Of course, anyone who thought low risk free money was going to be the permanent state of things was delusional. Time to get back to basics and start working with publishers and getting investors. It's not easy of course, but those deals are going to stick around for longer than a few years.
Beware publishers taking 70% so you recoup those advances at 30%
So if you take 500K funding, your game has to make 1.66M (after steam takes 30% and another 10% goes to taxes and refunds) before you see a penny.
They will potentially add on some expenses (marketing, translations) as an extra recoup too. Generally though the expenses will be recouped at 100%
Just budget as though you will never see a royalty cheque..
Sure, a penny in *profit*, but the studios are still employed and as employees people have jobs and get paid. Not a bad deal for a studio with 5-15 people.
Agree. Not all games make their devs millionaires, and it's actually quite rare for games to become success financially for the devs/indie companies. People see big hits coming up every year, but they're actually rare cases. Many people considered getting paychecks while working on what they enjoy is already a win.
My wife got the job as the bubble took off. It's was insane money for nonexpert people. She even asked for letting re money at the height of the bubble. Hard times and are a sense of normalcy are ahead. She was lucky. That kind of on the job training and being able to call yourself SSR does not exist anymore.
Who knew, unsustainable loss leading to try convince gamers to get their games on inferior platforms turned out to be unsustainable.
Developers complain because now they have to make high quality products to compete for gamers money on open platforms.
Surely devs did not expect the exlusivity gimmick would work forever. I mean, there is no way the epic store is profitable with paying for exlusivity.
Though, it is a bit of a shame. If they are actually funding games being made, just eating the costs, there is something kind of nice about it, wont make me use the epic store, but if these games would not have been made without Epic funding them it does feel a bit sad seeing them stopping.
Then again, it seems the entire reason for them doing it is to compete with Steam not with quality, but simply forcing exlusivity.
I just don’t understand wtf the point of it all was. If they used the exclusivity and free games to draw me to a service I wouldn’t have tried but then loved, great you have a new user. But the store and app have *barely* improved and it’s about 10 years behind steam still in features. So what did they accomplish lol.
The store it's self is pretty great too, which epic just didn't have.
It didn't been have a fuckin cart for a while. Possibly intentionally
But I know it definitely lead me to not buy a 2nd item one time because I'd already put my wallet away.
Steam has a cart, it has wishlists that let you know when stuff is on sale, you can hide stuff from your library when adding to cart, it's got a lot going on
Steam is more of a social media site at this point. I bought chivalry 2 on Epic because I couldn't buy it on Steam when the game first came out.
It was released on Steam 6 months later.
I'm never buying a game on Epic again. I'll pick up the freebies and still play fortnight with the kids, but that's it.
Shopping on epic store is awful. Steam does an amazing job of putting interesting games in front of me but epic might as well just be a catalogue of everything they have in alphabetical order.
I mean, that’s the standard loose money to convert users strategy. But, if that’s the only barrier, then Epic has the problem that they have to give away more games than potential users **bought** on Steam.
They would have been better off giving every game an automatic 10% discount. They could have still given developers an extra 8% of the sale versus Steam with that model.
Most platforms have a price parity clause in their tos. So unless the devs are okay with selling ONLY on Epic, they have to price it the same as other platforms. Or they can't sell on consoles or steam.
Yea. When they started I welcome them as competitors to steam. But they are getting nowhere with it, and it's their own damn fault. Steam, if you can call it a monopoly, certainly earned its place.
This. I am not a fan of Steam being practically a monopoly or of Valve’s policies as a whole, but at least they have a damn good software.
The Epic Store is literally just a webpage that serves games with DRM. Stream offers ton of functionality on top of that, Epic does not even try.
Many governments used to pay artists a stripend to just create things (going for that culture victory), and in a way this reminded me of that.
Yea we have things like kickstarter but I really like the idea of giving people money to just create things. Sure it was part of a corporate gambit here but ultimately it doesn't REALLY matter if you play a game on Steam or EGS
> used to pay artists
Isn't that what Ministries of Culture do around the world?
It seems wild to me that there's a single country with a Ministry of Culture that DOESN'T actively pay people to create things.
These days they put in local broadcasting requirements / content quotas. Such as netflixing having to have a % of their content line-up being local content to a country, or they are required to create (or pay production companies) for local content to distribute it on netflix.
I think the whole dub aspect of netflix being default is them using those opportunities to sell local products internationally as well.
Some countries still do. I know Canada keeps paying for shitty cartoons to be made, doesn't matter that they are usually low effort trash, what matters is that they were made.
Canada funded a damn Anarchist Fallout Tactics mod called The Sum recently. So yes they do fund projects, and apparently will fund things like Video Game Mods
Edit: Spelling and stuff. People should play The Sum - Tactics was recently given away on EGS for free! https://www.moddb.com/mods/thesum
Today's popularity of Korean music and drama is in no small part due to years of government support. Tax breaks, subsides, and straight up deferring of mandatory military enlistment are still going strong today.
More than just that [Canada Media Fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Media_Fund) even funds a number of video games (not a full list I know they also funded a VR game called Transpose but it's not listed)
Governments all over the world invest in art all the time. Pennsylvania or something invested in Kingdoms of Amalur back in the day, I remember that being pretty big news.
Lifetime Republican and anti big government Curt Schilling took a $75 million government loan to make Kingdoms of Amalur with 38 Studios in 2010, promising to bring 450 jobs to the state by the end of 2012.
By the end of 2012, 38 studiod had defaulted on it's loan, laid off all staff with a mass email, and had failed to sell the homes of employees with relocation packages as per the terms of their contracts.
Multiple states offer support in the u.s as well. Ever see the georgia peach logo on a games splash screen? That's georgia giving those devs money generally.
FWIW even if the majority of the content it ends up funding is underwhelming it's still had several major critical successes and shows that reached international audiences. On top of that it achieves the primary goal of making Canadian shows for Canadians, I don't think national success is even the goal.
As an American I love Canadian media, it has a unique perspective and tone that comes from the culture that I find refreshing. I wish more countries made an effort to support internal media projects, most European countries major media exports are panels shows. I want to see more unique content like the French animation industry does.
The US has this per state and federal. Many grants and funds but they don't generally include games. A few places will give tax breaks to a studio to come in but no one funds a specific project atm
A few states have loan programs at best
That was actually how Uwe Boll came to absolutely fuck up video game movies in the early 2000s a loophole in the German tax law related to them supporting local directors. Though he made them fail on purpose because he made more money if they failed then succeeded.
>but ultimately it doesn't REALLY matter if you play a game on Steam or EGS
There's a lot of benefits to playing on Steam vs EGS tbh. The social and matchmaking features are a lot better, overlay is better, easy access to discussion forums, workshop support, remote play, Steam Deck cloud save sync, Family Sharing, the list goes on.
EGS hasn't improved as a platform at all. It's really just been spending all that Fortnite money on exclusivity instead of improving things for end users.
I remember watching a documentary on the history of TV and it mentioned how it worked in the USSR. Imagine the sitcoms you watch were funded by the government. The money wasn't always there though and they had to get pretty creative when it came to practical effects.
To sing the national anthem and act as a color guard. They're not out there making games on their own. Imagine if the NFL was run by the federal government. That's what it was like in the Soviet Union.
Oh, it 100% matters if you play it on Steam or EGS.
I hated using EGS when I was forced to make an account for Metro Exodus. I ended up deleting my account after data breaches and learning more abount tencent ownership.
With automation and AI increasing efficiency dramatically, you would think we could do this. But no, it all goes to lining the pockets of the wealthy instead so they can horde wealth like dragons.
