X-Com successor Phoenix Point pulls out of GOG/Steam due to Epic payday

[Sovek]

Epic HAS tools to compete with Steam, its just their bag of tools outside of exclusive deals isn't working. Like what was mentioned, royalty free fees using Unreal Engine 4, more money for the devs, money to develop a competitor, not just another launcher. Cheaper prices are another one, use the money to invest and publish indie games, like say Epic goes to Pheonix Point and says "We want invest in your game, are you looking to add DLC?" and then offer 20% off or something for all DLC if game is purchased on Epic. 

 

But they didn't, they took one look at the playbook for Sony, said "thats a good idea, lets do that" without knowing who or what the PC gaming community is and what we will put up with.

 

Even Microsoft for petes sake is backing away from arbitrary walls and opening the Xbox platform. Were the Xbox not a console in most sense, pay to access the internet, I would actually consider buying one for when I need to travel, or a backup rig incase of some sort of computer failure. 

[Aimi]

Is it really competition if you just bribe game devs ?

[Drak3]

4 minutes ago, Aimi said:

Is it really competition if you just bribe game devs ?

Yes, just really bad competition that'll probably just hurt developers stupid enough to agree to these deals.

[Hellion]

10 hours ago, The Benjamins said:

anyone that thinks a crowd backing campaign is a pre order should never back anything.

 

Backing products/idea is fine if they understand what they are doing.

It's exactly the same. You are putting faith in an individual/company that you've never met on any personal level to follow through and meet expectations on a claim they have made in advance often without any form of resolution if something goes wrong or they claim bankruptcy etc.

 

Only truly gullible people fall for this nonsense and the truly moronic then whine about it.

[Suika]

12 hours ago, CarlBar said:

it's the bait and switch they're pulling by poaching titles allready announced on other platforms.

I don't know if I worded it incorrectly or if you just passed over what I said, but that's literally what I complained about. This bait and switch is scummy and the wrong way to go about it, and one of my objections to the Epic Games launcher at this moment in time.

9 hours ago, Humbug said:

The way you do it as a new store is that you approach lots of devs. You pitch to them

-we plan to be a major competitor to steam

-we bundle unreal engine for free

-we have a fair user base already thanks to our first party games like Fortnite

-you will get greater visibility on our store compared to steam where you are drowned out by thousands of other games

-You have nothing to lose by selling your game on one more store, in fact you can only gain from this since you get a larger piece of the pie

 

^^This is how you pitch to devs, you get them to come onboard with you. It's not a difficult pitch since you are not asking them to remove the game from other stores. Plenty of devs will come onboard because they want to support another player. Then you build up like that over the years by continuously getting more devs and improving your store. If you do it right you could even come to the point some day where your market share is big enough that some devs don't bother with steam anymore.

- Who hasn't tried that argument, though? And exactly how many major competitors have even come close to dethroning Steam? Everyone keeps citing GoG but not every developer is going to be sold on GoG, combined with not every PC gamer defaulting to "I'll go on GoG to buy this game," unlike with Steam. I personally do not know anybody who uses GoG. I have one game on it that I forgot about and never installed, in fact.

- I'm not sure Epic Games would do that, but that's a solid point for any developers or publishers without an in-house engine.

- To go back to my original point, that doesn't exactly translate to "We have a userbase that'll suddenly stop shopping on Steam and rely solely on the Epic Games launcher." It's a fair point, but way too many PC gamers already have it embedded in their heads that Steam is the primary place to buy games, and that idea is exactly what Epic Games is targeting with exclusivity.

- That's an incredibly good point, actually, but I don't see it being a point forever. Right now, Steam has some garbo games covering my front page, but in the future, the Epic Games launcher will be filled with the same garbage unless they want to completely dissuade indie developers.

- Oh, developers absolutely should throw their games on the Epic Games launcher if its free to them and they get a larger cut from it, but back to my point of "Who's going to buy it?" Epic Games is trying to challenge the idea that Steam is the exclusive store for buying PC games by forcing gamers to put it in their minds that yes, you can buy games on the Epic Games launcher. Challenging Steam is far more than building a capable client, it's actually building a userbase that wants to spend money on the client.

 

In a perfect world, building a "better-than-Steam" client is all you'd need, but the problem is more than just having a viable client and games library.

 

At the end of the day, I don't like the Epic Games launcher in its current state, and I'm not going to stand behind a company that keeps forcing developers into this bait and switch, but Epic Games has their reasons for doing this. It's still a bad approach, IMO.

