The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.
After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.
They can try all they want, but I’ll just wait until the game comes to steam. No game is worth using that dumpster fire of a launcher.
Elite Dangerous was their free game for the month awhile back. I made extra accounts and snagged free copies for people that wanted to try it, because I adore that game and love having people to fly with.
You know, oddly enough, no one wants it, even for free, expressly because they don’t want to deal with the dog’s anus EGS launcher.
Yep, I used to pick up the free games, then realized I’d never play any of them because I expressly do not want to deal with the EGS launcher.
It sucks, because it really is better for the devs, but steam is just so much better
it really is better for the devs
This is said a lot but… Is it really? And if so why should I, the customer, care?
I can’t think of any other good or service in my life that I would go out of my way to buy from an alternative store so that the manufacturer makes more money. I don’t choose between Aldi and Whole Foods based on whether the manufacturer of my chicken bullion cubes makes more margin with one or the other. It’s just fuckin weird.
Dude I have purchased Elite 4 times now, 1 for me and 3 for my mates
I wish they would do SOMETHING with the game to make it more accessible, all my friends gave up after realising how much grinding they had to do
That game is a ruined orgasm. So much build up and anticipation for fucking nothing.
My biggest complaint about E:D is that star citizen’s flight mechanics and ship design ruined the game for me. Star Citizen has a wider variety of ship designs than E:D. Additionally, the ships I’ve tried in SC are incredibly responsive, to the point where even the nimblest E:D ship feels like a whale. However, that’s about all I can say for star citizen. I mean, it’s getting there, slowly but I swear to god the world is going to end before they finish the fucking game.
Meanwhile, E:D is very much a complete game in a massive galaxy. Sure, it may not have as much detail as CIG is trying to put into star citizen, sure it may not have the complexity of star citizen, but that doesn’t matter if you can’t finish your game. However, E:D’s ships suck.
Can we take star citizen’s good half and E:D’s good half and make one complete game please?
I claim every epic game through the website, but I actually haven’t bothered installing the epic launcher since I did a fresh install of my OS months back. I’ve got other non steam launchers like GOG installed. So yeah, I’ll take the free game, but I don’t feel like spending money on the epic store even if it were more heavily discounted.
You’ve got the GOG launcher… Which can be linked to the Epic launcher… But don’t want to install the Epic launcher to play the free games they give…
Fucking hell you guys are pathetic.
If you still happen to have one handy I’d love a copy! Missed this one and finally getting a card that will let me play it
I will never get this sentiment. It’s a fucking game launcher, it downloads the games quickly and launches them. I just don’t get this hate boner people have for it.
I played Red Dead 2 and Control through it and had absolutely zero problems. You all just want a steam monopoly for whatever gods forsaken reason.
Because it doesn’t work
The launch is a piece of shit that doesn’t do the 2 thing it’s supposedly good at. Downloads are excessively slow and game launching doesn’t work half the time. It’s so slow that it has a noticeable effect on boot times.
Yes, I’d rather a steam monopoly than have to use that shit launcher ever again. Steam is a useable piece of software that doesn’t suck donkey cock.
It’s a skill issue if you couldn’t get it to work.
I couldn’t break the damn thing.
Their checkout still doesn’t have a cart, it takes forever to load, the UI is terribly clunky, the library sorting is terrible (how do you fuck this up), it’s resource heavy, and I’d be willing to overlook all that oof they had an in game overlay with web browser.
Aside from the terrible experience, they have profit seeking investors, one of which is Tencent. We all have seen were it goes when profits are priority over consumers.
Not a hate boner. Just genuine dislike of the platform as it stands right now.
They do in fact have a cart I fucking used it last week to add two free games and check em out at the same time.
Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales iirc, but does not enforce exclusivity agreements to their platform
I mean that’s seems like a decent deal for developers but I’m not buying it until it goes Steam and GoG.
The first few months of a game release are absolutely critical, no matter the size of the studio. I won’t buy anything on Epic just out of principle, and I’m sure there are countless other people who share the mindset. A 100% share, vs a 70% one, is definitely appealing at first glance, but it’ll butcher your numbers for short-term gain
A game that sells 10,000 copies on Epic may sell 20,000 or more on Steam since Steam is so popular. If the game sold for $20 they would get $200,000 from Epic or $280,000 from Steam in that scenario.
That’s an awfully generous ratio. I don’t recall all the specifics, but a year or so ago an indie game dev posted the sales stats of his game and left out the Epic Store numbers. When asked, he said that EGS accounted for less than 1% of his sales. Now, I’m not saying that’s going to be the case for all games, but considering EGS’s status as the “black hole of videogame marketing” I would say a 10-1 Steam/EGS ratio wouldn’t be surprising.