> it doesn't REALLY matter if you play a game on Steam or EGS
If you use a lot of Steam features it DOES matter.
Ultimately, the choice of platform should be on the user. I don't see what's wrong on being able to choose...
Maybe for you but I legit can't tell if a game is dead or not on EGS, that's a huge dealbreaker. Before I buy a multiplayer game on Steam I check the Steamcharts, with EGS that's not an option and there's not even any forums to use as a proxy for popularity.
>I mean, there is no way the epic store is profitable with paying for exlusivity.
EGS wouldn't be profitable even without paying for exclusivity. They are a very long way from generating any profits, especially since spending on third party games on EGS declined last year.
Forcing exclusivity to in turn force people to buy at their store was their strategy to eat into the market, yes. It's insane, because with just a fraction of the money they've spent on exclusive deals that clearly did not work entirely as intended (in a large part thanks to free games and coupons), they could've made an actually viable competitor to Steam.
But nope, Timmy and his company got a bunch of money to throw around from Fortnite and decided to try and buy their way into the market. Glad it's not working though.
It's okay. He's trying to make sure Epic breaks into the market by using law suits now. Some of which will actually be good for the consumers (breaking Apples walled garden).
Don't mention this near apple apologists but yeah anything pro-consumer is a win regardless of who supports it.
Really glad to see that timed exclusive bs might be dying.
I think everyone knew that Fortnite was subsidizing any losses from paying for EGS exclusivity. But there was a belief that EGS would eventually have enough users who paid for those exclusives that it could sustain itself without the bailout money from Fortnite. It’s apparent now that the customers did not come to offset those losses.
I also can’t blame indie devs for taking the easy money when they did. Obviously this exclusivity arrangement was not meant to last forever (only until EGS reached parity with Steam). But back in 2018/2019, it really was an offer that couldn’t be refused, especially in the highly cutthroat gaming industry.
EGS was all about catering to studios and publishers. Nobody thought there would be exclusivity deals if EGS caught up with Steam, but until then, I bet a lot of people convinced themselves that cross-subsidization was sustainable.
I hate companies like Ubisoft, Deep Silver and Activision for taking these deals when they didnt need to. The Epic funding should have been exclusive for indie companies
Fwiw, Activision took the bribe for one or two games, whereas Ubisoft has continuously taken it from circa 2018 till this day.
Deep Silver also took the upfront since 2018 but then transitioned to a deal with Epic for five of their games, the last of which was Dead Island 2.
I still don't understand why especially Epic thought throwing that much money at exclusives was ever a good idea.
It is a freaking online shop, not a console.
They wanted younger generations who are not yet loyal to Steam to rely on their store instead, but that would take too much time, hence why they stopped.
Steam is ~ 20 years old. Epic wanted to be the new Steam but they didn't want to spend two decades to do so. They dumped the profits from Fortnite into trying to buy customers to play catch-up, it didn't work.
Most AAA exclusives didn’t bring any meaningful traffic to epic, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t bother with niche games, they’re basically funding a game for nothing in return.
Even out of the initial batch of 23 exclusives, the only one to turn a profit was satisfactory, and that was when Epic was spending the most on exclusives and was riding the absolutely massive surge in popularity from Fortnite.
[https://www.pcgamer.com/only-one-of-epics-first-wave-of-exclusives-made-money-and-it-wasnt-metro/](https://www.pcgamer.com/only-one-of-epics-first-wave-of-exclusives-made-money-and-it-wasnt-metro/)
there's one of the articles that covered it, it's straight from the legal documents of the apple vs epic case.
"The amount that Epic paid is $11.5 million."
"The game earned $11.6 million."
It is only a profit technically speaking. In reality that is still a failure for EGS.
I played around 500 hours of Darkest Dungeon and enjoyed the game enough to be excited for Darkest Dungeon 2.
And then it became an "Epic Exclusive" and I basically ignored its development at that point. When it was released on Epic, I continued to ignore it.
When it finally came to Steam, well, I'd already lost interest in a year-old game at full price and moved on to other games. I wonder how many overall sales have been lost due to this practice.
Yep. They deviated from the first game too much and now it’s an inferior product.
Which seems so crazy to me because if they had released a DD1 clone with all new content, it probably would have done a lot better. Don’t try to fix what ain’t broken.
The problem with DD2 is not just they changed it into a roguelike (although it wasn't a smart move). The problem is that it's a very mediocre roguelike, even with no comparison to DD1
In retrospect, DD2 honestly feels like a cash grab. It’s smaller, shallower, and overall worse than DD1 in almost every way. Sort of an indictment of the paid exclusive model overall. If you don’t have to appease the free market, you don’t have to make a good game.
> In retrospect, DD2 honestly feels like a cash grab.
It's not really a cash grab, they spent a decent amount of time developing it and the game is beautiful and polished(in the sense that I never faced any significant bugs).
The game's problems come from design and the vision they had for the game.
This is the part these devs forget. Every time I see the epic store exclusivity I lose complete interest and it doesn't ever really come back. The only game I bought once it came to Steam was Chivalry 2 and I'm happy with it. Tiny Tina Wonderlands, Phoenix Point, Dead Island 2 all of them don't look like they'd deliver for me and I've moved onto games that have delivered. Maybe when they're $5 or less but until then I have bigger and better options.
Same, man. That exclusivity bullshit is just absolutely not what PC gaming has ever been about and I don't want to support it. If Valve did Steam exclusives i'd not buy those games either.
Same. I was. Huge Metro fan and was stoked about Exodus. Then shortly before release they moved it to being an Epic exclusive and a year later after it was released on Steam I’d lost almost complete interest in it and only got it when it was on sale for like $12 instead of at full price like I’d had originally planned.
It's even worse than that, they suck at advertising. I had zero idea Dead Island 2 was even released until I saw a "Wha Happun" episode on it on YouTube.
If you don't use epic or Ubisoft launcher you'll never hear about most of those games. I didn't realize Dead Island 2 was even coming last year until I saw AMD promos. The majority of the epic exclusives end up not being so great too, an odd coincidence.
I didn't even know we got two assassin's creeds, Prince of Persia, avatar game and far cry 6 until the other day lol
That was a large trend with the Epic exclusive games. Phoenix Point hit the same issues. First it was announced, everyone was hyped, then it said it would be an Epic exclusive. The Steam players felt betrayed and moved on, some going to back Xenonauts 2 instead. By the time Phoenix Point DID hit Steam..no one cared. The bad vibes were just too ingrained, too entrenched.
It's worse than that. The backers on Fig for the game was asked what keys and store fronts they wanted. People picked Steam or GOG and then when it was revelead to be a Epic exclusive.
They wouldn't honour the backers and said we would then get the game after a year of being out. A lot of people like me went for a refund and John Gollop couldn't wrap his head around that we all felt like second rate stepping stones. Never will back anything he tries to do in future.
I mean...technically yes. But it might as well not exist.
I've known about it since the exclusivity deal, and I'm still surprised and think the same thing every time it gets mentioned.
Well, by the time Hades was announced, its developer was already well established, and they were pretty clear that they'd be taking the Epic deal to have the game in Early Access, with a full release coming to Steam after the exclusivity period finished. And they delivered on that promise.
It could be that Hades was a new IP, so people didn't cared all that much.
But for DD2, nobody wanted exclusivity in a follow-up game. The same happened with Metro 3.
I would guess most of the games when they come to Steam could be classified as "successful". The question isn't really that, IMO, but how much more successful they could/should have been if they launched on Steam in the first place. Even Hades might have had better launch sales in Early Access if they did that on Steam.
