chickenboo wrote on Dec 12, 2019, 19:36:
Good Op Ed, but it boils down consumer backlash to noisy racists/trolls, labelling all dissenting opinions about the EGS to the association with a few noisy rude loudmouths on twitter. It's like labelling all of the protesters in Hong Kong as dangerous radical looting rioters because a few bad seeds are present.

The arguing against EGS definitely comes off as petty - it's just a store front, big deal - but games sold on Kickstarter guaranteeing Steam keys and then suddenly taking EGS exclusivity deals while riding the association with the Steam store front is pretty misleading and bad practice. Ditto Metro Exodus who announced two weeks before launch that they're going EGS Exclusive, the backlash for that is pretty deserved, and despite there being a lot of horrible direct abuse and attacks which are never warranted, there's a hell of a lot of decent, reserved commentary on why this is a bad thing. It's pretty annoying that this Op Ed glosses over that in favor of portraying every game consumer with the same rabid/troll/racist/pigheaded paintbrush.

The 88/12 deal is fine for producers but the argument it will lead to more and better games is simply misleading. It's like when businesses say that any increase in taxes represents one less employee that could be hired, implying they would have hired extra people if they had the money, not that that ever really happens. Look at Mechwarrior 5 Mercs: the game just released, it's riddled with poor grammar, spelling mistakes, the story is some weak revenge tale with one dimensional characters who don't even more, they just stand there stock still. From what I've read the missions are dead simple and don't offer branching paths that even MW2 Mercs managed to do (complete your contract with A or do what B suggests and get double the payout). You mean to tell me this developer took the EGS payout, and this is what we get? How do you release a V1.0 with grammar and spelling mistakes? I thought 88/12 split was supposed to improve the quality of games.

Until we get clear proof from developers of what they were able to achieve with the generous EGS earnings split and a demonstration of what would have been left off the table without it, why should I believe them that it's in MY best interests to buy from this store, that exclusivity is worth it? And when/if Steam eventually meets the 88/12 split... are we going to see these fabled lands of better games now that devs get 18% more, or will it be status quo...