It’s been a heck of a week for everyone involved with post-apocalyptic survival shooter series Metro. On Monday, the latest game in the series, Metro Exodus, became an Epic Games Store exclusive, prompting Valve to call the sudden departure “unfair to Steam customers.” For some Steam users, that’s served as a rallying cry.
While Epic plans to honour all Steam pre-orders, and Deep Silver is selling the game at a lower price point than it would’ve on Steam for North Americans (thanks to Epic’s more favourable 88/12 revenue split), this does mean fans will have to play Metro Exodus on another PC game launcher that is, for now, barebones bordering on straight-up bad—a wrinkle they weren’t expecting just a couple weeks from the game’s February 15 release date.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/01/physical-copies-of-metro-exodus-wont-come-with-a-steam-key/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/08/metro-exodus-2-410×231.jpg” title=”Physical Copies Of Metro Exodus Won’t Come With A Steam Key” excerpt=”Deep Silver’s decision to leave Steam in the post-apocalyptic marketplace wasteland is about to ramp up even further. After surprising users and the industry with its announcement that Metro Exodus would be a timed exclusive for the Epic Games Store, the official Metro Exodus account has confirmed that those buying physical copies won’t even get Steam keys with their purchase.”]
This has led to sustained outcry in the form of everything from review bombs of previous series entries Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light to irate comments on every possible social media post associated with the game.
The Steam review bombs, especially, have been vicious, with over 3,000 negative reviews being posted to the Steam store pages of 2033 and Last Light in the past two days.
“This game is actually good, but f**k Deep Silver for their [censored by Steam] actions regarding Metro Exodus,” says one of the most highly upvoted.
“Let me just rate this game negatively while Deep Silver sucks Epic’s [censored by Steam] in the next room,” says another.
“Am gonna buy the game next week, but greedy publishers don’t want me to buy it, so am gonna pirate it,” says a third.
It is, unfortunately, not a surprising response given the audience Steam has cultivated over the years by implicitly and explicitly advocating an irresponsible hands-off approach, allowing a pervasive player-vs-developer atmosphere to develop, and failing to consistently safeguard against review bombs and other forms of toxicity. What’s surprising here is that Valve chose to make a public statement that would, almost without a doubt, rile these people up.
The company either chose to play dirty by kicking the hornet’s nest and then chucking it out the door alongside Metro Exodus, or it’s woefully naive about its audience’s behavioural tendencies.
Metro fans also took to blaming publisher THQ Nordic for things suddenly going off-rails, but it clarified that Koch Media, a subsidiary whose gaming division is Metro publisher Deep Silver, made the call. Yesterday on Twitter, THQ Nordic said it won’t rule out future exclusives, but that it wants to “have the players choose the platform of their liking and make our portfolio available to as many outlets as possible.”
However, CEO Lars Wingefors later walked that back in a statement on THQ’s investor site, saying that he “fully” supports “our sub-groups’ autonomy to run their respective businesses” and is in “full” support of this decision in particular.
Kotaku reached out to Deep Silver and Epic for more information on why the deal got made when it did and what the companies plan to do about the backlash, if anything, but the former didn’t reply, and the latter declined to comment.
In a press release about the deal, though, Epic CEO and founder Tim Sweeney made its appeal at least partially apparent when he said that Metro Exodus will be “underpinned by Epic’s marketing support and commitment to offering an 88% revenue split,” which Deep Silver CEO Klemens Kundratitz said will allow his company to “invest more into the future of Metro and our ongoing partnership with series developer 4A Games, to the benefit of our Metro fans.”
It remains to be seen, however, whether or not things will actually play out that way. What happens, after all, if Metro sells like a busted gas mask in an irradiated wasteland instead of a hotcake in an anywhere?
People have also swarmed on the game’s official social media accounts and even those of some individuals, including Dmitry Glukhovsky, who wrote the book series on which Metro is based and also helps pen the games’ narratives.
Initially, people believed that Glukhovsky, in an unexpected twist, was also outspokenly against boarding the Steam-less train, but despite screenshots of an either now-deleted or never-existent Instagram comment in which he purportedly said he was powerlessly “standing by” as his series was being “killed,” his available Instagram comments suggest otherwise.
