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

[Secret Asshole]

Imagine being called a waste of money by Apple

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> Be Epic
> Spend nearly half a billion on exclusives
> $600 million in the hole and growing

Its an investment guyis!

Its so fucking obvious people are using them to claim the free games and not buying shit. Which is fucking hysterical. Epic is just whoring out money. You can't be a loss leader if you don't lead anything.

 

[Cubanodun]

> Be Epic
> Spend nearly half a billion on exclusives
> $600 million in the hole and growing

Its an investment guyis!

Its so fucking obvious people are using them to claim the free games and not buying shit. Which is fucking hysterical. Epic is just whoring out money. You can't be a loss leader if you don't lead anything.

Epic has reached a point that people prefer they waste shitload of money to get ports to PC only to wait for the exclusivity to end and buy it on Steam

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

Epic has reached a point that people prefer they waste shitload of money to get ports to PC only to wait for the exclusivity to end and buy it on Steam

Unless it's Ubisoft, and some games remained EGS exclusives with no equivilants like Dangerous Driving or Mechwarrior 5

 

[The tired cat]

Unless it's Ubisoft, and some games remained EGS exclusives with no equivilants like Dangerous Driving or Mechwarrior 5

Ye, but with Ubisoft you can save yourself time by just getting it on Uplay. Since you'll need it either way to run their games, so easier to cut out the middle men.

 

[XMassAllYearRound]

I just want for them to run out of V bucks already man , from what I remember on a slip in an interview a developer revealed that some exclusives only get paid if sales targets aren't reached within a period of time. If Epic goes so do a lot of parasites.

 

[Cantercoin]

I just want for them to run out of V bucks already man , from what I remember on a slip in an interview a developer revealed that some exclusives only get paid if sales targets aren't reached within a period of time. If Epic goes so do a lot of parasites.

Correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't fortnite microtransactions been slowly been declining since 2017

 

[XMassAllYearRound]

Correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't fortnite microtransactions been slowly been declining since 2017

It was a figure of speech, Fortnite is meaningless; Unreal is where Epic makes most of their money and it doesn't look like companies are prepared to drop it yet.

 

[Urbanmech]

Unless it's Ubisoft, and some games remained EGS exclusives with no equivilants like Dangerous Driving or Mechwarrior 5

Mechwarrior 5 is on the Microsoft store and would have been on Steam already had they not moved the release date back due to....Cyberpunk LOL. It will be releasing May 27 on all other platforms (including Xbox) except Switch/PS systems.

 

[gaystoner]

Fuck. Epic. Games.

 

[Snekposter]

Mechwarrior 5 is on the Microsoft store and would have been on Steam already had they not moved the release date back due to....Cyberpunk LOL. It will be releasing May 27 on all other platforms (including Xbox) except Switch/PS systems.

I might actually buy it when it releases then.

 

[ZMOT]

Ubisoft has pretty much waved bye bye to Steam and focus on Uplay/EGS, there hasn't been a Steam release for Ubisoft game since 2019 with Anno 1800.

ubisoft probably ran the numbers, saw how many people they get via steam, how many buy stuff on uplay "ubisoft connect" (fucking retarded name) directly and then timmy was willing to open his wallet to make up the difference. the 5% tencent owns of ubisoft probably played it's part too.
doesn't help that ubisoft is run like a drunken retard had a stroke at the wheel, so I don't even assume it was a logical decision at this point. remember, this is the "all pc players are pirates" company and then claim there's no customer base after they riddled their pc ports with forced online and other retarded shit and the customers of course told them to fuck off...

If Fortnite ever dies down EGS is fucked because you can't keep pumping money like that into a stagnating platform.

you mean when. remember when poopg was the FOTM pulling numbers everybody was envious off? what people also tend to ignore is that fortnite's success is partly based on the constant content stream - which costs money too. quite funny that "good guy timmy" for all his posturing has no problem crunching his devs with shit pay and shittier hours to churn out that content.

besides fortnite and the engine itself there isn't really anything else. unreal is dead and I can't even remember what that moba was called. engine is dependent on companies willing to pay for it (and it's not like epic has a cleanest record in that regard, just look at too human debacle and how fortnite came to be), and is competing with in-house engines and unity (which costs no royalties and unless you want to go full 3d AAA might be the more sensible choice).

 

[Secret Asshole]

Unity is way more sensible for indie, A and AA studios. Its come a long way and it isn't worth the royalties of unreal because competition in the gaming sphere is tight.

