Epic is starting to worry me

[Quadsword]

Despite massive backlash from their practices, Epic hasn’t let up even slightly. They have financial backing from Disney and Tencent, two of the largest corporations in the world, and a massive cash flow from Fortnite and unreal engine, the former being the most popular game in the world and the latter being the most popular commercial game engine in the world.

I feel like no amount of consumer backlash will stop them getting the monopoly they obviously want. They can just keep throwing money around until they control the entire games industry. I miss the days before mega corporations entered this industry.

[Wiawyr]

Ganger님이 먼저 게시:

McGillicutti님이 먼저 게시:

In other words, you aren't aware of what Steam does with the money for Consumers and Developers alike, and has been doing for years, from Steam Wallet to when they put money into Proton for Linux gamers until Sweeney bought Easy Anti-cheat to stop it.

When it comes to millionaires and billionaires, I will never defend any of them reguardless who they are.

But you are. You jumped in and said, "Why are you only saying this about Tim Sweeney, why aren't you saying it about Gabe Newell too!?" You're defending Tim Sweeney, whose company is worth about double Gabe Newell's, if I recall correctly, and you're doing it off-topic in a thread about Epic.

Ganger님이 먼저 게시:

Sorry guys for comment, but my leftist side (from my younger days) sometimes like to show itself and speak but my capitalist side will also beat it back into shape.

Considering the majority of Epic's revenue comes from their royalties on the Unreal Engine, one would think that a vibrant leftist such as yourself would be in favor of reducing the barriers to production held by a single individual. Epic pulls far more revenue out of developers' pockets in total than Steam does/

[Erebus]

Ganger님이 먼저 게시:

McGillicutti님이 먼저 게시:

In other words, you aren't aware of what Steam does with the money for Consumers and Developers alike, and has been doing for years, from Steam Wallet to when they put money into Proton for Linux gamers until Sweeney bought Easy Anti-cheat to stop it.

When it comes to millionaires and billionaires, I will never defend any of them reguardless who they are.

Sorry guys for comment, but my leftist side (from my younger days) sometimes like to show itself and speak but my capitalist side will also beat it back into shape.

Most of the people I've seen that dislike Epic dislike it for their own reasons and not out of some lofty "protecting gaben".

Epic straight up is a worse deal for me. No amount of flowery ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ or lofty ideals changes that. And it's business model is annoying because it adds further headache to my purchasing habits.

It's not my job to take a hit or get less for my money because of the "poooooooor devs". Not my problem. I'm not going to be crying at the supermarket when the farmers are getting pennies for what sells for 100s of times markup in the store. I certainly don't care if Hellman's Mayonaise is getting less money from Walmart than from Target. Why would I care when devs can't balance their budgets or this or that.

If I'm not up in arms about necessities, I'm certainly not going to self-sacrifice over entertainment products in a market where there are more products than I could humanly ever hope to finish.

[Ganger]

Wiawyr님이 먼저 게시:

Ganger님이 먼저 게시:

Sorry guys for comment, but my leftist side (from my younger days) sometimes like to show itself and speak but my capitalist side will also beat it back into shape.

Considering the majority of Epic's revenue comes from their royalties on the Unreal Engine, one would think that a vibrant leftist such as yourself would be in favor of reducing the barriers to production held by a single individual. Epic pulls far more revenue out of developers' pockets in total than Steam does/

No im not a leftist dude, I was once a leftist over 20 years ago but over time and I changed, now i sack leftist views off as non-sense. But sometimes it just pops up from time to time when I heard people defending the very rich. Don't know the reason but over the course of my life, events, people, growning up etc have changed me from my leftist thinking of old to more of a conservative.

[Erebus]

Ganger님이 먼저 게시:

Wiawyr님이 먼저 게시:

Considering the majority of Epic's revenue comes from their royalties on the Unreal Engine, one would think that a vibrant leftist such as yourself would be in favor of reducing the barriers to production held by a single individual. Epic pulls far more revenue out of developers' pockets in total than Steam does/

No im not a leftist dude, I was once a leftist over 20 years ago but over time and I changed, now i sack leftist views off as non-sense. But sometimes it just pops up from time to time when I heard people defending the very rich. Don't know the reason but over the course of my life, events, people, growning up etc have changed me from my leftist thinking opf old to more of a conservative.

