Gog does handle tons of old games that don't work on modern systems by updating them either with help from the original developers or by themselves. GOG also sells most mainstream and indie games on their store, completely DRM free, and sometimes even with a steam key(valve takes 0% cut)
You're confusing it with sites like g2a, who buy stolen or fraudulent keys. Greenmangaming buy keys directly from steam, origin or directly from the developers (at a lower cost) and sell.
Discord is currently the most popular gaming chat program, largely replacing things like skype, teamspeak/ventrilo even steam. They're also using the steam api to fully integrate games you have on steam into discord, so you can launch whatever you have there/other games on your computer/origin etc through discord. They already have a large userbase, provide ease of access and cheap offers and can easily compete.
Most casual users who *only play fortnite* is most likely going to enjoy other games at some point or another, Epic has a MASSIVE advantage in that they have an untapped pc gaming market, to think 40 million users isn't going to provide sales is ludicrous. If they provided a good service and good offers, both the casual gaming market and the core audience would no doubt turn over a massive userbase.
Does steam have a lead over those other stores? Yes they do. Is steam a monopoly with no competition, absolutely not.
Steam is at the top for a reason, and that reason is a plethora of features and functionalities for consumers and developers alike, the only store that comes even close to steam in it's functionality is GOG and their Galaxy client.
If Epic put all the money they're splurging on exclusives towards developing features and streamlining their store, they could easily catch up to steam or gog. Instead we'll get a shopping cart feature in 6 months.
I wouldn't consider peoples' understandably emotional response to Epic's brute force approach at creating a storefront to be a disproportionate response. No one is going to Epic's HQ and beating employees up, the only response has been anger towards Epic's immoral stance in doing business.
The only reason you feel folks here are being aggressive is because this is the sixth or so time an article on the EGS has been posted, and every thread there's always one or more people who decide not to read any posts before simply stating that they don't understand why people are upset with Epic.
There have been pages and pages of people giving sensible reasons as to why the EGS is a poor service for consumers, reasons that I specifically agree with and rate said posts accordingly. Your previous argument that people aren't giving their reasons and are instead rating posts because they can't give a proper response is bewildering. I'm not going to echo what folks like Geel and Janus have said because they have expressed exactly how I feel in a manner that is far more elegant than anything I could post.
Epic is actively harming the industry with their practices, and have shown a general disinterest in how consumers feel. I know Simon was arguing that Epic's approach is effective which is true in that punching someone in the face is an effective way to end an argument. That certainly doesn't make it a morally acceptable response.
What the EGS is doing now could be simplified by calling it effective, but this is only going to help them in the short term. They're throwing a ton of money towards other publishers and developers, but without a established userbase to buy games from their service Epic doesn't stand to profit in the long term.
(sorry I don't actually know how to split quotes into multiple parts so this is gonna be one big thing )
I agree with what you said for GOG! I also read an article last month or so saying they laid off a chunk of employees for financial reasons and have been restructuring since late last year, so it doesn't seem like that's working for them too well. Which sucks, because GOG is rad, but well are they really competing if they're going in the red despite their great services?
Ah, you're right, I definitely was confused. Thank you for clarifying. In that case, would GMG not just do the same thing they're currently doing and buy keys from Epic like they do with other storefronts?
Discord's got the userbase and Steam connections, but as far as I know they don't even have a real store - just a subscription service. Which is cool, and a great service, but it's hard to view them as a competitive store when they... aren't a store. Personally, I don't see them as a competitor to Steam/Origin/whatever at all given how much it interfaces with the two. More as a different service that works with stores already in existence. If they open up a store that lets you buy games directly from them, they might be able to transition their large userbase into an actual customer base. I'd be happy to see that but personally I think it's hard to say that they'll make an appreciable dent in the market.
You're right, to say 40 million users aren't going to provide sales is ludicrous, but it'd be crazy for anyone with that many users to just rely on the casual market going 'huh, well, might as well try this out' for sales. If I had to guess, they're tapping into niche markets while they can with the exclusivity business to attract players with a proven interest in different genres. That way they have a more varied customer base once the battle royale trend runs out. And sure, there are valid reasons to dislike that decision, but given how much your average consumer really cares about any of this it'll probably succeed. But then, who's to say? I guess your average consumer probably doesn't overlap much with, say, the crowd who cares for the Outer Worlds or Phoenix Point. I don't know. I'd really like to fast forward to a year from now just to skip the current controversy and see how all of this actually turns out.
