Why is everyone hating on Epic over exclusives?

I got an email today that said:

Which I guess is the latest in a long line of games that have ditched Steam to sell themselves on the Epic storefront. And people are really angry about it, apparently? A whole bunch of games are getting review-bombed because they were listed on steam and now they're not?

Does anyone else think that getting upset over this is completely fucking bananas?

Firstly

Epic doesn't decide where games are sold, that's the publisher or developer. So people getting upset that Epic is "yanking" games off steam, as though Epic had any say in the matter, are extremely misguided. What's happened here is that Publishers listed their game on one store, then a second store opened with better incentives, so they decided to use that one instead. Let's take a second to consider some of the reasons a developer or publisher might want to make the switch;

• The Epic store takes a 12% cut of every game sold, and waives the 5% fee if the developer is using the Unreal Engine. Valve takes 30%. Which means if a game using the Unreal Engine released on Steam, they're losing 23% of the potential profit that they could have made if they'd released on the Epic Store.
• Steam has an open-door policy for hate groups, harassment, and unsavory game-design. Moderations are rare, glacially slow and/or invisible. There's plenty of Developers who don't want to be associated with that or give up 30% of their profits to support that business model. Case in point.
• The Epic store is "hand-curated" instead of auto-populated by an algorithm, which means smaller indie games will still be featured on the storefront and given a share of the spotlight. Devs also have control over the appearance of their store page.
• Players can decide if they want to allocate a slice of the games cost to a streamer when purchasing, as a way of supporting/rewarding streamers who may have brought the game to their attention.

If the cost of all of the above is an exclusivity deal with Epic then that seems like a small price to pay - especially as the increasing size of the store will mean more traffic and customers snowballing into bigger sales; developers with exclusivity deals will be happy that other developers are also getting exclusivity deals, because it means more customers will be visiting the store where their own game is. The more exclusives Epic gets the more customers they have in circulation, so it's in their best interests to operate this way.

Secondly

A lot of this comes down to the notion of "fairness" and that Epic are somehow not playing fair by "depriving Steam customers" of the games they want. This is a mentality that is perpetuated by Valve themselves after they left up store pages for games that had been removed and literally accused Epic of unfairness. Does anyone else see the irony of the biggest pc-gaming monopoly accusing other stores of being "unfair"? This is some manipulative playground bullshit. Steam has been hyping up the illusion that their store is "open" and "fair" but the reality is that those terms are defined by Valve themselves, because they've been sitting on the top of the pile for so long and can dictate how the entire industry is perceived. The fundamental truth is that Steam graphs and algorithms manipulate and track players just as much as anywhere else, and transparency is limited only to what Valve wants you to see. We like to believe that a "fair" exchange would be for the Epic store to attract customers with a better set of features rather than with exclusives, but ultimately when it comes to corporations competing at this level it's always going to come down to who is willing to throw around the most money. Valve has got the capital to undercut the prices of every other store at a loss, effectively running them out of business, which they frequently do with their steam sales. How is that fair?

Thirdly

Rather than get annoyed with the people running the shiny new store, maybe your frustration would be better aimed at the old store for not properly supporting and looking after the developers upon which their entire platform depends? It's not like they're short of money, so their lack of apparent effort seems extremely complacent and greedy. Competition is good, and healthy; it promotes growth and experimentation and all that good shit.

What number are we on? Four? OK, Fourthly

Both stores are free. This isn't some Sony/Microsoft console war where each platform treats customers as investors and attempts to steal then away from the other by securing exclusives. If you have a PC that can run steam then you have a pc that can run the Epic store. There is nothing to prevent you from having both.

Fifthly

I can't think of a fifthly. But you get the idea, anyway.

Thanks For Reading

Love Sweep

If Epic wants me to use their product they need to make it worth using. That's about as simple as it gets. They might get there eventually but until they do I will continue to resent them causing games to be removed from the client with value to me. The Outer Worlds was the one that annoyed me the most but I'll just play it next year.

I think people get mad that Epic is more or less buying the exclusivity. Developers/publishers arent deciding to go 1 year exclusive with Epic simply due to the revenue split. Epic is dropping a fat stack of cash on them to come to the platform.

Sure Epic might not make money from these temporary 'aquisistions' however their goal is to simply develop a userbase.

As to why this pisses people off, sure some people might be mad about splintering stores but really the simple fact is the Epic Store when compared to even GOG Galaxy is a fucking joke. Let alone if you compare it to Steam. The road map Trello board that Epic has posted is sad to put it nicely.

Hell Epic doesnt even have a ETA for when Korean support will arrive. That means that if you live in Korea the only games on the epic store you can get is Shadow Complex and Fortnite. So now all the sudden this forced excusivity is keeping paying customers from being able to buy the games at all. Simply because Epic went into this business at best half cocked.

