Epic acquires Psyonix, will stop selling Rocket League on Steam

[Froody129]

Just now, D13H4RD said:

I don't think people are mad because Valve has competition. If that were the case, then the tune would really be different as much more people would be pro-Epic in that sense.

 

It's mostly because of Epic's strategy of gaining ground that's become the point of contention for many. Not helping is how EGS seems to have many benefits for developers (good) but almost none for people who choose to use it over competitors (bad).

 

Now, if Epic were to do exclusivity and offer consumers a significant advantage over Steam, a different tune would be sung.

So we're agreed that Epic is providing benefits to the people actually making the product. We agree that the feature set is bleak compared to Steam. However my point is that people are irrationally hating on Epic. As I said before it's a very new platform, that is developing very quickly, and they have the resources to match Steam. So if everyone would just calm down for a second they would see that you can't set up a fully fledged store like that overnight, but that Epic is working very hard on that. And thus they have acquired a team of very talented developers to relieve pressure off their overworked current team, and to broaden the scope of their future projects. I just don't see why Epic is the bad guy here 

[Dash Lambda]

This is where it goes from not cool to not okay.

[RuffRuffmcgruff]

13 minutes ago, suits said:

I seriously have no idea why so many people are upset about epic having exclusives. You realize the devs that you are supporting get more money through epic right?

 

People are so dumb. 

Yeah i don't get it either, personally i could'nt give a shite. Is it going to stop me from playing the games i want to play? No.

 

 

[suits]

51 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

I don't think people are mad because Valve has competition. If that were the case, then the tune would really be different as much more people would be pro-Epic in that sense.

 

It's mostly because of Epic's strategy of gaining ground that's become the point of contention for many. Not helping is how EGS seems to have many benefits for developers (good) but almost none for people who choose to use it over competitors (bad).

 

Now, if Epic were to do exclusivity and offer consumers a significant advantage over Steam, a different tune would be sung.

Maybe I care to much but the main advantage is the devs I support because I like their games can stay in business longer because Epic is raping them less than steam. As a business owner the most annoying thing is the credit card company raping you, the middle men raping you, and when all is said and done companies are getting way to much money for not a lot of benefit other than that's how the world works. 

 

I think most people don't know what the real world is like. If they did they'd be happy that their devs can get less raped.

[FunkmastaFlex]

With all this EGS vs Everything bullhonky, maybe consoles aren't looking too bad right now.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

 

4 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

 Open market dictated that they become as big as they are, and the lack of competition if we're honest. But there is competition nowadays and (most) publishers ares till picking steam due to how big it is

"(*)Steam required to play this game" is how Steam got as big as it is, plain and simple.

 

3 hours ago, D13H4RD said:

Well, the goalposts go both ways.

 

Epic isn’t forcing anyone to sign their exclusivity deals, but neither is Steam directly forcing anyone to only release on Steam.

True

3 hours ago, D13H4RD said:

An important technical distinction is that Epic’s exclusivity deal prohibits the developer/publisher from selling that title on another storefront for the duration of the deal. So why do they choose to publish on EGS instead of Steam? Not necessarily the 88/12 split, but a lot of it is down to the revenue guarantees alongside potential additional funding.

It's important to notice that, while they choice may have existed (and for some time it meant the option to sell through non-existing alternatives), it doesn't mean than it was used, especially due to the "Steam as DRM" approach. You can find plenty of games that are available on Steam, Amazon, the developer's own store... but whichever way you buy it, you'll need the Steam client to play. So, revenue-split-wise, yes, each alternative is different. From the point of view of Steam metastasizing as much as it did, they are the same.

 

3 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

Let's clear one thing. Steam is not the good guy in the story. They are still an evil, but a lesser mine in my subjective opinion. But they never restricted anyone to go steam only. 

They never had a Steam to go against either. For all we know, EGS and Steam could be the same character under different scenarios. Heck, that's even what I'm more inclined to believe (but I voted Kodos just in case ).

[jagdtigger]

19 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

ARK

WC is pretty much going down the toilet. One of their updates borked the P+ server i host. To top it off there isnt any option to get debug level logs out of that POS....

