• Metro Exodus will be Epic Store Exclusive, Steam Preorders will still be honored
    464 replies, posted
You missed the BF5 drama where EA execs pushed a TTK update without consulting the dev team, which led to 90% of the weapons doing almost no damage and being worthless while OP the already broken weapons. They were panicking because not a lot of people bought the game, and concurrent players was down. So BF5 got hit pretty hard for what they did before launch.
Is this some kind of threat? From everyone on PC: Fuck you. We are not the ones to blame if your game flops, talk to your publisher.
While they may have sold well and moved plenty of products, it clearly didn't do as well as they wanted as BF5 has been on sale with massive price cuts, and I think the same happened with BF2. The very least, it clearly didn't do well enough that they had to apologise on stage during e3.
as if boycotting had anything to do with it. just because games don't reach the outrageously unrealistic and high expectations these publishers give the games does not mean they outright failed.
well I hope it will make a difference since it's a single player game this time around, and at this age you can watch a streamer play through all of it without spending a dime.
You're right, I did miss that that's pretty rough, I can definitely see people flailing if sales figures were hit that hard. Would you mind finding a source on the changes being pushed by execs / without consultation? I've done a bit of googling but can't find anything pointing to that as the reason behind the change Sure, I can see them not doing as well as they wanted, but it's hard for me to concretely attribute that to the boycott and not just dumb high expectations like Keychain mentioned. That said going by the rest of your post, I appreciate that people actually voted for their wallet enough on this to make some impact, even if it's not easy to tell how strong that impact was
nowadays any huge AAA game that doesn't, at the very least, make its money back through sales can easily be blamed on marketing. marketing is all you need in today's environment. the quality of the game does not matter and certainly not some social media PR drama.
That is really unfair to say, that dev was just voicing his personal opinion in a casual manner on a local forum where he is a regular user, and on top of that he was speaking hypothetically (obviously there never be a situation where NO ONE buys new Metro game). Then someone found his post, badly google translated it and posted it on steam, and then it blew up.
As already said, Battlefront 2 only missed its targeted sales goal by 1 million. A decent hit, but certainly wasn't the death of the game in sales. In fact, people still continued to play it amidst the lootbox controversy, because your average consumer didn't even know about the controversy. As for BF5, its failings were a mix of two things. The game balancing during the betas didn't leave a strong impression (which turned off the hardcore audience), and EA had the bright idea of sandwiching its release between the new COD and RDR 2 (which turned off a fair amount of your average consumers). On top of that, they barely marketed the game at all honestly. I guess they assumed that the Battlefield name was so big that it would market itself? Very foolish if that was the case. The screaming and the "boycotting" probably did play some roles in some dissatisfaction for these games, but not on a massive scale. The games more or less failed due to EA's terrible management, not because gamers had risen. Same will probably apply here. People will kick and scream about Metro being exclusive to the Epic store, but at the end of the day, if they really want the game, you can bet they will install the Epic Launcher (if they don't have it already because of Fortnite) and buy it on there. Same applied to Fallout 76 before it was revealed to be a trash fire, and same will probably apply to games like DOOM Eternal (which I can see Bethesda also making a Bethesda Launcher exclusive). Publishers know this, which is why they do this stuff.
The dev should've had more common sense than to post something like this in public. They represent the game and their studio both on and off the clock.
I don't know, developers should be allowed to voice their opinions. Although I can see why most don't bother for reasons like this. Someone can have an opinion. But if your a part of a group who creates or is in some form of power, a passerby could take their word as the entire group's opinion. Then we have articles like this.. 4A dev said that if people Boycott Metro Exodus on PC, the next one won't come to it. 4AGames developer named "scynet" has responded
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but we have to remember that just because you can say something doesn't mean you should. Metro Exodus is already receiving a lot of criticism due to this Epic Store move, and by talking in such a confrontational way the employee just generates more controversy. An employee represents their studio, meaning that their actions can be seen as a reflection of everyone else. While the most likely case is that only this employee shares this sentiment, the public will now be of the opinion that everyone at 4AGames shares the same animosity. If I were an employee for the company the last thing I would do is insult the clientele on a public forum. It's just common sense. Nothing you post on the internet is private, and everything is up to scrutiny. A huge suggestion for anyone that wants to get involved in the industry is to keep quiet during a controversy and let PR handle it.
