Why are paid exclusives worse, though? I’ve never understood that. I understand why we hate exclusives, but I’ve never heard anyone explain why paid exclusives are worse. Steam has tons of exclusives, some of which are exclusive because they targeted Steam APIs that are proprietary and the developers don’t have the resources or incentive to port the game to another platform. Why isn’t it bad to encourage developers to use proprietary APIs that make it difficult to port games to other platforms?
As a consumer, exclusives are shitty because they restrict where I can buy and play a game. This is true whether they’re paid exclusives, technical lock-in exclusives, lazy developer exclusives, etc. All types of exclusives suck. Is it worse that Borderlands 3 was exclusive for 6 months compared to Borderlands 2 being exclusive for ~7 years, just because one was paid? I can’t understand why the 6 month exclusivity period is worse for a consumer than the 7 year one.
Most of the salt I have for this behaviour from games that were pulled from Steam because Epic threw cash at the developers, or they’re exclusive despite there being no reason to be.
I have no issue with Epic releasing their own games in their store, just like valve do, or EA/Actvision did.
This is the same kinda shit that Valve / publishers pulled when Steam launched, though.
Half-Life and Counterstrike originally didn’t require Steam, and then one day Valve told everybody they’d need to start using Steam if they wanted to keep playing the games they’d already bought. That’s a Valve game, but it’s akin to Epic moving Rocket League to EGS (which also pissed people off).
For more general / non-Valve games, there was a time period where you’d pre-order a physical copy of game and honestly not know if it would require a launcher. Tons of games that launched in early days of Steam didn’t bother to tell consumers upfront that Steam was required, and consumers wouldn’t find out until the game hit the shelves and there was a little note on the back of the box, “Internet access and Steam account required.” In that case, non-Steam pre-orders weren’t even given an exception – every copy required Steam. That seems even worse than the Epic mess IMO. There, the publishers at least made an exception for people who thought they were ordering a Steam game. If you thought you were gonna get a real physical copy of game that didn’t require a launcher, and it ended up requiring Steam, the publisher just told you to either use Steam or pound sand.
I don’t like the behavior either, but pulling already announced / released games and forcing them onto a different launcher is standard practice when a new launcher comes out. It’s happened to paid and non-paid exclusives. It’s happened to EGS and Steam (and probably Origin or Uplay or others too). I don’t see any reason to be any more upset at publishers over the EGS debacle than the Steam one.
My take is that launcher exclusivity shouldn’t exist, because every single launcher has just pissed off / screwed over consumers when there is exclusivity / any requirement to use the launcher.
Yes, in the long run it always is. That’s my point. EGS will probably be successful, and 15 years from now someone will bring up a story about how EGS really infuriated people “back in the day”, and everyone will say it’s irrelevant.
Nobody cares how the service got started. They only care where it goes. It doesn’t make a bit of difference how pissed off everyone is at Epic. It didn’t matter how pissed off everyone was at Steam in the early years. There’s a reason these companies start off by pissing everyone off: it works. There’s no long term downside, and, in the short term, it gets you users. Users don’t show up voluntarily on the early days, and they defend the service once it’s established.
As long as Epic lasts long enough for everyone to later forgive them for their anti-consumer beginning, they’ll be golden. It’s the market standard. The early days will always be viewed as irrelevant. “It was a different time,” people always say. “You can’t compare it to now.”
FYI, key resellers actually cost game publishers money, due to frequent credit card chargebacks. Many indie devs have stated that if you’re going to buy something from a key reseller, they would actually prefer you to just pirate it instead.
So ive heard, I remember the pricing before all the controversy was much lower, now most games after service fees either match steam price or slightly above a recent sale price.
Not advocating previous practice’s but saying that the issue seems to be a lot less prevalent to how it used to be
Besides the difficulties for players, there’s also the fact that key reselling is an excellent method for credit card pickpockets to launder money quickly.
Someone’s credit card is swiped in the streets, and in the time before it’s reported stolen, the thief buys many copies of expensive games, to be resold on a place like this. The key resellers themselves claim they’re purchased directly, but…I personally have almost no faith in them or their claims.
They’re partially owned by Tencent, a big Chinese company. And as Chinese companies are, the government has direct influence over them. And while Tencent is not a majority owner, Tim Sweeney happily took Chinese money and now pays his co-owner a portion of the profits which then go to pay for Chinese gulags.
There are many things, especially hardware, where it’s impossible to avoid Chinese companies but simply buying games somewhere else is super easy. It’s obviously not a perfect system because even on GOG there are games using UE, but just buying games somewhere else is such a low barrier, it’s not an inconvenience at all.