Edited May 2, 2019 by jagdtigger

[Bouzoo]

33 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

"(*)Steam required to play this game" is how Steam got as big as it is, plain and simple.

Yes, because publishers decided to go on Steam. You would get a Steam key, could've easily been Origin key if they decided to do that route. Or GOG. It is by far the most user friendly and believe it or not, has been around for more than a decade. But no one wanted to push that platform. 

[D13H4RD]

1 hour ago, suits said:

Maybe I care to much but the main advantage is the devs I support because I like their games can stay in business longer because Epic is raping them less than steam. As a business owner the most annoying thing is the credit card company raping you, the middle men raping you, and when all is said and done companies are getting way to much money for not a lot of benefit other than that's how the world works. 

 

I think most people don't know what the real world is like. If they did they'd be happy that their devs can get less raped.

I think indies stand to benefit the most, but for developers under the arms of big publishers, I'd wager that their paychecks are still up to their bosses.

[D13H4RD]

Just now, valdyrgramr said:

It all comes down to the contract they agree to.

Pretty much. Not entirely sure if the Epic deal changes said contract terms

[AdmiralMeowmix]

3 hours ago, Froody129 said:

So we're agreed that Epic is providing benefits to the people actually making the product. We agree that the feature set is bleak compared to Steam. However my point is that people are irrationally hating on Epic. As I said before it's a very new platform, that is developing very quickly, and they have the resources to match Steam. So if everyone would just calm down for a second they would see that you can't set up a fully fledged store like that overnight, but that Epic is working very hard on that. And thus they have acquired a team of very talented developers to relieve pressure off their overworked current team, and to broaden the scope of their future projects. I just don't see why Epic is the bad guy here 

They aren't this brand new entity to the market, gaming stores have been around for over a decade now and they KNOW what features are REQUIRED to be there. They just don't want to FUND those features because it means they can't do their revenue split. People have analyzed the revenue split and Epics push for steam to follow suite, Steam would end up in the red if they tried it due to everything they fund and the features they have to maintain. Epic chose the baseline and the basic set of features they could do without going into the red so they could try to pressure steam into going into the red or risk losing sales due to exclusivity.

 

Epic's actively trying to kill other marketplaces because it would benefit them. Epic KNOWS what features a game store SHOULD launch with they CHOSE not to launch with those not because they're developing them but because of the costs. Once those features start getting implemented they wont be doing their current revenue split anymore hence the LONG delay of these features. Devs are essentially being lured by the promise of a low revenue split but aren't realizing that split is going to increase on them the moment Epic feels like it has too.

 

All those features everyone wants are likely all finished and ready to go they just want to keep getting more and more exclusivity deals and to try and force Steam to make a bad business decision before they raise their revenue split and releases the features. Publishers are also the most benefitted because THEY are the ones making the deals NOT the devs. Creator of Metro Exodus expressed his dislike of it before they had him remove the post for PR relations. The Outer World devs outright stated they had NO IDEA theiur publisher made that deal FOR them. The publishers are going to keep all that millions of dollars and the devs are just gonna be overworked even more to meet the publishers demands to appease the EGS because it means more money in THEIR pockets.

 

It's a lose lose situation for Devs who aren't indie and Consumers alike, the only people it benefits is Epic and Publishers. You can't just keep claiming "oh they're new they're new" forever it's been MONTHS now and they haven't bothered with basic highly requested features. All they've been doing is getting more exclusives to try and sell their platform. They're the bad guy because they do not think of the consuemrs they only think of what could potentially make them money, so they look for highly anticipated games, they look for hugely popular devs, and buy them out for exclusivity deals because they can not survive by just competeing in the market they can only survive if they can try to kill the other markets. Like Steam, like GoG, like Itch.io, etc etc. They want to kill the smaller ones and are trying to go for the throat on Steam. It's a BS marketing tactic.

[Jito463]

4 hours ago, suits said:

I seriously have no idea why so many people are upset about epic having exclusives. You realize the devs that you are supporting get more money through epic right?

Correction, the publishers get more money.  We don't know how much (if any) will trickle down to the devs.

4 hours ago, suits said:

People are so dumb. 

Yes, because insulting people is the best way to convince them your argument is right. 

