Speak for yourself. And maybe that is causing some of us to respond in kind when the standard for discourse has been set at flat out refusing reality or to acknowledge points that have been brought up repeatedly.
Well then here's my official statement on that matter:
"It's probably not necessary, but they probably found it beneficial in one way or another"
Isn't it for importing friends lists similar to how Discord does it? I can see why they'd wanna do it.
I didn't read into the issue when it cropped up. I assume they failed to ask permission from steam & users? In which case, that's of course scummy.
You don't read into something but still feel the need to voice your opinion on it
Is that what you're telling us?
It'd be beneficiary for me to rob a bank. There may be consequences for my actions later but if I got a way with it that would be really beneficiary.
They've said that, but they've scraped data from areas that definitely are not related to the friends list. They also failed to use the by now well established framework for doing that in a legitimate way.
I'm not Epic, why should I have to justify their actions?
I'm explaining how I assume they're thinking. Doesn't mean I approve of it, it just hurts me in the end.
At this point there’s nothing to say that hasn’t already been said.
cry all you want, but there’s nothing morally or legally wrong about what they’re doing. It just makes you need to consume a game that isn’t in your absolute most favorite way, if you NEED THAT GAME (lol) because you’re too selfish to even consider the other entities in the business worthy of choice.
Bullshit, a lot of us was constantly shitting Valve in the past, do you remember how people was pissed about Epistle 3? How about the constant discussion about what is and isn't allowed on Steam? I think that you now how happy people received Artifact too!
No one wants a monopoly (By the way, Steam ins't one), we hope that one day someone can become a real competitor to Steam. But the Epic Games Store is not the path that we want.
Oh sorry, looks like is our fault that Epic is doing/saying something shitty every single day. Read the thread if you want to understand why we are angry.
Maybe because Valve don't give them a sack of money to become a exclusivity. Also, you seem to forget that others stores like GOG exists.
If you think that this reduces to "Console war" shit, I recommend you to inform yourself about why people are on the arms here. There are a lot of reasons of why people are angry, this don't benefits you either you or developers, the only ones that win on this are some publisher on the short term and Epic.
Ok, here's a bigger picture. Let's forget about steam for a second, how are stores like GOG, greenmangaming, itch.io, discord etc going to compete against epic throwing literally millions around to buy game exclusivity.
Steam however, is actively working with those smaller store fronts and are providing API services, keys and easy ways to integrate and play cross platform.
People often act like epic needs to do this to get a foot in the market, but they're only running one of the worlds most popular videogame exclusively through their store, Fortnite. They already have around 40+ million users, dangle some games in front of them and they'll buy.
Have you contributed anything to the threads on this matter that isn't just antagonism?
Epic is only throwing money around because they have Fortnite cash.
Epic is using their advantageous position in one sector to force their way into another sector and force out competition because they have money from other sectors that their competition doesn't.
This is identical to Walmart moving into town, lowering prices for a bit, waiting for the local businesses to die out, and then raising prices.
We generally view this as being a shit company.
Yeah, we are going to keep "crying" until this bullshit practices that Epic is pulling stops. Sorry if I am being selfish if I don't want to be fucked in the ass so some business man on Epic gets richer.
Why you appear in every single thread about the Epic Store in their defense? If you really want to change our minds, please elaborate more, reply to the stuff that people are saying in the thread and be constructive about it.
Do you have to be an asshole? In every thread you just make snipes calling people entitled, or children and then fuck off until the next thread about Epic to do it again.
I heavily disagree with you on the moral front. Also Epic don't follow the regulations of GDPR so yes there are legal wrongs, plus their practice of buying exclusives runs very close to anti-competition laws.
Or we actually care about consumer rights. Potato, potato. (There's only one way to pronounce potato.)
Oh no. Those evil ~customers~ who don't care about the bottom line of a store who's CEO said customers don't matter. How fucking selfish of them to want choice. They should just bend over and open their wallets.
