Disney Invests 1.5 Billion in Epic Games to create Disney branded titles

[tkitch]

4 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

Hear me out.. Disney princesses MOBA. 

Do you think the world wouldn't play some ridiculous magical girl moba?

[Dillpickle23422]

Can't wait for the Mickey Mouse battle royale

[Seccedonien]

2 hours ago, OhioYJ said:

This would be the only real value for Disney to actually aquire Epic. Especially as much computer animation they are using in films today.  

 

I was thinking this morning it might be to get Disney in Fornite as advertising to get kids excited about Disney again, but being able to aquire the unreal engine might make more sense. 

I truly believe the real worth for them is in the engine and I wonder how many would realize that before it's too late.

[SolarNova]

Well if they influence the games developed from this point on, and/or those currently running, in anyway like they do with their movies..... well, you can expect things to crash and burn as it all goes horribly woke.

Though to be fair, there has been some relatively recent signs that they now realize 'that' direction leads to nothing but disaster.

 

[williamcll]

I imagine the the kingdom hearts crew will appear in fortnight very soon.

[Stahlmann]

19 hours ago, LAwLz said:

A i the only one who likes Epic games? I don't really see why they get so much hate. 

 

They have been fighting to lower fees and increase profits to game developers.

They have helped uncover a lot of illegal practices from both Google and Apple.

They are a counter balance to the near monopoly that steam has. 

Their game engine is fantastic and really pushing the industry forward. 

 

 

If their biggest crimes are things like "they made a few game exclusive to their launcher" and "their store lacks a cart" then I'd say they are angels compared to most other gaming companies. 

 

Maybe there is something I am missing, but all the good they have done seems far greater than the potentially slightly negative things I've heard them do,yet people talk about them as if they Epic games came over to their house and ran over their dog on purpose. 

 

It is possible that I have missed something though so feel free to enlighten me. 

I'm mostly not interested in them because I hate the principle behind exclusives. Instead of making their app good and worth using, they rely on exclusives and free games to force people to use it.

 

Steam might be a monopoly, but is it really that bad if they're just a monopoly because they simply have the best service which in turn brings in the users? They're not a monopoly because of anti-competitive behavior. (like exclusives)

 

It's not just Epic though. I dislike every publisher that makes use of exclusivity deals. Afaik Steam doesn't have any other than their own in-house developed games.

 

Xbox (Microsoft) for example just earned a lot more goodwill from me because of their recent decision to make their exclusive games for more platforms.

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Ahaha, good one.

Can Epic actually make new UT though? You know, the very game that it's the engine is named at. Sad. 

They were developing a new Unreal Tournament game in 2014. But sadly they canceled the project in 2017. It's a shame because it looked really good.

 

https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/en-US/

 

 

  

3 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

I'm mostly not interested in them because I hate the principle behind exclusives. Instead of making their app good and worth using, they rely on exclusives and free games to force people to use it.

I don't think there really is anything they could do to "make the app good and worth using", because at the end of the day it's just a store and launcher.

They have already tried the few things they could do, like lowering their fees to entice developers. They are giving away free games. And yet, because of the massive barrier to entry created by Steam's dominance they can't succeed.

 

Do you have any suggestion on how they could make their store better, in a way that you think would meaningfully shift users away from Steam? Because I don't think they can.

 

  

5 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Steam might be a monopoly, but is it really that bad if they're just a monopoly because they simply have the best service which in turn brings in the users? They're not a monopoly because of anti-competitive behavior. (like exclusives)

Yes, Steam being a monopoly is bad, because we don't know what we are missing if the market was more approachable to competitors.

Developers feel pressured into being on Steam and as a result have to fork over large amounts of their revenue to Valve. There is also an inherent risk with giving a single entity that much control and power over a market. Just because they have been good so far does not mean they will always be good, and with less competition, the risk of them abusing that power is increased. I am not saying they will abuse their position, but the impact of potential abuse is greater the more dominant they are.

 

 

9 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

It's not just Epic though. I dislike every publisher that makes use of exclusivity deals. Afaik Steam doesn't have any other than their own in-house developed games.

That's mostly because developers are essentially forced to be on their platform anyway. Steam doesn't have to pay developers to be exclusive because developers don't really have a choice. It's a similar situation to Apple in a way. Apple don't have to pay app developers to choose their platform, because Apple already controls the potential customer base. But if the app developers want to be able to reach that customer base they have to agree to Apple's rules which include a really high fee among other things.

 

 

  

11 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Xbox (Microsoft) for example just earned a lot more goodwill from me because of their recent decision to make their exclusive games for more platforms.