“I am not responsible for publisher’s business decisions, I do my own little thing—imagine worlds,” he said in response to one person shoving blame onto him.
“Why?” he asked someone else, who said that the deal was a bad decision. “I think Epic will [do] everything to help, and I did not have an impression that Steam gives shit.”
Kotaku reached out to Glukhovsky for clarification, but he did not reply ahead of publishing.
Doubtless, the Epic Games Store needs work, but Steam’s stranglehold isn’t good for anyone, and competition—something people have been begging for for years—isn’t always friendly.
Is Metro Exodus’ exodus to Epic Land inconvenient? Definitely. Is it worth this much fuss? Probably not. And while many of the hundreds of responses to Glukhovsky’s post either (wrongly) chastise him or fan the flames of arguments, a few attempt to put things in perspective.
“All these hate comments referring to Dmitry and 4A are the stupidest thing that I’ve ever seen, not counting the review bombing on Steam (good way to show at Epic Games how ‘useful’ are the user reviews),” reads one response.
“Yes, the Epic Store has its problems and certain things are fishy, but they’re working on that (like giving the price difference of Hades back, at least here, and the refund policy). There are other ways and more intelligent to address the problems to publishers.”
Comments
67 responses to “After Epic Store Deal, Steam Users Review Bomb Metro Games”
I think this is a good way to say ‘F You’ to the Publisher. They should never have made the deal. The game would prob have done VERY VERY well, but 2 weeks out from going on sale, and they pull this… Like, it would be fine if the game was announced to be elusive to a store, but it has happens 2 weeks out from sale. Epic is not to blame here. Sure, they payed for it, but the Publisher in charge of making the this… choice… to do this is just dumb, especially with them taking per-orders and saying it will be on Steam and others for ages.
no it is juvenile and moronic. Reviews are there to tell gamers what they can expect from THAT GAME.
Epic is most definitely to blame here, I am not saying Steam is innocent, but gamers deserve to have freedom of choice. Epic could have been the good guys here sell the game as well, minus the Steam ‘tax’, so customers go ‘oh look cool game, great price, FU Steam’. But instead they took away their customer right to choose.
Whilst I disagree with the action, I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment these review-bombers have been expressing. Allowing customers to pre-order the game for ages on Steam only to turn around and say it will not be available on that platform at launch due to a paid timed-exclusivity deal 2 weeks before launch is a bit of an eff-you to the users of that platform. The publisher chose to make a very consumer-unfriendly decision both in the exclusivity deal and the timing, and Epic stepped over a line that Steam has made sure to stay well clear from previously by partaking in the deal (or offering it, I’m not 100% sure). It’s hard to see this working out as good for anyone in the long run.
I’m all for the competition and creating a better environment and revenue split for developers (let’s be real though, it’s the publishers getting the extra dosh) and I’m not even against platforms picking up titles this way but this was a kick in the teeth for fans and consumers who had already preordered the game.
That’s the problem I have with the whole issue.
It’s not even real competition. It’s abstract competition in a way that doesn’t actually create any benefits for consumers.
It’s like the rich kid who buys a bunch of sporting equipment, then declares they’ll only let the other kids play with it if the super-athletic kid gets excluded from the activity.
The rich kid isn’t directly competing with the athletic kid by being better at the sport… they haven’t beaten them in a competition, they’ve just excluded them.
My understanding is that people who already preordered the game still get it on Steam, but anyone who hadn’t made the leap yet due to waiting it out, financial issues, forgetfulness or what have you miss out on having it in their Steam library (for now).
I don’t fully understand what Publishers do, but i’m getting the feeling they’re a little bit like real estate agents.
They publish the game – they handle the marketing, distribution, etc. They also often inject cash into development and therefore have an interest in making sure the project is delivered within some sort of suitable timeframe.
Publishers get a really bad rap because of unfinished or unrealised titles, but look at all the ‘failed’ Kickstarters that didn’t deliver, or significantly under-delivered – these all happened without publisher oversight or intervention. Sometimes it’s developers that suck.