Rich coming from someone who enters a thread about Epic's bullshit, makes a grandiose bullshit post about how much better you are because you have no standards for the behavior of a company, and then refuses to elucidate or respond to anything because you know you're incapable of reasoning through your position.
Every time.
What don't people get about the EGS being bad for consumers? Not just now but for the precedence it sets. How will the PC market be split up in the future if companies decide exclusives are the best way to go?
That's the core issue. There are better ways to worm into the market, despite what you may think. It will just take time.
These features are all great, but as far as I can see it wouldn't make any money or would need significant startup investment. Lower prices and a lower cut are awesome, but they would obviously be bringing in less profit. To give away free games, they'd need a good reason to get creators to let that happen. From what I understand Epic pays devs for each copy of a free game that's grabbed, and you can probably put them as someone with a pretty significant financial base before starting this up
Plus, I don't know, obviously I can only give my own experience on this, so I'm curious what you think. If a store came out with all the things you suggested, how would they get a userbase? Would you switch over and buy more of your games from there than Steam? I honestly, probably, wouldn't, because Steam is more familiar and I wouldn't want to split my library just to save a few bucks or w/e. It's hard to say.
I really hope the new game the Hotline Miami devs are working on won't be epic exclusive.
Would someone be willing to explain to me how Epic benefits from having developers on their store if they don't take any cuts?
Okay, took a few moments to grab a bite and mull things over, I think there's some subtle miscommunication going on. Let me restate my position a bit.
I understand why some people would be rationally opposed to EGS. I disagree but I see where those people are coming from, if you value the decreased friction of a single library more than I do, or think it's a worse program because you value different functionality, that's just a difference of priorities that I can respect and understand. Not everyone needs to think the exact way I do.
I understand why certain people are emotionally opposed to EGS - people who bought the game under the (explicit or implicit) assumption that it would be delivered via Steam, only to have it not, is going to seem like a betrayal. Even in the case of something like Metro, where people who'd already bought on Steam will get it on Steam, it still feels wrong. I get that. I'm not even going to judge this as a "worse" reason to oppose EGS than the rational ones - emotions are valid and betrayal is a normal human emotional response.
But I don't think that explains the number of people with an emotional opposition to Epic. And that's what I'm fundamentally trying to figure out - why people are this emotionally invested in the kind of boring technical and business details of how they buy and play their games.
I thought about the tribalism aspect. Gaming is rife with fanboys, for consoles, for companies, for franchises, even for characters. But despite being the forums for a mod of a Valve game... Facepunchers as a group are kind of Valve-hostile. We're fucking gloating about Artifact being a disaster, we're constantly mad about no Half-Life 3, we scoff at CS:GO Battle Royale. Go back a year, we were generally pretty critical of Steam. Still are, kind of - I stay out of them but every thread about "Valve removes new controversial game from Steam" seems to get really heated. And, I see a lot of anti-EGS ranting on other sites with no Valve connection, so I think it's unlikely that it's just a matter of "we liked HL2 and CSS and GMod therefore anyone fighting Valve is an enemy".
So I'm confused. The facts don't seem to add up, and I don't seem to be the only one who thinks so. I just seem to be one of the few willing to ask about it (and reveal myself as not an Epic hater), because I have a semi-professional interest in the question. See, I'm trying to break into the indie game dev scene, and so it's absolutely critical that I learn how to not garner this level of animosity. I've already learned quite a bit from observing from the sidelines - I learned absolutely not to take orders on one store and then become exclusive to another; Tim Sweeney is a constant stream of examples of how not to talk to your userbase. I don't think I can learn any more without asking questions... so I'm asking.
They take a reduced cut, but it's still not going to be profitable for Epic, so I'll explain:
They're hoping to buy enough marketshare to gain a customerbase and then stop offering deals to developers.
In short, they're burning through their Fortnite cash in a desperate attempt to simply buy as much market share as they can in a mad dash to make the EGS profitable.
