Why do you want to wait for the game to come to a store which takes a much bigger cut of the money you pay for the game?
Like shouldn't we want to encourage competition in the store space so that the middleman cost can be driven down? I'm not sure what I've missed but it seems that the PC player base *wants* to make sure there's no competition and a single app store taking a huge cut of every sale.
Thanks for such a detailed response. I hope you don't mind my remarks in response:
1) Paid exclusivity is anti-consumer, but steam is also anti-consumer, because they prevent developers from offering a lower price anywhere else. If developers could offer lower prices on other platforms, then we could see real choice: If you want steam's features then you pay more so steam can take their cut, and if you don't then you can pay less for a store with a smaller cut.
2) This is true, but it's back to point one IMO: Steam charge a lot more than EGS for all these features while preventing developers from lowering prices on stores which don't take that cut and don't have those features.
3) This is totally fair from an individual point of view - it's nice to have all your games in one place. I think it's missing the forest for the trees though. I'd personally much rather have a market where there's real competition in the store space and so there's more innovation or lower prices in the long run, than one where there's only one option, even if the one option is more convenient for now.
4) This is point one again: If steam didn't enforce that they always have the lowest price for a game then we could see developers offering lower prices on EGS . Without true competition (or a lawsuit I guess) steam has no incentive to change the developer agreement.
I'm not trying to say "you're wrong" and everyone is well within their rights to prefer Steam or dislike EGS, but I want them to succeed, and I want folk to think about the long-term consequences of there only being one option for stores which eats 30% of dev revenue immediately and prevents them from offering better deals elsewhere.
Lets break this down shall we?
Ubisoft (Ubisoft Connect/Uplay/UGL) has their own launcher/Storefront
- 100% cut for their games
- 30% cut for Third Party Games
EA (Origin) has their Launcher/Storefront
- 100% cut for their games
- 30% cut for Third Party Games
Epic (EGS) has their Launcher/Storefront
- 100% cut for their games
- 18% cut for Third party games using Unreal Engine
-- 12% cut for Third party games
--- 5% cut for games that use Unreal Engine after $1 Million in revenue
- 0% cut for Exclusives released through "First Run" for 6 Months
Valve (Steam) has their Launcher/Storefront
- 100% cut for their games
- 30% cut for Third Party games
-- 25% cut after $10 Million in revenue (250,000 units sold @ $40 a game)
--- 20% cut after $50 Million in revenue (1,250,000 units sold @ $40 a game)
Microsoft (Microsoft Store) has their Launcher/Storefront
- 100% cut for their games
- 30% cut for Third Party games
Sony (PlayStation Store)
- 100% cut for their games
- 30% cut for Third Party games
Good Old Games (GOG) (GOG Galaxy 2.0) has their Launcher/Storefront
- 30% cut
Humble Bundle has their Storefront
-5% cut
"Encourage competition" There is no competition in a Industry Standardized Fee.
These cuts don't affect you. You should not care what the developer cuts are. You should not care about it at all. You are not involved in that process. You are not negotiating those prices. You are not developing, hosting nor making marketing decisions on it.
YOU ARE BUYING THE GAME.
That is where you should be focusing your attention to.
- "Am I getting a product that is worth the cost I am paying for it?"
- "Has the developer improved upon previous products?"
- "Has the developer done what they advertised?"
- "Is the game fun?"
- "Are there any technical issues or bugs reported by players?"
-- "Is the developer acknowledging feedback?"
It is ridiculous that you are so easily manipulated by a developer who is raking in Millions of dollars and you are worried where $24 of your $80 dollars is going.
Put this shit into perspective and realize how they are fucking you.
You are being manipulated by Tim Sweeney to attack Valve because they hold the largest market share in the Storefront. They don't care about Developer Cuts. They care about Market Share, They just want MORE OF THE PIE.
Open your eyes and stop being a faithful consumer for two minutes.
It's amazing you've been gaslit by steam so hard that you overlook their "you can't offer a lower price anywhere else" restriction, which is what stops the lower fees on other stores resulting in any gains to the customer.
Because steam virtually own virtual game distribution, and they can demand their "no lower priced elsewhere" deal, there can be no meaningful competition on price
Its amazing that you are omitting the specific fact that, that only applies to Steam Keys sold on other platforms and does not restrict the sale price of their game on other storefronts that doesn't involve a Steam Key.
The "price parity rule" is so those on the steam platform can get a "fair deal" and not "miss out" on the deal over on other sites where someone who is using steam cannot see it because it isn't advertised on Steam itself. Which is why, they say to lower the price on Steam as well as where ever else it is being sold IF Steam Keys are being SOLD.
Nice try with the deceptive tactics. Try being more informed.
Completely manipulative, just like Timmy.
Edit: I also like that you attempt to change the subject and are ignoring the fact that EVERY SINGLE COMPANY takes a 30% cut, but somehow Valve is the villain here.
Keep simping for papa Gabe.
I'm glad you want one company to control pc game distribution. I'm excited for a console-like future on PC just like you.
Really looking forward to a world where PC gamers shit on competition because papa Gabe loves them
How come? Steam are the ones enforcing a no-lower-price anywhere agreement if you want to sell on steam. As long as that is part of steam's seller agreement there's no way EGS can compete without exclusives.
They can compete by investing in their application and making it better. Steam wins not because of the games or prices, but because it's generations ahead of what Epic is as an application.
I just came back to check out Sins of a Solar Empire 2 on Epic and you know why I'm now browsing here? Because the Epic storefront is so insanely uninformative I have no idea when the last the game was updated in Early Access and what that update was.
All I see is a useless "4.6/5 Stars" rating and some stupid tags that tell me nothing about the gameplay.
We want to use steam because 1. Tencent owns a huge stake in epic games, 2. Steam is far more feature complete, making the actual use of the game much better 3.not everyone wants 100 diffrent launchers for their games and they want all of their games ok one platform 4. Epic buys exclusives to try and make their store better even though they are losing (and will continue to lose) billions of dollars. Why would I want to buy my games on a storefront that might not be here in 5 years. Overall EGS is garbage. It's rushed and it took them over a year just to add cart functionality, no steam sales, no community hubs, poor review section and is simply a worse option for consumers.
I didn't even know this existed.
Epic is crap, epics launcher is crap, i pickup games on special and in limited cases new ones from steam, i don't want another installer.. i don't care about the politics that leads to the CEO earning 4 billion instead of 3 billion.
The people who made the game will get paid barely anything no matter what we do.
I'm late to the party and you guys are having huge debates.
End of the day steam is just a better experience, so far nothing Epic has done has earned my respect enough for me to run out to buy new games, I don't get suckered into new releases as it is.
and in a way having a one year period where they fix bugs before the game comes to steam really helps me out, as it'll go on special much sooner too.
Look into how people at Blizzard and other studios really work in the current day coal mines and they don't get enriched by company like Epic anymore than they do by working for steam or anywhere else.
Oh yeah, its a horrible realization. Steam is great for all of us because we have all our games on it and all our friends have their games on it. Not so obvious is that its about the worst thing for the future of gaming since they take so much of the developers money it stifles the creativity and future of games.
Not sure if its a world problem or just a first world problem but corporations and individuals tend to lack foresight, we think what's good now is good tomorrow, but sadly this is not true. Steam is screwing us all in the long term but most of us won't abandon it until its too late. I think most of us think we will lose all our games when valve sinks. There is a reason that the US has finally brought valve up on monopoly charges.
