Refunded requested.
This is unacceptable.
I have a slightly different take on this in addition to feeling the same as many others.
I think this is Gallop’s way of saying this game is going to suck at release. He even hints at this in the way this is presented (as ensuring more development of the game). I find backer 3 to be pretty primitive and the game is already delayed. I’m guessing he didn’t think they could put out a good enough game to get sales and avoid getting hammered by steam reviews - there can be no other reason why he’d sell out and bait and switch his backers. It’s that or pure greed over the bags of money Epic sleaze offered - and one can hope that his decision at least has some twisted nobility to it.
Along with that, I absolutely despise consoles for several reasons, one being exclusives. There are some great games I’ll never play like RDR and Uncharted because I will never buy a console to play them.
Seeing exclusives to launchers appear in the PC gaming space is disgusting - I want nothing to do with it. I already hate it when Ubi or EA do this crap with the games they publish. It’s 100% worse to see other developers do this with their games via Epic. It’s pure garbage.
PC gaming is at a very high point now - but it wasn’t always like that. There was a time when PC gaming was supposedly dying - to be crushed by consoles. Steam - as a single point of buying, managing, updating, and launching games as easily as on a console, made it so that ANY PC owner could buy and play games easily - as easy or easier than as on a console.
Many people are not all that technically inclined and that was a big draw of consoles - don’t have to dink with hardware AND don’t have to know anything - just press a few buttons and try not to drool on yourself.
Love or hate Steam, it’s still the best launcher and store for PC games - by far. And even if you hate Steam you should acknowledge that it played a part in rescuing PC gaming from being vaporized by consoles.
As a gamer, there is NOTHING that the Epic launcher does for you - nothing. There’s no communities, no workshop for super easy mod use (many people are not technical enough to deal with Nexus or any kind of manual mod stuff - but they can click a button in Steam), crappier reviews (Steam reviews are mixed bag of crap but they still sometimes serve a purpose), no steamworks, no built in achievements, no trading cards, and so on.
Ever heard of “you get what you pay for” - that’s why Epic can give out a bigger cut - they do next to nothing for the devs that use their platform and do even less for players.
Here’s some not so amazing insight from someone who works for a corporation. Corporations only care about profits - just like most businesses. So if some game dev gets a bigger slice of the pie by going with Epic, that does not magically mean they’ll spend more on game dev or do a damn thing for the player. What it’s mostly going to mean is that some corporate bean counter is drooling a wee bit more and investors are seeing better returns.
Like many, I was very excited for this game. Turn based tactical is one of my favorite genres and there has never been and continues to never be a decent quantity of games worth playing in the genre.
I simply do not want anything to do with Epic or what they’re doing to the PC gaming landscape. I feel like Epic is seeking to fragment PC players far more than we already experience with mostly optional trash like UPlay and Origin, and none of this is good for the overall health of PC gaming. It’s just going to drive a lot of people who don’t want to deal with idiocy to the more simple world of consoles - and that is terrible for PC gaming.
Maybe I’ll buy the game when it finally comes to Steam. Maybe not. There are so many great games out there even if they aren’t TBS. I really have no desire to ever give money to Gallop or anybody that deals with Epic and/or treats players, or worse, shits on backers, like this.