The stores you listed are probably going to compete the same way they've done with Steam, which is to not compete at all and provide their own niche. Even that hasn't worked well for them if I understand right. GOG handles a bunch of older games that aren't available on other storefronts, and if I remember correctly it was going into the red before Epic started this business. Itch caters almost exclusively to the amateur/indie crowd, etc etc. Idk about greenmangaming, isn't it basically just a grey market anyway? And for discord maybe someone can enlighten me but I don't see their storefront competing with... anyone really .
Also, yeah, Epic has a lot of users aka a bunch of people who want to play Fortnite. Most (if not every?) game they've made an exclusivity deal with is a game that doesn't cater to that crowd at all, they're mostly niche indie games made by smaller teams for smaller audiences, it seems like they're trying to attract a wider audience than the Battle Royale crowd.
They get developer away from other storefronts, and forces customers to use their service
Holy fuck Epic is screwed if their store doesn't turn a hefty profit.
Too bad knowing your average customer, it will profit.
I was using the term "meme" in the stuffy academic "unit of idea or ideology transmission through a culture", not the trendy "image of an animal with Impact Bold text overlaid" sense.
And yes, I do care about how other people within this community view me. That's because I care about this community and my participation in it. I would rather not have everyone here think I'm a giant asshole.
It's a pretty typical loss leader strategy. Use a large cash reserve to sell below cost to gain marketshare that can later be leveraged for profit. That was the model of virtually every 90s dotcom - hell, every 2010s tech startup, for that matter. At least Epic has a solid way to actually monetize it in the end - if they gain traction, they can start charging a cut, and stop paying for exclusives.
They're basically paying their way through the chicken-or-egg problem of launching a storefront. Devs won't bother selling a game on a store nobody uses, gamers won't bother installing a store with no games. Epic's burning money on both sides - they're paying for temporary exclusives, to get devs, and they're giving away games to get users. That money won't last forever, but it only has to last until they've bootstrapped their way into having enough users that devs can put their games on EGS without extra incentive.
Well I gave you a pretty comprehensive answer on the last page.
I really don't see how you can think "the facts don't add up" with people not liking the Epic store when multiple people have given you their very specific grievances with Epic.
I have no doubt that Epic is gonna succeed with what they're doing and that deeply disappoints me.
The reasons people are giving are sensible, logical reasons to get mildly irritated, but don't really justify the absolute hatred I'm seeing. Like your own (well-written, thank you) post, which lays out a pretty good rational argument against the Epic Game Store. If I were trying to logically argue that EGS > Steam, I'd have a pretty tough time with all the counterarguments thrown at me... but I'm not trying to argue that. I made a bit of a mistake trying to argue that EGS ≈ Steam, which was tangential to what I'm actually interested in, which is analyzing the root of the emotional response. But even if EGS < Steam, I don't see that alone causing this level of backlash.
It's like people rioting in the streets, erecting barricades and stockpiling molotov cocktails because the government changed the procedure for setting the fees for filing extensions for paying property taxes. Even if you're logically correct... holy crap is that a disproportionate response.
Excepting the people who bought Metro et al. on other stores and had them later become exclusives, I'm still not seeing a reason for the intensity of the response. I don't want to just shrug it off as a case of "gamers just seem to overreact to shit all the time", that's a rubbish answer. But I don't have any better ideas.
Getting really sick of some peoples' on this forums willful ignorance tbh.
It honestly seems like if someone isn't literally smacking them over the head with the information they're "looking" for then it may as well not fuckin exist despite being told of its existence constantly.
Gonna be real with you. If you do intend to be in indie dev, get a PR person and never interact with your consumers.
I, and many others, are directly telling you the myriad of issues we have with Epic and you're literally saying it's a case of us over reacting. From a consumer to a developer, fuck you. If this was your response to me as someone looking into buying your game I would actively avoid your product, I would tell people to avoid your product, and I would point them to this response.
As forum user to forum user I'm not here to change your mind, it's just pretty frustrating to see you repeatedly downplay other people's reactions because you don't personally care about it, and are evidently looking to profit from it yourself.
why even bring it up? as you said, people in this thread are providing good arguments against EGS. what the rest of the internet is doing is irrelevant to their points
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