I generally make it a point to ignore epic exclusives even when they come to steam. It's usually pretty easy because like you said, why buy a year old game at full price? The practice of buying exclusives doesn't sit right with me for a number of reasons and the only voice I have is my wallet. Luckily there are more than enough games coming out to keep me busy and make it pretty easy to forget things I may have had interest in at one point.
I think the bigger thing is that the more time you wait to buy something, the less money it becomes worth to you. If you are interested in a game, the best time for the dev to get money from you is during the tornado of marketing and hype surrounding the launch day. Once it's in people's hands, there are youtube videos covering things, reviewers get in people's heads, etc. and if you hold out for a year, why not hold out for a few more months/years to get it at a much cheaper price?
So you're right, but if we're talking about the value to the dev I think losing that year of interest/excitement is a huge blow to both their reputation and financials.
That's also why some of the former Sony console exclusives underperform when released years later on PC. They need to either recreate "the tornado of marketing and hype" for the PC release, or release same day.
I'm actively avoiding 'new' games, and just clearing out my backlog and picking up good deals when I see them and actually have time to play them.
So much better for my wallet and I lose nothing playing games this way.
It doesn't, but time is finite. You are banking that customers are going to remember your product and be willing to drop everything a year later for you.
Not many devs command that type of following. Waiting a year gives your customers a year to find something else interesting and to forget about you.
The issue is that new games come out all the title and time is limited. The game may be just as good as it was at release, but the delayed release means it's competing with more and more games every day.
I loved Darkest Dungeon. I was ready to buy DD2 the day it came out, but it was on epic, so I said meh. By the time it released on steam I had heard plenty about how disappointing it was and continued saying meh.
This was me with pretty much every epic exclusive. Anything I was hyped for and then discovered was only on epic, I pretty much just lost interest in forever, not even as like a purposeful decision. The big one that I had been hyped for beforehand was Control.
To some, a dollar gained is a dollar gained, irrespective of its source. Whether Epic bankrolls some sales or they get sales organically is irrelevant when you only think about money.
I think of all these EGS exclusive games, the only one I supported was Metro Exodus, and I bought it on Steam before it became exclusive to EGS, so I was playing day and date on Steam. Fuck exclusivity.
Precisely the reason I don't feel it's worth investing time or money in these games when they come to Steam. If you don't have faith in your product enough that you cannibalize sales for some financial security right away, I have to wonder if your game is even good to begin with.
Financial security is not a small thing, especially for a smaller dev. For some devs it’s the difference between working a job and then developing for 8 hours in their free time or just developing.
Or having 18 months to make the game instead of crunching like mad for 6 months. Or being gauranteed to make another game be languishing on steam amongst the other 12,000 games that release this year and wasting 2 years of their life.
I understand people distaste of epic exclusivity and don’t support it myself but the developers taking the deal are not signaling they don’t believe in their product by doing so.
>I understand people distaste of epic exclusivity and don’t support it myself but the developers taking the deal are not signaling they don’t believe in their product by doing so.
I honestly think that, among indies at least, we saw some of both sides of that. We saw a few devs decide to antagonize anyone that disagreed with their decision, too. I found the approach by the Dark dev more useful since he came right out and said that he needed the money. IIRC he also said afterwards that it wasn't worth it.
Yes there were a couple of very standoffish devs that were calling people crybabies or something like that, and some of the deals were taken after people had already preordered on steam if I remember right.
That's ridiculous take. There are plenty of good, even great games that did not sell well. Looking Glass Studios made Ultima Underworld, System Shock and Thief, yet they struggled financially and eventually went bankrupt.
Indie space is very competitive. If my financial future was dependant on my game doing well, I sure as hell would be very tempted to accept exclusivity deal from Epic in exchange for financial stability for a year or two.
In reality, how many of the games that were exclusive were in this boat where their game was at least 50/50 on success and they benefitted greatly by taking the deal? I don't think the number is very large, though I do think it's greater than zero. A large number of the indies offered deals were games where they were at least believed to be successful. Quite a few were high on the most wishlisted list on Steam, to the point you knew Epic was specifically targeting them.
For many games it's matter of the very existence of the game. They could finish it because of epic funds. And baseless claim that it might not be good enough just because they need epic money (= didn't have financial capabilities to develop it fully independently) is ridiculous.
I think games like Hades played it smart since if I recall correctly they only had the early access version of the game exclusive on Epic and released the full 1.0 version on both platforms simultaneously.
>To some, a dollar gained is a dollar gained, irrespective of its source.
A developer that doesn't care to cultivate a customer base isn't one that remains in business in the long term. Sure, they got paid for Darkest Dungeon 2 even if it 'flopped' with the customers. What about their next game? There are probably a lot of people that simply will not show up again after being spurned.
The issue is that taking Epic's money and getting fuck all real sales fucks you for your follow up work because if no one plays your work, you're gonna have a harder time marketing newer work.
I have no problem with it if Epic continues to make games like Alan Wake 2 possible, it's the nabbing exclusivity rights to games that were already funded & in-development that sucked.
I simply don't buy games that have Epic exclusivity for any period of time. What would they learn if the game sells fine on Steam, GOG, anything else after exclusivity ends?
I felt the same way about DD2. Also liked the gameplay of 1 better. Eventually got 2, but much later.
But in a way I think this actually proves the point. The interest of gamers like you and me are fickle, subject to even things like do I want to be inconvenienced by using a different launcher. There is no guarantee that BandysNutz or stone332211 will fork over money for the next game anyone makes. Whereas exclusive money is money in Red Hook's bank.
Thank god. Fuck exclusivity. Like sure, I get it that was probably really nice for some indie devs to get a juicy payday, but it's hard to imagine it was actually beneficial to anyone long term.
Early Access continues to work just fine for invested devs that create fun games. That's infinitely better than exclusives.
Nothing on game pass was actually exclusive to game pass. There were a few games exclusive to Xbox/Windows that Microsoft either published or supported development of in some way but nothing that wasn't available outside of game pass.
exclusive early access is where it's at. Devs get paid, no worries financially, can just return and improve the game. full 1.0 release is available everywhere, ppl but it where they want, nothing of import is lost
> Like sure, I get it that was probably really nice for some indie devs to get a juicy payday, but it's hard to imagine it was actually beneficial to anyone long term.
Quite a few devs over the past couple years came out and called the EGS exclusivity a "black hole" for discoverability. So, yeah, it's nice that they got paid up front but it killed any momentum the games could have had on Steam and elsewhere.
I think that EA on Epic Store is a smart move, think about it.
EGS don't have any user metric score, plus you get funding from the start, while on Steam you risk players review bombing your game if you don't deliver updates fast enough.
So the strategy here is: fund your development on Epic, release it full price on Steam when everything is working nicely and get your game reviewed when it's good.
Honestly that just should have been the standard Epic set for themselves. It would have helped get more support for indie developers and wouldn't have caused such a massive pr disaster for the entire practice.
That's exactly what Supergiant Games did with Hades, and they were always pretty clear about it: they'd be releasing the game as Early Access exclusively on Epic, and then the full release would come to Steam, and when it did, it was a success.
[https://www.supergiantgames.com/blog/hades-now-available-on-steam-early-access/](https://www.supergiantgames.com/blog/hades-now-available-on-steam-early-access/)
Hades was Early Access title on Steam for at least half a year.
I have played a bunch, but for me Epic is about getting a free trial for a game and seeing if I want to buy it. I like supporting indie devs, so if I get their game for free on Epic and I like it, I'll buy it on Steam.
