Smart Community
Games => All Gaming Chatter => Topic started by: dsmart on February 01, 2019, 11:38:29 AM
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Due to the on-going drama, I have created three Twitter threads with my thoughts
02/01/2019 - Steam vs EGS Redux (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091339359779999750.html)
01/31/2019 - Steam vs EGS - Industry Silence (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091020563991142400.html)
01/30/2019 - Steam vs EGS (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1090613972607356928.html)
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Hi there. Long time lurker, first time poster.
Not a game dev or in any way connected with the industry apart from being a video gamer.
Derek I read your twitter about Steam, and liked some of the points you raised, for instance the dev steam tools and how easy they make it to integrate them into a game, also steam not minding taking on the heavy lifting from keys sold externally to steam. I've always wondered why steam is happy to supply bandwidth etc... for product sold off steam. It goes against money grabbing best practices, but it sure does make the environment much better for us consumers.
re the EGS. I feel the exclusivity model on PC won't work as well as it does on consoles. For a large portion of the console owners they seem to have a very us versus them mentality. A lot choose a single console, and they become loyal to that console and disparage the other console. Confirmation bias fanboyism. When your "side" gets an exclusive, all those silly emotions kick in and you're either happy your side won, or "pah didn't like the look of that game anyway". It does lead to some pretty crappy behaviour, and encourages the fanboy irrationality. It's interesting to talk to people who can afford to own both Sony and Playstation consoles because all that nonsense just dissappears. I think for the PC storefront exclusivity won't work the same way. People are invested in the platforms, but the barrier to conversion is much smaller than buying another console and keeping it up to date.
I've been a steam user since 2004, and have 261 games, the cliched bunch of games bought in sales that I've not got around to playing. Up until about a year or two ago I've also been a one launcher guy. It was steam or nothing for me, apart for the Blizzard launcher for WoW and D3. The other launchers were a bit shit, and I don't want a dozen launchers running in the background. That's changed over the last year or so. Free games are very tempting, so I've been adding to my packrat collection on other launchers when shouts go out that free games are up for grabs. Now I have Steam, Blizzard, EA Origin, Epic, uPlay, GOG, and humble bundle. I know humble isn't a launcher, just including it for completeness.
The things that have converted me from a Steam only guy to being more open to other launchers?
Free games, many storefronts give away free games.
Buying legacy games I love like Settlers 3 & 4 and Command & Conquer.
Not having all my eggs in one basket concerns. If anything ever happens to my steam account I will be gutted, but at least I will have some games on other platforms to play.
I want competition to Steam. I subscribed to EA Origin basic. £20 per year. I've played only 2 or 3 games from the vault and had a go at Anthem, so I probably haven't got good value for money out of it, but I really want the bean counters at EA to take notice of that business model. To the point my annual subscription is due soon, and I'm going to let it renew, even though I don't use it much. I want to vote in favour of that type of business with my wallet.
I think the way in which Metro Exodus moved to Epic exclusive was poorly managed. I think there would have been a lot less negativity if it had been managed better. My plan was to buy it on Steam once they removed Denuvo. I don't mind them using Denuvo to protect release sales, but I'm patient and don't mind waiting. It's still my plan, wait a year until it releases on steam, hopefully Denuvo will be gone by then, and it should be much cheaper 1 year from release.
I get what Epic is trying to do with exclusives and game giveaways, both of which are costing Epic money, but I think Epic are missing a trick, in fact I think Epic are screwing themselves a bit with the exclusives.
Epic's biggest selling point for me is the price. Their slice is much lower than steam 12% instead of 30%. This is what will sell the games. I did a small excel chart where if I was a game dev how much I would have to charge for a game on steam or epic to get the same return. I'll post it in a seperate post below to deal with table formatting issues. The Epic price to consumers is noticeably cheaper to consumers even when we are talking about a game where the dev only gets £10.
The real trick I think Epic is missing is that by having exclusives the side by side price comparison doesn't take place.
Metro is supposed to be 10 bucks cheaper on epic than it was on steam, but I can't see for myself any more.
That huge advantage epic has is actually being removed from public perception by epic having exclusives. I think this is a HUGE mistake.
