Since they are bought by Amazon I think any service they wasn’t on AWS would have been moved to AWS. Basically, on demand video streaming service (netflix, youtube, etc) does have finer control of how they want to re-encode and have like bit rate throttle on the server/client side so you don’t see too much buffering if internet connection is acting up. This means they can throttle you down to 360p like youtube auto if their data center isn’t fast enough to fetch the high bit rate yet and then feed you the higher quality one once they got it. (or down grade if your connection goes bad) But twitch stream is like I have a 10Mbits stream incoming and I have to copy, run a 2nd pass on the fly for different resolution, duplicate to outgoing servers and send to user all under 46s delay. I am not expert on the backend side and only have some experience dealing with streaming around 20162018. So to me that’s incredible feat but the short timespan means they can’t crunch the output bit rate even if it’s pretty static video. Compare to youtube, if I uploaded a 2030 minutes video in about 12GB on disk, it took them about 35 hours to re-encode, even if the source is already encoded with AV1. (I am not partner so I join the queue like any normal pleb on the internet.)
edit forgot to respond to the cloud GPU thing, I think AWS will be charging Twitch the same way as other company, so AWS aren’t really “losing” money if Twitch choose to use cloud instance with GPU(which would be kinda dumb). They need higher throughput for the data in/out so whatever the CPU ingest part I mentioned above is just to breakdown the stream and feed to user as quick as possible. They are not going to waste anytime to give you better quality stream with lower bandwidth cost. they just feed you whatever fits into their bandwidth budget basically.
very typical for people that never even run or host their own server from data center or even cloud service.
live streaming is worse in bandwidth consumption compare to youtube with same resolution input to output. Like youtube can do whatever they like to keep the outgoing low even if you encode according to spec. But streaming with the demand of like 4~6s delay their 2nd pass to try lower the output bitrate is just not gonna be as good as youtube. That’s why twitch still don’t have 4k stream, they have new beta programs thanks to newer codec on newer GPU, as otherwise their data center is gonna get crushed hard.
I think so but I also feel that the arena/duel can feature a bit more variety of high level enemies that uses different weapon types. I really miss when some of the duel that the enemy use things that are not blade and wish they could be extended more even onto say archer based boss, or ninja style boss, etc. (I guess the legends/raid type of boss may have more variety but I don’t really like that rng loot drop grinding part so I skipped the whole thing. )
They even bought out Rocket League and delisted it from Steam, even though it was already published and had been on the platform for years.
As a PSN/Steam launch Rocket League player and still playing. The only thing I don’t like about this decision is that it’s losing the workshop integration since Epic doesn’t have their own implementation. Otherwise I don’t blame them for doing this and it does not affect any “new” players after the F2P switch. Workshop was eventually rectified with community mod for EGS version but I wish there is workshop maps on consoles as well, some of them are really well made, my son love those a lot.
Note, it does not mean I like or approve how they run Rocket League and recent changes. In fact I decided to stop buying anything on RL with recent removal of player trading until they implement new features or improve RL that’s worth my bucks. I’ve paid enough in RL to let me go another 57 years for my share of server cost. (base on my calculation of hosting a server with similar capacity, my numbers might be off but pretty sure I paid more than enough. average around 7090 CAD each year since launch. )
I can’t criticize Epic for making their own properties exclusive
If I buy off Skyrim’s right and have my own store and did the calculator for risk and return, you’d be dame sure I will delist it and only host on my store so I don’t have to pay another store front 30% for the new Alan Wake II engine powered version of Skyrim.
Why buying exclusive deals are everywhere because making profitable games are almost like making correct bet on penny stocks. As a developer I would choose safe income to ensure we can keep going if no one else is willing to offer exclusivity deals. Those deals are really good for indie games especially if they are self-publishing instead of having to split with a stronger backing publisher. This is the part most steam worshiper or people that criticize Epic’s moves don’t get their head around and then threaten to “boycott” their once “loved” projects or developers, call them greedy, and abandon the fans, or backers. I believe some dev even promise to give out steam/gog keys after the exclusive deal expires but still getting shamed to death by accepting such deal. Developers aren’t your personal slaves, they got bills to pay and company to run.
