It's been a good partnership...But...

[ReaverKane]

15 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

No, exclusives are never a good thing. They're fundamentally anti-competitive and make life worse for the consumer and, in fact, for the creators in the long run. 

Them being anti-competitive is obvious: instead of competing in terms of quality of platform or product, companies compete for products themselves. So the platform doesn't get better since A: they have less money to spend on innovations or improvements and B: it doesn't matter because if they don't have the hot new thing, customers can't support one service over another. And, no, I don't believe for a second that Epic will actually deliver on their promised features for this very reason. Just in the past 24 hours at time of writing, they announced two things: That they have had the biggest month yet and hit games, and that they're delaying their roadmap just a month after releasing it. It's bad for the consumer for the same reason - less innovation or even lacking basic features. 

Them being bad for creators is again, for the same reason, but even worse for game development. Steam has certain features - inbuilt chat functions, an achievement system, the workshop and all that stuff. That's fewer features they can implement, so worse products, and stifled innovation means that new and potentially revolutionary ideas that nobody has thought of won't get implemented.

You realize that PC exclusives aren't really the same as Console exclusives. The platform is the same, you already have "Exclusives" for years and no one batted an eye... Everything Blizzard is Battle.Net exclusive. Most EA games are Origin Exclusive, same for Ubisoft. You already have games with "exclusives".
You're confusing what boils down to a store front with a platform. Steam is basically a store, one that offers some other gimmicks, but it's just a store, and having stores compete, IS good for business...

Them being bad for creators, is just demonstrably false, not only do they give creators a better return, do you think games like Borderlands, Metro Exodus, and the Division 2, which are already successful and had other distributors, do you think these huge games would go Epic exclusive if they weren't getting a better deal?

And yeah, its kind of inconvenient, and Epic store is not as good as steam, but those features that are lacking are not the point, the point is having good games, i couldn't give a rats ass about Achievements, and i use discord to chat... So basically Steam is useless, so useless to the point i actually forgot to use it to download Albion Online. Which i can't do now, because, since steam takes such a huge share of their revenues when doing purchases through steam store, they chose not to allow accounts made on their base client to be able to log through steam.

The game features aren't implemented by steam... What stifles innovation isn't steam having gimmicks, is the devs and studios getting paid less, and Epic pays better, it takes less than half of what steam takes in %.

There's also this:
https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/25/steam-epic-games-store-revenue-share-sweeney-challenge/

The ones that actually wanted exclusivity, and have held almost a monopoly, has been steam... And they were greedy about it.
And fanboying about it won't help the game devs, just valve (which btw, hasn't released a proper game in more than 10 years).

Edited May 2, 2019 by ReaverKane

[Hyperion5182]

Just now, MagPrime said:

Check out the graph I posted further up, doesn't look like they can "take it back" because they don't own it anymore, and, it means they'd lose almost the entirety of their Chinese playerbase. 

  

I did. And i'm still worried. And i get losing Chinese access could be a huge problem. But i don't know another solution that does not leave DE out there to possibly being left hung out to dry like what just happened with Rocket League. 

[ReaverKane]

7 minutes ago, Hyperion5182 said:

I did. And i'm still worried. And i get losing Chinese access could be a huge problem. But i don't know another solution that does not leave DE out there to possibly being left hung out to dry like what just happened with Rocket League. 

Was Rocket League left hung out to dry though?

Also, Rocket League's devs were bought directly by Epic Games. The fact that Epic games has a Chinese Shareholder has nothing to do with what happened.

Edited May 2, 2019 by ReaverKane

[YUNoJump]

10 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

No, exclusives are never a good thing. They're fundamentally anti-competitive and make life worse for the consumer and, in fact, for the creators in the long run. 

Exclusives can be pro-competition under certain circumstances. One platform having an exclusive encourages their competitors to bring in quality exclusives of their own, resulting in a focus on good games rather than just profitable ones. It's driven by profit, but from a consumer perspective it results in good games for everyone.

