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sad to hear the outer worlds has been delayed by a year, but I have a large back catalogue of games to go through, Battletech Roguetech will keep me busy.

 LordofHats wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
Also the article(from Forbes) flabbergasted me when it stated that Valve gets a 30%, or 20 for big earners, cut of sales on Steam. Pretty outrageous, in my opinion.

Yeah. I'd generally agree with the sentiment that Steam has enjoyed being king of the hill a little too much. I think Epic Games will probably go under, both because the model for their platform is hideous and because they're not EA and don't have a ready stable of established product lines to prop up their platform. The Unreal Engine might boost them a bit but honestly it's not the same market it once was. Most big developers have in house engines now, and while a free engine is a huge boon, being cut off from Steam's massive base hardly seems like a worthy trade. I suspect many will be woo'd in the short term, but when the exclusivity starts producing failures in and of itself it'll become untenable.

I'd like Steam to maybe loosen up a bit. Maybe offer some better rates. I don't like what Epic Games presents, but Steam being the only real competitor is only slightly better.

Steam is already pretty loose. There are 100% legit ways to get steam keys (including directly from developers, amazon, humble sales, sometimes even physical copies, and other storefronts, though I won't vouch for all of the latter) where valve doesn't get a bent penny, but still does all the heavy lifting.

There are certainly areas they can improve (returns, particularly) but given the current options and state of things where various publishers are trying to get (or already have) their own launchers/stores going, kicking Steam isn't necessary or particularly helpful to the consumer.

It isn't even helpful to the developer either, as it isn't clear how much of the deal goes directly to the publisher (take 2 in this case) (or how long epic's 'better percentage' will last). Its all very sketchy, and the major effect will probably be that the consumer is screwed and the devs are also screwed with a larger piece of a smaller pie, while publisher and epic store get some extra dosh and industry disruption to entertain themselves with, respectively.

The main problem i have with Epic, is tencent. they are involved with very very _________________________ censored due to political statement.

Basically they are a government sponsored firm from PRC and it is suspected that they snoop stuff.
Add to that the recent scandal of Epic supposedly trying to snatch your data of what you have in your steam library i think it is not worth it.

Of course, one of the other issues is the last three months of advertising have promised it on steam. It isn't a huge deal, especially compared to Phoenix Point, which was kickstarted with a promise of steam or gog keys, and now said 'screw you backers, epic only,' but its still a concern.

This industry really doesn't need any more shady behavior, and the reality is this going to be a spectre hanging over every release for the next year or two.

And its really sad when the MS store feels like the better option. Though not buying and not bothering with the game seems the best.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Forgive my ignorance but why the hate for Epic Games?

It's more a general dislike of locking games to any store for the first year by big cash payments from the store to developers rather than a general hate for Epic Games. When the store first was announced, the response in the supposedly "toxic gamer" community was actually quite positive as people thought that the opening of another well funded store would spur competition with steam and lead to MORE choice for gamers. Instead of spending that money on giving gamers/customers some sort of tangible benefit or spending it on launching the store with important features on par with Steam, they're throwing money at developers to paywall their games exclusively at Epic leading to less choice overall. Yes, most of the time games only launched on Steam in the past initially but Valve's generally hands off approach meant that a dev could offer it on multiple other stores if they wanted to at no cost to themselves and gamers at least theoretically had a choice. With Epic's exclusivity deals, they're effectively turning a previously completely open platorm into a forced walled garden for many popular upcoming titles. That's hypocritical given Tim Sweeney's (the owner of Epic Games) previous vocal dislike of the same tactic attempted by Microsoft and their store in years past.

https://mspoweruser.com/epics-tim-sweeney-still-hating-windows-store/

I think to also be fair, Epic Games at times feels like a helpless victim. As a publicly traded company, Tencent buying a major share of it's stock wasn't really something anyone could stop and numerous veterans of the company have quietly (or in the case of one) loudly left the company over changes.

Imagine Bioware, except EA is a behind the scenes Palpatine like figure hardly anyone who plays games casually knows exists, so instead of blaming the real problem everyone just blames the front company.

 LordofHats wrote:
I think to also be fair, Epic Games at times feels like a helpless victim. As a publicly traded company, Tencent buying a major share of it's stock wasn't really something anyone could stop and numerous veterans of the company have quietly (or in the case of one) loudly left the company over changes.

Imagine Bioware, except EA is a behind the scenes Palpatine like figure hardly anyone who plays games casually knows exists, so instead of blaming the real problem everyone just blames the front company.

Well unfortunately anyone attempting to "blame the real problem" is being accused of anti-Chinese racism, so blaming the front company is the only way to register dissatisfaction safely.

I was really excited about this and looking forward to it following the disappointing result of Fallout76, until I heard it was only on Epic and MS store until 2020.

I don't like that Steam is the big gorilla it is, but these other platforms aren't any better, usually a lot worse in terms of functionality and the fact that other outfits like GOG got cut out doesn't help. I've been invested in Steam since the eary 00's, and that's what is convenient for me along with GOG. Just like I have zero desire to subscribe to everyone's own unique streaming service, I don't want to deal with a dozen different cloud systems for games either.

I'll look forward to playing Outer Worlds in 2020 though. Hopefully that'll also mean I miss the major launch bugs.

Voss wrote:
Update on this one: eaten by Epic games and the MS store.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pcgamer.com/amp/the-outer-worlds-and-control-will-launch-on-the-epic-store-not-steam/

At least it's on the MS store, but I'm avoiding Epic Games like the plague. It's an amateur-hour affair ripe with fraud and account hacking.

Supporting the MS store isn't much better IMO, given it was/is a naked attempt to established a walled garden on an open platform. UWP is cancer.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Supporting the MS store isn't much better IMO, given it was/is a naked attempt to established a walled garden on an open platform. UWP is cancer.

Yep, this.
Btw is aoe III out there?