Sorry, I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at with this. Are you saying other storefronts/platforms on PC aren’t free, or that Epic Games Store currently does a better job?
No, sorry for my failed sarcasm, EGS as storefront are probably worse than EA’s Origin that was retired or Ubisoft’s crazy Uplay. It’s impossible with the current market share and dominance from Steam even if Epic actually put serious resource into making EGS better, and we all know they aren’t. Because any right minded person would put more resource on product that make them money, for Epic it’s Fortnite, for Valve it’s Steam and not [Insert project name] 3. Just like Gabe have his plenty of pet projects, Tim also have his own pet store front and law suits. Rich people do what rich people do.
And, I want to point out, Tencent the venture capital/investment arm and Tencent the publisher is very different entity. Like yeah they have the CCP tie and stuff but the people that runs the venture capital is just similar to any other venture capital, they want their investment make them profit. Compare to say, EA/Activision buying your studio, I’ve heard better things from industry friends. Oh, and they would try to avoid publish that Tencent owns their shares etc to avoid this kinda of finger pointing from internet folks. Even the Tencent venture capital people knows this and suggest keeping acquisition/investment under wrap. Epic is public company so they have to disclose. Wouldn’t it make sense? If you are a venture capital project manager would you:
pick and invest company that have good potential and planning to carry out their project and product then make big bucks in return and racking in your bonus. Less effort more result?
invest and dip your fingers into everything you can using your board voting power thus make future investment collaboration more difficult. And then getting fired because the company complaint in postmortem?
EA/Activision did their thing because they were in the game of owing your IP and then cut you off from your creation. They have long history of doing that and then fuck up the sequels/prequels/reboots, they don’t care since they got what they wanted. EA was doing much better now from what I can hear.
My points and arguments are solely on don’t view Epic as a malicious actor and focus on what changes it can bring to the digital game selling store front. Way too many people just “fuck Epic” and does not see the full picture and place their loyalty with a platform, just like fans of console wars. For example, during the past sale, I bought Witchfire on EGS, bought Cyberpunk on GOG even though I don’t have good experience with Galaxy, almost bought the new Jedi on EA Play but decided against it because Disney doesn’t need more of my money and I should not give in to my StarWars fan itch and buy a so-so product from the reviews I read. I made my purchase decision solely on one simple rule, how can I give the developer more revenue cut from the purchase I made.
And there are other articles that checks for if you can sell at lower price(without temp sales) on EGS, only 5 out of 41 did so. I take it with some handful of salt cause ars didn’t actually list out the games and who is the publisher behind those 5. That’s why I post the first link from a developer’s stand point. We will only know details once the case developed more.
Regarding reviews, it’s like manage or moderate a forum, but it has huge impact if your changes aren’t communicated, I just list this one but if you are more interested you can dig up older/newer changes. Simply put, if it wasn’t through backlash and developers pulling teeth to push some odd changes like this back to a more neutral place. (ie. Early Access Reviews, Product received for free, product refunded tags are all much later than this article.) Steam’s reviews would be something like youtube shorts that I simply skip. Is it better in the end? I don’t know, cause you can still influence how popular a review is by the upvote/found useful from marketing campaign. Extra costs from developer to marketing(and still subject them to exploits), harder to navigate for consumer(like Amazon reviews), it’s really messy and not really consumer/producer friendly.
I put my points in simply because there is a overwhelming “worshiping” of Valve/Steam that make the 30% cut seems justifiable, and distribution for digital good seriously can’t be more expensive than physicals right? you can go check how much average Amazon charges seller even given it’s dominant position as digital market place. Or simply put it this way, youtube/netflix/social bandwidth consumption is bigger than game distributions for average user. It might be a case for triple-As that come at 45G per game but vast majority of games are about 12 hours worth of streaming(<20GB), I’d like Valve simply provide a usage based charge like cloud providers and developers can pick and choose what features they wanted to pay accordingly. 30% cut is not normal just as lootbox is not normal, they did it simply because they can. (as in traditional brick-and-mortar shop like BestBuy charging extras for cables etc, even with Amazon as competitor.)
