Epic Games General Thread - Its time to talk about what the AAA gaming industry does not understand about the PC console.

[AnOminous]

I've actually seen screenshots of this thread on /v/ to argue that, because Kiwi Farms members don't like EGS, it has to be good. Not only is that the most desperate attempt at an argument I've ever seen but I don't get this mentality that 4chan is somehow morally superior to KF. I guess Jessica Slaughter and Shia LaBeouf just don't count anymore?

4chan is reddit without usernames at this point.

 

[vertexwindi]

4chan is reddit without usernames at this point.

But all that doxing and harassing goes way too far, there's no way 4chan users would ever do that, right??

God I hate moralfags.

 

[faint horizons]

God I hate moralfags.

"We hate the WeeWee Farms so much! We hate everything they like and like everything we hate! Waah!"

Remember when they removed anything involving ResetEra on /v/ because apparently it wasn't videogame related?
I wish Tumblr didn't shoot itself in the foot and have all these tumblr moralfags shit up 4chan.

Not like it was ever good anyway.

 

[AnOminous]

"We hate the WeeWee Farms so much! We hate everything they like and like everything we hate! Waah!"

Remember when they removed anything involving ResetEra on /v/ because apparently it wasn't videogame related?
I wish Tumblr didn't shoot itself in the foot and have all these tumblr moralfags shit up 4chan.

Not like it was ever good anyway.

Also they constantly white knight for SJWs and delete threads left and right, claiming they're "off-topic" even when the threads go to autosage in an hour or so when the mods are asleep or busy dilating. Apparently the people who actually use the board don't think they're off-topic but they don't decide.

 

[KanaPostsonKiwi]

Not like it was ever good anyway.

It was a fine place before Gamergate was a thing. Now all you can find there is "muh edgy" /pol/ posts and greentext with some tumblrisms thrown in for spice.

Edit: For those unaware 4chin banned discussion on gamergate and anyone partaking it as global bans because as far as i understood one of the global mods/whatever was a fembot who had a hissyfit because there's so much correlation between muh soggy knees and demands of game journos not being human trash.

 

[ZMOT]

Dude, there's no fucking way Control sells 10 million in 10 fucking years. Its not making a million dollars a year. Borderlands must have cost at least 30-50 million. No way it makes more than that in six months. Epic is not getting any returns on this shit. Even if its 100% of the sales after the exclusivity, they're basically taking out a fucking loan on themselves. They have to work to pay off the initial payment before they make any money.

the payout doesn't come from the game but the loads of cash they make when they have replaced steam (in their mind). still feels like they're getting desperate, maybe timmy didn't anticipate how entrenched steam is - and how shit the epic store is, but then he never hid what he thinks of customers so probably isn't aware they're the ones with the money he has to convince.
EDIT: there's also the theory it was just a ploy to force valve to go public so tencent can easily buy in and take over slowly (apparently they're super salty their comrades prefer steam in china, but getting conclusive stats on that is almost impossible). which kinda makes sense but only shows how hard they're sniffing their own farts when they believe they only have to yap about "muh 30%" constantly (which is also wrong, hilarously) and boths devs and consumers will come running when it makes zero difference in the final price and even made shit more expensive in lot of regions. why should I give a fuck how much more money a dev makes when I still have to pay 60 bucks + tip? because the games are apperently so much better now with devs having more money to spend on development?

Also they constantly white knight for SJWs and delete threads left and right, claiming they're "off-topic" even when the threads go to autosage in an hour or so when the mods are asleep or busy dilating. Apparently the people who actually use the board don't think they're off-topic but they don't decide.

that's just era troons trying to "subvert" or "fight back" against "toxic chan culture", of which some became jannies. which is also why moderation so inconsistent. for someone acting extra smug and superior all the time it's baffling how unaware they are that people can just check the era threads where they boast about it, it's like they don't understand people can use different websites at the same time, worse a websites with accounts no less which makes tracking even easier.

Edit: For those unaware 4chin banned discussion on gamergate and anyone partaking it as global bans because as far as i understood one of the global mods/whatever was a fembot who had a hissyfit because there's so much correlation between muh soggy knees and demands of game journos not being human trash.

back in 2014 mootykins had his hands full fending off feds and hollywood lawyers during the fappening, the last thing he wanted was another chanology making the rounds. there's some /x/ tier stuff how he's a sjw and it was some elaborate plan etc., but considering the usual cuck stuff comes along with it and he literally sold the site not soon after it's more likely he was just done with it after a decade even during GG.
more obvious was the mods getting butthurt when people were discussing neofag imploding, but that could be attributed to laziness since they just redirected it to /pol/ of all places - which ironically backfired since it's a red board with IDs and different moderation, so grossing out plenty of tourists and showing how much retarded samefagging is happening in the usual /v/ thread (at this point it's pretty clear hiroshimoot takes some form of cutback considering /v/ still doesn't have IDs and the epic store and other stuff gets shilled constantly, they're not even trying to hide it anymore).

