Epic vs Steam

EoinHef wrote: »

Except not one person here has made that comparison.

They have stated they dont like companies buying up third party games so they can remove competition in the market place.

Not sure why people keep ignoring that,willfully or otherwise.

Same with the point about competition,people keep saying competition is good yet are totally happy that competition is being removed from the marketplace by exclusivity.

Do those people do the same when Sky buy the rights to TV shows?

ArrBee wrote: »

I'm too far out of the loop on all this, but how does all this debate compare to when Origin was launched?

It's exactly the same only with some over the top unjustified rage.

Origin games are Origin exclusive, Steam may retail them
Epic games are Epic exclusive, others, including Steam at some point, may retail them.

They charge a reasonable 12% and they get the blame for it, it's not their fault that the publishers choose to pocket the difference instead of trickle it down.

Epic wants a piece of the pie, just like all others, and they get a lot of ****e, mostly undeserved (the only questionable move was Metro withdrawal from Steam, but they honored the preorders)

EoinHef wrote: »

I dont really see anyone raging here. I see people making an arguement that Epics practise of buying up 3rd party games and removing competition from the marketplace is not wanted or good for the consumer.

Depends on what you consider raging I suppose but, thus far, the conversation has often been bogged down by both factual inaccuracies and false equivalences.

For instance, the feature comparison list in the OP is still out of date and also has that ridiculous "Chi-Com Spying" entry. In the cases where Epic are found to have accessed data they absolutely should be hauled over the coals for it and in cases of GDPR breaches, they should be fined for it. The Chinese element is abject nonsense though and was thankfully torn apart in an article that Sweeney linked himself at the beginning of the tweet chain from the OP. Technical debunking aside, I find it odd that people weren't similarly worried about Tencent's outright ownership of Riot for LoL or their 5% stake in Activision and Ubisoft. What stake holding is required for people to be worried about Chinese spying via the Battle.net and uPlay?

The Monthly Security Breaches topic is also a weird one with a couple of issues being conflated, primarily the email leak from awhile back which related to pre-EGS Epic accounts, and the news reports from January which said there could have been a leak due to an exploit discovered by security researchers which was subsequently fixed by Epic. On a related note, you can enable 2FA on your Account Page.

The conversation then linked with Sweeney with regard to Windows 10 Cloud is that false equivalency rearing its head again. This flavor of the OS would only have allowed software built on UWP whose sole means of distribution at the time the tweets were made was the Windows Store. There is no reasonable comparison between this OS-level lock-down of available software and EGS.

Still, with all that aside, there's a pretty interesting debate to be had here. For instance, on the subject of the feature list, if the EGS offered feature parity with Steam, do you think people would start using it or would they rather stick with the store where the rest of their purchases would live? Outside of pricing, which is outside the control of the store, what feature or feature set would be enough for people to move away from Steam?

Cordell wrote: »

The only bullying I see is towards Epic.
There is no competition between Origin, Steam and Uplay. There are partnerships.
Origin doesn't make games, EA does. If Origin exclusive are well within EA corporation rights, then so are Epic and their exclusive deals.

The competition is Epic, with their lower cut they are moving things in the right direction. Only the publishers are to blame if the price stays the same. If there is something hurting the competition and the consumers and the devs then that is the hate Epic receives and the review bombing happening on Steam.

With all dues respect you dont want to address anyones points and just keep spouting yours so i dont see much debate happening here.

Also some of your points dont make sense. EA is Origin,Ubisoft is UPlay. And their exclusives are games they have developed or funded in some way,Epics exclusives are not like this,they pay other companies to take their games away from other store fronts.

Until you understand this basic point you are mis representing what others are saying. Also Epic are in competition only with themselves when they buy up exclusivity. Also a basic point i think you should have grasped by now,maybe its your anger on the issue thats clouding your comprehension.

gizmo wrote: »

For instance, the feature comparison list in the OP is still out of date and also has that ridiculous "Chi-Com Spying" entry.

I see a lot of criticism about that list calling out bias,and id agree there are a few there that are bias,but how many out of how many? If we say
remove 6 entries for bias how many does that leave that are valid? Quite a few from what i see.

So theres two ways to look at that list really.

Cordell wrote: »

They aren't, but Origin is a service provided by EA and product in itself developed by EA. I am quite aware of that.

EA own Origin, they have complete control, its EA.. :rolleyes:

Cordell wrote: »

I did address some of the points. Read carefully, with all due respect.


It makes very little to no difference to the end user if the store and the product maker have the same owner or not. Epic pay other companies they don't own, EA pays other companies that they own. Very little difference, in fact companies payed by Epic have a choice, the one payed by EA have none.



They create a more competitive market, just on the other side of the till, as it always been. The consumer does not choose the distribution platform, there was never a real choice before Epic, and there is no real choice now. The only good thing is their reasonable cut. For us the consumers it does not matter, for us the competition means better games, from our point of view the competition is between devs and publishers, not stores.

Except it does make a difference for some people that Epic exclusives are bought not made. It should worry consumers that they are at the will of Epic when it comes to some games. A forced monopoly isnt good for consumers.

EA owns said companies,it helps those companies fund those games. Without EA some of those games may not have been made. With Epic those games would have been made its just a business deal to make them exclusive to their store. For that reason people dont mind 1st party exclusives but reject 3rd party exclusives as they dont like the practice. So far the practice has brought zero positives for the consumer,just negatives. If you can poimt out a positove for the consumer im all ears.

Also saying Epic store will lead to higher quality games is a stretch,it will just lead to more profits for companies. Great for them,no real positive for the consumer. If that doesnt bother you fair enough,but it does bother others.

