Epic's exclusive Acquisition continues... Rocket League is next.

[Vakna]

Calling those who disagree with you "petty" and "lazy" is even more childish. Other than that, they don't care that I need to install fucking garbage to play their games, I don't care about how much money they receive. Quid pro quo.

Why is the Epic launcher garbage? What makes it so unpleasant to use? It's just another game launcher..

I've played games (and still do) that still use launchers that look like they were made in 2001 and are fairly irritating to use. But I spend like 5 seconds on the launcher and then get into the game.. not playing a game that would give you potentially hundreds of hours of enjoyment and you genuinely want to play just to not spend a few seconds on a launcher you don't like it just an alien concept to me.

Would I stop eating bacon if the best store in my area stopped selling it and I had to go to a different one to purchase it? Of course not, I love bacon, why would I deny myself that just for a slight inconvenience.

[qwerty123456]

And your proof is?

Do you have literally anything other than your imagination to back this assertion up?

The only two using their imaginations here seem to be you two. You would have to be delusional to think they believed an exclusive deal would net them the same numbers as releasing on everything.

Do you really believe that a store that doesn't even have a shopping cart, a friends list, and is fresh is going to have millions of users in the second or third week out? There is a reason Epic is having to buy all these timed exclusives and its not saving the devs from steam like epic tries to claim.

And it doesn't even matter as my point was we have no idea what they expected so exceeding expectations doesn't necessarily equate to amazing numbers.

Epic told everyone if you believe their word. The developer that raised their price even said they were going to raise the price anyways and it was bad timing to do it with the sale. Plenty of developers on Steam don't participate in the steam sales or do so to a minor degree. It is a non-issue.

Its possible they told them but clearly wires got crossed and shit. There were games who changed their prices so the epic sale price wouldn't count, others who raised it then said its because they were adding new content yet conveniently did it during a sale, unreleased games that made Epic take their games off the store entirely(albeit temporarily) after they too were marked down when they didn't want to be, etc...

[Rennadrel]

I don't understand why devs care about Epic exclusivity. Are devs really that lazy these days that they don't want to spend 5 seconds creating a page on a different launcher to sell the game they made? Are people really so petty that they deny themselves sales they would enjoy just because they have beef (for some reason) with a specific company?

It's not the developers choice unless they self publish, which rarely happens anymore. It's driven by the publishers, and they care more about making as much money up front as possible. So even if a game sells millions of copies on Steam, and ironically, EGS won't really make a game like Rocket League more popular since the game has been out for a few years and has already likely hit it's peak.

If there's one downside to Steam in it's current state, it's that users are often intentionally waiting for sales to buy games. But as a consumer, I get that mentality because in an ever growing age of wealth disparity, gamers would be among the biggest penny pinchers when it comes to their entertainment. Sure, there's a lot of people who buy games at release, but a lot of people don't, especially on Steam. Those who wait for sales drive down the earnings potential, knowing that brand new games are often on sale within a few months. So there's a catch 22 with services like Steam where consumers are so used to discounts. I can understand why publishers want to fight back on that sort of practice.

To me it makes more sense to get Valve contractually obligated to keep a game on for regular price for a set period of time before putting it on discount. Having to wait a year for instance, before the first sale, makes it really hard for people to justify waiting to buy a game.

[Edge-]

The only two using their imaginations here seem to be you two. You would have to be delusional to think they believed an exclusive deal would net them the same numbers as releasing on everything.

That's a fair point, but also not what I was responding to. I was responding to a post where someone implied that they expected sales to be poor, which there is zero information to support that being the case. Quite the contrary, all evidence points to strong and successful PC sales despite being EGS exclusive.

If they had posted saying, "They expected lower sales than if they were non-exclusive" then yes, that would be correct and I'd agree. But that's not what they posted.

Do you really believe that a store that doesn't even have a shopping cart, a friends list, and is fresh is going to have millions of users in the second or third week out? There is a reason Epic is having to buy all these timed exclusives and its not saving the devs from steam like epic tries to claim.

Uh...yeah, actually. It sold over 300K there already, and they've got a huge built-in userbase from Fortnite. And yes, the reason they're buying the exclusives is precisely to that end - to grow their userbase. That's literally the point. Pay money for exclusives, get new users through that and free games, retain users through sales like other storefronts, aim to have a healthy ecosystem of users that can sustain the storefront without exclusives in the longterm.

And Epic has always been transparent that they're buying exclusives to get folks to use their store. Sure, they talk up how they're helping developers in the PC space (which they are between their lower store cuts and stuff like the $500M software development grant), but they've never once tried to hide the fact that exclusives are done to get folks to use the store.

And it doesn't even matter as my point was we have no idea what they expected so exceeding expectations doesn't necessarily equate to amazing numbers.

Maybe not, "OH MY GOD WE CAN RETIRE EARLY!" numbers, but we know it was successful. It's rare that companies will project losses, they're always going to be at least cautiously optimistic. So if it's meeting, and exceeding, their projections, then by all definitions it's successful for them. How successful? We can't say for sure, but we can easily qualify it as a success.

