Should exclusivity contracts be banned or regulated?
They essentially amount to a company monopolizing a product. Unless the company actually funded the creation of the game, rather than that just buying out the title at some later stage, it's hard to say that the existence of the monopoly created anything of value.
The idea is that Epic isn't doing exclusivity is 100% bad. The problem is the WAY Epic is doing it. Its poaching crowdfunded games that have been advertised on Steam or the Steam platform, then negotiating behind the scenes, once the customer's money has already been spent, then advertising it on Epic, taking away the choice. Its shady as ever living fuck and you see the DARQ guy as the prime example of this.
Honestly, its desperation combined with underhanded shit. They need massive infusions of cash as soon as possible, so they need them as close to release as they can get. Buying Rocket League with its microtransactions is basically Epic's way to stave off bleeding. The problem is whether the community accepts it or not.
They definitely won't, but as for theoretically if they should, there's only so far it can be regulated. For all the exclusivity deals that exist entirely to screw over the consumer, yeah obviously they need to be banned, but exclusivity is a complicated thing. Exclusivity got grandfathered in because hardware differences used to be way more significant, but they still exist and still have an impact on things. Some games run better on different GPUs, for example. Different stores do exist for a reason, otherwise people would just be selling their game on their own personal website.
Lots of multiplayer games rely on Steam's integrated friends list to work, and making it work on Epic would require programming that small indie devs have no reason to do. Some of the more meta games can rely on the Steam achievements to lead you to content, or perhaps fake an achievement as a part of the game. Or if someone decides to pull a Psycho Mantis and check your library, it'll only work on the stores they programmed it for. These are all edge cases and obviously not the same as a game pulled from Steam because of a contract, but there's no legal way to distinguish them. You'll just end up with people adding these sorts of limited content when they sign an exclusivity deal in order to pass by the legal hiccups of justifying it. Letting the consumers determine what they will tolerate solves the problem just as well as legal action will, and if the consumers don't care enough then they made their own bed anyway.
Reminder: Steamworks is free to anyone that sells on Steam. So if you're a small developer and want to set up multiplayer, you can easily do this through Steamworks. Cloud Saves? Steamworks. With the Epic Store, everything has to be manually done. Reminder, people are bitching about the thirty percent cut, but developers get Steamworks free. Most people don't even know what you get. Here's what you get:
- Installing redistributables neccessary for your game. No outside downloads.
- Game Notifications for delivering offline notifications for games that are asynchronous multi-player, IE: Chess
- Multiplayer. Steam has Matchmiaking and Server APIs to provide dedicated serves that the community can create. Goes both for consumers and developers. Allows any shitty little game to have multiplayer with basically minimum amount of effort.
- Stats and Achievements
- 'Enhanced Rich Presence' - Like if I'm playing DotA 2, you can see what mode I'm playing, what character and what level they are. This is available with any game.
- Steam Cloud. Steam Cloud API to customize cloud saves for any game
- Steam DRM. No need for added DRM (Even though faggots put Denovo on shit for some reason)
- Steam Input. Compatability with Xbox, Playstation and all other controllers.
- Steam Error Reporting. Automatically upload errors of your game after 10 similar ones occur with users if turned on.
- Steam HTML Service. Enables display and render of HTML-Based Pages directly in a game or application.
- Steam Inventory. Persistent player inventories without special servers or third party programs.
- Steam Keys. Generate any key for anything.
- Steam Leaderboards.
- Steam Remote Play. You can optimize your game to play on TV, phones or tablets.
- Steam Overlay with Steam Screenshots. Allows for In-Game DLC purchases.
- Steam Voice. Automatic voice chat.
- Steam Workshop. Steam hosted mods and communites.
- Steam Video. Devs can stream themselves playing their game on their pages.
- User Ownership and Authentication.
- VAC Anti-Cheat so you don't have to buy one yourself.
I want to remind you,
all of this is free. 'HURR WHY DOES STEAM TAKE 30%' Its because you don't have to do any of the shit above on your own. What the fuck does Epic have? It has to manually put in Cloud Saves. It can't fucking pre-load, which isn't even present on this list because that feature is 15 fucking years old. This is why Steam allows barebones indies to have multiplayer and anti-cheat when they normally wouldn't be able to afford it. So what, you go to Epic and have to do it yourself? So you're going to waste time and money figuring this shit out.
A lot of people are discounting Steamworks, which is a pretty fucking huge deal. I think a lot of devs are going to assume Epic has what basically Steam does behind the scenes and hilariously, they're going to find out they fucking don't. So how is Epic going to lead to quality indies?
Yeah, you get money, but then you have to do the vast majority of the above on your own and at your own expense and time. So what are you really gaining? And then a year later nobody gives a fuck. The only reason people knew about Ooblets was because they were massive faggots.
I think they're probably already illegal, at least the way Epic is doing it, as a form of tortious interference, unfair competition, anti-competitive trade practices, or some other collection of business torts. With how incompetently the whole operation is run, I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't talked to any lawyers about it and are doing unlawful things left and right.
I think the main reason Valve hasn't already sued them is they're doing nothing but hemorrhaging money anyway.
Yeah, I just don't get how this is legal. I guess you would have to prove that advertising on Steam and being available for purchase there was somehow a contract. But definetly unfair competition and trade practices. They're using another service like a parasite to build hype for it and the second when it would make the most money, Epic swoops in and tries to buy them out.
I think so too. I mean, look at Epic. They've had not one singular piece of positive press since the store launched. Somehow Sweeny doesn't seem like this is a problem. The real thing I see Valve doing is very slowly clamping down on this sort of practice: IE, if you want to launch on Steam and you have a Steam page up, its going to start being contractual. Not that you can't sell anywhere else, but if your game does get released, it also has to be on Steam. If you want a Steam page, you can no longer be exclusive.
This will fuck over Epic as they can't rely on hype machines anymore. Devs will have to basically put up or shut up. Steam Forums can no longer be used as a support page. If Steam did that, Epic dies. That's basically it. The only way Epic has been surviving is snatching exclusives purposely close to release that were hyped on Steam.
People were wondering Valve wasn't doing anything. You always saw several YouTubers screaming "VALVE MUST COMBAT EPIC". Apparently they've never heard the phrase, "When your enemy is making a mistake, never interrupt him."
The Epic Store is bleeding to death. If it staunches the bleeding somehow, I've got no doubt that Valve has plans in place to rip that wound right open again. I mean, look at it like this: Epic got Shenmue III. Valve has Shenmue I & II. This is exceedingly smart, because Epic doesn't have the Shenmue remastered versions. Steam does. You know what you could do for that exclusivity to run out? Buy I & II, wait the year to pump yourself up for III, then buy III.
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