Cutter wrote on May 22, 2022, 12:08:
Yeah, but is the game any good? Well? Is it?

Not really.

Laughing Man wrote on May 21, 2022, 22:32:
The game is a flop. Just because it sold 500k copies has no bearing on if the game is good.

You don't get to change the definition of terms just because you don't agree with them. A "flop" in terms of any sort of media release is something that is unprofitable. Whether or not it is a flop ENTIRELY depends on how well it sells, not whether you enjoyed it, and 500k copies in 5 days is pretty damn good for anything short of established franchises. It also has a 74% metacritic score and 78% audience score, so the world doesn't even agree with you on it being particularly bad either.

It's ok, Timmy bought your copy.

Yeah, but is the game any good? Well? Is it?

The Flying Penguin wrote on May 22, 2022, 10:15:
I prefer to buy a game on Steam, but I have no major issues with other launchers (except when they make me enter the password when I haven't used it in a while). Steam will launch most competitor's games through it's launcher, and failing that (Epic games don't launch properly from Steam - big surprise) there are tricks and tools that allow you to do it.

I do this because Steam has become a social network of a sort for me. My gamer friends are all on Steam. I want them to know that I'm online and playing a game, and what game it is, so that if they want to join me, or ask me to play something else with them, they can.

Yeah, I'd prefer it if everything was available on Steam. In a perfect world everything would be on every store. It's not that Steam is perfect or without it's flaws but I've been using it a very, VERY long time. It has very mature discussion forums in which I can usually find answers, a very mature modding community, and an excellent review system with curated game reviews. I often get a much better review of a game from Steam than I do from any of the review sites.

Same here. I buy where the best deals are. That's no longer Steam. Steam sales these days are a yawn. I get better deals from Epic, Fanatical, Humble Bundle and others. Steam is immensely useful and convenient, but not enough so that I'm willing to pay 20-50% more than at other places. As for exclusives (that usually last a year or so), I couldn't care less. I've got hundreds of games to play, and I'll buy that exclusive game at some point, likely during a 50% off sale. Usually it is no longer exclusive once the developer is willing to dish out the deep discounts.

Again most of you are missing the point.

500k sales TOTAL. That's PC and Consoles.

Be pissed all ya want at EGS, but christ already the horse has been beaten to death already.

Have I bought stuff on EGS, yes, I made my mistake and won't do it again, but it was my choice to do so.
Like a bunch of people walking down the street with Tourette Syndrome randomly screamng "FUCK EPIC GAMES!"

I use Steam almost exclusively, but I think we've seen the damage consolidation has done to other industries and should welcome moving away from a largely one-vendor solution.

In farming, we have basically 4-6 meat suppliers. The result is skyrocketing prices being called "inflation," but with record profits. There's no true competition, and 4 competitors can easily coordinate prices without explicit coordination, so they do.

In baby formula, we have 3 or 4 manufacturers in the US, one of which has nearly 50% market share. It has to shut down its plants due to contamination and now formula is nowhere to be found.

We shouldn't have only Steam. But, at this point, it has such a large lead on features, and so many people are so locked into the ecosystem, that nothing will naturally challenge it. But what if Gabe sells to Facebook tomorrow and they require a Facebook login? What if he's hit by a train and had the only passwords, like that crypto company? What if a meteor hits all of their server farms? Far fetched, but just examples of why we should want competition. I suppose most here know that, but some refuse to admit that nothing would get them to leave 17 years of habit of going to Steam, or to split their library, yet somehow expect someone to be able to compete.

I prefer to buy a game on Steam, but I have no major issues with other launchers (except when they make me enter the password when I haven't used it in a while). Steam will launch most competitor's games through it's launcher, and failing that (Epic games don't launch properly from Steam - big surprise) there are tricks and tools that allow you to do it.

I do this because Steam has become a social network of a sort for me. My gamer friends are all on Steam. I want them to know that I'm online and playing a game, and what game it is, so that if they want to join me, or ask me to play something else with them, they can.

Yeah, I'd prefer it if everything was available on Steam. In a perfect world everything would be on every store. It's not that Steam is perfect or without it's flaws but I've been using it a very, VERY long time. It has very mature discussion forums in which I can usually find answers, a very mature modding community, and an excellent review system with curated game reviews. I often get a much better review of a game from Steam than I do from any of the review sites.