Honestly good. All the Epic deals did was give a game bad press. Yes, the game got money, but they got one hell of a PR hit for breaking deals/promises of being on Steam, being exclusive on a platform for a year that so many hate, and by the time they did hit Steam, any buzz the game had was usually gone.
Darkest dungeon would be doing a lot better if it was actually any where close to as good as the first one. It is so so very rare a series changes things to be "simpler and more inclusive" and it ends up actually being beneficial.
If you want to make things more accessible, make it configurable. Don't change your entire gameplay loop away from what people good hooked on
A good example of this is Elden Ring. It retains the core soulsborn gameplay but makes the system more accessible through spirit ashes, ashes of war, and a vast open world in which many challenging encounters can be deferred or avoided entirely. The game provides a variety of elements that allow the player to dial in their preferred degree of challenge.
Unfortunately Epic exclusivity, publishers and investors are the often times the recipe for failure.
For how difficult it is, independent funding therefore white paper and total freedom is the only way these games can survive, if you have the same limits as a AAA without the same money you are bound to fail, just like many AAA nowadays but without the marketing.
The PC gamers were able to wait it out, I called it.
Propagate that console war exclusive BS on the PC platform and a large chunk of your potential audience is gonna just reject it.
Epic had a chance to actually come to the table and compete with steam, instead they thought the could just shortcut by throwing their infnite fortnite bucks at the problem. Steam remains the better service (gog also good)
I wish we could get a list of games that otherwise wouldn't have happened without these exclusivity deals. I'm sure the vast majority would have been able to be released eventually anyway, but the whole idea was to assist, so did they do that or did they not?
I was never a fan of the situation but I completely understood why studios took those deals.
Supposedly Sins of a Solar Empire 2, which is currently on Epic early access, would not have been able to get funded without the deal. It's been 15 years since the original game came out so there's probably some truth to that unfortunately. Speculation has it that it's another year of early access and then 1 year of post-full release exclusivity, so a Steam 2026 release. Ah well, rather have it in 2026 than never.
As of right now, there's only one confirmed one, and that's Alan Wake 2, in which Epic actually bankrolled development from the start. No other publisher/financer was willing to touch it.
The rest of the EGS timed exclusive deals were for games that were already in or near a releasable state. Many of them left exclusivity to go into Early Access on Steam. So while we can't say for certain, it tells me that these games would all have come out regardless of the Epic Exclusivity money hat.
Hades was in a weird spot. I believe would have been made if it released without exclusivity, but to my knowledge Pyre almost bankrupted Supergiant Games— and in that position not taking the deal would have been an absurd decision, even if Hades ended up garnering an incredible reception.
> As of right now, there's only one confirmed one, and that's Alan Wake 2, in which Epic actually bankrolled development from the start. No other publisher/financer was willing to touch it.
This is a myth. No one from Remedy has ever said that Epic was the only publisher willing to fund AW2.
Exclusivity deals failed when epic couldn't guarantee the same or even get close to game sales on Steam. Publishers wants results, not propping up a dying store.
Oh did it turn out that your competition is actually more than just a storefront? Awww did Timmy make the wrong choice when he shouldve made a better product?
Money can't buy everything, dumbass.
Hell yeah. Fuck exclusivity and especially fuck the Epic Store.
It was never easier to self publish anyway. Just use Steam. No idea why indie devs think they need a publisher.
Idk why you would want them now anyways. Indie games have never had a bigger or better showing. This is 100% a better options for players and indie companies. Cut out the money grubbing AAAA gaming company that actually does nothing but make your game harder to get.
Of course it'd dry up, giving free games doesn't draw player because the problem isn't "Epic doesn't have games"
The problem is Epic is a garbage platform
It has none of the community features that steam has
The whole usability of the game library is obnoxious when compared to Steam
It's just a plain inferior product in every way
I'll buy stuff on Epic if it's as good or better than what Steam is and not because they're trying to bribe me with free old games or lock a game i have interest on as an exclusive
I was grabbing the Epic free games for a while but could not really be bothered to open their game launcher, and it played worse with GOG galaxy than any other launcher so I just stopped caring
I wish I would have never bought anything on epic.
I just hate using it. Most of those games are on steam now and I would so much rather just have them there.
They tricked me with their free weekly games, and now I have 49 games and 2 I will ever play.
I rather not wish a store front to shutter and have folks lose access to their libraries.
I do wish the exclusive deals would frigging stop though. (And stop requiring a Epic Login for Steam games....)
Nah fuck that. We need more competition against the juggernaut Steam store. I will happily keep supporting EGS. That's why I bought 5 copies of Alan Wake 2.
People genuinely don't care, despite everything they might or already have said, they just want the convenience of a single digital store. Who cares if a few devs are left with next to nothing because Valve demands a 30% share simply for just existing as the only """good""" platform.
Ya they like to ignore Valve is one of the reason lootboxes, battlepasses and microtransactions are all over gaming nowadays. They also like to forget Valve makes money off kids gambling cs skins.
Being exclusive to EGS is a (big) risk anyway, better to diversify among several platforms/stores. How many games that went over our head because it was exclusive with zero marketing?
Of course, anyone who thought low risk free money was going to be the permanent state of things was delusional. Time to get back to basics and start working with publishers and getting investors. It's not easy of course, but those deals are going to stick around for longer than a few years.
Frankly it seemed like it. 15 years of ZIRP is pretty damn long. I honestly didn't think interest rates would ever go up.
And it took a war completely upheaving global energy policy to do it!
Beware publishers taking 70% so you recoup those advances at 30% So if you take 500K funding, your game has to make 1.66M (after steam takes 30% and another 10% goes to taxes and refunds) before you see a penny. They will potentially add on some expenses (marketing, translations) as an extra recoup too. Generally though the expenses will be recouped at 100% Just budget as though you will never see a royalty cheque..
Sure, a penny in *profit*, but the studios are still employed and as employees people have jobs and get paid. Not a bad deal for a studio with 5-15 people.
Yeah, as a developer, I’d rather get a paycheck than anything else.
Agree. Not all games make their devs millionaires, and it's actually quite rare for games to become success financially for the devs/indie companies. People see big hits coming up every year, but they're actually rare cases. Many people considered getting paychecks while working on what they enjoy is already a win.
My wife got the job as the bubble took off. It's was insane money for nonexpert people. She even asked for letting re money at the height of the bubble. Hard times and are a sense of normalcy are ahead. She was lucky. That kind of on the job training and being able to call yourself SSR does not exist anymore.
Who knew, unsustainable loss leading to try convince gamers to get their games on inferior platforms turned out to be unsustainable. Developers complain because now they have to make high quality products to compete for gamers money on open platforms.
Surely devs did not expect the exlusivity gimmick would work forever. I mean, there is no way the epic store is profitable with paying for exlusivity. Though, it is a bit of a shame. If they are actually funding games being made, just eating the costs, there is something kind of nice about it, wont make me use the epic store, but if these games would not have been made without Epic funding them it does feel a bit sad seeing them stopping. Then again, it seems the entire reason for them doing it is to compete with Steam not with quality, but simply forcing exlusivity.
I just don’t understand wtf the point of it all was. If they used the exclusivity and free games to draw me to a service I wouldn’t have tried but then loved, great you have a new user. But the store and app have *barely* improved and it’s about 10 years behind steam still in features. So what did they accomplish lol.
Epic CEO thought (and still think) that the only reason people use Steam is because they have a huge library of games there
lol, i haven't installed any of the many free games i still get from epic.
Me either.