Ahhh thanks, makes sense, particulalry the bankrolling.
Yeah, one of the things that really annoyed me about the early Kickstarter goldrush was the developers who touted how glorious all this ‘freedom’ was. Freedom from business cases, freedom from project planning, from accountability, from deadlines… all the things that ensure that something actually gets shipped. When they expressed their surprise and remorse that they couldn’t actually ship titles and lost all the invested money, it felt pretty much like a certain President exclaiming that ‘no-one knew’ sorting out health care was hard.
This in the wake of a dedicated, concentrated game-journalism media campaign for several years, shitting on Steam for daring to curate its industry-gold-standard storefront because it meant indies couldn’t guarantee a payday simply by turning up, and would have to instead turn to publishers for all those things that it turns out cost money: marketing, access to distribution channels, localization, QA. All those actual dedicated professions that coders and designers don’t necessarily have the skills or experience to manage themselves. “I don’t want to have to pay for it, but I can’t do it myself! Why is the industry so unfair to indies?!”
I’m always annoyed that publishers do shitty things to protect their investments trough creative meddling, using their sheer wallet size to intimidate studios into giving up their IP, and generally having devs over a barrel for the sake of profits, but the reverse isn’t much better, when naive indies or even ambitious studios discount the value that publishers DO provide.
I’m not sure the “publishers as gatekeepers” thing was ever good for the industry (or any industry). Publishers can certainly add value, but they also add overhead that will change what “success” means. A game that wouldn’t be able to make the sales to cover publisher overhead might simply never have been made in the past. With self publishing to Steam, PSN, Xbox Live, etc, a dev can distribute their game in a way that they need fewer sales to be a success.
It isn’t just the games industry either. You have companies like MGM Distribution that popped up to act as a low margin CD distributor for bands willing to handle everything else a label would otherwise provide (recording sessions, artwork, marketing, etc).
If the publisher is purely acting as a gate keeper, then you risk them turning into simple rent seekers.
For my money, the best role for the publisher is as just another vendor that you contract to fulfil a purpose. That purpose being: legals, distribution, marketing, research, etc.
There are companies that individually do all of these things. As an indie with sufficient capital, you could – and should – outsource everything that a publisher normally does.
Where it all got screwed up was when it came to that important keyword: sufficient capital – getting developers a living wage while they work on something that isn’t going to see a return on investment for potentially several years, and that might not actually return on the investment. You normally cannot do that unless you’re living off the funds from a previous success, or you have an investor willing to take a risk.
And that’s a big risk for anyone to take, and the publishers know it – so they take their pound of flesh for paying that risk by way of owning IP, by way of reserving the right to creative control, up to and including killing the project.
We’ve seen what happens when industry-outsiders try to take on the risks that game publishers do, thanks to the government of Rhode Island. So it’s hard to say that it’s even necessarily bad that there are such brutal experts in the industry. (Up until you realize that games bring in more money than the movie and music industries combined.)
Are the offering refunds if you don’t want it on the Epic store? If so then i don’t see what the issue is? (I mean realistically it should just be another example of a lesson as to why you should never pre-order a digital product)
Im happy to see a competitor in the market who actually looks serious about eating some of Valves marketshare, either Valve stops being so garbage and improves or Epic steals its customers by being less worse, seems like a win to me for customers either way.
How is valve garbage exactly? And how is epic’s store an improvement for the customer?
The only good thing about Steam are the sales – otherwise it’s a bloated platform where good games are drowned in a sea of shitty asset flips and troll reviews. I don’t hate it but it’s in desperate need of improvement, and it needs something more than Valve leaving it up to the community to sort out (because the community is shitty).
It’s also had a significant chunk of the digital distribution market share – especially in the AAA sector, where it’s effectively been synonymous with exclusivity. Even if you bought a key from somewhere else, you still have to install Steam, and see the Steam storefront, and use the platform to update and launch your game, etc. Now the tables have turned and they don’t like it.
You cannot blame the laziness of devs / publishers on Valve and Steam.