If you look at how many people buy dodgy keys off parasitic sites like G2A or Kinguin which I think are a blight upon the industry it gives credibility to the argument that some people are very price concious. They are even prepared to gamble that after handing over real money to one of these shadey snake oil salesmen, that they will get what they paid for. In my opinion Epic's greatest marketing tool would be to have their prices directly compared to steam side by side.
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Excuse my multiposting please, I just wanted to continue before the page expired and try and post my chart
Dev Wants Steam price Epic price Cust saving
5 7.14 5.68 1.46
10 14.29 11.36 2.92
15 21.43 17.05 4.38
20 28.57 22.73 5.84
25 35.71 28.41 7.31
30 42.86 34.09 8.77
35 50.00 39.77 10.23
40 57.14 45.45 11.69
Sorry the headers don't line up.
First column is how much the game dev gets from a sale on the storefront. Using steam 30% and epic 12% cuts. No other factors built in e.g. better steam cut for larger sales, or the unreal engine cost. Second is how much the game would have to sell for on steam for the dev to get the first column, and the third is how much the game would have to sell for on epic to get the same cut. Last is the difference. Any game the dev gets 35 or 40 bucks ( currency agnostic ) is 10 bucks cheaper on epic than steam.
Derek has made some really good arguments as to why steam is worth 30% on twitter. All sorts of features that we take for granted on steam are missing on epic, some are dev only features like steam integration libraries. It's up to us as consumers to decide which storefront to buy from, and are those extra features worth the extra money?
One last point. What's true today may not be true tomoorow, one month from now, one year from now, or five years from now. Epic are throwing money at us consumers trying to get us onto their platform. Will that 12% cut still be 12% when epic think they are not longer the new kid on the block? Will they still give away free games every two weeks one year from now? Unlikely. Will epic store be more feature complete and closer to steam a year from now? Very probably.
Are epic your friend? No they are a business just like steam, out to make money.
I am in favour of epic competing against steam in the free market. I think that will be good for us consumers. I think they handled the Metro exclusive badly and as you tube commentators have said exclusives doen't bring any benefit to consumers, they are only done to try and benefit a business, in this case epic.
I'd love to know of the game dev gets any say in an exclusivity deal or does the publisher have the power to decide that on their own. When cash is handed out for an exclusive like Metro, do the publisher and dev split the cash or does the publisher get to keep all of that? What recourse does a dev have if they don't like what the publisher is doing?
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From my strictly consumer PoV: With each new DRM (they like to call it "digital storefront" nowadays) I can decide to not hop on board, ignore it and go with what I already have (Steam, GOG and Humble DRM-free).
Obviously exclusivity deals are anti-consumer. So I ignore those games entirely. No loss, there are more than enough. Maybe I get an used copy for my favorite console. :wink:
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Excuse my multiposting please, I just wanted to continue before the page expired and try and post my chart
This thread wasn't showing as updated for me; hence the late response.
Anyway, your posts are precisely the gist of my jumping into the fray about this. As a game dev, we who use Steam, know all its benefits. Which is why I was surprised by the results of that poll which I had posted in the thread. If you compare Steam to Lumberyard + AWS + all the crap (e.g. GameLift) that Amazon lumps into that ecosystem, and compare the costs, nothing beats Steam. Amazon makes a ton of money from their AWS services. That's how they're able to give Lumberyard away for free. The same applies to Improbable, which has the same business model.
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It was disappointed as I enjoyed the metro series, but I'm totally fine waiting a year for it.
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It was disappointed as I enjoyed the metro series, but I'm totally fine waiting a year for it.
In a bit of an hilarious twist, the fans have been giving it glowing reviews.....on Steam :emot-lol:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-02-23-despite-the-epic-games-store-exclusivity-controversy-metro-exodus-players-are-leaving-thousands-of-positive-reviews-on-steam
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Regarding your latest Twitter series:
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1106650297055748096
I'm not exactly sure what Reasoning you're asking for... ?
Why EPIC might want to distill marketing informations from their competitors data on your machine? Why the might want to share said informations with a major shareholder (who possess blocking minorities rights), who might also own a lot of juicy user data of the chinese market,in which EPIC might be interested?
So while the whole thing isn't the apocalypse, just as you wrote, i don't get what you're asking for in the end there?
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Regarding your latest Twitter series:
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1106650297055748096
I'm not exactly sure what Reasoning you're asking for... ?