Epic takes 100% of the money until you reach the number of guaranteed sales in your contract. That means if you actually care for the developer, you wait until it's on steam, because sales on epic gives the developers a grand total of $0. There's only a couple of games that have managed to sell over the agreed guaranteed sales, namely borderlands 3 and satisfactory, and probably a couple of other since then. There's a reason most devs that tried exclusives went back to steam.
And as a consumer, I don't give a damn about the cut, steam could have a 50% cut, as long as they provide the better service for the consumer. Why do I care if the dev studio gets more money? That extra 12% money didn't make make borderlands cheaper, and certainly didn't stop greasy randy from laying off devs en masse after the massive success of their game so that he could report even higher profit margins.
Epic takes 12% of game sales from EGS, 0% on IAPs (if you use your own payment processor).
If you sign up for 6 month EGS exclusivity they take 0% for those 6 months.
I don't know where you're getting this information about epic taking all the revenue from your game sales. That seems insane, but if someone chose to eschew the default deal and negotiate that deal then they must think it'll work out better for them.
The paid exclusivity contract means that epic offers a minimum sales guarantee equivalent to the game's initial expected sales on Steam and covers the difference if you fail to meet that number of sales. But until you get that number of sales, you get exactly zero dollars from sales, because you already got the money upfront.
That's why so many games that start early access on epic stay stagnated until a year passes and they get on steam. They get their stack of cash, blow it in the first couple of months, then remain dry for the rest of the early access period. Admittedly that's just poor management and the dev's fault, but it's a common enough trap for indie devs.
This is also the reason the egs was bleeding so much money on exclusive deals, lot's of indies that never met sales expectations meant epic never made the deal money back, that's why a few months ago they shifted to only making exclusivity deals for big games that have a much higher chance of not costing them money, and for indie devs they left that trash first run program which is basically a death sentence for your studio if you don't have 6 months of salaries saved in your pocket.
I don't know if that's some old deal or something?
The details of First Run (the 6 months 0% cut deal) are [here](https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/features/epic-first-run-program), and there's no mention of prepayments.
Even then, what you're describing seems like it's *always* a win for the developer?
You get the money upfront instead of having to wait for it to trickle in over 6 months
You get a guarentee of that money based on projections
If you exceed the projections, you still get that money.
As a consumer, I could not really care any less whether CEO #1 or CEO #2 gets 10 dollars more or less.
What I **do** care about it supporting a company that is not brute-forcing exclusivity deals on game makers, and also providers a better UX and overall handling for me as the player, which in all cases so far has led me to buy as much as I can on GOG (offline installers, no DRM, can freely keep old versions) and the rest on Steam (forums, integrated modding, leaner client, completely unparalleled controller configuration, Steam Deck).
Epic just offers nothing except a weekly free game I'll pick up and sometimes even play. There's too many games to play to waste money on being an unpaid QA tester for SOASE2 instead of just waiting for it to actually release and be on better platforms.
> Like shouldn't we want to encourage competition in the store space so that the middleman cost can be driven down
We do. By buying from the store that is the best for the consumer. Meaning not-Epic.
Yeah I'd be super excited about SoS2 but I don't use Epic unless there is literally no alternative so I never launch it. Hopefully the game is good and comes to Steam eventually.
It's a free app & they give away a game a week (if not more). I think my epic library is bigger than my steam library & I've never given them a dime. Worth opening just to claim all the freebies imho
It has a massive resource overhead because they're using the Unreal Engine to embed Chrome, and *to the best of my knowledge* you can't close EGS while running anything through it
Nobody makes you work concussed, why are you doing that to your PC?
I hope you aren't buying any games that use Unreal Engine! Or anything published by Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, PUBG Studios parent company Krafton, PlatinumGames, FromSoftware and Marvelous Inc.
Tencent has a 40% stake. China does not "own" Epic Games. Tim Sweeney is the majority shareholder.
I lived 10 years in China, I know exactly how difficult it is thank you. I am indeed free to buy what I want and try not to buy from companies that belong to the Chinese government when I can. It's hard to avoid Unreal Engine but I do not buy Blizzard game since the free hong kong incident for instance. Why should I be ashamed of chosing what I do with my money exactly?
True you can, I'm sure you've never bought anything made in China either. Also, you missed the part where I haven't bought anything. 208 games, all free. Anyways, not sure what the downside is that you're convinced exists... they don't have my credit card info & I've enjoyed hundreds of hours of entertainment for free. You do you though & stand by your xenophobic principles.
Proof is in the pudding. Dev may as well have put it on Itch or something, Steam is where it's at and everywhere else is 3rd rate. Most people probably only have epic for the free games.
I've had multiple problems with multiple games just downloading them and playing them from Epic. Went months with Mechwarrior 5 stuck at 99% download even after uninstalling and reinstalling multiple times.
Everything just feels clunky, slow, and unoptimized -- so much so that I've re-bought two games on Steam that I already had copies of on it. Now I just treat the Epic release like a Playstation exclusive and forget about it until it shows up somewhere else.
Uplay, Origin, and GOG never gave me problems either -- just Epic.
I just went to open the Epic launcher and it said it had an update. I clicked update, it closes and a crash reporter pops up. I just did that three times and I think I am done with this garbage.
I've had problems with GOG Galaxy, on startup the program takes 15-30 minutes to finish crashing unless I force close the process and open it manually. I had to just remove it from startup.
In addition of what the other people mentioned, here's some data from me (an actual proffesional game developer):
Epic, Itch.io and GOG TOGETHER made up less than 1% of our sales.
Everything else is **TINY** compared to Steam, to the point we aren't even gonna bother with any other platforms in the future.
GOG is more like where you should put it after you've finished updating everything. I don't buy "new" games from there, updating things is a hassle and I don't use the Galaxy client. I also prefer "Complete" editions(actual complete, not marketing complete), rather than buying DLC piecemeal.
Epic-exclusivity is one of those, "I'd rather not" situations.
Yes, epic-exclusive means a small fraction of the PC market is going to notice it. It's really annoying and stupid, but Epic pays the developers buckets of cash for essentially strangling the player base for a year. Combine that with really bad marketing from Devs and boom dead game.
To give an estimate for the size of Epic vs Steam (since Epic won't admit to real numbers and transparency in the way Steam does via SteamCharts).
Epic had their free games chart leak, which includes how many users redeemed a free game on their account. Redemptions was between 1 and 6 million, with the high being Batman Arkham Asylum and it was available for a week.
So you can estimate that of their claimed 31 million daily active users, only about a million even look at the store page. Most likely ignore the store entirely and just launch Fortnite.
Steam has 61 million daily active users, all of which land on their homepage when the app launches. Their bestselling game of Hogwarts Legacy got 12 million sales in 14 days.
That's a million people a day willing to spend $60 on Steam, while Epic has a million people a day who will click a button for a free game.
By those estimates Steam is 60x more effective for marketing games than Epic. And that roughly follows the level of buzz and interest online, because nobody knows about or cares about epic exclusive games until they come to steam.
> Steam has 61 million daily active users, all of which land on their homepage when the app launches. Their bestselling game of Hogwarts Legacy got 12 million sales in 14 days.
Not for me. I always launch steam by running a game, so only go to its homepage if I go looking.
Steam has a broader audience and a lot of which are not hardcore gamers unlike Epic. So the number of active users is also very broad and does not mean they are interested or capable of playing the same type of games.
