So what do you think about Phoenix Point being Epic?

And where did Steam say it had to be on their store front these list of games and no where else?

Or was it the publishers of said titles that put it on Steam to garner a much wider customer base.

Exactly some reason for me to make an forum account.

I backed more than one version of this game. I not know how many figures I did buy and signed editions.
I love collectors editions and have a really nice collection and usually also never open the boxes, so I would not mind if it is PC/PS4/Xbox.
But when it was on PC, and it was GOG or Steam, and now exclusive on a platform, that is only good for a dev, is really a big piece of sā€¦t.
Now I have an inner fight. Cancel the orders (and lose my figures, but do what would be right after this aā€¦hole decission this Epic) or keep them and get my figures.
Anyway, get happy with the money you get now with this deal and get they fate of every greedy personā€¦
Lost all positive thoughts about this company.
Even Metro was delivered to Steam to those that did pre order for Steam.
Most stupid decission for the backers ever!

Of course it was the publishers. Just as developer/publisher Snapshot made the decision to only offer it on the Epic store, only theyā€™re getting paid for making that decision instead of getting nothing at all. Does that make it a good thing? No, not really. But it doesnā€™t actually matter to the end customer who made the decision and why, only that it was made by somebody and their game is only available on Steam or Epic.

To use the obvious PC hardware analogy, if you buy a prebuilt PC youā€™re paying for a Windows license you may or may not actually want in about 95% of the cases. Itā€™s well known that Dell/HP/Lenovo get sweetheart deals from Microsoft to push Windows, but many of the boutique builders donā€™t get that treatment but still buy licenses at the normal bulk rate and stick them on everything because blah blah blah majority expectations. Who cares the motivation, youā€™re still paying the Windows tax before throwing Linux on it.

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So created an account to add my 2c. I wonā€™t be asking for a refund. BUT I am extremely displeased with this announcement.

Exclusivity is a problem in the content world. It forces people to support a provider that they may not like or agree with. There is no other option.

For all its sins (and there are many), Steam allows users to purchase from anywhere. If I donā€™t want to use the steam store, I can still buy the game. Epic doesnā€™t allow this. And by enforcing exclusion even only for a year, they are removing competition and more importantly consumer choice.

I donā€™t want snapshot to fail. But this was a very shortsighted choice. I will likely not back another of their games as a result.

Steam exclusivity? What are you talking about? Phoenix Point was going to be delivered on Steam or GOG. Also nothing said it could not be delivered in additional stores (there was no exclusivity to these two). Heck, I would CHEER if they would have added Epic store to the lineup. More choice is good.

But no, they got paid off to be Epic only because apparently you can pee on your customers and just take money from Fortnite kids and Chinamen and make a business from that, no sales to pesky customers needed.

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False, just search cheapshark.com for all those games, you will see they are on multiple retailer sites at various prices. Greenman being the cheapest right by the way. Epic will NOT allow third party sellers to sell the game. Steam allows you to buy the game ANYWHERE. Many steam games have GOG releases btw, and yes some have steamworks which means they only work on a steam launcher, but you can buy them ANYWHERE. Also just because I am pissed about EPIC doesnā€™t mean I donā€™t like the way Steam has handled things. THere is however a difference between the way Steam handles games and selling and EPIC. Steam made itself better, is developing tools for linux gamers, developed APIs for developersā€¦EPIC is throwing money at the problem.

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I feel like Iā€™m the only one who doesnā€™t care as long as I get my game.

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So itā€™s okay for them to change their mind after you bought said item from said store? Am I getting that correct here.

You do realise that backers on Fig or Xsolla years ago till recently were offered keys on Steam or GoG and they are now revoking that or well scurrying back to offer it up to us after a year of being on Epic, yes? I backed long ago and it stated as many others can tell you Steam or GoG key.

Youā€™re analogy is nothing of the sort going on here.

Who cares what crummy URL shows up on the receipt?

Same Steam backend.
Same Steam account.
Same Steam support.
Same Steam DRM.
Same Steam forums, achievements, modding walled-garden, etc.

Just a different coat of paint.