DarkCntry wrote on May 22, 2022, 06:41:

Icewind wrote on May 22, 2022, 04:32:
Steam and Gabe Newell worked hard to make their service what it is. Epic just sold their rights to Tencent and pockets fortnite money charged on the credit cards of teenage kid's parents.

I really don't see how Gaben or Steam worked hard... like how most things are done they created a service that wasn't available at the time that allowed them to cement their foothold.

It definitely isn't hard work to be doing the same thing that Epic does without the competing entities.

Don't feed the troll . Anyone with a clue knows that Epic is actually very much like Valve. Epic has been around since 1991. They have always been and still are a very successful game developer and they are possibly an even more successful engine developer/licensor (something that Valve seems to have dropped almost entirely). We have "will be using Unreal Engine 5" news rolling in almost daily. Reducing Epic to Tencent and Fortnite kiddies is pure trollish idiocy.

And when GabeN developed Steam in the early 2000s it was a very selfish move to create DRM for Valve's games. I don't think he ever even dreamed about it becoming such a major sales platform for so many other publishers. Valve got lucky that everyone considered PC gaming as dead (or at least dying) after the launch of the Xbox in 2001. No other major publisher invested in a digital PC storefront because they did not believe in the PC as a platform. This was not entirely unjustified either. Big publishers like EA or Ubi made only about ~10% of their total revenue on PC back then.

When PC gaming refused to die and when the PC finally became a more visible and viable platform again, Valve was there with an established platform ready to take on 3rd parties.
As many people here will remember, it certainly was not a very good platform in its early days. The "hard work" only started after the 3rd parties came piling in. They made demands with regard to sales tools and Valve delivered. The vast majority of Steam's features to this day are still sales and marketing tools aimed at user tracking, alleviating sales & visibility of products and intending to alleviate the work of the sales & marketing reps of the major publishers etc. etc.
It's always kind of cute, for example, when naive Steam fanboys believe that Valve created features like the 'wishlist' for them lol. Aw. So cute...

Icewind wrote on May 22, 2022, 04:32:
Steam and Gabe Newell worked hard to make their service what it is. Epic just sold their rights to Tencent and pockets fortnite money charged on the credit cards of teenage kid's parents.

I really don't see how Gaben or Steam worked hard... like how most things are done they created a service that wasn't available at the time that allowed them to cement their foothold.

It definitely isn't hard work to be doing the same thing that Epic does without the competing entities.

Jim wrote on May 21, 2022, 21:41:
No console game has steam features and nobody misses them.

And that's why I only play games on PC now. Steam has surpassed Xbox Live. Many years ago in fact.

And to your earlier statement in this thread where you stated "Steam could pay for exclusivity too" I suppose you weren't around in 2008/2009 when Steam was begging major companies to use Steamworks as their DRM so as to move them away from the broken, intrusive Games for Windows Live that required an Xbox account to use.

Steam and Gabe Newell worked hard to make their service what it is. Epic just sold their rights to Tencent and pockets fortnite money charged on the credit cards of teenage kid's parents.

HorrorScope wrote on May 21, 2022, 20:53:
Bribe is way too strong of a word, it is business and Epic offers people options, it is ethical in business. We may not like it, but nothing illegal, bribes are illegal.

All that bribing going on in e.g. the streaming business with streaming channels "bribing" so that they exclusively (mostly for a limited amount of time) get even series that they did not produce themselves. Evil Netflix, evil Apple (oh wait, no, they are always the good), evil Amazon, evil... Let me stop there.

bhcompy wrote on May 21, 2022, 23:11:

Laughing Man wrote on May 21, 2022, 22:32:
Because we're sick of 20 different launchers 10 years later. Just like how people are getting sick of every single cable channel now starting it's own streaming service and pulling content from netflix so they can rent it to you instead because licensing isn't enough money. It's a practice that's only going to get worse and divide us further.

Life's too short to be pissed off at it. If you're really that angry, GOG Galaxy acts as a launcher for Epic, Steam, Origin, and Ubisoft.