Epic is a bad platform at the moment, but most of that comes from the fact that Steam has had more time to create features people want, and has more games due to its age. Given a bit of time Epic and Steam will become equal in regards to features. In any case, none of these features really affect games directly unless you really care a lot about trading cards or making your profile look fancy.

Valve has been made complacent by its de-facto monopoly of the PC market. It has practically no curation or moderation, and any company smaller than AAA has a good chance to be totally crushed underneath erotic games and asset flip trash. If Warframe released on modern-day Steam there's a good chance it'd fail due to lack of attention. Steam also takes a massive sales cut. if you like indie games, you're gonna have a hard time looking for quality on Steam. If you're only interested in big games, then you probably don't even use the store page for anything other than buying the game you have already researched on the internet, which is the same process on both services.

Epic having some exclusives and providing competition may encourage Steam to improve their service. This results in the two platforms competing with each other to create a service that users enjoy with good games. It doesn't even have the console dilemma of having to pay for entry (ie a physical console); the Epic Store and Steam are both free to use.

Warframe probably won't move to Epic; if it did, the only things that would change would be the Tennogen process, and the specific method for paying for Platinum. Warframe has its own servers for profiles and authentication.

[--DSP--Jetstream]

3 minutes ago, Hyperion5182 said:

But i don't know another solution that does not leave DE out there to possibly being left hung out to dry like what just happened with Rocket League. 

Solution for what? There is no problem since its DE decision from the start, and it happen already long ago back when plains first released. And rocket league devs seem happy with their contract so again its just business as usual. Its not like they had a gun pointed at their head or something..

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

reality was DE needed money , if i recal the company who bought them owns plenty of other games right

[(PSN)nekokujo]

3 minutes ago, Hyperion5182 said:

I did. And i'm still worried. And i get losing Chinese access could be a huge problem. But i don't know another solution that does not leave DE out there to possibly being left hung out to dry like what just happened with Rocket League. 

As long as the game continues to remain profitable, we probably don’t need to worry too much.

In the meantime, it’s probably prudent to remember that we do not own the game; we only own access to the game for as long as they let us. All of our items are only digital. The service may be changed or shut down at any time. This is the reality of live service gaming in 2019. So... don’t get too attached, lol.

[MagPrime]

18 minutes ago, Hyperion5182 said:

I did. And i'm still worried. And i get losing Chinese access could be a huge problem. But i don't know another solution that does not leave DE out there to possibly being left hung out to dry like what just happened with Rocket League. 

With the success that the game is, all the platforms it's on, I don't think it'll be in the same situation as Rocket League (which I don't see it as being a bad position either, given my limited understanding) 

And if something does go wrong, I think this community is a testament to how much we love the Dev team and not just the game, and will take our support to any other game they decide to make after this. 

[ComCray]

Wow.. does this mean we finally get proper lootboxes? So we can actually compete with the REAL games out there...? 

😃😃

What...?

[(XBOX)Dex Xean]

20 minutes ago, (XB1)EternalDrk Mako said:

reality was DE needed money , if i recal the company who bought them owns plenty of other games right

only other game I heard from them was they were working on a lotr online game alongside the style of warframe. not going to be DE behind the game though gonna be another studio under them.

[ComCray]

7 minutes ago, MagPrime said:

With the success that the game is, all the platforms it's on, I don't think it'll be in the same situation as Rocket League (which I don't see it as being a bad position either, given my limited understanding) 

And if something does go wrong, I think this community is a testament to how much we love the Dev team and not just the game, and will take our support to any other game they decide to make after this. 

- Hi, this is Steve from DE.. We've decided to make a new shooter, think cyberpunk2077 - in space.. To fund this we're selling [item-primez0r], only available to backers...
- Funding = 1700% in a mere 0.03 secs
- Everybody owns [item-primez0r],

You read it here first!!!!

[MagPrime]

1 minute ago, (XB1)Dex Xean said:

only other game I heard from them was they were working on a lotr online game alongside the style of warframe. not going to be DE behind the game though gonna be another studio under them.