Why EPIC might want to distill marketing informations from their competitors data on your machine? Why the might want to share said informations with a major shareholder (who possess blocking minorities rights), who might also own a lot of juicy user data of the chinese market,in which EPIC might be interested?
So while the whole thing isn't the apocalypse, just as you wrote, i don't get what you're asking for in the end there?
Not sure what you're going on about. I was having a discussion with another party about the issue. I've written several threads about it. Can you be more specific?
https://twitter.com/OneAngryGamerHD/status/1106442607306178560
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1092044744174247937
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091339359779999750.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091020563991142400.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1090613972607356928.html
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Not sure what you're going on about. I was having a discussion with another party about the issue. I've written several threads about it. Can you be more specific?
https://twitter.com/OneAngryGamerHD/status/1106442607306178560
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1092044744174247937
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091339359779999750.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091020563991142400.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1090613972607356928.html
The twitter post in which you challenged ANYONE to give you a SINGLE credible reason (your ending argument of the first thread you linked).
Again there's quite some value for a business to get hold of tons of user/competitor data (e.g. on play times on certain titles to stock up ones own portofolio on similar titles). So that shouldn't be what you're asking for, now is it?
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The twitter post in which you challenged ANYONE to give you a SINGLE credible reason (your ending argument of the first thread you linked).
Again there's quite some value for a business to get hold of tons of user/competitor data (e.g. on play times on certain titles to stock up ones own portofolio on similar titles). So that shouldn't be what you're asking for, now is it?
You took the tweet (https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1106650297055748096) out of context.
"Yeah, I remember that fiasco well. However, that's different in how they tracked down the user. Also, this is Epic we're talking about. I challenge ANYONE to give me a SINGLE credible reason why they have reason to believe that they would do anything with user data."
I was asking anyone to give me a credible reason why they think Epic would take user data and give to a third-party (Tencent). If you read the whole thread, you will understand why, because I go into more detail than just a single tweet.
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A new Steam vs EGS thread (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1107671681517211649.html) (it's long)
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You took the tweet (https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1106650297055748096) out of context.
"Yeah, I remember that fiasco well. However, that's different in how they tracked down the user. Also, this is Epic we're talking about. I challenge ANYONE to give me a SINGLE credible reason why they have reason to believe that they would do anything with user data."
I was asking anyone to give me a credible reason why they think Epic would take user data and give to a third-party (Tencent). If you read the whole thread, you will understand why, because I go into more detail than just a single tweet.
Marketing & Money - in the same way Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Co. are doing it.
Not to mention the whole merit in discussing EPICs stupid implementation is that EPIC will actually have to change their stupid implementation. So i cheer everyone discussing any fuck-up of a corporation. As that's the actual part of the invisible hand supposed to keep the free economy working. And that doesn't exclude Valve. And i think you're giving Valve quite some leeway, when you remember back in the days Valves biggest argument to use their service (for developers) was copy protection, which always was the holy cow for our lil' gaming tribe.
Other than that - the whole digital market place with its service providers is nonsensical in terms of effeciency. As there's literally no additional value in yet another market place service provider. But let them battle eitherway - as long as we don't get another Bethesda Launcher -_-
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Epic are throwing money at trying to buy an installed userbase for the Epic store. One of the mains grips that people have with EGS, yet another installer, is the very reason that Epic are buying the exclusives. A Tim Sweeny tweet from an article in the Derek thread linked above.
"I understand your sentiment and the convenience factor of a single store, but Epic is absolutely committed to this path. Exclusives are by the far the most potent tool for our 88% revenue share making inroads against 70% stores."
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) March 16, 2019
Let's assume Tim Sweeny knows what the fuck he's talking about, and probably has all sorts of expensive paid for data to make decisions from. He is saying that an 18% revenue difference is NOT enough to get gamers to install yet another store application onto their PCs. 18% is huge, for that games devs could split the difference with the buyers, and take 9% better prices for both parties. And yet 10%-18% cheaper prices for the end buyer is not enough to break the not another installer mentality. That's utterly crazy when you think about it.
Epic are paying through the nose to buy customers with the installed EGS on their PC.
A free game every 2 weeks. The value of these games tends to be $15-$20 on the store after the free period. At first I thought EGS would pay the devs maybe $3-$5 for each giveaway, but I'm starting to believe that EGS is probably paying full whack, e.g. $15-$20 ( minues the EGS 12%), whatever the normal price of the game is to the devs. My reasoning?