I haven't been following those stories so I might be wrong, but isn't Microsoft mostly just bringing Xbox games to Windows? I guess that kind of counts as bringing games to "more platforms", but it's still platforms Microsoft owns.

[WereCat]

44 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

 

That's mostly because developers are essentially forced to be on their platform anyway. Steam doesn't have to pay developers to be exclusive because developers don't really have a choice. It's a similar situation to Apple in a way. Apple don't have to pay app developers to choose their platform, because Apple already controls the potential customer base. But if the app developers want to be able to reach that customer base they have to agree to Apple's rules which include a really high fee among other things.

 

Steam is not forcing anyone. Devs put their games on Steam because it's good. Not only it promotes their games but it also ties it with communities and allows for direct mod supports trough workshop and communication with the player base. Steam also has chat and voice chat tools for player to communicate and to also stream gameplay, share gaming moments, achievements, game reviews, etc... It's so much more than just a store.

The Steam % cut being higher is likely not a deal breaker for most devs and it's completely different situation to what Apple does with their store.

 

Besides, devs can at the same time sell their game on other stores like GOG or Epic.

 

 

While if they go with an Epic exclusive offer they can't sell it anywhere else. It's not bad for Steam, it's bad for any other store. Epic also lacks a lot of features that Steam has so people just don't really use it that much even if they got a lot of free games there. 

Epic literally pays the devs a lot of money to make up for them not being able to sell their game anywhere else. How is that good for anyone else than the short-term revenue of the dev? It certainly sucks for players since they are now forced to go on Epic if they want to play that game even though they don't want to use another launcher and it sucks for any other store as well.

[jagdtigger]

21 hours ago, LAwLz said:

They have been fighting to lower fees and increase profits to game developers.

They have helped uncover a lot of illegal practices from both Google and Apple.

They are a counter balance to the near monopoly that steam has. 

Their game engine is fantastic and really pushing the industry forward. 

And bribe developers to only release games on their junk-shop.......   No matter how hard-core they pretending they are the same scumbags as any other company nowadays.

[Doobeedoo]

59 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

They were developing a new Unreal Tournament game in 2014. But sadly they canceled the project in 2017. It's a shame because it looked really good.

 

https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/en-US/

Yeah I know. I was one the early testers and followed the development throughout the years before it was eventually cancelled. The approach to it was half-community based but not enough from dev side. So it was being worked on very slowly and in pre-alpha stages for a while. You had to manually do a lot of stuff, even some basic options etc. and custom worked on maps, manually get new ver. once out. Then fn blew and they shifted rest of devs.

[SimplyChunk]

12 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Can Epic actually make new UT though?

They don't really need to.  Unreal Engine at this point is so ubiquitous.  Studios are even dropping they own in-house engines to use it.  Look at CDPR with the new Witcher game that's coming.  They've dropped their own Red Engine to use it for it.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if EA decide to shut down Dice and stop using Frostbite in the near future.  Especially if Disney do end up owning Unreal Engine and start hocking it out to the nearest bidder.  Further to that point.  Don't the two Star Wars Jedi games use unreal already?

[Beskamir]

My concern with this is what the shareholder percentages are now. Tencent's got like 40% last I checked, Tim has 51%, and the rest is divided up among a bunch of other investors. 1.5 billion is a sizable percent of the 22 billion so I'm most curious who gave up their shares or if new ones were created or if investors in Epic Games have no influence over the company's direction.

 

Basically as long as Tim has more than 50% ownership I'm not too concerned about Epic Games becoming terribly awful. He seems like a fairly sensible person with reasonable and not overly exploitive business practices. Obviously it's difficult thriving in business without being sociopath so I wouldn't argue he's completely perfect, but it is rather nice that he's using his fortune to buy up forests in order to preserve them.

 

Either way, as much as I despise Disney, I prefer them to Tencent so if Tencent's grasp on Epic Games decreases because of this that will only be a positive imo.

[OhioYJ]

9 hours ago, SimplyChunk said:

They don't really need to.  Unreal Engine at this point is so ubiquitous.  Studios are even dropping they own in-house engines to use it.  Look at CDPR with the new Witcher game that's coming.  They've dropped their own Red Engine to use it for it.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if EA decide to shut down Dice and stop using Frostbite in the near future.  Especially if Disney do end up owning Unreal Engine and start hocking it out to the nearest bidder.  Further to that point.  Don't the two Star Wars Jedi games use unreal already?

 

Gasp the horror, now Epic has a monopoly on Game and Movie animation engines. Now everyone must agree they are evil. Lets get out the pitchforks! / sarcasm...