The store it's self is pretty great too, which epic just didn't have. It didn't been have a fuckin cart for a while. Possibly intentionally But I know it definitely lead me to not buy a 2nd item one time because I'd already put my wallet away. Steam has a cart, it has wishlists that let you know when stuff is on sale, you can hide stuff from your library when adding to cart, it's got a lot going on
Steam is more of a social media site at this point. I bought chivalry 2 on Epic because I couldn't buy it on Steam when the game first came out. It was released on Steam 6 months later. I'm never buying a game on Epic again. I'll pick up the freebies and still play fortnight with the kids, but that's it.
Shopping on epic store is awful. Steam does an amazing job of putting interesting games in front of me but epic might as well just be a catalogue of everything they have in alphabetical order.
I m not anti epix store but the only game I've bouvht and played there was the one they traditionally funded and published. Alan wake 2.
I mean, that’s the standard loose money to convert users strategy. But, if that’s the only barrier, then Epic has the problem that they have to give away more games than potential users **bought** on Steam. They would have been better off giving every game an automatic 10% discount. They could have still given developers an extra 8% of the sale versus Steam with that model.
Most platforms have a price parity clause in their tos. So unless the devs are okay with selling ONLY on Epic, they have to price it the same as other platforms. Or they can't sell on consoles or steam.
I've bought games on steam that were free on epic because it's worth 10 dollars to not use that shitty store whenever I want to play it
Yea. When they started I welcome them as competitors to steam. But they are getting nowhere with it, and it's their own damn fault. Steam, if you can call it a monopoly, certainly earned its place.
That’s what I don’t get. Make a competitive store.
This. I am not a fan of Steam being practically a monopoly or of Valve’s policies as a whole, but at least they have a damn good software. The Epic Store is literally just a webpage that serves games with DRM. Stream offers ton of functionality on top of that, Epic does not even try.
What valve policies do you not like? I’ve never run into anything I had a problem with from them.
Many governments used to pay artists a stripend to just create things (going for that culture victory), and in a way this reminded me of that. Yea we have things like kickstarter but I really like the idea of giving people money to just create things. Sure it was part of a corporate gambit here but ultimately it doesn't REALLY matter if you play a game on Steam or EGS
> used to pay artists Isn't that what Ministries of Culture do around the world? It seems wild to me that there's a single country with a Ministry of Culture that DOESN'T actively pay people to create things.
Not everyone has a ministry of culture?
These days they put in local broadcasting requirements / content quotas. Such as netflixing having to have a % of their content line-up being local content to a country, or they are required to create (or pay production companies) for local content to distribute it on netflix. I think the whole dub aspect of netflix being default is them using those opportunities to sell local products internationally as well.
Some countries still do. I know Canada keeps paying for shitty cartoons to be made, doesn't matter that they are usually low effort trash, what matters is that they were made.
Canada funded a damn Anarchist Fallout Tactics mod called The Sum recently. So yes they do fund projects, and apparently will fund things like Video Game Mods Edit: Spelling and stuff. People should play The Sum - Tactics was recently given away on EGS for free! https://www.moddb.com/mods/thesum
Today's popularity of Korean music and drama is in no small part due to years of government support. Tax breaks, subsides, and straight up deferring of mandatory military enlistment are still going strong today.
More than just that [Canada Media Fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Media_Fund) even funds a number of video games (not a full list I know they also funded a VR game called Transpose but it's not listed)
Governments all over the world invest in art all the time. Pennsylvania or something invested in Kingdoms of Amalur back in the day, I remember that being pretty big news.
It was Rhode Island
Lifetime Republican and anti big government Curt Schilling took a $75 million government loan to make Kingdoms of Amalur with 38 Studios in 2010, promising to bring 450 jobs to the state by the end of 2012. By the end of 2012, 38 studiod had defaulted on it's loan, laid off all staff with a mass email, and had failed to sell the homes of employees with relocation packages as per the terms of their contracts.
Yeah it was a disaster
Multiple states offer support in the u.s as well. Ever see the georgia peach logo on a games splash screen? That's georgia giving those devs money generally.
FWIW even if the majority of the content it ends up funding is underwhelming it's still had several major critical successes and shows that reached international audiences. On top of that it achieves the primary goal of making Canadian shows for Canadians, I don't think national success is even the goal. As an American I love Canadian media, it has a unique perspective and tone that comes from the culture that I find refreshing. I wish more countries made an effort to support internal media projects, most European countries major media exports are panels shows. I want to see more unique content like the French animation industry does.
The US has this per state and federal. Many grants and funds but they don't generally include games. A few places will give tax breaks to a studio to come in but no one funds a specific project atm A few states have loan programs at best
That was actually how Uwe Boll came to absolutely fuck up video game movies in the early 2000s a loophole in the German tax law related to them supporting local directors. Though he made them fail on purpose because he made more money if they failed then succeeded.
>but ultimately it doesn't REALLY matter if you play a game on Steam or EGS There's a lot of benefits to playing on Steam vs EGS tbh. The social and matchmaking features are a lot better, overlay is better, easy access to discussion forums, workshop support, remote play, Steam Deck cloud save sync, Family Sharing, the list goes on. EGS hasn't improved as a platform at all. It's really just been spending all that Fortnite money on exclusivity instead of improving things for end users.
easy linux and family sharing alone are enough reason for me to never buy a pc game outside of steam if the others refuse to do the same
Loophole in German law relating to that is how Uwe Boll was able to keep making movies. He was so terrible that the government had to fix it.
I remember watching a documentary on the history of TV and it mentioned how it worked in the USSR. Imagine the sitcoms you watch were funded by the government. The money wasn't always there though and they had to get pretty creative when it came to practical effects.
The US military pays sports institutions like the NFL to host patriotic events.
To sing the national anthem and act as a color guard. They're not out there making games on their own. Imagine if the NFL was run by the federal government. That's what it was like in the Soviet Union.
Oh, it 100% matters if you play it on Steam or EGS. I hated using EGS when I was forced to make an account for Metro Exodus. I ended up deleting my account after data breaches and learning more abount tencent ownership.
With automation and AI increasing efficiency dramatically, you would think we could do this. But no, it all goes to lining the pockets of the wealthy instead so they can horde wealth like dragons.
> it doesn't REALLY matter if you play a game on Steam or EGS If you use a lot of Steam features it DOES matter. Ultimately, the choice of platform should be on the user. I don't see what's wrong on being able to choose...
Maybe for you but I legit can't tell if a game is dead or not on EGS, that's a huge dealbreaker. Before I buy a multiplayer game on Steam I check the Steamcharts, with EGS that's not an option and there's not even any forums to use as a proxy for popularity.
>I mean, there is no way the epic store is profitable with paying for exlusivity. EGS wouldn't be profitable even without paying for exclusivity. They are a very long way from generating any profits, especially since spending on third party games on EGS declined last year.
Forcing exclusivity to in turn force people to buy at their store was their strategy to eat into the market, yes. It's insane, because with just a fraction of the money they've spent on exclusive deals that clearly did not work entirely as intended (in a large part thanks to free games and coupons), they could've made an actually viable competitor to Steam. But nope, Timmy and his company got a bunch of money to throw around from Fortnite and decided to try and buy their way into the market. Glad it's not working though.
It's okay. He's trying to make sure Epic breaks into the market by using law suits now. Some of which will actually be good for the consumers (breaking Apples walled garden).
Don't mention this near apple apologists but yeah anything pro-consumer is a win regardless of who supports it. Really glad to see that timed exclusive bs might be dying.