My understanding is that the Phoenix Point dev said he could afford to refund ALL of the crowdfunding backers out of the EGS exclusivity deal money, however many million that was? That is EGS paying that dev ( a second time ) for every presale already made before the announcement at full price. That is staggering.
Epic are spending an ABSOLUTE FORTUNE trying to buy an EGS installed userbase.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Epic straight up said sign up and we will credit your EGS with $100 which you can spend on anything you want in the EGS.
I've had every free game on offer on the EGS so far and I've paid for Satisfactory. I reckon I am probably about $100 up already.
The state of the EGS. Given how much Epic are giving you to install the EGS, do you think they will allow people to leave?
You don't spend hundreds of dollars per person to try and get people to sign up to something only to let them wander off, because the store is a bit crap in it's early days. I promise you that as crap as EGS is right now, it will evolve and develop at lightning speed. They are spending so much on buying customers they cannot let that invetment go to waste. Epic are probably spending a few million a month on pushing that storefront over the same hump steam went through. From "ewwww steam", to "cool steam". I wouldn't be surprised if the current EGS is a placeholder, like a html placeholder website, and behind the scenes they are building a behemoth.
You only have to make the supposition that Tim Sweeny is not an idiot, link that to the very visible amount of money they are putting into this, and the only logical conclusion is that the EGS is going to be a monster when it hits its full capabilities.
PS I should have asked this at the start sorry. Are we allowed to use the F word if we are not using it to insult someone? Sorry if the answer is no.
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A free game every 2 weeks. The value of these games tends to be $15-$20 on the store after the free period. At first I thought EGS would pay the devs maybe $3-$5 for each giveaway, but I'm starting to believe that EGS is probably paying full whack, e.g. $15-$20 ( minues the EGS 12%), whatever the normal price of the game is to the devs. My reasoning?
While I can't divulge how the model works, I can tell you with certainty that they are not paying devs full price for free games. A dev selling a game for $20, isn't getting $20 - 12% per copy. Think about how bundles work and are priced, and you will have an idea.
My understanding is that the Phoenix Point dev said he could afford to refund ALL of the crowdfunding backers out of the EGS exclusivity deal money, however many million that was?
$47K people funded the game for about $800K. So yeah, they can afford to refund everyone because I am quite sure that it's something they were expecting, and have worked it into their deal with Epic.
You only have to make the supposition that Tim Sweeny is not an idiot, link that to the very visible amount of money they are putting into this, and the only logical conclusion is that the EGS is going to be a monster when it hits its full capabilities.
It's not. At the end of the day, I envision it being just another store, but with few exclusive titles. In other words, like GoG, HB, GMG etc
PS I should have asked this at the start sorry. Are we allowed to use the F word if we are not using it to insult someone? Sorry if the answer is no.
We try to keep it respectful and PG-13 around here. Not because you can't use swear (as long as it's not at someone) words, but because we want to try and maintain quality discussions.
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My take on the recent Epic news.
Industries of Titan, and The Outer Worlds - slightly gutted these are Epic store exclusives. Microsoft store laughed my ass off :)
Epic game store windows application really kills my home PC if I have any chrome tabs open, also if I browse the EGS on my PC at work in chrome that's pretty hard on my work PC too. It is exacerbated by the EGS app wanting to refresh and take centre stage on my PC after I quit an EGS game. Uggg, I hope they fix this.
I do like that EGS is causing some non windows games to be ported to windows. Journey, Detroit Become Human, other Quantic Dream stuff, and a few others. These were never going to hit PC before EGS came along. What else that was never going to appear on PC might now make the leap? I am really excited by this possibility.
Derek how do game devs in general feel about EGS. The better cut is obvious, but I'm more after are there any devs dancing around because they feel the tyranny of steam is over and there is a new dawn? Is there a new feeling of hope in people you speak to, or is it just business as usual?
To all readers here have you paid for anything on EGS yet?
I have bought Satisfactory and will probably buy Journey, Industries of Titan, and Outer Worlds when they release.
I like the competition to Steam, not so keen on the exclusives, am interested to see where this all goes.
PS Mr Sweeny please make your client less sucky!