 

Or just make a good product and people will use it. Maybe EGS should take note, rather than their current strategy.

[Doobeedoo]

13 hours ago, SimplyChunk said:

They don't really need to.  Unreal Engine at this point is so ubiquitous.  Studios are even dropping they own in-house engines to use it.  Look at CDPR with the new Witcher game that's coming.  They've dropped their own Red Engine to use it for it.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if EA decide to shut down Dice and stop using Frostbite in the near future.  Especially if Disney do end up owning Unreal Engine and start hocking it out to the nearest bidder.  Further to that point.  Don't the two Star Wars Jedi games use unreal already?

No the point is Epic sadly doesn't care about UT anymore yet it was one of their main games that also showcased new engine. Now it's as if they never even made the game, they stopped working on last one in alpha, removed all older ones from store. Can only hope they may be working on something for UT though.

[Sauron]

I wonder if this means they're dropping EA for star wars games...

[Stahlmann]

23 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I haven't been following those stories so I might be wrong, but isn't Microsoft mostly just bringing Xbox games to Windows? I guess that kind of counts as bringing games to "more platforms", but it's still platforms Microsoft owns.

They have been coming to Windows more and more, which is great for PC gamers. And now many of their exclusives are supposedly coming to PS5 and Switch aswell, which will be great for PS and Nintendo gamers. People can enjoy the games on more platforms. They become more accessible.

 

Yet somehow this situation escalated into XBOX fanboys having an existential crisis more than them being happy their favourite games can be played by more people. But that's just the unnecessary console wars that never cease.

 

23 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I don't think there really is anything they could do to "make the app good and worth using", because at the end of the day it's just a store and launcher.

They have already tried the few things they could do, like lowering their fees to entice developers. They are giving away free games. And yet, because of the massive barrier to entry created by Steam's dominance they can't succeed.

 

Do you have any suggestion on how they could make their store better, in a way that you think would meaningfully shift users away from Steam? Because I don't think they can.

I don't have any suggestions. I know that might sound like i'm a Steam shill but there aren't any features I'd want from a game launcher that aren't already on Steam. Maybe one suggestion: Don't bloat the app with unnecessary shit. That's also the main reason i don't use Discord over Teamspeak. It's supposed to be a VoIP app first and foremost, and Discord feels way too much like a social media platform to me.

 

23 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Developers feel pressured into being on Steam and as a result have to fork over large amounts of their revenue to Valve. There is also an inherent risk with giving a single entity that much control and power over a market. Just because they have been good so far does not mean they will always be good, and with less competition, the risk of them abusing that power is increased. I am not saying they will abuse their position, but the impact of potential abuse is greater the more dominant they are.

So you're agreeing that it isn't bad right now, which was my point. But it might be bad? Yes, I can see how it can get bad but I also have quite a lot of confidence in Gabe Newell to find a successor who will head in the same direction he's currently steering the company. The biggest reason for my trust in Valve is the fact they're not a puplicly traded company that has to cater to shareholders before catering to their customers.

 

23 hours ago, LAwLz said:

That's mostly because developers are essentially forced to be on their platform anyway. Steam doesn't have to pay developers to be exclusive because developers don't really have a choice. It's a similar situation to Apple in a way. Apple don't have to pay app developers to choose their platform, because Apple already controls the potential customer base. But if the app developers want to be able to reach that customer base they have to agree to Apple's rules which include a really high fee among other things.

There are positives and negatives for developers using Steam. Yes, they might have to pay more royalties selling on Steam than they might have on Epic or their own platforms like the launchers from EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, etc., but on the other hand they have a very good tool to market and sell to a huge audience. It's great for Indie devs. And it's also the reason why not many devs have come out and said that Steam has terrible TOS for them.

[AbsoluteWoo]

It really makes me laugh that people ignore the fact that Unreal Engine 5 is actually quite brilliant, that Fortnite is actually quite good and includes LEGO Fortnite for free, that they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys and made them FREE, that they give away games for free, but wah-wah Epic bad because the store isn't as good as Steam.

 

People saying giving away games for free is a dirty tactic because they aren't trying to make a their own store good, yet praise Microsoft for Game Pass despite Microsoft not releasing a game worth playing for close to a decade.

[Seccedonien]

On 2/9/2024 at 5:48 PM, LAwLz said:

I don't think there really is anything they could do to "make the app good and worth using", because at the end of the day it's just a store and launcher.

