I didn’t read the entire post, but yes i agree. Steam was exactly the same way 10+ years ago. I’d say in 2-3 years people will be happy the Epic store is there to keep pressure on Valve.
I had to stop going to the PhoenixPoint subreddit - it’s garbage.
This is a good post, OP. I can understand why people feel strongly on both ends of things. However, personally, I’m disappointed with the decision to go Epic exclusive and requested a refund. I’m disappointed because it feels like Snapshot sold out to Epic for exclusivity (which, come on, nobody can argue that’s good) and I’m disappointed that, I can assume based on available information, Snapshot felt this was necessary to get enough money to deliver a quality product (not just, you know, release the product). I guess for my part I hope the money made in the Epic deal was worth the non-negligible loss in goodwill with the community. Man, between this and the “early access” ordering of Fallout *76, I’ve been batting zero lately lol
I hope nobody gets too agitated by this message - I wondered whether I should have made this post at all. Maybe I’ll see you all down the road post release sometime.
The argument that “Steam was just as bad in the past for forcing gamers to buy from their store” forgets one crucial difference between Valve and Epic: Epic is straight up paying developers/publishers to sell their games exclusively on the Epic Store, and this is why some people feel uncomfortable with it.
Yes, Steam’s rise did result in games being sold exclusively on Steam (no more physical copies). This happened, however, because Steam earned developers’ trust by offering superior services. Others in this thread have already named a few, and for me, I think that from a dev/publisher’s perspective, the cost savings from not having to manufacture and ship physical copies of games (and have retail stores take a cut of the sale AND further cut their revenue by promoting resold games a la GameStop) was a strong motivator for many game companies to move away from physical retail to Steam.
Yes, this does make the Epic Store similar to Steam in that they are also providing a better cut to developers/publishers (12% cut instead of 30%, plus a waiver of Unreal Engine royalties for games that qualify). But Steam didn’t straight up pay companies to sell their games exclusively on Steam. Epic is doing that.
Why does that seem wrong? Well, to some it feels like a cheap/cheat move. It feels like Epic didn’t “earn” sales exclusivity because it did so not by providing better features to compete with other digital distribution platforms, but by simply throwing large amounts of money around and “bribing” game makers. People were upset with EA, Ubisoft, ActiBlizz and Bethesda going exclusive with their own games on their own stores, but it’s much easier for these companies to justify their actions since these companies funded/developed those games themselves. It’s their own games and we can accept that they can sell or not sell wherever they want.
These other companies, however, never went as far as to pay companies for exclusivity deals, or worse, straight up poach games from Steam like what happened to Metro Exodus, which sold preorder copies on Steam right up until a few weeks before release when it suddenly announced it would become an Epic Store exclusive.
Epic simply throwing money around to win over developers/publishers feels like when rich parents pay lots of money to prestigious private universities to admit their children (an actual controversy happening in the US right now). Sure, it’s a private institution and maybe it can do what it wants but it still feels unfair.
Another part of your argument is that Steam released with far fewer platforms than it has today, so why should Epic be faulted for releasing an inferior store? Sure, back then Steam wasn’t as great as it is now but again, Valve didn’t bribe companies to sell exclusively on Steam. Furthermore, Steam didn’t have to compete with existing digital distribution platforms in terms of features. What it released during its time was revolutionary, and although at the time not everything worked perfectly, it was clear that they were innovating. The Epic Store is releasing in 2019 where it has to compete with other stores who each developed their own features to win over consumers, yet their own store is barebones and instead relies on paying for exclusivity deals.
Imagine that you really like bread, and you would normally go to any supermarket nearby to buy bread. One day, however, a new supermarket opens next to your usual stores. The new store is weird. The lights are a bit too dim so it’s harder to find what you want. It’s also 10 floors high for some reason and doesn’t have any escalators, so you have to climb 10 flights of stairs to get to the bread section on the 10th floor. That’s assuming you even know where the bread section is, because there’s no clear directory. The store’s management said there will be one in a few weeks though.
Why would you ever want to shop at this store? Oh wait, they paid all the bread companies for an exclusive deal to only sell bread at their store. All the other supermarkets you used to go to no longer sell bread at their stores. Sure, it doesn’t cost you any extra money to go to this new store to buy bread, but having been to better supermarkets in the past, you’re peeved about being forced to get bread at this awful new store, all because the new store was rich enough to pay bread companies for an exclusive deal, but not enough to provide a store that is at least on par with the other supermarkets you normally go to.
On top of that, someone on the streets is telling people to stop complaining about the new store, because back in the 1800s escalators weren’t even invented yet.
So yeah that’s part of why some people are upset with Epic. It just feels kind of scummy to throw money around without any effort to force consumers to use their inferior store. Some people are pissed at Snapshot Games too because by allowing themselves to be bought over by exclusivity deals (regardless of the reason), they’re signalling to companies like Epic that exclusivity deals work, and so they’ll continue to employ tactics that feel cheap or unfair to consumers.
but unfortunately bread is a necessity and you couldnt go for a year without it however Phoenix point is just a game and isnt an essential part of everyday life which you can get in a year if you want it from another supermarket.
