"Here Comes A New Challenger"

[kane_magus]

Yep, pretty much.

In reference to this. And also all the other scuzzy shit they do.

Fuck Epic Games and fuck the Epic Games Store. And fuck reputation management drones.

Comments

[owsf2000]

You know I wonder if in the long run if these buyouts are net positive for the sell out companies that take Epic cash just because they don't have the balls for business in a free marketplace.

The Epic Game Store isn't really catching on big time no matter how rosy Kotaku insists on painting it with every single review they give. If it doesn't catch on then sales are eternally going to be depressed overall and the game won't become a big hit with the general PC gamer since a LOT of them refuse to install the EGS launcher.

This means if the company that sold out their business to Epic wants to put out another game, they're going to have a very hard time doing so next time since they'll have alienated a chunk of the PC market for pulling Steam support at the last minute due to Epic waving wads of cash under their nose. They also won't have the exposure thanks to their previous game languishing in obscurity on Epic's store. So if they want their next game to succeed financially they'll have no choice but to accept Epic daddy's wads of cash again - assuming Epic offers it.

If Epic doesn't offer it, then they have to run to kickstarter again but oops! A good chunk of gamers will remember previous kickstarters by the company (Since many of these buyouts have had kickstarters etc) and how steam keys were promised then refused at the last minute - and won't kickstart it to begin with.

In short, while time will tell, selling out to Epic with these exclusives might end up killing all these devs in the long run. Epic already paid for the current games so we won't see them falling within the next year or three - and so long as Epic keeps paying to keep the devs alive at the expensive of their own bottom line we may see the fallout delayed - but I do truly wonder if we're going to eventually start seeing a list of these devs go bottoms up when Epic stops offering them free money.

Especially those devs that lie to the gamers faces by saying the reason they took Epic's money was to "make the game available to the widest possible audience" (Yes that excuse has been made several times in the past, which doesn't make sense how you make a wider audience by limiting your game sales to one small barely started digital store front with a meager install base.

[kane_magus]

I guess it depends on if the games in question are "forever" exclusive or just timed exclusive (like Shenmue III claims to be). If timed, then I think they'll eventually probably recoup whatever losses they incurred for being exclusive to Epic Games Store (I still refuse to use the acronym EGS for Epic's trashfire), despite whatever initial truck full of money they got from Epic. If they're "permanently" exclusive to Epic, though, which I'm not sure one way or the other if any of them are, then I'd say they're probably pretty much shit outta luck, and it's they're own damn fault for shooting themselves in the foot like that. I certainly won't be buying any their games on Epic's dogshit, anyway, I don't care how good they may supposedly be.

And, hell, given that the dude who refused to take Epic's money is being hailed now as a hero, and people are saying they're going to buy his game solely because he basically told Epic to fuck off, it looks like deliberately not using the Epic Games Store might possibly be the more lucrative way to go at this point (as long as you explicitly say that you're not doing so, I guess). As for me, I already had that guy's game on my Steam wishlist prior to all of this, because I thought it looked interesting, but if I hadn't already done so, I doubt I would've added it just because of this, unless this had just been how I'd first heard of the game at all. And if he had taken Epic's money and made his game exclusive, whatever interest in his game I may have had would have plunked itself into the toilet, reached up, and flushed itself into oblivion.

[kane_magus]

But yeah, regardless of whether or not exclusivity for their current game is timed or not, or if the devs in question try to go back to Steam or GOG or whatever for later games, their reputations, as you say, are pretty much in tatters now. (I would have said the same of Epic, too, but I don't think they actually give a fuck either way what people think of them, or else they'd probably try to stop being such dipshits.) I'll certainly be checking on any new games (regardless of whether they are on Steam or whatever) to see if the devs had ever taken Epic's money on a previous game, and if so, I'll think twice before supporting said game, that's for sure.

So... for their sake, I hope that dirty Epic money lasts them a long time.

[kane_magus]

And if Epic Games Store doesn't catch on like gangbusters in the next year or two, Epic will just have to fall back on their flash in the pan.

And even that is not going to last forever.