@boxxybae: I have no horse in this race whatsoever, but I think I will never understand why some people care whether someone like Epic pays a huge amount of cash to get a game exclusively, as if Epic paying for it somehow makes it more underhanded? Exclusives, timed or otherwise, only exist because of money paid at some point, whether it was to buy a studio, invest in a studio, or buy the rights.

To be clear, I'm not saying I like exclusivity one way or the other (I generally own all the consoles and a PC -- no kids and expendable income! Woo!), I just remember when people would say the same about Microsoft like "M$ is just paying people to get exclusives! Boo!!!" as if the right way to do it was with a candygram or something and a sweet card or something.

@sethmode: I dont think its just that Epic is buying Exclusivity. I think, or at least my problem with it. Is that its paid exclusivity on a platform that obstensivly is bad.

https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap

Look at this roadmap. Wishlists are 4-6 months out. Shopping cart is 6 plus months out. Search by Genre and Tag 1-3 months. These are basic store functionalities that just does not exist. Now I'll admit that its nice that Epic is being so transparent, but it does just show off how unprepared they were going into this.

@boxxybae: I understand, and I get that outlook in general. I wasn't referring to you so much as the internet chatter I see about the topic. Exclusives are always going to exist, and I get that they aren't pro-consumer in any way, but I just always found the sticking point of "so and so just PAID for that exclusive!" as if the company was doing it wrong to be yet another weird thing "gamers" get irrationally mad about on the internet.

@boxxybae: Could you go into more detail about what you don't like about the Epic store design? I've used it to buy and play a few games and I haven't run into any problems at all. I actually liked how minimal it is.

I'd also like to reiterate that there are plenty of flaws with the steam store, some of which I've touched on in my blog, but which seem to constantly be forgotten during this discussion. Steam is far from perfect.

@sweep: Steam isn't perfect sure. However the Epic store as I stated in a previous comment is far from even a complete store experience. Wishlists are 4-6 months out. Shopping cart is 6 plus months out. Search by Genre and Tag 1-3 months. Those are what I would call basic online store front functionality. Not to mention things like regional pricing, currencies, a review system.

Those are just things that are wrong with the functional store. The Epic Platform itself falls short on missing features that the likes of Steam has made people accustomed to. Pre-Loading for one. This IMO is pretty big. Not everyone has gig internet and the ability to preload a game a few days in advance is pretty awesome. The 'community' aspect of Epic is missing entirely. Admitedly this is a aspect of Steam I more or less dont interact with however I would be lying if I said I havent gotten some use out of support thread people have made in the steam community forums.

Also as someone who plays games on Linux, Valve's Linux support and contributions are second to none.

On a slightly more personal level I have zero problems with multiple competing platforms. I own several games on GoG Galaxy. However one of the reasons you will never hear anyone complain about Galaxy (which to be fair is also a weaker platform) is simply because they arent buying exclusivity and forcing you to use there weaker platform.

GoG Galaxy fills a niche and they do it well. Epic Games Store is a drunk child in a china shop. Sure at some point the child could grow up and be a contributing member to society. But for now its just a nuisance.

@boxxybae: Hmm, I'll agree that some of those are quite a big deal (although admittedly they aren't really relevant to me). I'd still say that the amount of hate people have been throwing at Epic seems completely disproportional if it's genuinely over things like Wishlists and Shopping Carts, though. I can see the regional stuff/linux support being frustrating. And I'm actually enjoying the lack of community - the way Valve managed their community features is part of the reason I was so enthusiastic about leaving their platform.

I think ultimately that's what it comes down to; I'm not an Epic fanboy, I'm just fed up with the way Steam handles business and, like the developers who seem to be abandoning ship, I've been waiting for an alternative for so long that I'm happy to embrace it even if it's still a work in progress.

@sweep: I agree with all of your points and I do think it's fucking bananas that people are going crazy over competition. I've no issue using either store, like you said they're both free. I think both of them need a lot of work done but I actually think Epic are in the better position to build up their platform rather than Steam having to tear down theirs.

The one thing I'll really criticize the EGS on is that they absolutely half-assed the launch of it and buying up 6 month, 1 year or permanent exclusives seems like a band aid to strong arm people into using it. Valve did the very same thing, making you need a Steam account to play lots of physically bought games, but I still don't agree with it. That's not to say I disagree with EGS paying to have exclusive games, but to me it absolutely looks like they know their store offering isn't good enough to make people use it so they have to force you to use it. But nobody at Epic is forcing 2k to take their money for a 6 month exclusive. And if Valve really wanted to they could afford to do the same thing, they just don't and instead they're trying to play the game of "Oh those guys are just baddies and they're not an open play ground like us." Like fuck Steam is an open playground. I've bought physical media games that I needed a Steam account to play. Steam is video games biggest form of DRM that everyone just accepts.