Do you have any info on this?

[MagPrime]

1 minute ago, ComCray said:

- Hi, this is Steve from DE.. We've decided to make a new shooter, think cyberpunk2077 - in space.. To fund this we're selling [item-primez0r], only available to backers...
- Funding = 1700% in a mere 0.03 secs
- Everybody owns [item-primez0r],

You read it here first!!!!

Pretty much lol 

[(XBOX)Papa Requiem]

This is alarmist clickbait. 

[(XBOX)Dex Xean]

3 minutes ago, MagPrime said:

Do you have any info on this?

https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/04/the-lord-of-the-rings-universe-is-getting-a-free-to-play-online-game-from-athlon-games/

 "Athlon Games’ parent company is Hong Kong-based Leyou Technologies Holdings, which also owns Digital Extremes and Splash Damage. The aim is to marry its deep expertise with free-to-play game design and service with Western development and strong intellectual property to create top quality console and PC games that have global appeal."

[MagPrime]

2 minutes ago, (XB1)Dex Xean said:

https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/04/the-lord-of-the-rings-universe-is-getting-a-free-to-play-online-game-from-athlon-games/

 "Athlon Games’ parent company is Hong Kong-based Leyou Technologies Holdings, which also owns Digital Extremes and Splash Damage. The aim is to marry its deep expertise with free-to-play game design and service with Western development and strong intellectual property to create top quality console and PC games that have global appeal."

[(XBOX)Dex Xean]

1 minute ago, MagPrime said:

me too we need more online rpg games based on warframes F2p model. I also really like the lotr universe and lore.

[MagPrime]

1 minute ago, (XB1)Dex Xean said:

me too we need more online rpg games based on warframes F2p model. I also really like the lotr universe and lore.

Well, just goes to show, DE being involved is likely to bring a large following.  I'm 100% behind a LotR game with DE involved. 

[Aldain]

Just now, MagPrime said:

Well, just goes to show, DE being involved is likely to bring a large following.  I'm 100% behind a LotR game with DE involved. 

At least a decent following could come from DE's brand.

Though I can't help but think that it might be difficult to replicate Warframe's success even with LoTR's brand as well.

[(XBOX)Dex Xean]

4 minutes ago, Facadedestroyer said:

we had a game that DE never told us about and its called the amazing eternal, wonder what happen to it ? they canned it in silence, have fun with the current content drought.

not much I can say about this lotr game yet way too early to tell and also I dunno the studio that behind this game since its not DE. No clue if they going to go thru with its development till the end.

Edited May 2, 2019 by (XB1)Dex Xean

[MagPrime]

1 minute ago, Aldain said:

At least a decent following could come from DE's brand.

Though I can't help but think that it might be difficult to replicate Warframe's success even with LoTR's brand as well.

Oh, certainly.  I don't think there's enough interest in the Tolkien universe to get close to Warframes success.  

I think the main reason Warframe took off so quickly and so well is because they did everything differently and it blended so many different genres in a new way, not restricted by having to play by the rules like they would with a premade universe like Tolkiens.

But, I don't think Warframe is in any danger, especially not the kind that OP is seeing.  

[Loza03]

17 minutes ago, ReaverKane said:

You realize that PC exclusives aren't really the same as Console exclusives. The platform is the same, you already have "Exclusives" for years and no one batted an eye... Everything Blizzard is Battle.Net exclusive. Most EA games are Origin Exclusive, same for Ubisoft. You already have games with "exclusives".
You're confusing what boils down to a store front with a platform. Steam is basically a store, one that offers some other gimmicks, but it's just a store, and having stores compete, IS good for business...

First off, all of those services are utter garbage, precisely because of the exclusive nature of them. You don't get them because they're better, you get them because you have to. So why should the company bother making them good?

No-one batted an eye because the individual, anti-competitive, anti-consumer company storefronts were small and weren't buying licenses off of other companies and thus not actively drawing ire - they just horded their existing licenses. People not kicking up a stink doesn't stop it from being poor business practice. Steam basically having a monopoly also wasn't a good thing, and I was happy when I heard it had a competitor. But then it turned out Epic wasn't a true competitor.

