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

[Guest]

Leyou only owns non-voting shares.

[(PSN)Onder6099]

36 minutes ago, MagPrime said:

You've misunderstood;  you personally don't buy 20%, a portion of the player base buys 20% of DE in order to gain control of it. 

Then an administrative body would be needed to filter the millions of ideas and concepts that would be out forth. 

My bad English as always. 20% from 20% Players package, 20Mega if package is 100Mega. With 1/5 I expect that mine ideas will be implemented with few compromises. Let’s say i’m Greedy as hell and want to 30 Bosses to be killed with single weapon buyable with real money only,  get answer: no, so I will make compromise, OK only 5, but I choose which: Eidolon trio, Orb duo, should be accepted because 1/5 is mine, nvm how dumb that idea is.

Edited May 2, 2019 by (PS4)Onder6099

[MagPrime]

11 minutes ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

My bad English as always. 20% from 20% Players package, 20Mega if package is 100Mega. With 1/5 I expect that mine ideas will be implemented with few compromises. Let’s say i’m Greedy as hell and want to 30 Bosses to be killed with single weapon buyable with real money only,  get answer: no, so I will make compromise, OK only 5, but I choose which: Eidolon trio, Orb duo, should be accepted because 1/5 is mine, nvm how dumb that idea is.

If I owned that much of the company, I'd want a lot of say as well lol 

[Lost_Cartographer]

9 hours 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.

No one's going to the Epic store if they can get all the same games on Steam.

For that matter, paying for exclusives is expensive and hardly profitable as a long term plan.  They're doing it to get people to explore Epic as an option in the future.  It has a long ways to go, but a key part to growing big enough to tango with Steam is just being a familiar space.  Part why no other company is getting in on the console wars action - They're going up against 3 industry titans.  Also part why when one company releases a console, the rest of them have to.  Playing catch up is an unfavorable place to be in.

Consoles also have an entry fee.  PC distribution platforms do not.

Competition is good for the consumer, but it's hard to topple a monopoly without pulling some skeazy S#&$ to survive long enough to actually compete.  History favors the victors, not the noble.

Edited May 2, 2019 by Lost_Cartographer

[Loza03]

8 hours ago, YUNoJump said:

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.

Not really.

Your hobby is made worse because if you choose not to support one storefront... that's it, you can't get anything from that front.

8 hours ago, YUNoJump said:

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.

People usually play more than one video game, yes, but that doesn't make it OK to give them the ultimatum of 'if you want to play this game, you have to support a company you don't agree with.'

If you consider each individual game a different kind of 'juice', then the analogy works. No two games are exactly alike after all.

Even if Epic's intentions are good (which, honestly, is beside my point), breeding that sort of market always causes trouble down the line.

8 hours ago, YUNoJump said:

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.

Again, Steam's not the good guy here. In an ideal world, we'd get Governmental bodies to enact anti-trust laws to force Steam to relinquish exclusive licenses and prevent Epic from making new ones, allowing tons of games to be accessible by Epic and broaden the market, producing the kind of competitive environment the industry needs to truly flourish. It worked for Cinema after all.

Sadly it's not an ideal world. Still, making a stink, spreading the word and not just standing idly by is the best thing we can do to make it closer to one.

(BTW, thank you for introducing me to GMG.)

[Loza03]

18 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

No one's going to the Epic store if they can get all the same games on Steam.

Of course not right now. Epic's a demonstrably worse service than Steam.

19 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

For that matter, paying for exclusives is expensive and hardly profitable as a long term plan.  They're doing it to get people to explore Epic as an option in the future.  It has a long ways to go, but a key part to growing big enough to tango with Steam is just being a familiar space.  Part why no other company is getting in on the console wars action - They're going up against 3 industry titans.  Also part why when one company releases a console, the rest of them have to.  Playing catch up is an unfavorable place to be in.

If that was the case, then why do Disney +, HBO Go and Netflix all fight over expensive exclusives? Same for the anime streaming services.

It's not just sustainable business model, it makes a ton of money as you wind up having to pour less money into expensive, risky innovation to keep up with other companies.

22 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

Consoles also have an entry fee.  PC distribution platforms do not.

Perhaps not, but it does split communities. Plus, consumers do lose out long-term from reduced innovation and complacent companies, not dissimilar to how Steam's search system has remained absolutely abysmal for so long. No fiscal reason to improve.

24 minutes ago, Lost_Cartographer said:

Competition is good for the consumer, but it's hard to topple a monopoly without pulling some skeazy S#&$ to survive long enough to actually compete.  History favors the victors, not the noble.

That's probably the fairest point in all this.

That being said, I'm not going to stop advocating for pro-consumer business practices because of it. We get the industry that we pay for - we need to make sure we're paying for a pro-consumer, pro-competition one. Letting it slide lets companies make worse decisions in the future. For example, the microtransaction scandals of 2018. Years of consumers just letting steadily worse stuff by led to all of that.

[SneakyErvin]

2 hours ago, Pr1A said:

Leyou only owns non-voting shares.

That is the important part that so many people completely miss each time this discussion reaches the surface.

Leyou isnt a publisher, developer or anything like that, they are simply an investor. That means that DE has sold an idea in order to get money with a written contract to follow, a contract we dont have access to. We do however know that shares have been sold and part of that contract, just as the creative rights and voting has stayed with DE.

Very few investors tend to budge in, there is a very large chance that Leyou has no people whatsoever on the actual DE board.