That’s not true at all. It’s objectively, provably false. There are many, many great things about Steam beyond its sales.
Workshop, achievements, fast and reliable servers for updates/downloads, cloud saves, numerous discovery options (recommendations based on games already played, or other titles purchased by players who enjoy the same), user reviews, filtering based on said reviews, automatic refunds that don’t require manual customer support intervention, an unparalleled range, regional pricing, comprehensive search options (which includes discount amount), wishlists, email notificatons for wishlist discounts, front-page customization, a built in social network, discussion pages/forums, multi-factor authentication for security…
Steam doesn’t need to ‘catch up’ to any other platform, because no other platform is even close to rivalling it.
It absolutely could use improvements, sure, but even without them, Steam is still well and truly ahead of ALL the competition and has the most comprehensive and mature feature set of any digital distribution platform that exists.
De facto exclusivity thanks to having the best service and the biggest audience to the point that publishers simply don’t bother with other platforms (their choice, not Valve’s) is a big fucking difference to buying exclusivity on a shittier platform to mandate that publishers can’t ship elsewhere.
It boggles the mind that anyone could think Epic is offering a competitive alternative to Steam. It’s a shithouse store that does nothing anywhere near as well beyond curation… which isn’t fucking hard when you’d need to quadruple your catalogue to break into triple digits.
This is why PC gaming has all but disappeared from the shelves of most games stores. Steam became the better option for more than just the games being sold.
To the point other companies released their own version, like uPlay, GoG, Blizzard, etc. And now Epic.
But what you’ve listed (apart from the Workshop, I’ll give you that one) are things I just expect a digital platform to do. “You have servers that work” isn’t anything to write home about – it’s the minimum standard I expect from a content distribution network. The discovery options are awful in my opinion – and yes I know you think they’re great and we’ve had this discussion before, but at least for me it constantly suggests things I’m never going to play (even if I say I’m not interested). The main screen is still a mess of noise. User reviews etc aren’t specific to Steam (GOG has them too). And regional pricing isn’t a feature because it directly penalises us in Australia (and it was infinitely worse when they also charged us in USD).
I’m not saying Steam is complete garbage – but it does need improvement, and as an end user, if I’m asked what things stand out to me about Steam, the only answer I’ve got is “The sales are pretty good.” Nothing else about it is something I’d call notable – because it’s been in the platform for years, and it’s just the minimum that I expect. I’m not handing out praise because your servers work – I just expect them to work.
It has the biggest audience because for ages it was the only audience for digital distribution – it’s big simply because of the network effect in those early days, and because people practically demanded a Valve monopoly. Again I don’t like platform exclusivity, but I can’t help but feel Valve’s cries are a little hollow when they’ve enjoyed defacto exclusivity for over a decade in some cases and didn’t give a shit until now.
Again Steam isn’t complete garbage, but there’s less and less to be excited about with Steam. It’s just an app that manages games for me these days. I don’t use its discovery features because they’re still suggesting rubbish, and I’m more likely to hear about something interesting from Kotaku AU or similar. I don’t use the community features because the forums are full of toxic bullshit and reviews are filled with review-bombing or stupid jokes looking to get into a Kotaku article.
Epic’s store may be shit, but I’m not giving Steam praise anymore – because it’s just doing the minimum of what I expect from a store. And as much as I hate exclusivity, Valve crying about it rings hollow to me when they’ve enjoyed their own kind of exclusivity and have now noticed that it isn’t locked down.
“But what you’ve listed (apart from the Workshop, I’ll give you that one) are things I just expect a digital platform to do.”
Isn’t that because Steam pretty much set the bar, though?
As Mr. Mind said, I think Steam is well ahead of every rival platform in regards to that list.
(Absolutely willing to be wrong on this though)
It set the bar because it was effectively the first. Again, when Steam launched in September 2003, it was awful – content servers would fall over frequently, authentication would regularly shit the bed, and major releases often caused significant problems on launch day (remember the HL2 launch?). That went on up until about 2007 when the Orange Box released. Valve also had the foresight to allow third parties to set up content distribution severs – anyone else remember using software to force Steam to use the GameArena content servers to avoid usage charges on Telstra Bigpond?
