Anyone here use the Epic store?

[arcana75]

Lately there's been alot of salt going around cuz games/devs/publishers were going exclusive to Epic's store for various reasons, chiefly money. Alot alot alot of PC gamers are upset about how their PC landscape is becoming divided via exclusives and having to install different launchers to access a game. The litany of arguments range from sensible to the absurd, from Epic's exclusivity deals being anti-consumer, to the Epic launcher being spyware because CHINA.

Previously Metro Exodus made some news by switching to Epic exclusive, but honoured earlier promises to deliver Steam keys to pre-orders. Gearbox got some pushback when Borderlands 3 was announced to be Epic exclusive. Note that in both cases, the exclusivity deals are timed, 1 year for Exodus, 6 months for Borderlands 3. More recently, Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries was the latest game to jump to Epic-exclusive for 1 year. In the MW5 deal, earlier promises to be on Steam were renounced creating some backlash and pre-order refunds ensued.

Console-primary gamers are used to the idea of exclusives between Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, to the point it's becoming a flagpole for fans to rally around. Moreso, console exclusives tend to be permanent and not timed, save for a rare few exceptions.

The main incentive going exclusive is money. In Epic's case they are giving a 88/12 revenue distribution (12% to Epic) to devs/publishers that use Unreal Engine. Juxtapose this with Steam's previous 65/30/5 split (30% to Steam, 5% to Epic for using Unreal Engine) and now announced 70/25/5 split if the game does $10 million sales (which does nothing for indies or games that will not do $10 million sales). If you're using Unreal Engine, it is a 23% bonus on sales revenue, on top of any exclusivity bonuses (which are likely significant) and more intimate support for Unreal Engine. These translate to undeniably significant incentives to developers/publishers making Unreal Engine games.

What are your thoughts?

[BuTTBR41N]

I don't use any of them but from what I heard is that epic store front is really shit lack of simple features like shopping cart. And also some simple stuff like no games review, no in games achievements. This are actually quite legit concerns. If epic can improve on all these stuff in the coming days and people still wanna complain, then those are just Gaben dicksuckers.

It's good that epic is rewarding the devs for their hard work and in return devs may be able to produce better and more games especially indies. Since on steam, it's become a cesspool of asset flip trash disguise as games. But then as of now, there's just no advantage for the consumers.

As for exclusivity deals, deal with it. This is the way of life. Money talks. Not everyone on the street can afford a multi million dollar penthouse or drive a Ferrari. That's exclusivity for you.

[arcana75]

Right now the main butthurt is that the butthurt say they shouldn't allow/accept the biz practise of Epic cuz their method of obtaining exclusives to help position themselves against Steam is considered anti-consumer and they feel a game should be available on all platforms or as many as possible, and refuse to accept that exclusives is the way of life. In fact they go as far as saying anyone who says deal with it is exactly what's wrong with the consumer that is allowing such "bad" practises to continue.

Sometimes there's just no in between with such people. Has to be black or white choose one.

[BuTTBR41N]

dont surprise me. people are just self entitled bitches. pretty sure these same people says the same thing about sony exclusives.
that's anti consumer. why is sony forcing people to buy a PS4 just to play their games?
spiderman belongs to all of us comic books fans. they should not make the game only available on playstation.
the games are made using PC. sony do not have the rights to restrict the game from running on PC... etc etc nonsense.

btw, can company be sued for anti consumerism? this people can start a class action lawsuit then if they think they have a case? but as usual they be just crying and whining.

anyway, the epic boss also did mentioned that if steam is able to follow the revenue split that epic is doing, they will stop getting exclusives but steam never said anything at all. i wonder if steam really does follow, will epic honor their words.

getting exclusives and strong arming people to go to your platform is pretty much the fastest way to get customers. the same can be said for sony and microsoft when they first join the business. it's all business. but then i am wondering how long epic can sustain themselves into getting this exclusives. are they really that rich a company? i dont believe just that fortnite money is able to sustain their exclusives purchasing.

[arcana75]

Tencent should be funneling in cash too ba.

Companies in EU & US have been fined for anti-competition b4.

[BuTTBR41N]

That's anti trust leh. Different as anti consumerism.

talk about anti trust, there's an ongoing talks about whether apple store is considered monopoly. i hope it's considered as such so next they will go after psn, xbox and nintendo eshop. if console gaming really goes full on digital, i believe we should have a choice to buy console games from other places like u-play origin and etc instead of just buying stuffs from sony, m$ and nintendo only.

[arcana75]

Eh, if I'm not wrong, "anti-trust" is basically anti-competition, which is the same as anti-consumer no?

Anyway didn't I see news that the Origin store will appear on PSN? I believe the various exclusive/publisher stores will appear as part of the platform stores aka XBox/PSN/Nintendo. It's easier to do it this way since the primary mode/device is exclusive to a small extent (console & code-base exclusives).

It's alot different from the PC scene. Unless someone keechiu says they want to be the motherland of all launchers, allowing launcher within a launcher system of digital distribution. GOG Galaxy 2.0 is something like that?

[BuTTBR41N]

not really the same but if anti trust is not controlled, it may lead to anti consumerism cos everyone is greedy by default.

remember the case when m$ integrated IE into windows and use their OS market monopoly to force OEM to ditched netscape during the browser war days? i dont think anyone really complained about it being anti consumerism since people who wanna use netscape can still install it by themselves.

origin on PSN? no lah. EA access subscription is it? anyway, fuck EA.

[BuTTBR41N]

Now ninja is streaming exclusively on mixer. So are some of these crybabies who are into watching his streams gonna whine about Microsoft being anti consumer now? Haha...
Like I said before, exclusivity pretty much can happen anywhere and everywhere. Deal with it!!! Haha...

Anyway, why suddenly you started this topic? You currently in a war with these whiners / crybabies?

[arcana75]

Ya the crybabies were whining and called me a moron and Epic shill and whatever. Claiming shit like malware, spyware, anti-consumer, etc... topic was Mechwarrior 5 going Epic exclusive after earlier promising Steam keys. What an unnecessary shitstorm. This was last week. I walked away. No point talking to these ppl.

Over in the official forums, when the news broke that MW5 would go Epic exclusive, the News thread in the official forum blew up. it's currently at 1,187 replies, most posting that they're getting refunds for their MW5 pre-orders, the rest are just anti-Epic whines.

This saga also showed that the vocal minority is really that, vocal and in the minority. The CEO of the dev company (PGI) revealed that there was only 20,000 MW5 pre-orders, yet the Epic switch would give the devs something like US$9m extra to their warchest to further development, plus get extra support from Epic themselves who make Unreal Engine, and also pocket the 5% engine royalty fee. Yet those so-called diehard fans pulled their pre-order cuz Epic. Apparently so far about 1k+ ppl have refunded.

[BuTTBR41N]

And yet these crybabies didn't go kaopeh to valve to also match epic revenue split so that developers get paid better.

I'm pretty sure all these drama didn't affect too much on the sales else no one would wanna sign time exclusive deals with epic already.

[arcana75]

More Epic Store exclusivity saga...