The Ongoing Disasters of the EPIC Games Store

I don't mean for this question to be snarky in any way, but out of genuine curiosity: if you are opposed to buying Metro Exodus from the Epic Games Store, why not buy it from the Microsoft Store? The game isn't really a timed "exclusive" title so much as it's a timed "unavailable on Steam" title. If you buy it from the Microsoft Store, you can enjoy the game right now and support the developers, but without in any way funding the Epic Games Store. Is there a reason not to do that?

 

Idk if this has changed since, but when Metro Exodus released on the Windows Store, it was a technical mess.

 

I thought the only way to get Metro on the Microsoft store was to be an Xbox Game Pass subscriber.

 

I think thats it, I have it on game pass so I can't see the other options.

Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk

 

It's included with the pass, but also available for purchase separately: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/metro-exodus-windows/9p60kl3mhcnh#activetab=pivot:overviewtab

 

I don't use the Microsoft Store, on Windows 10 I erase all of the Store and Store apps, so for me it's not possible. Besides I prefer the Steam environment where most all of my other games reside, and I don't mind waiting a few more months - I have plenty of other things to do.

 

Subbing to Xbox Game Pass is a much better deal than buying Metro outright. Tbh for singleplayer games it makes buying obsolete.

 

Yes, absolutely. You pay what, $5 for a month of playing ALL available games? This is an awesome deal for people who just want to play some single-player game once and forget about it, without paying full retail price (something that greedy GabeN forces all Steam users to do unless the game publisher will agree to lower retail price). Ubisoft does the same with their subscription service, though it costs more, about $15 a month, but still a good deal for people who want to play single-player games. Hopefully Epic Store will do the same at some point.

Edit: it's actually $1 to sub for first month of Xbox Game Pass. $1! No rational person would decline such deal if a person is interested in actually playing the games Best of all, developer and publisher will still get their money, Microsoft will pay them same amount regardless of how people will pay for these games.

 

Make sure to set the voice language to Russian for best immersion ;-)

 

No rational company would set such a low price vs value unless they were desperate for customers.

When potential customers are staying away in droves - the MS Store has been an abject failure from it's inception - the only thing MS can do is give it away to hook people - but at $1/mo noone that will take them up on that offer will be able to afford much of a price hike as MS tries to pay the real costs of operation.

The same as Apple setting such a low price for their services, they are desperate to get into the market they should have been in 20 years ago, too little too late - $2B / year for Apple created content for that service is a joke, they need at least 2x that for years before they would have a compelling product.

And, of course once you are hooked on their system - invested yourself and your family and friends in a use cycle that is difficult to change, they will all start raising prices to profitability, going well beyond what any of us would have signed on for initially.

The low prices aren't useful if they don't last, either the prices or the service - or the company.

 

Yup. $60 AAA games are an almost unsustainable business model in this day and age without guaranteed revenue, which is why so many developers are taking these Epic deals. It’s kinda crazy that games are still priced the same as they were 20 years ago despite them costing 20x to make in terms of developmental and marketing cost as well as inflation. I have no problem with non-P2W MTX because of the importance of sustained revenue stream for post-release content and support, and in fact more MP games should augment that with an optional subscription model.

 

Yes, but this is irrelevant for the customer and the game publisher ;-) Let's say I want to play Metro Exodus. Why would I pay, say, $60 at Epic Store or $60 at Steam (this would be the price if it was available there) if I could pay $1 to play it, from start to the finish? ;-) And let's say I am a publisher - why do I care how much MS would subsidize this game for if I will still get my money? ;-)

Maybe they will not last. Or maybe they will - perhaps Microsoft will keep subscription prices low and just keep compensating for this through the other business divisions for as long as their store will exist. Nobody knows for sure, including you, it's just a pointless speculation. Like I said above, it doesn't really matter if you are a customer who just wants to play a single-player game right now. For example, if anyone wants to play Metro Exodus once. Like me, who played it, enjoyed it but does not give a **** if I will lose access to it tomorrow because I do not enjoy replaying same games more than once. If I wanted that (to be able to play the game regardless if the digital store like Steam or Microsoft Store or Google Stadia will still exist a year from now) - I would simply buy the game on a disk for a gaming console, or wait for it to appear on GoG.

 

You are forgetting about digital distribution model, which allows to sell much more copies than "20 years ago" at a much cheaper cost. Plus you are forgetting about something called "outsourcing", which is yet another way to save on labor costs. Bioware did it with Mass Effect Andromeda, so do other smart game developers. Here is a good article about one example related to Horizon Zero Dawn:
https://theoutline.com/post/3087/ou...e-in-china-horizon-zero-dawn?zd=1&zi=buaelho4

"Thanks to outsourcing companies like Virtuos, making games today is less about building levels or creating characters. Instead it’s about managing a global network of labor that builds, programs, animates, and designs. Sixty-five of Virtuos’s employees spent over two years building 11 of Horizon’s 32 enemy robot types; modeling many of the bandit settlements spread across the game world.

Virtuos was only one of 18 different outsourcing companies that worked on the game. Among the others: 3Lateral Studio in Novi Sad, Serbia, which helped character modeling and facial animation for human characters; Territory Studios, a graphic design company in New York that specializes in interface design; Audiomotion in London, which helped with motion capture; Kokku in Recife, Brazil helped build models for some of the robotic animals; and XPEC Art Center in Taipei, which helped build environmental assets to fill the game’s world"

 

Digital substitutes manufacturing and distribution costs with infrastructure costs. The main reasons the $60 AAA model has still managed to stay afloat are the growth of the overall gaming market and the rise of monetization schemes like DLC, microtransactions, and special editions, but those are still not enough to keep AAA in a healthy state because games these days take many more people much longer to make and have to be marketed much more extensively than in the past. You can see how damaging it is when a AAA title fails to meet expected sales target. The threat of outsourcing to countries with cheap labor keeps the price of the end product down and helps maintain status quo in an industry already infamous for poor salary, exploitative conditions, and non-unionization.

 

Yes, it's probably time for AAA games to be priced a bit higher. I'd rather that than have microtransactions and loot boxes. And people may not like "Day One DLC," but so long as developers give us a meaty and long base game, I'm completely fine with developers announcing and continuing to make paid DLC as soon as the base game launches. The continued revenue stream keeps their doors open and lights on, and it gives us more content. (Also, it's absolutely time for developers to unionize!)

 

The problem is that the $60 AAA game is so ingrained in the collective consciousness, a higher base price for the standard edition of a game is almost certain to result in lower sales, which is self-defeating. I never understood the instinctive hatred some people have for monetization schemes as long as they are not P2W. People think that just because they paid upfront for the game at release, that they are entitled to all post-release content additions for the duration of the game’s lifespan. That “free DLC” mentality is unsustainable in the real world. In the real world, expecting something that costs money to make for free usually results in receiving little to nothing. That’s what EA’s recent live service titles, Anthem and Battlefield V, have demonstrated. Battlefield as a franchise has been panned for years because of its Premium paid DLC model, but without Premium (or any form of effective monetization really), BFV has been an excruciating drip feed in terms of content drops, including content that was finished almost a year ago and already present in the singleplayer portion, deliberately held back to stretch out the live service.

 

This is how I see it, more than likely MS negotiated prices with the game companies that simply add to their revenue stream without cannibalizing full priced sales of their games, gaining income from those that can't afford the full price - they only get to use the game without long term benefits of ownership.

I replay my games from time to time, that's why I buy them, I use the other services of Steam to elevate my enjoyment of gaming - specific game communities, saved games, upgrades - choice of rev level per game when offered, and discounted game bundles from developers / publishers hosted by Steam.

I like that Steam is reliable and I can count on my games being there on any device I want to use my game library - almost anywhere I go.

There is no similar future for the MS Store. MS's Store is failing and the games business are a fraction of the sales and cost of the services offered, and won't be enough to make the MS Store float long term, especially a $1/month service.

No one wants to buy their full priced games and host them in MS's Store otherwise MS wouldn't be coming up with this unsupportable in the long term scheme.