Not having things like a shopping cart on a digital store front? What? How is that a thing? Not being able to wishlist things, not having at least some standard form of information on games - sure let the devs write what they want but put a box on every game page to say what it supports, like single player, multiplayer, controller, etc, etc. Maybe even throw in some stuff about does this game have accessibility options. VR support.

One answer actually two but hey shitty service +

as for the 30% take hosting 20 gig+ files is bloody expensive especially if your getting high bandwidth all the time cudos for steam maxing out my bandwidth. As for the shitty groups and shitty games i just ignore them most steam filters are good enough to filter that BS out, last time i try'd and search for ones of those obscure rape games Kotaku mentioned took me 10 minutes searching forums for a link to the store page couldn't even find it with steam search.

i feel like we've had this discussion multiple times in these forums now, and circumstances (on the epic or valve sides) haven't changed, so at this point outrage and outrage at the outrage shouldn't be surprising.

my tl;dr is- give me a consumer-facing reason to use your service, epic. most of the benefits (rev split, curation, etc.) appear to be strongly on the b2b side of things. even the rev split (which legitimately could be great), when a publisher is involved, requires a tremendous amount of faith be placed in middlemen to pass savings on to creators (vs. the executive class, shareholders, marketers...everything that supports games but is not directly involved in the making of them).

for now all the value-adds remain with valve (screenshot management, cloud saves, controller support)- so until epic gets with program and sells me what i want, i'll have a hard time getting psyched for b2b-favoured deals.

^I've seen this conversation come up a number of times too, and every time, there are a handful of folks saying things like "give me a reason to use the service" or "make the product worth using."

The exclusives are that reason. What am I getting out of using Epic? Access to Borderlands 3.

Missing features are frequently called out as a reason for not using Epic. Some people complain that if Epic only had better features, they'd use it. I don't buy it. I'll be the first to admit that if a game is available on both platforms (even with equivalent features), I'd be buying on Steam. It's what I'm used to and it's where I have most of my games.

So what else can Epic do to attract customers? Give away free games? They're already doing that. I honestly can't think of any features or storefront enhancements that would convince me to buy a game from Epic that is also available on Steam. The obvious answer is to buy exclusivity, and that's what they're doing.

It doesn't bother me in the slightest, for the record.

https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/explain-to-me-like-im-5-what-is-so-bad-aboutthe-ep-1864724/

This similar thread will answer a lot of questions.

Apart from the lower cut that epic takes i haven't seen what their plan is to support smaller games.

Like visibility is at a high when the amount of games are low, but a small game like Phoenix Point is already far down the page in favor of big titles like Borderlands 3, Metro Exodus, Control , Vampire: The masquerade 2 & The Division 2. The kind of big games that get exclusivity deals handed to them seem to be the ones that they want to show to everyone. Not everyone is interested in the big AAA games that populate the topslots right now. Some actually want to find the indiegames, the visual novels. The games that some might label as 'shovelware'. They already rejected Assault Android Cactus from making it to the store, which is regarded as a pretty decent to good indiegame. We've been through that dance with Steam already. It wasn't always a place for smaller devs to get their games out there. How will Epic lead me to the smaller games when they have more than 50 games on their platform? Will the games that they have signed expensive contracts with get preferential treatment?

I also fear what the mandatory streamer cut will do for the smaller games in the longrun. If your game is not a valuable proposition for the variety streamers that can bounce between smaller games without huge fluctuations in views, subs & donations, you're not getting access to that form of (now) attainable marketing. If you make a singleplayer linear experience, you're not getting that exposure. Not enough people will buy that after seeing a playthrough. If you want visibility, you better have a multiplayer / viral challenge kind of game that makes people want to try it out themselves by using the referral link. And you better make sure that it's a viable financial choice for streamers trying to make a living out of this. This means that your pricepoint has to be set with this in mind, instead of being able to set the pricepoint that you as developer think would bring the most money in the drawer. Epic cut + streamer cut < 30%? Let's hope so. When you offer financial ties to the streaming of games, it's not about making the best games pop up. Games like Rise of Kings & Conan Exile have made it to the frontpage of twitch for a day or two already, showing that money will boost games that are not all that great. It's about making the games pop up that entice others to buy in with the referral code. More about that in the link, i'm tired to keep writing about this :P

Two thoughts:

1) I'm in total agreement with the OP.

2) I think I've already seen the start of resulting shift in Valve to become more consumer friendly in the face of competition, though I don't have a pre-EGS point of comparison, so I'm not positive. Last week, when Breach shutdown development wile still in early access (side note: I thought that game had promise, but it clearly launched too early and with too many microtransactions already active), I contacted Valve Customer Support directly; bypassing the automated systems. I noted that I had already played over 2 hours of the game, so I didn't qualify for a refund, but felt that I should still receive a refund because the developer was not fulfilling its promises (in the form of not completing their roadmap listed on the store page). Valve's support staff said they understood my complaint and gave me a steam wallet credit equal to my purchase cost (I don't think its technically a refund because I don't think they were clawing back money from the developer). Maybe Valve has always been this accommodating, but I certainly wasn't expecting it; I was mostly just venting.

