• Epic Mega Sale
    155 replies, posted
It's not the card that's being locked, it's Epic deciding that they don't want to accept any more purchases from that card in the near future. Order velocity (# of orders placed recently) is a large indicator for fraud. Obviously, the order velocity wouldn't be so high if there were a fucking shopping cart that allowed you to buy multiple games at once, but still. Anti-fraud is like chemotherapy. You're basically killing a ton of orders with the hope that you're killing more fraudulent orders than legitimate ones. But you will negatively impact legitimate customers. And frankly, the people you should blame are the people who caused this situation in the first place: fraudsters.
In this particular scenario, blame Epic just as much for shipping a storefront that wasn't even remotely ready for market. Undergrads who've never developed anything in their lives have implemented shopping baskets into their coursework before. There's no excuse for this. Anti-fraud measures essentially being scorched earth should be expected, missing basic functionality should not be accepted.
I can't at all disagree with this. I just disagree with the idea that anti fraud in general is anti-consuner, because it's actually pro-consumer. One day, it might be your card that gets stolen. And someone might try to use it on some website, and that website might deny the order because it tripped fraud flags. That helps you as a consumer. However, if you're implementing anti-fraud before shit like a shopping cart, you're incompetent to the extreme. Shopping carts get built before any transactional logic, and anti fraud is part of transactional logic. The fact that their antifraud is tripping up due to their own incompetence is telling.
Anti-fraud is typically there to protect the company accepting the order. With credit card, the responsibility is on both the credit card company and the store to prove that a sale was without doubt done by the card owner. This means that 99% of the time, having your credit card stolen is an inconvenience, but doesn't result in lost money. Whether the credit card company or the store eats the charge, I'm not sure - but they could very well be trying to protect themselves (understandably).
...do we know that for sure? I don't use the EGS so I haven't personally gotten myself locked out to test whether it's my card company or it's EGS itself, but if you've seen clarification that confirms it is one way or the other I'd like to see it. I've been assuming it was the card locking down because of multiple transactions in such a short time. If it's the EGS itself locking down accounts for purchasing multiple games in a row because the EGS doesn't have a shopping cart and it's a store-wide* sale, l m a o wow holy shit their code must be a shitshack and a half under the hood. * with some exceptions, many of which have been temporarily removed from sale
I've given about 150 euro already to epic. But not via games - It was via UE4 assets on marketplace. Still can't believe such a shitty company is behind such a masterpiece engine.
Companies aren't a hive mind of course. Epic is full of people and I bet the engine team they have is entirely uninvolved in Epic's direction as a company. Even the worst companies have good, talented people. I do miss the Epic Megagames from the 90s. They published some awesome games when they still operated out of a tiny house.
What stores are competing against these prices? Where else can I buy epic game exclusives with competitive prices or services?
the way he words it also sounds fishy as hell
I mean you could say the same thing about Steam exclusives. While there are very few AAA games exclusive to the Steam platform, there's an overwhelming number of indie games that are only distributed on Steam and can't be purchased elsewhere. What stores are competing against those prices?
except that the whole "OFC DEVS ARE MOVING TO EPIC THEYRE MORE DEV FRIENDLY AND GIVE THEM A LARGER CUT AND AND AND VOLVO SUCKS" then they pull something without even telling the devs and publishers ahead of time (who are sweeping the problem under the rug but are likely still pissed) Example: This has shown me that I'll never be buying any supergiant game ever again considering they made Transistor PS4 exclusive (on consoles) when Bastion exploded because of the Xbox arcade, and when they made Hades an EGS exclusive, proving to me that they care extremely little about their audience.
name any not made by/funded from VALVe
The difference is Valve didn't bribe them into this being the case and chose themselves that Steam was the best market to use.
Steam does not have any third party exclusives. All those indie games only available on steam are so by choice of those developers, steam isn't stopping them from selling their games anywhere else. That's the crucial difference here.
would also be willing to bet most of those are being sold on other/their own sites with steam just as the DRM
A crucial difference that some people seemingly can't comprehend.
My guess is that 2k made the decision to pull the game, since they are smart enough to realize that having the product on sale this early devalues it.
you're confusing steam as a store and steam as a launcher. steam as a store has no "exclusives" besides valve's own games. people choose to release their games on steam because it's the biggest pc storefront. indie developers are free to release their games on itch.io or other indie-focused sites. steam as a launcher, you're able to purchase games from multiple different stores. gamebillet, indiegala, greenmangaming, amazon, fanatical, gamestop, newegg, etc.