The same goes for Epic throwing around money like there's no tomorrow. Mostly because they know it's unsustainable they are doing it to make a pitch for a business to leverage for investment from other sources long term - and Tencent knows they are going to end up bailing out - buying out - Epic.

That's how Chinese investment in small technology companies works, they invest in a company they know will fail without future investments and their plan of investment for companies from the start is to buy them out 100%.

No one else will step in and bail out that company when the Chinese investor steps in and calls for a buyout. The Chinese investor takes over the company and now owns the technology, data collection capability, and privacy assets - or other similarly advantageous IP.

The US Federal Government has figured this out and are finally acting to stop this kind of predatory investment:

US government is forcing Chinese owners to sell Grindr

I don't want that kind of future unstable ecosystem to host my games library, so I'm not going to start buying games in that ecosystem, I'm not going to contribute to the success of an ecosystem I am not interested in seeing happen.

That leaves me buying full priced games - or nice bundles and high discount sales at Steam, GOG, etc - but not MS and Epic.

I'm not interested in participating in any of MS's / Epic's shenanigans, even at $1/month.

 

"Not enough" for whom? For developers like CD Projekt RED which can still afford releasing a single-player RPG for $60, without caring how much people will pirate it (no DRM), without milking it through lootboxes and overpriced DLCs and without taking exclusive deals with companies like Epic (who have definitely made them an offer but most likely could not offer enough money to convince CD Projekt RED to do so)?
Or "not enough" for EA, a company who aggressively promotes their games and milks them like no other company yet they cannot even manage to make a genuinely successful "Battle Royale" game and can only put a half-assed effort through BF5's BR mode, which is so bad that nobody cares to play it or even stream it on Twitch or Mixer, even though BR is still extremely popular genre and FREE games like Fortnite and PUBG still bring billions to developers through smart cosmetic monetization? A company which caused a HUGE backlash by the fans of BF series and many other games in general due to their "**** the historical accuracy, we will force diversity instead and unrealistic cosmetic mods" stance with BF5? And a company who RUINED a AAA RPG subsidiary by forcing them to release half-assed abominations like ME:A or Anthem? ;-)

Look, I agree that price increase is inevitable for both singleplayer and multiplayer games, but saying such things as " it is not enough" about current prices is way too premature, especially considering the fact that a successful developers who put enough love and care into their product and who can SMARTLY use existing tools (such as outsourcing, in case of Guerilla Games) can still turn plenty of profit from sales of $60 games to keep them in development. As for the **** developers and the subsidiary owners like EA or Zenimax who have completely lost the touch with their fanbase - no price increase will ever save them or will make the products they themselves ruined profitable again and all of their "fake AAA" products deserve to fail regardless of the price ;-)

 

Apples and oranges. CDPR releases one game every 4 years, instead of financing multiple huge projects every year, and is subsidized by the Polish government.

 

Please delete

 

Probably the best way to do it would be to start small and phase it in. For instance, start raising AAA prices to $65. A $5 increase is something I suspect most gamers would reluctantly get over and not cause sales to appreciably drop. Then, 5-7 years later, to $70.

 

Nah, it is a fair comparison. CDPR did it with Witcher 3 before getting any loans, they started development for Cyberpunk 2077 and expansion of their studio way before any government loans and they would still be doing same thing they are doing now even without loan. And they are not the only one. Guerilla Gaming, Atlus Games, PlatinumGames and many other developers of genuine AAA games - they are still actively working after selling their latest AAA games for $60. Nobody is getting fired (last time I checked), they are not merging with anyone.
If you want to see a company with "financing multiple huge projects" as an example - SquareEnix, which owns various subsidiaries, they are also developing and being publisher of many AAA games, without trying to increase the $60 "ceiling" for retail games or raising traditional $15/month fee for their MMORPG game (a game with absolutely no p2w items, no lootboxes and only few cosmetics in in-game store) or the price of expansions for it, without reduction in workforce.

So yea, once again, it is way too premature to assume that it is "not enough to keep AAA in a healthy state because games these days take many more people much longer to make and have to be marketed much more extensively than in the past" (this is your own quote) because once again, I do not see examples of SUCCESSFUL companies failing due to game prices remaining as they were. The current $60 ceiling is still perfectly fine for now.

