Tim Sweeney: Epic Storefront is nearly perfect for consumers - Sensationalist Headlines

It's a problem that Steam provides features that other services don't provide, and also it's by definition impossible to use a platform's features if you don't have that platform? Maybe Epic should make a platform that isn't shit and then people will stop pointing out how shit it is..... Fair, but it seems like this has more to do with arbitrarily raising your Steam prices to prevent sales on it, and then selling the game elsewhere for the "real" price. I'll grant there are restrictions, but from everything I've seen they are quite rare.

From that alone though you can easily tell that steam wants and expects you to make most of your sales through them anything that ultimately ends up on their platform. They're not free-use, which makes financial sense.

Your game can use Steamworks and be sold on GOG if you want, Valve allows that, but Steamworks are tools for Steam, if you want to have the same stuff both the GOG and the Steam versions, then you need to work double for it. Valve doesn't force you to use it. If you mean the recent ones, people are pissed about the Epic Store exclusivity deals shit, and people are right to be angry, look the thread about the Xcom like game, you probably gonna understand why people are asking to stop with these deals. I am gonna repeat what I posted some time ago: Steam reviews are more useful that you think for the common customer. Let me give you an example: Customer X is watching the last year E3 and he watches the trailer for Just Cause 4, his favorite franchise. He gets hyped and watch every trailer and gameplay from the official channel. The game launches, he read the review on IGN ( https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/12/04/just-cause-4-review ), he understands that has problems but is still a new Just Cause. He finally decides to purchase the game, he goes to Steam, and... a "Mostly Negative" in red is in the game page, then scrolls to the bottom and reads that the game is awfully optimised and has a ton of technical problems. He decides to not buy the game. The review system is basically the final barrier between you and the "Add to Cart" button. Maybe is not useful for you, but for a lot of people can be the thing that saves you to buy a turd of a game. Again, I am gonna repeat myself here: Look, I understand that Indie developers have it difficult, but that doesn't mean that they can fuck with the consumers so they can succeed. I don't going to let them fuck me in the ass because "ohhh my poor developers". I am a developer myself and It never occurred to me to fuck with my client so I can get some extra money. About the "This more or less forces smaller developers to sell on steam, where the vast majority of their sales will come from, at a 30% tax.", every single store works like that, Epic can offer a much lower one because they are not interested on making profit YET , they have a lot of Fortnite money to spend. Also, that "super happy 12%" already means that some tax stuff gonna be charged to you, and in the future probably gonna be changed.

There's a difference between "most" and "you can't have a 1:10000 disparity"

Just because you haven't thought of that it doesn't meant that others have. The difference between the financial viability of a small venture with everyone on payroll might be that percentage difference between stores, or it might be whatever Steam does to sweeten the deal for developers on their platform if they want to. The competition between storefronts will compete to ultimately make indie ventures more successful. It's not just developers being greedy if they want money- a lot of developers are more or less forced to pay 30% of their revenues to a platform which doesn't really do much for them beyond consuming the majority of the market. I'm also a developer and have heard more than a few people in this circle be very disgruntled with the state of affairs with steam and the overall market. I know steam doesn't force you to use it, I only brought that point up because someone implied that steam's utilities are exclusively a boon for developers, and I was mentioning how the utilization of those tools might change the market in steam's favor. They're doing nothing WRONG by providing the steamworks tools, but they're certainly not doing it exclusively out of the goodness of their hearts. I agree that the developer's choice to swap over to the epic store has terrible optics and pissed a lot of people off, but that's ultimately the developer's choice to make a maybe shitty decision. They say they went for the money to expand on the game, and hopefully they did instead of just grabbing it and running. This is one of the problems with crowdfunded games though, at least the developer offered a refund to anyone unhappy with the hold steam and GOG.

Developers refusing to launch their game on a service that doesn't support Steam's features shows that Steam's features are a boon for developers. Remember, it is developers that are making the decision that Steam provides better features and only releasing on Steam as a result. That is different from developers making the decision that Steam isn't throwing enough money and exclusivity deals at them and only releasing on EGS as a result.

That doesn't make them immune to be criticized both to the developer flipping the finger to the consumer and Epic for pushing this anti-competitive stuff. Oh, and about the refunds, I invite you to the Phoenix Point thread, they are making the process as obtuse as possible so people don't refund it, so they are not exactly doing it in a good faith.

I'm not defending this developer for doing what they did. Personally I never invest in early access ventures because if I've learned anything by watching other games, some shitty twist like this happens 99% of the time. The developer approached Epic for this one though- I'd really call that a failing of them more than anything. If they're making refunds difficult it's absolutely not an okay move at all. I just believe the macro effect will overall be a boon for developers and by extension gaming. Steam is incredibly useful and beneficial as an end-user, to the point that it might nearly be perfect. It is not even close to perfect for developers though.

Epic Games Launcher appears to collect your steam friends & play.. I love the smell of GDPR violations in the morning, smells like Tim Sweeney's bullshit.