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Pylons posted:You're thinking about this from the consumer perspective, but I'm talking about the developer - whether it's incorrect or not, as a developer I'd be pretty pissed about having to compete with hentai anime puzzler 5000 and the only thing that keeps customers from seeing my game over that one is Valve's algorithm (and they've already had an incident where they changed the algorithm and completely hosed a bunch of indie developers sales). Maybe the game developer should advertise to potential customers, in addition to posting their game on Steam? Why is the onus on Steam to market indies to their customers, beyond what they already do with their storefront? And perhaps most importantly, if you dislike and distrust Valve so much, why on Earth would you want them to curate Steam?
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Apr 13, 2019 18:32
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Cynic Jester posted:Maybe the game developer should advertise to potential customers, in addition to posting their game on Steam? Why is the onus on Steam to market indies to their customers, beyond what they already do with their storefront? And perhaps most importantly, if you dislike and distrust Valve so much, why on Earth would you want them to curate Steam? But when other storefronts - Epic, in this case - are charging *less* and advertising your game *more*, owing to their smaller catalog, how could you be satisfied with Steam's cut for what they provide for you, as a developer? It's not necessarily about "not trusting Valve", it's more about not trusting the algorithm, and preferring to put your livelihood in the hands of an actual human being.
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Apr 13, 2019 19:41
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Pylons posted:But when other storefronts - Epic, in this case - are charging *less* and advertising your game *more*, owing to their smaller catalog, how could you be satisfied with Steam's cut for what they provide for you, as a developer? This won’t last long once more games go on EGS and indie devs have the same issues they had with steam. No one will ever be happy because the companies with the most money will always have more visibility than some random indie game
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Apr 13, 2019 19:43
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The REAL Goobusters posted:This won’t last long once more games go on EGS and indie devs have the same issues they had with steam. No one will ever be happy because the companies with the most money will always have more visibility than some random indie game I don't really agree because I don't see Epic opening the floodgates like Valve did.
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Apr 13, 2019 19:44
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Pylons posted:I don't really agree because I don't see Epic opening the floodgates like Valve did. You are incredibly naive
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Apr 13, 2019 19:54
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The REAL Goobusters posted:You are incredibly naive Why would they throw away their one major advantage that they have against Steam? Opening the floodgates pisses off the developers that they're working very hard to get on their side.
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Apr 13, 2019 19:58
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Pylons posted:But when other storefronts - Epic, in this case - are charging *less* and advertising your game *more*, owing to their smaller catalog, how could you be satisfied with Steam's cut for what they provide for you, as a developer? If the cut was the only thing that mattered to devs, all of them would have left Steam for EGS in droves and EGS would have welcomed all of them, even the hentai porn puzzlers. They don't, because no matter how many users EGS has, the number of buyers is a fraction of what they find on Steam. EGS loves to bring up that a large number of their users don't use Steam and how many users they have, but never bring up what percentage of users have made a non-fortnite purchase. I'd be surprised if it reached double digits. And if you believe EGS will offer similar levels of coverage for indies when EGS starts seeing AAA releases, I have a bridge in Asgard you might be interested in.
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Apr 13, 2019 20:02
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Pylons posted:Why would they throw away their one major advantage that they have against Steam? Opening the floodgates pisses off the developers that they're working very hard to get on their side. Here’s a hint: they don’t give a poo poo about developers
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Apr 13, 2019 20:04
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Cynic Jester posted:If the cut was the only thing that mattered to devs, all of them would have left Steam for EGS in droves and EGS would have welcomed all of them, even the hentai porn puzzlers. They don't, because no matter how many users EGS has, the number of buyers is a fraction of what they find on Steam. EGS loves to bring up that a large number of their users don't use Steam and how many users they have, but never bring up what percentage of users have made a non-fortnite purchase. I'd be surprised if it reached double digits. There's obviously a balance that needs to be struck - Itch and Discord offer lower cuts than EGS but they're not realistically going to compete with Steam because neither are making aggressive moves to attract customers. Developers would take Epic's exclusivity deals no matter what - it'd be stupid not to - but Epic wouldn't be offering those deals if they didn't think they could build a competing platform with them, and the reason they think they can build a competing platform is because of Developers dissatisfaction with Steam and Steam's revenue cut. You keep framing it as indies competing against AAA games, but that's not what I'm talking about - I'm talking about quality indie games competing with hentai porn puzzlers and assets flips and all that other bullshit that's greatly outnumbering the first group. Do people buy them in significant enough amounts? Maybe, maybe not, but consumers have a limited amount of patience when looking for a game and digging through the trash to find the one good lesser known indie game that appeals to you isn't something most people are up for. If Epic opens the store to low-effort trash like Steam did I'll eat my words, but I think it'd be extremely dumb of them to do so.