People forget that Steam has had many years to get this right – Steam has been operating in some capacity for 15 years now. That’s a very long time to not only get it right, but to build up a user base that is now used to this level of service. When Steam launched it had major issues and lots of people weren’t pleased at being forced onto the platform, but lots of gamers today weren’t into PC gaming at that time (or weren’t even old enough to play PC games!). If your service is bad after 15 years in the business, you’ve failed.
A platform that’s had 15 years to build up its network should perform better than a new entrant. The next nearest comparison is GOG (which started in 2008 – and was specialised up until only recently). Steam’s good at distributing content because it’s been around for a long time and has had a lot of time to work out the problems – in an environment with effectively no competition.
Irrelevant.
Other stores are not competing with where Steam was when it launched. They’re competing (or failing to) with where it is now.
When you buy a car from a new entrant into the manufacturer field, you don’t give them a pass on not having modern safety features just because it’s their first car. You compare them against what the established players are doing, and you base your decision on what the standard is NOW – not what it was when the oldest players started making cars.
@transientmind It’s not irrelevant – it’s a fact of the industry. If you’ve built it first and had the time to build up the infrastructure, it’s going to be very hard for anyone to compete without a significant drawcard. For better or worse (almost certainly for worse), the Epic store is doing it with exclusives.
You seem to think that any criticism of Steam is praise for another platform – it isn’t, I don’t like the Epic store and I don’t like exclusives. But Steam being around for 15 years is very relevant when we’re talking about how ‘good’ it is or how well it performs its core functions.
Ah yes, the old GameArena forced download trick. Good for when the ISPs at the time had unlimited free internet for Australian-based downloads.
They are things you take for granted.
Epic are already on record saying that reviews are going to be opt in and can be hidden at any time.
I don’t really read Steam reviews because many of them are nonsense.
My understanding on the customer side is that Epic are offering free games to customers (a fair few decent ones) and their lower pricing model has allowed Dev’s to pass on the difference in costs as price benefits to customers.
As for Valve being garbage its more their current attitude to their market position then an indictment on their product, Steam does a lot of good things that have built up over years (as a side note i’m sure feature competition is where this competition will move but its hard for a new entrant to enter the field and compete with a company that has implemented over a decades worth of innovation in the space right out of the door) but Valves current hands off approach to almost every facet of the store makes it a pain to deal with them from customer service and discovery to developing for the platform, so garbage is a bit unfair but they could sure stand to feel a little less secure in their market position
You’re naive if you think developers are going to be passing on the difference in costs as price benefits to customers.
They’re keeping them for themselves, otherwise there is basically no point making the jump to Epic from the infinitely more established service Steam currently offers.
Not naive at all, developers and publishers will not pass the full saving onto customers nor would I expect them to and I imagine the big boys will gobble the entire difference because people will pay. But lower overheads will give publishers and developers more rom to compete on price and your naive if you think businesses will ignore that lever in all cases if they think it will help them compete.
I think you have this backwards. Valve’s store is better than Epic’s in just about every way possible… Epic is the one that needs to improve.
Epic is competing with Steam the same way services like Foxtel compete with Netflix. That is, rather than trying to provide an experience that is more enjoyable to the user than the competition, they throw money at content providers in order to gain exclusives that force users to use their service if they want to access said content.
This is not competition. This is avoiding competition.
“We can’t beat you in an equal-footing sprint, so we’re bringing a motorbike to the track and field competition. What? It’s ‘competition!‘”
Exactly.
Epic is wooing devs with a better share, but offering no incentive for users, instead trying to hold the games ransom through exclusivity.
If they were smart, they’d be looking for ways to really incentivise users to choose to user their platform. Obviously they have a lot of catching up to do with Steam in terms of features, so the obvious way to do this would be through price, and looking at having a unique value proposition beyond, ‘f*** you, if you want these games you have to buy from us’.
For a great example of a company successfully doing this, look at GOG. Those guys get it.
im sick of hearing about steam an epic >.<
lets all bitch about those monumental assholes at Foxtel
Game that would’ve been exclusive to Steam is now exclusive to Epic Store.