Your argument is like suggesting that Uncharted isnā€™t a Playstation exclusive because it can be bought in retail stores in addition to the Playstation Network. Which is obviously silly, since you canā€™t get very far without a Playstation just as you canā€™t get very far with the games I listed without a Steam account.

Again, Iā€™m not saying that Epic is great or even that the two are equivalent. What Iā€™m saying is that complaints about exclusivity ring hollow to anyone who took the DRM red pill because like 95% of big ticket games have been off limits to us for about a decade. In other words, now you know what itā€™s like to be me.

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You might want to scroll up to my initial comment, it wasnā€™t exactly a love letter to Snapshot and Epic. But I am making two points, one being that this is a shady move and the other that the coming showdown between Valve and Epic is going to show a lot of gamers what lifeā€™s been like on the other side.

I requested a refund. The deal was done in bad faith and shows a complete disrespect for original backers of the project. I will not support that kind of behavior.

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No, my position is using EPICs definition.

EPIC WILL NOT ALLOW GAMES BEING SOLD ON EPIC BEING SOLD ANYWHERE ELSE.

That is my problem plain and simple. They are BUYING this exclusivity and only hurting the consumer. There will be no price competition, no reviews (unless allowed) no mods, nothing other than a friends list.

GOG is a great example of Steam competition completely different backend and everything. Many games there are on steam. Steam lets you sell games any where, and have never paid for exclusivity. Games not on GOG are not there for various reasons. Either publisher wants DRM or steamworks API.

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Iā€™m also refunding my purchase of this game. Iā€™ve got an Epic Game Store account and lost access to it for over 3 months without any help from Epic to actually get it back (whereas with Steam I would have had the account back a week later). Since that poor customer service I have no interest it anything on the Epic game store.

Iā€™m also against exclusives in general on PC. I donā€™t mind companies deciding to only sell their game through X method or Y method that is up to them, but as soon as someone is paying them for exclusives Iā€™m noping out of purchasing that.

Iā€™m also reporting it to the ACCC as anti-competitive practice (which is illegal in Australia but only if it results in significantly lessening competition so thatā€™s going to be a judgement the ACCC will have to make).

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Julian, you done f*****d up.
Come on, tell us how much did they grease your sweaty palm with? And secondly do you think it was worth it?

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Doesnā€™t bother me. Although, Iā€™ve never used Epic. I imagine they have the same problems as the rest have or have had at some point during their respective evolutionary development. Name a platform or service that hasnā€™t experienced security issuesā€¦or had some kind of service breakdown over their history.
As long as I retain all the goodies promised me by my particular backer selection and I can actually play the game, the hard on I might have for Steam or GOG doesnā€™t really matter.
And besides, I can get a full refund if I feel particularly butt hurt.
Exclusivity always seemed a rather bizarre business choice to me, I mean, why cut yourself off from perfectly viable parts of the market and potential profits? But, at the end of the day, I personally havenā€™t lost a thing. Having said all that, I have yet to experience Epic and hopefully Iā€™m still around to play the finished product :slight_smile:

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From what Iā€™ve heard, it was worth it.

Iā€™m not saying this to be flippant (I need to establish that whenever talking about subjects like this), but this is what Unstable Voltage implied on Discord. He couldnā€™t give specific numbers, but mentioned that even if every single person refunded their order, Snapshot would still have made a profit. Think about itā€“we made what, 800,000 dollars in donation? Epic seems to have offered more than that, possibly considerably more. I understand your anger, and if they werenā€™t offering me a steam key (albeit after a year), Iā€™d be even angrier than you are. However, looking at it from Snapshotā€™s perspectiveā€¦if Epic was offering THAT much moneyā€“and it seems to be an absolute ****load of moneyā€“I donā€™t think any of us would pass on it if we were in Gollopā€™s shoes, no matter how much we hate Epic and its scummy Tencent masters. It leaves a foul taste in my mouth to admit it, but I donā€™t think Gollop and co. made a wrong, or at least completely incomprehensible, decision here.

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Snapshot should ask you first? :slight_smile:

btw did you ever heard that projects can evolve and their budget can change? :slight_smile: Keeping to original funds and making the best with it also abandoning additional funding would be poor practice. I support Mr Gollop here.