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Apr 13, 2019 20:07
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The REAL Goobusters posted:This won’t last long once more games go on EGS and indie devs have the same issues they had with steam. No one will ever be happy because the companies with the most money will always have more visibility than some random indie game iOS Store is huge and Apple still does curation of highlighting good apps. Steam could do it, too; the difference is Apple hires humans to sift through the mess for money and that doesn't work when your company is "flatland". Valve's structure is incompatible with a wildly huge distribution platform. Epic may refuse to grow with the store, but we won't see it for a while at least because they're not allowing everybody onto the store. It's sort of like how Blockbuster Video, though a flawed distribution model that couldn't thrive financially against streaming services, still beats YouTube for finding quality content because Blockbuster didn't stock Lowtax's movies.
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Apr 13, 2019 20:08
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I’m not seeing Epic advertising indie games, though.
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Apr 13, 2019 20:10
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The REAL Goobusters posted:Here’s a hint: they don’t give a poo poo about developers They do, because that's how they're competing with Steam.
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Apr 13, 2019 20:10
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Pylons posted:They do, because that's how they're competing with Steam. Epic doesn’t give a singular gently caress about you if they don’t think your game will steal users from Steam.
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Apr 14, 2019 08:31
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Pirate Jet posted:Epic doesn’t give a singular gently caress about you if they don’t think your game will steal users from Steam. I can’t believe they rejected this game no one plays
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Apr 14, 2019 15:21
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Mayveena posted:You know in thinking about this more, I'm getting a refund for Anno from the Epic store and going with Ubisoft. I realize it's probably mostly paranoia but if the Store goes out of business, I'll be left with the game and no way to get future DLC for it. Ubisoft seems like the safe choice since you have to use their launcher anyway. If its anything like Division 2 the moment you buy the game on the epic store all it'll do is install uplay and install the game through uplay leaving you with both the EGS download and the full game install, doubling the standard size of the package because EGS forgets to delete the junk thats not needed anymore.
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Apr 14, 2019 15:28
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Not using it. There is absolutely nothing that differentiates it from Steam except from exclusives. Freebies and cheap prices are temporary. If you are a developer and it is a better alternative for you, then more power to you. As a consumer though, I've have to go through using impulse, gamestop, direct2drive, origin and blizzard's digital distributors and they've all been the same regression towards the lowest common denominator. GOG is the only other one I use besides steam because its easier than pirating games, they let me download the installation executables and I don't have to be online to use it.
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Apr 14, 2019 15:58
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Comrayn posted:I can’t believe they rejected this game no one plays Ah, yes, they'll only accept already popular games, that sounds like it'll be great for all those indie developers they're fighting for and a great use of all the exposure indies get from being on EGS.
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Apr 14, 2019 16:50
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3 of my buddies and I bought Anno 1800 from steam so Epic doesn’t get a cent from us and Ubisoft has to take a cut. We are aware of having no sense or point in beeing “loyal” to steam, but it is our best practice and solution right now. We will wait for Borderlands 3 until it releases on steam. The games we need to play - backlog is insanely big as always, so no need to support this idiotic move from the borderlands publisher. This is bigger than the cod boycott stuff, it is about the question how gaming (and our hobby) as a service is provided, supported and presented. gently caress Epic and their Fortnite billions dollar induced “business model”.