That said, claiming the free games doesn’t help them. It helps the developers making those games because Epic has to pay them and won’t get anything in return if that doesn’t result in users leaving money in EGS for other things.
My parents asked me to bring the VR kit like I did last year. It’s an old HTC Vive I lucked into for cheap from a friend who didn’t have space to really use it once he’d moved. I run things through SteamVR.
Had to bring the whole desktop but it was worth while - my brother and mum get a kick out of Beatsaber, my dad and cousin were all about The Lab’s archery game, Longbow. Nothing else was played on it, but those two are enough. Kinda like a little side-room arcade.
Of course you can’t really play with each other, not with my one headset and PC but someone playing draws a small crowd so it’s entertaining for all.
I wouldn’t really recommend anyone to get VR at this point unless they’re super into that kinda thing as the ecosystem of games is pretty weak for the price and setup, and it doesn’t seem to be developing very fast.
However, it was a real joy to have at Christmas. Even my very aged grandpa shot a few arrows and had a marvel at it.
Otherwise, I’ll always play a game or two of FIFA on the Xbox with my brother for old times sake!
Do you mount the lightboxes when you bring it with you? Mine has been languishing in a corner for a year because I have high ceilings in my current apartment and don’t feel like going through the trouble to mount them
I don’t. I don’t at home either. I’m sure it’s terrible practice and I’m courting disaster but just standing them there on the shelves honestly does the trick. They’re quite forgiving with the view angle it seems.
Never heard of it. Is it a story heavy game? My Steam account says it’s similar to Hollow Knight and Ace Attorney, which seems like two completely different games.
I suppose you could say it’s story heavy since what you’re doing is piecing together what happened on the ship. The story is that you’re a insurance investigator and have to find out what happened to every person that was on the Obra Dinn. It’s a great game. If it matters, it’s a Lucas Pope game, the guy who made Papers Please.
I picked up En Garde recently because I absolutely adore the tone, setting and swashbuckling duelist vibe.
It’s a little flat for me, I don’t feel like it has achieved the character fantasy of being a swashbuckler in the mechanics, instead I’m basically kicking boxes into people and stabbing them again and again.
For less than $5 CAD, I picked up Maiden & Spell, an excessively cute sidescrolling shooter a la R-Type, except it’s a levelless boss rush with Story and Versus modes. It’s got a very Touhou aesthetic (i.e. rather than spaceships or dragons or something, everyone is cute girls).
Story mode is basically a Touhou boss rush, where your character fights 4 monster girls and 2 out of the other 3 human girls, with no level in-between, it’s just bosses. There’s a threadbare but acceptable story linking them, with each playable character giving a different perspective on the same story, and then there being an epilogue chapter and a bonus extra boss. Story mode has 4 difficulties, the easiest of which is called Cute Mode and is basically unloseable, so even if you’ve never played a game like this, you can give it a go.
Versus mode is basically a 1v1 fighting game. You and one friend each pick one of the 8 girls and do bullet hells at each other until you see who wins. It’s not complex, but it is kind of tactically deep.
The same author is currently working on a sequel, Rabbit & Steel, a very similar game except rather than a versus battler, it’s a coop roguelike inspired by MMO raid mechanics. A sneak-peek demo with online multiplayer is available, and it’s really fun!
I have three games on the go at the moment. Gotta enjoy those few weeks off from university, when I actually have some time.
Empyrion: playing this with my partner. This really feels like a game that could be amazing if the devs gave it a bit of polish, cleaned up the bugs, and updated the in-game information with the current game mechanics. There’s something deeply frustrating about not knowing how to do something, and every post on Steam community and Reddit has a different answer, and very few of those answers are correct in the current version of the game. It’s a shame, because I’m really loving the actual gameplay. I spent most of today rebuilding my ship: suffice to say, the NPC faction that blasted holes in the previous version of the ship are going to rue the day they blasted holes in my ship. I have shields and a lot more guns. 😈
Earthlock: still enjoying this. Delightful RPG in the style of 90s Final Fantasy games. The storyline isn’t wowing me. It’s fine, very standard fantasy, but it doesn’t stand out as anything really amazing. But it’s a nice, easy-playing game with a lot of nice elements. It’s cute, the gameplay mechanics are interesting, and the puzzles are just the right balance between too easy and too hard. And I can plant trees that, for some reason, spawn frogs around them. I have no idea why, but I’m not complaining. 🐸
Maneater: I really had no idea how much I needed this game in my life until I started playing it. It’s been a rough couple of months, and something about being a shark on a quest for vengeance is incredibly cathartic. Those people in that fancy yacht totally had it coming. My glee definitely did escalate once I moved into an area with lots of rich people. More golf courses should have electric sharks sliding through them, chomping on the golfers. 🦈
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Aktywne