Epic announces the Epic Games Store, a more developer friendly Steam
123 replies, posted
I just read that the store will allow devs to opt out of user reviews and forums? Excerpt from Kotaku:
On top of that, Epic is touting scale-tipping features Steam developers have been requesting for years like a built-in bug-reporting system, opt-in/out user reviews, and a lack of forums and other social media to mitigate Steam’s rampant toxicity issues.
Epic store is pro-business and consumer-second. I don't know what to think of it.
Owned by Tencent. Not going to be using it personally.
Tencent isn't majority share.
Or maybe I'd rather have all my games in one place instead of scattered around, just like I don't really have a single problem with the steam store?..
I had remembered that I read a Games Industry article from a tech analyst that spoke about publishers competing for hard drive space, and why larger sized games are better, as it would require people to delete other smaller games, and competing on the "we take up most of your hardware so other companies can't"
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-11-30-hard-drive-share-as-a-strategic-weapon-for-console-publishers
It ended up being exclusively about consoles, but the takeaway I saw for it was the 408 gigs on the guy's PS4 silm, 70% was taken up by four games (RDR2, GTAV, FIFA 19 and Battlefield 4)
laughing at the people that will despise the concept of a monopoly but also don't want to use different company's marketplaces because ew that means less convenience for me, literally playing right into Valve's apathetic hands right there
That's a big "Yikes" for me. Steam reviews in aggregate work really well to get a sense of how people feel about a game that might otherwise be a media darling.
So I suppose this is obvious but Epic can effectively use their mad profitability to forgoe more mad profitability off royalties, which will draw developers to their platform. It'll be a tough sell getting people onto Steam, but Fortnite is a gateway game like Minecraft was when that first came out. Plus they get new players there by convinience. They're not going to ever be able to fully convert people (like me) who have 1000+ games on Steam, but the number of people playing games is constantly growing, and a lot of that is coming from Fortnite, they can probably siphon a fair bit of those people to be primary users of their platform rather than letting them default to Steam.
Steam got comfortable with being a practical monopoly over the digital game industry and as a result they've gotten lazy with their own games, predatory with their business models, and they've recently taken measures which benefit AAA developers and leave indie devs in the dirt.
They're proof that monopolies are shit and that competition is good.
Yeah this.
Origin/uplay/battlenet etc are not competition to steam, they're just publisher specific launchers. The discord/epic store things are supposed to be actual competition.
Tencent owns the largest share at 40%... you don't need to be 51% to control a company.
Kinda scummy, but in the same vein, Steam reviews are only really useful in a broad general sense. Great for getting a snapshot of how a game is currently doing, but at the same time, is susceptible to knee jerk reactions to sometimes very mundane and minor changes to to games that don't really affect their overall quality. Not to mention typically looking at most user reviews in detail is basically akin to browsing a comments section on Youtube.
It's a nice system, but it certainly isn't perfect. And in the case where a game on the Epic Store doesn't have the ability to give user reviews, it's not that hard to turn to Metacritic or OpenCritic user reviews to get the same info.
It's weird. I feel like nothing much would really be lost in having it being opt in, but at the same time, I also feel it's definitely something that should be there and required. Maybe if there's enough feedback given towards Epic to make it required, they'll make it that way. Time will tell though.
As for the lack of forums, let's be honest, Steam Community Hubs for games are a fucking mess. It's usually flooded by those who are inept, are contrarian/trolls, or those complaining about a game having Denuvo for DRM for like the 20th time that day in the slim hopes that the developers will magically listen to them and remove it.
You'll have to elaborate. What exactly is bad about competition?
the intention isn't to get people to transition over, it's to get new people invested in their platform. the sheer amount of ppl who play fortnite who are probably absolute normies who probably dont even have steam installed wouldn't surprise me. and if those ppl eventually get invested in the epic games client, they will look at steam the same way we look at other clients. regardless its a fantastic movie because valve wont be able to just sit back and ignore everything as usual
I much rather have them improve tools to contain tantrums, than to give the developers the absolute power to silence dissent.
Not all smaller games have entries in Meta nor OpenCritic, not even Reddit for some.
In retrospect, I agree. They now hold the attention of the next generation, even if their demographic gone cold turkey post-fortnite, their massive install base can and will threaten Steam growth.
In contrast though devs silencing dissent altogether is a very clear warning sign that they're not confident in te quality of their game. I think it's dumb to allow devs to censor reviews because there is no situation where it won't be abused to silence critics but there is that silver lining for anyone willing to take it as an immediate warning not to buy a game.
https://kotaku.com/the-guy-behind-steam-spy-has-been-working-on-epics-stor-1830890162
This led to a slew of valuable insights that Galyonkin says directly informed the Epic store’s feature set. For instance, forums and other social media-like tools—a cornerstone of Steam—won’t be part of the package. Galyonkin said that this is because “not a single developer I talked to wanted forums” and “the toxicity it brings,” preferring to interact with communities on their own terms on platforms like Reddit and Discord instead.
