Epic Plans More Exclusives For Its Games Store (arstechnica.com) 70
DarkRookie2 shares a report from Ars Technica: If you thought Epic was done adding to the growing pile of PC games exclusively available on its own Games Store, well... I'd like to know where you got that impression. In any case, you should think again, because Epic has announced it will "reveal brand-new material for several games, including some exclusives, coming to the Epic Games store" at next month's Electronic Entertainment Expo. Epic also confirmed the platform's first storewide sale will be announced in the coming days. "That confirmation came after a few eagle-eyed Fortnite players noticed a news-feed ad for the 'Epic Games Store Mega Sale' when launching the game," reports Ars Technica.
The message promised that users could "Sign up for 2FA in order to get $10 to spend in the store."
The message promised that users could "Sign up for 2FA in order to get $10 to spend in the store."
That's nice. (Score:4, Interesting)
I terminated my Epic account with extreme prejudice as a result of the whole Borderlands 3 kerfuffle.
It was honestly overdue, I really didn't see any reason to patronize Epic and their Tencent overlords anyway.
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Tencent only purchased a 40% stake and only have 2 members on their board. They do not control them or are their overlords.
Epic has stated on the record that Tencent does not make decisions for them.
Re: That's nice. (Score:2)
You're an idiot or fanboy if you say otherwise. 10% or more ownership means they can threaten a CEO with termination if he or she doesn't do what the board members says.
Even if it is a battle the CEO might win that member can vote on bonuses and salary and bring up topics at every board meeting.
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10% or more of ownership means that entity earns a chair at the board of directors. It means that entity gets to have quarterly meetings on how the company and CEO are doing and gets the power to set votes and tell the CEO how to do his job. That is HUGE.
At 40% it means all Tencent only needs to find one other board member who has 10% or more to force a decision or fire the CEO for not doing what Tencent wishes or vote for CEO bonuses. INfact, the quarterly meetings with a board of directors are what sets
Re:That's nice. (Score:4, Insightful)
Same here. I will either wait for things to appear on Steam or just do without.
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So many games, so little time and so easy to ignore any game you care to. Especially when they are so bad at this time, microtransaction advertising built right into the game so fucking annoying, right in your fucking face all the fucking time. I stop playing those games and stop buying from that developer and from the publisher. Forced updates that only introduced fucking advertising, infuriating. Pay to win, more accurately pay to not play a game you paid to play because it is too fucking boring to play,
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Meh, if someone wants to give away or sell for cheap a game I'm interested in, I'm happy to receive it from them, then use the feature in Steam that allows you to add non-Steam games to your library. I have all of my GOG and Epic games linked in Steam that way, that way I can use it as a universal launcher for all things PC gaming.
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I take the view that it's lovely for all of those people happy to install Epic spyware on their system to beta test games for me.
A year later the properly patched game will be available on Steam and I can choose then whether to buy it or not.
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Hehehehe, indeed!
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Make your fucking mind up, willya? (Score:1)
You whined about Epic making SOMEONE ELSE'S GAMES an exclusive, so they bought up companies and THEN made it Epic exclusives and you then start whining about them doing THAT.
Where were you when Steam was the ONLY WAY to get Half Life 2, a game I still haven't played because it was a Steam Exclusive? There are THOUSANDS of games you can ONLY get on Steam. Can you get a non-steam version of Cities Skylines for PC? How about Shadow of Mordor? Spiderman?
Sure you can get them for console, but consoles HAVE EXCLU
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I could buy half life 2 from a shop in my local town.
I could buy half life 2 from any of 20 websites.
I could buy half life 2 direct from Valve via their own online store.
There are people that will bitch at Epic for mandating their shitty launcher but the bulk of the criticism is because Epic are actively removing games from other storefronts in order to try and establish a monopoly.
