The move is designed to make more titles Epic Games Store exclusive…
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.
Someday maybe they will try to improve the launcher instead of burning all the money in exclusives that only pisses people off. I uninstalled that shit and don't even bother to take the free games anymore.
I had to request and confirm the deletion of my account to stop chinese people trying to hack it or something because I kept getting e-mails from Epig that someone in China is trying to access my account EVERY GODDAMN MONTH.
Why should you be happy it has the most bare functionality it could possibly have. It's 2023. On Steam I can stream from a Linux PC to my living room, play on some Nintendo Joycons with full gyro support, have a YouTube video playing picture-in-picture and bringing up an achievement guide with one button press. Epic is just a launcher, Steam is a full-fledged gaming platform.
The issue is not the launcher. The issue is the exclusivity. It demonstrates an anti-consumer mindset. The GOG, which people here have demonstrated acceptance of, is yet another launcher, the launchers less elegant to steam, and everyone is just fine with.
It will probably work fine but it's not an officially supported use case of the software. You can't exactly submit a ticket to Valve if something doesn't work right because the game isn't even on their store.
... What are you even talking about. I never even said the first statement so how could I possibly be a hypocrite lmao. And having features isn't "bloat". Your argument is just all kinds of nonsensical.
They would have been complaining about Steam killing distributors when it released and vowing to boycott it forever. I'm old enough to remember these guys back in the day, now they're basically sucking Gaben's dick and bowing in front of his virtual monopoly.
Steam did not force any developer to make an exclusive. The developers had the choice of using every platform available to them. They thought steam was good enough.
And the reason nobody complained about steam being the de facto place to get games? It treated people fairly, it was easy, good enough. More convenient than piracy.
If the only choice is storefront A that's used by 100% of consumers and storefront B that's used by 0.1% of consumers then storefront A has a monopoly even if technically there's a competitor. They means storefront A doesn't need to sign exclusivity agreements because it knows no one will choose not to sell through them as it would mean not selling at all.
Epic doesn't force third party developers to sell exclusives with them either, they're free not to take their offer.
Let's take your scenario where there's stores a with 99.9% and store b with 1%
A developer of a game can list their game on store a and store b. Store b will have to compete with higher revenue share. But that would make it enticing for developers to dual list.
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Legally epic is not forcing anyone to take their exclusive at the offers, but I as a customer realize they're removing choice from me as a customer. I consider that a personal affront to my agency. And I will not do business with a company who I consider as a negative, removing my choices.
If epic just offered a better cut to developers, nobody would have an issue of them. It's the exclusivity trying to fragment the space that makes it annoying and to be avoided
If you pay a meth addict 50 bucks to break into my house and poop in my car. I'm upset with the meth addict sure. But I'm more upset with the guy who paid him 50 bucks to mess my life up