[thorhammerz]

35 minutes ago, AdmiralMeowmix said:

They're the bad guy because they do not think of the consuemrs they only think of what could potentially make them money,

Welcome to free-market capitalism! Enjoy your stay!

Quote

They want to kill the smaller ones and are trying to go for the throat on Steam. It's a BS marketing tactic.

The pie is only so big, the pie is not growing at a particularly fast rate. If you want more pie, you take said pie from your competitors.

[Blademaster91]

3 hours ago, suits said:

Maybe I care to much but the main advantage is the devs I support because I like their games can stay in business longer because Epic is raping them less than steam. As a business owner the most annoying thing is the credit card company raping you, the middle men raping you, and when all is said and done companies are getting way to much money for not a lot of benefit other than that's how the world works. 

 

I think most people don't know what the real world is like. If they did they'd be happy that their devs can get less raped.

I really doubt the devs are seeing any of that money incentive Epic gives out for agreeing to an exclusivity deal and only using their launcher, unless the devs are also the publishers. I would rather support devs or publishers that aren't taking bribes to only use EGS as a storefront, and use a more consumer friendly client such as Steam or GOG.

35 minutes ago, thorhammerz said:

Welcome to free-market capitalism! Enjoy your stay!

The pie is only so big, the pie is not growing at a particularly fast rate. If you want more pie, you take said pie from your competitors.

It would be free market capitalism if Epic weren't locking games into only their store, which Epic isn't doing.

[thorhammerz]

28 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

It would be free market capitalism if Epic weren't locking games into only their store, which Epic isn't doing.

The decision to say "sign me up for 'dem big bucks" from the publishers and/or developers was made solely at the discretion of their stakeholders.

Epic leveraging a competitive advantage on the supply end of the distribution network (that is to say "sell only here and we'll give you a bigger cut") is... merely just that. It is unduly unfortunate (for the consumer) that their platform offers a reduced feature set and spyware for the end-user, but as with any business in any industry, the best product is never guaranteed the most sales (or continued business survival, for that matter). 

[Crunchy Dragon]

21 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Is EA  even a developer, though?  I mean technically these are their own games now.  But, like EA had pulled some stuff they had bought over the years from Steam to push their own storefront it's just nobody cared about them.  Crytek was bought by EA, and EA stopped publishing games by them to Steam.  

EA is a publisher last I checked.

[Guest]

10 hours ago, suits said:

I seriously have no idea why so many people are upset about epic having exclusives. You realize the devs that you are supporting get more money through epic right?

 

People are so dumb. 

They would simply get more money by having it on both platforms.

 

Even if it’s a 70% split as opposed to 85% (I think?) to what Epic have. That’s 70% more of a larger amount sold. They could very well still make more due to the vastly larger audience using steam. It’s 70% of a much larger pie. 

 

Its a fallacy that a split like this would actually give the developers more money.

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, floofer said:

Its a fallacy that a split like this would actually give the developers more money. 

Yep, it will be interesting to see sales figures when exclusivity expires and games hit the steam....

[EldritchMoose]

16 hours ago, suits said:

I seriously have no idea why so many people are upset about epic having exclusives. You realize the devs that you are supporting get more money through epic right?

 

People are so dumb. 

Where to start...

 

For me, this whole issue is about my refusal to support shitty, reductive business practices. Epic could work towards actually competing with Steam, but their insistence on forcing the customer to use their store for more and more games belies a lack of confidence in their ability to compete on a fair level. Not going to lie, Epic had me in the first half - when they revealed plans to make a store that had a revenue split that was skewed more towards the people who produce the game rather than the people who maintain the storefront, my first reaction was to be happy that Steam may finally have some decent competition. Then they started bribing developers (and, let's face it, publishers) and showing that they were more interested in buying out the competition rather than actually doing proper work for it. EA has been doing this shit for years on a bigger scale, so why should Epic get a pass just because they pretend to be better for developers?

 

Speaking of which, it really doesn't look like Epic is all that good for their own in-house developers. They really don't get to pretend that it's all about supporting the industry when they're hiring staff in the same way I buy batteries to replace the depleted ones.