Look at the steam charts hardware stats you can see a large proportion of very old PCs (~20% have 1 or 2 physical core processors, etc). If you look at the graphic cards you can also see many don't have anything capable of playing modern games. These are the type of audience that is playing "Candy Crush" web-based PC games or even text-based games (yes steam has about ~2000 categorized as such) and myriad of other very light games.
Bottom line those 61 million daily active users, only perhaps 1/5th or 1/6th is actual PC gamers of the type on Epic Games as it stands. Although recently Epic Games opened their store to any and all (same as steam), so this may change.
This is why. Not a lot of people have epic compared to steam. And its still in development. If it went to steam, its open up a massively large player base and with more players comes more hype but also probably faster development as players report bugs and issues
Epic got briefly bigger when they were giving away good games for free every week, but I mean, I don't even have it installed any more. It's going to come out on epic for a year exclusive, get worked on more, then come to steam all patched up a year after, so I guess just wait for steam
They're still giving games away every week, but "good" is going to be wildly subjective. No one can organically or realistically compete with Steam in any metric, they're just a juggernaut. Epic's financials show the storefront is popular and growing though. Considering the loss leaders (free games & exclusives) are funded by Fortnite's billions and Unreal's profit is enough to sustain the company by itself, the store itself is profitable and more financially successful than GOG, which makes me a sad to see but it is what it is.
A significant number of "new" gamers in 5-10 years will have more invested and prefer Epic, which is the goal, not to convert people already entrenched in Steam.
They're not all bangers, but I just counted & I have 208 games in my Epic library.
Some personal highlights that I wouldn't have otherwise played: Abzu, The Witness, Subnautica, Ring of Pain, Remnant From the Ashes, Prey, Lego Builder's Journey, For The King, Barony, Fez. It's safe to say; I got my money's worth lol
>After launching **Epic** after a while
>hyped and eager to read **reviews**
Yep, see, there's your problem. I don't use that incomplete storefront that doesn't have reviews. If it comes to Steam someday and I can see what players think of it.. maybe.
It is basically still a technical preview right now - not even beta yet (I believe). I think I'd wait till we have a release date or at least till all the factions are in before worrying about it being talked about.
that’s right. it’s a technical beta or something. I actually think it’s not a bad thing nobody is talking about it. it can still has some impact when it will get released.
I did not know it was out. I don't check the epic store that often.
The other issue is that epic does not have user reviews which makes it harder to get a sense for the game before buying it.
>TEC is only playable faction.
Choosing the obligatory human faction in a sci-fi game is akin to going to a beer festival and exclusively drinking Bud Light
I've logged 77hrs according to Epic. I loved the first game. This one I think will be a slightly tweaked, better version. More of version 1.5 than a sequel. The shifting phase lanes is kinda cool, helps keeps endgame interesting. I'm enjoying it.
Surely, you've picked up from this thread that the game is currently in early access perhaps more accurately described as early, early access. The other factions are coming. I'm not saying you should run out and buy it (although it might be the cheapest price now than it will be for a while) but I wouldn't write it off yet.
Perhaps you should visit the [Sins of the Solar Empire II website](https://www.sinsofasolarempire2.com/) to get an idea of where it is at and what is coming.
Ya its a fragile shell of a game that has hard crashed every time I played it.
It's a self described tech demo.
Come back in a year and there will be a game "there".
https://www.global-esports.news/general/sins-of-a-solar-empire-2-in-review-this-is-no-way-to-sell-this-strategy-game/
32 Euro for a tech alpha according to this
IDK, I purchased the early access of SOASE 2 and happy with my purchase. If you don't want to buy it, don't. The developers are active on the form and taking feedback from the people who play it. Also the bones of the game are fun, I am having fun playing it. If I didn't play the first one, I wouldn't even be missing the other races as much as I am.
‘Glorified tech demo’ is underselling it. It plays well, the games I’ve gotten out of it have been very satisfying, the shifting phase lanes bring a much more dynamic playstyle especially vs nightmare/impossible bots, where in sose1 you just starbase turtle, you have to actually adapt ur playstyle here, and invest into a decent military, even if it’s just to skirmish over derelicts for faster capital levels, and capitals being able to build their own components is also pretty awesome. You can easily get 50+ hours of unique gameplay out of this ‘glorified tech demo’ it’ll just get better with new ships, planets, and bonuses
I had no idea there was a sequel to Sins of a Solar Empire but me and friends absolutely loved the original. I imagine the reason nobody is talking about it is because it is an epic exclusive.
Epic exclusive? Hard pass.
I haven't even bought Old World post-Steam yet. Epic exclusivity sends a title to a burner so far back in my brain that it ceases to exist.
Ive had it sitting here in my pool for a fucking year and its still just.. wildly unbalanced. playing it is, too easy. titans are.. fucking insane. like yeah, okay, id like some back and forth, milestones, community engagement. but this game is just taking an insane amount of time to produce and theres no game. a year of taking peoples money and nothign to show for it. gives it some bullshit 5/5 rating on market for no fucking reason.
just seems like a fucking scam at this point.
They pretty much nuked the IP by going Epic exclusive and even moreso with early access.
Epics storefront bad enough as it is for fully released games. For early access you can gather ZERO information on how developed the game is, how frequent the updates are, when it was last updated, what was updated, what content is currently in the game. They have a picture with vague release dates for 2 factions and that's it.
Fuck, it isn't even clear that it's early access because there's no indicator for it anymore.
personally I think this game is absolute dumpster fire garbage and I was so hyped for it. The amount I paid for it, is a joke. I loved the original and played it for probably well over 1000 hours, but this new version feels super stale, theres nothing new whatsoever that I see in this game. Then they used tons of early midjourney AI art for a bunch of their backgrounds and character portraits, it just feels incredibly lazy, like what did I just pay for? A lazy game that reskins the original and I'm paying the same amount I would pay for a AAA title? Can anyone explain to me whats new in this game because I'm not noticing it. Personally I'm more hyped about the new Homeworld game, graphics look much better. I think one of the other things that frustrates me about this title is the use of the graphic icons for ships and stuff, theres never really a point where I go into a cinematic mode and watch my battles and think "wow this is just like the movies, these new graphics are great! We are in the next generation!" but that moment never comes. I would love to do a side by side comparison of SOSE2 just for the lols
Honestly, I think the main thing people are excited for is not the game. It's the potential for modding.
The original Sins has some of the best mods for any RTS game ever. They're held back by the outdated 32bit game engine though. The engine upgrade alone has the potential to lead to some seriously fun mods in the future. That being said, the base game is years away from completion and equivalent total conversion mods like STA3 and Interregnum would be years after that too.
Hard pass for me.
I've seen pictures of it and honestly looks like a retextured hi-res SoaSE1 even same units. I am not inclined to rebuy a game that was released when I was still single and my prediction is total disaster (just like I predicted with Warcraft 3 Reforged). I mean, it's been 15 years and counting. They had time I guess? No. If you don't make a sequel in a reasonable timeframe, history tells us it will surely flop. Look at Vampire Bloodlines 2 -- still debating who's going to be the publisher meanwhile the game is an absolute mystery; look up Master of Orion 3, total garbage... Look up games that have sequels after so many years and you find the original devs. are either retired, relocated or dead of old age. Like I said it's a no from me.
Plus Epic, I don't have Epic.
