Epic announces the Epic Games Store, a more developer friendly Steam - Sensationalist Headlines

Yes. You want a Disney situation where they own everything ?

Honestly, with the tencent involvement in this it only furthers SirActionSlacks Conspiracy theory and I hate that lmao.

I've seen it coming for a few years now, but what is essentially happening is that valve lost their position as the major market leader in PC gaming. The PC gaming spacing is going through a period of balkanization right now, as major publishers decide they would rather strike it out on their own than kiss the ring so to say as it pertains to using steam. Note major publishers no longer using steam: -Activision/Blizzard (all of the cod games used to go to steam but this will no longer be the case moving forward, major loss of users) -Epic Games (hasnt really been active on steam since 2010 or so, last thing they released was UT3 black edition) -Bethesda (potential that they may wholly leave the platform, have been making moves to use their own launcher) -EA (was one of the first to tell valve to pound sand years back and make their own launcher/store) Wildcards: -2K could well move onto their own platform, if they ever bring red dead redemption 2 to PC. There was too much money at play with GTA5 for this not to have been considered. -Ubisoft already has uplay, and valve sort of made a deal with the devil to keep them on the platform Overall, valve was the first shop in town that really did what it does well... But the high cost of the platform and lack of visibility seem to be pushing major AAA publishers that have the capacity to do their own thing...to follow through and actually do so.

wow a whole ONE more step to launch a game, truly we as gamers must do something epic even lets you import your steam friends and so does uplay, like seriously what is the problem in downloading extra launchers, i have about 20 for minecraft and i couldn't care less

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/229956/d3bab07d-d4d2-434a-baa3-4a7e26237573/a8768e32e922744f3a35272ba5ea3c09.gif ANOTHER DRM PLATFORM!?

I see this as a very good thing. Yeah, fat chance the entire Steam library will be moved over to it, and fat chance you'll be able to just move all your games from one account to another without paying for it, but I'm all for a storefront that actually gives more back to developers and actually curates their shit (unlike Steam). Epic certainly has the install base to pull off a worthy competitor thanks to the massive success that Fortnite is, and while their cut isn't the "ALL THE MONEY TO US" cut the big publishers want, I think it'll be enough to influence some to still use their storefront. Steam isn't going to die at all, but if it were to somehow "magically" come to that, I guess we'll see if Valve does true to Gaben's word and makes all Steam games be able to be played without Steam.

No Unity games allowed

All games allowed, my dude. It will push more devs to make their content with UE4 though, because if you do and launch it on the storefront, you get all your required royalties waived. So essentially, you get to use UE4 for absolutely free.

This seems like a situation where indie devs win either way, barring the censorship conspiracy, especially if it causes valve to respond in a way to better promote indie games

I mean, password managers exist. Its not like its a big deal having one more login.

That analogy doesn't really work because most people get their groceries just from one store, usually just the nearest one. Because it's convenient. It's not like people are running all around the town because one store has ketchup but the one across town is the only place to get mustard while a third store equidistant from the other two is the place to get relish. That kind of thing is why Steam users were (and still are to an extent) hostile to the idea of Origin. Nobody wants to have to keep track of two different storefronts because they got the first two Mass Effect games on one but the other is the only place to get ME3. If that ends up being the case with this Epic Games storefront people are going to be hostile towards that, too, no matter how fairly it treats devs. Because that isn't competition. And that's before getting into the fact that most Steam users have hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in Steam. It's going to take a lot more that "we give devs a better share" to make them open to the idea of using a new platform.

No mandatory DRM on the Epic store. They'll let devs put DRM on games if they choose to (unlike GOG) but won't be making it a platform feature (unlike Steam).

People hate monopolies and competition.

This is actually pretty smart of epic since they already have a gigantic install base with fortnite.

oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, EVERYONE MAKE STORES SO THEY HAVE TO MAKE ACTUAL GAMES.

I'm happy to see real competition for Steam. I can't say I want EPIC to succeed here, but I'd like to see them force Valve to give a damn again.

The thing is, no games are probably pulling out of Steam any time soon, for publicity sake. So for users who stick with Steam, continue as usual. The exception being that the games end up cheaper in Unreal Store as a result of the revenue split.

its not just having one more login. I keep everything tiddy in a txt file off of the computer for whenever I forget something, an extra password isn't a HUGE nuissance. But having to create yet another account and download yet another launcher is.

This memory usage argument is stupid. Memory is storage, if you not running out of space, you not getting better performance with less memory usage.

just dont run it on startup??????

