Tim Sweeney: EGS improves the industry, and gamers don't understand
105 replies, posted
You are absolutely tripping if you think EGS has done more than Steam for indie games.
For years, Indie devs constantly borderline harassed Valve to allow them to sell their games on Steam, and Valve wouldn't budge.
Then they finally introduced Greenlight and the indie devs jumped for joy.
Then the indie devs realised "Wait Valve takes 30%??? How bullshit. They should give me their time, software, and servers for free (or near enough)."
Then Valve starts letting indie games show up on the front-page of Steam, which in my opinion is a pretty big privilege. Valve didn't have to do that.
Then indie devs start complaining because other indie devs are spamming the frontpage with garbage.
Now Indie devs are hopping on EGS' dick because it's lower cut. Give it a few months and indie devs will start shitting about EGS as well.
The only thing EGS has done for indie devs is give them more money because they are offering them less features. (Because EGS has lower overheads than Steam since it lacks basic features, and even recently only got a fucking search bar...)
Indie devs are literally the definition of the phrase "biting the hand that feeds you".
Note: I'm obviously generalising here. Some indie devs are actually cool people.
First, "indie games" is more than just the dev side of the equation. Sure, Epic gives indie devs so much money upfront they straight up don't need to shift any copies to sustain themselves, but it's all at the expense of the indie gamer who has to deal with a shitty store before playing the actual game.
Second, Valve just made big Steam announcements at GDC, so they're hardly idle. Epic Store meanwhile has no interest in improving its customer experience..
How many indie games has EGS released over the past few years?
How many indie games has Steam released over the past few years?
How many games in the latter will ever end up in the former?
Like I understand that valve take a big cut, but that doesn't excuse shitty anti-consumer business practices to try and compete rather than spending the time and money they wasted buying the developers rather than actually trying to make a good game store that would actually compete with valve, what's their endgame anyway? They want everyone one to have EGS so they have a customer base but there's nothing on EGS that means those customers are going to stick around. Like as soon as they stop exclusive hogging with their Fortnite money there store will just disappear.
Look at GoG, they made a game store which is remarkably superior to steam (which is why its the only other online store I use as much as steam) and even they aren't as popular yet, so how the hell do epic plan on keeping all these customers around with their shitty, laggy and underdeveloped store which give's me no incentive to choose it over steam where all my games already are.
Lets just wait and see how their tactic plays out.
Right now publishers/devs only jump on it because its easy money for them, its guaranteed money even if their game is shit and doesn't sell.
Its also a guaranteed loss in customer base and honestly thats not what you want unless you only plan to release this one game.
So in my opinion its not something sustainable and will likely backfire on the majority of devs, indie devs who should really invest in a good player base seem the first ones to fall after year or for their next games.
I have read only 3 or 4 articles about Sweeney and I have enough of him. He thinks he is being vanguardist but I only see those infantile "if you don't like me you are against me" or "I'm not wrong if they are wrong" mindsets reinvented every time he speaks of its playerbase.
If he ever accomplishes someting positive in the long term it will be buried under 400 articles showing his questionable speeches from these days.
In the meanwhile I'm just saying 'no' to everything Sweeney has to offer. What an annoying, arrogant guy.
The back-peddling is real af. How many defensive statements has Tim made the past few weeks? If epic games had just tried to win through actual competition there probably wouldn't be so much backlash. I guess Tim is already finding out that pissing off your consumers doesn't drive sales.
Am I out of touch?
No, it's the gamers who are wrong.
ok but what does this have to do with the Epic Games Store
this is Epic the company throwing money around for people to use their Unreal Engine, at no point is this related to the store
Not one of those things has to do with the EGS. Epic giving grants to indies is completely devoid from what they're doing with EGS. You specifically referenced EGS in your post so how's a about you link us to some substantial evidence to back up your claim that "EGS has done more for indie games than steam has in the last few years.". Now, if you had just said "Epic" instead of "EGS" then we wouldn't quite be having this debate.