This seems like the type of thing that they would joke about in one of their E3 streams.
GoG used to have a price compensation system (can't remember what it was called) where if a game was cheaper in America than it was in your country they would make up the difference in store credit. The issue is that most games were cheaper in America than in pretty much all of Western Europe and Australia, so every game GoG sold to those regions was taking a huge chunk out of their share of the revenue. GoG ate those costs directly.
They removed that system and should now be in a much more stable position. The restructuring was related to this but they only laid off around 12 people. That sucks for those people, but it's not a desperate attempt to save money, from what I understand they were support staff who primarily were responsible for dealing with issues related to the price compensation system.
This article and several others I've seen describe them as "dangerously" close to being in the red and don't mention the Fair Price Program at all, but it's entirely possible I'm missing a connection somewhere. I can definitely say I hope that they're not as in dire straits as I originally thought. And I'm definitely curious where GOG will be a year from now as well.
Here's one more, from a niche user perspective, while Valve is bankrolling technology on Mac OS and Linux to make development easier and compatibility higher, our man Tim Sweeney posts this on his twitter:
https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698?lang=en
Oh, no, that response I totally understand. I've said repeatedly that I absolutely understand that response, and even agree that yeah, that's a totally dick move that anyone should be mad at.
Actually, now that I've taken way too long to write a reply to all these posts, I think I can make sense of it all just off this one. I actually didn't realize just how many times Epic had done that - somehow, all of the games affected weren't on my radar, so to me it looked like a blur of "<game I hadn't heard of> becomes Epic exclusive, people mad", and a lot of those I didn't realize had taken preorders elsewhere, or advertised as being on Steam. A game never announced as being on any particular store is one thing... this is quite another. Adding to that, doing so repeatedly gives them a bad reputation - fear they could do so to a game you actually care about in the future. Not itself a big factor, but it's a multiplier.
So, question answered. I wasn't missing a specific separate cause, I was just way off on weighting the ones I knew about.
(If anyone does have another thing they think is a significant factor, please feel free to enlighten me)
I was not trying to downplay your reaction. I was trying to understand it, so I could avoid having that reaction aimed at myself in the future. (Basically, I'm trying to learn how to be a better PR person, because I can't afford to work on my game full-time myself yet, let alone hire a marketing guy. Clearly I have much to learn.)
I knew about the big obvious way Epic was pissing people off - making games exclusive that people were already buying, or planning to buy, elsewhere. I miscalculated and thought it was too small a factor to be the full story... so I was digging for another cause, so I could avoid it as well. People kept coming up with rationalizations, little ways in which EGS is bad, but I kept overlooking the big one because I already knew about it, and everyone was getting so worked up arguing about relatively inconsequential details.
And to be real with you... I think I might have missed how big a factor it was because it's so obviously a bad move. Of course you shouldn't make a game a storefront exclusive, after already announcing its availability elsewhere. I have some basic fucking integrity, so I wouldn't naturally think of doing otherwise myself. I knew Epic did it once or twice, but I think I subconsciously assumed they learned their lesson after that because, well, duh. Epic isn't run by idiots, they make a really good engine and have made some pretty good games, and they clearly have a smart business side because fucking everyone uses UE4. And how many game devs are soulless or desperate enough to pull the rug out from their customers like that, in exchange for a bag of cash?
Well, a lot of them, apparently.
This is pretty much terribly wrong. Misguided and mismanaged sure, but uncaring? If anything, the amount of small things Steam gives me in terms of compatibility and quality of life more than make the platform worth it's downsides for me.
If I had my way, all AAA games on PC would be releases on GOG without DRM. That's clearly not happening unfortunaly. Good job assuming.
Damn and I loved Stories, Untold. Was looking to play it on release but looks like that's not happening
Remember when discord games store came out and everyone bitched and moaned forever about how awful it was and how it was actually the worst thing ever?
No wait, there wasn't. Because Discord store wasn't being bullshit and a sorry excuse for a storefront.
All I can say to this is that their recent actions are making that quite hard to believe.
Assholes and egocentric nerds, yes. Idiots not so much.
aw come on devolve not you too, i actually enjoy their products
wow this is probably the dumbest fucking thing Sweeney said yet, by a gigantic margin
Do we really need to explain on each new thread about X game coming to Epic Games Store about why they do this? Is all about the devs doing everything to recover the costs?
