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Remedy and Annapurna announce a strategic cooperation agreement on Control 2
(www.remedygames.com)
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We would never had an Alan Wake Remaster without Epic paying for it.
Dear PC gamers, please stop bitching about installing a second games launcher. If you wanted all games to only come out on a single launcher then you should have bought a console. Us console players are getting real sick of the endless bitching about Epic just because they tried to break Steam's monopoly.
Noone is a fan of exclusives but Epic's behaviour was explicitly to try and break Steam's entrenched monopoly and they legitimately offer far more favourable terms for developers. They've also spent hundreds of millions of dollars to break other monopolies like Apple and Google's. They are by no means the evil villains that PC Gamers make them out to be. The tactics they took with EGS were misguided but they've genuinely fought to level the playing field at the legislative level, they're a full tier better than an EA or Ubisoft who only ever try and squeeze as much profit as possible at every turn.
They should have spent those millions to fund development of a store that can actually compete with the competition and studios that produce games, which they then can sell on their own platform.
Instead they snatched up every new release on the way to Steam while still not being able to provide the basic necessities of a modern PC store front.
So why should I bother purchasing something from them? They have nothing to offer and actively make it harder for me to play games through their store with their anti-Steam Deck stance.
I'm not saying you should, I'm saying it doesn't make them villains or a bad company.
They made a mistake in their approach to the EGS, which they've pretty candidly talked about and admitted. But the end goal of EGS wasn't just to make them more money, they offer every developer more money when they publish there. The underlying motivation for creating EGS in the first place was the recognition that Valve does not need to be taking a 30% cut of every game sale to provide the services they provide.
I'm happy that Remedy can afford to self publish and that Anna Purna is willing to finance the project without publishing it, but I don't think Epic is a particularly bad publishing partner.
But it does, paying third parties to not publish on your competitors platform is the oldest anti-competitive behaviour in the book.
It would have been completely fine if they started out with actually funding development of new games and only releasing them on their store.
I would have even given them some slack for their bad launcher since they were new to this.
Instead we are here, almost 6 years later. Their launcher is still trash, their exclusive deals were a complete money sink, EGS is still not profitable, they burned all bridges to Valve and are not one step closer to their claim that 30% is too much and they can do it with ~~8%~~ 12%.
I would argue that even restricting sales to your own store is anti-competitive tying. You're avoiding competing on the merits of a store using exclusive licensing of a creative work.
Again, not a fan of the tactic, but they are trying to break an entrenched monopoly with a ton of network effects which is near impossible.
Their launcher is perfectly fine.
Not really. They weren't as effective as they wanted them to be but they did ultimately gain a significant chunk of market share.
No, they needed to gain more market share to break even.
But they are. They're not losing that much money, even with a tiny portion of market share. Valve having far more market share means they should be able to do it for an even smaller percentage than what epic is using, especially since Valve has 21 years of infrastructure to lean on.
A creative work which you made yourself, which you can sell wherever you want.
Should you sell it everywhere so as many people can play it as possible? Sure. Do you have to? No.
Let's reverse the roles for a second: EGS is the big player and Steam is just getting started. EGS suddenly starts paying all publishers to only publish on their platform. Does that sound like competition to you? You don't break a monopoly by using tools used by monopolies.
Fine? Yes. It does the bare minimum of being able to buy a game and start it. Does it do everything I expect a modern game launcher to do after existing for almost 6 years? Nope.
They are "not losing much money" while providing a fraction of the services Steam does. They say 30% is too much, we can do it in 12% and yet they severely lack in social features, have no modding support, no VR support, no in-home streaming, no Remote Play Together, no Big Picture, no Family Sharing, a barely functioning Steamworks alternative, no Steam Deck support, no Linux support and absolutely zero open source contributions. That's just the obvious stuff I can think of right now, every single menu you open in Steam you find a barebones menu in the EGS.
They don't even need 21 years of infrastructure for most of these, they just need to fund development of it. Which they seem to be unwilling to do so.
You're so close to figuring it out yet you pass right by it...
Also, Steam can have all the extras you mentioned while also making Gaben a billionaire so they do in fact get a huge surplus by charging 30% and found absolutely afford to give you all those extras with a smaller cut
We're not talking about what you currently have to do, we're talking about anti- competitive behaviour and what you should do.
If you set up your own shop to avoid paying a middle man for something you can do yourself fine. If you set up your own shop and then use your exclusive games to grow your shop into something bigger, then that's anti-competitive tying. Your shop is not competing on its merits as a shop.
There is a fundamental difference between using anti-competitive behaviour to break a monopoly, and using it to entrench a monopoly. That's like arguing that a bully using violence and someone standing up to a bully using violence is the same thing.
Where do you think the funding for Valve's system came from? 21 years of taking 30% of virtually every single PC game sale.
Yes, and as we all know, a company that gets to the top using scummy tactics will definitely change them once they're on top. /s
How fucking naive are you? There's no difference between the two because the later turns into the former every time. You're just defending your favored party using shit tactics, which is why you can't defend the opposite.
If you have to use violence constantly to survive and thrive, violence is your only tool. Once the bully is defeated, the victim will begin bullying, continuing the cycle of violence. This is no different.
Lol no. It's called competition. It's the literal entire basis of how our economic system is supposed to work and remain balanced, and having two competitors inherently creates more competition than just one where their inherently is no competition.
Now who's naiive, you really think that every time someone has stood up for themselves that they've gone on to become a bully?