EoinHef wrote: »

I see a lot of criticism about that list calling out bias,and id agree there are a few there that are bias,but how many out of how many? If we say
remove 6 entries for bias how many does that leave that are valid? Quite a few from what i see.

So theres two ways to look at that list really.

Well there's a difference between bias and inaccuracies. I prefer to focus on the latter because they're easy to discuss in an objective manner; could anyone really argue against the point that the Epic Game Store has considerably less features than the Steam store? Even Sweeney himself has referred to its "spartan feature set" as a "fine target for ire". So, if you update the list to reflect the currently available features and remove the nonsense ones, then I'd say nearly every other entry in the list is valid.

The question, however, is how import are those features for each person and this is where the bias comes in. In my case, there's a number of things on that list which I don't think every store front needs and there's a bunch of other things that are currently absent from the EGS that, although I think they are needed and should be implemented at some point in the near future, wouldn't stop me from using it now. As these will obviously differ from person to person, the point at which both stores will be "comparable" will be completely different which I why I see relatively little value in that particular argument in general.

Cordell wrote: »

I'll do it, so please do the same. We, the consumers, care about price, quality and choice, all together.
- smaller cut means a potentially smaller price, so far only happened with Metro on the US market, but it did happen.

I'd bolden, italicise and underline potentially in that sentence but it seems Saber are passing on some of the savings for WWZ too.

EoinHef wrote: »

One game and in a region that doesnt apply to us is not a positive for us.

I dont see the quality of games getting better because of Epic,nor worse. They only thing that would be worse is the restriction of choice.

Another store can restrict choice when it limits the choice to one via buying up exclusivity. This is a fact no matter what way you want to frame it.

I dont really see any positives in your list. If epic just sold the games devs wanted to have on their store without any exclusivity there wouldnt be this issue.

The negatives are restriction of choice that doesnt benefit the consumer. And being forced to buy from a company whos launcher doesnt even have basic features that every other launcher has in 2019. All in the name of lining said companies pockets.

The developer sets the price not the store.

TitianGerm wrote: »

The developer sets the price not the store.

The store adds it's cut as well - Valve adds almost 50% on top of what the publisher asks for.

I have both installers installed since they were released (HL2 for Steam and Unreal Engine for Epic - Monthly sub days). It doesn't bother me having multiple launchers. I have 7 installed not including launchers for invidiual games.

When it came to Epic offering more to the Developer I was very interested in it and I would have choosen my games here over steam for games I liked as I would want to support the Dev's. Once they started messing around with exclusivity agreements I had no interest in them. This shows an anti consumer thinge to the company that I don't want to support.

Borderlands 3 was my most anticipated game which I would have bought on Epic as it would have gave the Dev a bigger cut but I will be skipping it with this deal in place. A better option would have been to add the cost onto the consumer on steam if they really wanted to purchase it there. Then the consumer would have still had the same choice and the dev would still get the same cut.

I can't see myself purchasing anything else from epic again with this (I can be stubborn that way).
The one thing since after learning the early lessons at the beginning of steam is they have usually been very good to consumers which is why they garnered such good will and have fans defending them.

For those who say they'll boycott/not buy from Epic because of the exclusivity deals, have you availed of the free games they offer?

dreamers75 wrote: »

No, have most of them from the Humble Bundles.

Again only main gripe with EGS is the inability to play games online with my buddies. Big enough gripe to stop me buying games on it again.

Is that down to individual games though? Thought that the developer had to allow cross play?

dreamers75 wrote: »

Posted this elsewhere but a quick skim tru of the EGS store front and the games they buy are all SP games mostly made with Unreal.

I bought Ashen as I was looking forward to it since it was announced, it simply doesnt work in EGS. The only MP game that really works is Fortnite.

Ashen is a travesty as an MP game and I would bet a testicle it worked in Steamworks before being yanked last minute to EGS.

Epic don't charge for unreal upfront they take a 5% after a (lowish) sales tier, that 5% is covered by the 12% for games sold on EGS.

So another 5% off the likes of Borderlands 3 compared to other stores or console.

TitianGerm wrote: »

Do those people do the same when Sky buy the rights to TV shows?

Do you want ants pirates? Because that's how you get ants pirates!

Buying up exclusivity will undoubtedly lead to a lead in piracy of games, that competition would greatly reduce.

TitianGerm wrote: »

Don't try to justify piracy because of exclusivity. Piracy is a crime, exclusivity is not.

Did I justify it, or even try to? No, I'm simply stating a fact.

TitianGerm wrote: »

I was editing my post. Your not the first person I've seen mention piracy though. You have to laugh at the online "warriors" complaining about Epic security and then they say they'll pirate in the next sentence :pac:

You may have edited it, but still suggests I'm advocating or justifying piracy. I'm not. And I don't. I'll happily wait out any exclusivity, should I think the price is too steep. I dislike third party games being made exclusives or timed exclusives, so I'll just wait it out and just get it wherever it's cheapest, or when it's on sale.

But we all know others will simply pirate the game instead of waiting, because they don't want to use this launcher. (Which I already have, so I'm not opposed to it in any way)

Whelp, I'm buying into the whole security issue of Epic Game's Launcher... just had a log in attempt by some ****er from Pakistan, even though I've never used it once since playing Metro back when it was released.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

He isn't justifying it. It's just a fact that there will be an increase due to people not wanting to use the epic store but wanting to play the game.

Why steal the game when you can play it day one on Epic or wait 6 months and play it on Steam.

TitianGerm wrote: »

Why steal the game when you can play it day one on Epic or wait 6 months and play it on Steam.

Because f_ck epic and f_ck waiting i think would be their answer :pac: