EPIC GAMES STORE DISCUSSION

Steam elevated PC gaming from its worst era where it grew increasingly irrelevant (save for genres that weren't viable elsewhere like MMORPGs and RTS) to arguably its very best where every game, from indie to AAA to Japanese console games and now emerging industries like Chinese game developers, is making a push on it. It pioneered digital distribution and gave equal terms and chances to the smallest indies as the biggest AAA productions which also translated to indies getting their due attention and even appearing on consoles as near equals to the big studios. And Steam gives such complete control over developer and publisher content and how they present it and sell it that they can so easily game the system and essentially advertise products they won't even sell on it beyond a preorder and/or for a long time! And it continues to improve and pioneer.

Sweeney and media posse offer what? A dodgy client, a store worse than the average key reseller's, no features to speak of for users or developers (sure, if a developer is uninterested, like Dangerous Driving has next to no expected features like leaderboards which would be easily implemented with the Steam API for free, then I guess they don't care to see the overall benefits), making stuff up haphazardly with contradictions and actual lies about their goals and methods. Sloppily piggybacking on Steam's 16 years worth of work after they had abandoned PC thanks to another big corporation (Microsoft and their Xbox money back then) and claiming it's a selfless act for the developers when they simply want to get in on the lucrative market Steam established when all Epic claimed to see was filthy PC pirates.

Some people claim it's healthy capitalism and competition when they offer nothing, they don't even fund promising indies to develop their risky and as of yet unknown quality games which would then understandably be exclusive like their own output without complaints, they just pay up front for the lost sales of pre-existing already evidently eye catching games so that they do not get on competing storefronts, like it is with Ubisoft's games which aren't even exclusive as they still sell them on UPlay so they basically just got money to not release on Steam (let's cheer for that and how deep preferential treatment can go for the worthiest of games with Epic too)! Valve could easily destroy them with the same tactics and use them just long enough to achieve that, but they know they aren't good for the platform, the industry, the gamers or the majority of developers, indies included, those not lucky enough to be fancied by any Sweeney or whoever would be tasked with reaching out and giving them one of the inevitably limited bags of money, while those who receive one so easily forget about the rest of the industry and their indie brothers are suddenly beneath them.

I don't even know if the few indie games onboard with such an exclusivity deal truly benefit from it (for some non indies we know it was a publisher decision with the developers not even being aware, never mind getting a dime, without knowing if they can also potentially lose high sales bonuses on top as they're not likely to sell as many copies as they would on Steam). Nobody talks about Hades or Ashen on their reddit, discord or anywhere despite having the makings of indie super-hits that became the talk of the town like Hollow Knight or Risk of Rain 2 (the latter incidentally we wouldn't even know of its success if we just relied on bloggers, they barely paid it any attention and it didn't even review that great where they bothered, we only found out by the large amount of user reviews and the equally transparent Steam statistics). Where does that leave their sequels and overall future output which at some point will not be able to rely on more Epic money bags, either when Epic abandons the market again or when they decide it's time to profit off it rather than leak money gained by Fortnite? Maybe they hope that when they get on Steam and elsewhere after the exclusivity ends they will produce the same fanfare as if they had first launched like that but that's also a risk, they could be seen as old news even if most gamers didn't get to buy them and there will be even more games to compete against by then. They're getting money up front to not only give up on the risk of not selling well (yet just by knowing Epic sees a mindshare to buy they're less risky than other indie titles), but also give up on their potential for great success and how that may affect their future sustainability or growth! Imagine if The Witcher (or Metro 2033) had launched on a platform with no confirmed buyers (as Epic constantly refuse to give but the vaguest of statistics for specific AAA titles) for just a few millions of dollars. Would that series have evolved into the behemoth it is or would they have continued making janky near indie-level under-budgeted games with in turn a super limited niche audience compared to what The Witcher 3 achieved thanks to their earlier success with actual gamers, rather than by swaying one benefactor into funding them a little bit in return for giving up on said gamers?