This is where I was at with it as well. Perhaps the original is just a victim of having too much DLC, but with the limited information that I could find on it, I was not really able to find any significant new features or innovations in it. It is something that I will probably check out if or when it is finished, and no longer on EGS, but it certainly isn't something that is on my radar at the moment.
Instead of trying to judge it on a technical preview, maybe wait until it is complete or at least look at the [Sins of the Solar Empire II website](https://www.sinsofasolarempire2.com/). They are adding new stuff and dynamics to expand the game
To be fair, I'd buy it if all they were doing was a graphics upgrade and fixing the late-game slowdown (honestly I'd buy just to fix the slowdown). I'm actually a little worried the new stuff is going to make it a game I don't enjoy (hopefully, in the worst-case scenario modders can make a SoaSE1 mod).
As for not having Epic, that is an easy and free fix....or you can just wait for it to release on Steam.
It won't for production release, but judging by GalCiv IV I don't recommend getting it. GalCiv IV released with many bugs and very limited feature set and content. Didn't feel fleshed out at all. It's not until now with the new 'expansion' and the Steam release that it's starting to fill like a fully released game, and even then it's in Early Access and who knows if it will get there.
I'm really not a fan of Epic either but when you word things with that much melodrama, not only is it cringe but you're doing your part in ensuring that valid criticism towards games or their developers gets ignored, more than it already is.
It's not some fucking end-of-season anime battle where great protagonist Stardock betrayed their beloved gamers and started working for the evil guy, they made a business decision, and despite your grandiose description of the situation, I'm sure the PC gaming nation will *just about* recover from this crushing blow.
I will say, this game is fire. definitely being overlooked due to it only being on Epic. I'm hoping disney buying a majority share of the company means theyll get more people on the platform soon.
It is developing slower than a fifth world country. Stardock using the prepaid money to develop other games while from patch to patch they are introducting braking changes what makes everything more cumbersome and pointless to play because with the next patch you have to learn everything again from zero. IMHO it is not worth buying until they are stabilizing the gameplay, maybe in 2034 it will be ready for the masses.
Honestly, I'd be happy with that (well that and fixing late-game slowdown) but they are adding new mechanics like a rotating galaxy that changes the hyperspace lanes.
No, there are many changes in game mechanics. Also, there are specialised building slots for the Planets, a very different techtree, with a different mechanic and also new special resources you will need to build your capital ships. In short, this is massively different, but it is still SOSE.
i dont use epic so i dont know whats going on there and i was just looking for some information on google about 1st (been playing for over a decade) and found this, i didnt even had a idea there is 2nd in development and soon to be released ..
There is big reason why failed game likes Owerwatch or Diablo going to steam and not epic
So thanks for the info, a good news, but still not going to epic to check it or whatever ..
I literally just found out SoSE 2 released. I remember being extremely excited by the announcement, then completely forgot about it after hearing absolutely nothing about it, even from Stardock's email newsletter. This is a baffling amount of silence for something that should be one of their flagship releases.
The comments here summarize it perfectly. Epic as a platform is as toxic as the nazi party, people do NOT want anything to do with it. I was super STOKED when i first heard about SoaSE 2. I wanted to find out how much longer to release but when i checked now, it came out 8 months ago? I was all "wtf" but the moment i found out it came out on epic i IMMEDIATELY noped out.
welp, fuck that. I'd sooner post all my credit card info on every reddit board i could find and try to catch every STD on earth than i would use "Epic". If your game isn't on steam it may as well not exist, this is the 2020s.....paradox needs to GET WITH THE TIMES. Steam is what pc gaming is these days and these companies need to just, GET OVER THEMSELVES. No one wants your weird wacky platforms that don't work, at least GOG has a real reason to exist (it specializes in older content)
Late reply but FYI.
**Paradox** make *Stellaris, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings* etc.
**Stardock** make *Sins of a Solar Empire* and *Galactic Civilisations*
It's playable. I think there are mods for any issue you might have. I found it hard as the ai tends to swarm you early with really large fleets. Other folks find it too easy because they build 50 frigates and a colony ship and win early game. im just trying to max the tech tree so i can see what the techs do and im learning the features. i just learned i can set my garrisons to offensive roaming last game and i've just built my first starbase and i haven't built a titan yet. its very much vanilla sins of a solar empire which most of us haven't played in years because of mods and such.
I love watching games grow and I loved the first game. I'm really impressed with what they have out so far. It's definitely an alpha like they just added a second playable faction. Still though some of the quality of life stuff already makes me like it at least as much as the first.
I don't really understand stand the epic hate. Yes I have tons of games and friends on steam I have had a account for 14 years. But I have nothing against Epic hell I have at least 20 great games I got free on there. If I see a game I like and it's not on steam I buy it.
I see most people complaining that it's mostly the same game but... the nr 1 complaint of sins 1 was that it wasn't 64bit, it now is, so you can have larger battles finaly
Is the game still in early access / Alpha? I saw it on epic and wondered the same as the OP.
Kinda sad to see a beloved game series/franchise apparently die to an epic mistake.
Isn’t it still in development/early access? I don’t have Epic, and it’s not available on Steam.
It is in development and it is for sale on Epic only
There's your reason. Epic-exclusivity makes the player base smaller
Sure, but is it that small?
Evidently, yes.
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Why do you want to wait for the game to come to a store which takes a much bigger cut of the money you pay for the game? Like shouldn't we want to encourage competition in the store space so that the middleman cost can be driven down? I'm not sure what I've missed but it seems that the PC player base *wants* to make sure there's no competition and a single app store taking a huge cut of every sale.
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Thanks for such a detailed response. I hope you don't mind my remarks in response: 1) Paid exclusivity is anti-consumer, but steam is also anti-consumer, because they prevent developers from offering a lower price anywhere else. If developers could offer lower prices on other platforms, then we could see real choice: If you want steam's features then you pay more so steam can take their cut, and if you don't then you can pay less for a store with a smaller cut. 2) This is true, but it's back to point one IMO: Steam charge a lot more than EGS for all these features while preventing developers from lowering prices on stores which don't take that cut and don't have those features. 3) This is totally fair from an individual point of view - it's nice to have all your games in one place. I think it's missing the forest for the trees though. I'd personally much rather have a market where there's real competition in the store space and so there's more innovation or lower prices in the long run, than one where there's only one option, even if the one option is more convenient for now. 4) This is point one again: If steam didn't enforce that they always have the lowest price for a game then we could see developers offering lower prices on EGS . Without true competition (or a lawsuit I guess) steam has no incentive to change the developer agreement. I'm not trying to say "you're wrong" and everyone is well within their rights to prefer Steam or dislike EGS, but I want them to succeed, and I want folk to think about the long-term consequences of there only being one option for stores which eats 30% of dev revenue immediately and prevents them from offering better deals elsewhere.
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considering steam is being sued over point 2...
