The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.
After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.
Steam was shit for like the first 10 years, though, and people suck around until it got better, so I’m not sure this is true.
I’m not fully sure the steam comparison works only because that was a different time.
With that said I still think epic has staying power if for no other reason than anyone mildly interested has a massive epic library sitting there. I don’t spend a ton of time thinking about epic, but I do want to keep my account because of all those games.
Steam literally forced me to install it when I bought Portal on CD back in the day.
The only thing that was on that CD was a Steam installer and a code.
This is kind of like complaining that you have to own a Switch to play Nintendo 1st party games.
Portal is a Valve game. Steam is the PC launcher for Valve games.
FWIW, Portal was available on other platforms without Steam. I had my copy of the Orange Box for the Xbox 360 and that didn’t require Steam or a Steam account to play.
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Making it seem like Steam’s problems for the first ten years were some software bugs inherent to all software.
It required you login every 48 hrs to two weeks to play most games for DRM purposes, they had no return policy, app’s buttons barely worked, overlay made games run considerably worse, it frequently took up a shitton of resources. The 48 hr thing meant that if you were offline for a bit and Steam was down or slowed (any time a bit sale happened or a big game was launched) most games were unplayable.
Steam came out in 2003 and tons of people complained about Steam DRM hearkening the end of actually owning videogames until at least 2012. GoG came out in 2008, didn’t require a launcher at all, sidestepped everything wrong with Steam.
There’s been non-buggy, not anti-consumer software as long as there’s been computers, Steam prior to like 2016 was not that. There’s been an alternative, buying physical games (until they all started using Steam DRM or worse) and GoG.
Yeah Epic Launcher is barebones. Both Steam and Epic are anti-consumer because of DRM, and making users beholden to any buggy software update to play software they purchase. At least Epic pays devs.
Yeah I mean I hope my comment doesn’t seem like it’s blindly defending Steam or anything. I think steam today is a good platform. Not talking about their 30% cut, I just mean from the perspective of gamers.
But its launch was anything but smooth. I HATED steam when it launched as a requirement for HL2. I had dialup and the experience was utter shit. I recall being so upset at what a pain it was.
Nothing about epic has ever been as frustrating as the early life of steam.
This is exactly what I think of when people argue that EGS shouldn’t be supported or will definitely fail. These days, most gamers agree that Steam is good. They like Steam. Early on, though, Steam was really bad, and gamers really hated it.
Should gamers have avoided Steam early on, when it sucked and they hated it, so that it would have failed? Or was it better to support it early on so that we ultimately got the Steam that we have now? I dislike both EGS and Steam, but the reality is that the marketplace will probably be better for everyone if EGS survives and actually has a substantial market share to compete with Valve’s market share.
I know everybody hates the exclusives thing, but it’s actually probably necessary and is based on market studies of the games market. There was an economics journal paper years ago that basically argued that exclusives are an equalizer of sorts. That is, if you’re the dominant player in the market, you don’t need to buy exclusives. You’re, as the dominant player, going to get the big games anyway. As a smaller player, though, nothing is guaranteed, and, in general, nobody is ever going to switch platforms just to play the same games on the newer, smaller platform that they were already playing on the older, bigger platform. You’ll need exclusives to get people to switch, even if your platform is as good or better than the dominant one. (I’m not saying EGS is as good – but I’m saying people wouldn’t switch anyway.)
When a new product like a TV from a new manufacturer shows up people judge it by standards from 10 years ago as opposed to current ones? Same from software?
There were better alternatives when Steam launched, though. Stardock Central was more mature and feature complete (it launched ~3 years earlier than Steam), but, even so, many people actually preferred to not have a launcher at all at that time. The thing that really got people using Steam was that there were big name games requiring it, but people didn’t like it. When Half-Life 2 launched and required Steam, almost every PC gaming magazine ran a story about how Steam made the experience worse than it would have been if the game didn’t require a launcher at all.
Half Life 2 launched in 2004. Which will be 20 years next year. I’m not sure why state of a product from over a decade ago matters for judging products now. I’m not exactly time traveling and being forced to use 2004 steam.
I’m not comparing the current state of EGS to the state of Steam from 2004.
My point is this. Steam came out in 2004. At the time, consumers thought it sucked. A lot. Gamers filled forums with posts about how they were avoiding it, hoped it would die off, etc. Gaming magazines like CGW wrote articles about how it made the experience of installing and playing games worse than the old way of installing and playing games. Even so, consumers kept using it, and Steam eventually improved and won people over.
EGS came out in 2018. At the time, consumers thought it sucked. A lot. Gamers filled forums with posts about how they were avoiding it, hoped it would die off, etc. Gaming websites wrote articles about how it made the experience of installing and playing games worse than the old way of installing and playing games. Even so, will consumers keep using it and will it eventually improve and win people over? Why couldn’t that happen a second time?
It’s an incredibly poor look having to even resort to comparing epic to the era of 2004. That’s like someone referring back to the days of flip phones for why a new current day phone release should get a pass. Even having to do that is a poor reflection.
Having to rely on hypotheticals over the actual offering of epic isn’t a good look. It’s not our job or your job to convince us why epic is worth spending money in. That’s epic’s job.
At no point did I say Epic should get a pass. I’m saying that, just because people don’t like it and want it to go away, that doesn’t mean it will. Steam received the same negative reception and ended up being the dominant force. Gamers don’t like Windows 11, but they’ll use it when it’s required. Gamers didn’t like Windows 10. They used that too.
I’m not trying to excuse Epic in any way. What I’m saying is that the idea that consumers will refuse to use or support EGS just because it sucks is a pipedream. Consumers have always, and probably will always, give in and use services that are required to play the games they want to play. They used Steam back when they hated it. They’re using EGS even when they hate it. They use UPlay, Origin, and whatever else when it’s required.
EGS may well end up being the dominant force in PC gaming. Being hated or shitty is not guaranteed to stop that. That’s what I’m saying. If being hated or shitty early on were something that stopped a platform’s success, Steam would not have been successful.
Why couldn’t that happen a second time?
Maybe because steam is already extremely popular and has improved more in the last few years than Epic has.
I don’t know how popular stardock was but it couldn’t have been anywhere close to how popular steam is now.
Epic hasn’t really done anything to improve.
Installing games from disc was extremely popular when Steam launched, though, and, even though it was what consumers said they preferred, it eventually got replaced by Steam once enough games required Steam. The reality was that consumers, even if they didn’t like Steam and preferred the old way, weren’t willing to give up on PC gaming in order to avoid it.
If Epic can get enough games to require EGS, I really think the same thing could happen a second time. Consumers will be pissed off, but they’re not going to give up on PC games. They’ll just go along with it.
What was the alternative for the first ten years? Nothing better for sure.
The alternative was to not use a launcher, which is what most people wanted at the time. Gabe even came out and said, after the Steam launch of Half-Life 2, that the Steam situation was bad. Some reviews of HL2 went as far as to deduct points from their reviews based on the fact that Steam made the experience of playing the game worse than it would have been if you could have just installed and played the game without a launcher.
Also, there was a launcher that predated Steam and was more mature and polished than Steam at the time. It was Stardock’s Stardock Central, which came out in 2001(about three years before Steam) and began offering third party games for sale in 2004.
The alternative back then was to buy physical games or to pirate them.
As bad as the Steam experience was at the time, it was still convenient. Nowhere else could you reliably download games at those speeds, and you could legally purchase games without leaving the house, not to mention the prices.