Ahh, the dulcet tones of outraged Gamersā€¦

Iā€™m actually old enough to remember the days when forcing Gamers to play though Steam was seen as ā€˜anti-competitiveā€™ and ā€˜a betrayal of the fansā€™ ā€“ and now people seem prepared to wait a year just so that they can choose to exclusively play it on Steam. Iā€™ve lived through Halo being exclusive to X-Box and ā€“ even more disastrous ā€“ Madden being abandoned on PC (Iā€™ve so far played something like 45 seasons of Madden 07, which was the last PC version I was able to get ā€“ until Madden 19 this year, yay!).

So if I have to install another portal to play the game, so what? Iā€™ve already done that with the Snapshot Installer for the Backer Builds.

And to those who cry ā€˜anti-competitiveā€™, I refer you to the days when even if you bought Empire: Total War on disc from a store, you had to install Steam and could only play it online for about a year until Steam got their act together. I refer you to Halo, I refer you to Madden on PS3. Platforms pay for exclusive content in order to establish a position in this highly competitive marketplace. Epicā€™s no different to X-Box, PS or Steam in this respect ā€“ except that you donā€™t have to fork out 300 bucks to buy the platform you need to play the game on.

To those who cry ā€˜Chinese backdoorā€™, Iā€™ve read all the articles and to open yourself to a phishing backdoor you have to actively click on a ā€˜too good to be trueā€™ offer and invite them in. So donā€™t click on any of that juicy free DLC for a few months until CheckPoint have had a chance to check it out and report it clean. As others have pointed out on this forum, Epic is not the only platform to have been hacked ā€“ Steam & Sony PS have less than glowing records in that regard. To be frank, Epic are under so much scrutiny at the moment, any obvious security vulnerability is going to be flagged up very quickly.

As for the Snapshot deal, my reading of this is that Julian was made an offer he couldnā€™t refuse. I donā€™t know the man, but everything I have read about him makes me doubt this was solely for his retirement fund ā€“ though as someone who has logged more than 600 hours on just the latest of the spinoffs from his genius, I wouldnā€™t begrudge him the money if it was. I suspect, however, that Snapshot made the calculation that they were more able to deliver the game they want to make on time and to the level they want to make it by taking the Epic deal than by scraping by hand-to-mouth without it. They arenā€™t going to have taken that deal unless Epic either guaranteed to cover their refund liabilities or gave them so much money up-front that every Fig backer could abandon them and theyā€™d still be in profit.
So flounce off in a sulk all you like. Itā€™s not going to make any difference.

Iā€™m with Yokes. I backed this game because I want to play the game that the designer of X-COM always wanted to make but could never get enough support to develop. Now that heā€™s got that support, I wish him all the best.

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Developers doesnā€™t have to consult every decision they made but Maybe for this one they should have inform the backers in advance.

We paid in advance to help this game be made, we gave money to the developer, the developer told us that we could have the game in one of the plataform available at the time and now from nowhere the conditions are changing in a way that looks a bit force to the users.

It sounds like ā€œitā€™s or way or the highwayā€.
Yes, we can ask for a refund but this looks like ā€œwell we needed certain number people to launch the project and attract investors/partners and now that we have more money from other places we will play with their rules and we donā€™t need you anymoreā€

Yes, if we stay and wait one year, we can have the game in the plataform that were promised with one year of dlc (and BTW what kind of DLC?, because since we have to wait a complete year would be nice to know at least what we are going to receive. New mission, maybe cosmetics, hats?)

And what kind of precedent this will create for other crowfounding projects? They will announce something, people gave them the money, and once they have their objetives they will change the conditions when they want?

In my opinion and for what I know about the Epic Store this exclusivity deal doesnā€™t improve anything to the users.

I donā€™t have a problem if they want to add the Epic Store to the previous options, but force the exclusivity a few months before release, Iā€™m sorry but I donā€™t think itā€™s right.

And talking about that, we focused a lot in Steam and GoG, but what will happen with the deal with the Microsoft store?

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