9 hours ago, Humbug said:

I know that some people do think along these lines. They know that exclusivity bribes are evil but they think sometimes the ends justify the means. With the end in this case being more competition to steam. I strongly disagree. I think that people only say this because they have not thought it through

I'm not informed enough to say I can assume what a future with a viable Steam competitor looks like, but I doubt it's all that bleak. I think it'll be annoying, but people will figure out what each client is for. That said, I still don't like what Epic Games is doing here.

9 hours ago, Humbug said:

Imagine in the year 2025 a world where the Epic Store has become the dominant PC games store. Paying money to 3rd party devs for exclusivity contracts will then be the norm in pc gaming. Then if another small PC games store pops up the developers will not have the freedom to support that store with day one releases unless they break their contracts with Epic.

I don't think Epic Games is planning on living in their own nightmare world where they have to constantly pay out huge sums to developers just for them to stay on board, their plan is to eventually make money from this situation. This Phoenix Point game may be an instance where Epic Games is near blatantly losing money on the deal from every angle, but want the exclusivity to build up users willing to spend money on their launcher.

 

I really doubt the future is as bleak as you're implying it to be. In fact, I'd argue a future where every publisher keeps trying to push their own game client is more bleak than one where Epic Games convinces people to stop making a new client every time they have a major game launch.

9 hours ago, Humbug said:

90% of these games are also available on steam. Now let's say Valve decides to throw their billions of dollars around, they could approach all these devs and ask them to sign exclusivity contracts with steam. GOG will have to close down!

Except Valve wouldn't do that because they're already seeing growth as it is, but if that growth were to halt or reverse, I'm sure they'd start to throw some incentives to developers about pushing games to Steam. Not to mention, Valve has proper fear of internet backlash, Epic Games does not.

 

I'm really tired and tilted over a video game so I probably said something stupid ok, but I'm sure we can all agree that this practice of straight yoinking developers and games planned for launch on other clients is really scummy and unnecessary in the market.

 

I also want to point out, we're talking about free pieces of software, not $400 video game consoles. Some people are comparing the two and, I don't know if the comparison is a fair one.

[D13H4RD]

6 hours ago, Sovek said:

But they didn't, they took one look at the playbook for Sony, said "thats a good idea, lets do that" without knowing who or what the PC gaming community is and what we will put up with.

There's one big difference though. 

 

Typically, Sony funds their studios to develop titles for the PS4 from the ground up. Epic only gets exclusivity from devs whose games were slated to go on multiple storefronts originally. 

 

It's really more of them taking a page off the Microsoft playbook 

[Humbug]

50 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

It's really more of them taking a page off the Microsoft playbook 

One example that springs to mind which I hated was what Microsoft did with Rise of the Tomb Raider. They threw money at the developers to make it an xbox timed exclusive.

 

So PS4 and PC users had to wait. They actually punished their own (windows) customers. Imagine being willing to pay money to devs to keep a game away from your own customers...

 

Today you can play the game on PS4, Xbox, Windows, Linux, Mac OSX. I actually played it on Linux LOL.

[jaggysnake57]

On 3/16/2019 at 12:57 PM, Sakkura said:

But there are other problems. The crowdfunding campaign promised native Linux support. This was later withdrawn, but at least people would still be able to run the game on Linux via Steam Play. Until this deal... now they'll have to wait a year to play at all.

im sure the 5 people on linux are pissed

On 3/16/2019 at 1:00 PM, D13H4RD said:

Before any self-proclaimed "hero of consumerism" jumps on here and claims that this is "necessary" to "save us from the monopolistic clutches of Valve and Steam", you're delusional. This not only hurts the consumer but also hurts smaller players like GoG. If you think a store that is grabbing exclusivity away from even those smaller stores is somehow healthy competition just because of Valve, then I honestly have no words for that sort of belief. 

im here, your being stupid but dont worry ill save you....keep reading ill make my point further down 

On 3/16/2019 at 2:11 PM, Terryv said:

I wonder if Epic truly realizes how much damage their brand is taking with all the controversy going on. That's 2 major releases so far that's produced little besides a shit storm.

there brand is fine.......they are still selling....this game lost 1600 pre orders out of 47,000.....

16 hours ago, Suika said:

At the risk of sounding like I support Epic Games here, to be fair to them, Steam has a massive stranglehold on the market, and the Epic Games launcher in its current state offers absolutely nothing against Steam (as far as features and titles). Buying major exclusive titles would help them build up the user base to give developers an actual incentive, because let's be fair, even if Epic Games offers a better cut than Steam, what's that better cut going to matter if absolutely nobody is going to buy the version that pays out better?

