Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford says his hopes on Epic Store were 'overly optimistic or misplaced'

Comments

• Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I see some larger publishers bemoan the fact that Epic hasn’t caught on, but it should be pretty obvious why. Markets that favor the buyer more than they favor sellers will typically attract the largest user base, and the sellers don’t have a choice to not sell where the buyers are.

  Epic giving away free games is a nice buyer friendly action, but literally everything else they’ve done, from paid exclusives to poor client experience isn’t favorable to buyers. They’ve created a market that no buyers want to use unless the product is free or literally not available anywhere else.

  Giving publishers/devs better cuts is great, but it does nothing for you if all the buyers are on Steam instead.

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  • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I always say the reason they give so many free games is because the real price is in having to use that goddamn launcher

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    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It does what it needs to do, you open it, your installed games list is on the left, click and play.

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  • Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t even get their free stuff. And if it’s only epic, I won’t even bother checking it out or well…ya know.

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    • misterdoctor@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I hope it’s okay to ask, because I am being genuine, but why is using the Epic Games Launcher such a deal breaker for you? I have Steam, Epic, Ubisoft, Xbox, Battle.net and I’m sure more that I’m forgetting and I honestly don’t mind at all. It’s never been an issue for me but I think that I’m in the minority on that so I was curious to hear your thoughts.

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  • slaacaa@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I also think that developers/publishers don’t care about the % cut that much, they would rather just sell a lot of games. Which comes back to your point, they weren’t appealinh enough to the buyer.

    It’s like I make a competition to Uber with better cuts and working conditions to drivers. That is nice, but if the consumer has to wait 25 mins for my taxi while the Uber is there immediately, than they will not pick me for the same price.

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• Sidewalker@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Fuck Epic. I will never forgive them for buying Rocket League and ripping it away from my Linux library on steam. I will never do business with them, never play any of their games, never give them a dime, never even sign up to claim their free slop of the week. Fuck Epic with a cactus.

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  • chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    To be fair, Rocket League runs fine in Proton.

    Also, to be fair…agreed. Fuck Epic.

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  • stoy@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I own the original CD release of Unreal Tournament 2004, made by Epic, it includes a native Linux installer on disc, you get the full game, and it worked fine.

    It makes me so sad that they did a complete 180 on this.

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    • Defaced@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      My theory has always been they wanted to keep the door open for Microsoft if things just go under. When you think about it, they were struggling quite a bit in the early 2000’s until gears. Microsoft really propped them up with that franchise, then they made fortnite, lost a lot of money until they pivoted to the BR mode and now they make millions every damn day.

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  • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Tbh without epic I doubt the game would’ve survived 2020. If you recall, the whole fanbase was unhappy with how things were stale. Epic didn’t improve anything obviously but the free to play did boost it’s active nunber of players. Nevertheless fuck epic.

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    • Macaroni_ninja@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Wasnt it already a PS+ game years before epic? It literally had millions of players on day one.

      I dropped it after my steam copy first time asked me to register an epic account, but till then I didn’t see huge issues with the game apart from the DLC milking.

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• Tellore@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I like how many games they give away for free, but tbh I’ve never played any of them there. Some of those games I decided to buy later on Steam anyway just to do achievements.

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  • AutoPastry@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Sorry if this comes across pedantic, but in case anybody isn’t aware there are some games that offer Achievements (Alan Wake 2 is one I know).

    I do agree though, Epic just doesn’t have the features Steam does. I don’t think their barrage of free games idea is a bad one, but it feels like an afterthought when it’s just not as fun to play them there. (Better Linux support would be nice too, at least there’s Heroic.)

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    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They have achievements on all games, it’s been the case for two years

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  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    shacknews.com/…/epic-games-store-unlocks-achievem…

    They’ve had achievements for over two years… I swear all the anti epic crowd knows nothing about what their launcher is like at this point and just keep repeating what they read back when it launched… Just like the Steam boycotters back in the early 2000s

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    • rdri@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Are you serious? Obviously people don’t care about achievements on a platform that has almost no community-related functionality.

