Metro Exodus will be Epic Store Exclusive, Steam Preorders will still be honored
464 replies, posted
Exclusivity doesn't promote competition, it kills competition because companies literally doesn't have to compete when people have no choice.
People checks out other service or competitors because, you know, they have better services? Many people use GoG over Steam for older games because they have the better service, better support and sometimes better prices to the games. They aren't using GoG because GoG forced those game out of Steam to be put on their platforms.
Lastly, how many times I have to say this isn't really about the revenue split when THE GAME IS ALREADY ON STEAM WITH PHYISCAL COPIES STILL GETTING ON IT.
Having a blue checkmark is pretty much the same as saying "I'm a fucking idiot please don't bother listening to anything I say"
This argument would hold up water if GOG actually had those things for one (they don't for developers at least, according to most devs I know who say it's a pain to manage games on GOG, which is also why GOG versions can sometimes even be behind Steam and lack tools and features), and if GOG sales got anywhere near Steam's (again, they don't because DRM free does not interest publishers, and most consumers don't even know what DRM is). It's better for the consumers in terms of choice of course, but it's not exactly true competition to Steam, just an alternative to a specific niche. GOG is good at satisfying that niche, and I love GOG as a platform myself, but satisfying a niche is not how you create actual competition with a behemoth like Steam. It's not how you get Steam to change. To get Steam to change, and to provide actual competition to Steam, you need to be a threat to Steam, and one way to be a threat is to get exclusivity deals. To offer what Steam does not have or will not have for some time. This drives up interest from your average consumer, and again ultimately, if it's a game the average consumer wants to play, they will get it on the platform it is offered on.
Also, I really don't see what services other storefronts could offer over Steam. Outside of better deals on games (of which some say wouldn't even matter to them), the only things Epic could offer on their platform are just equivalents to what Steam already has. That does not promote competition, that just makes people question why this platform exists in the first place.
I know we're all consumers in this, but we have to take a step back and look at this all from a business perspective. That's where everyone is getting caught up here. In an ideal world, digital platforms would offer all the same games but with different reasons to get it on their platforms. In reality, most digital storefronts offer no real differences over each other, so the only way to compete is to provide what the other doesn't have.
"Hyper-toxic "pro-consumer" userbase"
"Cultivating through inaction and avoidance"
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/210790/f15a1a99-18d6-45b2-af0b-40468f1a581b/images.jpg
Thing is people have done the whole exclusive thing before, it was called Origin. Which, true to this day, sells mostly EA's current and future stock.
A lot of people made a fuss about EA abandoning Steam in favor of Origin. People got mad for many of the same reasons we see today. With a lot of new EA games from that point forward purely Origin exclusive, No real consumer benefit or gain with said new service, and it of course being another service to sign up for.
Same thing with services like BattleNet ( Black Ops 4 | Destiny 2 ) and BethesdaNet ( Fallout 76 - Onwards? ), they didn't escape their share of criticism for these reasons too.
Yes, i'm all for competition against Steam. Lord knows we need a challenger to the throne. But to say, the only way to defeat Steam is by excluding things behind walls, ignores a history repeated time and time again. Which is that no one likes to be railroaded between HBO Now, Disney+, WarnerMedia ,Origin, BethesdaNet, BattleNet, Uplay..
How is a store fulfilling a different niche/needs than Steam not a "true competition" while Epic locking up shit on their store a competition? Epic is still satisfying a niche for people that want the game faster/slightly cheaper, wouldn't that not be a "true competition" by your standard as well? Games are Overwatch or Guild Wars 2 are to some extent understandable as they were developed by the respective companies, but when Ubisoft is able to put their games on both uPlay and Steam it's just some bullshit excuses to lock consumers into their systems.
"I don't see what services other storefront could offer" Maybe Customer Service, the one thing Steam is notorious for? Maybe refund policy, which Steam is somewhat lacking compared other platforms? There's even the whole Steam Direct nightmare for indie and a lot could be done to improve the service, maybe competitor could've at least tried to match SOME of the features Steam offer to compete? Funny how you would say not allowing exclusive would "kill the industry" while companies limiting the distribution to "threat" its competitiors and effectively killing their income wouldn't.
Seeing everything on a business perspective is why modern games are a DLC/Microtransaction hell and exclusivity doesn't help a bit.
For me, installing another gaming client isn't really much of an issue. I can usually launch it pretty quick and set my games up to store on a different drive so it doesn't really clog much, just a bit time consuming. The big issue I am having since I was interested in the game is that I already had a decent bit of money on my steam account from trading and selling items from dota. So was going to preorder, I just had been too lazy to do it.