 

If the Epic Games client was actually competitive with Steam in feature set and didn't have developers pull these bait and switches, I wouldn't object to Epic Games purchasing exclusives titles, but the way they've decided to go about their business doing so has made me object to the platform as a whole until it ceases.

 

14 hours ago, The Benjamins said:

anyone that thinks a crowd backing campaign is a pre order should never back anything.

 

Backing products/idea is fine if they understand what they are doing.

err did you order a product before it was availble?.......sounds like a pre order to me

12 hours ago, Humbug said:

The way you do it as a new store is that you approach lots of devs. You pitch to them

-we plan to be a major competitor to steam

-we bundle unreal engine for free

-we have a fair user base already thanks to our first party games like Fortnite

-you will get greater visibility on our store compared to steam where you are drowned out by thousands of other games

-You have nothing to lose by selling your game on one more store, in fact you can only gain from this since you get a larger piece of the pie

 

^^This is how you pitch to devs, you get them to come onboard with you. It's not a difficult pitch since you are not asking them to remove the game from other stores. Plenty of devs will come onboard because they want to support another player. Then you build up like that over the years by continuously getting more devs and improving your store. If you do it right you could even come to the point some day where your market share is big enough that some devs don't bother with steam anymore.

no the way you pitch to devs is........13% cut. done.

 

people are making mountains out of mole hills, actin like epic are the devil just because they snagged a few games, jesus is there nothing better to do atm.

even if epic was objectively better than steam people still wouldnt choose epic because "muh steam", not to mention the stupid children that will hate epic because fortnite. epic is going no where the only thing that will happen is but hurt fanboys will have to wait for some games because "muh Steam". 

 

steam are already starting to respond with the changes to reviews that is coming up. see competition

[MetEishYa]

This is scummy beyond compare. The only reason this game exist is because of your backers and now you screw them.

 

Where is Valve with all this Epic stuff? They should start stepping in and blacklisting companies that start pre-order on steam then at the last moment swap platforms. Removing all there previous games on sale on steam.

 

Can you imagine the outrage if Microsoft decided that if a developer wanted to have there game on the XBox that they can only sell there game on the Windows Store for PC.

[D13H4RD]

1 hour ago, jaggysnake57 said:

im here, your being stupid but dont worry ill save you....keep reading ill make my point further down 

there brand is fine.......they are still selling....this game lost 1600 pre orders out of 47,000.....

LOL, okay then. 

 

You keep defending Epic's store with the same points, but you keep failing at exactly why we should care.

 

Just to be clear, at the time of when they made that announcement, the game lost at least 1600 pre-orders. The figure could be different by now. But that's beside the point. The point is that the developers went to Epic, apparently to ask if they could have it on their store, and ended up with extra funding but also a one-year exclusivity period, with them basically telling those who backed it that they would have to wait a year until they could have the key on their preferred store. The real scummy part is that Discord message, where it was said that even if everyone were to cancel their pre-orders, the developer would still apparently be in the black (basically still making a profit). That's not how it works. How it works is you tell backers that you get this shit and they get it. If you tell them you get this shit, only to do something that causes those terms to be changed into something other than what was given at the time someone backed it, that will not go down well.

 

Also, who said this was all about Steam? The game is taken away from GoG as well, a much smaller store. It's exactly as I said in the post you quoted. How exactly is this healthy competition when a storefront + launcher combination that lacks so many basic features like a damn shopping cart alongside criticism when it comes to data protection and privacy is resorting to spending their resources on securing exclusivity deals before their platform is remotely ready for prime-time? @Suika nailed it right there. If you want to take on Steam, have a platform that both developers AND consumers want to use. Forcing people onto a clearly inferior platform is not going to go down well. There's a damn reason why this move is being criticized, and it's not because "mUh StEaM".

 

If Epic's store was objectively better than Steam in every metric, and also included enticing deals not just for developers but also consumers, then the forced exclusivity wouldn't have made everyone as salty as now. It's still a garbage move at the end of the day, but if the service were more complete, then people likely wouldn't be as pissed.

