As I see it Epic isn’t forcing itself onto people too. Developers and publishers (mostly indie and mid sized) are taking the “Epic Deal” by choice.
Since last year, or a bit earlier, I’ve seen many indies and smaller studios voicing concerns against Steam for catering to big AAA publishers and for treating smaller publishers as second class citzens. All the things Steam offered to developers and publishers (specially smaller ones) were important for them in the past. Maybe what Epic is offering is a better deal for them now. Visbilty on the storefront and financial securty among them.
With Fig and pre-orders Snapshot already raised the money they needed to finish and ship the game. But only to barely put it on the market. If the game had a slow start and didn’t sell well right off the bat Snapshot would be in serious financial trouble. This deal with Epic gave them room to breath, time to recoup the investiment made on the game, and allowed them to keep working to improve it (the extra DLC for example).
I was wondering about the timeframes myself. According to wikipedia the Epic Games store launched on 6 Dec 2018, is that right? That’d put it after Steam’s changes, which is not to say that Valve didn’t know that the Epic Games store was coming.
YOu’re of course free to go complain to the Chinese government about this and see if they will change their mind and make China an actual free market rather than the “please drive up a dump truck full of hookers and blow to my mansion and you will get what you want” system.
Considering that I got into it with some of the Steam apologists in the main threadnought, it should come as no surprise that I remember those days. In many ways I see the EGS push as a kind of karmic echo of the late 2000s when Valve was aggressively wooing everyone they could find and those of us who weren’t gonzo for throwing our lot in with the Matrix were told to love our new web-service overlords or find a different hobby.
That being said, Steam wasn’t all bad. They checked a lot of bad behavior at a time when the other major players were working overtime to screw over customers with limited activations, nonexistent post-release development support and the like. That’s all very good, and indeed the PC game industry may well have died out if they hadn’t done it. But they kicked some dogs of their own to get there, and once on top they and their biggest clients got very lazy and bossy, as all aging empires do. So I don’t begrudge Steam for doing what they do, nor do I begrudge Epic. I likewise don’t have sympathy for either of them, or Snapshot, if they play Internet games and win Internet prizes.
Sort of the irony is that the kind of bizarre “Steam or nothing” attitude is far more “console like” than anything else. And this is from someone who’s been using steam since the beginning and prefers steam. But I still bought Diablo on Battlenet. ANd play BF1 on Origin. And AC on uPlay.
Like my computer is the same. Its not like Epic is forcing me to buy a Mac or even install Linux. Its nothing like the ‘consoles’. You can still play the game on your existing PC.
Untrue. You are suggesting Steam Origin and Ubisoft all made some kind of filthy deals under table with our government so they can enter our market. Do you realize how absurd that sounds?
And are you saying that’s not literally how everything works in China? Isnt it amazing how the government ‘shuts down’ approving games on a whim? Almost as if, wait for it, its not an actual free market.
Have you actually tried to do business in China? Because that’s literally how it works. How do I know. Because I know people who have, and guess what all of them say. “dumptrucks of money hookers and blow”
While I would admit that our business environment is not optimal, please realize that many foreign business thrive here in our market. I own a local business myself and I’ve lived in deep south then cali for over 6 years until Trump came alone. All I heard is if you want big bucks you go to China. Maybe your friends need to adjust their business strategies. Also, doing business in some democracy like India is much harder than in China. An open government does not guarantee a good market, and vice versa
Well this is way off the topic. Enough politics.
Anyway, first Metro Exodus then Phoenix Point, Epic is becoming really annoying. Maybe it just look like what Steam was at its early stage, but still. Not happy at all.
It is China blocking Epic Store or has Epic Store simply not expanded to that region yet? Setting up business all over the world must take quite a bit of paperwork and infrastructure. Maybe they just focused on easier market (US, EU) and will be expanding there further?
Definitely not China blocking them. I managed to register an account on Epic website, and the only game shown in the store is Fortnite which is free to play.
If Chinese government is blocking Epic like what they did to Youtube or Google I simply cannot reach the website.
If you’re gonna talk about your government at least understand how it actually works
All foreign businesses are required to ‘partner’ with a chinese firm. Lets call this what it is. “Want access to our market, well you’re gonna drive a dumptruck full of money to my cousin’s business so we can launder it in the foreign housing market”. This isn’t a free market, it government sanctioned bribery. I wonder why all major chinese utilities and businesses are all part of the Communist party? Hmmmmmmmmm.
Oh you want to release a movie in China? Well you’d better throw in at least 15 minutes of additional footage in Iron Man that doesn’t make any sense but makes China look awesome. Oh we ‘technically’ have a limit on the number of foriegn movies we release per yer, but yeah that’s just a fake number and we can release more or less depending on the quality of the blow you drive up to my mansion.
Businesses only ‘thrive’ as long as the government feels like it wants them to thrive. Oh hey is someone infringing on New Balance’s trademark? Hahah good luck the court ruled that the obvious fake New Balun is the ‘real’ company. Oh yeah Tencent, we can also shutdown your streaming service by suddenly requriing a ‘license’ no one has ever heard of before, and wow somehow a bunch of other businesses have no issue getting this ‘license’ that were all Tencent competitors, but Tencent cant get one? How peculiar. Why would this be!
The chinese ‘game/morality police’ are required to approve all games in China, to protect you from yourself. Conveniently they stopped doing this a year ago and only recently opened it up again, to approve a few dozen chinese games only, then magically closed it back up again.
Ever wonder why a dozen devs were all part of Tencents WeGame initiative when it launched? Because it was the ONLY way to get access to the Chinese market at the time. Apparently even Tencent can’t pay the government regulators enough money to get their games released now.
I realize Winnie the Pooh has your internet blocked off but at least try to not be utterly vastly ignorant of how your government corruption works
Once again peeps, let’s try to be civil to one another, no matter what we may feel.
There’s enough heat out there without bringing it onto yet another forum.
all I am interested in is to keep your development team going, I don’t care if you sell it on Steam, standalone or Epic. All I care you keep doing good game that will shine amidst the loads of indie trash sold on Steam for outrageous prices.
Being game developer for 20 years now, worked on several AAA titles and I actually know how the industry works. Problem is tons of young players fed by youtube channel game guru’s who often talk total trash and who feel entitled to say to someone who tries to make good game that they sold them and abused them.
They have no actual clue.
I hope you do well and this storm of nonsense comments will eventually stop, you did nothing wrong.
I also hope the game does well, and i’m sure the comments will stop once the refund period is over. But claiming that they did nothing wrong is just a blatant lie.
So i’m starting to wonder, do most game developers have the moral spine of a jellyfish ?