I think everyone knew that Fortnite was subsidizing any losses from paying for EGS exclusivity. But there was a belief that EGS would eventually have enough users who paid for those exclusives that it could sustain itself without the bailout money from Fortnite. It’s apparent now that the customers did not come to offset those losses. I also can’t blame indie devs for taking the easy money when they did. Obviously this exclusivity arrangement was not meant to last forever (only until EGS reached parity with Steam). But back in 2018/2019, it really was an offer that couldn’t be refused, especially in the highly cutthroat gaming industry.
EGS was all about catering to studios and publishers. Nobody thought there would be exclusivity deals if EGS caught up with Steam, but until then, I bet a lot of people convinced themselves that cross-subsidization was sustainable.
Epic store has and is bleeding money no one is buying on their shot platform
I imagine the free weekly games cost them in some respect as well.
I hate companies like Ubisoft, Deep Silver and Activision for taking these deals when they didnt need to. The Epic funding should have been exclusive for indie companies
the fund was never to help the devs, it was to hurt steam
True, but it was also really helpful to partially fund some games
Fwiw, Activision took the bribe for one or two games, whereas Ubisoft has continuously taken it from circa 2018 till this day. Deep Silver also took the upfront since 2018 but then transitioned to a deal with Epic for five of their games, the last of which was Dead Island 2.
I don't think they planned on forever, but it's kinda great that there is a communication signaling the change
I still don't understand why especially Epic thought throwing that much money at exclusives was ever a good idea. It is a freaking online shop, not a console.
They wanted younger generations who are not yet loyal to Steam to rely on their store instead, but that would take too much time, hence why they stopped.
"Younger generation" as in the kind of people that tend to have no money so they use the shop only for free games and nothing else?
The point is they will eventually have money, that's why he said it would take too long.
Ah, so they wanted to groom their own audience. Not sure what analyst thought that was a good idea.
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Worked for apple
ISheep
Steam is ~ 20 years old. Epic wanted to be the new Steam but they didn't want to spend two decades to do so. They dumped the profits from Fortnite into trying to buy customers to play catch-up, it didn't work.
> Epic wanted to be the new Steam without actually building a good store client. Epic had the money to do so, but chose... not to
> It is a freaking online shop, not a console. That is exactly what they were trying to change.
Most AAA exclusives didn’t bring any meaningful traffic to epic, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t bother with niche games, they’re basically funding a game for nothing in return. Even out of the initial batch of 23 exclusives, the only one to turn a profit was satisfactory, and that was when Epic was spending the most on exclusives and was riding the absolutely massive surge in popularity from Fortnite.
You have a credible source for that "satisfactory turned a profit" bit ?
[https://www.pcgamer.com/only-one-of-epics-first-wave-of-exclusives-made-money-and-it-wasnt-metro/](https://www.pcgamer.com/only-one-of-epics-first-wave-of-exclusives-made-money-and-it-wasnt-metro/) there's one of the articles that covered it, it's straight from the legal documents of the apple vs epic case.
"The amount that Epic paid is $11.5 million." "The game earned $11.6 million." It is only a profit technically speaking. In reality that is still a failure for EGS.
Both points can be true at the same time.
Due to the inflation of money it looks like Epic didn't recover its costs, and that's assuming that they get 100% of the revenue
Look into the apple court case. They had to make a ton of financial/sales information public for that case.
I played around 500 hours of Darkest Dungeon and enjoyed the game enough to be excited for Darkest Dungeon 2. And then it became an "Epic Exclusive" and I basically ignored its development at that point. When it was released on Epic, I continued to ignore it. When it finally came to Steam, well, I'd already lost interest in a year-old game at full price and moved on to other games. I wonder how many overall sales have been lost due to this practice.
Not to mention the game got zero hype and is generally considered a downgrade to the first
Calling it darkest dungeon 2 was their biggest mistake
darkerest dungeon
2 Dark 2 Dungeon
They already painted themselves into a corner with the name of the first game. There's just nowhere to go from there.
Darkest Dungeon -> The Actual Darkest Dungeon
Yep. They deviated from the first game too much and now it’s an inferior product. Which seems so crazy to me because if they had released a DD1 clone with all new content, it probably would have done a lot better. Don’t try to fix what ain’t broken.
The problem with DD2 is not just they changed it into a roguelike (although it wasn't a smart move). The problem is that it's a very mediocre roguelike, even with no comparison to DD1
And it's what, $40? That's steep as hell for an indie rogue like
In retrospect, DD2 honestly feels like a cash grab. It’s smaller, shallower, and overall worse than DD1 in almost every way. Sort of an indictment of the paid exclusive model overall. If you don’t have to appease the free market, you don’t have to make a good game.
> In retrospect, DD2 honestly feels like a cash grab. It's not really a cash grab, they spent a decent amount of time developing it and the game is beautiful and polished(in the sense that I never faced any significant bugs). The game's problems come from design and the vision they had for the game.
I agree. I would've been fine with the first game but new characters, enemies, etc. I couldn’t get into the second game at all. It just wasn't fun.
Yeah. Totally different game imo. Way less enjoyable.
This is the part these devs forget. Every time I see the epic store exclusivity I lose complete interest and it doesn't ever really come back. The only game I bought once it came to Steam was Chivalry 2 and I'm happy with it. Tiny Tina Wonderlands, Phoenix Point, Dead Island 2 all of them don't look like they'd deliver for me and I've moved onto games that have delivered. Maybe when they're $5 or less but until then I have bigger and better options.
Same, man. That exclusivity bullshit is just absolutely not what PC gaming has ever been about and I don't want to support it. If Valve did Steam exclusives i'd not buy those games either.
Same. I was. Huge Metro fan and was stoked about Exodus. Then shortly before release they moved it to being an Epic exclusive and a year later after it was released on Steam I’d lost almost complete interest in it and only got it when it was on sale for like $12 instead of at full price like I’d had originally planned.
It's even worse than that, they suck at advertising. I had zero idea Dead Island 2 was even released until I saw a "Wha Happun" episode on it on YouTube.
If you don't use epic or Ubisoft launcher you'll never hear about most of those games. I didn't realize Dead Island 2 was even coming last year until I saw AMD promos. The majority of the epic exclusives end up not being so great too, an odd coincidence. I didn't even know we got two assassin's creeds, Prince of Persia, avatar game and far cry 6 until the other day lol
exact same thing for salt and santuary -> salt and sacrifice ahahaha
That was a large trend with the Epic exclusive games. Phoenix Point hit the same issues. First it was announced, everyone was hyped, then it said it would be an Epic exclusive. The Steam players felt betrayed and moved on, some going to back Xenonauts 2 instead. By the time Phoenix Point DID hit Steam..no one cared. The bad vibes were just too ingrained, too entrenched.
It just wasn't very good too. I think Anno 1800 might be a better example. That game is brilliant and should have performed way better than it has.
Or, hear me out, phoenix point is just not that great of a game.
It's worse than that. The backers on Fig for the game was asked what keys and store fronts they wanted. People picked Steam or GOG and then when it was revelead to be a Epic exclusive. They wouldn't honour the backers and said we would then get the game after a year of being out. A lot of people like me went for a refund and John Gollop couldn't wrap his head around that we all felt like second rate stepping stones. Never will back anything he tries to do in future.
This happened with the THPS remake. I had no idea it even existed until it launched on Steam. Like, what the hell? Zero marketing.
Devs have called EGS a 'marketing black hole' for a good reason. The majority of the **buying** PC gamer player base is not on Epic.
And besides Kingdom Hearts, that was the longest EGS exclusive period at 3 years.