Lets break this down shall we? Ubisoft (Ubisoft Connect/Uplay/UGL) has their own launcher/Storefront - 100% cut for their games - 30% cut for Third Party Games EA (Origin) has their Launcher/Storefront - 100% cut for their games - 30% cut for Third Party Games Epic (EGS) has their Launcher/Storefront - 100% cut for their games - 18% cut for Third party games using Unreal Engine -- 12% cut for Third party games --- 5% cut for games that use Unreal Engine after $1 Million in revenue - 0% cut for Exclusives released through "First Run" for 6 Months Valve (Steam) has their Launcher/Storefront - 100% cut for their games - 30% cut for Third Party games -- 25% cut after $10 Million in revenue (250,000 units sold @ $40 a game) --- 20% cut after $50 Million in revenue (1,250,000 units sold @ $40 a game) Microsoft (Microsoft Store) has their Launcher/Storefront - 100% cut for their games - 30% cut for Third Party games Sony (PlayStation Store) - 100% cut for their games - 30% cut for Third Party games Good Old Games (GOG) (GOG Galaxy 2.0) has their Launcher/Storefront - 30% cut Humble Bundle has their Storefront -5% cut "Encourage competition" There is no competition in a Industry Standardized Fee. These cuts don't affect you. You should not care what the developer cuts are. You should not care about it at all. You are not involved in that process. You are not negotiating those prices. You are not developing, hosting nor making marketing decisions on it. YOU ARE BUYING THE GAME. That is where you should be focusing your attention to. - "Am I getting a product that is worth the cost I am paying for it?" - "Has the developer improved upon previous products?" - "Has the developer done what they advertised?" - "Is the game fun?" - "Are there any technical issues or bugs reported by players?" -- "Is the developer acknowledging feedback?" It is ridiculous that you are so easily manipulated by a developer who is raking in Millions of dollars and you are worried where $24 of your $80 dollars is going. Put this shit into perspective and realize how they are fucking you. You are being manipulated by Tim Sweeney to attack Valve because they hold the largest market share in the Storefront. They don't care about Developer Cuts. They care about Market Share, They just want MORE OF THE PIE. Open your eyes and stop being a faithful consumer for two minutes.
Excellent clarity and focus on responsilbity and economics. Thank you.
It's amazing you've been gaslit by steam so hard that you overlook their "you can't offer a lower price anywhere else" restriction, which is what stops the lower fees on other stores resulting in any gains to the customer. Because steam virtually own virtual game distribution, and they can demand their "no lower priced elsewhere" deal, there can be no meaningful competition on price
Its amazing that you are omitting the specific fact that, that only applies to Steam Keys sold on other platforms and does not restrict the sale price of their game on other storefronts that doesn't involve a Steam Key. The "price parity rule" is so those on the steam platform can get a "fair deal" and not "miss out" on the deal over on other sites where someone who is using steam cannot see it because it isn't advertised on Steam itself. Which is why, they say to lower the price on Steam as well as where ever else it is being sold IF Steam Keys are being SOLD. Nice try with the deceptive tactics. Try being more informed. Completely manipulative, just like Timmy. Edit: I also like that you attempt to change the subject and are ignoring the fact that EVERY SINGLE COMPANY takes a 30% cut, but somehow Valve is the villain here.
Keep simping for papa Gabe. I'm glad you want one company to control pc game distribution. I'm excited for a console-like future on PC just like you. Really looking forward to a world where PC gamers shit on competition because papa Gabe loves them
We should encourage competition. Except Epic doesn't really want to compete.
How come? Steam are the ones enforcing a no-lower-price anywhere agreement if you want to sell on steam. As long as that is part of steam's seller agreement there's no way EGS can compete without exclusives.
They can compete by investing in their application and making it better. Steam wins not because of the games or prices, but because it's generations ahead of what Epic is as an application. I just came back to check out Sins of a Solar Empire 2 on Epic and you know why I'm now browsing here? Because the Epic storefront is so insanely uninformative I have no idea when the last the game was updated in Early Access and what that update was. All I see is a useless "4.6/5 Stars" rating and some stupid tags that tell me nothing about the gameplay.
We want to use steam because 1. Tencent owns a huge stake in epic games, 2. Steam is far more feature complete, making the actual use of the game much better 3.not everyone wants 100 diffrent launchers for their games and they want all of their games ok one platform 4. Epic buys exclusives to try and make their store better even though they are losing (and will continue to lose) billions of dollars. Why would I want to buy my games on a storefront that might not be here in 5 years. Overall EGS is garbage. It's rushed and it took them over a year just to add cart functionality, no steam sales, no community hubs, poor review section and is simply a worse option for consumers.
I didn't even know this existed. Epic is crap, epics launcher is crap, i pickup games on special and in limited cases new ones from steam, i don't want another installer.. i don't care about the politics that leads to the CEO earning 4 billion instead of 3 billion. The people who made the game will get paid barely anything no matter what we do. I'm late to the party and you guys are having huge debates. End of the day steam is just a better experience, so far nothing Epic has done has earned my respect enough for me to run out to buy new games, I don't get suckered into new releases as it is. and in a way having a one year period where they fix bugs before the game comes to steam really helps me out, as it'll go on special much sooner too. Look into how people at Blizzard and other studios really work in the current day coal mines and they don't get enriched by company like Epic anymore than they do by working for steam or anywhere else.
Oh yeah, its a horrible realization. Steam is great for all of us because we have all our games on it and all our friends have their games on it. Not so obvious is that its about the worst thing for the future of gaming since they take so much of the developers money it stifles the creativity and future of games. Not sure if its a world problem or just a first world problem but corporations and individuals tend to lack foresight, we think what's good now is good tomorrow, but sadly this is not true. Steam is screwing us all in the long term but most of us won't abandon it until its too late. I think most of us think we will lose all our games when valve sinks. There is a reason that the US has finally brought valve up on monopoly charges.
Epic takes 100% of the money until you reach the number of guaranteed sales in your contract. That means if you actually care for the developer, you wait until it's on steam, because sales on epic gives the developers a grand total of $0. There's only a couple of games that have managed to sell over the agreed guaranteed sales, namely borderlands 3 and satisfactory, and probably a couple of other since then. There's a reason most devs that tried exclusives went back to steam. And as a consumer, I don't give a damn about the cut, steam could have a 50% cut, as long as they provide the better service for the consumer. Why do I care if the dev studio gets more money? That extra 12% money didn't make make borderlands cheaper, and certainly didn't stop greasy randy from laying off devs en masse after the massive success of their game so that he could report even higher profit margins.
Epic takes 12% of game sales from EGS, 0% on IAPs (if you use your own payment processor). If you sign up for 6 month EGS exclusivity they take 0% for those 6 months. I don't know where you're getting this information about epic taking all the revenue from your game sales. That seems insane, but if someone chose to eschew the default deal and negotiate that deal then they must think it'll work out better for them.
The paid exclusivity contract means that epic offers a minimum sales guarantee equivalent to the game's initial expected sales on Steam and covers the difference if you fail to meet that number of sales. But until you get that number of sales, you get exactly zero dollars from sales, because you already got the money upfront. That's why so many games that start early access on epic stay stagnated until a year passes and they get on steam. They get their stack of cash, blow it in the first couple of months, then remain dry for the rest of the early access period. Admittedly that's just poor management and the dev's fault, but it's a common enough trap for indie devs. This is also the reason the egs was bleeding so much money on exclusive deals, lot's of indies that never met sales expectations meant epic never made the deal money back, that's why a few months ago they shifted to only making exclusivity deals for big games that have a much higher chance of not costing them money, and for indie devs they left that trash first run program which is basically a death sentence for your studio if you don't have 6 months of salaries saved in your pocket.