Actually owning stuff will do that and having a career will change perceptions.

Look at people all for piracy as children and students, but how their perceptions change when they are trying to get money for their works or know someone in a creative field.

[Realigo Actual]

Ganger님이 먼저 게시:

Grimsdottir님이 먼저 게시:

Its simple, Just vote with your wallet. Hell Epic and Tim Sween- I mean Greedy.

How can you call Tim greedy while at same time failing to call gabe greedy ? Infact, sweedy is giving money away and taking less money. You can't call one billionaire while defending another billionaire whos only goal is to milk you dry.

God it's just...

OK. Let's recap how we got here.

Epic ripped off PUBG, and when their easy-to-run Battle Royale game caught on, they worked a bunch of outsource developers overtime to fill it with a slew of microtransactions to make money off all their players trying to see what the Battle Royale thing was. Microtransactions.

They then took this microtransaction money and proceeded to use it to throw around payola bribes to anyone with a game with any noticeability to lock their game up on their store. A store which isn't better than anybody else's, and this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ includes EA, Ubi, and maybe GOG as well, and which wasn't even really a store when they announced it as one. And they're offering to undercut Valve too, which is no surprise considering they don't have anything else to compete with Valve, because again, no systems, not the same level of store. Their roadmap has been tweaked so many times and has been pretty much abandoned.

And all of this is because people don't like Valve's "take rate" ohhhh. I like buzzwords.

WTF was Valve supposed to do when it was coming up? Undercut the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ retailers like Tim Sweeney? It's a double-edged sword. You can call Valve greedy for taking 30% but that's what the retailers were doing and in many cases the deals were worse than that because retailers have shelf and visibility politics and negotiated with publishers and distributors selectively based on their size. So Gaben's 30% was just par when he came in. Was he supposed to say 20 back in 2005? Piss off Wal-Mart, Gamestop, enter-name-here? The digital present might look different if he'd scared them that way back in the day. Epic Sweeney might not have an opportunity to undercut Valve instead he might be doing PR on a Jensen's or Sony stage.

But some people are saying Valve doesn't deserve what it gets. OK. Who? Epic? The guys that showed up with a worse store, a slashed roadmap for it, all of which is fueled by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ exclusivity deals payed for by trend chasing microtransaction money. These are the guys we agree with that Valve doesn't deserve?

Doing well is not the same thing as greed. Being good at making money is not quite the same thing as exploiting people to make money. You can't resent someone or something for having been skillful/successful. I played TF2 a lot. TF2 can feel expensive but it never feels exploitative. It doesn't try to get you to spend money all the time and there are many ways to get things and do things without your wallet. It can feel expensive at times, but there are so many ways and things and community-created efforts that offset that that Valve has done nothing against. Nobody else would do this.

If that Batman game is exclusive. I haven't pirated a game in so long I can't remember when I did it last. I will regret everything I said to people telling them not to hatetrain Epic when that was going on.

Sweeney was making 5 or so percent from Unreal, and developing engines are expensive. None of their own games had taken off and while Unreal is used everywhere it was only 5%. These days all of the major publishers have their own internal engines because Tim Sweeney is the greedy one and he's overearning right? So Epic's best customers were starting to not become customers. So you still have smaller guys.

Unity spooked Epic. Unity isn't some cheap parlor thing and I think Epic was worried about where that might end up going. This payola store is an attempt to create a walled garden open ecosystem to get people on Unreal and away from Unity, and Epic will double their "takerate" from Unreal in the process. But that's OK for them. Not Valve. Valve greedy. Right.

I dunno if's right for all these guys like 2K and EA and Ebi and Epic to say that Valve doesn't deserve (#hashtag takerate and 2K will send goons to your house to give you a high five!), but the way Epic has gone about it is just the worst ♥♥♥♥. It's the worst ♥♥♥♥ even before any considerations about where Epic's ♥♥♥♥ store might lead to.