Sorry if I miss some parts to provide follow ups, simply too tired to focus on stuff. Mark my words, once Gabe passed gamers are gonna have the reckoning coming for them. All my purchases are based on how much money the developers can get at the end. I buy games on store/launcher even if I don’t like them, but if more bucks goes to developer, that’s where I choose to buy. That’s the important part, we buy stuff to support the developer we like/love, not to support the “platform” selling them.
Valve’s steam provides values to consumer but aren’t entirely “consumer friendly”. Some of their “give ins” are entirely because of competition.
Examples:
self refund and refund window, directly copy EA’s origin.
allow big publisher to negotiate store cut, direct response to Epic’s store cut.
linux push is entirely for steam’s own survival, not a pro-consumer move.
their policy changes on steam reviews over the years.
the Steam UI revamp multiple times and makes discovery pretty messy when they tried to gamify the discovery process. All for easier marketing campaign pushes. (I found it pretty annoying, but I also don’t like the Netflix style on EGS or other store front.)
Valve’s market place and their key/lootbox and cross game drops are among the pioneers just shy of the scummy gacha from the mobile space.
Valve’s policy dictates that you can not sell at lower price on different store front. Ie. a game dev selling on EGS can take off 18% and get the same amount of revenue from the store front, but they can’t price lower because of Valve’s policy. That’s not consumer friendly.
The fact that Valve can just charge 30% even if a developer didn’t use “any” steam feature is simply because they can. And we are all eating the cost cause developers have to factor that in as well.
care to layout how he buy his way into his own monopoly?
buy exclusives or studio? most big publishers do that.
give free games out? It’s consumer friendly.
drive Valve or other store front out of business? lol
make EGS/EOS so good and free that no one wants to publish on Steam? lol, any advance in that 2 department Steam as platform will respond way before they take foot hold. (EOS voice chat back end does work nicer compare to steam’s one if the game build for it. BUT, many gamers just use discord instead.)
anything I missed?
Epic’s capital is tiny compare to other big publishers.(MS, Sony, Tencent)
good luck with that angle, practically “all” creative industry software have a free learning or community edition until you cross certain threshold and they are also all very dominant software, not because there are no competition, but more like existing market share friction. Like asking Maya artist to transition to Blender.
There are also plenty of game engine out there that are free or cheaper, UE4 or UE5 aren’t exactly click 2 buttons and you have a game. (in fact, people spend decent amount of time to trim features/plugins they don’t use/need from the source to cut build time and memory cost for the shipping build.
I didn’t design that system, and I think it is this way because in the past without forensic evidence, the witness role basically put the burden to people who are testifying or on the stand for questions. That’s why nowadays when the suits wants to push shady things they go off record cause they don’t want to keep any evidence. It’s up to the minions to smart up to make sure you cover your own ass.
And, sometimes company make or break during trials. I don’t want to see value flop, but I also think 30% is a lot if you don’t even use steam features. (here I mean you only publish on steam, but you don’t use their DRM/Friend/Matchmaking, workshop, lobby, etc. But if a dev do indeed use those backend service I think it’s justified. )
I hope you understand the principle of putting down names and/or title in email for paper trails is a thing, you don’t really think Valve is a “flat” structure as marketed, right? I’ve consider myself lucky that I didn’t run into much political or ethical drama thing for my career, but simply put names down and confirm the decision in writing dodge me quite a couple big bullets.
Did you followed the Debb vs Heard one? I know it’s kinda special case with lots of video and court recorded footage etc. Gabe isn’t exactly a celebrity that expose their private life, but if internal emails is on the table for discovery then it can also be very different. Cause they will just tell you “you said/wrote make a decision here from this email” then start off that. Like you said who is a better actor? Can you suddenly remember details with which “partial” quote are referenced without context from email 6 months ago for your argument? And then suddenly don’t remember any details making a decision 2~3 weeks ago? From neuroscience, our memory is pretty unreliable as we can fill the gap all we want. But it’s court case just how the judge/jury believed what part they saw/hear.
cause you would then have to dispatch a 3rd party audit to make sure Gabe isn’t reading from a teleprompter that his lawyers prep to answer any questions on the fly. You can prep your script “before” but not during, once you are on the stand you are on your own, subject to the court rules, etc.