What does this mean? I've never heard of Valve setting the price of a game independently from the publisher/developer, and I've never heard of them undercutting another store either. They take 30% of the sale, same as every other store before Epic, and their sales aren't any deeper than other storefronts so who are they running out of business?

You seem to have listed most of the reasons why Epic existing is good for Epic. If it doesn't do anything for me, why should I be happy? If competition is good, you should have a fact that demonstrates that.

The EGS barely affects me at all, and the only feeling I have towards it is extremely slight annoyance. If other people are more affected then I'm not surprised they are angry, because at this time the people who aren't playing the free games have zero positives to balance out the perceived inconvenience.

If you're wondering why a mild negative experience can kick off a giant internet dogpile then I have no answers for you, other than that "completely fucking bananas" is totally normal and expected with these things.

So if i wanna buy Nutella and i have two options buying Og Nutella in a glass container or in a plastic bag (for the same price) knowing Nutella get's more profit from the plastic bag i would still buy the OG glass container, cause it's easier/better in use.

My long winded stance is here, but in summary.
Epic's entire plan for competing with Steam seems to be to buy exclusives, using the masses of money they're making from Fortnite, a game idea they stole from one of their engine licensee's.
I don't like the precedent Epic are setting by paying for exclusives within a platform, what should the other stores do, bid higher?
I don't like 3rd party exclusives on PC, it goes against the core ideals of the platform.
The Epic store has no other functions than to sell and launch games, Steam is a feature complete social hub for the PC platform.
Epic insists they're improving the PC space with their store, and their exclusive partners being paid healthy donations are more than happy to talk about all the virtues of the featureless Epic store, WHICH ISN'T WEIRD.
Valve rescued PC gaming a couple generations ago when pretty much every multi-platform PC port was dog s*** due lack of interest from publishers, Steam created that interest.
Valve continues to support their back catalogue while Epic has abandoned all their classic titles, and recent failed projects in Paragon, another money chasing venture into the MOBA genre, and Unreal Tournament, which was just sad.
I'm weary of China and Tencent's inpending world dominance, i have a lot more trust in Gabe Newell and his knife collection.
That's the short version, i am currently boycotting the Epic Store, it really disturbs me.

Also

I really feel like if you look at the epic store with any sort of scrutiny you'll start to see all the issues with it. To address specific points, nobody is going exclusive on the epic store because of the revenue split, it's because Epic is paying them up front, the revenue split is the icing on the cake and makes for good PR. Regarding the 30%, Valve allows free steam key generation (within reasonable limits). That's why there are so many key resellers, because the devs are selling keys to other sites/on their own site. Valve gets no cut of all those sales.

More importantly, give this thread a look, since it explains the issue better than I can: https://www.resetera.com/threads/epic-store-and-12-cut.110333/

Short version, Valve's 30% cut necessary for the fact that valve eats the payment processing fees for the most popular payment methods around the world, particularly in Asia and Russia. Valve loses about 10-15% on steam wallet cards, which again are one of the most popular payment methods in some countries. Not everywhere uses credit cards and paypal, but the Epic store forces you to use those and pay any associated fees. Sometimes those fees can be up to 25%. Epic covers none of that, and never will with their cut being so low, so they pass the expense onto the consumer.

Also you straight up can't use the epic store in China, that's what prevents some people from using both. When Metro switched platforms a couple weeks out from release, it made it so nobody in the most populous country on the planet could purchase it anymore.

So when games go epic exclusive, a large number of people are paying more for less. That's why it's a bad storefront, that's why people hate it paying for exclusivity.

It's already hurting other storefronts. GOG has had to end their generous rebate for regional price differences, specifically because developers are demanding a higher cut which leaves GOG no room to eat the extra costs for those currency conversions.

Acting like other storefronts are just greedily eating up the 30% is absurd, there's a reason it exists. Epic store is not just another launcher, and I wish people would stop acting like it's just a matter of clicking a different picture on your desktop. That may be true for you, but for a large portion of the world it's not.

I don't think I can be mad at a company paying for exclusive video game exclusivity. It's business.

Errrr, the last Valve game was Artifact, a money chasing a venture into the TCG genre and is deader than dead. Not even the fact that it's tangentially related to DOTA 2 could save that game and people even booed it's announcement.

Before that it was DOTA 2 in 2013 - a game spun out of a mod of a non-Valve game and CS:Go, an update to CS that I don't think anyone really wanted considering it meant you had to rebuy CS (now you get it free), in 2012.

Meanwhile games that people have been asking for for absolute donkeys, like L4D, Portal and a little thing called Half Life are basically vaporware at this point.

Yes Epic are kind of ignoring everything else for Fortnite, but you can easily say Valve have pretty much done the same thing since Dota 2 came along.

