I know nothing about Ooblets. What's with the hate?

[Windwalker]

Why are people so upset with the developers? What's the history of this game and whatever the exclusivity was that's making people so angry?

[Jamjars]

Originally posted by Glowyrm:

Why are people so upset with the developers? What's the history of this game and whatever the exclusivity was that's making people so angry?

Actual context:
https://www.pcinvasion.com/ooblets-the-story-so-far-whats-with-the-outrage-and-fake-screenshots/

[Barbas]

Is the game good though?

[Mericet]

Originally posted by Barbas:

Is the game good though?

Not especially. There's a good reason the developers took an exclusivity deal with such an otherwise strong and appealing premise.

[pp]

They sold game exclusivity to Epic games in 2019 when most people hated Epic games for continually buying game exclusivity deals/they just hate Epic games. I would say the hate has died down a lot though and most people have moved on, they were far more outraged when it happened rather than now.

Kickstarter supporters were mad because they felt they were promised initial release on Steam too - but keep in mind that investing in Kickstarter project promises you basically nothing obviously. I would have just disputed it with my bank/credit card company if I felt mad about my purchase.

[Willie The Automaton]

The actual anger starts from their blog post letting people know it would be an epic store exclusive. Post here
https://ooblets.com/2019/07/we-did-the-thing/

People were finding out about it being exclusive in this post, but in the post it also is somewhat condescending, but I think that was just a situation where text doesn't really let the nonsensical sarcasm through.

I do however, disagree with their take on exclusives not being anti-consumer, despite their post making a few good points, namely that epic game store is free. So it's truly not like they pulled a bait and switch on being able to buy the game or something.
However, this doesn't change the fact that exclusivity is an anti-consumer practice. It's not pro consumer, thats for certain. Exclusivity contracts are only ever made in an attempt to keep a potentially threatening opponent from keeping or gaining momentum. It's a business tactic. But steam and epic are businesses after all.
The larger concern is that it starts with exclusives. This can be declared as catastrophizing though.
No matter the case, a company that is willing to create policies and use tactics that don't directly ask the question "Is this good for the customer?" are businesses that grow more and more anti-consumer. They think of customers as more of a threat to their revenue rather than their community and support.
Competition is good for the customer. If the games weren't exclusive, then it would be possible that the consumer has both stores, but see that one store is running a sale, so they get it there. This also keeps one store from increasing prices because they're the only place that has the game. Even with Timed exclusives, this is possible.
This only gets worse as Epic buys full on game studios, or possibly works in exclusivity into the unreal engine. Which would destroy a level playing field for their competition and giving them absolute power over pricing, release, content...well, everything.

[pp]

Originally posted by Willie the Automaton:

The actual anger starts from their blog post letting people know it would be an epic store exclusive. Post here
https://ooblets.com/2019/07/we-did-the-thing/

People were finding out about it being exclusive in this post, but in the post it also is somewhat condescending, but I think that was just a situation where text doesn't really let the nonsensical sarcasm through.

I do however, disagree with their take on exclusives not being anti-consumer, despite their post making a few good points, namely that epic game store is free. So it's truly not like they pulled a bait and switch on being able to buy the game or something.
However, this doesn't change the fact that exclusivity is an anti-consumer practice. It's not pro consumer, thats for certain. Exclusivity contracts are only ever made in an attempt to keep a potentially threatening opponent from keeping or gaining momentum. It's a business tactic. But steam and epic are businesses after all.
The larger concern is that it starts with exclusives. This can be declared as catastrophizing though.
No matter the case, a company that is willing to create policies and use tactics that don't directly ask the question "Is this good for the customer?" are businesses that grow more and more anti-consumer. They think of customers as more of a threat to their revenue rather than their community and support.
Competition is good for the customer. If the games weren't exclusive, then it would be possible that the consumer has both stores, but see that one store is running a sale, so they get it there. This also keeps one store from increasing prices because they're the only place that has the game. Even with Timed exclusives, this is possible.
This only gets worse as Epic buys full on game studios, or possibly works in exclusivity into the unreal engine. Which would destroy a level playing field for their competition and giving them absolute power over pricing, release, content...well, everything.

I think they should be thinking in terms of business though. They're a business who wants to stay afloat, the idea in their head should be "how can I keep my business afloat longer?" and Epic games was the answer for them. Valve doesn't fund projects like Epic games does, actually Valve would prefer that you pay them a little money instead. Completely fair of them to ask, I'm just saying.

If you're looking for some angel investor on your gaming project and you're running on a shoe string budget and need help, Epic has far more money than the average Kickstarter investor so they looked there. Whatever deal they got was likely pretty good (they never stated what the deal was.)

