Epic Games buying Rocket League developer

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...ket-league-from-sale-on-steam-later-this-year

They have not announced yet whether they will actually stop selling it on Steam (they might use this game as another tool to encourage Valve to implement 88/12 revenue split) but if they will - this could be a smart decision since they have their own digital distribution store where they don't have to share revenue with Valve. Sure, not all Steam users will want to switch, but I'm sure Epic has done a proper analysis to show the risk vs potential benefits of having the game sold on Epic Store only and I'm sure their own analysis is more valuable to them than the opinion of anonymous forum warriors ;-)

In any case, this is a pretty smart investment since Fortnite will not stay popular forever and by buying Rocket League they have a potential of extra steady income from future versions of Rocket League regardless of how popular their digital store will be or how popular Fortnite and future games based on it will be. Something that Valve should also be doing instead of trying to milk their old games dry without doing anything else ;-)

 

This reads like an ad for Epic. What gives?

Do you really think they care about fairness? They ask for 12% hoping to get enough market share to leverage asking more. They're a business for crying out loud.

Anyhow, why are we supposed to support having fewer games in each store? Exclusives are bad.

 

Of course they are, and as a business they naturally want to pay less and get more income so they would naturally want to use this game to either try and decrease Valve's revenue share or NOT provide Valve with ANY revenue (which they haven't decided yet). This is exactly what I meant in my post. I'm sorry that some people have trouble reading it but I always try to make the posts as clear as I can.

Well, you are always free to not support it, the choice is always yours to make ;-)
Exclusives are an undeniable inconvenience, but as a business owner myself I understand that they are inevitable and I am glad that such business model is legally allowed to exist. As a gamer and as a rational adult, I just learned to deal with it - when I wanted to play Persona 5 (which, amusingly, no one whined about despite the fact that it is only available on Playstation) or Horizon: Zero Dawn, I just went out and bought a PS4 and greatly enjoyed those. When I wanted to play BF3 (which was my favorite BF series game) - I downloaded Origin launcher and spend 100's of hours enjoying it. When I wanted to play Metro Exodus - I also just downloaded Epic launcher and played that game, without anything bad happening to my PC or laptop. Same goes for many other games. This provided me more enjoyment than simply typing angry posts on Reddit or spamming links to YT videos about "exclusivity is bad" ;-)

I made my choice regarding "exclusivity" and I am fairly satisfied with it (especially since I am fully able to comprehend the fact that exclusivity is unavoidable in one form or the other). If you have other preference (for example you personally prefer to see more games on whichever platform that is more convenient for you to use) - you are always free to wait for those games to come to it and not download launchers from competing companies. Or to NOT play them at all (in case of console exclusives which never come to PC). Your choice is as valid as mine and I will never encourage anyone to accept my choice as the only right one (I am not paid to do so and I am rational enough to understand that different people have different preferences). I just hope you'll understand the fact that no matter how much people complain about "exclusivity is bad" nothing will absolutely change when it comes to behavior of such businesses (game developers and publishers will always do a " console only" or " console for certain amount of time then PC" or " certain digitial distributor on PC then others" type of deals as long as digital distributors and console manufacturers will make such offers and they will always make such offers if they believe it will be more profitable to do so).

 

What do you mean "nothing will change"? We've recently moved away from forced exclusivity, more console ports were launched for both systems and PC than before.

Add to that, this exclusivity for digital releases is a new development. Before online downloads, no game developer with an inch of sense would choose to only sell their games in one gaming store chain. After digital releases, releasing on steam didn't mean steam demanded they did not release elsewhere. I mostly saw this behavior from developers that integrated everything from development to marketing (say, Blizzard).

At the end of the day it's a good as how awesome it is, say, that Disney is breaking off from Netflix so now you will get the choice to cycle through even more streaming services or just not bother. Either way, customer is a loser.

 

Really? What's "recently"? And what are you judging this on, the fact that Microsoft threw out worthless Halo bundle because nobody buys it on XBox anymore? How about RDR2 on PC? Or latest God of War? Or Marvel's Spider-Man? Do you honestly think that Last of Us 2 will "launch for both systems and PC"? Even FFXIV, a very popular PvE MMO (after WoW) is still limited after so many years, NOT available on Xbox (only available on PC and PS4) and may never will. Black Desert Online, another popular MMO which currently has the highest quality graphics among all MMOs, is opposite - they signed up exclusive deal with MS so they are only available on PC and XBox and NOT available on PS4 and it is unknown when it will be. Death Stranding, yet another game that is highly anticipated by fans of certain game developer, will be a PS4 exclusive for some time. Come on now. There will ALWAYS be exclusive deals like these as long as they are legal. This is undisputed fact. Today it is Borderlands 3 and Outer Worlds, tomorrow it will be something else. The amount of those and the time the game will stay exclusive will solely depend on how much money will the publisher be willing to pay for it. For example, if Sony had enough money - they sure as hell could make Cyberpunk 2077 an exclusive for PS4, even a permanent exclusive. They just don't have enough to sway CD Project Red (but they still have plenty for other developers and they will continue doing so) ;-)

Of course this is not true. GameStop, throughout their history, had plenty of exclusive versions of certain physical games, such as games with various bonuses (maps, posters, in-game items or figurines) which were only available at GameStop. They paid extra to game developers and publishers for those exclusive versions. And it even applied to whole games. For example, Tales of Hearts R, a PlayStation Vita game, was only sold at GameStop in physical form in North America. And that is not the only one. Mega Man Star Force Dragon version also came as an exclusive physical version for EB Games and GameStop in North America, not in any other stores. Come on now. How many games you have purchased personally for various hardware devices throughout your years and how many hardware devices you actually owned? Most likely not much if you can't remember such basic things like exclusive bonus items or exclusive physical games which were only available at one or two store chains because those store chains were smart enough to pay extra for exclusivity ;-)

I don't consider myself a "loser" if I can still enjoy content, even on different platforms. Sure, it may sometimes cost me more (to buy hardware devices like PS4, or my old Vita or other handheld gaming devices and consoles) but if I believe the content is worth paying extra - I have no problem paying that.

 

Disney + isn't comparable because Disney is putting their exclusives behind a separate paywall, which will cost consumers more money than if Disney left their content on Netflix. Putting games exclusively on the (free) Epic launcher doesn't add any financial costs to consumers.

 

it git this game in steam sad news if it will be removed.

 

Incorrect, unless we assume that Epic Games will always price lower than the cheapest reseller would have, was the title not exclusive.

Without exclusives, there is more competition for each individual game in terms of pricing.

 

That's a different point. Disney+ is guaranteed to cost consumers more because it's putting current Netflix-exclusive content behind a separate paywall. That isn't comparable to Epic; there is no paywall. Competition is better, sure, but it doesn't guarantee the costs will be lower. If Disney had simply left their content on Netflix, the costs to consumers would be lower, full stop.