Now I can't preorder it using my steam wallet money and I'd have to whip out my credit card which makes me slightly more apprehensive toward pre ordering or even purchasing the game.
Let's just throw the whole competition argument out of the window for the moment. To tolerate what Epic Store is, is to tolerate declining standards. I will, and we should, applaud Epic for starting the 88/12 revenue split, but everything else is a straight downgrade from Discord, Steam and GoG. Now they are going out of their way to yank people out of their comfort zones. It is irrelevant how the DEVS think the storefront should be handled, because in the end it is the CONSUMERS who weigh their benefits.
Their strategy is to put others down instead of improving themselves. Don't put up with this.
That's not even galaxy brain levels, they're on a completely different plane of existance
lol steam reviews are much better than just "googling". You can game google search results and game journo sites are all untrustworthy, it's harder to game straight up owner reviews which the steam reviews provides. There's metacritic but that also includes journo crap above the user reviews which will naturally bias opinions away from whatever direct owner reviews would otherwise say, and it lets you review stuff even if you don't own the game.
lol I don't agree. With all the review bombing and brigading going on I can't take the reviews seriously anymore. Googling is fine, but I recommend searching for opinions on Reddit and watching gameplay videos. I don't trust game journalists either, but at least they can give me a good condensed piece of info about the game. Metacritic is garbage, that I agree on - but the user reviews on there are equally untrustworthy (like the bad reviews for Yooka-Laylee because of JonTron, to name an example).
I really like the review feature, it has flaws, but overall I think it makes a significant more positive impact than negative. I know there are some reviewers that are passionate and write really well about the games. And the comments help too sometimes.
Often if there's review bombing it's because the devs did something a lot of people feel is scummy, those are fair reasons not to buy a game and you can just look at the actual reviews to check if it's bombing or of it's actual criticisms. If you don't agree then yeah steam reviews arent going to be as useful to you.
review bombs are stupid for the most part but sometimes they are a valid way for the community to show complain about recent update/moves by the developers. Meanwhile, even if a game is being review bombed, looking at the actual reviews still give you a much better looks on the game than most other platform ala Reddit/Google since you can actually see how much time people have spent on the game, whether the review is for an older version, and whether the reviewer got the game for free, etc. If a game's got bad/mixed rating, often time the actual reviews could state all the good and flaws on the game.
the only other way that's comparable imo is watching gameplay on Youtube, but that's more preview than a review of the game.
With platform based exclusivity deals I can totally understand it if the platform holders in question were responsible of developing or funding said title.
With Battlefield on Origin, yeah they threw a lot of money on making it happe. Or Valve having developed CS:GO.
But what tends to happen with putting your own game on your own exclusive platform (imagining that I'm not the only one) is that people just use your launcher to play a few of your exclusive titles.
Sadly our current capitalistic system is apparently plagued by prioritizing short term gain and little care for consumer good-will (though not really surprising if socio/psychopaths often take leading positions).
As an example with Steam's 70%-30% revenue split; if they'd want to entice people to their own platform they could sell their own game at say a 25% cheaper prize compared to Steam.
A lot of people would definitely check it out, likely buy it and leave with a positive aftertaste.
Ubisoft for example flunked this totally; They got their own games on Uplay and Steam for the same prices, but buying the games on Uplay means:
Bigger download files (worst example GR:Wildlands had ~15Gb updates on Uplay and ~5Gb updates on Steam).
Tinkering needed to also run Steam overlay.
Less stable system (Uplay losing track of where your games are installed)
And for only a few years ago did they fix Uplay taking up all your bandwidth when downloading.
Look, I don't disagree that Steam reviews can be useful (the more info the better) - I just don't think they are super important. Yes, game journos are super stupid and often times even just give good reviews just so they can keep getting review copies. There's still a ton of YouTube game reviewers that are honest, and they've been around before Steam reviews.
Honestly, if I need good info on Google I'll just search "<term> reddit". Reddit isn't perfect either because of the whole voting system, but I think there's a good balance of information and discussion surrounding games on there. Otherwise, I just ask friends. There's always someone who has played the game and can give me their critical opinion.
Do Epic pay in real money or V-bucks?
Oh yeah, I'd like to add that I understand why review bombing happens and it's a good indicator of devs doing something scummy. Nevertheless, I think it's bad form. This bombing is also used to criticize things devs do unrelated to the game. As vital and interesting as this information is, I don't think it has any place in the form of a game review. It buries actually game reviews and ends up being noise.
The big majority of the ""reviews bombing"" are about terrible performance problems or mayor bugs ( https://store.steampowered.com/app/517630/Just_Cause_4/ ) aggressive microtransactions ( NBA 2K19 on Steam ), or awful publisher decisions ( https://store.steampowered.com/app/271590/Grand_Theft_Auto_V/ ).