Keep in mind in 2019, people just irrationally loathed Epic games for many reasons.

1) Fortnite kids annoyed people to no end on the Internet - making them hate Epic for spawning Fortnite kids in 2019. It was all the rage to hate "TikToking Fortnite kids" which isn't really as big of a deal currently.

2) Epic games is owned by a Chinese company, enough said. Most of us here obviously just have sour thoughts when we hear Chinese company. Not trying to make it political, but that was a huge part of the hate.

3) Exclusivity always annoys gamers, even though they allow certain companies to do it without complaining (Nintendo and Nintendo games, I don't see many people whine about them even though they have always kept their games exclusive.) It's just a business move, I don't personally care if people do exclusive. I own this game on Epic myself and bought it at their first launch.

[spielerinchen]

the main problem here is not EGS, most people are reasonable enough to understand that game development costs money. the main problem is to treat potential customers as garbage. & Glumberland devs just hope people forget or just don't know the whole story.

[Macro]

Originally posted by pp:

Originally posted by Willie the Automaton:

The actual anger starts from their blog post letting people know it would be an epic store exclusive. Post here
https://ooblets.com/2019/07/we-did-the-thing/

People were finding out about it being exclusive in this post, but in the post it also is somewhat condescending, but I think that was just a situation where text doesn't really let the nonsensical sarcasm through.

I do however, disagree with their take on exclusives not being anti-consumer, despite their post making a few good points, namely that epic game store is free. So it's truly not like they pulled a bait and switch on being able to buy the game or something.
However, this doesn't change the fact that exclusivity is an anti-consumer practice. It's not pro consumer, thats for certain. Exclusivity contracts are only ever made in an attempt to keep a potentially threatening opponent from keeping or gaining momentum. It's a business tactic. But steam and epic are businesses after all.
The larger concern is that it starts with exclusives. This can be declared as catastrophizing though.
No matter the case, a company that is willing to create policies and use tactics that don't directly ask the question "Is this good for the customer?" are businesses that grow more and more anti-consumer. They think of customers as more of a threat to their revenue rather than their community and support.
Competition is good for the customer. If the games weren't exclusive, then it would be possible that the consumer has both stores, but see that one store is running a sale, so they get it there. This also keeps one store from increasing prices because they're the only place that has the game. Even with Timed exclusives, this is possible.
This only gets worse as Epic buys full on game studios, or possibly works in exclusivity into the unreal engine. Which would destroy a level playing field for their competition and giving them absolute power over pricing, release, content...well, everything.

I think they should be thinking in terms of business though. They're a business who wants to stay afloat, the idea in their head should be "how can I keep my business afloat longer?" and Epic games was the answer for them. Valve doesn't fund projects like Epic games does, actually Valve would prefer that you pay them a little money instead. :laughing_yeti: Completely fair of them to ask, I'm just saying.

If you're looking for some angel investor on your gaming project and you're running on a shoe string budget and need help, Epic has far more money than the average Kickstarter investor so they looked there. Whatever deal they got was likely pretty good (they never stated what the deal was.)

Keep in mind in 2019, people just irrationally loathed Epic games for many reasons.

1) Fortnite kids annoyed people to no end on the Internet - making them hate Epic for spawning Fortnite kids in 2019. It was all the rage to hate "TikToking Fortnite kids" which isn't really as big of a deal currently.

2) Epic games is owned by a Chinese company, enough said. Most of us here obviously just have sour thoughts when we hear Chinese company. :slimetabby: Not trying to make it political, but that was a huge part of the hate.

3) Exclusivity always annoys gamers, even though they allow certain companies to do it without complaining (Nintendo and Nintendo games, I don't see many people whine about them even though they have always kept their games exclusive.) It's just a business move, I don't personally care if people do exclusive. I own this game on Epic myself and bought it at their first launch.

it surely helps to keep your business afloat when you taunt, mok and spit your customers in the face as Independent Developer, or?

Especially when you act unprofessional and short sighted.

That's sure something you learning first at business school...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhckuhUxcgA

[pp]

Originally posted by Macro:

Originally posted by pp:

I think they should be thinking in terms of business though. They're a business who wants to stay afloat, the idea in their head should be "how can I keep my business afloat longer?" and Epic games was the answer for them. Valve doesn't fund projects like Epic games does, actually Valve would prefer that you pay them a little money instead. Completely fair of them to ask, I'm just saying.

If you're looking for some angel investor on your gaming project and you're running on a shoe string budget and need help, Epic has far more money than the average Kickstarter investor so they looked there. Whatever deal they got was likely pretty good (they never stated what the deal was.)

Keep in mind in 2019, people just irrationally loathed Epic games for many reasons.