And it being the same platform doesn't stop it from being anti-consumer. Otherwise television streaming services wouldn't be in the sate where you have to pay for a dozen or more services, many of which lack basic features. Almost exactly like Epic.

21 minutes ago, ReaverKane said:

Them being bad for creators, is just demonstrably false, not only do they give creators a better return, do you think games like Borderlands, Metro Exodus, and the Division 2, which are already successful and had other distributors, do you think these huge games would go Epic exclusive if they weren't getting a better deal?

Epic giving the devs a better deal isn't a justification for exclusivity. In fact, it should be the reason people go to it in a true competitive market, on top of better features than Steam. Which Epic demonstrably doesn't have.

Even if it's better in the short term, in the long term its worse. See also: Steam.

24 minutes ago, ReaverKane said:

And yeah, its kind of inconvenient, and Epic store is not as good as steam, but those features that are lacking are not the point, the point is having good games, i couldn't give a rats ass about Achievements, and i use discord to chat... So basically Steam is useless, so useless to the point i actually forgot to use it to download Albion Online. Which i can't do now, because, since steam takes such a huge share of their revenues when doing purchases through steam store, they chose not to allow accounts made on their base client to be able to log through steam.

So, what you're saying, is in a true competitive market, you would choose to give Epic your money over Steam? That's perfectly reasonable. I absolutely agree with that statement. That's the right I'm fighting for.

But you can't do that, can you? I'm against exclusives, not Epic. Epic's just drawing my ire for actively buying out exclusive licenses and thus creating a market of exclusivity deals rather than true competition. This right here is actually an argument for my point that exclusives are bad for the consumer. You have to give money to a company whos practices you don't agree with because nothing else sells their products. 

Steam isn't innocent. Epic might be worse because they're actively pursuing exclusivity deals (and, yes, they are buying out exclusivity licenses, it's not just the devs decision), whereas Steam's just collected a large library of exclusives due to how long its been uncontested, but that doesn't give them a free pass in this situation.

28 minutes ago, ReaverKane said:

The game features aren't implemented by steam... What stifles innovation isn't steam having gimmicks, is the devs and studios getting paid less, and Epic pays better, it takes less than half of what steam takes in %.

Again - I'd endorse you not giving them your money, but exclusives means that you can't do that.

28 minutes ago, YUNoJump said:

Epic having some exclusives and providing competition may encourage Steam to improve their service. This results in the two platforms competing with each other to create a service that users enjoy with good games. It doesn't even have the console dilemma of having to pay for entry (ie a physical console); the Epic Store and Steam are both free to use.

No, it won't. 

It'll encourage them to get more exclusive licenses. That's it. You could offer the best service in the world, but if you're not selling what people want to buy, nobody will use your service.

37 minutes ago, ReaverKane said:

There's also this:
https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/25/steam-epic-games-store-revenue-share-sweeney-challenge/

If they do follow through with that, more power to them. I'd be willing to support them. But they actually have to do it first. Otherwise it's empty words.

 

35 minutes ago, YUNoJump said:

Exclusives can be pro-competition under certain circumstances. One platform having an exclusive encourages their competitors to bring in quality exclusives of their own, resulting in a focus on good games rather than just profitable ones. It's driven by profit, but from a consumer perspective it results in good games for everyone.

As mentioned above: No they can't. Even if you make the best lemonade in the world, with the most fairtrade system and giving 50% of the profits to charity, if everyone's buying orange juice it doesn't matter, you won't make any money and the company that dumps sewage into the groundwater that feeds the well of the local orphanage that does happen to sell orange juice gets all the profits.

Normally, you'd expand to orange juice, make the best orange juice in the world, and the other company would have to make even better orange juice to compete or they'd stop making money. They'd also have stop dumping sewage because people would stop buying from them and go the more moral company. They'd have to get better. But in the world of exclusive licenses, you can't do that, so they keep on doing it because they have no financial reason not to. That in turn means you can't do anything to stop them from that except boycott them, giving up your orange juice. Which consumers are far less likely to do.

