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Nothing more disappointing to me than seeing a game I might enjoy... and then it's only available on PC on Epic Games store. Why can't it be available on Epic, Xbox game store and Steam? It's so annoying, like you have no choice but to use Epic... which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.
Valve kills physical ownership of games: I sleep
Games exclusive to Origin: I sleep
Games exclusive to whatever the fuck Blizzard made: I sleep
Games exclusive to Microsoft Store: I sleep
Games exclusive to Epic: REAL SHIT
Its because the other exclusives are the devs/publishers launcher. While epic was actively seeking those 1year exclusivity deals to get more users on the platform.
So it would be better if it was a permanent exclusivity deal, like traditional publishers have?
They've been paying out in advance in some cases (Epic Mega Grants, I think) so the devs can finish the game. That's basically the definition of what publishers do, but when Epic do it it's somehow "not publishing"?
Well it really depends how you look at it. For the devs it's better in terms of how much they get per purchase given that epic takes a lower cut than steam, IIRC 15% as opposed to 30%.
But many users hate epic as a platform seeing how it's not as mature in features, and probably just pure love of steam.
What I'm actually wondering about is if it's worth signing the exclusivity deal seeing how some people will not bother buying a game on a platform they hate or do enough people purchase for it to even out and even gain a larger profit.
steam and valve has also been generally more respectful with users than mostly any other online business, not even just in the space of online software stores. of course it's not all rainbows and glitter but the point stands.
I don't give any attention to the arguments that Steam is "more mature" in regards to features, when the vast majority of users don't use those features to begin with. Steam has all the community features (and more) of Discord, but I would wager most of the fanboys in this thread don't even know about that, or where to find those community features, let alone actually use them.
https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7
They waited until a game previously announced for Steam was finished development and had a launch date, then tried to bribe them with an exclusivity deal to not provide the game on the platform they promised to backers.
They weren't paying a damn thing for development, just to eliminate consumer choice. Instead of, you know, providing a better service in some way so people want to purchase from you instead.
don't hide the full story, they pay devs millions to keep their games exclusive to epic for a year. that is an extremely scummy business practice that you are rewarding and encouraging if you buy from this shitfest of a platform
When Half Life 2 launched, you had to register your game with Steam before you could play it. You had to give up your physical ownership of the product, and lock it to yourself. You couldn't sell it to anyone else, or even let them play it.
That's what you were encouraging by buying from that shitfest of a platform.
I really don't see how bunging devs money for publishing rights is worse. The devs clearly don't see it that way.
Epic lets you sell your games to someone else?
As to your 2nd point I play my friend's games all the time. I haven't purchased Satisfactory but have almost 100% it on Steam playing my friend's copy.
No. You can with physical. Well, before that just meant a steam key with a disc.
That come much later. Try to keep up.
So we're talking about everything except this moment in time?
If Steam is bad because no physical media then so is Epic.
Pick an era in time you would like to complain about, and if it's the early 2000s then go bitch to people in the early 2000s. I'm sure many of them are complaining about the loss of physical media. People still used Steam anyway and now it's the norm. Now people are complaining about exclusivity deals, if people still use Epic anyway then that will become the norm.
I mean I see this as a good thing. I have to keep a separate launcher around but... at least that dev is getting a great deal and will probably be able to support that game for a while (or start their next one)
You don’t even need to do that. Use Heroic and you can combine Epic, GOG, and Amazon into one launcher.
Yeah and get in return like 10 players? Only who has no faith in their game sells it to the demon
There are apparently 270 million Epic Store accounts made.
Now most of them don't buy anything and are probably installed on a whim for one free game ad now they've forgot their password, while a good chunk of them are probably 12 year olds playing Fortnite who don't even look at it and hurl all their pocket money into V-bucks so the rest of us get free games, but it's not an insignificant amount.
You know it also counts ghost accounts made while linking your steam to epic or when you use a game with EOS and it creates a dummy account yee?
Buying the game. I thought it was obvious but I guess not
They’re paying indie devs millions to remain exclusive for a year. What’s scummy is the Steam fanboys who see that and think it’s better for gamers if those games just aren’t financially successful.
-Valve didn't kill ownership it was already dead. DLC has been pulled, and games delisted, as well as games made unplayable by server shutdowns. They just happened to be the platform who told you to your face what you were getting into while everyone else lied and said the game was yours until it wasn't. They also say they'll provide downloads for a time if they ever shut down, but if you want that long term guarantee you're probably better off looking at GOG and some kind of data storage for the installers.
-Origin is shit and I hate EA/Origin exclusives too, but it's basically a launcher for their own games which I understand, but still prefer steam to be included too, so much of the time I avoid EA games (i avoid them for a lot of reasons tbh)
-Battle.net started as a unified launcher for blizzard games, which sort of made sense as they never worked with or were involved with steam, and many of their games were disc based or had its own installer. Subscriptions specifically I don't think existed with steam for a while so that was sort of a complicating factor. Still wish their games were on steam, but it sort of made sense at its inception.
-I don't even use the microsoft store unless forced to, I find it annoying and bleh. They're forcing more games to it and it's shitty too.
-Epic is annoying, but it's a special kind of annoying because for many games early on, they would announce steam as a supported platform, some even sold the game on steam, until they changed to Epic exclusives. I think Fall Guys was one example. The bait and switch really lost them trust with a lot of gamers and you'll find the attitude towards them can be pretty bad because of that history.
Add in that many of the games aren't published by them, they just threw money at the publisher or devs to make their games epic exclusive. This can be good for developers, like an upfront investment, but sucks for gamers who like to keep things somewhat unified in terms of a game library. Especially when you already have to deal with 5 other launchers, another arbitrary one is pretty annoying.
If you're wondering why people want their games on steam, look at the features. Free cloud save backups, a decent amount of free screenshot backups, in game recording is new and pretty neat, achievements, community marketplaces, frequent sales, family sharing, steam workshop for easy integrated modding, discussions and guides for all your games, early access games, built in friends, text chat, voice chat, remote play together, game streaming, etc.
TLDR: It isn't an "oh epic stinky just because" situation. The Epic game store simply doesn't have feature parity, bait and switched gamers multiple times with exclusives after games were advertised as being on steam, and basically survived on throwing money at devs to put their games exclusively on EGS, at the expense of the people who want to play those games on their chosen platform. Doesn't shock me that they don't have a lot of positive PR in the community.
kills? most of them work with a steam emu, even offline. that's not even cracking. most of those that don't have a different limitation.
with a steam emu you can do whatever you want with the game files, often you can put it on your pendrive and play it as a portable game (the right goldberg emu settings allow game data to be stored near the game files instead of appdata)
So much this
I'm OK if you own the game you are making exclusive to your platform. Bribing devs is shitty practice. They also sit and wait for a game's early access to gain momentum on Steam first before offering them money to leave.