You're also gonna need to explain to us how locking indies down to a single storefront benefits them, sure being able to sell your game on as many stores and platforms as possible is more beneficial.
Being an indie isn't easy so having that immediate financial assistance for going on their store is hands down one of the best things to see when you're a small team. It's not surprising and you'd be hard pushed to find an indie team that doesn't see the upsides to using the EGS.
It's also naive to think the company that owns UE4 and the EGS wouldn't have any form of crossover in people using their engine and storefront - those developer incentives directly feed back into the dev. The 5% engine fee is completely waived.
Ive heard that even that may have some fucked up caveats.
Even so, Steam offers way way way way way way way more on its storefront than Epic does and actually gives devs stuff like keys.
Anything to defend Epic.
They can do no wrong apparently.
There's something distinctly wrong about an industry where the companies can actively just tell their consumers they're wrong and somehow get away with it. Same with all that stupid "entitled gamers" shit, no other industry would get away with that. Imagine buying a car and when you complain that the car operates poorly you get told you're an entitled piece of shit who doesn't know what he's talking about.
I dont understand where this Epic defense brigade is coming from.
They're like openly being a scumfuck company that is literally bribing devs to use their service and not Steam, a service which is straight up bad and lacks key fundamental features you'd expect from a storefront in 2009 let alone 2019. Like the dude straight up said they wouldnt pull the "lmao nope" exclusive twist again and then did it again the very same day. This shit isnt pro-consumer, its not anti-monopoly, this is just Epic swinging their 40% Tencent China dick around trying to brute force Steam off the market through pure cash and scum, not merit. They're not trying to sell a better service, they're trying to strong arm everyone into using their shit by buying out all the titles people are looking forward to in hopes that they can force a consumerbase to conjur around them.
indie games cease to be indie the moment they receive funding from a publisher
I'm curious if it's the same people coming into every steam article to shit on valve with "well what about" for the past few years
as in I wonder if a lot of it is defending epic because of some stupid hateboner for valve
There is definitely some of that, but I've seen people who are normally quite anti-Valve/Steam taking their side.
Which i dont really understand. Valve is a flawed company that seems to not know how to finish anything but if theres one thing they do that im mostly fine with its Steam. Steam isnt perfect, Steam has flaws, but what Steam is and the kind of company Valve is and how that works together, i'm fine with. I'd rather a more or less perfectly functional if sometimes buggy storefront thats generally fair and offers a wide array of options and features run apathetically by a company that wants to fiddle with VR shit all day than Tencent boy Tim Sweeney and his Chinese spyware.
Is it because of Half-Life? is that what it boils down to?
Not really taking anyone's side, just calling out the bullshit how as I see it.
That's incorrect but okay
do you know what "indie" is short for?
If they're being published -
They're not independent.
Literally what "Indie" means dude.
I wish I could give Tim Sweeny's brain the pain and suffering that my brain experiences whenever I read basically anything that dribbles out of his mouth.
Being bankrolled by a publisher doesn't mean they own you. PlatinumGames has been published by Activision, Square, Nintendo etc. but they're still independent.
This thread reminds me of what hbomberguy said in his control-alt-del video:
These decisions are not made in a vacuum,
games are threatened not by a
secretive anti-art coward, but by an environment
that systematically crushes most of the
people who work on them in order to make
its owners and shareholders vastly rich
and which has no interest in anything's
intrinsic value.
Gaming culture is largely unable to
conceive of this level of socio-economic
criticism or analysis of systemic
problems and wider issues
with society beyond one person's
individual failings and therefore cannot
accurately fathom exactly what is
damaging the things they love
It's not even Tim himself, if he didn't do the loot boxes if he didn't do the deals then he'd get outcompeted.
EA
I like how you completely ignored the rest of his post rather than acknowledging that you were completely wrong or even attempting to defend your indefensible point.
Also to counter your points here: If taking that money harms any base you might have built up by not taking the money then you're kinda just digging your own grave for short-term gain. If the devs intend to continue releasing games then it's kinda vital that they get a base built up and taking short term money over the chance to build that base is rather shortsighted.
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