Also if you're that worried about Tencent are you boycotting everything else they're involved in in western gaming?

I just finished watching this and Jim brings up some interesting points.

that's all fair enough- and for the record, I fully registered an epic account the day they announced the free game program. i'm not some valve loyalist that will go down with the ship- if epic presents more value for my dollar, i'll happily spend my money there.

but speaking to the specifics of something like the borderlands 3 situation- and speaking only for myself (clearly)- getting to play borderlands 3 several months before on an anemic service (and doing the work of trying to foist a new platform on my less-tech-savy friends for coop) is a less desirable situation than just waiting for steam. I have more patience and need of big picture/controller support than FOMO.

I am sympathetic to the work epic needs to undertake to dislodge people such as myself- but they picked this fight of their own volition, and are the ones trying to pry open marketshare. I agree it seems their options are limited- but then again they asked for this, and as the ones selling a service it's incumbent upon them to come up with value-adds and creative solutions. simply saying 'you'll have to buy the game here' is among the most conservative approaches they could have taken, which is why it's difficult to be excited for it.

Not ideal but it doesn't make me want to crusade and rage against it. Just another launcher; I already have at least four I use on a semi regular basis. I just don't see the point in getting *so* bent up over it.

@jesus_phish: No.
I didn't bring up Valve's lack of interest in developing new titles in their beloved franchises because many AAA developers/publishers are guilty of that including Epic now, there's no comparison there, same with money chasing ventures they're both guilty. The only reason Bethesda/Ubisoft/Capcom continue to put out a wide variety of games is because they haven't found their golden egg, and they own too many studios to simply shut down at the moment, though as we saw with Activision they laid off 800 staff despite "record setting revenue". Siege is doing very well for Ubi, but it's not Fortnite or DOTA.
I am aware Tencent own stakes in almost everything, but the only thing i'm allergic to is pollen, it's minor on the list of issues i have with the Epic Store but it's still on the list.
I think that covers everything.

So I see a lot of people complaining about the Epic store being bad/not feature rich....literally the only "feature" I, and I'm sure a large majority of people, use on steam is the "play" button.

Does the store download my games, let me play those games, and make sure I can keep playing those games? Yes? Sweet, I'll buy it wherever.

Honestly, I see more people getting mad at developers than Epic, which is hysterical because you're basically saying they shouldn't want to make more than just over 50% of their sales, which is a joke.

I have a few reasons I am not a fan, and they're not so much based on high minded ideals of consumer friendliness as much as being purely selfish in nature.

1. Green Man Gaming: I have a habit of buying things from Green Man Gaming, because they typically resell keys for uplay/origin/steam at a 15-20% discount, and are known to sell 'real' keys, purchased in bulk from publishers. By being store exclusive, it means I can't get that 20% anymore.

2. Game Library Management: I am a data person. I like orderly catalogue of the things I own (or own licenses to, if you want to be specific in the world of digital downloads). And the more stores that exist on PC, and the more fractured the marketplace gets, the more important this becomes. I like Steam because you can pull an extract of your game data, and Steam provides an API that can be used by applications like LaunchBox to parse and format this data for me.

3. Epic Store's UI: Quite simply, looking at Epic's UI, it looks more minimalist and 'cleaner' than Steam, and when you only own a few games, its a marked improvement (if only the thing would quit hawking Fortnite at me) but once you get more than 20-30 games on there, I fear it'll get to be a lot of scrolling. Because the game icons are bigger, and you don't have the categories and filterable lists you can get on Steam. I haven't used Epic's thing enough to know if it supports it, but it was also nice being able to load shortcuts into Steam - particularly for DRM free things I have from places like itch.io and GOG, to avoid desktop icon clutter.

4. Cloud Saves: Now, I know this is a minor nitpick, but I liked the functionality I got for cloud saves. I use it a lot of access my saved games for certain games on my laptop, Civilization, Europa Universalis and it's various related games, and Cities Skylines to name a few.

5. Sudden Change: Stuff like Division 2 and Borderlands 3 was a known quantity, or was announced as an exclusive. What really bums me out is when publishers make this decision last minute and leave pre-order customers in the lurch. A good example was pulling Metro at the 11th hour, and it leaves customers wondering how long update support will feasibly last, and if the developer will still care about maintaining a version only 5% of the total is using down the road. As someone who bought Bioshock 2 on PC and got to spend months listening to console players rave about Minerva's Den, while we got complete radio silence from 2K, I don't blame them for worrying.

I guess i will start sounding like a parrot repeating the same thing over and over, but what benefit do we as a consumer get?

Everything they offer seems like a good deal for the developers (granted they can make as many sales as they would on steam and all the other stores) but i don't see any reason or benefits for the consumer? Installing new stores is inconvenient, having multiple libraries is inconvenient etc etc. But what are the benefits for us?