 

[Tetra]

He does have a point about investments being a present loss for future profit, but I'm pressing X on him actually growing his audience when PC players can get a better service right now from Steam, GoG, or even the Microsoft store. People aren't sticking around in large number for free games, they're grabbing their free shit and going right back to their store of choice. Hell I grabbed Subnautica from Epic and proceeded to set it up so it boots from steam without even opening the Epic Store.

When Steam sales continue to blow Epic exclusives out of the water despite the year headstart, I doubt many people are bothering to shop there

> Be Epic
> Spend nearly half a billion on exclusives
> $600 million in the hole and growing

Its an investment guyis!

Its so fucking obvious people are using them to claim the free games and not buying shit. Which is fucking hysterical. Epic is just whoring out money. You can't be a loss leader if you don't lead anything.

to be fair, they're not aiming for you guys. You guys are willing to stay on steam because that's where all your games are. But sweeney is counting on all the 14 year olds that just got into pc gaming because of fortnite and now they have a small library of games given to them for free on epic, where their games are. They don't wanna abandon all that to go on steam because they don't have any games there. Just like how you guys may not be willing to move away from steam. Say what you will about them but they are playing the long game.

That's his plan anyway. If it'd be a success or not nobody knows.

 

[Vaping Autist]

Ubisoft has pretty much waved bye bye to Steam and focus on Uplay/EGS, there hasn't been a Steam release for Ubisoft game since 2019 with Anno 1800.

That's not really much of a surprise, though doesn't really matter too much as Ubisoft hardly release anything groundbreaking/good within the last 2-3 years.

 

[HumanHive]

Ubisoft has pretty much waved bye bye to Steam and focus on Uplay/EGS, there hasn't been a Steam release for Ubisoft game since 2019 with Anno 1800.

They’ll end up regretting it like EA did.

 

[ZMOT]

to be fair, they're not aiming for you guys. You guys are willing to stay on steam because that's where all your games are. But sweeney is counting on all the 14 year olds that just got into pc gaming because of fortnite and now they have a small library of games given to them for free on epic, where their games are. They don't wanna abandon all that to go on steam because they don't have any games there. Just like how you guys may not be willing to move away from steam. Say what you will about them but they are playing the long game.

That's his plan anyway. If it'd be a success or not nobody knows.

how much spending power does your average fortnite zoomer have tho? and how much value has a library you don't give a shit about and got for free anyway? as @HumanHive said it didn't work for EA either, and they had a much broader customer base with sportsball fags, sims housewifes and battlefield dudebros.
to make a shitty analogy, imagine you tell me you really liked reading harry potter, and I in return dump 300 pounds of books in your lap. will you read even one of them? will you continue reading in general?

the incentive is to get enough people to buy into the store pushed by the freebies so their library has value before the clock runs out where the beancounters say it's not sustainable and/or the next fad after fortnite rolls out and everybody leaves in droves. the 14 year old are just there for fortnite and whatever their friends play, if that is on origin or uplay or whatever they'll just go there. plus epic store already has shit word of mouth, the second their currently favorite influencer shits on it they'll happily regurgitate that opinion; for most other customers outside of price features still matter, and it's very hard to keep your customers with shitty service when there's a more attractive offer right around the block. does epic store even have refunds at this point? individually I can't see many people stick to it after getting sold shit that might not even work with no way to complain about it, that's why reviews and forums are important (as shit as they might be).

 

[StraightShooter2]

Curious, is "Epic Games" the same company known as "Epic MegaGames" back in the early 90s, which made PC games like "Jazz Jackrabbit"?

 

[Tetra]

how much spending power does your average fortnite zoomer have tho? and how much value has a library you don't give a shit about and got for free anyway? as @HumanHive said it didn't work for EA either, and they had a much broader customer base with sportsball fags, sims housewifes and battlefield dudebros.
to make a shitty analogy, imagine you tell me you really liked reading harry potter, and I in return dump 300 pounds of books in your lap. will you read even one of them? will you continue reading in general?

the incentive is to get enough people to buy into the store pushed by the freebies so their library has value before the clock runs out where the beancounters say it's not sustainable and/or the next fad after fortnite rolls out and everybody leaves in droves. the 14 year old are just there for fortnite and whatever their friends play, if that is on origin or uplay or whatever they'll just go there. plus epic store already has shit word of mouth, the second their currently favorite influencer shits on it they'll happily regurgitate that opinion; for most other customers outside of price features still matter, and it's very hard to keep your customers with shitty service when there's a more attractive offer right around the block. does epic store even have refunds at this point? individually I can't see many people stick to it after getting sold shit that might not even work with no way to complain about it, that's why reviews and forums are important (as shit as they might be).