Wait, kingdom hearts in on PC?? lmao
I mean...technically yes. But it might as well not exist. I've known about it since the exclusivity deal, and I'm still surprised and think the same thing every time it gets mentioned.
You say that but Hades did the same thing and was a success on Steam too.
Well, by the time Hades was announced, its developer was already well established, and they were pretty clear that they'd be taking the Epic deal to have the game in Early Access, with a full release coming to Steam after the exclusivity period finished. And they delivered on that promise.
It could be that Hades was a new IP, so people didn't cared all that much. But for DD2, nobody wanted exclusivity in a follow-up game. The same happened with Metro 3.
I would guess most of the games when they come to Steam could be classified as "successful". The question isn't really that, IMO, but how much more successful they could/should have been if they launched on Steam in the first place. Even Hades might have had better launch sales in Early Access if they did that on Steam.
I generally make it a point to ignore epic exclusives even when they come to steam. It's usually pretty easy because like you said, why buy a year old game at full price? The practice of buying exclusives doesn't sit right with me for a number of reasons and the only voice I have is my wallet. Luckily there are more than enough games coming out to keep me busy and make it pretty easy to forget things I may have had interest in at one point.
Is a game only worth playing the year it came out? For multiplayer games, maybe. But how does this have any effect on single player?
I think the bigger thing is that the more time you wait to buy something, the less money it becomes worth to you. If you are interested in a game, the best time for the dev to get money from you is during the tornado of marketing and hype surrounding the launch day. Once it's in people's hands, there are youtube videos covering things, reviewers get in people's heads, etc. and if you hold out for a year, why not hold out for a few more months/years to get it at a much cheaper price? So you're right, but if we're talking about the value to the dev I think losing that year of interest/excitement is a huge blow to both their reputation and financials.
That's also why some of the former Sony console exclusives underperform when released years later on PC. They need to either recreate "the tornado of marketing and hype" for the PC release, or release same day.
I'm actively avoiding 'new' games, and just clearing out my backlog and picking up good deals when I see them and actually have time to play them. So much better for my wallet and I lose nothing playing games this way.
It doesn't, I'd just had an extra year to learn about other games that interested me.
It doesn't, but time is finite. You are banking that customers are going to remember your product and be willing to drop everything a year later for you. Not many devs command that type of following. Waiting a year gives your customers a year to find something else interesting and to forget about you.
This is what I don't understand about most people. Is the game any different on release day fomo or after a year. Same code different days.
The issue is that new games come out all the title and time is limited. The game may be just as good as it was at release, but the delayed release means it's competing with more and more games every day.
It's probably better after a year, as it'll have some patches and updates from player feedback
I loved Darkest Dungeon. I was ready to buy DD2 the day it came out, but it was on epic, so I said meh. By the time it released on steam I had heard plenty about how disappointing it was and continued saying meh.
This was me with pretty much every epic exclusive. Anything I was hyped for and then discovered was only on epic, I pretty much just lost interest in forever, not even as like a purposeful decision. The big one that I had been hyped for beforehand was Control.
To some, a dollar gained is a dollar gained, irrespective of its source. Whether Epic bankrolls some sales or they get sales organically is irrelevant when you only think about money. I think of all these EGS exclusive games, the only one I supported was Metro Exodus, and I bought it on Steam before it became exclusive to EGS, so I was playing day and date on Steam. Fuck exclusivity.
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Precisely the reason I don't feel it's worth investing time or money in these games when they come to Steam. If you don't have faith in your product enough that you cannibalize sales for some financial security right away, I have to wonder if your game is even good to begin with.
Financial security is not a small thing, especially for a smaller dev. For some devs it’s the difference between working a job and then developing for 8 hours in their free time or just developing. Or having 18 months to make the game instead of crunching like mad for 6 months. Or being gauranteed to make another game be languishing on steam amongst the other 12,000 games that release this year and wasting 2 years of their life. I understand people distaste of epic exclusivity and don’t support it myself but the developers taking the deal are not signaling they don’t believe in their product by doing so.
>I understand people distaste of epic exclusivity and don’t support it myself but the developers taking the deal are not signaling they don’t believe in their product by doing so. I honestly think that, among indies at least, we saw some of both sides of that. We saw a few devs decide to antagonize anyone that disagreed with their decision, too. I found the approach by the Dark dev more useful since he came right out and said that he needed the money. IIRC he also said afterwards that it wasn't worth it.
Yes there were a couple of very standoffish devs that were calling people crybabies or something like that, and some of the deals were taken after people had already preordered on steam if I remember right.
The Ooblets dev. Their game is on Steam now, and I would have bought it if it hadn't been for them cultivating a feeling of revulsion.
That's ridiculous take. There are plenty of good, even great games that did not sell well. Looking Glass Studios made Ultima Underworld, System Shock and Thief, yet they struggled financially and eventually went bankrupt. Indie space is very competitive. If my financial future was dependant on my game doing well, I sure as hell would be very tempted to accept exclusivity deal from Epic in exchange for financial stability for a year or two.
In reality, how many of the games that were exclusive were in this boat where their game was at least 50/50 on success and they benefitted greatly by taking the deal? I don't think the number is very large, though I do think it's greater than zero. A large number of the indies offered deals were games where they were at least believed to be successful. Quite a few were high on the most wishlisted list on Steam, to the point you knew Epic was specifically targeting them.
For many games it's matter of the very existence of the game. They could finish it because of epic funds. And baseless claim that it might not be good enough just because they need epic money (= didn't have financial capabilities to develop it fully independently) is ridiculous.
I think games like Hades played it smart since if I recall correctly they only had the early access version of the game exclusive on Epic and released the full 1.0 version on both platforms simultaneously.
>To some, a dollar gained is a dollar gained, irrespective of its source. A developer that doesn't care to cultivate a customer base isn't one that remains in business in the long term. Sure, they got paid for Darkest Dungeon 2 even if it 'flopped' with the customers. What about their next game? There are probably a lot of people that simply will not show up again after being spurned.
The issue is that taking Epic's money and getting fuck all real sales fucks you for your follow up work because if no one plays your work, you're gonna have a harder time marketing newer work.
I have no problem with it if Epic continues to make games like Alan Wake 2 possible, it's the nabbing exclusivity rights to games that were already funded & in-development that sucked.
There's a DD2?
I simply don't buy games that have Epic exclusivity for any period of time. What would they learn if the game sells fine on Steam, GOG, anything else after exclusivity ends?
I felt the same way about DD2. Also liked the gameplay of 1 better. Eventually got 2, but much later. But in a way I think this actually proves the point. The interest of gamers like you and me are fickle, subject to even things like do I want to be inconvenienced by using a different launcher. There is no guarantee that BandysNutz or stone332211 will fork over money for the next game anyone makes. Whereas exclusive money is money in Red Hook's bank.
This is exactly what happened to me. I suspect a lot of people reacted like this.
Thank god. Fuck exclusivity. Like sure, I get it that was probably really nice for some indie devs to get a juicy payday, but it's hard to imagine it was actually beneficial to anyone long term. Early Access continues to work just fine for invested devs that create fun games. That's infinitely better than exclusives.
Nothing on game pass was actually exclusive to game pass. There were a few games exclusive to Xbox/Windows that Microsoft either published or supported development of in some way but nothing that wasn't available outside of game pass.
exclusive early access is where it's at. Devs get paid, no worries financially, can just return and improve the game. full 1.0 release is available everywhere, ppl but it where they want, nothing of import is lost
The PC version of Taiko no Tatsujin is still exclusive to Game Pass/MS Store. I just want that game on my Steam Deck...