I know it will sound selfish, but i am not actually writing from my perspective since i honestly don't' game much anymore, but just answering why i think there is and will always be a major issue with this. WIIFM (What's in it for me) is the bases for 99% of customers is every market. When you launch a service or product that benefits your trade partners, investors but does not benefit your clients/customers then you will get this kind of backlash. And it's probably why you don't see it happen until companies get so big they think they can do whatever they want like epic now that they have all that fortnight money. I guess it just kind of erks me a bit when i see this happening, now if there was something like (20% off all games for whatever period of time) or even something like (Free twitch prime for 3 months or some sorta discount) or just ANYTHING that would benefit the gamers and add value to their experience instead of just inconveniencing us to break into a market simply to make more money for yourself.

@reap3r160: You've never used a cloudsave or invited people to your game? You never played a multiplayer game that relies on steamworks?

There's no way in hell these games would not be sold on any available platform if it wasn't for Epic making sure they aren't. Saying Epic had no say in the matter is just being blatantly ignorant. This isn't publishers seeing Epic offering better margins and going "We're gonna make so much more money, but gosh darnit I guess we can't sell it anywhere else." Moving your product away from a massively dominating market to a completely fresh market is just bad business, even if it has better margins. The only way it makes sense for the publishers to do this is if there's compensation involved, which means Epic is reaching out and making deals to make it happen.

The 20% increase in revenue is extremely unlikely to be worth the massive loss of exposure. Also, If this somehow was voluntary exclusivity by the publishers we wouldn't see hard time limits, like 6 months or a year etc.

This is the main argument I see from people, and I don't see why that is a bad thing. Epic are basically funding game development. They're saying "Here, have this money to support your studio and allow you to fund future development". In a space as competitive as the video game industry (especially the indie space), that's a huge deal. If a game comes out and the sales are significantly lower than expected, that is usually enough to tank a studio and everyone involved loses their job. And with so many games coming out, it is incredibly hard for games to stand out of the crowd and be a success. Especially when the Steam storefront, the dominant store on PC by far, is a total clusterfuck that makes it impossible to find anything unless you already know what you're looking for. Being a success often has very little to do with the quality of the game, but a lottery of whether you get noticed or not.

Epic has made a shitton of money from Fortnite and they're using a small portion of that to fund developers, and that's great. I know they're not doing it out of the good of their hearts and they're building up an audience for their store, but I don't think their motivations really matter. They are still funding developers and allowing them to continue to produce their art regardless of commercial success, and I think that is an incredibly positive thing.

@mattyftm: You're giving me flashbacks of the "support the developers" era with that rationalization. When looking at the exclusivity argument you have to realize that it was pretty much unprecedented on PC before Origin happened. Steam might've had an iron grip "almost monopoly" on the market, but if you wanted to buy elsewhere you could. People could dig around for sales and deals all over the place, and while it wasn't any real threat to Steam at least it held it in check somewhat. Without it Steam could've very easily turned into a closed market where sales never happened, support was non-existent and developers were gated access to the market (like you see with American television and communication services).

With more and more platforms chopping off their own pieces of the market it's becoming more and more hostile to the consumers. While it doesn't completely remove all competition it drastically reduces it. In a market where every shop only sells their own products there is very little competition on pricing and services (in fact they're more likely worsen at that point), the only competition is the product.

People was sorta fine with it when EA did it with Origin because it was basically "EA being EA", but Epic is specifically targeting popular titles from all over the market to grab market share. While that makes sense for their tactic it also has the unfortunate side-effect of maximizing the blowback. People want to have choices on price, service, availability etc, and on PC they are used to having those choices. Making games platform exclusive removes those choices.

What is Epic doing to increase visibility for games once they get into triple digit numbers? They have fewer games on their store right now, but i already need to perform 11 scrolls to find out that games like Donut Country & Gorogoa are on the EGS. The games that are prominently featured are mostly the ones made by prolific studios, The ones that would have no issue finding an audience already. In the meantime a game like Assault Android Cactus gets rejected despite having great critical reception. Having gone through the curation period at steam , good games will fall by the wayside. If curation & visibility is how you want to set your store apart, it means that you will have to reject a bunch of amazing games, just because they might not attract a big enough audience and limit the visibility of the games that you do want to support. Visibility is a fantastic bullet point for an up & coming starter, but as more and more games get added, it will only get worse & worse. Epic doesn't seem to have an answer to this. Handcuration by some guy at Epic won't help them make a frontpage that shows the games that might be of interest to me or you. You're dealing with millions of different people with different tastes.

And by mandatory tieing sale revenue to streamers, it puts variety streamers in the position where they could spend time on game A that gives them 10%, but it would be more profitable if they spent their time on game B that gives them 20%. Making a living as streamer is quite hard already so it's clear which game will get exposed. Especially when it's a genre that entices an audience to buy in to the same game they like to watch. Suddenly it's not a lottery of whether a game gets noticed or not, it's about what kind of streamer cut you're offering, it's about how good the game is at converting viewers into buyers. That means that you wouldn't want to spend your time on linear story based games when you can do a multiplayer game or a viral challenge type of game like Getting Over It. Those games will make more viewers end up buying the game with your referral code. That's less of a lottery perhaps, but it will hurt a bunch of genres & studio's that are not able to attract a large enough crowd to match the streamer cut of the games that are able to attract a bigger crowd.