 

Besides, I'm led to believe that developers and publishers are forced to put additional monetization (and patent news ways to do it) in their games because they "have to make money somehow", which implies that they're not making any money on game sales anyway (or at the very least, that the $60 per copy doesn't count, somehow). If your business model hinges on getting an additional $10 from an upfront sale in a game that's 40% finished and requires an ongoing subscription in addition to gambling practices, you frankly have no business making video games.

16 hours ago, D13H4RD said:

If I'm honest though, that 88/12 split mostly makes sense for indies, especially when you throw in the revenue guarantees. When it comes to big AAA publishers like 2K and Ubisoft, the benefits are cloudier.

I agree, I can see the benefit for a small developer who is still trying to break through, but the moves Epic is making are focused on projects that already had a lot of support and word of mouth (specifically the games that were successfully crowdfunded).

16 hours ago, Froody129 said:

Rocket League is already an established and stable game, and most of the hype surrounding it has dissipated. I think this is Epic acquiring developers for Fortnite. As they said about the stressed workers- they can't get more developers not because of financial reasons, but because they need the talent and experience. Rocket League is kinda similar to Fortnite in its business model, so they've used their considerable financial resources to acquire talented and successful developers. Smart move imo. 

 

----

 

I don't see why you all need to piss yourselves about Steam getting some competition. More competition is good, and Epic is an established team with talent - they are not the cancer that is EA. Valve is raking in money and not really doing anything with it. A push to action is good for everyone 

 

 

The cynic in me agrees with you - it's exactly the kind of thing I would expect from a AAA game company to just buy a studio to use as human resources (I mean, hell, EA has been doing this for over a decade).

 

With regards to Steam needing competition - they've needed competition for years, but what Epic is doing is not competing. Epic is throwing money around to muscle themselves into a place at the table, and there will come a point when they'll switch to "well, we have to make the money we spent on our exclusivity deals back somehow". You're right, Epic is not EA, but EA did not start out as the black hole of the gaming industry where smaller developers get sucked into, forced to make shitty mobile ports from their once-good IP and then cut off of life support when EA does not get what EA wants.

 

Epic is currently in the "throwing money around to secure the loyalty of other players in the game industry" stage and has given me no indication that they intend to stop before becoming the next EA. In fact, they keep insisting that they are "better for the developers" based solely on the amount of money that can be made, which shows where the priority lies.

16 hours ago, Froody129 said:

So we're agreed that Epic is providing benefits to the people actually making the product. We agree that the feature set is bleak compared to Steam. However my point is that people are irrationally hating on Epic. As I said before it's a very new platform, that is developing very quickly, and they have the resources to match Steam. So if everyone would just calm down for a second they would see that you can't set up a fully fledged store like that overnight, but that Epic is working very hard on that. And thus they have acquired a team of very talented developers to relieve pressure off their overworked current team, and to broaden the scope of their future projects. I just don't see why Epic is the bad guy here 

On the surface it looks like they are trying to be magnanimous, but considering the news that they are grossly overworking their own dev team, I am not willing to call that anything but a PR smoke screen at this point. They have money to burn, but at this point it's not really costing them anything significant to play the manganimous benefactor. I don't trust any company that has their PR rep insist that "they're not putting a gun to anyone's head to work these hours" because to me that just translates to "it could be worse, at least we're not practicing actual slavery"

 

Any company that feels the need to glorify crunch periods with phrases like "Bioware Magic" or revelations of 100-hour work weeks after RDR2 was released should take a long, hard look at why they're in business. It's not sustainable in the long run to work your staff to the point of burn-out (or as Bioware called it, "strass casualty") because you end up with a job market flooded with people who are unable to work under the unreasonable conditions the industry demands of them.

 

Maybe people are irrationally hating on Epic, but at the same time it could just be that Epic is doing a shitty thing in a time where people have just HAD it with shitty things regarding the games industry. As a direct result of developers and publishers doing business the way they have been, we've seen several high-profile, highly anticipated games suffer (Fallout 76 and Anthem being the biggest of the more recent offenders) and we've seen how dishonest game developers have been with regards to having to rebalance games like Battlefront 2 and Diablo 3 because they were no longer allowed to rely on their primary means of making money.  If they want my money, let them make a good fucking product for once, and not something they are totally promise will be good 6 months from now. 

