible. That’s money in the bank.
What they risk losing is the casuals and dependents. Though I don’t know what market share that is.
Billy’s steam gift card from grandma wont be going to epic.
Given I have large backlog to play through, I will get on Steam and wait for a year, The game will be much cheaper when it release on Steam next year, plus GMG and Fanatical may be able to sale steam keys for even cheaper if they can sale steam keys. Another reason is I hope all the bugs will be worked out by then, the game will be stable and perform well on my rig.
Pretty much this.
This I find hard to believe, honestly. No way they finally put it on Steam and it’s less than $50. You may find some sites like GMG giving you a 20% discount, sure, but that’s pretty normal.
I’d grab this for my PS4 Pro but then I would have to use my damned controller, and that’s not going to happen. I bet it would look amazing on my TV though.
I’ll end up getting this on the EPIC store, I’m sure. Probably sooner rather than later. It looks awesome. I can wait for reviews though, the pre-order stuff isn’t interesting enough to me to want to dive in before launch.
For one year old game? I bet it will be released on steam in the $30-40 range, if they charge $50, then I can wait longer.
They won’t see it as a “one year old game” when they put it on a new store front. The publishers charged full price for the Tomb Raider sequel on PS4 when it was an XBO exclusive for a year, for example.
If EPIC is smart, they will set EPIC store price $10 below whatever Steam release price is right before the Steam release to drive price conscious buyer to EPIC store.
I’m probably not buying the game based on the Koch name alone, but I never really got into the Metro series so it’s not like I’m a diehard fan taking a principled stand.
Edit: Just looked it up and they’re not owned by the Koch brothers. Just an unfortunate name, like Gamersgate.
Die hard Metro/STALKER fan here, I liked guys like Prof since like 2002 when first screens and articles about STALKER: Oblivion Lost started coming out. And I would still wait that year if I didn’t manage to preorder the steam version, simply because I do not wish to support third party exclusivity and have about 15 other games installed at the moment that I want to play this year.
What makes you think DS is stupid enough to give control over the pricing to Epic? From a publisher perspective giving price autonomy to a store only makes sense if the store has to buy licenses for a fixed wholesale price. If Epic has to pay 40$ DS couldn’t care less if Epic sells the game for 30$. But if you don’t have a wholesale model and go for revenue sharing, the publisher would be rather stupid to give up control over the pricing because their business targets aren’t congruent with Epic’s.
It will be sold at whatever it’s being priced at on the Epic store, or it won’t be on Steam. If that’s still $50 a year later, I guess it will be $50 on Steam too. But that doesn’t seem super likely.
My goodness.
Anyway, I don’t mind people complaining to the Internet. Social media firestorms can change behavior. That’s fine.
I would hope this forum of adults can limit the constant shitting on Epic over the next year. Only because it’s already tedious. It reminds me of console war nonsense. And yes, they started it, but just about everyone on this forum is above stuff like that.
I’ve concluded my soapbox for the year. Carry on with ranting.
Reset Era has an OT up for Metro, and I see it contains a nice write-up for the events of the first and second game, if anyone want’s a refresher.
Holy shit, I don’t remember any of that, but it sounds awesome! I suspect a lot of the story nuance escaped me when I was playing, plus that was so long ago…
I found a good video recap as well, for those that would prefer that medium!
Also, a new Special Weapons Trailer has arrived:
LOL, here is a twist.
Hahahaha! Oh man.
It isn’t that “pre-load via the Epic games store” is not planned, it’s that isn’t possible, from what I know there is no preload feature in EGS.
Steam case is a bit special in this particular feature, as it was one of the first one they did! Of course the real reason was because in 2004 people could need a pair of weeks to download the game, and people who bough HL2 in retail had the game files but encrypted, so they needed some kind of of mechanism to accept game files before release date and a decrypt on release day.