This CEO may think it’s developer-friendly, but I highly doubt if Epic will keep such developer-friendly stance if Epic becomes a giant in this industry.
Epic burnt so much money on Epic store these years. If it succeeds, it’s very likely Epic will try to earn it back. From player? Will players willing to pay more in Epic store than the others? If the answer is no… Sometimes it really makes me wonder if these CEOs are really that stupid…
Yes, and at wholesale rates it’s a pretty good bang-for-your-buck, as an advertising scheme. Advertising is a numbers game about getting as many eyeballs as possible on the product, and I know I actively check for free games on the Epic launcher most weeks. Even if I don’t ever buy anything because of that specifically, it keeps the app on my computer and keeps me checking back in.
Edit: And I shit you not I just opened it to check 'cause I can’t remember if I looked at this week’s free game. Turns out it’s a good thing I did too, the Fallout collection is free right now!
“Even if I don’t ever buy anything” is why I doubt it’s going to work out. Epic is publicly right now saying that it’s great at acquiring users. Yeah, I’ll bet it is. People love free stuff. Is it great at turning those users into paying customers? Even at wholesale rates, I’ve gotten hundreds of games for free from Epic, which means they spent thousands of dollars on me, and I can’t foresee an instance where I’ll ever give them a cent back.
Yeah, obviously they’d want to earn it back and yeah, obviously from customers. You make that sound malicious. Steam is doing the same thing. With the amount of money Steam makes, they could drop their share in half and still make a killing. Epic wouldn’t have to do anything that Steam isn’t to recoup costs if they were competitive with Steam.
That said, Epic does take less revenue from developers, which is nice. This doesn’t translate to less for the end user though because Valve uses their market dominance to force the same price across marketplaces or you aren’t allowed on Steam. It’s fucked up.
Just pointing out, once again, that games sold on the Epic store can be different prices to Steam. “Valve uses their market dominance to force the same price across marketplaces” is a nonsensical, incorrect statement.
Epic store not being profitable and despite the backing of Fortnite and Unreal Engine surplas being at the state that it is shows that it is probably much more expensive than expected to make a feature rich launcher. What epic has is more a glorified storefront like humble bundle or Fanatical but worse because it isn’t even selling keys for the platform of your choice, and they have to handle server costs of storing all the games too.
They “invested” in paying out the ass for exclusivity and loss leaders thinking that buying users would result in users ignoring how terrible their store was and buying more games there.
In a way it like trying to enter the smartphone market and paying for app exclusives then ignoring the part about polishing the OS experience as much as possible and putting out something that is from the flip phone era.
I own a handful of games on Epic that I actually play. But whenever I see one of those games under $5 on steam sale I buy it. I think I’m down to two games left. Playing Fallout London on GOG gives me the same heebie jeebies
If Borderlands 3 had released on Steam, I’d have probably bought it when it came out because I still had a lot of goodwill for the series at that time. Instead, I had to wait until the Steam release when the game already had loads of negative press. Exclusive deals are idiotic
How is he so disconnected from the reality? At the same time I know what he meant but did it in the worst way possible. Why corporations are so big that they don’t recognise their bad decision. “We are not the problem, it’s just you” and then swallows gamers and enshititifaction again.
I would say now do the Google Play Gift card scam where buyers cannot redeem the cards in Google’s automated systems, and the buyer is not allowed to return the card either so the money is kept by Google forever…
You can still buy 100% of the games on gamepass. I don’t see Microsoft stopping individual sales as I’d expect that action to draw the attention of regulators
Considering Microsoft is supposedly releasing a new revision of the Xbox Series X and S next year without disc drives, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Given the direction the industry is moving, I wouldn’t be surprised if the PS6 and whatever Microsoft calls the next Xbox are all digital only.
I'm a little fuzzy as to why the first-sale doctrine exists for physical goods but not for digital goods. It seems to me that any reasonable economic rationale should affect either both or neither.
The Series S and Game Pass have shown that people like discounts; so either competing console is going to run into issues attracting customers if they never offer them in any form. That’s currently an issue for the Nintendo eShop.
It’s this or buying nothing. I play most games for a few hours to see what they’re like and then ditch them. I love the current system as it is kinda making me feel like I’m part of gaming still while mostly being too tired to play. Starfield is the first game in years I’ve spent more than 5 hours on (dozens by now) in years. Never would’ve played it without gamepass.
I haven’t used a disc in a long time. Even before I got my series s most everything I played was gamepass or a digital purchase. When used physical games barely cost less than a new game, why bother?
EGS was always shit, I've said it since the beginning, and if they totally shut down and a bunch of dipshits lose their free libraries, all I'll do is laugh. Every downvote I've ever gotten for saying Epic is shit is just another tear for my collection.
You should have been able to see this coming the first (and every) time they bought a dev studio and immediately blocked game sales on Steam, or set games to exclusive for no reason other than locking out people who don't use their shitty store. Companies that can compete on their own merits don't have to do that, and being a fanboy because they gave out free games you probably already bought is fucking stupid.
I've heard of people getting banned from online play on steam, but haven't heard of anyone losing their library. I guess if you only play online, it could be the same effect (so maybe don't be a douchebag when playing online?)
I don't play multiplayer, except the rare occasion, and it's usually direct connect (which you can't be banned from), so I wouldn't care.
At any rate, I'm not saying steam is perfect or should be the only store, just that EGS fucking sucks. I agree with Randy Pitchford; We should have many viable competitors. Options are good. Epic is not a good option.
I have a large library of non-DRM games from multiple sources, to say nothing of physical releases and homebrew.
Even if I didn't, I have every right to say that an anticompetitive shitbag company's hack-job store sucks ass. Same goes for the Nintendo eShop. They don't care about their customers' experience, they only care about making money.
I mean, you can run any game through Proton. You don't even need to buy anything, just open steam, add the non-steam game, select proton compatibility, and off you go. This is how I play a lot of my Itch.io games on Steamdeck or my laptop (I don't have a windows install on any of my systems).
Google hardware actually gives you the most freedom, no other Android phone allows you to install a custom operating system, relock the bootloader and use Android Verified Boot, which is a fundamental part of the Android security model, with a custom signing key defined by the custom OS. It also includes the Titan M2 secure element which gives you great security through features like Android StrongBox, the Weaver API and it even has Insider Attack Resistance meaning Google, even if they get a court order to do so, can’t comprise the Titan M. Firmware can only be loaded to the chip after proper user authentication. Yes, it’s a little ironic, but Google hardware gives you the most freedom over your device.
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