The interesting thing about this is that they often spend many times more on marketing than actual game develepment costs.
it's kind of dumb for the dev not to realize that they were paid money for an exclusivity deal specifically because it makes people unhappy and has significant downsides for the developer itself. They took money to limit their customers choices. For him to turn and essentially threaten to leave the platform altogether if people aren't happy with their money grubbing decision is ridiculous.
The mindset seems to be out of sheer spite towards Valve for whatever reason; though I think we all know why. Valve are no saints, but they're not as bad as what's happening here. I wouldn't want to fracture Steam's userbase into four seperate clients because they're a different company than the one I grew up with. The sentiment feels a lot more like revenge to me than a desire for competition.
They missed their target by 10, not of 10.
Personal opinion doesn't mean it can be free of criticism, especially when you are part of an organization.
I agree with that, however initial post I was replying to was saying "Fuck the devs then!" - which doesn't look like a valid form of criticism to me. Also there is really huge amount of people on steam/reddit saying things like "How dare 4A Games threaten us, PC gamers, by saying that next Metro wont come out on PC!", while that not the case at all. Recently some google empolyees wrote an open letter where they said they are against Project Dragonfly. And if we were to apply same logic here, it would mean something along the lines of "Google is against project Dragonfly!", which is obviously a wrong reading of a situation.
I can't find anything to back that up, every piece of info I've found has said the sales target was 10 and they missed it by 1 (unless I'm misunderstanding something which is possible tbh). Ex: https://mobile.twitter.com/saraheneedleman/status/958446307848392704
I just think everything is getting out of hand, like AC7 being mass downrated because it doesn't support 2-3 features. There are other ways to protest and this one only hurts the developers, not the publishers ( which very likely are the ones behind this ).
No matter what happens, the developers will be hurt. If we allow this to happen, we allow others to follow in example. If we don't, we create a message that things like this will not be appropriate in future. I'm sure if there was a direct way to buy the game without any nonsense, people would do so in a heartbeat. As it stands, both sides are at an impasse.
I fully understand, but I'm sure people are going too far. I believe the right thing to do on this case is just not buying it on Epic and wait a whole year in Steam, but downrating all the metro games or even pirating them is just a dick move.
www.facebook.com/4aGames/posts/2705652466174370 [quote] The recent decision to move Metro Exodus from Steam to the Epic Game Store was made by Koch Media / Deep Silver alone. The recent comments made by a member of the 4A Games development team do not reflect Deep Silver’s or 4A Games’ view on the future of the franchise. They do reflect the hurt and disappointment of a passionate individual who has seen what was previously nothing but positive goodwill towards his work turn to controversy due to a business decision he had no control over. We respectfully ask that any and all valid feedback over this decision is directed at Koch Media / Deep Silver, and not the developers at 4A Games. The future release strategy of the Metro series lies with Koch Media / Deep Silver. Our decision to partner with Epic Games was based on the goal of investing in the future of the series and our development partner at 4A Games. We have every intention of continuing this franchise, and a PC version will always be at the heart of our plans.[/quote]
Seriously. The arguments against this whole move have just gotten completely out of hand at this point. I get being upset, hell I was too and I was even trying to defend the move from a business perspective, but there's being upset, and then there's overreacting. Let's get this out of the way first. Boycotting this title is not going to work. Consumers who have a legitimate interest in the game on PC have probably already pre-ordered it and will be getting it anyway, or won't have a problem with installing a new launcher (that they probably already have installed anyway because of Fortnite). For those in the vocal minority (most people in this thread) who won't be getting the game due to it being exclusive, more power to you to express your frustrations, but you are just that. A minority. I thank you guys for raising your concerns because it does help the industry, but you aren't going to hurt the game's bottom line all that much. As for those making jokes and being serious about pirating the game? Nah, fuck you guys if you're doing that. You aren't standing up against the "corruption of the industry" and you were more than likely just going to pirate it anyway (just like the dev was saying). You aren't contributing to the argument in any meaningful way by stating this, just being annoying. As for myself, well, I fall in what is going to be the majority more than likely. I'll be waiting on reviews and general opinions of the game to see if it's good (I hope so), and if it is, I'll probably end up buying it on the Epic Store. Not because I support Epic, the devs, or the publisher, not because I support this move, and not because I want to "fight against Steam." Not even because I want to give the developers more money (which I'm all for). I'll be buying it on there simply because if the game is good, well, I don't care what platform it's on. Is it inconvenient to not have it on Steam? Definitely. Does it irk me enough to prevent me from buying a potentially good game? Not really.