 

Also, what does Epic's store have to do with Steam's recent change to the review structure to defocus on review bombing? Epic's store doesn't yet have a review system and it's opt-in by developers. If Epic's store had a review system that was a lot like Steam's but done in a way to reduce the effects of review bombing, then yeah, that's an effect of competition. But it isn't, because Epic doesn't have that sort of feature on their service, or at least one that is of equivalent quality.

[D13H4RD]

2 hours ago, Humbug said:

One example that springs to mind which I hated was what Microsoft did with Rise of the Tomb Raider. They threw money at the developers to make it an xbox timed exclusive.

 

So PS4 and PC users had to wait. They actually punished their own (windows) customers. Imagine being willing to pay money to devs to keep a game away from your own customers...

That's exactly what I was referring to when I mentioned the Microsoft playbook. 

 

It wasn't okay when Microsoft did it and it ain't okay with Epic. Although to be fair, Microsoft's deal meant that if you wanted to play RoTR on launch, you needed to buy an Xbox One while the Epic deal just requires a free Epic account, but that's still not ideal, especially when Epic's platform is still missing quite a few nuts and bolts.

[jaggysnake57]

1 hour ago, D13H4RD said:

LOL, okay then. 

 

You keep defending Epic's store with the same points, but you keep failing at exactly why we should care.

 

Just to be clear, at the time of when they made that announcement, the game lost at least 1600 pre-orders. The figure could be different by now. But that's beside the point. The point is that the developers went to Epic, apparently to ask if they could have it on their store, and ended up with extra funding but also a one-year exclusivity period, with them basically telling those who backed it that they would have to wait a year until they could have the key on their preferred store. The real scummy part is that Discord message, where it was said that even if everyone were to cancel their pre-orders, the developer would still apparently be in the black (basically still making a profit). That's not how it works. How it works is you tell backers that you get this shit and they get it. If you tell them you get this shit, only to do something that causes those terms to be changed into something other than what was given at the time someone backed it, that will not go down well.

 

Also, who said this was all about Steam? The game is taken away from GoG as well, a much smaller store. It's exactly as I said in the post you quoted. How exactly is this healthy competition when a storefront + launcher combination that lacks so many basic features like a damn shopping cart alongside criticism when it comes to data protection and privacy is resorting to spending their resources on securing exclusivity deals before their platform is remotely ready for prime-time? @Suika nailed it right there. If you want to take on Steam, have a platform that both developers AND consumers want to use. Forcing people onto a clearly inferior platform is not going to go down well. There's a damn reason why this move is being criticized, and it's not because "mUh StEaM".

 

If Epic's store was objectively better than Steam in every metric, and also included enticing deals not just for developers but also consumers, then the forced exclusivity wouldn't have made everyone as salty as now. It's still a garbage move at the end of the day, but if the service were more complete, then people likely wouldn't be as pissed.

 

Also, what does Epic's store have to do with Steam's recent change to the review structure to defocus on review bombing? Epic's store doesn't yet have a review system and it's opt-in by developers. If Epic's store had a review system that was a lot like Steam's but done in a way to reduce the effects of review bombing, then yeah, that's an effect of competition. But it isn't, because Epic doesn't have that sort of feature on their service, or at least one that is of equivalent quality.

ahhhh steams number 1 fanboy is in the house

 

 

how old is the epic store? less than 12 months? and in what state was steam in 12 months? nearly all of the "big features" of steam are being added to the epic store soon so then what will your excuse be?  funny thing ubisoft stated that since there announcement of store exclusivity to epic and metros there pre orders for the division 2 went up, face it people are not as up in arms as you might think

 

oh and what privacy issues are you talking about? also you want to talk about steams securtiy problems. do remeber when we could all access other peoples details becasue of a botched update......mmmmmmm

[D13H4RD]

29 minutes ago, jaggysnake57 said:

how old is the epic store? less than 12 months? and in what state was steam in 12 months? nearly all of the "big features" of steam are being added to the epic store soon so then what will your excuse be?  funny thing ubisoft stated that since there announcement of store exclusivity to epic and metros there pre orders for the division 2 went up, face it people are not as up in arms as you might think

Kid, it’s 2019.

 

You seriously can’t tell me a store developed by a reputable game developer whose also responsible for one of the most advanced and well-used game engines on the planet can’t develop a store that has a shopping cart at launch. These guys aren’t newbies. They’re industry veterans. So why are we saying it’s acceptable that their much newer store is missing basic, ubiquitous features just because a much older platform didn’t have it at the time it was new, in a totally different era?

