So what do you think about Phoenix Point being Epic?

Not going to happen, they have a legally binding agreement with EPIC now, which aside from just morally favoring over the agreement with their backers is held by a company that very much has the power to slap them across the face.

All we can do is whine loudly and unless Pheonix Point’s devs end up giving a shit from the moral ground it’s all just noise.

They won’t know whether this is a mistake or not until they tally their profits a year from now and see how relevant they still are in the game industry space.

1 Like

Fuck legal agreements. it’s all a scam. It’s disgusting to the point of me almost wanting them to fail miserably as punishment for their betrayal.
They don’t give a shit? then they should go fuck themselves. They’re scum and i’ll never respect them again.

4 Likes

You don’t know that. :wink: And the rest are strong words. Good that you don’t have to go through divorce process. :wink:

2 Likes

So backers now get 2 copies of Phoenix Point. I wonder if there is a way to barter your Epic copy to someone else, as opposed to getting a refund? I never traded Steam or Gog keys but I see posts in the forums of people looking to trade or giving away keys. Phoenix Point is currently listed at $39.99 on the Epic store, so if you backed at the $25-$30 dollar tier maybe you can come out ahead and keep your Gog or Steam copy. Also, I expect the Gog and Steam copies will be worth more, even a year later (especially if dlc is included, hopefully the r/ama will confirm).

As for me, I like the Epic Store so far because they give out free games every 2 weeks. Subnautica is a nice experience that I normally wouldn’t have bought for myself. If you don’t like Epic, you don’t have to buy anything from them, just take all the free stuff, its their loss.

As for having multiple game launchers, my only gripe is actually Steam’s Workshop. I like buying from Gog given the choice, but Steam holds many mods hostage. It’s not as bad as holding entire games hostage but I think its worth mentioning.

These are just my thoughts on the general topic.

3 Likes

Communicated what? We might make it an Epic exclusive but we are not announcing it now? Ask backers opinion in business decision?

I am sure they expected backlash, even if not that aggressive, and I am sure they didn’t make this decision lightly. In their defence:

  1. They offer full refunds.
  2. They offer free content for backers, which supposively will be developed with money gained via inconvienience of Epic exclusive deal.
  3. After the backlash (it seems) they offered keys for the original platforms after the Epic deal expires.

They made an announcement when it went through, and they sweetened the deal hoping to appease backers. It didn’t work, but it is hardly malicious or exploitative behaviour.
How good/bad this deal is depends on how much you hate Epic store/don’t want to wait for a year/how good DLC content will be.

1 Like

Well I requested my refund. I’m not installing a 2nd store and launcher, especially when it is only going to have this game in it. Nor will I support the Epic store for the underhand exclusivity deals that it is starting out with.

It’s a very firm ‘get stuffed’ from me, won’t be back to this company again.

1 Like

I’m retarded anyway it’s best not to pay me too much heed.

I’m on the fence but will probably request a refund unless Snapshot grandfathers the crowdfund/preorders or does just an absolutely amazeballs job of defending this. Which is really a shame because it’s not often that I get to have a boxed edition of something that interests me.

Reasons:
-I drew a hard line against account based DRM many years ago, making me de facto GOG-only though receptive to direct sales and other methods that pass what I call the Log Cabin Test. That is, whether I can install the game on a fresh system in a proverbial log cabin without an internet connection, i.e. an account to download is okay but not if the binaries can’t be transferred. It’s not clear from the FAQ if this is possible with the Epic Store. I’m assuming this is the case since it’s extra work to authenticate within the binary itself, but since a lot of Steam games do this it’d be nice to know for sure.

-More generally, I have no particular feelings for or against the Epic Store beyond the previous note on DRM, but this feels like a slap in the face. I probably wouldn’t be here had I not heard about it through the GOG grapevine, and now Snapshot is essentially saying “thanks for the money and publicity, now go pound sand you dirty peasants” which does not exactly make me want to stick around. That this announcement is coming so soon after inXile and Obsidian got gobbled up by Microsoft–and will no doubt soon do something monumentally stupid like force MSFT store or accounts on all of their customers–is certainly not lost on me.

-Snapshot says that I’ll get a GOG key after a year, but why should I trust them to stick to that promise? They’ve already altered the deal once, maybe they’ll do it again when Epic offers another fat stack in their quest to buy their way into the game distribution market.

I work during the day and don’t have time to mess with Reddit anyway, so it’d be great if someone could see about getting these concerns presented to Snapshot staff.

4 Likes

I don’t mind it if I only have to use the launcher as a one off. If I need to have that crap running in the background all the time, I wouldn’t be so happy. Install epic, install the game, remove epic…

but you won’t get updates when you will remove epic

If there is something broken or really warrants an update:
Install epic, update the game, remove epic…

I am still good with that, if it easy enough. No real different to steam I guess but it will just be another thing to have running if left on. How hard is it to add and remove Epic?