 

[Slimy Time]

We've finally got something of a solid estimate on how much Epic's willing to pay for exclusives, thanks to the devs of Control.

Epic Games paid 9.49M Euros for Control exclusivity According To Digital Bros

Epic paid a whooping 9.49M Euros for Control Exclusivity according to a latest report published by Digital Bros, parent company of 505 Games.

www.spieltimes.com

Epic Games paid 9.49M Euros for Control exclusivity According To Digi…

archived 20 Sep 2019 18:09:09 UTC

archive.fo

9.49 million euros (when loosely converted back to dollars) totals to around, give or take:

$10,454,516.15

'Ly shit: that's not just "fuck you" money, that's "wine and dine before you get fucked up the ass with a railroad spike" money.

And that was for a smaller game like Control; just imagine how much they had to pay for Borderlands to get on their storefront, or better yet, to purchase studios like Psyonix as a whole, or literally every exclusive thus far on the platform.

EDIT: Reminder: this is just what got leaked/revealed publicly through 505 Games, it could very very easily have been much more, and covered far more expenses than the initial profit they would've received.

EDIT 2: Some have tried using super rough math to estimate how much of a sales advance Epic paid up front directly.

Spoiler: 2 + 2 Equals a Shitton of Copies

Some people seem to be saying it's about the value of 150k copies, but that figure is waaaay off. A Publisher sees about $30 of a $60 game sale, after deducting licences, retailer cuts, royalties, etc...
The Developers will usually see 10% of what the Publisher makes, so $3. Meaning Publishers actually make $27 per $60 game sale. So this is like being paid upfront, for 350,000 copies (not an insignificant number) and probably somewhere in the ballpark of the expected first month of the sales on PC. Coupled with the lower cut that Epic take, it's easy to see why Companies take the exclusivity deals.
For Epic to turn a profit on that Exclusivity deal, at 12% of $60 per copy sold ($7.2), they need to sell 1.32m copies at full price. Although keeping in mind, that Epic has a lot of control on the price of its exclusive games. Assuming my maths is correct (probably not).
Despite that, 1.32m is still asking a lot and I'm sure Epic don't expect to make that back. But even if they don't, a couple million in loses would be a drop in a near infinite bucket.

So even when lowballing, Epic essentially paid the equivalent of the developers selling 1.32 million copies of the game, and gave the money they'd have earned totaled after expenses to those developers directly, in exchange for exclusivity.

...Talk about a deal with the devil.

Not going to lie, If I was the devs of Control, and knew that I would struggle to sell that many copies, I would take that money. Between getting 10 million without doing anything plus whatever cut I get from sale, or gambling on just sales. I'd take that money. Especially given the company game portfolio not exactly being filled with winners as of late, and coming once every 3 to 4 years.

 

[Bread Fetishist]

So I gave in and got the free Lego Batman games off the Epic store, but I have no intentions of getting anything else there, at least for now.

 

[Quijibo69]

I got a ton of free games there, the last one they had was Conarium and it was pretty good.

 

[AnOminous]

back in 2014 mootykins had his hands full fending off feds and hollywood lawyers during the fappening, the last thing he wanted was another chanology making the rounds. there's some /x/ tier stuff how he's a sjw and it was some elaborate plan etc., but considering the usual cuck stuff comes along with it and he literally sold the site not soon after it's more likely he was just done with it after a decade even during GG.

That it was just chanology redux was the excuse, but not the reason. Kicking off chanology planning was more or less welcomed by everyone and they set up shop on their own forums and imageboards not to mention ED.

The GG shit was part of a concerted effort to censor discussion of the subject everywhere and that's why people reacted a lot more angrily to it.

Not going to lie, If I was the devs of Control, and knew that I would struggle to sell that many copies, I would take that money. Between getting 10 million without doing anything plus whatever cut I get from sale, or gambling on just sales. I'd take that money. Especially given the company game portfolio not exactly being filled with winners as of late, and coming once every 3 to 4 years.

I can't blame devs for selling out for that price. I would. Even if you'd raised some money in a Kickstarter and had somehow survived the game dev scene with even a tiny, shriveled conscience left, you could throw in some extra bonuses or even refund whoever wanted and still give them the game after the exclusive.