1) Fortnite kids annoyed people to no end on the Internet - making them hate Epic for spawning Fortnite kids in 2019. It was all the rage to hate "TikToking Fortnite kids" which isn't really as big of a deal currently.

2) Epic games is owned by a Chinese company, enough said. Most of us here obviously just have sour thoughts when we hear Chinese company. Not trying to make it political, but that was a huge part of the hate.

3) Exclusivity always annoys gamers, even though they allow certain companies to do it without complaining (Nintendo and Nintendo games, I don't see many people whine about them even though they have always kept their games exclusive.) It's just a business move, I don't personally care if people do exclusive. I own this game on Epic myself and bought it at their first launch.

it surely helps to keep your business afloat when you taunt, mok and spit your customers in the face as Independent Developer, or?

Especially when you act unprofessional and short sidhgted

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhckuhUxcgA

As someone who was deep into Fortnite in 2019, who also enjoys and purchases any sort of cute farming sim creature collector thing, I saw it purely as a joke and not mockery. I always felt like Epic hate was often overblown too and I thought that was the joke they were making, they even referenced Fortnite dances in the first paragraph.

The post was purely honest, the investment for Epic games actually did enable them to move into their own home. They were also able to have their first child too after getting the investment from Epic, something they couldn't do with Steam. I don't think they did it to spite consumers, I think they did it because they were really hoping to invest in themselves/their lives and wanted to achieve personal life goals with their initial investment. Steam doesn't offer enough money to enable you to purchase a home [down payment] while you develop a game or have a family - they're older too and probably didn't have much time left to start the whole kid adventure thing.

Yes, they're an unprofessional indie dev husband/wife team. Don't expect fluffy corporate speak, lol. They're not really marketers, as you can see.

[Kashra Fall]

As I recall, the developers were...less than colorful when people weren't happy about the EGS announcement so close to release. So much like elephants, people don't tend to forget.

[Welene Wios]

Lol they removed my post.


I'll just repeat it here.

Someone made a point that they wanted to buy the game but couldn't because Epic Store didn't support their currency.

The Ooblets dev told this individual that Nobody owes them a game.

The core of the message is true, that nobody is owed any game. But don't believe the people who say the devs were only clowning on to the "Toxic capital G gamers". They were being rude to everyone.

[Welene Wios]

Forgot the image

https://i.imgur.com/9ESnCt7.png

[pp]

Originally posted by Futaba Days:

Lol they removed my post.


I'll just repeat it here.

Someone made a point that they wanted to buy the game but couldn't because Epic Store didn't support their currency.

The Ooblets dev told this individual that Nobody owes them a game.

The post is true, that nobody is owed any game. But don't believe the people who say the devs were only clowning on to the "Toxic capital G gamers". They were being rude to everyone.

I do think it's a really weird in inappropriate thing to say to a customer. You could just advise them to pirate if they have no easy way to sell the game to you, as many other developers have recommended before to people who cannot purchase due to their region.

[Macro]

Originally posted by pp:

Originally posted by Macro:

it surely helps to keep your business afloat when you taunt, mok and spit your customers in the face as Independent Developer, or?

Especially when you act unprofessional and short sidhgted

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhckuhUxcgA

As someone who was deep into Fortnite in 2019, who also enjoys and purchases any sort of cute farming sim creature collector thing, I saw it purely as a joke and not mockery. I always felt like Epic hate was often overblown too and I thought that was the joke they were making, they even referenced Fortnite dances in the first paragraph.

The post was purely honest, the investment for Epic games actually did enable them to move into their own home. They were also able to have their first child too after getting the investment from Epic, something they couldn't do with Steam. I don't think they did it to spite consumers, I think they did it because they were really hoping to invest in themselves/their lives and wanted to achieve personal life goals with their initial investment. Steam doesn't offer enough money to enable you to purchase a home [down payment] while you develop a game or have a family - they're older too and probably didn't have much time left to start the whole kid adventure thing.

Yes, they're an unprofessional indie dev husband/wife team. Don't expect fluffy corporate speak, lol. They're not really marketers, as you can see.

The main problem was NOT the Epic Launcher alone.
The developer handled the situation very unprofessionally and poorly and was disrespectful to the customers. I hope the deal paid off really well for him, which I don't think it will (the money for it definitely ran out a long time ago). In the long run, the developer has hacked into his own flesh. Because the game is back on the platform exactly where it started. And people still remember it negatively.

[Empurress MeowMeows]

They were all set to launch on steam and then when the day got closer to launch they went to Epic instead. A lot of people were burnt by that and so many have not forgotten. The dev team responses were also a bit rude if I remember correctly and there might of been some other stuff I am forgetting.