[MagPrime]

2 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

That is the important part that so many people completely miss each time this discussion reaches the surface.

Leyou isnt a publisher, developer or anything like that, they are simply an investor. That means that DE has sold an idea in order to get money with a written contract to follow, a contract we dont have access to. We do however know that shares have been sold and part of that contract, just as the creative rights and voting has stayed with DE.

Very few investors tend to budge in, there is a very large chance that Leyou has no people whatsoever on the actual DE board.

If we don't have access to the contracts, what are the documents linked further up in the thread? 

Genuinly confused at the moment. 

[Lost_Cartographer]

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

If that was the case, then why do Disney +, HBO Go and Netflix all fight over expensive exclusives? Same for the anime streaming services.

It's not just sustainable business model, it makes a ton of money as you wind up having to pour less money into expensive, risky innovation to keep up with other companies.

They also have tons of in-house original and cross-platform available content.  Epic does not, but they're obviously planning to.  Steam didn't either, but it was the only fish in the pond when it got started.

Perhaps not, but it does split communities. Plus, consumers do lose out long-term from reduced innovation and complacent companies, not dissimilar to how Steam's search system has remained absolutely abysmal for so long. No fiscal reason to improve.

If this will be the case, and as this is the case now with a Steam monopoly, then this is a moot point. 

Otherwise, you're plain wrong.  A successful Epic store that starts cutting into Steam's profits makes Steam actually give a hoot about its service, because until Epic, it absolutely had no reason to give said hoot in the same way your internet service provider doesn't have to upgrade infrastructure because it is, I'm guessing, the only option you've got where you live, ja?  Most locations don't have ISP options in the U.S. anyway, and thus they're not very compelled to upgrade infrastructure and offer better deals.  We're still running on 10+ year old broad band tech in much of the US of A!

And while you might deem it anti-consumer friendly to have exclusives on a platform, I'm not wrong that most people will stick to Steam out of convenience if they can help it.  The consumer doesn't think about what's best for them long term.  I'm in total support of Epic doing what they're doing only because I can't trust the average person to think beyond the tip of their nose.  I'd rather competition born from unfavorable practices than no competition at all.  Tired of the idealistic "gotta do it right or don't do it at all" naive BS. 

You wanna win?  Play hardball.  Otherwise, stay off the damn field.

Edited May 2, 2019 by Lost_Cartographer

[LupisV0lk]

This is just Epic Games showing that they're willing to be the anti consumer monopoly to Steams free market. Stop with the Chinaphobia.

Edited May 2, 2019 by LupisV0lk

[Yamazuki]

11 hours ago, ReaverKane said:

Second, Epic store exclusives are a GOOD THING! Valve takes a lion share of game's revenue (30%) for just distributing the game in their store, Epic takes 12%, which is why people go there! They do exclusives, because it's a good way to get players to that store, and, lets be honest it's also better for the devs if they sell more copies of the game on Epic than on Steam.

If taking only 12% wasn't enough to draw in developers, then it should be obvious just how terrible Epic is.

11 hours ago, ReaverKane said:

If this gets a strong enough wave, first, the complaints we have about Epic store not having as many features will start working itself out, because with more revenue means more means to improve, and second, valve will see their revenue's drop, and start having to adopt a fairer policy to compete with epic, which means more money to devs, which means more funds for better games!

Epic isn't a new or poor "competitor"; they apparently have enough money to throw down the drain on a Steam game just to remove it from Steam (as well as buy all these exclusives) but you want me to believe they can't afford to provide better services to customers?

[SneakyErvin]

21 minutes ago, MagPrime said:

If we don't have access to the contracts, what are the documents linked further up in the thread? 

Genuinly confused at the moment. 

I'm not sure what to call those, but they arent the actual contracts. They just show the sales and distribution of shares. We dont really know what the actual contract says that led to the sale. We only know how much the shares were sold for but not what the people at DE actually got out of it, which a contract would tell us. Also, this will very likely not effect much regarding WF because WF itself wasnt sold, only the company developing it. WF is still someones IP and that IP still hasnt been sold to Leyou.

It is one thing when companies like PWE intervene with IP's like Star Trek or Champions because those IP's were "rented" and distributed to sister-companies to PWE/PWG. In those two cases they went to Cryptic, Champions were first intended to be Marvel Online, but there were things that didnt go like planned between Cryptic, Marvel and Microsoft, so Marvel canned it and later handed it to Gazillion.

And people make too much out of the whole Perfect Online involvement in DE's case. Perfect Online is only a very small part of PWG and an even smaller part of the DE share holding. They will never have a chance to get their word heard regarding how DE will be run.

[tnccs215]

Some of you need to go out more

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

8 minutes ago, tnccs215 said:

Some of you need to go out more

These are the Official WF forms. 

Pssh Nobody goes outside. lol

Edited May 2, 2019 by (XB1)RDeschain82

[Letter13]

Going to go ahead and lock this because:

1. It's alarmist clickbait (as someone else mentioned earlier in the thread), and
2. It's very unhealthy rhetoric that encourages xenophobia.

 

DE has repeatedly demonstrated that they still control the direction of their game. If, by this point, you are still somehow unable to trust them in that regard and feel the need to get the proverbial torch and pitchforks over something that hasn't even come to pass... I simply don't know what to say other than it's silly and doesn't make any real sense. Sort of like amputating a perfectly healthy limb because of the unlikely possibility of severely injuring it in the future.