EGS is starting to let other stores sell keys, I know that Humble store and greenmangaming stock them.
The Microsoft store is also selling The Outer Words if I recall. So epics current stance is "anywhere but Steam". Which is fucking childish and just reeks of Sweeney throwing his toys out of his pram.
Yeah I suppose that's true, I guess Epic is being a little aggressive with the cash flow at their disposal. I still don't think it's that big of a deal but I think I understand more where you guys are coming from. I'm really not trying to stir up any shit here I've just been confused as to why people are so upset when the whole thing has seemed innocuous to me and nothing we haven't seen before; I compared it to Origin and Uplay in my head because they have their exclusives but yeah I guess they've never muscled their way in and bought big third party exclusives away from other stores. I'm still not in full "fuck epic" mode but I'll be a little more skeptical of their business practices going foreward.
I still think that the sale price expectations thing has been a classic Steam issue for years now, to the point where a lot of new releases come with discounts right out the gate in order to compete. It's something that's been adopted by just about every online game store though so I obviously can't just point fingers at Steam but it's far from a unique problem on the Epic store.
This isn't because of discounts during sales, this is just to try encouraging pre-orders. Some people may not bite for pre-order exclusive content or a game doesn't support, but they may if they're getting 10% or 15% off.
Those are things the developers chose to do. From what we've seen this sale was entirely on Epic's end with developers/publishers not being made aware of it beforehand. When the sale started it was pretty much every game having a discount, with a further $10 off games over $15. Then publishers quickly pulled their games from the store, including VtM: Bloodlines 2 and Borderlands 3 (despite Randy Pitchford promoting the sale on twitter a few hours before they were pulled). Even Supergiant increased the price of their game, in their words they 'scrambled' to do it, meaning they didn't know the sale was happening in advance. The sale on its own isn't a problem, it's how Epic have gone about it which is drawing criticism. They clearly weren't prepared for a sale with their store and they apparently didn't prepare anyone else for it either. Though I will give them credit, unlike Supergiant they didn't immediately jump to breaking the law by increasing the base price of their games.
That's a fair point, I figured Steam usually took the reigns on their earlier sales and dropped prices without warning but now I'm remembering that was just on their own games. Yeah I'm thinking Epic needs a little more trigger discipline on their business moves. I still attribute it to a new player in the market getting its footing but I'm now more okay with all the outrage, because without the outrage Epic wouldn't be learning anything. I think with enough time and feedback they'll get their shit together.
humble because they share a corporate owner doesn't really change the fact that they're still locked to the egs
The thing is this is a market that has existed for a long time now, its not like this is the early days when expectations didn't exist and everyone was still learning. The cowboy days of digital distribution are over, and Epic is not an start-up that is fighting just to survive. They have all the funding and time they need to not behave like this.
Meh, if you really want borderlands 3 so bad you can snag a copy from Greenmangaming so epic doesn't get any of the money.
you realize they get a billion from fortnite a year and have bribed for these games at prices large enough for the devs to excuse it by saying it paid more than all their preorder and projected sales numbers they can afford to replicate steam or even make something remotely competent, they'd rather spend it on bullying the competition and customers.
I dunno if anything this is the hardest time to start up a competitive game store with all these established giants like Steam, GMG, GoG etc. It may not be the wild west but the landscape has nonetheless changed and brought with it its own unique challenges. I think they've definitely crossed the line a number of times but I can't blame them for coming out of the gate with a bunch of high tier exclusives, I think that's a really smart move for anyone trying to compete in any industry. I think the way they've been handling things has been pretty bad lately (like the whole Metro Exodus thing) but I have nothing against a platform having some exclusives on a principle level, they exist on every platform. Like yeah, they definitely shouldn't be yanking games out from peoples' libraries but I don't see why EGS shouldn't exist with exclusives if they work out these problems, I'm willing to give them a chance if they're willing to throw money at devs like Obsidian or the ones making Outer Wilds. And I like the idea of developers getting a larger cut of the pie, even if this just means other distributors will adjust their compensation ratios and EGS fades into obscurity without its silver bullet.
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