40 minutes ago, YUNoJump said:

Epic is a bad platform at the moment, but most of that comes from the fact that Steam has had more time to create features people want, and has more games due to its age. Given a bit of time Epic and Steam will become equal in regards to features. In any case, none of these features really affect games directly unless you really care a lot about trading cards or making your profile look fancy.

Valve has been made complacent by its de-facto monopoly of the PC market. It has practically no curation or moderation, and any company smaller than AAA has a good chance to be totally crushed underneath erotic games and asset flip trash. If Warframe released on modern-day Steam there's a good chance it'd fail due to lack of attention. Steam also takes a massive sales cut. if you like indie games, you're gonna have a hard time looking for quality on Steam. If you're only interested in big games, then you probably don't even use the store page for anything other than buying the game you have already researched on the internet, which is the same process on both services.

Aside frome that, you're absolutely right. Steam HAS gotten complacent. Again: Steam isn't innocent, they're just less guilty than Epic. They're the good guys by relativity, like Deadpool.

That's why I want a true competitive market. If Epic was actually capitalising on its morals, and providing a service that was better for everyone, Steam really would have to get better to compensate, and everyone profits.

[YUNoJump]

14 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

No, it won't. 

It'll encourage them to get more exclusive licenses. That's it. You could offer the best service in the world, but if you're not selling what people want to buy, nobody will use your service.

That's fine on its own though, because as I said, unlike consoles it is completely free to use both Epic and Steam at the same time. If you don't buy anything off of either store it doesn't affect you at all.

14 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

As mentioned above: No they can't. Even if you make the best lemonade in the world, with the most fairtrade system and giving 50% of the profits to charity, if everyone's buying orange juice it doesn't matter, you won't make any money and the company that dumps sewage into the groundwater that feeds the well of the local orphanage that does happen to sell orange juice gets all the profits.

This analogy only works if people are only buying a single type of product. People sometimes drink more than one type of drink, and people usually play more than one videogame.

If someone goes looking for a new game to play, they may browse either Epic or Steam. Steam will show them AAA stuff and then a bunch of unfiltered junk of unknown quality, and currently Epic will show them some games that they have made exclusive and a select few others which at least pass the mark of "videogame made with player enjoyment in mind". If Steam improved its service so that actual quality games are made more visible above the mountains of trash then it'd stay on top (assuming Epic doesn't keep up), but if it doesn't then it's gonna be much easier to see games on the Epic Store once they've become more established. Hell, at the moment Epic is giving out free games every few weeks so that's a pretty good reason to check it every now and then.

14 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

That's why I want a true competitive market. If Epic was actually capitalising on its morals, and providing a service that was better for everyone, Steam really would have to get better to compensate, and everyone profits.

Unfortunately that isn't going to happen on its own, that's just how capitalism is. There are alternatives to Steam that offer a better service (eg GMG, just buying the game direct from the developer), but they will never properly challenge Steam because of the simple fact that Steam is so famously popular, and people would rather buy from the simplest source than spend time seeking out real value. Epic has created the threat of competition by flexing its monetary muscles, but it's suffered in quality due to rushing out an unfinished storefront. Apparently Epic only plans to keep buying exclusives until it's got a solid foothold in the industry, so give it some time and we might see Epic and Steam settle into more standard roles as competitors.

[Rogunz]

1 hour ago, ReaverKane said:

There's also this:
https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/25/steam-epic-games-store-revenue-share-sweeney-challenge/

The ones that actually wanted exclusivity, and have held almost a monopoly, has been steam... And they were greedy about it.

He can say that because he knows that steam can't offer a 12% cut and still offer the same service. Value eats a lot of costs for consumers that the epic store forces you to pay and provides a lot of features that would probably make the sales of some games unprofitable.