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Derek how do game devs in general feel about EGS. The better cut is obvious, but I'm more after are there any devs dancing around because they feel the tyranny of steam is over and there is a new dawn? Is there a new feeling of hope in people you speak to, or is it just business as usual?
It's just business as usual.
As I have said in all my Twitter threads (latest (https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1107755730059157504)) on this, the primary issues for defections are:
- 12% v 30% royalties (more money!)
- review bombing on store reviews
- community toxicity (as per above)
- store discovery (too many titles, poor algorithms etc)
Those are very compelling reasons to do exclusives with EGS, without even thinking about the ramifications of leaving Steam for a period of time.
Thus far, Valve has attempted (with hilarious results) to address 1&2; almost as an afterthought.
At GDC, it's almost as if Epic locked-up all the titles there. It's hilarious really. :emot-lol:
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:emot-lol: FF to 10:50.
They got those quotes from this thread (https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1109118249688539138). Also this (https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1109256614094295040).
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Vampire Bloodlines 2 same price on EGS as it is on steam :(
Dev just keeping the difference.
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Rage 2 has appeared for pre order on steam. I guess Fallout 76 wasn't enough to entice people into the Bethesda store.
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Oh how I miss the good old days. Just pop in the disc, run setup.exe, install, click shortcut and away you go. Now it seems filing your tax returns isn't too dissimilar from this.
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Rage 2 has appeared for pre order on steam. I guess Fallout 76 wasn't enough to entice people into the Bethesda store.
https://twitter.com/bethesda/status/1110225138979651584
"We’re pleased to announce that RAGE 2, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot, and DOOM Eternal will be released on Steam as well as beth.games/2Mhhqoi. We will also be bringing Fallout 76 to Steam later this year."
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https://twitter.com/bethesda/status/1110225138979651584
"We’re pleased to announce that RAGE 2, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot, and DOOM Eternal will be released on Steam as well as beth.games/2Mhhqoi. We will also be bringing Fallout 76 to Steam later this year."
Allow me to translate for you :)
"After Fallout 76 tanked and with low uptake on our "yet another launcher storefront" to install we've realised that the Epic Game Store is going to solve out 30% steam cut problem for us. We've had a lot of justified bad press recently, and gamers have started to realise they shouldn't give us a free pass on buggy poopshows, especially when we forget to include the charm. Some Bethesda internals want to keep our storefront so we've given it one last throw of the dice by giving Morrowind away free for one day to see just how effective Tim Sweeny's idea of free stuff to drive install base works. But of course we are Bethesda, so we can't take an idea without cocking it up with that Bethesda secret sauce somehow. So the free stuff will be only during a one day window, and our servers won't be able to cope. We won't learn how effective the Sweeny gambit is, because one day is just a stupidly small window to try it out and get good data, but we are confident some customers will patch that for us, lord knows we can't be arsed.
The reality is We'll be retiring our own "yet another launcher storefront" as soon as we think we can without losing any more face. We can't endure any more humiliation, and Todd's shrink has insisted he gets a PR person for the sake of his own sanity. We'll be launching on EGS in the future, steam also, but we are passing steam's extra 18% on to the customer, and we'll be encouraging our own "yet another launcher storefront" to become ever more invisible until it can be finally put to rest, hopefully with no one noticing, and our fans can go back to making our games great again."
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Oh how I miss the good old days. Just pop in the disc, run setup.exe, install, click shortcut and away you go. Now it seems filing your tax returns isn't too dissimilar from this.
I miss the times when there was retail trade with actual price competition. Now it's just publisher price fixing with the highest prices worldwide in my region (they even divided the EU into two regions, so they could charge me higher prices than my neighbors, imagine paying twice as much in California than in Florida). "Digital" games cost the same in every store, regardless of "storefront", just locked to the GeoIP.
BTW: I don't care much about the launcher chaos and I won't participate in any consumer tribalism. The "exclusives" thing simply lets me put the platform as a whole further on the backburner until I abandon it completely, when it gets too inconvenient and expensive. I don't need "PC gaming", when other platforms have a better selection, much more convenience AND better prices.
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I had a quick compare olf steam prices vs EGS prices the other day. They were exactly the same. I am happy devs are getting more money, but I thought part of the selling point of EGS is that it would result in cheaper prices for the consumer? Dev's aren't keeping the lion's share and passing on a small saving, devs are keeping the lot. I expected at least a buck or two off to tempt the consumer.