I mean, lets say I don't want to give money to Valve but play Cities Skyline..
https://www.paradoxplaza.com/c... [paradoxplaza.com]
or Shadow of Mor
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Same here (Score:2)
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"I'm glad Epic is shaking up the status quo. Developers deserve to make more off of their blood, sweat and tears. Other game shops are ripping them off."
this is true if you're thinking about indie games, but for AAA titles, naaah...
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I terminated my Epic account with extreme prejudice as a result of the whole Borderlands 3 kerfuffle.
It was honestly overdue, I really didn't see any reason to patronize Epic and their Tencent overlords anyway.
The thing is, Epic intends to have more exclusives, however it's up to publishers to accept it.
A lot of PC gamers feel exactly like you do and refuse to buy from Epic. It'll just take a few months of a big release getting lukewarm sales numbers to make publishers think twice. Between Epic's 12% and Valve's 30%, if just 1 in 5 sales is lost it equals a net loss for the publisher.
I've never had an Epic account, never will.
Steam and Epic (and a little bit of EA) (Score:2)
The reason? I have enough trouble tracking down friends on my steam account if I want to play something multiplayer. That I would have to go through the whole process all over again with EPIC or EA or anybody el
Linux support (Score:3)
Valve (and hence Steam) has a comparatively good reputation.
Good old Games has a great reputation.
And these last two also support Linux.
Actively.
e.g.: Valve has put dev time and efforts into Proton (Wine + various libraries like DXVK)
Re: Steam and Epic (and a little bit of EA) (Score:1)
He didnâ(TM)t say they were hacked. He said their engineering department is fucking clown shoes. Canâ(TM)t even get the main show right; the fucking game. Games are no fun when cheaters thrive.
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We need games that are based around something other than violence.
So you want to make games that don't sell.
Past successes != violence (Score:2)
We need games that are based around something other than violence.
So you want to make games that don't sell.
In addition to the Tetris mentioned in the other answer, let's look at some other of the biggest game success:
- All the Sim game (including Sims): you don't shoot anyone, you build stuff, or you raise some artificial life.
- Any of the sport license (random example: FIFA): you don't shoot anyone, you play a visual simulation of some real-life sport.
- PacMan: you don't shoot anyone, you just try to eat as many dots as possible. (Okay, somebody is going to point out that eating disorder
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Thing is people have been complaining about violence in media and video games for as long as they have existed. It's true that the amount of violent media has skyrocketed, but what the complainers always seem to miss is that simultaneously the amount of actual violence and violent crime is pretty much steadily declining throughout the industrialized world. The most popular se
If Tyler Durden was a gamer (Score:2)
The game launchers you own end up owning you.
You are not the games you play.
Reject the basic assumptions of game industry, especially the importance of exclusives.
Preorderung is masturbation. Now not ordering...
On a long enough time line the price of every game drops to 10$.
If I had a tumor I'd name it Free to Play.
One could make all kinds of enjoyable moments, using simple vintage games. If one were so inclined.
We're a generation of gamers raised by game launchers. I'm wondering if another game launcher is
Vintage video games not rereleased (Score:2)
On a long enough time line the price of every game drops to 10$.
Some vintage video games are still not lawfully rereleased, with used copies priced as collector's items. Or by "long enough time line" are you referring to a time scale just shy of a century?
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That is why I am not computer gaming anymore. I miss the old days!
Screw EPIC (Score:5, Interesting)
It's one thing to open a competing store and win on merits. It's quite another to buy your way into the industry through limiting consumer choice and thus forcing consumers to switch you your shitty store (no EPIC does not have a platform, it has a store, Steam has a platform).
I don't want to run multiple launchers on my PC.
I don't want to have to look through multiple platforms to find friends available for a gaming session.
I do not want my choice to be reduced and will happily hand over the difference between 30% and 12% take from both stores if it means I get the game on a single store instead.
I do not want games to be released in a subpar store which offers a small fraction of the features of a competing platform.