[Ganger]

Erebus님이 먼저 게시:

Actually owning stuff will do that and having a career will change perceptions.

Look at people all for piracy as children and students, but how their perceptions change when they are trying to get money for their works or know someone in a creative field.

Spot on with this statement. I own a house, car, own items of value, have kids I need to rise and make sure they go without. When I see young people, students protesting about equality and wanting free stuff e.g free travel, free health, free college, cancel student loans etc, its makes me very very angry.

Angry that I have to wake up early, work all hours, pay bills, defend and feed my family and these upstarts who still live at home with no responsibilities want everything free without working for it. Makes me very angry but I was once like them sadly.

[McGillicutti]

Ganger님이 먼저 게시:

McGillicutti님이 먼저 게시:

In other words, you aren't aware of what Steam does with the money for Consumers and Developers alike, and has been doing for years, from Steam Wallet to when they put money into Proton for Linux gamers until Sweeney bought Easy Anti-cheat to stop it.

When it comes to millionaires and billionaires, I will never defend any of them reguardless who they are.

Sorry guys for comment, but my leftist side (from my younger days) sometimes like to show itself and speak but my capitalist side will also beat it back into shape.

I used to be like you. I've sat at the table of 2 billion dollars of people, 10 of them, and noted how each of them but one tried to help me learn how things work. They also would from time to time look to help me get work, look to help me get things I needed.

One day wanting to not always look like some over exuberant child in reaction to them, to want to rise up and hope to reach their pinnacles and even surpass em, I did a simple exercise: Imagined if I had 10 billion dollars what would I do.

I made the mistake of assuming I'd give it away, a significantly short-sighted mistake. And then the reality of what they do is what I'd likely do too, maybe to more and lesser degrees in some areas but growing what I had to make sure I can help when it's not about making more but instead about using it for a better purpose, I suddenly realized how significant it is to have the right mindset as money can happen to anyone anywhere, for a short time for a long time, if they're willing to accept it. Most see it as a spending spree opportunity, why so many lottery winners blow the money in a year or 2. Money is a responsibility, the more you have the more of a responsibility you have, as that always comes with opportunity, and generosity is an act without expecting anything in return, whereas charity, includes when you employ someone for pay. The owner of a business doesn't have to hire anyone. An inventor doesn't have to get a prototype made doesn't have to either build the item or sell the patent to which businesses are born and employment of many that feeds their families to provides them an eventually opportunity to have their own business is born.

None of this comes from a force (government) engineered society but if the interest of those in power goes there, and usually it's short lived and their jealousy of others potential to replace them if those others are more successful results in paranoia that punishes those same people who may well have been inspirations to others.

I share all this to understand why there's a visceral reaction by many of us to exclusivity of product availability and the force aspect of purchase as grounds to reject entirely, and why that's not good for the industry as a whole and the many who work in it.

I share all this to appreciate maybe how Steam and its use of DRM that is free to Developers from what I understand, provided an opportunity to protect those entrepreneurs, when they needed it to secure products well enough to gain capitalization that stabilized the computer industry as a whole, how that helped further development, and how all of that employed an extremely large population of people, coming upon 2 generations, and all for the sake of advancing the computer Industry.

Do I think Gabe Newell knew that at the time though? Nope.

But I do think he's appreciated that exercise enough to continue to place his bets on the customer over anything else, that the regulatory and judicial fights taught he and everyone at Valve a respect for the customer, the oldskool point of a fight and result appears a part of Gabe Newell's DNA.

Whereas Epic and Sweeney, made numerous mistakes in relation to customers, thus causing question of their intention.