 

Also, pre-orders for The Division 2 went up on UPlay. It’s more than likely that whoever would have gotten it on Steam got it off UPlay instead. It’s still logical either way because regardless of whether you got it off Steam or EGS, you would need UPlay anyhow, so instead of having 2 layers of DRM, you only have one.

 

I find it hilarious that you have resorted to calling me a Steam fanboy, even though

• I have never logged into Steam in eons, and hence, never bought anything off it in ages 
• Have called out Valve multiple times
• Criticized Steam’s incompetence at times

Must be easy to do so rather than doing actual research and developing proper, constructive counter arguments, eh? No, the age of the Epic Store and The Division 2 are not valid, because the former doesn’t take into account the changing industry landscape and the latter saw pre-orders increase in their own store, likely from Steam users who preordered on UPlay.

 

Instead of regurgitating the same, played out and often rebuked points, have something different, like the 88-12 revenue split, how they’re giving indies a funding boost (even though exclusivity is a bitch) or stuff like that. Jim Sterling’s take may not be something I agree on, but at least he’s got a few good points laid in there, namely how Steam’s library has the impression of a dumpster fire.

 

Gee, must be a wonder why I’ve never bothered with Steam for ages.

[TopHatProductions115]

And this is why I don't do crowd-funding or pre-orders.

[Drak3]

35 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

Kid, it’s 2019

While I agree with the basics of your argument, goimg it’s [current year] is not a valid argument.

[DeScruff]

On 3/16/2019 at 9:00 AM, D13H4RD said:

 If you think a store that is grabbing exclusivity away from even those smaller stores is somehow healthy competition just because of Valve, then I honestly have no words for that sort of belief. 

Its a very, "In order to stop all suffering, everybody must die!" kinda philosophy...

Ive said this in other places and Ill say it here. Epic as of right now is just a leach. They aren't really adding anything to the table to us the consumers, which is the whole reason competition is supposed to be good, they only rearranging the table.

We aren't getting any games that likely would not have been made if it wasn't for the Epic store. We aren't getting games that the other storefronts rejected. (Mostly cause Valve  doesn't reject anything until it causes controversy but that is besides the point)
We aren't getting new community features or accessibility features for Linux like we do on Steam.

We aren't getting old games resurrected to work 'out of the box' on modern hardware and OSes, or games without DRM like we do with GoG.
We aren't getting the ability to buy keys for games from other storefronts. - Steam and GoG do allow that which is what lets stores like Humble Bundle work.
We aren't getting the ability to transfer over purchases from one store to another - Gog does this with a couple of games... but not really a lot...
We aren't getting games that otherwise wouldn't have had PC ports, or getting some kinda Xbox integration like we do on the Windows Store. (Even if its limited to just Win10...)
I have no idea what Uplay or Origin add to the table. I haven't played a Ubisoft or EA game probably a decade.

Im trying to think of something the Epic game store brought to us consumers that we didn't have before, and I really can't think of anything other then a less cluttered Steam.
But thats like Burger King cloning Mcdonald's menu, except they don't have the breakfast menu, - Oh and they bought the rights to the McRib, so now its a Burger King Exclusive!

[D13H4RD]

1 minute ago, Sypran said:

Im trying to think of something the Epic game store brought to us consumers that we didn't have before, and I really can't think of anything other then a less cluttered Steam

Only one I can think of right now is the 88-12 split, but that benefits publishers and developers. There really isn’t a direct translation in savings to the consumer aside from being $10 cheaper but only in the US.

[DeScruff]

2 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

Only one I can think of right now is the 88-12 split, but that benefits publishers and developers. There really isn’t a direct translation in savings to the consumer aside from being $10 cheaper but only in the US.

Yeah, exactly, and that $10 cheaper is often mitigated by the ability to buy from multiple storefronts.
Even if you stick to 100% legitimate non shady, non grey market, stores you can often get a game on launch day $10 off.

[D13H4RD]

2 minutes ago, Sypran said:

Yeah, exactly, and that $10 cheaper is often mitigated by the ability to buy from multiple storefronts.
Even if you stick to 100% legitimate non shady, non grey market, stores you can often get a game on launch day $10 off.

Such as Green Man Gaming

[jaggysnake57]

5 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

Kid, it’s 2019.

 

You seriously can’t tell me a store developed by a reputable game developer whose also responsible for one of the most advanced and well-used game engines on the planet can’t develop a store that has a shopping cart at launch. These guys aren’t newbies. They’re industry veterans.