If you use the reviews system to find these problems, then is one of the most useful tools of Steam. That's why developers tell Epic Games to not add it to the Epic Games Store, they can make stupid decisions without a "Mostly Negative" on their game.
I actually do have a question on this. Does either the Steam or Epic TOS stipulate that you can't sell your game on another platform for a lower price?
I know a long ass time ago, back in the magical days of Games for Windows Live that you could buy a game on Steam but if you wanted the DLCs you'd have to go through GFWL. Now eventually Steam changed this so that you are required to have your DLCs be on steam as well but this is a question that's bugging me right now.
Obviously it's okay to sell your game on multiple platforms, and it's okay to sell your game on your own platform for a while but then put it on Steam. But if I was Ubisoft, could I sell Watch Dogs 2 for 30$ on Uplay but still charge 60 on Steam? Like if I was feeling super scummy today
If my memory is correct, Steam doesn't allow selling your game on another store in a lower base price.
Adding something extra about googling "reddit gamename": Subreddits are big circlejerks and are not a good measure to know the real status of a game. I mean, go to /fo76, if you consider that informative Fallout 76 must be easily the Game of the year 2018.
Well, in those cases the reviews are justified. But we've certainly also seen the review system abused:
Firewatch review bombed after DMCA of PewDiePie video https://www.pcgamer.com/firewatch-is-getting-review-bombed-on-steam/
Dota 2 getting negative reviews because Valve didn't make HL3 https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/28/16215092/dota-2-steam-user-reviews-half-life-3-artifact
Nier: Automate getting review bombed because people wanted a Chinese translation https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-review-bombing-is-working-and-chinese-players-are-a-powerful-new-voice/
Granted, all are important critiques, but have no place in a game review.
Though, it seems Valve has mostly cleaned this up by now with the recent store changes.
Nier: Automata was review bombed because the shitty PC port ( I have the game, is really shitty that I depend of a third party patch to play it ). The other two cases, specially the Dota 2 one, are a bit unfair to the game that they get punished because the devs make some stupid crap irrelevant to the games itself, I admit, but these are extraordinary examples.
So you cherry pick examples to the review bombings and called it a day. "well some people abuse the review system, therefore its completely inaccurate and useless and we should just not bother with it" is basically your point, which is shit. I personally use steam reviews to see if major launch issues were fixed or terrible changes happened later by looking at their upvotes/downvotes by date. Tools for transparency are excellent for the user base, even if some people abuse said tools.
Yes, it initially was. This review bomb happened a bit later, after the performance issues. I suppose they are extraordinary, but apparently they were problematic enough for Valve to add a review histogram feature.
Valve added the histogram after DOTA was review bombed, not when a 3rd party's game got bombed. That's besides the point, you're arguing removing the ability to review games at all on a platform that sells games is okay because "I use other sources" or "heres 5 games who got review bombed for different reasons".
Again, you're putting words in my mouth. Nothing was removed, the Epic store never had a review system. I'm not against adding it.
I'm arguing that Steam reviews aren't a treasure trove of information. We did perfectly fine before the Steam review system was introduced.
For the last time, I don't mind them being there, I just don't think they're super valuable compared to all of the other information on the internet.
Or are we going to pretend that the absence of reviews in a game store makes it suddenly impossible to be informed about your purchase?
I think Epic will add it eventually as more and more games pop up on the platform. The whole average review thing was needed for steam as time went on because you had little clue aside from a Metacritic rating on knowing if the game you are going to buy is good or not - oh and because we're in the past, you can't refund it either!
Steam had some severe growing pains indeed.
(god remember when Pennyarcade was featured on Steam's frontpage, or how they had a category for 'highest rated' but it eternally had Bioshock, Halflife 2 and GTA3? God of the Groove remembers)
Sorry, but I don't cherry pick anything, search any game with Mixed to Negative reviews and 95% of the times the reasons are: technical problems, microtransactions, publishers crap or, you know, the game isn't good.
Every source of information are prone to be abused both by customers and developers/publishers. I mean, do you remember why nobody takes game journalism seriously anymore?
I'm just going by the examples you've listed, but that's fair enough. Every open information platform is open to abuse, that's why you collect multiple sources of information to build a better view.
Yes, I agree with this. I don't take game journalists seriously either (they're hardly every neutral). All I'm saying is that Steam reviews aren't the end-all information source and that you should always research your purchase with different sources of information to make up your mind. Would you agree with that?
I go one step further and say that I don't find Steam reviews very useful in the grand scheme of things, and we did perfectly fine for many years before they were implemented. You don't have to agree with that, of course.
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