You clearly have never used GOG launcher if you honestly believe it replaces all of them. It does not. It removes the need for nothing and does not launch any game without needing the original launcher. If it did, then every single one of these people would use it. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

Jim wrote on May 21, 2022, 23:37:

Laughing Man wrote on May 21, 2022, 22:32:
The game is a flop. Just because it sold 500k copies has no bearing on if the game is good. Reviews are not good for the game as it's just another DBD ripoff made from a new IP.

LOL a flop compared to what? How about some stats: https://comparecamp.com/steam-statistics/

On average, a Steam game sells 1,500 copies on Steam and earns around $16,000 in net revenue.
On average, games priced at $10 sold 1,000 copies with net revenues of $6,000.
On average, games priced at $11-15 sold 2,000 copies with net revenues of $35,000.
On average, games priced at $16-20 sold 2,500 copies with net revenues of $55,000.
On average, games priced at +$21 sold 5,000 copies with net revenues of $200,000.

I'd say that 500000 copies is vastly better than the steam average. And when you look at the numbers, only the top AAA games will ever hit $10 million to get reduced rates, and only a game like elden ring will hit $50 million, which makes the commission structure a joke.

A financial success does not mean that a game is good. I sold over a million of an imaginary product that was completely useless to people. Does it mean that what I sold was good? No, it meant I got 1 million idiots to give me money for something.

Darks wrote on May 21, 2022, 19:49:

Jim wrote on May 21, 2022, 18:38:

Darks wrote on May 21, 2022, 15:15:
Really pisses me off that this game is not on Steam. so tired of Exclusive bullshit.

Steam has just as much ability to bid for games that epic does. But obviously they don’t give a damn, they would just rather collect cash.

That's a bullshit statement, Steam isn't in the business to go out and bribe developers to use their gaming platform when its already the best established gaming platform out there, Epic does this crap because they are trying to establish their gaming platform, and to just rub it in Steams face.

There's nothing stopping Steam from shelling out for its own exclusives. Valve has billions in cash. Gaben's cash swimming pool might have to go down and inch or two though.

If Epic feels so confident in their platform, lets put it to the test and put both games on both platforms at the same time. I'm betting Steam will face roll Epic on sales. And Epic knows it which is why they do the shit they do.

I think that would be interesting to see. But while we're getting rid of Epic's taught-in-business-school exclusives, let's also get rid of Steam's illegal, monopolistic forced price parity MFN contracts. I would be interested in seeing if people would pay Steam's premium for the extra services they offer, or if they would choose Epic's 18% lower price. Would they pay $40 for Evil Dead on Epic or $47 on Steam? 🤔

Jim wrote on May 21, 2022, 23:37:

Laughing Man wrote on May 21, 2022, 22:32:
The game is a flop. Just because it sold 500k copies has no bearing on if the game is good. Reviews are not good for the game as it's just another DBD ripoff made from a new IP.

LOL a flop compared to what? How about some stats: https://comparecamp.com/steam-statistics/

On average, a Steam game sells 1,500 copies on Steam and earns around $16,000 in net revenue.
On average, games priced at $10 sold 1,000 copies with net revenues of $6,000.
On average, games priced at $11-15 sold 2,000 copies with net revenues of $35,000.
On average, games priced at $16-20 sold 2,500 copies with net revenues of $55,000.
On average, games priced at +$21 sold 5,000 copies with net revenues of $200,000.

I'd say that 500000 copies is vastly better than the steam average. And when you look at the numbers, only the top AAA games will ever hit $10 million to get reduced rates, and only a game like elden ring will hit $50 million, which makes the commission structure a joke.

Just FYI, those numbers are not facts. The data referenced by that article is borrowed from a presentation made by an indie dev talking about how sales for a lot of indie games had slumped in 2019 compared to 2018. He did not have actual sales figures, he used the same type of public information that sites such as SteamSpy use to guess at how many copies a game has sold, etc. Then it was sculpted and presented in a very specific way to better illustrate his point:

The data

• Around 900 games were released on Steam between July 5 – August 6, 2019
• Any game that did not achieve 10+ user reviews was removed (around 700
titles removed, i.e. around 78% of released titles will make less than $5,000 in
their first year)
• AAA titles removed (not particularly useful knowing how Wolfenstein sold)
• Then, the top and bottom 5% (ranked by revenue made) were removed, to
reduce noise from outliers
• The data left contains roughly 170 games released between these dates

Regardless, these are still all estimates, and should be treated as such.