( Obviously exclusives can't be compared. )
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I had a quick compare olf steam prices vs EGS prices the other day. They were exactly the same. I am happy devs are getting more money, but I thought part of the selling point of EGS is that it would result in cheaper prices for the consumer? Dev's aren't keeping the lion's share and passing on a small saving, devs are keeping the lot. I expected at least a buck or two off to tempt the consumer.
( Obviously exclusives can't be compared. )
Publisher price fixing and store exclusives means no competition. Retail going away also makes Steam completely uninteresting to me. The digital only release of X4: Foundations marked the point, where I stopped buying PC games (on release).
From a gamer's PoV I couldn't care less about these digital store shenanigans. EA dropping out of Steam only meant that I didn't notice their releases anymore. Recently I found out, that they released Titanfall 2 in 2016 already. I completely forgot that it even exists, it's like these games are invisible. :grin:
So I wish them fun with whatever business model they come up with on PC, I don't care. Goodbye, Microsoft.
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I had a quick compare olf steam prices vs EGS prices the other day. They were exactly the same. I am happy devs are getting more money, but I thought part of the selling point of EGS is that it would result in cheaper prices for the consumer? Dev's aren't keeping the lion's share and passing on a small saving, devs are keeping the lot. I expected at least a buck or two off to tempt the consumer.
( Obviously exclusives can't be compared. )
No... EGS is trying to win through cutting Valves game supply off... by offering a (short-term) better deal to producers.
By the way, game companies don't compete directly against each others, as every product is it's own mini monopoly. No matter how cheap Tropico 6 will be, it will never be Anno1800 - and i'm not talking quality or anything.
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I seem to remember that one of the "selling points" of the EGS is that it was supposed to offer the potential that counsumers could get a better deal as well as devs. For instance I think Metro was five bucks cheaper when it moved to EGS? The difference between the valve slice and the EGS slice, especially if you use the engine too, was large enough that devs could make more profit AND charge the consumer less.
Apart from one example, Metro Exodus, the devs are just keeping all the extra cash, not passing a portion of that on to the cunsumer.
I am happy for devs to make more profit from paying less to digital distibution platforms. Game devs making more money will benefit consumers because it will add to the incentive and competition to make games. For a 60 dollar game, a dev/publisher gets almost 11 bucks more selling on EGS, if sales for that game are measured in millions, then that's 11 million bucks per million sales. That is incentive to make more and better games. It is good for the industry and consumers.
But the unfortunate reality is it's not going to reduce the nickle and diming cash grabs inside games. Dev and publishers paying EGS less is not going to reduce pedocaches ( lootbox gambling ) or any of the other crappy money squeezing practices the industry is so addicted to. If anything it may even encourage this crappy behaviour.
One interesting side effect is that extra cash incentive doesn't apply to free to play games. They get no benefit from the EGS, unless they start selling bundles on the EGS. If anything the EGS will incentivise a small nudge away from free to play, but I think the markets and mentality between free to play and purchased games is probably so vast that the effect will be next to nothing.
My biggest gripe with the EGS so far is that it runs like a dog on my PC. It will happily kill chrome stone dead when it is running in my tray, and when I leave an EGS game the game likes to try and prod the EGS back to life for some extra fork you marketing, but instead of ressurecting the EGS from its slumber, my PC just grinds to a halt. It really kills everything inclusing the OS, EGS is a real pile of dog**** on that front.
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No... EGS is trying to win through cutting Valves game supply off... by offering a (short-term) better deal to producers.
This can only work, when there is no retail market anymore. The platform is really in a sad state.
By the way, game companies don't compete directly against each others, as every product is it's own mini monopoly. No matter how cheap Tropico 6 will be, it will never be Anno1800 - and i'm not talking quality or anything.
That's why we used to have price competition in the retail market. Publishers now expect me to pay higher fixed prices in digital, when I ever paid in retail (all that with huge retail margins far higher than 30 %).
And I won't. I will simply opt out, until the video game fad falls out of fashion again.
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A thought has crossed my mind in regards to Epic Games pedigree. They've launched an online store for game distribution, they make game engines and also nake games.
What it be smart to suggest it's only a matter of time before Epic releases their own custom built operating system which is designed strictly to video games using their own custom built or Vulkan as their API?