[qwerty123456]

Numbers of sales? Yeah, probably not... but then again, the few sales don't make just because people don't want to use Epic Launcher are easily covered by the extra they get from the exclusivity deal and the larger cut than they would get in other platforms.

I think the exclusivity deal money was probably more incentive than the dev cut percentage considering they could have launched on everything and still got the cut from whoever bought on epic.

And Epic has always been transparent that they're buying exclusives to get folks to use their store. Sure, they talk up how they're helping developers in the PC space (which they are between their lower store cuts and stuff like the $500M software development grant), but they've never once tried to hide the fact that exclusives are done to get folks to use the store.

Didn't Tim say if Steam lowered their cut he would stop doing exclusives?

Uh...yeah, actually. It sold over 300K there already, and they've got a huge built-in userbase from Fortnite. And yes, the reason they're buying the exclusives is precisely to that end - to grow their userbase. That's literally the point. Pay money for exclusives, get new users through that and free games, retain users through sales like other storefronts, aim to have a healthy ecosystem of users that can sustain the storefront without exclusives in the longterm.

Maybe not, "OH MY GOD WE CAN RETIRE EARLY!" numbers, but we know it was successful. It's rare that companies will project losses, they're always going to be at least cautiously optimistic. So if it's meeting, and exceeding, their projections, then by all definitions it's successful for them. How successful? We can't say for sure, but we can easily qualify it as a success.

How many Fortnite players will actually buy other games tho? If they all did they wouldn't have needed to start buying exclusives. There are millions of Fortnite players that don't spend any money or only bought save the world for the free V-bucks. There's also people like me where I've probably spent more in Save the World(and a little in battle royale) than anyone on MMOChampion but I only installed the Epic launcher when Dauntless forced me to since I play Fortnite on Xbox. I'm not saying that there aren't Fortnite players that will buy games on the epic launcher just that they wouldn't have needed exclusives if number of players = number of paying customers for a different service.

[qwerty123456]

Most players who want the game will get it regardless the platform they are in, very few of them will actually boycott it over it, if all the sales are made just trough Epic store, that means that every single sale will get them 88% of the profits, while if they had to split the sales with Steam, that means a big chunk of the sales would just get them 70% of the profits… on top of the exclusivity deal bonus, it’s a win-win for the developers.

And yet developers aren't just flocking to the epic store without the exclusivity deal. Hell there have even been some who have expressed displeasure when their publishers have done the epic exclusive.

[Edge-]

Didn't Tim say if Steam lowered their cut he would stop doing exclusives?

Yes, because practically it would not longer be affordable for Epic to buy exclusives at that point. They'd lose that advantage when it comes to the sales cut, which would drive up the asking price for exclusivity. It's a practical business decision - they can get games exclusively far cheaper now than they could if Steam had competitive revenue splits.

How many Fortnite players will actually buy other games tho?

How many Counter-Strike or Half Life players will buy other games?

That's part of the challenge: They need to turn these players into now just Fortnite players, but EGS regulars. In addition to new users they need to turn these players into users of the store (which they're doing with the same tactics).

If they all did they wouldn't have needed to start buying exclusives.

They're not foolish enough to think they can turn all Fortnite players into EGS users, hence why they're going after both them and non-EGS/Fortnite users/players. This isn't some half-assed thing, they're making a serious investment. They're going after as many users as they can, just just one small section of the market.

[Gref]

2 days ago I was browsing some games on steam and read one game saying; developer pulled this game out. It is unfair etc etc.
This must be the reason I guess. I forgot which game tho. It think it was METRO.

[Super Kami Dende]

I don't understand why people care about Epic exclusives. Are people really that lazy these days that they don't want to spend 5 seconds opening a different launcher to play a game they enjoy? Are people really so petty that they deny themselves a game they would enjoy just because they have beef (for some reason) with a specific company?

Because People don't like using trash launchers from trash companies.

[Vakna]

Because People don't like using trash launchers from trash companies.

If I really wanted to play a game, spending 5 seconds in a trash launcher to open it up isn't a deal breaker, I do it all the time with other non steam games. Hundreds of hours of enjoyment from a great game vs a few seconds in a shitty launcher? Not even a consideration.

[Jtbrig7390]

Because People don't like using trash launchers from trash companies.

So you don't use Steam?

Hate to break it to you but no launcher is perfect and each one has major issues they need to fix. But by all means pretend that Steam/Valve doesn't have their own issues (like leaking data almost every year).

[JammEr21]

Hey, guys, I see that there are a lot of beginners here and I want to help you out. I recommend you to watch some videos about RL, there you will find some useful information about this game. Also, if you want to buy items, I advise you to use trading sites because the prices there are more affordable. You can find them easily on the Internet, personally, I found out this rocket league trading site when I was browsing a forum about Rocket League. I've been using it for some time and I've never had any issues with it at all, so you should try it.

[Lahis]

I'm terribly sorry for posting here but is it worth buying RL in 2020? I've never played it before and I don't know if I will enjoy playing it, can you help me out?