They could make it fast working and low in resource use as a start, Epic Launcher is so slow and sluggish with everything and using way too much system resources for what little it does. Doing that would already make people like me not completely hate the product to the point that I don't want it running at all unless forced too because I want to play something that is exclusively on there. Start with the basics and expand from there because atm. it's just annoying bloatware.

[Godlygamer23]

10 hours ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

People saying giving away games for free is a dirty tactic because they aren't trying to make a their own store good, yet praise Microsoft for Game Pass despite Microsoft not releasing a game worth playing for close to a decade.

Epic's method is arguably better because these count as purchases, so you can sometimes get side benefits from them, along with them being semi-permanently added to your account. Some games don't even require installation, or require Epic to be running in the background.

 

A few years back, Epic gave away Batman Arkham City, and I wanted to see if I could just launch the game without the launcher, or installation...Sure enough, it worked. 

 

Either way, many of the games that Epic gives away are actually pretty decent, and if Epic is currently running coupons, you can get said coupons by 'purchasing' free games. That's what allowed me to purchase Assassin's Creed Odyssey for $20 when it was still a fairly new release.

[LAwLz]

8 hours ago, Seccedonien said:

They could make it fast working and low in resource use as a start, Epic Launcher is so slow and sluggish with everything and using way too much system resources for what little it does. Doing that would already make people like me not completely hate the product to the point that I don't want it running at all unless forced too because I want to play something that is exclusively on there. Start with the basics and expand from there because atm. it's just annoying bloatware.

I haven't done any measurements but I find it hard to believe Epic Game store is more resource intense than Steam, which is extremely bloated. 

[RejZoR]

Epic sucks even though I used to be huge Unreal series fan. Disney is also crap, but I absolutely loved the Split Second Velocity game which was published by Disney of all companies. A rare example of a racing game that wasn't Need for Speed and it felt amazing to play, especially with unique destructible race tracks.

 

So, it depends. If they make Split Second like good games that won't be lame Epic exclusives, then count me in. Otherwise this deal can just as well burn down.

[NobleGamer]

14 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I haven't done any measurements but I find it hard to believe Epic Game store is more resource intense than Steam, which is extremely bloated.

The complaints with screenshots or videos I have seen on reddit's /r/fuckepic about the EGS client tend to consist of slower loading times than Steam and occasionally high CPU usage when user is not actively doing anything in the EGS client.

[Seccedonien]

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I haven't done any measurements but I find it hard to believe Epic Game store is more resource intense than Steam, which is extremely bloated. 

Booted them both and all they both are doing is sitting idle.

 

Epic has allot less features then Steam but takes more resources, it's using almost as much as Discord and I am in 60+ servers on that...

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, NobleGamer said:

on reddit's /r/fuckepic

Why am I not surprised that's a thing...

 

 

4 hours ago, Seccedonien said:

Booted them both and all they both are doing is sitting idle.

-image-

 

Epic has allot less features then Steam but takes more resources, it's using almost as much as Discord and I am in 60+ servers on that...

In your picture it's a 50MB difference, but I suspect that can be explained by the page you got open in the processes.

 

For anyone who want to measure this, when you look up the process "Steam" in the task manager, you only see the main process, not the child processes. On the EpicGamesLauncher you see everything (hence why it has the (5) behind it).

In order to measure the proper resource usage of Steam you have to take these processes and add them all together:

Steam Client WebHelper

Steam

Seam Client Service

 

If you do that, the RAM usage on my machine ends up being about 410MB when displaying the page for GTA 5.

 

 

When we do that, Steam ends up using more resources than Epic Game Store when displaying the same page. It also uses more CPU cycles (don't have an accurate numbers on that but I can get it if you want). The disk space usage is slightly higher on Epic Game Store though. 1,2GB vs 1GB. 

 

If you get different results then chances are you got a page with lots of images loaded in Epic Game Store, and a page with fewer images loaded on Steam. You're not really measuring the difference between Steam and Epic Game Store, you're measuring the difference in the game page you got loaded. You need to set both to the same page to measure it.

 

So no, Steam uses more resources than Epic Game Store. At least in this test I did using GTA 5 on a brand new install.

But they should be somewhat similar because both of them are Electron programs, and that's the majority of the resource usage. Hardly a reason to prefer one over the other.

[Obioban]

a) I'm shocked Disney has the money to make this move, with the billions they've been setting on fire for a the last couple years

b) Everything Disney touches turns to shit these days, so any epic fans should be wary '

c) Apple seems like an interesting 3rd wheel here. Disney is probably the company with the closest relationships with Apple, while Epic is one of, if not the, most hostile. How will that shake out?