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Apr 14, 2019 16:50
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Mill Village posted:I’m not seeing Epic advertising indie games, though. Don't think it was ever going to be a flood like Steam. Comrayn posted:I can’t believe they rejected this game no one plays Rascyc fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Apr 14, 2019 |
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Apr 14, 2019 17:04
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Cynic Jester posted:Maybe the game developer should advertise to potential customers, in addition to posting their game on Steam? Why is the onus on Steam to market indies to their customers, beyond what they already do with their storefront? And perhaps most importantly, if you dislike and distrust Valve so much, why on Earth would you want them to curate Steam? Valve already curates Steam, in all the ordinary, arbitrary ways that people hate and in a bunch of novel ones that are worse than nothing. What Valve specifically does not do is provide basic sanity checks on the curation process... because that would eliminate the need for the discovery queue. The ocean of garbage on Steam is tolerated specifically because it funnels the userbase into the almighty algorithm. All these poor benighted indies with no home outside of Steam exist for one reason only, which is driving users into the arms of their robot overlords. "I don't need some corporation telling me what to buy" says the guy whose daily routine includes dutifully informing the same corporation of his preferences and shopping habits. The whole point is that the store is impossible to use in any other way. There's no sense in which this is an "alternative" to curation. It's nothing but curation; always on, always watching. Steam proudly advertises its system of curators, which--sorry for ruining the surprise--is actually not a cute, ironic name for what they do. Outside of major AAA titles, no one has purchased an un-recommended game on Steam for like five years. And I'll stake the value of my OG account in guessing that the degree to which you're engaged and active in the system probably predicts whether you actually play your Steam games or simply horde them, because the way the Steam store currently works targets compulsive shopping and impulse buying far better than simple price cuts ever could.
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Apr 14, 2019 17:09
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Pirate Jet posted:Epic doesn’t give a singular gently caress about you if they don’t think your game will steal users from Steam. That developer got sent a form letter and interpreted it as a rejection letter. The store isn't technically open to developers yet.
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Apr 14, 2019 19:06
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Cynic Jester posted:Ah, yes, they'll only accept already popular games, that sounds like it'll be great for all those indie developers they're fighting for and a great use of all the exposure indies get from being on EGS. You don't seem to realize that's the point, stores that allow indie games that get enough "gamer cred" or whatever are both fine and non-threatening to big publishers and still give indie makers room if they find some success. Look at the success of the Switch store, which allows stuff like Stardew and Undertale but does not include 100 Individually Listed Choose Your Own Adventure Storybooks and every Unity test game and "Blario In: World 1-1" title someone can slap together over the weekend. We've always known the openness of the PC kind of leads to a low signal to noise ratio on the software front. We've known this because we've seen the "600 Shareware Games On One CD-ROM" discs in the 90s and we saw how many of those were actually good. Steam is rapidly turning into the old games section of AOL, except now you pay upfront and refund later if you can. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Apr 14, 2019 |
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Apr 14, 2019 19:08
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The big games industry crash of 1984 was mostly caused by nobody curating the quality of games released I mean just saying
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Apr 14, 2019 19:33
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precision posted:The big games industry crash of 1984 was mostly caused by nobody curating the quality of games released I believe the actual reason was that Atari was FOMO. Pacman and ET were the hottest arcade game and movie license at the time. Atari gave their programmers mere months to make their ports of both, with one looking like utter crap, and the other being legendarily unfun to play. Atari produced more cartridges of both without considering market demand and completely saturated the market, ending up with more cartridges than there are consoles. Which resulted in the company running into cash flow problem with unsold games, and all ended in the famous videogame landfill in New Mexico. I don't think companies can make the same mistake again given that digital keys aren't expensive to produce the way cartridges were, and I think you can generate keys much faster than cartridges so eliminating the need to place orders months ahead.
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Apr 15, 2019 03:05
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Nah it was because stores literally ran out of space for all the shovelware, to say nothing of the many new systems coming out, and since nobody was curating the releases consumers would get tired of trying new games only to find out that they're completely unplayable poo poo Which sounds kinda familiar 
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Apr 15, 2019 03:08
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Embarrassing levels of hyperbole.
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Apr 15, 2019 03:18
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precision posted:Nah it was because stores literally ran out of space for all the shovelware, to say nothing of the many new systems coming out, and since nobody was curating the releases consumers would get tired of trying new games only to find out that they're completely unplayable poo poo Digital storefronts won't run out of shelf space by putting 500 random Unity games up for sale.
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Apr 15, 2019 06:37
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I heard the phone app store industry is going to crash because those stores are filled to the brim with crapware.
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Apr 15, 2019 08:47
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Schubalts posted:Digital storefronts won't run out of shelf space by putting 500 random Unity games up for sale. Consumer patience matters, though. Books were the cheapest medium available for a long time and look at the number of clubs and ways to curate that people have tried, because simply putting all of the books on a shelf and letting readers sift through it isn't a good long term strategy.