It's not about the current spending power of a 14 year old but future spending power. It's demoralizing to see an empty library in comparison to one with games, it feels like starting over and it's what they're aiming for. However the fortnite zoomers does appear to have a lot of money given how profitable fortnite ended up being. Moreover, now keep in mind their friends also play fortnite and are on EGS. Now everyone in the friendgroup has to move to steam. Up until discord happened I thought that was impossible, but it's likely still very hard to do.

I don't know what will happen after the fad end or if it will fail, however i'm simply explaining what they are aiming for here and their reasoning. Steam does have the advantage of having droves of old games so should those zoomers ever want to play and old game steam is the way to go. I'm unsure if epic has a plan to deal with that.

A lot of people in the thread have this idea that it's about features and whatever has the best features will win in the end, it's just not the case. It's about where your friends are first and foremost and what games they have. That's why console exclusives works.

also I have a question that I'm not sure has been brought up in this thread; Do you guys think the epic games store is an attempt to find new sustainable income because the unity engine damaged the unreal engine stranglehold on game engines?

 

[Miller]

Ubisoft has pretty much waved bye bye to Steam and focus on Uplay/EGS, there hasn't been a Steam release for Ubisoft game since 2019 with Anno 1800.

Yeah but it makes sense since Ubisoft and Epic Games are owned by Tencent. That said, Ubisoft has its own launcher so it's better to just buy from Uplay (or whatever its called now) directly.

 

[ZMOT]

It's not about the current spending power of a 14 year old but future spending power. It's demoralizing to see an empty library in comparison to one with games, it feels like starting over and it's what they're aiming for. However the fortnite zoomers does appear to have a lot of money given how profitable fortnite ended up being. Moreover, now keep in mind their friends also play fortnite and are on EGS. Now everyone in the friendgroup has to move to steam. Up until discord happened I thought that was impossible, but it's likely still very hard to do.

I don't know what will happen after the fad end or if it will fail, however i'm simply explaining what they are aiming for here and their reasoning. Steam does have the advantage of having droves of old games so should those zoomers ever want to play and old game steam is the way to go. I'm unsure if epic has a plan to deal with that.

A lot of people in the thread have this idea that it's about features and whatever has the best features will win in the end, it's just not the case. It's about where your friends are first and foremost and what games they have. That's why console exclusives works.

a full library full of crap you don't care about doesn't make much of a difference, else origin would be the number 2 after steam. the zoomers only buy v-bucks with their mom's credit card, they don't have much use or need to play anything else. maybe gtaV. they certainly aren't that eager to play the latest "deep" indie pixelcrap timmy shelled out money for. a populated list you didn't buy yourself and have no interest in is just background noise.

console exclusives only work if they are worth enough to reach critical mass in your social circle, and that's only if you play multi with them to begin with, and by that definition steam has epic beat as well. the majority of games played on consoles are multiplats anyway. that's also assuming you can't use both, running both steam and epic is hardly comparable to owning 2 consoles and paying for their online services each month.
discord is also a bad comparison since it filled a niche that didn't previously existed or only using several programs, and even then it's much more convenient in a single package with more features (same way steam is to epic) than whatever instant messenger + voice chat you were using, and you can even post spicy memes while doing so. that's not even close to epic trying to buy their way into an already saturated market.

also I have a question that I'm not sure has been brought up in this thread; Do you guys think the epic games store is an attempt to find new sustainable income because the unity engine damaged the unreal engine stranglehold on game engines?

that was more epic themselves giving publishers the last push to go back to their in-house engines with their lawfare shit, no one wants to spend money on a possible liability. but for heavy 3d stuff unreal is still the go to for most indies that don't have other options otherwise or some jap devs. unity has only recently been shaping up in that regard and still some way to go (biggest issue being that they don't have a popular showcase for their engine, while epic has been using unreal for till it was replaced with fortnite. unity claims they don't want to compete with tier customers, which makes sense, but that also means the only thing people associate unity with are shitty asset flips where you can't disable the splash screen).

besides the engine it's much better to just be a service provider and skim off a bit while hardly doing anything, valve has operated that way for years (they certainly invested more into steam than epic does in it's store, but given the money valve made steam could still be much better). epic isn't the first wanting to be it, and certainly won't be the last. and of course what ever shenanigans their chinese investors are up to.

Yeah but it makes sense since Ubisoft and Epic Games are owned by Tencent. That said, Ubisoft has its own launcher so it's better to just buy from Uplay (or whatever its called now) directly.

tencent's stake in ubisoft is 5% (last I checked, which has been a while tho), compared to epic's 45? 48?
more likely they were desperate for short-term cash while/after fending off vivendi, and after their #metoo drama they're going full woke so I doubt things will get better anytime soon.