Additionally, none of the people and bloggers that flood the media with highlighted anti-Steam rhetoric or pretend all Steam users opposing their arguments are alt-right fanboys with Stockholm syndrome (ignoring Sweeney's own political alignment) even reported the Valve GDC business talks which gave some insight into what kinds of things they're working on and where that 30% (which for most of the games Epic acquired could be a 20% with the latest policies anyway, for the smaller ones maybe 25%, but they certainly didn't sign up games/developers with zero mindshare and super niche looking games - unless it was part of a deal for multiple titles like Annapurna's whole output) is invested in and how it benefits everyone and in the long term. Like for example not only theoretically supporting certain regions but also their currencies and locally favored payment methods regardless of their high fees, including things like printing steam money cards in emerging markets or even having cash-on-delivery partners in India (which actually hire and send people over at the buyer's house or wherever to take the cash for the digital game and confirm the purchase), with Steam eating the whole cost rather than asking anyone to give up a larger fee for every sale depending on the payment method (or for users to pay inconsistently higher prices based on those factors). Sure, if you only want to sell your game in a few Western countries or just dump it on a single store you don't necessarily care, but it shows how Steam does their business in a manner that benefits the whole of the industry, its present and its future growth, rather than a chosen few and itself. Let's not forget they also take zero cut while providing all the same features and support for Steam keys in retail boxes or any other digital storefront that isn't Steam. Their fee is indeed 30% or 25% (easily achieved by a modest indie hit) or 20% (ok, true enough this is only for the bigger hits) where it applies, but it's also zero in many cases so clearly it's less than those numbers indicate on average for all games and to varying degrees (I believe someone did the math with the limited available data and it turns out that 30% would be on average 19% when taking in account copies outside Steam that still use Steam as the platform). This is the tip of the iceberg.

Then there's the hot topic of user reviews, rekindled with the Borderlands review bomb. I found it funny as without Steam’s own features made to combat their negative effects (without however making it so it's not possible to find the information if you want it, as it can still be relevant to customers and companies and isn't a form of protest that should be killed off just because some people attempted it for the wrong cause in the past, just as we don't ban the freedom of street protests just because some neo-nazis also use them for their cause at times) nobody would even know a review bomb occurred at all. Yet they’re attacked as if they allow something heinous, despite having way more features and transparency than any other platform with user reviews (including outside gaming) and despite those who attack them using Steam’s own tools to demonstrate what happened! Lol? Does nobody really see the conflict of interest at play when bloggers bash something so natural and common across our daily lives as user reviews? Of course both Epic and bloggers would love if it if the only way to gauge a game is by their own hands, paid off by publishers or not. Why would any company care to please customers when they can just please bloggers for their word of mouth, right? That's easier. Why does it only happen with gaming anyway? And only Steam at that? Why don’t they rag on metacritic for having them? Or Apple Store? Google Play? Amazon? IMDB? Best Buy? Local retailers? Popular price comparison websites? Facebook business pages? Youtube? Just about everything ever these days? If an Amazon competitor was set up without user reviews they’d be laughed out of existence.

Again, we already had a curation based store where only established and otherwise so called noteworthy publishers and developers had a chance to sell their stuff with early Steam and we didn't like it and constantly showed that we didn't want good games to fall through the cracks by the platform curation itself (it's different if they fall through the cracks because of too much competition in an overabundant industry, that's capitalism for you and Steam was clearly not going to fix that as much as it tries, it's the basis of the whole industry they're part of), now they want to accept Tim's hand picked selection of games as the only ones worthwhile because of asset-flips or whatever else everyone easily ignores and scrolls past except when it comes down to writing another sensational blog about the industry (rather than write to highlight a cool game we might have missed, that's too hard). It's anti-indie at its core, shovelware affecting visibility somewhat and improvements (which are constantly done) being needed is no excuse for acting like any game not fancy or popular enough to get on Sweeney's good side for a deal is shovelware. Days ago we had that wave of bloggers from big media like IGN claiming Steam has no noteworthy games left for 2019 which is a ludicrous proposal given how few developers and publishers in the grand scheme of things are actually signed up for EGS. But hey, because they made these shitposts just after the likes of Resident Evil 2, Sekiro and Devil May Cry 5, and before E3 where all the announcements will happen, then provide vague reasons for why Bethesda's and Microsoft's return on the platform (without money bags, just the quality of service and the reach of the platform at play for that) don't count, and ignore big indie hits like Risk of Rain 2 as if they didn't happen, then they can claim it sounds about half-right? It's just a ridiculous anti-indie stance to hold and shows their heavy and willfully ignorant bias, whatever its reason for existing may be.

TL;DR, EGS is lesser than Steam circa early '00s in 2019, completely ignoring how we, gamers and developers, shaped it into its ever pioneering form these last 16 years, and they and their media posse pretend this is all a progressive future-facing forward-thinking feature!