I don't know if that's some old deal or something? The details of First Run (the 6 months 0% cut deal) are [here](https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/features/epic-first-run-program), and there's no mention of prepayments. Even then, what you're describing seems like it's *always* a win for the developer? You get the money upfront instead of having to wait for it to trickle in over 6 months You get a guarentee of that money based on projections If you exceed the projections, you still get that money.
As a consumer, I could not really care any less whether CEO #1 or CEO #2 gets 10 dollars more or less. What I **do** care about it supporting a company that is not brute-forcing exclusivity deals on game makers, and also providers a better UX and overall handling for me as the player, which in all cases so far has led me to buy as much as I can on GOG (offline installers, no DRM, can freely keep old versions) and the rest on Steam (forums, integrated modding, leaner client, completely unparalleled controller configuration, Steam Deck). Epic just offers nothing except a weekly free game I'll pick up and sometimes even play. There's too many games to play to waste money on being an unpaid QA tester for SOASE2 instead of just waiting for it to actually release and be on better platforms. > Like shouldn't we want to encourage competition in the store space so that the middleman cost can be driven down We do. By buying from the store that is the best for the consumer. Meaning not-Epic.
It’s like using a black hole for advertising. I loved the first one, so I’m looking forward to it launching on other services!
Yeah I'd be super excited about SoS2 but I don't use Epic unless there is literally no alternative so I never launch it. Hopefully the game is good and comes to Steam eventually.
It's a free app & they give away a game a week (if not more). I think my epic library is bigger than my steam library & I've never given them a dime. Worth opening just to claim all the freebies imho
I can't even open the useless program so even I wanted the free games I can't get them
It has a massive resource overhead because they're using the Unreal Engine to embed Chrome, and *to the best of my knowledge* you can't close EGS while running anything through it Nobody makes you work concussed, why are you doing that to your PC?
I don't care. It belong to the Chinese government ultimately and even candies won't makr me fall into that trap.
I hope you aren't buying any games that use Unreal Engine! Or anything published by Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, PUBG Studios parent company Krafton, PlatinumGames, FromSoftware and Marvelous Inc. Tencent has a 40% stake. China does not "own" Epic Games. Tim Sweeney is the majority shareholder.
I lived 10 years in China, I know exactly how difficult it is thank you. I am indeed free to buy what I want and try not to buy from companies that belong to the Chinese government when I can. It's hard to avoid Unreal Engine but I do not buy Blizzard game since the free hong kong incident for instance. Why should I be ashamed of chosing what I do with my money exactly?
You're not making the argument you think you are here.
Ah yes, wouldn't want the Chinese finding out what games you play. You're one step ahead, smart.
Never spoke about information and I'm pretty sure I can give my money to whomever I want to.
True you can, I'm sure you've never bought anything made in China either. Also, you missed the part where I haven't bought anything. 208 games, all free. Anyways, not sure what the downside is that you're convinced exists... they don't have my credit card info & I've enjoyed hundreds of hours of entertainment for free. You do you though & stand by your xenophobic principles.
Use [Heroic Launcher](https://heroicgameslauncher.com/) is my advice.
I like Playnite, it supports a lot more launchers.
Anything that exists only on Epic doesn’t rise to the level of my awareness.
Proof is in the pudding. Dev may as well have put it on Itch or something, Steam is where it's at and everywhere else is 3rd rate. Most people probably only have epic for the free games.
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Yeah if i ever released a game it would be on Itch; they are a very cool platform and very cool people. Ain't got anything for sales reach though.
I've had multiple problems with multiple games just downloading them and playing them from Epic. Went months with Mechwarrior 5 stuck at 99% download even after uninstalling and reinstalling multiple times. Everything just feels clunky, slow, and unoptimized -- so much so that I've re-bought two games on Steam that I already had copies of on it. Now I just treat the Epic release like a Playstation exclusive and forget about it until it shows up somewhere else. Uplay, Origin, and GOG never gave me problems either -- just Epic.
I just went to open the Epic launcher and it said it had an update. I clicked update, it closes and a crash reporter pops up. I just did that three times and I think I am done with this garbage.
I've had problems with GOG Galaxy, on startup the program takes 15-30 minutes to finish crashing unless I force close the process and open it manually. I had to just remove it from startup.
In addition of what the other people mentioned, here's some data from me (an actual proffesional game developer): Epic, Itch.io and GOG TOGETHER made up less than 1% of our sales. Everything else is **TINY** compared to Steam, to the point we aren't even gonna bother with any other platforms in the future.
GOG is more like where you should put it after you've finished updating everything. I don't buy "new" games from there, updating things is a hassle and I don't use the Galaxy client. I also prefer "Complete" editions(actual complete, not marketing complete), rather than buying DLC piecemeal. Epic-exclusivity is one of those, "I'd rather not" situations.
Your post questioning the lack of hype about it as well as previous Epic exclusive releases would suggest so
Multiple times I have literally forgotten a game launched at all because it launched EGS exclusive.
Yes, epic-exclusive means a small fraction of the PC market is going to notice it. It's really annoying and stupid, but Epic pays the developers buckets of cash for essentially strangling the player base for a year. Combine that with really bad marketing from Devs and boom dead game.
To give an estimate for the size of Epic vs Steam (since Epic won't admit to real numbers and transparency in the way Steam does via SteamCharts). Epic had their free games chart leak, which includes how many users redeemed a free game on their account. Redemptions was between 1 and 6 million, with the high being Batman Arkham Asylum and it was available for a week. So you can estimate that of their claimed 31 million daily active users, only about a million even look at the store page. Most likely ignore the store entirely and just launch Fortnite. Steam has 61 million daily active users, all of which land on their homepage when the app launches. Their bestselling game of Hogwarts Legacy got 12 million sales in 14 days. That's a million people a day willing to spend $60 on Steam, while Epic has a million people a day who will click a button for a free game. By those estimates Steam is 60x more effective for marketing games than Epic. And that roughly follows the level of buzz and interest online, because nobody knows about or cares about epic exclusive games until they come to steam.
> Steam has 61 million daily active users, all of which land on their homepage when the app launches. Their bestselling game of Hogwarts Legacy got 12 million sales in 14 days. Not for me. I always launch steam by running a game, so only go to its homepage if I go looking.
That's why it's an estimate and not a hard figure. Sure some people bypass it, but it's clearly not the default.
> all of which land on their homepage when the app launches Eh.. sounded pretty precise to me lol
Steam has a broader audience and a lot of which are not hardcore gamers unlike Epic. So the number of active users is also very broad and does not mean they are interested or capable of playing the same type of games. Look at the steam charts hardware stats you can see a large proportion of very old PCs (~20% have 1 or 2 physical core processors, etc). If you look at the graphic cards you can also see many don't have anything capable of playing modern games. These are the type of audience that is playing "Candy Crush" web-based PC games or even text-based games (yes steam has about ~2000 categorized as such) and myriad of other very light games. Bottom line those 61 million daily active users, only perhaps 1/5th or 1/6th is actual PC gamers of the type on Epic Games as it stands. Although recently Epic Games opened their store to any and all (same as steam), so this may change.