How exactly is steam greedy? The 30% cut is an industry standard and steam offers more than any other platform does. They are also doing a lot of work to support linux with proton even though no one else does because it isn't really worth the investment.

1 hour ago, YUNoJump said:

Valve has been made complacent by its de-facto monopoly of the PC market. It has practically no curation or moderation, and any company smaller than AAA has a good chance to be totally crushed underneath erotic games and asset flip trash. If Warframe released on modern-day Steam there's a good chance it'd fail due to lack of attention. Steam also takes a massive sales cut. if you like indie games, you're gonna have a hard time looking for quality on Steam. If you're only interested in big games, then you probably don't even use the store page for anything other than buying the game you have already researched on the internet, which is the same process on both services. 

If you like indie games all you have is Steam. Epic isn't going to put anything on their store that hasn't already proven itself as a success.

The only problem with indie developers and steam is that there are too many of them. Valve can't promote every game and you can't expect to be successful if all you do is put your game in the store and wait for people to buy it.

 

12 minutes ago, YUNoJump said:

If someone goes looking for a new game to play, they may browse either Epic or Steam. Steam will show them AAA stuff and then a bunch of unfiltered junk of unknown quality, and currently Epic will show them some games that they have made exclusive and a select few others which at least pass the mark of "videogame made with player enjoyment in mind". If Steam improved its service so that actual quality games are made more visible above the mountains of trash then it'd stay on top (assuming Epic doesn't keep up), but if it doesn't then it's gonna be much easier to see games on the Epic Store once they've become more established. Hell, at the moment Epic is giving out free games every few weeks so that's a pretty good reason to check it every now and then.

Have you actually tried looking for a new game on steam lately? The discovery queue can have a lot of junk in it because it's how things get filtered. If you look at the front page or any sort of sale it's basically all quality games. The only "exception" is the erotic games which need a better filter to exclude them but they get put on those pages because people buy them.

[YUNoJump]

58 minutes ago, Rogunz said:

If you like indie games all you have is Steam. Epic isn't going to put anything on their store that hasn't already proven itself as a success.

 The only problem with indie developers and steam is that there are too many of them. Valve can't promote every game and you can't expect to be successful if all you do is put your game in the store and wait for people to buy it.

Epic has plenty of indie games, its just that it curates itself so that they're indie games with actual effort put in, not some guy in a basement stealing Unity assets and releasing them as a full game without modification. Slime Rancher, The Witness, Subnautica, Hades (from SuperGiant Games), just to name a few off the top of my head. Steam's mountain of trash makes indie games seem like most of them are skeletal early-access things with half an hour of actual gameplay.

There's a difference between active promotion and just having them in a decent spot on your store. Steam games exist in a massive list where the erotic visual novel sits next to what could be the "next big thing" if you choose the wrong search parameters. The fact that there's no curation means that you have absolutely no idea how much quality any given game has, whereas a curated store like Epic's carries a promise that any given game should be a decent-quality release.

1 hour ago, Rogunz said:

Have you actually tried looking for a new game on steam lately? The discovery queue can have a lot of junk in it because it's how things get filtered. If you look at the front page or any sort of sale it's basically all quality games. The only "exception" is the erotic games which need a better filter to exclude them but they get put on those pages because people buy them.

Every now and then I give it a go but it takes me a lot of effort to properly appraise games myself. None of the systems that Steam has in place to bring quality games to the front really work; User Reviews are often just jokes or memes, half of the Curators offer no tangible advice at all, and the Discovery Queue only recommends things that are "popular" as opposed to anything actually personalised. In addition to this, the complete lack of moderation means that there's no guarantee that anything will be of an acceptable quality; something that has a nice thumbnail might actually just be a card-farming game or a crappy visual novel. There are some quality games that make it to those "top" lists on the front page, but as soon as you go anywhere past the first page of those lists it's back into the lottery of crap/not crap. If Steam made its curation systems actually work then their "let everything be sold here" strategy might actually work, but none of it does, and tangibly losing sales to a service that offers curation could change that.