As a patient gamer, who hates enticements to get stuck in yet-another-walled garden, I refuse to go with Epic. The benevolent kingdom of steam never forces exclusivity deals, and just out of self interest i wont reward behavior that removes options from me.
I guess this means I’ll have to wait at least 6 months for some games to show up on steam
I’m ok with other ecosystems, if they treat people right, like GoG, I’m cool with GoG.
I’ll have to wait at least 6 months for some games to show up on steam.
It raises a fun ethical question: Is piracy moral if you fully intend on buying the game at full price when it hits Steam in six months?
Spare me the “piracy is always moral” arguments; Even as a fellow pirate, the mental gymnastics to justify it get old quickly. Just admit that you won’t/can’t pay for something. So the question is whether or not the morality comes into play when you DO intend on buying the game as soon as it’s available on your preferred platform.
Waiting 6 months means you will find out if the game was any good anyways
Found lot of the big titles that go to epic have been terribly unoptimized too at launch requiring fixes anyways, and I don’t want to pay more to be a beta tester. I don’t want to pay more for early access for a game that will be a better experience for customers who buy it much later.
So if a game is stuck in Steam’s walled garden it’s ok, but if it’s stuck in Epic’s walled garden then it’s wrong?
As a gamer living in eastern Asia, Epic’s exclusives that could only be bought in certain countries due to payment processors pissed me off enough to boycott. I generally don’t touch any games that started as exclusives there, either. The couple of exceptions I have, I waited until they were a couple of years old and > 50% off on Steam or GoG
I don’t think I’ve spent any money on the Epic Launcher yet but I’m happy to see them try their best. Competition is good and needed.
The problem with Epics approach is theyre doing competition for devs, not compition for consumers.
Compition for content usually comes at the cost of consumer convenience or benefit (e.g the multitude of streaming platforms for movies and videos)
Competition for dev’s is fine, its the exclusivity deals that show them to be evil.
Offer devs a better cut of the profits, devs can sell the game for less on Epic and make the same money as steam… a real price war to reduce fees. The devs and customers would naturally follow.
But Epic has demonstrated they want to take advantage of their “customers”… so many reasonable people are like… Steam is the devil we know, a chill devil we can get a beer with, and eat some hot dogs on the weeknds with, The Lowbowski of devils… were good.
Not inplying compition between devs is bad, its just if you go for devs and little for the consumer, it would make sense at a consumer standpoint, that’s not competition.
The mistake a lot of Pro Epic defenders make is equivalating that all forms of competition is equally great for everyone, when it isn’t.
Exactly. This isn’t encouraging competition; It’s encouraging exclusivity. The two are diametrically opposed. If you’re competing over exclusives, you’re not really competing to make the best platform possible. It’s a race to the bottom, because Epic has consistently proven that they don’t care about the consumer experience. Their launcher is hot garbage, and they seemingly have no plans on improving it. Meanwhile, Steam has a best-in-class launcher and has been making improvements every single week.
If Epic focused on improving the usability and the feature set, I think they’d find gamers much more willing to give it a try. But when every single experience with a platform is bad, gamers are going to dig their heels in and refuse to use it out of spite.
Man epic games store is actual industry aids. We don’t buy games on steam because we have no other choice. We buy them because it’s by far and large the best platform. I don’t want 10 different apps for different games. I want my collection in one spot. Epic games sucks. I’ve never given them a single cent and never will. I’ve claimed many a free game on there but the irony is I just buy them on sale through steam and never actually play them on epic. I want playtimes, achievements and the games themselves in one fucking spot. If steam becomes wildly anti consumer I would absolutely change my stance. But valve and it’s customers have a pretty good relationship imo.
I wish more companies were like Valve. They are following that old style of making a great product and/or providing a great service to make consumers happy to spend their money there. The only mixed feelings I have about spending money on steam is “do I really need more games when there’s a ton in my library that I still haven’t even installed let alone played?”
I hope they stay private and that Gabe has or finds an heir that follows his mindset rather than decides to go for a quick payout.
Even when those other companies embrace shitty business practices to make more money and it works for them, they are just setting the stage for a better company to come along and replace them.
Dude, we are so fucking boned if Gaben ever retires/dies/does not become GLaDOS. Valve is one of the only companies I can think of that hasn’t squandered goodwill completely and generally maintains a tight ship (aside from maybe Costco).
Can guarantee some random, unkempt, 38 year old asshole from the pharmaceutical industry will make Steam subscription only, throw it on the stock market, and have it tank due to some hedge fund mindset within 5 years if they hire a new CEO.