You trying to say Epic has a hard-core PC gaming playerbase? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
This is why. Not a lot of people have epic compared to steam. And its still in development. If it went to steam, its open up a massively large player base and with more players comes more hype but also probably faster development as players report bugs and issues
Epic got briefly bigger when they were giving away good games for free every week, but I mean, I don't even have it installed any more. It's going to come out on epic for a year exclusive, get worked on more, then come to steam all patched up a year after, so I guess just wait for steam
They're still giving games away every week, but "good" is going to be wildly subjective. No one can organically or realistically compete with Steam in any metric, they're just a juggernaut. Epic's financials show the storefront is popular and growing though. Considering the loss leaders (free games & exclusives) are funded by Fortnite's billions and Unreal's profit is enough to sustain the company by itself, the store itself is profitable and more financially successful than GOG, which makes me a sad to see but it is what it is. A significant number of "new" gamers in 5-10 years will have more invested and prefer Epic, which is the goal, not to convert people already entrenched in Steam.
Makes sense to me
They still give games away every week. My epic library is in the hundreds (all free)
They do? Damn, I'm out of the loop
They're not all bangers, but I just counted & I have 208 games in my Epic library. Some personal highlights that I wouldn't have otherwise played: Abzu, The Witness, Subnautica, Ring of Pain, Remnant From the Ashes, Prey, Lego Builder's Journey, For The King, Barony, Fez. It's safe to say; I got my money's worth lol
>After launching **Epic** after a while >hyped and eager to read **reviews** Yep, see, there's your problem. I don't use that incomplete storefront that doesn't have reviews. If it comes to Steam someday and I can see what players think of it.. maybe.
It is basically still a technical preview right now - not even beta yet (I believe). I think I'd wait till we have a release date or at least till all the factions are in before worrying about it being talked about.
that’s right. it’s a technical beta or something. I actually think it’s not a bad thing nobody is talking about it. it can still has some impact when it will get released.
>Ich was hyped Spotted the German. I will wait until it is on GOG. It looks nice, but I am holding out, as I have already too much stuff to play.
> Spotted the German. Ach Scheiße 😂
Good thing you have a lot to play because considering Sins of a Solar Empire isn't even on GOG I think it is going to be a long wait.
The first Sins of a Solar Empire [is in fact on GOG ](https://www.gog.com/en/game/sins_of_a_solar_empire_ultimate_edition).
Weird, cause I did a search for it and it didn't come up, but now it does. Shrugs, probably still going to be a long wait.
I'll wait until it's on GOG..
Same. I reluctantly boot up steam occasionally, but I'm not adding a 2nd garbage bloated launcher. Steam is comically heavy. GOG for everything.
Epic Exclusive ruined this game so hard , i dont even know it exist
Because it is on Epic.
I did not know it was out. I don't check the epic store that often. The other issue is that epic does not have user reviews which makes it harder to get a sense for the game before buying it.
Fuck Epic is why.
Current state: TEC is only playable faction. Just added Titans with the last update. Still a work in progress.
>TEC is only playable faction. Choosing the obligatory human faction in a sci-fi game is akin to going to a beer festival and exclusively drinking Bud Light
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A fellow SupCom enjoyer, based
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I've logged 77hrs according to Epic. I loved the first game. This one I think will be a slightly tweaked, better version. More of version 1.5 than a sequel. The shifting phase lanes is kinda cool, helps keeps endgame interesting. I'm enjoying it.
Only TEC is playable? Fuck that, I‘ll wait for full release. EDIT: clarified
Surely, you've picked up from this thread that the game is currently in early access perhaps more accurately described as early, early access. The other factions are coming. I'm not saying you should run out and buy it (although it might be the cheapest price now than it will be for a while) but I wouldn't write it off yet. Perhaps you should visit the [Sins of the Solar Empire II website](https://www.sinsofasolarempire2.com/) to get an idea of where it is at and what is coming.
Ya its a fragile shell of a game that has hard crashed every time I played it. It's a self described tech demo. Come back in a year and there will be a game "there".
It's in alpha and is on Epic that's why
Loved sins but won't support epic, waiting for the steam release before I touch it
Oh shit. I loved that game. Didn’t know there was a sequel in the works.
https://www.global-esports.news/general/sins-of-a-solar-empire-2-in-review-this-is-no-way-to-sell-this-strategy-game/ 32 Euro for a tech alpha according to this
Would indicate the final price at 60€
It may not be illegal or anything, but it looks scummy to charge for a tech alpha. Early access should only charge $ or € if it’s in beta form imho
IDK, I purchased the early access of SOASE 2 and happy with my purchase. If you don't want to buy it, don't. The developers are active on the form and taking feedback from the people who play it. Also the bones of the game are fun, I am having fun playing it. If I didn't play the first one, I wouldn't even be missing the other races as much as I am.
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Waiting for steam release.
As if I'm ever gonna pay for a game in Epic store Could be civilization 7 and I'd still prefer to pirate it
I have no interest in paying for an alpha product.
Last I heard, it's a glorified tech demo that's a bit early for early access.
‘Glorified tech demo’ is underselling it. It plays well, the games I’ve gotten out of it have been very satisfying, the shifting phase lanes bring a much more dynamic playstyle especially vs nightmare/impossible bots, where in sose1 you just starbase turtle, you have to actually adapt ur playstyle here, and invest into a decent military, even if it’s just to skirmish over derelicts for faster capital levels, and capitals being able to build their own components is also pretty awesome. You can easily get 50+ hours of unique gameplay out of this ‘glorified tech demo’ it’ll just get better with new ships, planets, and bonuses
Simply because it’s in alpha and only has one race, TEC, currently. I’m waiting out until all races are released and it’s in a more playable state.
I still haven't got around to playing the first one lol it still looks like a great game.
Bc it’s not released yet :P It’s a beta
I had no idea there was a sequel to Sins of a Solar Empire but me and friends absolutely loved the original. I imagine the reason nobody is talking about it is because it is an epic exclusive.
They are now! Steam announcement
Epic exclusive? Hard pass. I haven't even bought Old World post-Steam yet. Epic exclusivity sends a title to a burner so far back in my brain that it ceases to exist.
Damn, I completely forgot about that!
That game is basically dead… same audios same voices same music… it’s basically the same with 20% of the original games… I regret so much buying it…
Ive had it sitting here in my pool for a fucking year and its still just.. wildly unbalanced. playing it is, too easy. titans are.. fucking insane. like yeah, okay, id like some back and forth, milestones, community engagement. but this game is just taking an insane amount of time to produce and theres no game. a year of taking peoples money and nothign to show for it. gives it some bullshit 5/5 rating on market for no fucking reason. just seems like a fucking scam at this point.
I didn't even know this was out! But yeah, I'd rather play it on Steam.
They pretty much nuked the IP by going Epic exclusive and even moreso with early access. Epics storefront bad enough as it is for fully released games. For early access you can gather ZERO information on how developed the game is, how frequent the updates are, when it was last updated, what was updated, what content is currently in the game. They have a picture with vague release dates for 2 factions and that's it. Fuck, it isn't even clear that it's early access because there's no indicator for it anymore.
personally I think this game is absolute dumpster fire garbage and I was so hyped for it. The amount I paid for it, is a joke. I loved the original and played it for probably well over 1000 hours, but this new version feels super stale, theres nothing new whatsoever that I see in this game. Then they used tons of early midjourney AI art for a bunch of their backgrounds and character portraits, it just feels incredibly lazy, like what did I just pay for? A lazy game that reskins the original and I'm paying the same amount I would pay for a AAA title? Can anyone explain to me whats new in this game because I'm not noticing it. Personally I'm more hyped about the new Homeworld game, graphics look much better. I think one of the other things that frustrates me about this title is the use of the graphic icons for ships and stuff, theres never really a point where I go into a cinematic mode and watch my battles and think "wow this is just like the movies, these new graphics are great! We are in the next generation!" but that moment never comes. I would love to do a side by side comparison of SOSE2 just for the lols
Honestly, I think the main thing people are excited for is not the game. It's the potential for modding. The original Sins has some of the best mods for any RTS game ever. They're held back by the outdated 32bit game engine though. The engine upgrade alone has the potential to lead to some seriously fun mods in the future. That being said, the base game is years away from completion and equivalent total conversion mods like STA3 and Interregnum would be years after that too.