In my part of the world bread isn’t a necessity 
but you get the idea I hope.
I don’t disagree with the argument that people can just wait for the game’s exclusivity period to end, but that still leaves some backers disappointed that they backed a game with the expectation that it will release on their preferred platform.
Anyway the point of my comment was to provide an argument for why some people think what Epic is doing is worse than Steam, which is a counterpoint to OP’s argument that Epic isn’t any more “evil” than Steam (from a consumer’s perspective, “evil” would mean anti-consumer I suppose). You saying that “the exclusivity period ends after a year” doesn’t rebut the argument that Steam never paid for exclusivity deals in the first place.
Perhaps my supermarket analogy was a bit distracting (although I appreciate that you even bothered to read my long comment that far haha), but to clarify, I was proposing that the core reason Epic feels more like a bad guy than Valve is their buying of (timed) exclusivity deals. The supermarket analogy was to illustrate how, from a consumer’s perspective, timed exclusivity is made more annoying by the fact that it’s making games exclusive to a storefront that many people consider inferior to the current competition
i whole heartedly agree with you and i get what you are saying, it just the bread analogy made me laugh (in a good way) and I couldn’t resist replying.
Haha well I’m glad you enjoyed it
Gluten Free capitalism?
In my eyes, the Jedi are evil!
Johnny Lawrence was the true Karate Kid!
FWIW, I’m 70, been playing computer games for over 30 years and I too was “scandalized” and “outraged” when my favorite games started to use Steam. I almost quit gaming over it. I was proven wrong. I now own about 90 titles on Steam and could not be happier with it. The decision to use Epic was surprising, but not alarming given that I’ll have PP on Steam within a year of release anyway. Tempest in a Teapot as far as I’m concerned. You all are free to have your own opinions, as always.
70 !! wow !! i tought i was among dinosaurus here being 45…An Epic account is not such a bad thing, you may use it to play Fortnitte with your grandchildren.
respect if you didn’t mean from '70 
The fact that it worked out well once is no valid prediction for the future.
You may end up as a chinese puppet server or your government may ban epic and make it illegal due not being compliant.
The same goes for steam and steam still IS the evil empire, nothing changed. But there was always GOG going in a different direction.
As long as you have no right or propertiy on the things you pay for the whole gaming industry is always one step away from doom.
This is very different from backing something. When I backed this game I was aware that I might get nothing in return for it.
I had no right on anything and I may not complain if they are now ripping me of with this deal. This was a risk investment and I see the project as a complete failure now.
I might get something in late 2020. Maybe. Maybe not, we don’t know. It is a long time until then.
That is sad cause I thought the game was on a good path until they came up with this move.
This will have hard consequences on my behavior in the future, the damage that they did affects how I will trust this project and other coming procjects.
Only 8 years older at 53:exclamation:These young whippersnappers don’t realise how good they ‘ve got it!
Personally, I’m loathe to use other installers so much so that I simply don’t tbh. If I really want to play or try a game that’s exclusive to another launcher, I simply do the ‘naughty thing’ or wait 'til it comes to Steam if it deserves my support.
I never hated Steam when it first came out but I was very skeptical. I was used to getting an actual disc and also being able to lend games.
However, what with compatibility issues with later versions of windows making some games unplayable and also the sheer cumbersome nature of storing all that stuff, (I’ve never been a home owner) I soon got used to Steam as a practical place for all my games to be; one library, one lot of security, one launcher, one friends list and access to old titles etc…
Funny thing is, there were two things that initially won me over. One was the Steam sales and the second was the fact I could play UFO Enemy Unknown again, without having to faff around with DOS-Box. How strange that UFO/XCOM got me into Steam and now Steam is influencing my decision to not buy PP on release! 
Still, I’m not bitter or anything. It’s a sound business decision I imagine and I’m too old to get outraged about this sort of stuff, though I do sympathise with those that are upset.
Maybe they can use that extra cash and add the Terror from the Deep stuff now 
They will 
Dude, nice try, except that the landscape is different.
AND STEAM never tried to pull the stupid console EXclusive deal on us ever before, unlike those Epic Twats.
If they had, I assure you that they will never have grown to what they are now.
And that is putting aside all the inconvenience of multiple launcher AND the regular hacking on epic game store account.
And don’t forget, Epic NEVER promise that their launcher can be accessed in the event that their company collapsed, unlike Steam and GOG.
Nice try with your false equivalence.
So don’t use it.
Dude, let it go! We are SO past that.
Look at the rest of this forum, what most of us are talking about right now is BB4.
So you don’t like Epic. So either wait a year or get a refund and go get a life with some other game.
WE DON’T CARE! We just want to help make PP the best successor to X-COM that it can be.