They're covering their entire costs and every penny of profits they hoped to make, all guaranteed up front. They have no kind of general duty to the public not to go for it.

 

[Jaimas]

The Ooblets developers are one of those "good people" that are "tolerant, caring and against all forms of bigotry" that turn out to be bigoted close-minded assholes when they don't have to have a public face anymore, partly because they've never faced the slightest amount of adversity in life, outside of a Starbucks employee once spelling their name wrong. It seems to be a common trope when it comes to Californians especially, i wonder what the deal is over there.

It's the Los Angeles/San Francisco bubble specifically. It's been covered it in other threads, but the TL;DR is that as long as it doesn't effect them directly, they don't give a single solitary fuck. The rest of the city could be awash in the bubonic plague, have trash piles that go higher than the fences, thousands of mentally ill people living on the streets, and feces and needles everywhere, but until it effects the gated communities they won't give a single fuck. They hate basically everyone but themselves and are the origin-point for much of Social Justice culture, which, I feel, speaks volumes.

A friend of mine who lives in eastern Cali has informed me that if you locked them in a room with Hitler, Bin Laden, a representative from LA or SF, and a gun with two bullets in it, they would shoot the representative twice. Make of that what you will.

I've actually seen screenshots of this thread on /v/ to argue that, because Kiwi Farms members don't like EGS, it has to be good. Not only is that the most desperate attempt at an argument I've ever seen but I don't get this mentality that 4chan is somehow morally superior to KF. I guess Jessica Slaughter and Shia LaBeouf just don't count anymore?

Anyway, even with all that Fortnite and UE cash Epic has lying around, paying 10 million for a limited exclusive that didn't even get that much attention online is insane. They're definitely not gonna be able to keep that up for long.

It's been discussed a few times, but pretty much everyone with a passing interest in economics knows that what Epic's trying to do right now is basically unsustainable. Fortnite isn't going to be the shiznit forever, and something new will come along. We've seen this over and over again, with insanely popular games gradually giving way to other titles. Father Time always exacts his price eventually, and you either base yourself around that inevitability or you face the same fate dozens of other games that thought themselves invincible did.

 

[vertexwindi]

It's been discussed a few times, but pretty much everyone with a passing interest in economics knows that what Epic's trying to do right now is basically unsustainable.

Oh no, that's obvious, but it's not until now that I realized just how much they were spending. Control only sold 120k copies across all platforms apparently and they dished out 10 mill for that. Imagine how much they have to pay for big triple A titles like BL3 or Metro. They're gonna implode in a year if they keep it up.

 

[not william stenchever]

I've been watching someone play Control because I don't have a PS4 and it would probably melt my graphics card and it has a very interesting premise and the gameplay looks damned fun. I'm personally happy that the studio got a relative fuckton of money. From what I can tell they deserve it. They'll only make even more money on word of mouth advertising and console and eventual steam sales

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Oh no, that's obvious, but it's not until now that I realized just how much they were spending. Control only sold 120k copies across all platforms apparently and they dished out 10 mill for that. Imagine how much they have to pay for big triple A titles like BL3 or Metro. They're gonna implode in a year if they keep it up.

Rough napkin math: If you assume exactly one third of the 120k copies were sold on EGS (so 40k) then EGS spent $250 on each copy and has made back 2.4m with sales for a loss of 7.6m on the advance.

 

[Secret Asshole]

4chan is reddit without usernames at this point.

But all that doxing and harassing goes way too far, there's no way 4chan users would ever do that, right??

God I hate moralfags.

4chan is basically for faggots at this point. Their user's brains are mush and its basically going to go the way of SA eventually.

They're all dumb as dogshit there and I'd argue even reddit is better. It doesn't have the smug sense of superiority.

the payout doesn't come from the game but the loads of cash they make when they have replaced steam (in their mind). still feels like they're getting desperate, maybe timmy didn't anticipate how entrenched steam is - and how shit the epic store is, but then he never hid what he thinks of customers so probably isn't aware they're the ones with the money he has to convince.
EDIT: there's also the theory it was just a ploy to force valve to go public so tencent can easily buy in and take over slowly (apparently they're super salty their comrades prefer steam in china, but getting conclusive stats on that is almost impossible). which kinda makes sense but only shows how hard they're sniffing their own farts when they believe they only have to yap about "muh 30%" constantly (which is also wrong, hilarously) and boths devs and consumers will come running when it makes zero difference in the final price and even made shit more expensive in lot of regions. why should I give a fuck how much more money a dev makes when I still have to pay 60 bucks + tip? because the games are apperently so much better now with devs having more money to spend on development?