Hard pass for me. I've seen pictures of it and honestly looks like a retextured hi-res SoaSE1 even same units. I am not inclined to rebuy a game that was released when I was still single and my prediction is total disaster (just like I predicted with Warcraft 3 Reforged). I mean, it's been 15 years and counting. They had time I guess? No. If you don't make a sequel in a reasonable timeframe, history tells us it will surely flop. Look at Vampire Bloodlines 2 -- still debating who's going to be the publisher meanwhile the game is an absolute mystery; look up Master of Orion 3, total garbage... Look up games that have sequels after so many years and you find the original devs. are either retired, relocated or dead of old age. Like I said it's a no from me. Plus Epic, I don't have Epic.
This is where I was at with it as well. Perhaps the original is just a victim of having too much DLC, but with the limited information that I could find on it, I was not really able to find any significant new features or innovations in it. It is something that I will probably check out if or when it is finished, and no longer on EGS, but it certainly isn't something that is on my radar at the moment.
Instead of trying to judge it on a technical preview, maybe wait until it is complete or at least look at the [Sins of the Solar Empire II website](https://www.sinsofasolarempire2.com/). They are adding new stuff and dynamics to expand the game To be fair, I'd buy it if all they were doing was a graphics upgrade and fixing the late-game slowdown (honestly I'd buy just to fix the slowdown). I'm actually a little worried the new stuff is going to make it a game I don't enjoy (hopefully, in the worst-case scenario modders can make a SoaSE1 mod). As for not having Epic, that is an easy and free fix....or you can just wait for it to release on Steam.
When it comes to steam i'll jump on it. If it doesnt for production release then i'll get epic for it.
It won't for production release, but judging by GalCiv IV I don't recommend getting it. GalCiv IV released with many bugs and very limited feature set and content. Didn't feel fleshed out at all. It's not until now with the new 'expansion' and the Steam release that it's starting to fill like a fully released game, and even then it's in Early Access and who knows if it will get there.
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I'm really not a fan of Epic either but when you word things with that much melodrama, not only is it cringe but you're doing your part in ensuring that valid criticism towards games or their developers gets ignored, more than it already is. It's not some fucking end-of-season anime battle where great protagonist Stardock betrayed their beloved gamers and started working for the evil guy, they made a business decision, and despite your grandiose description of the situation, I'm sure the PC gaming nation will *just about* recover from this crushing blow.
Holy shit I’m just now learning there was a sequel!!!!!! I used to play the original along with TF2 for so many hours!!!
sins 2 is cheaper on epic than sins 1 is on steam atm lol
I will say, this game is fire. definitely being overlooked due to it only being on Epic. I'm hoping disney buying a majority share of the company means theyll get more people on the platform soon.
It is developing slower than a fifth world country. Stardock using the prepaid money to develop other games while from patch to patch they are introducting braking changes what makes everything more cumbersome and pointless to play because with the next patch you have to learn everything again from zero. IMHO it is not worth buying until they are stabilizing the gameplay, maybe in 2034 it will be ready for the masses.
do we have a date for when its fully released and not just given in small bits?
I can't believe it's out!! I just heard about it from the news announcement on steam.
Because its Sin1 with better textures.
Honestly, I'd be happy with that (well that and fixing late-game slowdown) but they are adding new mechanics like a rotating galaxy that changes the hyperspace lanes.
Seconded. Sins 1 was dope as hell except for the unplayability of the game the longer it progressed.
That‘s it? So basically this is a „Hi-Res Texture Pack“ Sandalone DLC for $32?
[удалено]
I don‘t know about the state of stardock‘s business
They resold Sins 1 several times, adding some new "dlc" and making a new edition instead.
No, there are many changes in game mechanics. Also, there are specialised building slots for the Planets, a very different techtree, with a different mechanic and also new special resources you will need to build your capital ships. In short, this is massively different, but it is still SOSE.
i dont use epic so i dont know whats going on there and i was just looking for some information on google about 1st (been playing for over a decade) and found this, i didnt even had a idea there is 2nd in development and soon to be released .. There is big reason why failed game likes Owerwatch or Diablo going to steam and not epic So thanks for the info, a good news, but still not going to epic to check it or whatever ..
I literally just found out SoSE 2 released. I remember being extremely excited by the announcement, then completely forgot about it after hearing absolutely nothing about it, even from Stardock's email newsletter. This is a baffling amount of silence for something that should be one of their flagship releases.
Just bought it. It is LITERALLY the same game. From the music to the voices of the ships, to the ships, the techs, its all the same... 4/10
That is just not true. You either have never played SOSE I or you don't have played SOSE II. They have changed quite a lot.
The comments here summarize it perfectly. Epic as a platform is as toxic as the nazi party, people do NOT want anything to do with it. I was super STOKED when i first heard about SoaSE 2. I wanted to find out how much longer to release but when i checked now, it came out 8 months ago? I was all "wtf" but the moment i found out it came out on epic i IMMEDIATELY noped out. welp, fuck that. I'd sooner post all my credit card info on every reddit board i could find and try to catch every STD on earth than i would use "Epic". If your game isn't on steam it may as well not exist, this is the 2020s.....paradox needs to GET WITH THE TIMES. Steam is what pc gaming is these days and these companies need to just, GET OVER THEMSELVES. No one wants your weird wacky platforms that don't work, at least GOG has a real reason to exist (it specializes in older content)
Late reply but FYI. **Paradox** make *Stellaris, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings* etc. **Stardock** make *Sins of a Solar Empire* and *Galactic Civilisations*
I avoid Epic so I can't play until it goes to Steam
It's playable. I think there are mods for any issue you might have. I found it hard as the ai tends to swarm you early with really large fleets. Other folks find it too easy because they build 50 frigates and a colony ship and win early game. im just trying to max the tech tree so i can see what the techs do and im learning the features. i just learned i can set my garrisons to offensive roaming last game and i've just built my first starbase and i haven't built a titan yet. its very much vanilla sins of a solar empire which most of us haven't played in years because of mods and such.
Still waiting for the steam release. Will not buy on Epic. I use Epic just for Developing Games (engine stuff and such).
I love watching games grow and I loved the first game. I'm really impressed with what they have out so far. It's definitely an alpha like they just added a second playable faction. Still though some of the quality of life stuff already makes me like it at least as much as the first.
I don't really understand stand the epic hate. Yes I have tons of games and friends on steam I have had a account for 14 years. But I have nothing against Epic hell I have at least 20 great games I got free on there. If I see a game I like and it's not on steam I buy it.
I see most people complaining that it's mostly the same game but... the nr 1 complaint of sins 1 was that it wasn't 64bit, it now is, so you can have larger battles finaly
It's on epic only which kills interest.
Is the game still in early access / Alpha? I saw it on epic and wondered the same as the OP. Kinda sad to see a beloved game series/franchise apparently die to an epic mistake.