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

[Kane Lives]

The consumer wants an easy route to a product. They don't want 50 digital distribution sites that fractures them all over the internet, with different features and different rules. They don't want to pay for a product that is massively expensive as compared to everything else in their country. They don't want horrid DRM that makes running a pain. So what Gaben did was this: Centralize, Simplify, Expedite and Regional. Buying shit on Steam was simple. Much more simple than hunting down a crack or a good torrent. It had basically invisible DRM (except for cunt publishers). It had fair pricing. Not many realize this, but Gaben nearly eliminated PC piracy in Eastern Europe because of this. China is an exception, because it is INCREDIBLY hard for a non Chinese company to break in. But in Eastern Europe? He did the impossible.

I can tell you right now that Steam did the same for South-East Asia as well, a region on par with Eastern Europe in terms of affluence. Moreover, Steam came into the market supporting most of the major payment processors of the region, and later, implemented regional pricing which was absolutely huge. Not having to pay American prices for games cut piracy by a substantial amount. Nowadays it's passe to just wait for Steam sales and get the games you want, even if you're on a tight budget.

So what does Epic offer? Nothing, nada. Fuckall features. Pricing in fucking You Ess Dee. Rampant reports of accounts being stolen.

The fact that even the normies in my workplace is making fun of Epic is simply cherry on top. Epic is not competing in any meaningful fashion at all, outside the Americas. And even in it, it seems.

 

[Secret Asshole]

I can tell you right now that Steam did the same for South-East Asia as well, a region on par with Eastern Europe in terms of affluence. Moreover, Steam came into the market supporting most of the major payment processors of the region, and later, implemented regional pricing which was absolutely huge. Not having to pay American prices for games cut piracy by a substantial amount. Nowadays it's passe to just wait for Steam sales and get the games you want, even if you're on a tight budget.

So what does Epic offer? Nothing, nada. Fuckall features. Pricing in fucking You Ess Dee. Rampant reports of accounts being stolen.

The fact that even the normies in my workplace is making fun of Epic is simply cherry on top. Epic is not competing in any meaningful fashion at all, outside the Americas. And even in it, it seems.

Ah, yeah, I didn't even realize that. Steam did that all over. I mean, fuck, it has even made Japanese developers port their stuff on PC. And really well too. I want you to think about this. Japanese developers in the past treated the PC like leprosy. Like it was the fucking scourge of the Earth. Anything they did port, they did it as fast as they could, really shit. But Steam made it insanely profitable for them to do so, despite Tim Sweeny the autistic faggot whining about the 'huge' cut Steam takes.

Nowadays, people are waiting for the day when shit like Persona gets ported over. In the past, this would be fucking laughable and impossible. Thanks to Steam, it is now possible. It is obvious Sweeny is extremely jealous and out of touch with just how influential Steam is. We might even start seeing back ports of Japanese games because of just how thirsty the PC audience wants them.

Epic is honestly not competing in any meaningful sense of the word. It offers free games, which people will take. I won't, got enough games. It offers exclusives, which really aren't enough. The only way its competing is because its using its billions to do so, which isn't really effective. I mean, 10 million for Control which is going to be released in a year? That is absolutely batshit. Epic would be better served developing its own titles than doing exclusives, starting out like Steam did.

Its also kind of funny, because every time I see a streamer or someone with an Epic Games Launcher on their desktop, they get a ton of shit for it. Epic's marketshare is incredibly small and its existence is basically only because it pays developers and publishers exorbitant amounts of money.

 

[Jaimas]

Nowadays, people are waiting for the day when shit like Persona gets ported over. In the past, this would be fucking laughable and impossible. Thanks to Steam, it is now possible. It is obvious Sweeny is extremely jealous and out of touch with just how influential Steam is. We might even start seeing back ports of Japanese games because of just how thirsty the PC audience wants them.

We have. Small-time Japanese developers that never had a chane outside of indie circles previously can now find their market and it's all thanks to Steam. Series like Rozenkreuzstilette and Momodora that have been out for a while but basically niche and impossible to find outside of Japan without going off-market and fucking with your region settings now can get directly to the weebs that want them.

It's caused lots of tiny devs to go the Cave Story route and that's a great thing.