EPIC is doing more to ruin the gaming industry than anyone else. The first game I pirated in 8 years was an EPIC exclusive, and is still sitting on my Steam wishlist. You hear that publishers? There's a small pile of cash just waiting here on my desk for you to stop screwing gamers.
Re: Screw EPIC (Score:3)
I never buy games for full price. I always wait for sales on steam or humble bundle. I was actually considering buying Metro Exodus at launch or even preorder because I enjoyed the first 2 so much (I have the originals and the reduxes). Then they pulled that crap with epic. Now I'll wait until the year exclusivity is up and buy it for $15 on steam instead of the $50 they wanted on epic.
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Also screw Itch.io? (Score:2)
Does this also mean you're unwilling to buy DRM-free copies of indie games through Itch.io? Some startup developers release their first few titles through Itch.io until they build enough capital to do what it takes to succeed on Steam.
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Does this also mean you're unwilling to buy DRM-free copies of indie games through Itch.io?
Yes I would not buy a multiplayer game on Itch.io. Not when it results in splitting a gaming platform. Platform is the key word. It does help that Itch.io doesn't have any highly anticipated AAA titles originally promised to be released on Steam only to be pulled at the last minute to speak of. I'm *more* inclined to buy something on Itch.io than I am on Epic's store, but not really interested. There's no shortage of fun indie games on Steam.
Mind you if your indie game developer can't afford the $100 fee, w
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It's one thing to open a competing store and win on merits. It's quite another to buy your way into the industry through limiting consumer choice.
LOL man slashdot sure has changed... for you to complain about epic and not the four horseman of the PC gaming apocalypse in the late 90's... Ultima online, everquest and Guild wars 1 and world of warcraft.
In the late 90's videogame budgets were rising fast due to CPU and GPU speed doubling with the advent of 3d add in cards. Ultima online was a test case of moving Ultima rpg's they had in development to put drm and a subscription on them to undermine game ownership. Then everquest was next, once the game
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Valve was one of THE LYNCHPINS for walled garden gaming.
Valve entered online marketplace market at a time where DRM was being pushed in completely unreasonable ways via online sales while every company was rapidly trying to fragment the online gaming market and bring it in house thanks to the recent movement of abandoning general purposes platforms like GameSpy.
You mentioned it yourself "World of Warcraft" except it didn't start there. Mass fragmentation started with Battle.Net many years earlier and common online platforms were a frigging shitshow before Steam
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So much of this outrage seems like people conflating console exclusivity with PC launcher exclusivity. It's one thing to grab your pitchforks because you have to buy an entirely new console in order to play a game (e.g. Halo), but quite another to have to go to what basically amounts to a different website in order to pay for a PC version of the game, which is compatible with all other PC versions of the game no less...
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but quite another to have to go to what basically amounts to a different website
Nope. Not at all. A different website would be cool.
A different system resident launcher with a new DRM concept, poor features, that splits online friends between multiple platforms which just causes users to be perpetually offline due to not wanting to run ever goddamn launcher at once in the background, all the while actively limiting choices of what I can do with purchases (no gift options, no lend options) and screwing the developers (no modding system), is not cool.
Also those PS4 exclusives aren't even
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Loot boxes are an industry issue.
No thanks (Score:2)
I do believe Steam needs to reduce their 30% cut from developers. But Epic is an anti-consumer nightmare and I will not promote or back it. Worse yet they are apparently robbing developers by doing an end around to their publishers (publisher gets Epic money, developer only gets cut from games sold with now a reduced market thanks to Epic exclusiveness).
Epic Store is dead if it gets Popular (Score:2)
Currently, the *only* advantage of the Epic store is the smaller cut it takes from devs out of every sale. If the Epic store succeeds in any meaningful way, Valve simply knocks down the cut they take. Epic, meanwhile, has a lot of catch-up to do with Valve in terms of development which could take months or years. Valve reducing their cut would take days at most to implement.
Competition in this area is good so I do hope devs get more of a cut. I am entirely unsure of what Valve is doing to earn its 30% -- th