This article reads suspiciously like Epic Games' press-package. It keeps bringing up exclusivity without mentioning how they get those deals. Basically some indie developer crowd-funds a game with the promise of a Steam release, after it gets to a certain stage of development and hype Epic comes gives them a bunch of money to make the release Epic exclusive, some of the original backers feel betrayed. Otherwise Epic just buys the studio outright. The 2nd deal is alright in theory, but gamers are distrustful of studio consolidation because its had a history of making game studios worse instead of better.
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Steam already has the social functions Epic is planning on implementing sometime. The pro epic bias in this article was a bit much.
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Epic is a terrible company and deserves to be boycotted. This guy will not be buying Borderlands 3 when it releases.
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I’ve read some sketchy reports about Epic Games gathering data on its users/other shady practices. Might be worth looking into for a follow up article.
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Fortnight is to gaming what smooth jazz is to music: It's what you play when you don't have any good tastes, didn't grow up with better games, and don't appreciate the history of the hobby you claim to love.
I just popped open Steam and sure enough, where you could previously purchase Metro: Exodus, there is a message from Steam apropos of this article:
"Notice: Sales of Metro Exodus have been discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store.
The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam.
We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know."
Lame. I won't be touching this new Epic garbage platform on principle alone.
Also, you forgot to mention the great work the folks at CD Projekt are doing with GoG.com. Good Old Games started selling ports of all the old computer games from the 80s and 90s like Sierra's Space Quest series. They have great deals similar to Steam.
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Hey, wait a minute, didn't we just bring Johnson and Johnson to court, for doing THIS:
"Compulsion Loops and Dopamine Hits: How Games Are Designed to Be Addictive...As our attention and interactions continue to be analyzed and monetized, understanding the psychology, neurochemistry, and behavioral science behind our love of video games is becoming increasingly important. The dopamine that we get from video games and the techniques we’ve devised to get that dopamine lie at the root of both good and addictive game design." A Braun
Without telling the world.
Yeah, THIS is the WEIRDEST Science Fiction Reality - Virtual Reality, Show in the entire history of the entire world.
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Steam does need to get smacked in the head a little. Much like Amazon, they use their massive user base to undercut and strong-arm producers.
Personally, I love the Steam app, but I recognize that their sales model hurts the developers I love more. I have tried to use other services when possible, but nobody else can match Steam's huge catalogue.
I wonder if there's truly something to worry about re: the connection to China, or if that's just reflexive wariness due to the current political tensions. The fact that a Chinese investor put a couple hundred million into the company back before Fortnite was popular suggests that there isn't some weird conspiracy to capitalize on Fortnite's US appeal for Chinese interests. Nobody knew it would get that big.
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I don't mind the competition, but buying exclusive rights to a game does tend to rub people the wrong way. If Epic wanted to challenge the market, why not give heavier discounts on games on a more regular basis. When they announced exclusive rights to Metro: Exodus, I was just frustrated and bought it instead on my PS4. I can wait to buy it on steam during the summer sale for 40-50% off.
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I rarely buy games outside of steam. I don’t want to install a second store and launcher platform. Epic isn’t offering anything new to users here, just a better deal to developers. They’re years late and the exclusivity contracts offend many of the Steam users they need to lure over. Maybe they’ll make it through sheer brute force but I don’t see them as a positive force here.
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I'm not a gamer but I know a few things. Fortnite is everywhere in elementary schools. Kids and teens love it and do the dances often. Epic will always be linked to Fortnite.
The issue is that for the older market, Fortnite is annoying... because people who play it are mostly young kids and teens and the culture around it is cringey because well, they're kids. Older gamers don't like being associated with that. Who wants to be associated with preteens and kids? The design of the game is a bit more childish as well vs. a similar game vs. PUBG - Fortnite is basically the kid version of PUBG. Epic needs to shed this image if it wants to get anywhere close to Steam, or net itself some quality games exclusive to their store that people can't help but purchase from there.
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@K Honestly, I don't think that has anything to do with it. From past experience with Ubisoft and EA, when other companies set up storefronts or launchers they tend to do things that are annoying or rub people the wrong way, such as installing additional software, collecting too much information, or just being outright bad. Epic also has a bit of a reputation for bad customer service, which makes people hesitant to trust them, particularly given Tencent's involvement. But to be completely honest, the main issue I think people have is that it means having yet another platform to split our game libraries between, another account to remember the details for, and yet more software clogging up our PCs unnecessarily.
Personally, the timed exclusivity for new released rubs me the wrong way, and is not a behavior I want to encourage. I understand why developers do it, but it's another inconvenience for me as a consumer.
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@Sam "Epic also has a bit of a reputation for bad customer service"
I hope it's more than "a bit", my experience with them was worse than any other company in my lifetime. I try to spread my story far and wide, I'm sure there's lots of others doing the same.
The problem is, I'm not sure how much better Valve is because despite being with Steam since the beginning I've never actually had to deal with their support directly. But I can say with confidence Epic has no genuine interest in helping its customers and I was spoken to only by bots despite spending hundreds of dollars on their products. They have the gall to treat customers this way because of their Fortnite cash influx, I can only hope that it comes back to bite them.
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Epic Games is bad for PC gaming consumers. By using obscene amounts of Chinese funded money, Epic is strong arming deals, buying up exclusive rights to games directly from developers. This means that there is less choice for consumers to buy those particular games. This, as well as their extremely sketchy launcher app (keylogging, etc), Epic Games is only interested in making as much money as possible regardless of what it means for consumers. There's a lot that Epic Games is doing to disrupt the PC gaming industry beyond what I just mentioned, and basically all of it is egregious.
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@Erwin
Exactly this. If they had just made a store they might have done alright. But by buying exclusives including games already released or presoled on other platforms they have lost any goodwill from gamers.
I have specifically decided to delay playing several games until epic exclusivity is over just to avoid supporting a dumpster fire of a company, where as an old unreal game fan I might have given them a chance otherwise. I already have a number of game distribution networks, but I no longer trust epic.
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