Darq dev offers to donate all revenue from epic games store to charity if they are allowed to release nonexclusively

[spartaman64]

Quote

The developer behind Darq has offered to donated all of the money generated via Epic Games Store sales to charity -- but only if Epic agrees to a non-exclusivity deal.

source: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-08-28-darq-developer-offers-epic-revenue-to-charity-if-given-non-exclusivity

 

I think this is a great opportunity for epic to turn a bit of negative PR into positive PR so they would be crazy not to accept imo. I'm normally a big scardy cat when it comes to horror stuff but I'm getting the game on steam because I like the dev's loyalty to their community and wanting to give to charity and if they release on epic I'll buy it there also.

[Mira Yurizaki]

I don't understand why Epic wants to have exclusivity clauses outside of:

1. Having all of the pie
2. Having a pissing contest with Valve

If they wanted a game to succeed, an exclusivity clause comes last in mind.

[jiyeon]

I really don't like Tim. On one hand, he aims for Valve to be taken down a peg on the PC gaming space, but on the other, he's - at least at face value - proud of the success of games that he can potentially make exclusive to Epic Games Store?

[Taf the Ghost]

2 hours ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

I don't understand why Epic wants to have exclusivity clauses outside of:

1. Having all of the pie
2. Having a pissing contest with Valve

If they wanted a game to succeed, an exclusivity clause comes last in mind.

Fortnite made somewhere over 2 billion USD in 2018. It'll probably make between 1-2 billion USD during 2019. It'll likely make less than 1 billion USD in 2020. They want EGS to exist long after Fortnite is a "cool memory from your childhood" because it would be a consistent revenue generator. EGS made logical sense given that Epic already had a launcher people use for Fortnite. 

 

What didn't make much sense was pushing exclusivity deals before the product was ready for prime time. Discussing this again (because of Control's launch), I think I've really boiled down the actual issue. In a big chunk of the world, EGS still doesn't have regional pricing, so any exclusive game could see somewhere between a 10-400% price increase depending on the current state of your currency relative to the USD or EUR. Jacking up the price on someone that was expecting to pay X for a game and now might be paying 2-4 times that amount is a textbook way to generating actual hate against your company. Once you've tried to steal money from a large group, expect every little thing to bother them.

[Mira Yurizaki]

15 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

-Snip-

 

11 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

-Snip-

I mean, it doesn't take much thinking to figure out why Sweeney is doing this.

 

What upsets me is he saying exclusivity is good for developers.

[Taf the Ghost]

4 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

 

I mean, it doesn't take much thinking to figure out why Sweeney is doing this.

 

What upsets me is he saying exclusivity is good for developers.

Tim says a lot of things. Not a lot of them are actually true.

[Andreas Lilja]

32 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

It's Tim protesting against Gaben's company policy.  That's the point.  Tim wants more of a cut on his games.  He originally was posting them there.  No joke, you can find the Unreal Tournament games on steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=unreal tournament

Probably forgot about these since they were uploaded ages ago and clearly aren't high sellers.

[Jito463]

19 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

It's Tim protesting against Gaben's company policy.

You mean the policy that permits devs/publishers to generate keys and sell them directly without Valve getting a cut, despite still absorbing the server costs for distribution?  That policy?

 

Funny, I haven't heard of Epic being so generous to their devs/publishers.

 

I'm not trying to make Valve into a white knight.  They're a company and they're in business to make a profit.  Nevertheless, this trend to inversely paint Valve as the dark knight - out to steal devs souls or some such balderdash (such a great word) - is just as ludicrous a proposition.

 

As for the topic at hand, this is sounding more and more like the Darq dev is milking this for all it's worth, to generate interest in his game.  Not that I blame him, mind you.  I'd probably do the same in his position.

[Drak3]

6 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

this trend to inversely paint Valve as the dark knight

I dunno. Christian Bale did a great job when nobody thought he could. I say we give Valve a chance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

Worst case scenario, another Adam West.

 

[Jito463]

2 hours ago, Drak3 said:

I dunno. Christian Bale did a great job when nobody thought he could. I say we give Valve a chance.

I knew as soon as I typed it out that someone would go there.

2 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Worst case scenario, another Adam West.

Hey now, watch out or West will come gunning for you.  And you know what that leads to.

[xAcid9]

Oof. Rubbing salt to into the butthole. DARQ dev subtly trying to expose Tim's true face. 

[Guest]

Tim needs a PR guy

[spartaman64]

Just now, valdyrgramr said:

 

"the more gpus you buy the more you save"

[5x5]

7 hours ago, floofer said:

Tim needs a PR guy

He needs a hacked buttplug imo. Every time he's being bad, he gets tased from it. That's how you train a disobedient individual. 

