• joelfromaus@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    Maybe less investment in trying to monopolise the market and more investment in developing their shopping platform so it’s not a smouldering turd.

    • Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is the most asinine approach IMO.

      “Let’s release a worse product. Hey, no one likes it. Okay, let’s spend money on games so THEY can essentially force people to use our software. Hey, still, no one really likes it. Okay, let’s try to give away stuff for free. Hey, people use our thing for the free stuff but still no one likes it for any other reason.”

      They just keep spending money to up their numbers and their product is still missing features and inferior to competition. They spend big money on exclusivity, but that is only temporary - if that’s how you’re getting your customers, you’re going to have to keep doing it forever to retain them. If people only use you for free stuff, you’re just going to have to keep giving stuff away at a loss to retain them.

      This model is not sustainable. You’re not doing anything that aligns value with your customers besides just throwing free stuff at them. That’s not a business.

      What’s especially sad to me is they could literally have just spent that same money to improve their launcher and have an actual product. Instead they’ve invested in temporary stats. They’re essentially bankrolling other devs on games with temporary popularity instead of in their lifelong product.

      Using other games exclusivity as sway into your ecosystem only works when you have a good product the person would be interested in but they haven’t seen it yet. EGS is currently something people are essentially coerced into using but no one really gets any real value out of it other than “well I couldn’t buy this game anywhere else”

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Plus it’s not like there wasn’t room for a good shopping client, if you go smart about it.

        Steam had at the time - and still has - tons of bad UI design, stemming for its very old layouts wrangling with newer client additions and changes. Plus Steam for the longest time until the new client solved it had serious issues with late boots and hanging closures. GOG had just tried to bring out their own client a few years before, but in the move to GOG Galaxy had gotten a lot of ire and fucked a lot of things up. All the per-developer clients were berated constantly.
        There was room there. But Epic, hell, this is so not it. Your client is so much worse than even the bad competitors…

        • Moneo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Steam may suck at extra goodies like streaming but they sure as hell don’t suck at selling games. Constant sales, cloud saves, pre-downloads, a solid friend system for co-op games. They nail all the important shit and that’s really all that matters to most people.

      • ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I think it just depends on how long they can do this. I think they are banking on getting the fortnite kiddies hooked on the store. They typically have far less disposable income (yet they still charge kids for 20$ skins), they will most likely not have a super large steam library (probably due to the aformentioned skins) so they are banking on the store being that kids default to Epic rather than steam. Its not terribly odd since Steam basically did the same thing, when it used to have those mega sales with the flash sales and the such. That is when the love for Steam basically exploded and its been cruising on that hypetrain for a while.

    • designatedhacker@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, if I’m reading that right they’re complaining that they’re stuck at phase one of enshitification - lose money on aquiring users. The reason behind that is they’re not able to monopolize the market for their games. “These damn mobile stores won’t let us turn the corner and put the clamps on our users. Fix it please.”

    • PrMinisterGR@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      If you count all of Steam’s features (Steam Input, Big Picture Mode, Proton etc), then Epic has decades of catching up to do. The problem is that usually executives will choose the “easy way out” of problems, so let’s just give free games instead of making a good platform.

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well not to discourage them but I like Epic games because every Thursday they give me a free game sometimes two. Hell all the 100 games I own on their platform I gotten for free. So maybe that’s why it’s not profitable?

      Beyond that I see no monopoly every game on their I can find on Steam and so far have had no issues with it.

      • Zorque@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        They literally pay for exclusivity. It’s weird that people seem to selectively ignore that every time someone brings up their desire to get free games from them.

          • Maestro@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Epic still has to pay the developers even if they give away the game for free. I’m happy to help bleed Epic dry by taking their free games. But I will never ever spend a single cent on their platform.

            • Rose@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              You’re lying to yourself. They pay a fixed amount for the giveaway and it doesn’t matter if the games are claimed. If anything, you owning a game on Epic means you’re more likely to mention it to your friends and possibly get them to use the platform and spend on it.

              • SRo@lemmy.sdf.org
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                1 year ago

                This. Active usernumbers are more worth to them than the small fee they pay the Devs. Everyone who “just redeems the free games” is helping them actively.

              • Maestro@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                They pay a fixed amount based on expected/average number of units given away. If that number is higher, devs can get more money.

                • Rose@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Can you provide any evidence for this? The documents from the Apple trial showed fixed and round figures for every single giveaway.