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• Vespair@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ve said it before, but until Epic adds some way to provide feedback to others, I won’t spend any money on it. Being able to read if a game is buggy, runs on my hardware, etc, is too essential to the experience to not have.

  Epic wants to be the pro-developer storefront, but since that seems to involve being anti-consumer, I as the consumer have no interest.

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• msage@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I am always suprised that people expected anything differently.

  Epic was from the start doing things the wrong way, and I will not support any store that has exclusives.

  Making a good gaming platform that could rival Steam would take A LOT of time and money and dare I say - no company is willing to lose that for a chance of one day perhaps being only slightly worse competitor that still can’t convince people to migrate.

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  • ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There are only a few companies that could even hope to take on Valve, at this stage. The likes of EA and others. But by definition, their company culture means they’ll never be able to take on Valve.

    Someone else made a comment about what will happen when Gabe steps down and I suddenly realize what a short-term golden age we’re likely living in, even with all the bullshit.

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    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      EA tried about a decade ago to compete with steam. It didn’t go well for them either.

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  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I can support a store if they keep their own games exclusive. Completely fair game. But fuck the gobble up companies.

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• atkdef@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This CEO may think it’s developer-friendly, but I highly doubt if Epic will keep such developer-friendly stance if Epic becomes a giant in this industry.

  Epic burnt so much money on Epic store these years. If it succeeds, it’s very likely Epic will try to earn it back. From player? Will players willing to pay more in Epic store than the others? If the answer is no… Sometimes it really makes me wonder if these CEOs are really that stupid…

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  • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Epic burnt so much money on Epic store these years

    It burned money on exclusives. The free games are a much cheaper marketing tool than advertising.

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    • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They burn a ton of money on free games too. They’re only free to us. Epic pays for them at wholesale rates.

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• stardust@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Epic store not being profitable and despite the backing of Fortnite and Unreal Engine surplas being at the state that it is shows that it is probably much more expensive than expected to make a feature rich launcher. What epic has is more a glorified storefront like humble bundle or Fanatical but worse because it isn’t even selling keys for the platform of your choice, and they have to handle server costs of storing all the games too.

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• TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m far from being a business savvy person, but honestly, from business perspective what exactly is Epic offering that sets them apart from other competitors? Even if Epic fixed their launcher issues, how would they be different to Steam that is already well established for 20 years? That’s why I like GOG as Steam’s competitor. GOG focuses on selling DRM-free and retro games. If a game is also happens to be available in GOG, I would prefer to buy it from there than Steam. Moreover, GOG keep old games well maintained and updated to run in modern computers, something that Steam is very poor at doing. What does Epic even do differently?

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  • ChairmanMeow@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s slightly cheaper for developers to put their games on there. But that sucks as a business model, because game prices aren’t any lower so for the end user it doesn’t matter. And on features, Epic just loses every matchup against Steam.

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  • nico@lepoulsdumonde.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    @TankovayaDiviziya aren’tyou guys tired of talking about steam vs epic etc ?
    Same discussions for years.

    Move on.

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    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      To be honest, I totally forgot about Epic until articles are popping recently that it’s not going well even after all these years.

      Also, what’s wrong about discussing this? Epic is a good example of a business venture not doing well for failing to do one of the most basic business philosophy: set yourself apart from the competitors.

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• bionicjoey@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If Borderlands 3 had released on Steam, I’d have probably bought it when it came out because I still had a lot of goodwill for the series at that time. Instead, I had to wait until the Steam release when the game already had loads of negative press. Exclusive deals are idiotic

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• HoofHearted@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  And the fact that they are a multi squillion dollar company suggests they’re know what the fuck.

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• june@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Using Junk Store on my Steam Deck (and redeeming free games on the mobile website) to completely avoid the Epic Launcher 😎

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  • smeg@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Please tell me more about this Junk Store, I’d been using Heroic for Epic games but it’s been a bit dodgy recently

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