“That’s why we won’t have forums on Epic Games store and will start with a ticketing system, so gamers can message devs about their problems instead of review-bombing them,” said Galyonkin.
holy shit lmao. developers want to be able to control the conversation. i hope this fails.
So they basically want to hide any posible bad press. No thanks Epic, maybe Steam reviews are not always perfect, but is helpful to know if a game has horrible performance,bugs or if is infected with Microtransactions
He was talking about forums there, which as I said earlier, are pretty goddamn toxic usually. Seriously, go to a Steam Community Hub, and if it's not a dead one, then tell me it isn't filled with people just trying to be shitty trolls, or just being inept. Not to mention developers on those hubs still have full control of the narrative there, with the ability to just outright delete posts that do call out legit issues.
Having that stuff offloaded to a different service like Reddit makes a lot of sense. The only thing to look out for will be if it's a developer run Reddit, or a community run. Basically, if any of the devs of the game are moderators, stay far away.
As for reviews, see the point I made earlier. Honestly, I would want them to be a required thing, but with the huge amount of low quality and non descriptive reviews that flood Steam reviews and get upvoted because they're "funny", I could see them going the opt-in route for that reason. Not that I fully agree with it, but maybe there's a middle ground to be had with enough feedback given to Epic. Make them a requirement, but have them actually be checked for quality.
I mean, Steam could actually do with a built-in bug reporting system, even if it's something as simple as a designated bug report forum section for all applicable games.
No. You should not criminalize your consumers just because there are a few bad apples. Every customer deserves a voice, whether it is constructive, inquiry, or contempt. I can't endorse a store that starves its customers of information to protect their image. Why offload forums and reviews elsewhere? What makes them different?
Just look at Discord store. You literally can't tell if a game is good or not because THERE IS NO INFORMATION BEYOND PRODUCT DESCRIPTION. I much rather see an angry mob than be ignorant to my purchases, at the very least I will be aware of one or two flaws of the game. Steam invented a lot of tools to assist in curbing the bad, improve them.
And not everyone on Steam is a shithead. I popped into the first game I see on Steam, Just Cause 4, and immediately see valid consensus.
Honestly that seems extremely scummy lmao
Steam users reviews are great. They're generally mixed when it comes to review quality, but as a means of tracking public sentiment toward a game it's incredibly useful. If you see a game with overall mixed reviews but very positive recent reviews it means the developers probably did something good, the same applies to the opposite where a game with good overall reviews but negative recent reviews means someone at Ubisoft said something stupid again.
Epic Game Store is out!!
NOT A SINGLE game has review scores or forums, including an early-access game. So much for opt-out.
Looking at the website as it is now, I have 1 issue right now..
A lot of the selection is in panels..
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/636/0e57eb77-4ad0-4bf9-8166-f1e9f3fb2ad4/PN.png
Doesn't look that bad right now, right. That's because I zoomed out to give some perspective..
How it actually looks without any adjustments..
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/636/80ca897c-7892-4b91-87a2-7e5a2e7b5d2c/PN2.png
Ehhh, yeah quite in your face isn't it?
This can work for now because it's just a few games, though I hope this layout changes before launch.
It's about as shit as Humble bundle's homepage.
Zero care has gone into actual UX, and only just making it presentable
Steam and Itch frontpages are really, really good interfaces in comparison
Yea I need to revise my opinion about the Epic Store for a bit.
As of right now it severely lacks basic features that even a simple store should have.
The layout is questionable, I just hope its only like this for the beginning, more games and this will break.
A good thing, my old UE Store Credit is still valid, I haven't used that since 2015, when UE became free.
https://i.imgur.com/7qMEtP6.png
So thats free 30€ for me to spend on a game.
Whats really not great at all is that Epic is pushing for exclusive releases it seems.
Satisfactory just dumped its Steam page and in a quickly recorded video by the Community Manager it just explained that it won't be on Steam anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obZqJVSMbkc
I really hoped that Epic Store will be a second place to publish games, not create more exclusives.
Since I really don't mind extra launchers as long as they aren't just made to push exclusives, thats really the worst thing.
Similar to how Discord made timed exclusives.
The alpha of Satisfactory already ran on the Epic Launcher before that, so the must have already had a deal either way but still a bummer.
Can't wait for every single publisher to have their own store.
That's the issue. If these different store fronts are just wanting exclusives then they aren't competing stores or marketplaces, just competing publishers. You won't have Steam and Epic fighting to see who can give the best deal, it'll just be each as their own little garden with fruit no one else gets.
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