 

Also, pre-orders for The Division 2 went up on UPlay. It’s more than likely that whoever would have gotten it on Steam got it off UPlay instead. It’s still logical either way because regardless of whether you got it off Steam or EGS, you would need UPlay anyhow, so instead of having 2 layers of DRM, you only have one.

kid..... i was probably playing games when your mommy was wiping your arse

 

with only a handful of games why would they need one till now? does it not make more sense to ensure you have a good install base before pumping money into features that you might not need? and as i said these features are coming soon

 

i read it was general pre orders but if you can link something that says other wise. on the subject of uplay, there is a really good example of why epic need to do this. you have to run uplay to play ubisoft games and yet people still buy on steam......i mean really how dumb is that, but then again "muh forums"

[CarlBar]

3 minutes ago, jaggysnake57 said:

kid..... i was probably playing games when your mommy was wiping your arse

 

And i was probably playing games when your mom was wiping our arse. The relevance of which is...

[D13H4RD]

6 minutes ago, jaggysnake57 said:

i read it was general pre orders but if you can link something that says other wise. on the subject of uplay, there is a really good example of why epic need to do this. you have to run uplay to play ubisoft games and yet people still buy on steam......i mean really how dumb is that, but then again "muh forums"

https://www.neowin.net/news/the-division-2s-pre-order-numbers-are-up-from-the-original-even-without-steam/

 

Quote

In an earnings call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said the pre-order numbers for the PC version are "higher than for the first Division," with the Ubisoft Store alone bringing in six times as much pre-orders than before.

The Epic deal was actually meant to boost UPlay’s adoption. Losing Steam was not as big a deal because you have always needed UPlay to play Ubi games regardless of where you got it from. So it makes sense for people to just get it off them and not have to deal with another piece of DRM (Steam/EGS) on top.

 

It also makes marketing and financial sense for Ubisoft, because since they own both the IP and the store, they keep 100% of the cut, rather than just 88% on Epic and 80% on Steam (the game would have already exceeded Valve’s revenue quota for a 80-20 split)

[jaggysnake57]

Just now, D13H4RD said:

https://www.neowin.net/news/the-division-2s-pre-order-numbers-are-up-from-the-original-even-without-steam/

 

The Epic deal was actually meant to boost UPlay’s adoption. 

ok so i miss read it but still points stand

[D13H4RD]

 

2 minutes ago, jaggysnake57 said:

ok so i miss read it but still points stand

You would need UPlay anyhow regardless of where you bought it. So it makes sense that more people would buy it off UPlay. People likely got it off Steam either due to having Steam funds or just the convenience of having everything all in one launcher. 

 

It’s hard to see it as anything other than a clever marketing move by Ubisoft for their own service.

[The Benjamins]

4 hours ago, jaggysnake57 said:

im sure the 5 people on linux are pissed

im here, your being stupid but dont worry ill save you....keep reading ill make my point further down 

there brand is fine.......they are still selling....this game lost 1600 pre orders out of 47,000.....

 

err did you order a product before it was availble?.......sounds like a pre order to me

no the way you pitch to devs is........13% cut. done.

 

people are making mountains out of mole hills, actin like epic are the devil just because they snagged a few games, jesus is there nothing better to do atm.

even if epic was objectively better than steam people still wouldnt choose epic because "muh steam", not to mention the stupid children that will hate epic because fortnite. epic is going no where the only thing that will happen is but hurt fanboys will have to wait for some games because "muh Steam". 

 

steam are already starting to respond with the changes to reviews that is coming up. see competition

 

8 hours ago, Hellion said:

It's exactly the same. You are putting faith in an individual/company that you've never met on any personal level to follow through and meet expectations on a claim they have made in advance often without any form of resolution if something goes wrong or they claim bankruptcy etc.

 

Only truly gullible people fall for this nonsense and the truly moronic then whine about it.

Pre-Ordering and Backing a crowdfunding campaign are on 2 different levels, not even close to being the same.

 

A Pre-Order is typically a full price commitment to buy a product in the final stages of development with very low probability of product not releasing

 

A Crowdfunding campaign is a Investment into a project at its early stage of development that is used to "kickstart" its development with a fair chance of failure to reach the market. Other risks include that most are started by unexperielced groups which means time lines may be under estimated, budgets may be underestimated, ect. Also due to the fact the project is in the early stages it is almost certain that changes will happen along the way.

 

Both should be looked at with critical thinking skills to determine weather some one should pre-order or back a porject, but backing a project is 100 times more risky then pre-ordering.