People who pre-ordered on Steam still get the game on Steam as well as updates, DLC, etc. Not missing out on anything.
I really don’t see what the problem is here.
Why would it have been exclusive to Steam?
Just being ‘the default’ (because it’s got the biggest audience) doesn’t mean exclusive…
I’d be very surprised if it turned out that Steam was offering big cash incentives to publishers to prevent them from distributing through other platforms like GOG, Twitch, or Origin.
I dunno man, I’m pretty sure Valve is in Steam’s pocket, I haven’t seen Team Fortress 2 on those other platforms
I’ve played it on Xbox…
But honestly if you publish the game. You can use your storefront no one is complaining about that.
If you poach a game from another storefront with 2weeks notice, it’s shady and unprofessional and WILL make you look bad.
By exclusive, I don’t mean exclusivity deal. I just mean that it’d be the only store you can get it on. Steam key resellers aside. Effectively the same thing.
Not sure what Epic’s stance on key reselling is.
Epic Store lacks the ability for consumers to leave reviews and feedback. Ironic that people are using that ability on Steam to review bomb the game but many consumers rely on reviews from other players to determine whether or not the game is something that they want to put money down on.
Some people don’t want to have to install another distribution platform, especially one that is more develop-centric that consumer.
Also, it seems that the game is no longer being released on Xbox. Steam doesn’t make developers make their games that exclusive.
Microsoft hasn’t taken it down from their website yet. Here’s hoping… Don’t want to give Epic any money for their anti-competitive behavior.
Isn’t MS just selling the Xbox version, not the PC version? I can’t find it on the MS store, and Epic isn’t competing on console.
Devs and publishers fear giving their consumers a voice.
The shadier the Devs the greater the fear.
Except that it wouldn’t have been exclusive to steam…
Where’s the hand-wringing about how awful and unfair review-bombing is?
In any event, I don’t particularly like this platform exclusivity stuff, but I can’t say I’m not a little bit excited that Valve are actually going to have to do something other than watch the Steam dollars roll in from now on.
They’ll probably start throwing money at securing actual exclusives for a change (rather than just relying on being the ‘default’ option that most devs / publishers won’t look beyond).
I cannot see how this is going to be good for us consumers.
This just adds more to the Epic store’s selling points.
Go with Steam where you earn less and are attacked by a childish audience who review-bomb your games when they don’t get their way, OR, go with Epic and earn more and not have your games subject to reviews which have nothing to do with the actual games.
Other side of the same coin: not allow consumers to leave legit reviews and feedback on your game. Despite all of its faults, one of Steam’s strengths is that it provides a place for consumers to have their say rather that rely on the “professional” reviews, which, in current year, can be just as detrimental as review bombing.
GOG does user reviews too.
They’re also typically better thought-out, conveyed, and more insightful.
Though the method of looking at their aggregate and filtering them by negative/positive isn’t as good, and they kind of suffer from the metacritic problem of offering a non-binary rating system that can be treated as a binary one – though again, due to the audience, it’s not as bad as on metacritic.
There’s a lot to like about GOG’s store, though it doesn’t always play as nice with its launcher as you’d expect.
non-binary is a trigger word for me :S
time to say my piece i think.
I actually went and downloaded gog uplay and epic when this shit all originally kicked off to compare them to steam. Steam is the gold standard i used to compare the others, now i actually hated uplay sooooo fucking much the first time i used it, i was forced to use it with a game i purchased from steam this was about a month after uplay launched and it was shit.
now Gog and uplay are pretty good, some things they do better than steam some things worse but neither is overall better than steam, while Epic is a steaming pile of shit.
review bombing is an asshole activity but i understand wanting to express your outrage in some manner, that being said it was hilarious to see some people now make the argument that the lack of reviews on epic is a good thing because then people can’t review bomb… what the fuck are you talking about!!!!!
True, I do like to get a good sample of reviews from professionals and consumers myself. So if we want consumers to be able to review (which we do) but don’t want review bombing, what’s the answer? Moderated reviews?