Besides, everyone can always buy extra copy of the game if they genuinely like the product by a developer - I did it with Witcher 3, Nier: Automata and few other games, and I know other people who did the same ;-)

I don't understand why you reply to my post - I wasn't even talking to you in it.

 

Square Enix also botched great IPs like Sleeping Dogs, Thief, Deus Ex, and Kane & Lynch, almost botched the Hitman franchise, famously declared Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, and Tomb Raider 2013 as commercial failures for not meeting unrealistically high sales targets, and laid off half of I/O Interactive after Absolution as well as cancelling Kane & Lynch 3.

 

That's true, no publisher or developer is perfect and SE had its own share of failures, including the most famous one - initial release of FFXIV. Still, those things did not happen because of the price of games, just bad decisions by whomever was responsible for directing those games. In case of FFXIV, they actually managed to make a historical re-launch which made the game successful and popular which it still remains even today, something that no other game developer has attempted ever since, especially EA.

 

Devs could theoretically increase their profits by using Epic instead in which they get to keep 88% of their sale price vs 70% on Steam. In fact they would actually still make $2 extra per copy on Epic when even passing on $10 of that savings to the customer, which is in fact what happened in the case of Metro: Exodus (59.99 vs 49.99).

When everyone started going crazy cord cutting to try to get away from paying for cable and just paying internet and Netflix like 7 years ago I was always like JUST WAIT.. those content creators are going to get your money directly, you're going to end up paying 15 different subscription prices instead of paying the cable company. That's exactly what's happening. Same thing is going to happen to Steam, the "cable company" of digital game storefronts.

 

Well said. Agree 100%. A lot of whining about things and jumping to conclusions. People thrive on drama and controversy, and most of it is just stupid nonsense.

Indeed. Micro$lop's approach to gaming is something actually worth getting worked up about. Their dystopian vision for the future of gaming is a far greater threat to all of what sensible people hold dear than all of the silliness and displaced spastic psycho-babel about Epic. Keeping your enemies closer than your friends is smart. Trusting your enemies is not. Micro$lop is not our friend, and anyone that believes they are is living in a dream world.

 

Time to hop over to Digital extremes warframe

 

Is there any benefit to running Warframe on Digital Extremes vs. on Steam?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/230410/Warframe

 

If the game is good and sells well, it's gonna make enough money at the current prices. If the game isn't so good or doesn't catch on a $5 price hike per copy isn't gonna help much.

Please stop encouraging developers to raise the cost of their games.

 

I want to say that the none steam version will run slightly faster, but you do not have access to steams in game Tennogen store for "fashion frame" which is the true end game for Warframe.

 

Those companies are gonna be surprised when people pick "one" streaming service, maybe "two", and that's it.

Then they'll all need to congregate back on the "winners" so they can monitize their content without the expense of running their own service.

Most people get sick of paying multiple bills month after month - even worse is auto-pay if there's no cash in the account and they get dinged with an overdraft or money-transfer handling fee.

At some inflection point of annoyance some thought will go in to shaking out some of their bill's and stopping subscriptions.

Apple's not gonna be happy.

 

Maybe disabling the Steam in game features can bump up the performance? When I think of it I shut that off for games as I don't usually need it.

I am also done with spending money on visuals in games. I have plenty of things to buy in the real world that I like and can truly use and enjoy. Although I can and do appreciate the visuals with "fashion frame" I no longer have the urge to blow money on such things.

In reality I've wasted $ on elements in games and online worlds that no longer exist - my $ went "poof" at the flip of a server switch, so I no longer have the urge to do that again.

 

They're already way too expensive. If they're too wreckless, everyone will take the Mr. Fox approach and wait until the game price drops to $20 before they are willing to buy it. I think I haven't paid more than $25 for two, maybe three, games in the past 10 years. I'm not one of the first to play it, but I don't care. There are hardly any games made that are compelling enough to make me want to dump much north of $20 on them.

 

Please stop telling me what to do. If you can't handle people posting opinions on the internet that you don't like, that's nobody's problem but your own

 

Let's just ....continue here.