That's even more laughable. How are you going to get Valve to go public? Its cornered its market, it has no need of extra investors, meddling from stockholders or take over concerns. Its founders are billionaires. Going public offers them literally no benefits and is absurdly expensive. Its also basically antithetical to Valve's corporate culture and hierarchy. Going public would throw all of that into chaos.

It is literally the dumbest fucking thing they could do. Valve as a corporation is known to be slow and not very reactive to much of anything. How are you going to make them panic and do anything? They've already launched Steam China. Epic buying exclusives didn't make them panic. If it didn't make them panic at first, its not going to make them panic now. Borderlands, a AAA title, only got 6 months. Meaning that companies are upping the price for exclusivity to squeeze more out of Epic. Nothing Epic can do at this point can force them to go public. Only maybe a succession would do so, as we don't know what Valve has in place once Gaben goes.

I mean, they're launching a popular VR headset and new features right now, which is massively improving the service and the VR is the top selling device. They have no reason to go public.

Oh and the 'devs getting more money = better games' is a crock of shit. Need brings innovation. If you don't have any 'need' (IE: Epic paying the devs of control 10 fucking million) you don't have any reason to innovate. The bigger the company, the truer this is.

Oh no, that's obvious, but it's not until now that I realized just how much they were spending. Control only sold 120k copies across all platforms apparently and they dished out 10 mill for that. Imagine how much they have to pay for big triple A titles like BL3 or Metro. They're gonna implode in a year if they keep it up.

Rockstar opened its own launcher, so if RDR2 ever comes to PC, its launching there. To get it exclusive for six months, no joke, Epic would have to pay literally, a billion dollars. Because the amount of money that game would make would be absurd. So for expensive, AAA releases, its just not going to happen. Ubi does Epic only because of a fat check and laughs all the way to the bank as people just buy their games on Uplay instead of Epic. That's another expensive deal that is not going to pan out. I think from this point on, AAA exclusivity is just going to increase in expense and decrease in time. Because they're going to see that Control number and that BL3 was only six months and they're going to squeeze Epic for every cent. That information leaking is fucking terrible for them, because if they didn't know it before, Valve now knows it can bleed them. Because Control is not going to break even in 10 years. It has to make 1 million a year. Its just not going to do that. Games sales drop into the Earth over time.

BL3 cost them at least 20-50 million and maybe, MAYBE it made that back in the six months. But that's just breaking even. Its an absurdly small window for an obscenely large amount of money and that is with Steam coming. Once it hits Steam in six months, that's all she wrote for Epic sales. And with Epic taking all of the profit after this number, BL3 has no reason to cooperate to lower its price on Epic.

Also overlooking the fact is that Epic exclusivity is hurting both Steam and GoG, which makes them more likely to cooperate to fuck Epic. Because technically, GoG is adjacent, business wise, to Steam. I'd call it an indirect competitor rather than a direct one. It doesn't go head to head with it. It offers DRM free products and mostly older titles that are well optimized for modern hardware. I mean, Steam right now maybe controls 85% of the digital market, with GoG being 10% and Epic being 5%. I realize I'm being super generous. But just like Epic bullied its way in, it can be bullied out. The only reason anyone uses Epic right now is Fortnite and Exclusives. That's it. And that is a major fucking problem.

If Valve cooperates and makes GoG Galaxy 2.0 easy to use on its stuff, both companies benefit. Epic has this massive hatred for Valve, so it'll make them less likely to cooperate. Also given how they think they're the 'best evar' they're not looking to get in the market the good way. They've basically made enemies of everyone. I mean, is it likely the two cooperate? Probably not. But its been made more likely.

 

[Friend computer]

I surely can see taking this deal, especially if the numbers are correct, if you are just looking for a payday and not thinking about the backlash, especially from kickstarters that said they are going steam and do a switch last minute.

But if you are going for a career especially early on, doing switches that we have seen will make your brand toxic and mark you as liars, as not much of the industry is that already but thats another discussion.

So yeah, take this deal, but expect your customerbase to get pissed and dwindle, look at the long term and not the short term. And if you MUST take this deal, to keep the lights on, announce it in good time and why you are taking this deal, and dont be condencending and have good communications.

But yeah, insane numbers, 10 millions for an AA title? Yeah... ok...