No, it is not worth to buy Rocket League in 2020.

Because the game becomes free to play in a week.

[bbr]

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/co...ic_account_to/

Well, thats a big ole RIP for rocket league.

[Temp name]

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/co...ic_account_to/

Well, thats a big ole RIP for rocket league.

That is.. Sad.

[SirBeef]

Didn't Tim say if Steam lowered their cut he would stop doing exclusives?

He also said the smaller cut Epic would translate to cheaper games for players and bigger cuts to dev teams. There has been no significant reduction in prices of games on the Epic games store, nor is there any evidence publishers give devs a larger cut of the profits received from Epic(self published games aside). He's also trying to argue that he should be able to open a store within a store using all the other stores infrastructure, marketing, and security without having to pay the other store anything.

Seriously? Would anyone think it's OK if someone said Walmart has to allow other business to open up shop within their own stores and cannot charge them anything? It's fine if you think 30% is too high, but that is not just the games industry standard, but a fucking retail standard. Fight the real fight not some made up monopoly BS argument that has legal experts laughing and Tim Epic.

- - - Updated - - -

It's not the developers choice unless they self publish, which rarely happens anymore. It's driven by the publishers, and they care more about making as much money up front as possible. So even if a game sells millions of copies on Steam, and ironically, EGS won't really make a game like Rocket League more popular since the game has been out for a few years and has already likely hit it's peak.

If there's one downside to Steam in it's current state, it's that users are often intentionally waiting for sales to buy games. But as a consumer, I get that mentality because in an ever growing age of wealth disparity, gamers would be among the biggest penny pinchers when it comes to their entertainment. Sure, there's a lot of people who buy games at release, but a lot of people don't, especially on Steam. Those who wait for sales drive down the earnings potential, knowing that brand new games are often on sale within a few months. So there's a catch 22 with services like Steam where consumers are so used to discounts. I can understand why publishers want to fight back on that sort of practice.

To me it makes more sense to get Valve contractually obligated to keep a game on for regular price for a set period of time before putting it on discount. Having to wait a year for instance, before the first sale, makes it really hard for people to justify waiting to buy a game.

I always joke that HL3 would bomb becasue everyone would wait for it to go on sale first.

[thilicen]

But monopoly is bad! Epic games hates monopoly! They literally tried to raise a child army to fight for them against the evil monopoly giant that is Apple..

[Lahis]

Why is the Epic launcher garbage? What makes it so unpleasant to use? It's just another game launcher..

It is not Steam.

And worse, it has Fortnite on it.

(Really, there is no good reason to hate it as much people do, they just have fanatical cult hard-on gor Steam for some reason.)

[Rennadrel]

Why do people hate epic games so much?

I've gotten 4 free games I've actually played in the past 6 weeks - steam doesn't give me that

Let's see.

Tim Sweeney is a hypocrite who has the balls to bitch about monopolies while subsequently forcing products from other platforms with exclusivity on his half baked distribution service known as EGS (which STILL doesn't have a shopping cart!). Also ironic is that games on EGS can only be on EGS at release, no multiplatform releases between EGS, Steam and GOG, for instance, they won't allow it. And frankly, with a massive user base between Steam and GOG, why the fuck would you care as a developer or publisher if your game was on EGS? The only people who use it generally don't care about other games, the majority of the user base are Fortnite players, their ADHD doesn't allow them to want to play other games.

Also, being 40% owned by Tencent is a deal breaker for some, especially considering the amount of malicious spyware that's been discovered in many of Tencent's own published games. And with Tencent's founders being sitting members of the Chinese Communist Party, it's reasonable to understand why people shouldn't be funding a police state that is committing cultural genocide as we speak.

[Jester Joe]

Let's see.

Tim Sweeney is a hypocrite who has the balls to bitch about monopolies while subsequently forcing products from other platforms with exclusivity on his half baked distribution service known as EGS (which STILL doesn't have a shopping cart!). Also ironic is that games on EGS can only be on EGS at release, no multiplatform releases between EGS, Steam and GOG, for instance, they won't allow it. And frankly, with a massive user base between Steam and GOG, why the fuck would you care as a developer or publisher if your game was on EGS? The only people who use it generally don't care about other games, the majority of the user base are Fortnite players, their ADHD doesn't allow them to want to play other games.

Also, being 40% owned by Tencent is a deal breaker for some, especially considering the amount of malicious spyware that's been discovered in many of Tencent's own published games. And with Tencent's founders being sitting members of the Chinese Communist Party, it's reasonable to understand why people shouldn't be funding a police state that is committing cultural genocide as we speak.

Offering a deal for exclusivity is hardly "forcing". Forcing someone to pay you so you can release something on their shop is quite a different situation though, which is what Apple does. Huge difference between paying for the exclusivity (Epic) or using your exclusivity to take a cut from the dev (Apple).

Also I highly doubt that Epic would be investing so much money into the EGS if people only cared about Fortnite on it, but I always find it a bit strange that people find the need to insult/mock others for enjoying Fortnite either way.