Charles

 

The benefit is probably that Digital Extremes makes more money if people buy things for it directly from them instead of through Steam.. 30% more..

 

Refund surveys for Shenmue 3 finally came out, and in that announcement Ys Net/Deep Silver said that there's a possibility backers may never get a Steam key, even after the EGS exclusivity period ends. So I made my choice.

 

It is with great sadness that I have to say I finished Metro. It is an amazing game, albeit quite short. This also may be just in my head as I lost track of time while playing it. Don't know how many hours it took me.

If I could add one piece of criticism without spoiling anything, I wish they would have stuck to the open world approach like they did for the first two large areas, for the rest of the game too. I really really enjoyed those levels most.

 

Yes, open areas are most visually impressive and it is nice to just explore in those areas instead of going in a straight path. Oh well, maybe next one will be more open and less linear. My personal criticism would be that the character animations weren't good, if they would spend more time on making them more realistic during conversations - the game would've been much more immersive. They're still better than anything garbage companies like Bethesda manage to put into their games, or the garbage like ME:A from Bioware ;-)

It was also nice to hear familiar (for me) songs played on radio, which added extra immersion, I like when games do that.

 

The game is fantastic, I agree. Everyone should play it whether that be MS Store, EGS or one of the consoles. Or I guess wait till Steam gets it next year, that works too.

 

I appreciated that the final area was linear with traditional Metro gameplay, but I agree that the preceding forest area could have been better if it were a bit more open.

 

Just finished my playthrough of the main story of Metro Exodus, and it is beautiful and sad at the same time. Thank goodness for my 1 month XBOX game pass. xD I would just wait for it to come out on Steam, so that I could also experience all of the DLCs.

 

Beautiful and sad is a good description.

I'm a bit irked now because Metro sort of "ruined" other ongoing games I had before. This always happens when I get into a good game and I finish it... I guess I need to give it a little time. Still need to go back and finish FC New Dawn, Rage2 and The Sinking City.

 

I don't have time or inclination to get into it right now, but I've noticed others discussing the one year anniversary of the start of EGS on various forums. Perhaps after the first of the year we can review the Epic Failures so far.

Until then; I ran across this nice expose on Tencent, some poor guy setting out to figure out what's what with Tencent and discovering it's much worse than he realized, and now he wants to share that with other gamers.

The Title says China, but he quickly realizes it's mostly Tencent that owns or influences most everything in China - not just gaming - and in gaming world wide, it's Tencent as #1 revenuer.

Tencent may own almost 50% of EGS, but that's chicken feed compared to the total ownership Tencent wields. See what he discovered...

How China is Infiltrating [Has Infiltrated] the Gaming Industry
Premiered Dec 24, 2019
Glink
China's growing presence on the international stage has trickled into the industries of gaming and media with massive companies like Tencent. Like it's US competitors, Tencent holds massive power in online communication and information. Blizzard's recent actions against Hearthstone player Blitzchung are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to China's influence in western entertainment.


Still going strong, the various "Bird"Epic groups, still keeping it real into the new year, and 2nd year of EGS's BS:

Please replace the **** with the "Bird word":

r/****epic
Welcome to r/****Epic. This is a subreddit where people can come to voice their personal opinions on what Epic Games is doing right and wrong with the Epic Games Store. All forms of discussion are encouraged, but please be mindful of the rules. ..., threats of violence, racism etc. will not be tolerated.
https://www.reddit.com/r/****epic/

We have no need for Epic Games Store !
NO MERCY FOR EPIC EXCLUSIVE MAFIA !
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/NoExclusiveGames

No EPIC Games Curator
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34410309/

Epic Games Store
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/epic-games-store

Please Enjoy, and Happy New Year!!

 

It's a sad start for this year. Just came back from a short vacation, got excited reading some random news that Detroit Becoming Human had been released on PC and then the kick in the gut that it's on epic...

I'm missing out more and more games I was looking fw to because of this epic mess. I still refuse to cave and give them my business.