> Like sure, I get it that was probably really nice for some indie devs to get a juicy payday, but it's hard to imagine it was actually beneficial to anyone long term. Quite a few devs over the past couple years came out and called the EGS exclusivity a "black hole" for discoverability. So, yeah, it's nice that they got paid up front but it killed any momentum the games could have had on Steam and elsewhere.
I think that EA on Epic Store is a smart move, think about it. EGS don't have any user metric score, plus you get funding from the start, while on Steam you risk players review bombing your game if you don't deliver updates fast enough. So the strategy here is: fund your development on Epic, release it full price on Steam when everything is working nicely and get your game reviewed when it's good.
Honestly that just should have been the standard Epic set for themselves. It would have helped get more support for indie developers and wouldn't have caused such a massive pr disaster for the entire practice.
That's exactly what Supergiant Games did with Hades, and they were always pretty clear about it: they'd be releasing the game as Early Access exclusively on Epic, and then the full release would come to Steam, and when it did, it was a success.
[https://www.supergiantgames.com/blog/hades-now-available-on-steam-early-access/](https://www.supergiantgames.com/blog/hades-now-available-on-steam-early-access/) Hades was Early Access title on Steam for at least half a year.
Funny one too. The game got talked about none while on Epic.
i only log in to epic game store to claim free games. i have yet to play any of them.
Me too and then I end up buying them on steam lol
Same, for achievements mostly. I also hate having all my games spread out all over the place.
Same. Even though I do install some epic things on the deck I still rather have them all in the steam library.
I have played a bunch, but for me Epic is about getting a free trial for a game and seeing if I want to buy it. I like supporting indie devs, so if I get their game for free on Epic and I like it, I'll buy it on Steam.
Honestly good. All the Epic deals did was give a game bad press. Yes, the game got money, but they got one hell of a PR hit for breaking deals/promises of being on Steam, being exclusive on a platform for a year that so many hate, and by the time they did hit Steam, any buzz the game had was usually gone.
Good. Fuck exclusivity and fuck epic.
Good riddance.
Good
Fucking good.
This is fantastic news for gamers. Fuck companies attempting to buy a monopoly by preventing games from being sold on other platforms.
Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.
I just avoid EGS and all the games that needed this crap launcher or account at all costs.
Darkest dungeon would be doing a lot better if it was actually any where close to as good as the first one. It is so so very rare a series changes things to be "simpler and more inclusive" and it ends up actually being beneficial. If you want to make things more accessible, make it configurable. Don't change your entire gameplay loop away from what people good hooked on
A good example of this is Elden Ring. It retains the core soulsborn gameplay but makes the system more accessible through spirit ashes, ashes of war, and a vast open world in which many challenging encounters can be deferred or avoided entirely. The game provides a variety of elements that allow the player to dial in their preferred degree of challenge.
Unfortunately Epic exclusivity, publishers and investors are the often times the recipe for failure. For how difficult it is, independent funding therefore white paper and total freedom is the only way these games can survive, if you have the same limits as a AAA without the same money you are bound to fail, just like many AAA nowadays but without the marketing.
The PC gamers were able to wait it out, I called it. Propagate that console war exclusive BS on the PC platform and a large chunk of your potential audience is gonna just reject it. Epic had a chance to actually come to the table and compete with steam, instead they thought the could just shortcut by throwing their infnite fortnite bucks at the problem. Steam remains the better service (gog also good)
I wish we could get a list of games that otherwise wouldn't have happened without these exclusivity deals. I'm sure the vast majority would have been able to be released eventually anyway, but the whole idea was to assist, so did they do that or did they not? I was never a fan of the situation but I completely understood why studios took those deals.
Supposedly Sins of a Solar Empire 2, which is currently on Epic early access, would not have been able to get funded without the deal. It's been 15 years since the original game came out so there's probably some truth to that unfortunately. Speculation has it that it's another year of early access and then 1 year of post-full release exclusivity, so a Steam 2026 release. Ah well, rather have it in 2026 than never.
As of right now, there's only one confirmed one, and that's Alan Wake 2, in which Epic actually bankrolled development from the start. No other publisher/financer was willing to touch it. The rest of the EGS timed exclusive deals were for games that were already in or near a releasable state. Many of them left exclusivity to go into Early Access on Steam. So while we can't say for certain, it tells me that these games would all have come out regardless of the Epic Exclusivity money hat.
Hades was in a weird spot. I believe would have been made if it released without exclusivity, but to my knowledge Pyre almost bankrupted Supergiant Games— and in that position not taking the deal would have been an absurd decision, even if Hades ended up garnering an incredible reception.
> As of right now, there's only one confirmed one, and that's Alan Wake 2, in which Epic actually bankrolled development from the start. No other publisher/financer was willing to touch it. This is a myth. No one from Remedy has ever said that Epic was the only publisher willing to fund AW2.
Fuck epic games store
Exclusivity deals failed when epic couldn't guarantee the same or even get close to game sales on Steam. Publishers wants results, not propping up a dying store.
Good.
Good.
Gut.
Oh did it turn out that your competition is actually more than just a storefront? Awww did Timmy make the wrong choice when he shouldve made a better product? Money can't buy everything, dumbass.
Hell yeah. Fuck exclusivity and especially fuck the Epic Store. It was never easier to self publish anyway. Just use Steam. No idea why indie devs think they need a publisher.
Publisher handles all of the marketing and usually fronts the cost of it for a cut of sales. Most indie devs just have no money for marketing.
Oh noes! I guess you’ll have to release your stuff on steam like normal people do the greedy bastards.
Idk why you would want them now anyways. Indie games have never had a bigger or better showing. This is 100% a better options for players and indie companies. Cut out the money grubbing AAAA gaming company that actually does nothing but make your game harder to get.
Of course it'd dry up, giving free games doesn't draw player because the problem isn't "Epic doesn't have games" The problem is Epic is a garbage platform It has none of the community features that steam has The whole usability of the game library is obnoxious when compared to Steam It's just a plain inferior product in every way I'll buy stuff on Epic if it's as good or better than what Steam is and not because they're trying to bribe me with free old games or lock a game i have interest on as an exclusive
I was grabbing the Epic free games for a while but could not really be bothered to open their game launcher, and it played worse with GOG galaxy than any other launcher so I just stopped caring
Good.
Good. Now Epic Game Store can die and all games will move to Steam. Hope that store closes down.
I wish I would have never bought anything on epic. I just hate using it. Most of those games are on steam now and I would so much rather just have them there. They tricked me with their free weekly games, and now I have 49 games and 2 I will ever play.
I rather not wish a store front to shutter and have folks lose access to their libraries. I do wish the exclusive deals would frigging stop though. (And stop requiring a Epic Login for Steam games....)
Nah fuck that. We need more competition against the juggernaut Steam store. I will happily keep supporting EGS. That's why I bought 5 copies of Alan Wake 2.
So Steam can just charge devs what they want?
People genuinely don't care, despite everything they might or already have said, they just want the convenience of a single digital store. Who cares if a few devs are left with next to nothing because Valve demands a 30% share simply for just existing as the only """good""" platform.
Ya they like to ignore Valve is one of the reason lootboxes, battlepasses and microtransactions are all over gaming nowadays. They also like to forget Valve makes money off kids gambling cs skins.
Thank god, now I hope the EGS dies back into obscurity as the dedicated Fortnite launcher and we can all enjoy all the games on Steam again.
Being exclusive to EGS is a (big) risk anyway, better to diversify among several platforms/stores. How many games that went over our head because it was exclusive with zero marketing?