With kind of OS alot of background tasks wouldn't be running and would free up unnecessary overheads.
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uhm, no. Why on Earth would anyone do that?
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I cracked and bought Anno 1800 :(
Bought it from the Epic Game Store because I think despite all the exclusivity brooha, that I want to give a greater portion of my cash to the devs. I have technical issues with the EGS but I'm sure with how much cash Epic are throwing at this that the EGS will improve.
Anyway clicked install on the EGS windows application for Anno 1800. Chose my SSD OS drive as the install location, boom 25Gb munched up. Went to play the game once it had installed, only to be greeted with a choose install location dialogue. But it's already installed??? Nope it appears not. Had to choose a new drive to install on, not enough space left on my SSD. So did that. Boom another 34Gb of that slow drive chewed up by the actual game file installation. Play after that actually launched the game.
It appears that EGS only downloads a huge chunk of files to install from, it doesn't actually install the game like steam does. Once you "play" those files they then install the game.
No the install files are not cleaned up or removed after install, they just sit there chewing up hard drive space.
This is very sloppy and slapdash. All sorts of Ubisoft crap also gets installed in folders you didn't specify. It's a real mess after the game has finished it's second "install".
Of course the Epic launcher doesn't have a move install location like steam does :(
This isn't impressive, this doesn't even feel vaguely competent, this feels like a whole ton of crap got dumped on my machine :(
If any of you bought Anno 1800 through steam can you confirm or not does it behave the same way?
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Update.
At the location you "install" the game from EGS app, two things are created AFTER you have installed it the second time
- 1 the Anno setup files in a folder called installer
- 2 some uplay launcher bootstrap files
It appears to be safe to delete the "install" folder manually AFTER the second install. Do not delete the uplay bootstrap stuff for what I hope are obvious reasons.
I forgot just how cruddy uplay is, it even makes the EGS look good :(
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uhm, no. Why on Earth would anyone do that?
Undercutting and cutting out middlemen seems to be the rage nowadays. Why hold yourself to someone else's OS and API when you know you can do better with your own and licence it out to other developers.
Hell, Valve did it . . . . And it was a colossal mess. But when you see the flaws and mistakes in which a company made during development you learn and improve.
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Undercutting and cutting out middlemen seems to be the rage nowadays. Why hold yourself to someone else's OS and API when you know you can do better with your own and licence it out to other developers.
Game devs/publishers/storefronts don't pay Microsoft for the OSes of the customers. There is no middleman to cut out. To develop and worse maintain an OS is a huge undertaking that dwarfs any game's costs by comparison. Why would anyone go to that expense? What's wrong with existing APIs? If you don't like existing APIs just write closer to the metal, which is in itself expensive. Most just use the standard APIs which means no expensive retraining of staff away from industry standards. The whole custom OS thing makes no sense.
The only reason Steam tried it is they were exploring moving into the hardware business and new console hardware ( range? ) needs an OS. Even MS for xbox consoles just forked windows because of the cost and complexity problems a brand new OS would bring, and I bet it was a bloody short meeting with no objections when they made that decision.
The whole new OS thing just makes no sense whatever direction you look at it. Why would game devs want to pay to retrain staff who know APIs for windows and xbox for a brand new way of doing things? There's enough engineering overhead out there already without adding more. The last thing I would want if I was a game dev is yet another different system for my devs to have to have in depth knowledge of to make things work but bring no new revenue with it.
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Well that shut me up. One of the reasons I wrote that post is because Epic Game's Unreal 4 engine is becoming more pervalent nowadays. If Epic could propel the engine further in terms of performance effeciency and network (such as cloud compute) via a tailor made "mini" OS it could rustle out competitors.
But I'm not a developer. I was mainly thinking along the lines of competition and marketing.
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Well that shut me up. One of the reasons I wrote that post is because Epic Game's Unreal 4 engine is becoming more pervalent nowadays. If Epic could propel the engine further in terms of performance effeciency and network (such as cloud compute) via a tailor made "mini" OS it could rustle out competitors.
But I'm not a developer. I was mainly thinking along the lines of competition and marketing.
Most people buy their OS bundled to some machine be it console, computer or smartphone. Only as few funny ones go the extra mile to install any other OS. Which is why every OS developer is pushing buttons to get their OS bundled to machines. So i don't even see consumers as eager to switch for some possibly minor upsides.