[suicidalfranco]

Tim: a man who once accused MS of trying to have a monopoly on PC gaming during the release off Windows 8 with the introduction of UWP.

Now doing exactly the same thing he once accused MS of.

Pot calling the cattle black?

[The King of the Undead]

look. epic. If you want my damn money support linux in some way shape or form. now other way. no other how. I still won't buy the paid exclusives but I will buy some games who have better deals. however I am not buying something that I can't play.

[HomeBoi]

TBH the actual competition that Epic has been forcing on the industry aint a bad thing, cause a monopoly like steam kinda have had for years and good us as customers.

So i don't really care about exclusivity to be honest, also i don't really game all that much anymore and if i did i would prob play my 3 regular games ad infinitum so not bothered at all by new titles having to be bought either here or there.

[Jito463]

4 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

Pot calling the cattle black?

Cattle?

[Unixsystem]

6 hours ago, HomeBoi said:

TBH the actual competition that Epic has been forcing on the industry aint a bad thing, cause a monopoly like steam kinda have had for years and good us as customers.

So i don't really care about exclusivity to be honest, also i don't really game all that much anymore and if i did i would prob play my 3 regular games ad infinitum so not bothered at all by new titles having to be bought either here or there.

There's a difference between regular competition and all of these weird big baskets of cash that Epic is throwing around seemingly at random in any attempt to lure people onto their service. 

 

All they had to do was say to devs "hey, we take a much smaller cut of your profits, in exchange we want you to lower the list price of your game on the Epic Store by ~10% versus the price on Steam. Devs still make the same or slightly more per copy than on Steam, Epic doesn't need to put up any cash upfront and can instead invest in the service itself, and customers get a global discount on everything compared to what they'd pay on Steam. Maybe offer some small bonus/"port" money to smaller devs just in order to offset the cost of maintaining the game on multiple storefronts (not really necessary but I don't see anything wrong with the idea). Tack on the occasional real exclusive, as in a game either made or funded entirely by them from day one, and you've got even more of a value add. 

 

Assuming the above (and that Epic actually made the store functional with expected modern features), I would have no qualms about using Epic for some or all of my purchases. Of course there would still be the occasional Valve fanboy whining as you'd expect, but there would be no widespread distaste for Epic the way that things seem to be heading right now. 

[Andreas Lilja]

Dumping is not fair competition. 

 

[realpetertdm]

22 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

They were at the time, but now it's more of a cult following by people sick of 400 CODs, BFs, and shitty battle royal games.  Quake and Unreal were the big craze in the 90s and early to mid 2000s.  I just don't think Gabe really cares.

From what I've heard nobody at Valve actually cares about EGS. They don't consider Epic a competitor or anything else.

[Thaldor]

14 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Why would they?  EGS is probably one of the dumbest protests in history.

If EGS was a protest it would be the one where the one guy with megaphone and banners shows up after telling everyone in every media how they are going to protest for some reason... and then no one else came along and the guy decides to go with the plan and call it a great protest while everyone just hopes he gets the idea and just stops.

[Brooksie359]

On 8/29/2019 at 12:04 PM, HomeBoi said:

TBH the actual competition that Epic has been forcing on the industry aint a bad thing, cause a monopoly like steam kinda have had for years and good us as customers.

So i don't really care about exclusivity to be honest, also i don't really game all that much anymore and if i did i would prob play my 3 regular games ad infinitum so not bothered at all by new titles having to be bought either here or there.

What epic games is bringing is not competition. It's not competitive at all and lacks basic features that basically every other platform has. It just has exclusives that they paid for to try and force people to use a platform that is just miles worse than the rest of the competition. I dont like uplay or origins all that much but I would still take them over the epic games store any day of the week. 

[Taf the Ghost]

3 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

What epic games is bringing is not competition. It's not competitive at all and lacks basic features that basically every other platform has. It just has exclusives that they paid for to try and force people to use a platform that is just miles worse than the rest of the competition. I dont like uplay or origins all that much but I would still take them over the epic games store any day of the week. 

EGS is the place to distribute if you're making an Unreal Engine game. The lack of 5% license fee is relatively massive. However, outside of that situation, all the exclusive deal does is assure you'll make the money agreed to at some point after launch. (Some deals have had upfront cash, but most of them seem to be post-launch "fill in the missing" deals. Yes, EGS did this on the cheap.)

 

We'll know a lot more when the exclusivity deals end and they go live on Steam. The smarter developers will do an Ad Campaign when they go live on Steam, to see if they can "double dip" the launch window and grab that long-tail sales.

 

EGS would have saved themselves about 50% of the hate by putting the list price at 57.99. Even 2USD cheaper would have saved a lot of the consternation, as there's 0 benefit to the end user.