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Apr 15, 2019 08:52
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I wouldn't give a poo poo about Epic store or their exclusive games if they didn't pay developers (or usually their publishers) fat sacks of coke money to break the promises they made to their communities. It's not likely but I really hope they get what's coming to them for that anti-consumer poo poo. Also their CEO is a huge rear end in a top hat in a suit and he's barely even trying to hide it.
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Apr 15, 2019 09:06
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Jack Trades posted:I wouldn't give a poo poo about Epic store or their exclusive games if they didn't pay developers (or usually their publishers) fat sacks of coke money to break the promises they made to their communities. There are some instances like that, sure, but Borderlands 3, for example, was never announced to be on Steam at launch.
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Apr 15, 2019 09:33
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Yeah, I couldn't give any less of a poo poo about Pitchfords latest attempt at getting maintenance money for his secret magician dungeon in his home. It's the cases like Phoenix Point that piss me off where the community has been promised a Steam/GOG release for a year now, if not more, and then uncle Epic comes with sacks of coke money and makes the community all collectively take it up the rear end for absolutely no benefit. EDIT: Also if you read interviews with Tim Sweeny it becomes very clear that he just doesn't give a singular poo poo about actual consumers. He's just purchasing cattle and he doesn't see any issues with that. Jack Trades fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Apr 15, 2019 |
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Apr 15, 2019 10:11
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I think anyone should be able to publish whatever they want on steam, but $100 is WAY to cheap a barrier of entry, and even that is refunded if the game pulls $1000 or more.
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Apr 15, 2019 11:31
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The video game industry crash didn’t just happen because crappy games existed, it happened because the games based off of massive names like ET were spectacularly lovely, and the industry didn’t have a baseline of core franchises you could expect quality from so people bought based on the quality of the things they were adapted from. Now that we have Mario, Minecraft, and CoD - your thoughts on those games notwithstanding, a lot of people like them - another video game crash cannot happen for the same reasons. Also yes, it’s absurd to worry about crappy games “filling up shelves” on a storefront that’s entirely digital. Comrayn posted:I can’t believe they rejected this game no one plays Not only is AAC a well-received and popular indie game, as that article I just posted suggests, you’re also missing the entire point of digital storefronts, and you can’t claim Epic is “pro-indie” if they’ll turn down an indie game on the basis that it’s too old. Do you really think AAC is gonna have less players than Phoenix Point or Observation? Pirate Jet fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Apr 15, 2019 |
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Apr 15, 2019 14:23
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Pirate Jet posted:The video game industry crash didn’t just happen because crappy games existed, it happened because the games based off of massive names like ET were spectacularly lovely, and the industry didn’t have a baseline of core franchises you could expect quality from so people bought based on the quality of the things they were adapted from. Now that we have Mario, Minecraft, and CoD - your thoughts on those games notwithstanding, a lot of people like them - another video game crash cannot happen for the same reasons. AAC wasn't rejected from being sold on the store, though. That's just what the developer interpreted the automatic form letter as.
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Apr 15, 2019 16:39
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I have my own comically embarrassing reasons, but I pre-ordered World War Z and I installed it launch. It straight up crashed to desktop at startup and is giving me no help as to why. This owns lmao amazing storefront, incredible exclusives. Wow
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Apr 16, 2019 10:05
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Taintrunner posted:I have my own comically embarrassing reasons, but I pre-ordered World War Z and I installed it launch. It straight up crashed to desktop at startup and is giving me no help as to why. This owns lmao amazing storefront, incredible exclusives. Wow Just as another trip report, it's doing the exact same thing for me which is absolutely killing me since this game is the only reason I re-downloaded this lovely client. I'm working on trying to figure it out and I'll let you know if I fix it. I've lived through Troika, I can live through this. Or I'll just bitch forever about it.
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Apr 16, 2019 12:56
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Epic Game Store: poo poo sure fine we'll start letting people use GMG for some games. Borderlands 3 is on GMG now for 10% off https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1118190192815271937
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Apr 16, 2019 18:42
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 loving  He has like a 20 tweet chain explaining why him doing an epic exclusive game is totally heroically saving pc gaming and definitely not because he needs epic's money to maintain his secret kiddie dungeon. Excuse me, I meant secret magic show dungeon.
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Apr 17, 2019 09:30
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So far Epic Store is the worst client I've used - Uplay and Origin are already lightyears ahead of it. It can barely function with the handful of games it carries. That said, I bought Metro Exodus and it owns.
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Apr 17, 2019 09:57
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