Laughing Man wrote on May 21, 2022, 22:32:
The game is a flop. Just because it sold 500k copies has no bearing on if the game is good. Reviews are not good for the game as it's just another DBD ripoff made from a new IP.

LOL a flop compared to what? How about some stats: https://comparecamp.com/steam-statistics/

On average, a Steam game sells 1,500 copies on Steam and earns around $16,000 in net revenue.
On average, games priced at $10 sold 1,000 copies with net revenues of $6,000.
On average, games priced at $11-15 sold 2,000 copies with net revenues of $35,000.
On average, games priced at $16-20 sold 2,500 copies with net revenues of $55,000.
On average, games priced at +$21 sold 5,000 copies with net revenues of $200,000.

I'd say that 500000 copies is vastly better than the steam average. And when you look at the numbers, only the top AAA games will ever hit $10 million to get reduced rates, and only a game like elden ring will hit $50 million, which makes the commission structure a joke.

Laughing Man wrote on May 21, 2022, 22:32:
Because we're sick of 20 different launchers 10 years later. Just like how people are getting sick of every single cable channel now starting it's own streaming service and pulling content from netflix so they can rent it to you instead because licensing isn't enough money. It's a practice that's only going to get worse and divide us further.

Life's too short to be pissed off at it. If you're really that angry, GOG Galaxy acts as a launcher for Epic, Steam, Origin, and Ubisoft.

Jim wrote on May 21, 2022, 21:41:

Darks wrote on May 21, 2022, 19:49:
That's a bullshit statement, Steam isn't in the business to go out and bribe developers to use their gaming platform when its already the best established gaming platform out there, Epic does this crap because they are trying to establish their gaming platform, and to just rub it in Steams face.

If Epic feels so confident in their platform, lets put it to the test and put both games on both platforms at the same time. I'm betting Steam will face roll Epic on sales. And Epic knows it which is why they do the shit they do.

would you even care if the game had flopped? bribe implies something illegal or shady. I'd venture that it was a good business deal that worked out for them. The game developer gets a guaranteed stream of income at favorable rates to a reduced audience. They get a year to iron out bugs, add DLC and then release the "full" "debugged" game to a wider audience.

I don't really get why paying Gaben all this money for years means that a person must continue to pay Gaben money for games, else they get upset because of missing non-game features. The end result any store is you click on an icon and the game launches. No console game has steam features and nobody misses them.

The game is a flop. Just because it sold 500k copies has no bearing on if the game is good. Reviews are not good for the game as it's just another DBD ripoff made from a new IP.

Because we're sick of 20 different launchers 10 years later. Just like how people are getting sick of every single cable channel now starting it's own streaming service and pulling content from netflix so they can rent it to you instead because licensing isn't enough money. It's a practice that's only going to get worse and divide us further.

Darks wrote on May 21, 2022, 19:49:
That's a bullshit statement, Steam isn't in the business to go out and bribe developers to use their gaming platform when its already the best established gaming platform out there, Epic does this crap because they are trying to establish their gaming platform, and to just rub it in Steams face.

If Epic feels so confident in their platform, lets put it to the test and put both games on both platforms at the same time. I'm betting Steam will face roll Epic on sales. And Epic knows it which is why they do the shit they do.

would you even care if the game had flopped? bribe implies something illegal or shady. I'd venture that it was a good business deal that worked out for them. The game developer gets a guaranteed stream of income at favorable rates to a reduced audience. They get a year to iron out bugs, add DLC and then release the "full" "debugged" game to a wider audience.

I don't really get why paying Gaben all this money for years means that a person must continue to pay Gaben money for games, else they get upset because of missing non-game features. The end result any store is you click on an icon and the game launches. No console game has steam features and nobody misses them.

Bribe is way too strong of a word, it is business and Epic offers people options, it is ethical in business. We may not like it, but nothing illegal, bribes are illegal.