I have a bunch of installers installed, but i just don't see any signs of epic's store making the future a better place apart from the moves they make now to get their foot in the door.

Using fat stacks of cash to buy a pseudo-monopoly in an attempt to choke out other storefronts is an ugly, anti-competitive practice. The fact that the Epic store is garbage makes this worse. People have already listed ways that Epic's business practices are making things worse for consumers on the other stores, but if this strategy is successful then people could eventually be left with no place to turn to when Epic starts to exploit its customer base. This is also assuming that a company with deep ties to the Communist Party of China doesn't do what other companies with such ties do and spy on their customers with an eye for stealing trade secrets. Or using those computers to launch cyber attacks, which is the other thing that the China is infamous for.

90% of my games are on Steam because I've had it for like 15 years or whatever... since day one.

Cant say I like Steam, its become increasingly bloated in recent years, but I don't buy games anymore really and just try to work through that fat catalog.

Hmm feel like playing Dragon Age this month... oh wait now I need to boot up Origin. And Update it. Shit what is my password?

...yet ~another~ store is just a bloat I as a consumer don't want.

We're seeing the same thing with streaming services. I just want one App.

Isn't Tim Sweeney like twice as rich as Gabe Newell?

I don't know why people are taking whatever he says at face value.

I've seen some good people fall prey to this so I can only assume there's some influential person, or group somewhere, that's spouting all the right buzz words (China, Tencent, communism, spying, exclusivity etc) to make a targeted group of consumers very mad at developers having the choiceto gamble on a new platform.
Or at least that's my ten cents.

I mean it's just downloading a new launcher.... not like you have to go and spend 400 quid on a new games machine to play an exclusive game lol.

You're putting words in my mouth. I explicitly said:

If the cost of all of the above is an exclusivity deal with Epic then that seems like a small price to pay

Obviously no developer is demanding exclusivity, but Epic has offered them an exclusivity deal and the developers jumped at it. Rather than complaining about it, my blog was trying to ask why developers seem so enthusiastic about accepting that exclusivity deal in the first place; part of it will be because Epic is giving them a bunch of money and a bigger cut of sales, sure. But part of it will be because Steam is a mess and people are fed up with their arrogance and complacency. If that means moving onto a platform that's still a work in progress then logically that means they're either being offered a lot of money, or they're really unhappy with steam.

Why aren't people getting mad at Amazon or Netflix for dropping money to secure exclusive streaming for hit TV series? That's how this works; to get people to subscribe to your service you need to have the content to back it up and you need content that's going to mean you're competitive. Are people really just learning about capitalism for the first time?

I also see a lot of people saying that none of this is to the benefit of the consumer and that seems super shortsighted. If people are abandoning your platform for a different one, it's because the other platform is doing something more appealing to them; in the case of developers, that means a bigger cut of profits and financial support up-front. You can either sulk and say "that's not fair" (which is literally what Valve is doing right now) or you can fight back and attempt to make your own platform better to win back those developers. Because Steam has been the only real platform for PC gaming for so long, there's never been any real pressure to do that until now. Similarly I'm sure Epic is reading these complaints about where their platform is lacking and they're going to address them, if they're smart. And in the short term developers (who are notoriously strapped for cash and frequently have to layoff staff when games under-perform) get a cash injection which might keep them going a little longer, meaning more games for us. How is that not beneficial for the consumer?

You're making this very muddled by firstly talking about consumer benefits then taking the perspective of developers/publishers and then a platform holder. From a consumer perspective they're not doing something more appealing (in fact it's the opposite), they're just handing out cash to grab market share. If I pay a streamer 50 thousand to play my game on stream it doesn't mean my game is better or more appealing than the alternative, it just means they were able to make more money streaming garbage with a huge paycheck attached to it rather than streaming what would normally generate more revenue. The viewers would only end up with a crappy show from this deal. As for why platform exclusives are bad for the consumers overall I already covered that in another reply (tldr; it reduces competition).

In regards to your TV analogy, it's because it's already so normalized for broadcasting. Content exclusivity has been part of that business for decades. The reason people are complaining about Epic is because they're introducing it to a market where it's not a norm.

@sweep: Exclusive content is not the sole way that it can work. It can even work against you. 10+ years ago we had this rich guy start a TV-station over here. First he bought talent across multiple competitors to come work for him. Then TVshow concepts were bought. After that , sports rights were purchased. Suddenly you had a TV-station with the best talent, the best watched shows & the sports that people care about. And yet, he utterly failed. The station started in december and was taken over in April next year. People resented him for the agressive nature of these deals and just didn't make the effort to show up to this new channel, despite it being in the exact same TV package for customers. The lesson was that it didn't matter how good & expensive the content was, if the general consumer doesn't want to support you, you'll fail. You can't just ignore a key stakeholder like that.