                  • Maestro@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    Yes, but those buyout prices aren’t negotiated in a vacuum. When the number of entitlements goes up, studios will demand higher buyout prices. There’s a reason free game quality has been lackluster lately. Studios demand a higher buyouts and Epic doesn’t want to spend too much money, so they go with smaller titles.

            • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Same If I buy a game it will be either directly from the maker or Steam. Epic strictly for the free games.

        • highsight@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          I mean, I get why people hate this, but some games would literally not exist if not for that exclusivity funding. For example, the newly released Alan Wake 2 is completely funded by Epic. I’d say at that point, the exclusivity is fair game.

          • micka190@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            After Control’s success, I’d imagine AW2 still would’ve been made even without Epic’s exclusivity/publishing deal. If anything, Control’s timed EGS exclusivity hurt their numbers until they eventually hit Steam.

            • Rose@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              So your theory is that Control wasn’t a major success on Epic, so Remedy decided to do the same thing with their next game? Sounds legit.

          • cottonmon@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Epic funding games development was only a recent thing. For the most part, they were buying exclusivity for games that were already set to be released or were already in active development. The other reason why this was hated was because they bought exclusivity for games that were crowd-funded back when the store was newly opened.

          • CMDR_Horn@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Epic funding games just makes them a publisher, nothing groundbreaking.

      • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I have not bought a single game from their store. I have over 300.

        I also haven’t played any of the games I got for free. Maybe one day I will, but today is not that day.

        • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I started playing a few and they play well and so far are fun. Have had no issues with the platform.

      • Davel23@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        every game on their [sic] I can find on Steam

        Oh yeah? Find these:

        3 out of 10

        A Knight’s Quest

        Alan Wake Remastered

        Alan Wake 2

        Assassin’s Creed Mirage

        Battle Breakers

        Binary Smoke

        Castle Storm 2

        Core

        Corruption 2029

        Crime Boss: Rockay City

        Dangerous Driving

        Dauntless

        Dead Island 2

        Diabotical

        Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed

        Goat Simulator 3

        Grit

        Infinitesimals

        John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando

        Kid A Mnesia Exhibition

        Kingdom Hearts series

        The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria

        Ooblets

        PC Building Simulator 2

        ReadySet Heroes

        Rocket League

        RollerCoaster Tycoon Adventures

        Salt and Sacrifice

        Saturnalia

        The Settlers: New Allies

        Shoulders of Giants

        Sins of a Solar Empire II

        Space Punks

        Star Trek: Resurgence

        Tchia

        The Crew Motorfest

        The Expanse: A Telltale Series

        Tortuga - A Pirate’s Tale

        Touch Type Tale

        Witchfire

        The Wolf Among Us 2

        • Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t know about any of the others, but at least Rocket League and Fall Guys are great examples here.

          Both games already existed and were extremely successful on Steam.

          Both games got bought by Epic and we were told they were going to get continued support.

          Both games were then REMOVED from Steam.

          Both games then started suddenly having objectively worse monetization. Both communities grew a pretty negative opinion of the changes.

          Both games are objectively less popular now, though at least some of this is just age/fads.

          But both games are just objectively in a worse spot than they were before. All Epic did was make them objectively worse.

        • mayTay@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This list is just another argument against epic… artificial exclusives. For a FUCKING LAUNCHER. Even fucking Playstation, EA and Ubisoft opened up.

          Fuck Epic.

          • WldFyre@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Fucking Playstation is not better than Epic with handling exclusives lmfao come on now

            • mayTay@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              They are literally releasing their games on another platform that actually requires them to put money into the project again to develop a port. So yeah, even PS atm is better than Epic.

              • WldFyre@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                So Playstation releasing some of their games literally years later as often sub-par ports is better than being able to play a game day 1 native on PC? I’d love to hear to the logic for that lol

        • panchzila@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They bought fall guys and removed the possibility of buying it on steam. And timed exclusives like borderlands 3.

        • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Okay, fair, there are some exclusives. But reading through these, wow, nothing of value is lost.

          Most importantly because for the newest ones like AW2, they’re just on a 1 year Early Access release in a lot of ways. Every time someone I know bought a game there, I was grateful they did the paid (as in, they pay, not get paid) bug testing work for the poor devs. And then once it releases on other stores, you can buy a somewhat patched-up version, and usually for 25%-50% off.