Epic isnt going to dethrone Valve overnight and its not like everyone is abandoning Steam right now so I dont know why you're complaining about a software you would probably not use forever and if the memory eating DRM was the problem then GOG has existed forever and Epic's new whatever store wont require DRM on their games Valve ignored the countless problems with Steam and competitors like GOG or even Discord took advantage of it, so its kind of Valve's own fault that this happened and it was only a matter of time someone with enough money and resource like Epic tried it for themselves with better appeal than Steam and I'm not counting the bunch of standalone launchers like Battlenet and Origin since those are just glorified personal wanking space for AAA publishers

I never really get the argument of "memory hogging applications", especially if you aren't starving for RAM. I have 16 GB, and I still haven't even reached the limits while having "memory hungry" applications like Discord and Vivaldi (basically Chrome) running in the background while I play a game that uses over half of my RAM on top of Windows already taking a decent amount for itself. RAM is there to be used. If you're so concerned about memory usage, why are you even playing games or using Windows in the first place? Go move to a lightweight Linux install. RAM usage is only going to continue to rise as applications become more and more complicated or feature rich. Developers are already optimizing their applications as much as they can, but this is just the nature of things.

lol @ the people complaining that it's "just another launcher". Unlike shit like Origin, Battle.net and Bethesda.net, this could serve as a legitimate competitor to Steam since any pretty much any company, AAA and Indies alike, can put their game up on this platform and expect to get a very, very reasonable cut from each sale and could potentially force Valve to change their cut and encourage them to improve in general. Yeah, perhaps some games going forward will require you to make a new account and download the launcher, which is annoying, but it's a necessary annoyance that will eventually benefit the PC games market.

That is the one thing people seem to be losing in this "another launcher" argument. It's not. Battle.net just has Activision/Blizzard games, Origin just has EA games for the most part, Bethesda.net will only have Bethesda games. Those you can argue are "just launchers" in the sense that they don't expand beyond the scope of the games they publish. The Epic Store will be open to everyone, regardless of what engine it's made in. It's less "another launcher" and more "another Steam/GOG" like something akin to Itch.io, but on a much larger scale. As for how large of a scale, if we take into account how many Fortnite accounts there are (which will be tied to the storefront as Fortnite becomes part of it and Epic accounts get integrated), it certainly has potential. For reference As of 2017, Steam has 67 million users In August of 2018 alone, Fortnite had 78.3 million active players The number of accounts for Fortnite is over 200 million Now of course, this does not take into account the split of accounts between PC, console, and mobile (which will also be another platform for this store), and it doesn't mean every one of those accounts will become buyers, but the install base and the potential are definitely there for it to become a real form of competition to Steam. Not to mention the more dev friendly revenue split will entice more developers to check it out (especially indies), and may even prompt some to make their games exclusive to it. There's no way in hell this will "kill Steam", but actual competition (which Steam has never had) is always a good thing. It gives incentive for Valve to improve Steam and some of its policies, which last I've heard, many people have been asking for.

Hate for DRM is valid, but more competing stores isn't the source of your woes and they are not your enemy. You can't just 'get rid of' something like DRM, so competing is the only way to prevent it from getting worse, and maybe even get it to improve over time.

I made the mistake of purchasing fortnite save the world a long time ago and ever since I've gotten around 3000 emails with the subject "someones trying to access your epic games account!" no thanks epic Im good

Even if Epic's store doesn't end up being very popular, indie games would still get more exposure than on steam. Not to mention 12% cut against Steam's 35% (including UE4 5%)

this rarely actually happens with these things

There's a lot to be said about the disaster of a storefront steam has become, and I think competition for steam is necessary. If your issue is remembering passwords, either come up with a better, more modular password or keep a password book. Being annoyed you have to remember passwords is a goofy reason to not support a new developer minded storefront

I'd rather companies not be wasteful and inefficient just because "Well RAM/storage is cheap, who gives a shit about efficiency anyway?" It's just an excuse to be lazy. As for Epic's store specifically I'm never a fan of a new store program coming out. There's always a pile of drawbacks for the consumer (i.e. me): I need another account, which will mean a new password to keep track of If they have a friends list I have to either try to get all my steam friends on it or have multiple friends lists with random differences It's another company who will be selling my information, even if they say they won't There's a high probability they'll make their games exclusive to the platform (can't get Valve games on Origin, can't get many EA games on steam, Fallout 76 is Bethesda.net only (not that anyone cares about that game) There's the possibility that their version of a game might not be compatible with a steam or Origin version of the same game (which has happened in the past) It's another library to keep track of (I thought I didn't own Rayman Origins on PC for ages because I never thought to check uPlay and was close to buying it again on a couple of sales)