A platform is more than just the content it holds. You can see that in the way that a consumer like you cares about getting more money in the hands of gamedevs in the short term & having a sour taste in your mouth regarding Steam despite it having a ton of content and me as a consumer having worries about the long term implications for smaller devs, but understanding that right now it's a great deal for the ones that are allowed on the store. These impressions & beliefs already steer us towards our choices no matter what the content situation is like.

We also have a music streaming industry with 5-6 big players that all have a sizable userbases (Spotify, Apple music, Google music, Deezer, Tidal, Prime music) where only Tidal somewhat dabbles in exclusivity. Apart from some anomalities, you'll generally find the same music across these platforms. There are plenty of ways in which you can entice users to make an account for your platform. You don't have to barge in like an elephant and make deals with games that are already taking money on other platforms. It should be obvious that that makes people not want to be part of this new platform.

probably because if amazon or netflix have exclusive streaming, it's usually because it's the equivalent of first-party development, no? 'stranger things' production was commissioned and funded by netflix, so it's more like a mario game than a season of star trek. stranger things has never existed anywhere other than netflix, so it's sorta a different thing than when you have something like a metro, anno, or borderlands (games with established legacy on steam) departing for other platforms.

also if i want to watch something like handmaiden's tale (hulu exclusive) on itunes- i can purchase it and watch on demand. which i suppose is sorta what will happen when these timed exclusives expire on epic (and presumably come back to steam), but i guess we'll have to see what actually happens when these first of their ilk actually lose their epic exclusivity.

I can feel for the people living in countries that dont have access to the epic store. It sucks that they essentially lose access to certain games.

But theres a lot of people who seem to be screaming about "anti consumer" practices because... they have to download a new launcher? I can understand people not liking it, but when I see the full on rage over this it strikes me as just another example of people that love to be outraged.

It's a shame about lack of linux client, but seeing as how valve did everything they could on linux side (native client, steam machines/steamOS, proton, porting all first-party games, contributing to sdl, etc) and yet something like 0.5% of the steam userbase uses linux, it's understandable that epic doesn't even consider it.

Some of the initial complaints were absolutely bizarre - they launched with like 10 games, and people were already complaining about lack of search. After that, I don't know how many of the other complaints are real vs just an excuse to hate on it.

I agree..

We’ve needed change forever on PC. People hate change though, I think it’s mostly just that and loyalty confusion.

@onemanarmyy said:

This is not true, Apple Music definitely relied on some big-name exclusives when it was relatively new to get people interested. Chance the Rapper's last album is the example that comes to mind. Maybe not your cup of tea, but that album was huge. Turns out one of the only ways to to get consumers of a streaming/download marketplace used to using a different platform (Spotify -> Apple Music in this example) is to offer...exclusive content. CBS All Access offering Star Trek: Discovery when it launched is another example of this. Music, TV, games, the concept is the same.

I see Steam as very lethargic and complacent, which is a symptom of their unchallenged success. They issue policies that sound like they came from a Youtube video comment section: "Everything is allowed that's not illegal or straight-up trolling." It's a policy that sounds like somebody scrawled it on the back of a napkin. It's also the bare minimum lowest bar possible for a retailer of any kind.

They also try to automate their way out of problems that their automation created in the first place: Histogram graphs on user reviews, for example, or arbitrary "off-topic" review periods.

They can be better, but have no incentive to change if they're rewarded for staying the same. So a strong competitor like Epic actually stands to wake them up.

Everyone has already mentioned it better, but the EGS is just subpar compared to other stores/launchers. (Didn't even know about the no cart thing until now, that seems legitimately insane.) I don't have any problem with them buying exclusives, that sort of thing happened in the 360/PS3 days, but it's terrible compared to Steam. There are so many great games coming out all the time, along with older games I might have missed, I'm fine waiting a year for a game to pop up on Steam or elsewhere. I'm not the sort of person who needs to be part of the conversation when new games show up, and I'll probably get them cheaper by waiting anyways.

I haven't used the Epic Games Store yet, so I can't really speak intelligently to it, but my response when I hear so and so game is exclusive to it is "Good. Go get paid.".

@dudeglove: Steam never really did exclusivity at all. There might've been games that were only possible to play through Steam, but you were able to buy them through a plethora of platforms due to Steam codes. This meant that long before Steam started localizing their store it was possible for people around the world to buy affordable games and pricing was still fluid and competitive. You can literally have a library of hundreds of games on Steam without ever having given Valve a penny.

Edit: Apparently Epic does codes too. I wonder what their policies on publishers distributing codes for their exclusive games are.