I’d say that’s one option. Or strong use of algorithms to recognise review bombing. IE large and sudden spike in reviews left, reviews having the same text, reviews from same or similar sources, etc. Put all of these traits together to detect a possible bombing and flag all reviews during the spike period for manual moderation. And then actually do something about the redundancy.
Selling points for devs/publishers maybe, but not for consumers.
Yes, monopolies are bad, and Steam having real competition should be a good thing in general. But Epic haven’t done anything here for consumers. They’re trying to use the power of exclusives to coerce users, rather than giving them compelling reasons to choose to user their platform.
Well they are giving away decent games for free every few weeks which is a big plus for consumers.
But other than that, I agree. But it’s early days, we’ll see how competition between Steam and Epic progresses.
wow what a shitty take….
epic has no reviews that is much worse for consumers than having to wade thru some bullshit now and then…
Game devs need a safe space i guess.
If you were a dev/publisher wouldn’t you want to avoid review bombing if you could? Plus if you could have less of a cut taken by whichever distribution software you use, wouldn’t that be a positive?
Obviously as a consumer I use reviews but I can see why a platform like Epic is enticing for game companies sick of Steam taking a good cut of their sales and doing little to manage the sometimes out of control customers.
all valid points my dude, i would like to clarify that i don’t think steam does anything therefore not enough to stop review bombing and i think review bombing is asshole behavior even if i understand the frustration that leads to people doing it.
I understand wanting a larger cut too i get it, i have no problem with people adding their games to the epic store, but not if your going to remove them from steam it is anti consumer i should have the choice and i will not buy from epic because there is no review process i personally cannot stand that shit.
If i was a dev i would like to get a bigger cut from epic i would also like to avoid review bombing if possible, but not at the expense of having a review process that is important to me. If i was a dev and i was selling a game right now the way things are i would want my game on every store despite my distaste for epic i would want my game on their so the consumer can choose the lower price form their store, i will pay more through steam and i can afford that but some people need games as cheap as possible so they need the diversity to shop around.
I hope that answers your question quidgy.
Childish audience? A consumer by anyother name.
Valves store at the moment has the zerg like numbers. And people who ARE on steam ARE customers.
Fortnightly players are NOT equal to payers.
If valves cut of the pie is 30% but it’s a giant pie it is still more revenue than 88% cut of a party pie.
Epic have done a good job of Wooing Devs to their store…but a really piss poor job of Wooing customers.
I wonder how many steam haters would flip on a dime if steam cut their rev split to say 15%.
What would the epic store truely offer then?
I’m assuming the question mark was intentional and legitimate so i’m answering.
epic offers fuck all to consumers accept the chance to be an infant and impotently stick it to valve, who won’t even notice.
I mean reading these all these arguments just points out to me how awful the idea of a platform integrated with a store is in the first place for consumers, in an ideal world for consumers the features everyone loves about Steam would be a seperate products, so you can buy from the best store selling the product and play on the platform that offers the best features.
It will never happen as its a fantastic idea from the platforms perspective as it makes people less likely to seek out competition as they have to sacrifice familiarity and features to do it
Kotaku not listening to the users and siding with the money men once again. Does anyone pay attention to them anymore?
im here for the comment section mostly it makes my shift appear to end much faster, unfortunately the more angry and contentious the situation gets the faster time flies.
i think that has occasionally led me to escalate things
“The company either chose to play dirty by kicking the hornet’s nest”
LMAO, exactly what this article is about. (insert duplicate spiderman meme)
I wonder if the game will sell less on PC now due to not being on steam.
Surprisingly, I thought the same thing would have happened to the previous Fallout games due to F76 turning out the way it has and being on Bethesda launcher.
Imagine if CD Projekt did the same thing with Cyberpunk 2077, by pulling the game from Steam (also close to release) and putting it on GOG and Epic stores only. Would the Steam reviews for the Witcher series be hammered?
What if all Capcom games went to their own store or over to Epic. All the good will that RE7 and RE2 brought might be wiped away overnight. I know, it’s an alarmist point of view.