Of course, I think that the whole bombing is going to give people more ammunition against giving us a platform. The piracy however I feel is a symptom of the publisher's decision. I don't condone it by any means, however I can sympathize for the people that feel this is their only recourse to play the game without supporting the decision. People will pay through the nose for convenience, but when you make things difficult to obtain will people turn to alternative means to obtain it. " Piracy is a service problem " is exactly that, when things are needlessly complicated do people turn to the next most convenient thing. They do not hate the product, but they hate the service that provides it. Whether it's anti-consumer, overly complicated to use, region locked, incompatible payment methods or currency conversions. These are service failures, that the average person doesn't want to deal with. Why bother, when a better services exist to make the process as simple as a click?
I can imagine how frustrated the developers must be, as they too are being (unrightfully) targeted for a decision the publishers have made.
I'd agree with this if piracy actually wasn't less convenient for your average consumer than installing the Epic Launcher and buying the game on there would be. Your average consumer is not going to know what a torrent client is or how to set it up if they need to, will have trouble finding a torrent site that isn't blocked by Google these days (or coming across a proxy for one that doesn't have malware infested ads), and will probably have trouble finding a legit torrent or the right one. With the Epic Launcher, it's just install log in/create account find game buy play Game piracy these days has just been more or less confined to those who are more technically minded and have pirated before and were probably going to pirate anyway. It's not as convenient as, say, TV/movie piracy is nowadays where it's so casualized in approach that your average consumer doesn't even know they're pirating.
Game piracy is easy as fuck, what are you on about? There's thousands of blogs and tumblr accounts which exist solely to link to torrents. Most people will just go to r/piracy or r/torrents or r/trackers or r/seedboxes. Setting up a new account is always a pain, since you have to pick a password, verify your email, keep track of the new account, and with Epic you're on a clock until some 12 year old tries to get into your account for Fortnite shit, so you have to deal with emails about that too. The average customer IS the average pirate. I barely pirate anything these days (only games you can't buy any more, really) and everyone I know who isn't particularly computer literate pirates most of their shit, games included.
It also costs $60 less. Look, I can agree that getting upset over needing to install and register for another client is somewhat juvenile, but frankly over most community sites people are despising the client downgrade and Epic's bullshit move than anything. 4A is a victim. When you piss consumers off you can bet there will be a subset of purchases being withheld out of spite, this is why PR and brand image are especially careful. Are the torches and pitchforks necessary? Will they even have an impact? Probably, and probably not by a large margin, however when the hate sets in, people get stubborn to prove a point, effective or no. Some people just can't separate art from artist, and I much rather just respect their decision. After all, the issue isn't fabricated. Exacerbated? A bit. Fake? No.
The people you know must be at least somewhat literate in computers then, because most people I've come across who aren't as much get confused as soon as you bring up the concept of torrents. They don't know what those are, how they work, etc. If you try to explain it to them, they just give up and say "nevermind." I'm talking people who don't even know that the OS they're using is called "Windows." They just know what they're using is "a computer" or "a PC." Even so, you're still having to search sites for what you want, whereas with a client like Steam or Epic, it's all in one place and one program. You don't have to open up a web browser (even though Steam is technically a web browser) to download a file to run in a torrent client to download some files that has an installer you run to install and play the game. You just start Steam, buy game, download, and play. Game piracy is easy once you learn it and find out where to go and what to do, but it's all about first learning what to do. There's not really any sort of learning what do do with Steam or the Epic Store. Also, I've personally never found setting up a new account to be a pain. Annoying, yes, but it's not something I dread. If it's account for something that doesn't really need one (looking at you NVIDIA/Razer), then yeah. I'd rather not.
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