I mean, these reactions were valid back when Metro Exodus came, but it has been already for a while. Just ignore and move along, after all, Epic can't sustain giving money forever.
As an random gamer, I want to give you some advice:
First at all, your consumers are the most important thing. If they criticize you, listen to them. If they scream, listen to them. If they praise you, study what have you done to make them happy. NEVER treat them like idiots, because they do not gonna forgive you. If you feel that they are wrong, make sure that they really are, and then show them how wrong they are by actions, not words. Learn to accept when you are wrong. If you make the right choices, people gonna start loving you and your job.
Second, be always honest, even if the truth is not nice. People sooner or later gonna find out if you lied. For example: You were dishonest with your words about your hate about Steam, and people showed you why you were talking nonsense.
Finally, nor you or any developer deserves "forgiveness" if they treat users like shit. No one cares if you are living on a cardboard box, if you made some scummy decision, prepare to receive angry comments/tweets/emails, you deserve it. You are the one being selfish, not the people that pays money for your product.
As a fellow developer, I wish you luck with your game and I hope you start listening people and put on their shoes when they say something, that way you will start to "understand" them.
For the people whom were looking forward to said games for months or even preordered on another platform, yeah I can understand when people get mad and want to vent their frustration.
Just because they're not huge releases like Metro who have advertisements up the ass for doesn't make it any less valid.
I'd like to stress one thing though, yes the developers are taking the large sum of money that covered the cost of the game and any sales are just an added bonus.
But with that it goes to show they didn't really care if their game did good or if they made a great game people would love, they just wanted cash in hand.
One thing to add as well that Epic doesn't have that Steam does is recommending games via algorithms through discovery and games you already own through the front store page.
This gives even indie developers a steady flow of new consumers long after its initial release.
On Epic, once they're off the first page you won't be seeing them again unless you search for it specifically. Resulting in a sudden nose-dive in sales.
The article on that was actually misunderstanding things from what I recall. The employees that CDPR laid off were employees that no longer had anything to actually do regarding Gog.
See the above but they aren't operating in the red. There was a follow up a few days later clarifying that.
GOG lays off around a dozen employees amid report of financial s..
We see that quite a few of you raised concerns about GOG's future. As part of a publicly traded company, we can't comment on any financial results until they are officially reported, but we want to ensure you everything is good with GOG. Being part of a big gaming company, some reports - especially some given by significant media outlets - can often sound much scarier than reality.
Actually it was more about the discussion being in circles on each thread here on FP, always going the same with:
rage due the announcement->flame wars due people critizing it and "defenders"->people coming to say why the devs did it->discussion dies and gets restarted on a new one.
That's why I was critizing these reactions, it doesn't really add anything of value to the existing debate as the same things are literally said ( look up on the previous threads, people are pretty much saying the same thing again and again ). Probably it would be just a better idea to do a megathread to roll in all this kind of news, just like in the past we had a subzone with bots reporting which games where being released, although that's up to the moderators if they want to keep SH tidier or this is acceptable.
Bills and salaries have to be paid at the end of the day. Sure one finds pleasure if the people likes your game, but that doesn't help you live. Game dev is hard and if you don't have a constant income you are going to close, even as publisher.
Then again I agree that Devolver should have done better on this situation rather than "yes we need the money, so what?".
To be clear, you're asserting that they would not have been able to stay afloat as a company unless they took Epic's money?
Because that's a hell of a thing to say with no evidence.
What is this then? Is not from Devolver?
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/129/b3b54949-9b00-4ffb-82ce-7b5ef74f6c12/h85ndar19vl21[1].png
Cool, I missed that! Thanks for linking it.
That is a quote from the Phoenix Point Discord, the dude pictured is the developer’s community representative.
You do understand what being "in the black" means, right? They'd still be making a profit. That is them saying they literally don't need to even sell the game to make a profit, they can take the massive loss of the refunds and it wouldn't negatively impact them.
Whoops.
I guess today can't read, sorry then.
Not only is this not from Devolver, the company that did say that also said that they didn't need Epic's funding to survive. That they had the funding necessary to complete the game already.
This whole Epic stuff is just temporary. It'll last another year or so and then that's that. They aren't getting enough revenue from these deals to sustain it, and once their cow Fortnite dries up that's it. They'll go to the exact same percentages Steam uses, and have less features, and fade into obscurity. And in the meantime we see who cares about consumers and who sells out for themselves
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