 

Where did you hear that "Destroy All Humans" would be exclusive on EGS?
Steam and all the news I can find says DAH is coming to Steam this year, 2020, and no EGS exclusive is advertised.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/803330/Destroy_All_Humans/

The game is set to be released for Stadia, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in early 2020 - Wikipedia

It's on this New Year's greeting + list of upcoming non-exclusive titles (in URL replace **** with the "Bird" Word:

At this point Epic store is annoyance not an issue ... And actually it helped me grow.
https://www.reddit.com/r/****epic/comments/ekkm2k/at_this_point_epic_store_is_annoyance_not_an/

"Now i see Epic as just something which is here, it is here, it does not affect me as much anymore.

Look, the most of the games Epic gave away are mediocre, most of the games they gave away for free i got from Humble choice. What is there left to do? Most of the great game which will come here:

Evil Genius 2 (Highly recommend to check this one)
Dragon Ball Z:Kakaroto
Cyberpunk 2077
Halo:Masterchief Collection
Death Stranding PC release
Destroy All Humans
State of Decay 2

Are the best games we get on Steam this year. And I doubt any of those games gets snatched. Some of them are already set in stone.

Spoiler: post continues

Epic gets to getting their exclusivity kink of games nobody ever heard of because of poor marketing and thats it. Sure Epic has some gems like Hades but there is not much beyond few games which are actually considered good.

Also thanks to this, i learned to spend much less, be much more patient, and love the way of getting fully fleshed game.

And Steam with EA and Microsoft coming to help, Epic Store is basically a Fortnite launcher again at this point.

I just wish Epic would succeed as i agree Competition is something Steam desperately needs. What i got is a lot of frustration with tons of valuable lessons along the way.

Epic showed me patience, virtue and who my enemies are. As in for future? I see them closing down like Games for Windows live, focusing on their engine only, and people here flooding sub-reddit on r/****epic to complain how much they got screwed over games they legally bought, just like Games For Windows Live users did on Steam.

Also with all the respect **** all supporters of this greedy corporatism practices, **** devs who sold their soul to Epic without any good reasoning and **** the example of worst human garbage of our planet Earth Tim Swine ... He is disgrace for word Human.

Best of luck to all of you guys!

Update: Mistook "Detroit: Becoming Human" for Destroy All Humans, need to drink the coffee *first*.

 

I was thinking about Detroit Becoming Human. PS4 title from a while ago and just recently released on PC. Looks very cool but I don't have a PS4.

 

Sorry about that I really did just pass right over the words and saw Destroy all Humans

Detroit: Becoming Human does look cool, I'll probably pick it up on PS4 or Steam / GOG when it comes out.

Thanks for the heads up about it.
-----------------
Detroit: Becoming Human was an Epic exclusive announced back in March of 2019, kind of old news at this point, and there is no mention of a GOG or Steam future release, but GOG Twitch hosted a gamer session on the PS4 version a while ago.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/h..._for_sale_for_pc_through_the_epic_games_store

EGS exclusives that were indie's may not make it further than EGS, but at least this one is on PS4, no Xbox release that I can see...

Maybe start a campaign on Steam to get it release there? Not much interest on Steam that I can see...so far...

Detroit: Becoming Human does look interesting...

Detroit: Become Human - Opening
May 24, 2018
Shacknews
Check out the full guide at Shacknews -
https://www.shacknews.com/article/105093/opening---detroit-become-human

 

Rejoice, this could be the year EGS Exclusives decline with the declining income from Fortnight down to $1.8B in 2019 from $2.4B in 2018, $500M less cash for EGS to waste on exclusives as the decline in Fortnight Revenue continues:

Fortnite’s 25% Revenue Plunge Is a Terrible Omen for Epic Games
Over the course of 2019, Fortnite only brought in $1.8 billion, a drop of 25%. Of course, $1.8 billion is still a lot of money, but the drop should be worrying Epic.
https://www.ccn.com/fortnites-25-revenue-plunge-is-a-terrible-omen-for-epic-games/

 

The Laymen's view of EGS's in 2020...

Epic Says Their Strategy Worked - Promises More Exclusives In 2020
Jan 19, 2020
Laymen Gaming
Epic games declaring victory over exclusive strategy?