 

[ZMOT]

Valve never gets enough credit for turning the entire PC platform from a piracy haven into a respectable gaming platform. Gaben made PC games great again, and he did it simply by offering an accessible platform with lots of QoL improvements to the entire environment, while offering fire sales on so many games.

remember when epic threw a shitfit over piracy and turned their games into console exclusive franchises? pepperidge farm remembers.
I still don't know what companies were smoking around 2006-2011 getting super butthurt about piracy and going full tard in the process (ubisoft and crytek especially).

Tim really loves to hide behind his excuses about developer cuts. Tim, you're just training a whole generation of zoomers how to pirate their games. That's a thing I've wanted to write a long post about, how shitty digital distribution practices get people into the flow of piracy instead of paying for stuff, to the point where they're much more comfortable with running a torrent client instead of running their card, and how so many games out there are just a flat-out better experience when pirated than legit.

with singleplayer basically dead and/or riddled with denuvo and mandatory online, piracy is a mixed bag - on top having to find a good source, knowing how to prevent getting lawyers on your ass, then install and keep it updated (and have to figure out what went wrong when it doesn't work etc.)... even back then when it was way easier it was still too complicated for the average normie. gayben wasn't wrong with it being a service problem. one thing normies really like is convenience, and they're more than willing to pay extra for that.

Market forces have basically dictated 12% is not a sustainable model to keep with consumers if you're a third party store. 30% is the standard because its what is required to: Make a profit on your company, keep adding features to lure users and have capital to seduce games over to your platform without exclusivity.

This autistic faggot doesn't realize his 12% only works because he is sitting on Fortnite money. If he tried to do this without Fortnite money, it'd be dead in six months.

ironically steam cut on average is more like 20% (even before their recent change offering a higher cut based on units sold). it's also great timmy jerks himself off over 12% when discord takes only 10% - so even with the fortnite money he's still not the best option around, what does that say about "for the devs publishers"?

I want you to think about this. Japanese developers in the past treated the PC like leprosy. Like it was the fucking scourge of the Earth. Anything they did port, they did it as fast as they could, really shit.

to be fair japan is a very strange market. piracy is heavily punished, some games release everywhere but japan, sometimes japanese language for english games costs extra (try that in the west), games being more expensive on average (afaik) and other stuff. pc market is also relatively small last time I checked, which makes a proper port kinda unfeasible if you only release locally (not every indie dev can offer an english version or even implement it easily etc).
still, being able to just spend 100 bucks and have your game on an established storefront is a huge boon. if only valve could stop being exceptional when it comes to adult games. either properly curate them or not, the inconsistency is amateur-tier.

 

[R.E.O. Spedwagon]

We have. Small-time Japanese developers that never had a chane outside of indie circles previously can now find their market and it's all thanks to Steam. Series like Rozenkreuzstilette and Momodora that have been out for a while but basically niche and impossible to find outside of Japan without going off-market and fucking with your region settings now can get directly to the weebs that want them.

It's caused lots of tiny devs to go the Cave Story route and that's a great thing.

Not disagreeing with you regarding Japanese devs going in hard on Steam releases (though I wish they’d look at GOG more), but Momodora doesn’t come from a Japanese dev, they’re Brazilian. It’s only with the fourth game that a Japanese company served as publisher, but they’d obviously be inclined towards Steam releases already.

 

[KanaPostsonKiwi]

Epic Timmy says Epic Games won't censor players who make pro-Hong Kong gestures (archive).

View attachment 965568

Press X to Doubt. Please nobody smarter than a common pigeon (i.e. a games journalist or a redditor) believe this for a second.

You misunderstand. Timmy says he wouldn't do anything. That's not to say Epic or Tencent wouldn't do something.
Also just to put it out there: Verge is a known paid shill and a tabloid, and isn't reliable on anything. The fact that he's unironically slapping it down as if its writing mattered is humorous.

 

[OmnipotentStupidity]

Fortnite's "The End" update removed the entire game of Fortnite BR, replacing it with a black hole, and subsequently crashed the Epic Games Store, leaving people stranded with basically no way to play either their games or Fortnite itself. Because the game world, your skins, the map, everything...is gone, and people are wondering/logging onto EGS to find out what the hell is going on.