 

[AnOminous]

If Valve cooperates and makes GoG Galaxy 2.0 easy to use on its stuff, both companies benefit. Epic has this massive hatred for Valve, so it'll make them less likely to cooperate. Also given how they think they're the 'best evar' they're not looking to get in the market the good way. They've basically made enemies of everyone. I mean, is it likely the two cooperate? Probably not. But its been made more likely.

Something I've seen is letting you download something on GoG or Steam if you bought something on the other. I have a few games that are free on GoG because I bought them on Steam. If they just cross license like that on most titles Epic is dead. Of course, it already is dead.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Something I've seen is letting you download something on GoG or Steam if you bought something on the other. I have a few games that are free on GoG because I bought them on Steam. If they just cross license like that on most titles Epic is dead. Of course, it already is dead.

Yeah, some titles let you do that. I can see GoG and Steam doing more of that, especially if Epic grows as desperate as it seems. And if Valve works with GoG 2.0 to make the launcher work well, Epic just loses more to the two. I can't even picture the Epic launcher working well with GoG 2.0 because of simply how awful the store is. The store is still basically a Fortnite launcher with no features.

Again it helps that GoG is adjacent to Valve and not really competition like Epic. GoG found a nice little niche to occupy where Steam generally sucks at (old games. Seriously, never buy old games from Steam. They are shit ass optimized. GoG spends time and money making sure they work and launch well. As well as being DRM free, which Valve doesn't do).

I honestly don't see a world where Epic works. It's just too late to go against Valve unless you're a AAA. Even then, if you use your launcher to lock off mod support (looking at you fucking Bethesda), I just think you kneecap yourself and just underestimate how much the PC community mods.

 

[KanaPostsonKiwi]

Fortnite isn't going to be the shiznit forever, and something new will come along. We've seen this over and over again, with insanely popular games gradually giving way to other titles.

This is true, but some games have insanely long spans. Minecraft and DOTA certainly haven't stopped, even if the latter has changed its name (and engine) a couple of times on the way there. As far as i understand, a lot of people are unhappy with the new forkknife season though

Their user's brains are mush and its basically going to go the way of SA eventually.

I wonder how SA would feel if someone told them Kiwi farms is more or less in the same position SA was 10+ years ago, well, without the trigger-happy mods and $10 forum entry fee.

 

[ZMOT]

That it was just chanology redux was the excuse, but not the reason. Kicking off chanology planning was more or less welcomed by everyone and they set up shop on their own forums and imageboards not to mention ED.

The GG shit was part of a concerted effort to censor discussion of the subject everywhere and that's why people reacted a lot more angrily to it.

raids and doxxing always got punished hard even years prior to GG, not sure if the latter even has legal ramifications. when GG kicked off after 5guys&fries it had all the markings of an new chanology, and even if not it was obvious there would be a lot of shitflinging and other crap. tbh I probably wouldn't have done anything different in that scenario, it simply would've been (and was) way too big a headache even without the fappening, no matter the personal stance. but then moot could never be arsed to put in IDs or containment stickys either, so moderation was always kinda shit.

4chan is basically for faggots at this point. Their user's brains are mush and its basically going to go the way of SA eventually.

They're all dumb as dogshit there and I'd argue even reddit is better. It doesn't have the smug sense of superiority.

as shit as 4chan is it's hard to beat reddit, least there you call people faggots and move on while on reddit just voicing the wrong opinion will get you downvoted into oblivion or dragged into an endless mire of trying to have the last word, combined with people digging through your post history. a discussion on reddit is like a 6yo that repeats everything you say without sense or logic and think they're smart for doing so because they're "redditors". so not only do you have to deal with the bad aspects of an account-based platform, you also have to deal with a community enforced echochamber.

as for ubisoft, tencent has a 5% stake for helping out fending off vivendi. and since they still get to use uplay they can whore it out on either storefront, it simply works better for they way they operate. ubi also has the catalog to warrant that, I think in their last earnings report 27% were back catalog sales. although I'd be curious to see how much of those were keys, which got dropped after they moved to epic (so much for competition).

Oh and the 'devs getting more money = better games' is a crock of shit. Need brings innovation. If you don't have any 'need' (IE: Epic paying the devs of control 10 fucking million) you don't have any reason to innovate. The bigger the company, the truer this is.

yeah, it was meant to be ironic because it's the go-to brainlet argument for everything when devs publishers get a bigger cut. same way digital games would be cheaper now that they don't have to pay the retail expenses etc. made epic's strategy to zero in on the 30% even more retarded right from the start, but it's a good way to spot the obvious journo shills when they regurgitate it wholesale.