13 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

They bought some last year and shut them down after buying them, iirc.

EA's done a bit more that just buying some studios last year and shutting them down, They've been doing this for over a decade, all so they could try to compete in a field they had no business competing in:

EA would swoop in, buy a studio like Origin and dictate how they would make the next Ultima games, only to be disappointed that bad games don't sell well. Bullfrog and Westwood got to make two of the most maligned mobile games this side of Flappy Bird based on Command & Conquer and Dungeon Keeper. Visceral got to make the final entry in their Dead Space franchise, only for that to not sell as well as EA "needed it to". All of the above developers were bought, given unreasonable expectations and, when they failed to perform to these expectations, they were "restructured" out. Shut down. Never to make a game again.

 

A lot of classic game series might still be going on today if EA hadn't swallowed them up, but hey! That's the free market and if it doesn't make all the money, it might as well not even try to make any money, right? EA's story should be a cautionary one. The game industry does not benefit from corporate greed inflating budgets and expectations alike. The game industry was doing well long before every single aspect of it needed to make money.

13 hours ago, AdmiralMeowmix said:

They aren't this brand new entity to the market, gaming stores have been around for over a decade now and they KNOW what features are REQUIRED to be there. They just don't want to FUND those features because it means they can't do their revenue split. People have analyzed the revenue split and Epics push for steam to follow suite, Steam would end up in the red if they tried it due to everything they fund and the features they have to maintain. Epic chose the baseline and the basic set of features they could do without going into the red so they could try to pressure steam into going into the red or risk losing sales due to exclusivity.

 

Epic's actively trying to kill other marketplaces because it would benefit them. Epic KNOWS what features a game store SHOULD launch with they CHOSE not to launch with those not because they're developing them but because of the costs. Once those features start getting implemented they wont be doing their current revenue split anymore hence the LONG delay of these features. Devs are essentially being lured by the promise of a low revenue split but aren't realizing that split is going to increase on them the moment Epic feels like it has too.

 

All those features everyone wants are likely all finished and ready to go they just want to keep getting more and more exclusivity deals and to try and force Steam to make a bad business decision before they raise their revenue split and releases the features. Publishers are also the most benefitted because THEY are the ones making the deals NOT the devs. Creator of Metro Exodus expressed his dislike of it before they had him remove the post for PR relations. The Outer World devs outright stated they had NO IDEA theiur publisher made that deal FOR them. The publishers are going to keep all that millions of dollars and the devs are just gonna be overworked even more to meet the publishers demands to appease the EGS because it means more money in THEIR pockets.

 

It's a lose lose situation for Devs who aren't indie and Consumers alike, the only people it benefits is Epic and Publishers. You can't just keep claiming "oh they're new they're new" forever it's been MONTHS now and they haven't bothered with basic highly requested features. All they've been doing is getting more exclusives to try and sell their platform. They're the bad guy because they do not think of the consuemrs they only think of what could potentially make them money, so they look for highly anticipated games, they look for hugely popular devs, and buy them out for exclusivity deals because they can not survive by just competeing in the market they can only survive if they can try to kill the other markets. Like Steam, like GoG, like Itch.io, etc etc. They want to kill the smaller ones and are trying to go for the throat on Steam. It's a BS marketing tactic.

I couldn't agree more, In addition, it's also not like Epic is even new to the gaming industry in general. They have been a part of it for nearly 3 decades. They should know better than to package this as anything but a shameless tactic that is dishonestly packaged as a good thing for the industry.

6 hours ago, floofer said:

They would simply get more money by having it on both platforms.

 

Even if it’s a 70% split as opposed to 85% (I think?) to what Epic have. That’s 70% more of a larger amount sold. They could very well still make more due to the vastly larger audience using steam. It’s 70% of a much larger pie. 

 

Its a fallacy that a split like this would actually give the developers more money.

This is the exact same reasoning I heard Miracle of Sound give on a podcast recently. Having a revenue split that is better on the surface means nothing if the amount of sales doesn't grow with it, and beyond that there is no telling how much of this better revenue split goes to the publisher rather than the developer.