A big one that I'll point out is Epic announcing a 12/88 split and that it's better, okay that's fine. I am not arguing against it or they shouldn't do it. But where Sweeney's mistake is is in choosing any exercise of Exclusivity to prove the 12/88 split is better. Instead he brings questions as to his confidence in it, and thereby, confidence in Epic surviving when it can't even compete on the free market, and compels a monopolistic limited timeframe like a little baby needing others to cater to it until it grows up, but will it ever grow up if it's never actually competing and thereby learning to walk? Is blaming Steam while excluding everyone else just a ploy to keep anyone from realizing Epic has done all it can not to have its claims challenged by the actual market?

I'll leave that one but I think you get the idea.

I didn't know the difference until I looked into it and well after applying what I did to understand an emotional disdain for wealthy people is probably a bias I shouldn't have, and my experiences with wealthy people had all been positive, well I walked away from that old rooting that just put me on the fence against the most important thing I have as an American: Private Property Rights. When I look at what Valve Steam will do on behalf of us, I know what company I trust, it's not the only one but for games they've proven themselves rightful receivers of my hard earned money.

[McGillicutti]

Ganger님이 먼저 게시:

Wiawyr님이 먼저 게시:

Considering the majority of Epic's revenue comes from their royalties on the Unreal Engine, one would think that a vibrant leftist such as yourself would be in favor of reducing the barriers to production held by a single individual. Epic pulls far more revenue out of developers' pockets in total than Steam does/

No im not a leftist dude, I was once a leftist over 20 years ago but over time and I changed, now i sack leftist views off as non-sense. But sometimes it just pops up from time to time when I heard people defending the very rich. Don't know the reason but over the course of my life, events, people, growning up etc have changed me from my leftist thinking of old to more of a conservative.

You're forgiven (not like I can forgive you but just saying as language protocol suggested is necessary hahaha).

Enjoy your games man, and I hope you review what I posted to you and that you may find it useful :)

[Ganger]

McGillicutti님이 먼저 게시:

Enjoy your games man, and I hope you review what I posted to you and that you may find it useful :)

Aye, good read

[McGillicutti]

Ganger님이 먼저 게시:

McGillicutti님이 먼저 게시:

Enjoy your games man, and I hope you review what I posted to you and that you may find it useful :)

Aye, good read

Thanks and it's nice to meet a fellow older "been there done that" gamer, and hopefully more folks realize that though there's younger pops easier to get into gaming, and sometimes way beyond just into gaming, there's this older crowd with retirement money and we'll we're more likely to stay and spend where we trust and not flit around. I mean, Epic's focus may well be that other crowd, free games, etc., but then they set themselves up, since all it takes is someone else who can do similar (not Steam) and their plurality of the market is smaller. Copycats are the trouble with gimmicks. EA has a shot, along with UBI, Sony, many others if Epic gets any marketshare. Steam won't be the target because theirs is a much harder act to follow. But hey I am treating y'all like we're old friends out for coffee, sorry about that hahaha.

[omgitsbees]

Please Remove Untitled Goose Game from Steam

Hello,

The devs made their game Epic Game Store exclusive for the next year. They have no intention of releasing the game on Steam in the next 30 days. According to Valves own end user license agreement for devs, the game isn't allowed on Steam. Having the game on Steam at this point is misleading, and taking advantage of the platform to advertise the game in a place where it's not going to be sold for another year if at all.

[Chompman]

If it's coming to steam, even if it's delayed, the steam devs are fine with it as we have seen in the past so either get the game on epic or wait a year as we have enough "epic" threads as it is so feel free to post in those or on the games forums as this is general forums.

[LowJack_VA1]

I've never heard of that requirement for devs, can you link it?

[north]

The game is trash and shouldn't be for sale on Steam anyway. I played like 5 minutes and was so bored I gave up. Agree with you OP in that Valve need to enforce that 30 day rule

[Chompman]

north님이 먼저 게시:

The game is trash and shouldn't be for sale on Steam anyway. I played like 5 minutes and was so bored I gave up. Agree with you OP in that Valve need to enforce that 30 day rule

The problem with this is so many games have been listed on steam that are in "development" for months / years this would prevent a lot of them from being listed and thus less advertising for their game and steam.

Otherwise game devs could just say the game is in closed testing and bypass such a rule also if that was to ever happen.