Spoiler: Epic Games Went DFE on All of Their Content

Leaked Fortnite Chapter 2 trailer shows boating, fishing, and carrying teammates

It's a new chapter for the game.

www.cnet.com

Fortnite @FortniteGame

....

www.pscp.tv

Fortnite on Twitter

“... https://t.co/cTqXvOTuoa”

twitter.com

r/pcgaming - Epic Games Store appears to be down

271 votes and 137 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

Twitch is currently down right now, Twitter is struggling to load due to an influx of users, content creators are floundering due to them apparently cancelling Fortnite: Chapter 2/Season XI plans and replacing it with this, it's a MESS.

Everything Epic Games-related is gone.

 

[ZehnBoat]

Everything Epic Games-related is gone.

gabe newell does the default dance

 

[Imperialist #348]

Fortnite's "The End" update removed the entire game of Fortnite BR, replacing it with a black hole, and subsequently crashed the Epic Games Store, leaving people stranded with basically no way to play either their games or Fortnite itself. Because the game world, your skins, the map, everything...is gone, and people are wondering/logging onto EGS to find out what the hell is going on.

Spoiler: Epic Games Went DFE on All of Their Content

Leaked Fortnite Chapter 2 trailer shows boating, fishing, and carrying teammates

It's a new chapter for the game.

www.cnet.com

Fortnite @FortniteGame

....

www.pscp.tv

Fortnite on Twitter

“... https://t.co/cTqXvOTuoa”

twitter.com

r/pcgaming - Epic Games Store appears to be down

271 votes and 137 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

View attachment 969632

Twitch is currently down right now, Twitter is struggling to load due to an influx of users, content creators are floundering due to them apparently cancelling Fortnite: Chapter 2/Season XI plans and replacing it with this, it's a MESS.

Everything Epic Games-related is gone.

how does something like that just up an disappear?

 

[AnAspieWithAVengeance]

And my little brother thinks its all marketing for the next season. Brilliant.

 

[ZehnBoat]

And my little brother thinks its all marketing for the next season. Brilliant.

it could be
but damn
that's stupid as hell

 

[Xerxes IX]

I see how it is. Epic won't censor pro Hong Kong players, they'll just make their games unplayable for everyone.

 

[I can't imagine]

And my little brother thinks its all marketing for the next season. Brilliant.

At their peak today, Fortnite had over a million viewers on Twitch. At the moment, it has over 600k viewers, even though it's literally just been hours of a nearly totally blank screen. YouTube has over 200k viewers for Fortnite at the moment as well. At the very least, they succeeded in getting people's attention.

Now, whether they actually do anything useful with it is another story.

 

[Colloid]

inb4 Fortnite 2 gets announced

 

[vertexwindi]

it could be
but damn
that's stupid as hell

It's Epic, what did you expect

 

[not william stenchever]

Hahahahaha, they really did it! They blew it all up!

 

[ZehnBoat]

It's Epic, what did you expect

new fortnite map is more important than a cart for the store

 

[SiccDicc]

If this is a marketing stunt, expect them to have made an oopsie and actually did end up deleting everything with no way to get it back.

As to be expected of the company that can't figure out how to make a shopping cart.

 

[Slimy Time]

If this is a marketing stunt, expect them to have made an oopsie and actually did end up deleting everything with no way to get it back.

As to be expected of the company that can't figure out how to make a shopping cart.

We deleted all your stuff so buy it again from us.
I bet you it's a fuckup spun into being a marketing ploy. This is a fucking site that doesn't have a shopping cart, the most basic of all systems on any online shop, and absolutely shit the bed when people went on buying sprees when they put things on sale (ie, bought 3 games).

 

[Thiletonomics]

We deleted all your stuff so buy it again from us.
I bet you it's a fuckup spun into being a marketing ploy. This is a fucking site that doesn't have a shopping cart, the most basic of all systems on any online shop, and absolutely shit the bed when people went on buying sprees when they put things on sale (ie, bought 3 games).

Not to mention that the timing of this event comes after Blizzard's massive PR fuck up with the Free HK guy situation. You would think that Epic Games would try to capitalize on that, (although I'm not sure if they would because Tencent owns a part of them, although it's not majority share) but then you have this.