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.

5 Likes

Well I’m away from my computer so I can’t request a refund currently but I most likely will once able. Exclusivity is why I dropped Destiny after the first expansion and refused to buy D2. Likewise I feel like I was lied to with this. I really wanted to support the devs and got the Fig Limited Edition but it’s a two-way street. And this feels like being disrespected and steamrolled.

As much as it sucks, the only way to be heard is with my wallet. While I “might” change my mind after I sleep on it, chances are high I’ll just request a refund and wait for it to go on sale on Steam. I’m not opposed to it being on Epic as more competition for Steam is good, I just can’t support this sort of crap.

2 Likes

I am very disappointed in Mr. Gollop’s decision.

So this is yet another alteration to the original promise, first one being signing a contract with Microsoft. I was upset back then but decided to wait and see what will come next. So here we are now, yet another behind the scene agreement and a very questionable one at best.

Epic store, with its anti-consumer business practices as well as technical and security issues deserves no support so it will come to surprise that many people are upset this contract. The publicity around last moment exclusive deals several developers and publishers made with epic store is large enough for Mr. Gollop to be in the know. So I strongly suspect that Mr. Gollop made the decision to sign this contract with epic with full understanding that he will be alienating a good number of his loyal backers. Backers who made it possible for him to get going with the development of Phoenix Point in the first place. I don’t expect our backer agreement to allow us to have any real influence over such decisions but from a standpoint of mutual trust and respect, this situation looks quite rotten.

I backed this project because I had a great deal of respect towards Mr. Gollop. Given the current situation, it is likely that either Mr. Gollop made a false promise when he announced the target funding goal for this project and he is now forced to seek additional funds or (and I hope I am wrong here) he simply went for a cash grab when he saw an opportunity. Either way, he lost my respect and, thus, should lose my funding. I will support neither an anti-consumer publisher nor a developer who shows no respect towards people who helped to make his project possible. This is a matter of principle and if this means missing out on what I expect to be a great game, so be it.

I will request a refund, through Fig if at all possible. Making us jump through all the additional hoops of this transferwise thing to get a refund seems to be nothing more than a cheap tactic to stop people from getting refunds en mass. At this point I couldn’t care less if Snapshot Games will end up reaping some kind of sanctions from Fig or paying extra transfer fees; I have no interest in catering for their needs any more.

4 Likes

Incidentally, notwithstanding my concerns regarding this having the appearance of an ugly bait and switch, I find the “but exclusives are terribad!” nerd rage from the Steam crowd rather amusing. Y’all didn’t seem to have any problem at all with Steam exclusivity, or the unholy union of Steam and one or more lame vendor specific middleware packages the AAA racket is so fond of, so why start worrying now?

1 Like

XCOM is currently porting to UE4 - we will not see it until 2022 at the earliest, more likely 2023 or 4.

Other than VALVe’s own games being only sold on Steam what other games are EXCLUSIVE to steam? please pray tell? I can buy guys from different stores, at different discounts and steam actually provides steam keys free of charge to the publisher/developer for sale anywhere without steam taking a cut. Steam has no exclusives nor have they bribed people to publish games there.

1 Like

ok, this gets under my skin, exclusively has no bloody place in gaming, it’s customer last, if it was not exclusively at all I wouldn’t have a problem, I mean just because epic cant makes a good launcher to compete with steam they do exclusively.

which does nothing steam will not fix its problems, because epic is just using exclusively to get customers not a better platform so steam will not change.

epic lets devs opt in and out of user reviews again customer last…

I’m getting so over this industry its the only one were they can put the customer last or blame the customer,

i mean i was looking forward to this game but not supporting a game that uses exclusively,
may go looking on how to get a refund now which suxs

but i paid for this to be on steam without exclusively on epic for a year

4MMNPuHSJMGikghCAHgc4M-650-80

6 Likes

Just about every AAA PC game is either exclusive to Steam, or exclusive to Steam plus that publisher’s own DD middleware service. Here’s a few to get you started, from my own personal list of games I’d love to play but walked away from because all roads lead to a Valve server. An asterisk denotes something that’s also available through the pub’s own shitty walled garden as well, but nowhere else, and in many cases comes along for the ride either way (i.e. buy Ubisoft games on Steam and you’re getting Uplay whether you like it or not, boi). Helpfully grouped by publisher, for the most part, in case you’d like to poke around online and see for yourself.

Just Cause 2, 3, 4
Sleeping Dogs
Deus Ex: HR and sequels
Assassins’ Creed series, except AC1 and maybe AC2*
Watch_Dogs*
For Honor*
TES V: Skyrim
Fallout 4
Rage
GTA 5*
L.A. Noire*

I don’t mind it really. I would prefer to be able to consolidate all my games on 1 platform, but that’s never gonna happen anyways so why struggle against the current.