RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS

[Katphood]

By the way, where is Sonicmage117? Is he okay?

He and Lexx fell in love and went on a honeymoon trip to Vegas. Sonic didn't came back from the trip which is puzzling...

[majestic]

By the way, where is Sonicmage117? Is he okay? 

 

It's simple, BruceVC is posting a little more in WOT. It's hard to get in character for two really similar but somewhat different personas so he's sticking to one over the other for a while. Or he's doing the method acting version of trolling.

Edited March 14, 2019 by majestic

[Katphood]

 

By the way, where is Sonicmage117? Is he okay?

It's simple, BruceVC is posting a little more in WOT. It's hard to get in character for two really similar but somewhat different personas so he's sticking to one over the other for a while. Or he's doing the method acting version of trolling.

For a second there I mistook BruceVC with Hurlshot and I just couldn't stop laughing.

[Vitalis]

I can understand why Epic rammed into this market like brutal smelly hog, it's very hard to win by playing nice and polite with the ultimate dominant like Steam. I still think this is odious practice that must be awarded with utter failure, alas, life is unfair and when it's about big money it's unfair¹⁰.

 

It'd be funny if Epic pulled the stunt popular with telecommunication (and not only) companies, when they enter with dumped prices (or price cuts in this case) to lure clients in and then raise them over time, expecting those clients to stay out of inertia or unwillingness to go through the hassle again.

Something something free markets.

[Zoraptor]

 

So it looks like Denuvo actually does eat your CPU cycles, thanks to DMC 5's Denuvo free developer fork being public for a few hours alongside the standard denuvoed exe. Up to 25% of your precious fps go straight to the DRM anti tamper. I haven't been so surprised since I last dropped something and it was accelerated towards the object of greatest local mass.

 

Or maybe it's all a plot by dastardly pirates to slander Denuvo's good name...

 

Or.. these developers implemented Denuvo poorly. Or are you suggesting Denuvo has a 25% performance hit every time?

 

 

Well, you said there would be zero hit under all circumstances so that is already out the window.

 

It will have up to 25% performance hit dependent on CPU type and whether the computer is CPU or GPU limited. If it's GPU limited there will be no performance hit unless the extra overhead pushes it into CPU limited territory, albeit 25% is a lot of extra overhead. The amount seems reasonable for a system that requires on the fly encryption and decryption plus multiple hook monitoring, they could never realistically do that for 'free'.

[HoonDing]

"Epic Games" is kinda on the same level as "stable genius".

[Sarex]

The whole thing to me is like poisoning the well. While I can understand why they did it, they still tainted the Kickstarter for any other company that wants to do it, as they showed that they are not really bound by any promise they make. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that jazz.

[Lexx]

Eh, going by that, there have been far worse game dev kickstarters, imo.

[pmp10]

Well, you said there would be zero hit under all circumstances so that is already out the window.

 

It will have up to 25% performance hit dependent on CPU type and whether the computer is CPU or GPU limited.

You know, one could just as easily question where did you get that 25% number from.

It's oddly specific and reputable people that promised to benchmark the thing didn't deliver so far.

[Sarex]

Eh, going by that, there have been far worse game dev kickstarters, imo.

 

Yep, they just added their **** to the pile.

Edited March 14, 2019 by Sarex

[Zoraptor]

 

Well, you said there would be zero hit under all circumstances so that is already out the window.

 

It will have up to 25% performance hit dependent on CPU type and whether the computer is CPU or GPU limited.

You know, one could just as easily question where did you get that 25% number from.

It's oddly specific and reputable people that promised to benchmark the thing didn't deliver so far.

 

 

Perfectly fair to question where it came from.

 

25% is the highest drop observed and yeah, it's 100% anecdotal. Various drops have been observed by pro reviewers with ~12% being the highest and lower single figures being more common, but then even when doing a proper CPU limited scenario at very low resolution (which only the ~12% youtube review bothered with) the reviewers still had high end hardware in the 8700k class with lots of threads, rather than more typical hardware. With 12 threads hardly any program will use them all so Denuvo overhead can largely be offloaded onto an empty thread, with proper coding- but the case is quite different if you don't have any spare threads as is more likely with an i5/ minimum hardware set up. Nobody has formally tested that so far as I am aware though, there are only anecdotes which show the big frame rate drops.

 

It won't effect most people (much) because the vast majority of people are GPU limited rather than CPU limited; it's brought up because mkreku previously claimed denuvo had no effect at all.

[LadyCrimson]

I'm going to lose a lot of time some day... question when is the release date???

 

Speaking of Epic ... I guess the new Epic "panic" is from some twitter remarks Pitchford made regarding Epic a few months ago. So folks are drumming up fear that BL3 could be Epic exclusive. Rather counting eggs before they hatch but I can understand why ppl are worried, with all these exclusivity stories.

 

The actual tweets: https://mobile.twitter.com/DuvalMagic/status/1070125621785714688

[Gorth]

 

Speaking of Epic ... I guess the new Epic "panic" is from some twitter remarks Pitchford made regarding Epic a few months ago. So folks are drumming up fear that BL3 could be Epic exclusive. Rather counting eggs before they hatch but I can understand why ppl are worried, with all these exclusivity stories.

 

The actual tweets: https://mobile.twitter.com/DuvalMagic/status/1070125621785714688

 

Ah, that would be a shame if it ended up there. Not fear, just disappointment as I would have loved to play the game, but it's not the end of the world missing out on a game

[Wormerine]

There seems to be a gab between press/publishers/developers and customers perception of Epic Store.

 

While it could be explained as a financial gain (paying of game creators) I feel there is more to it. Do they feel the rule of valve, as a negative influence on their business and welcome serious competition in spite how imperfect it is? Is there more to how Epic and Steam deal with game publishers which makes them supportive toward the former? So far the gaming press I have seen is pretty lax about Epic behaviour. The worst article I saw was: "not the best way of gathering new customers". By press I don't mean youtubers who, while many of them I respect, feed on controversy and drama.

[Gorth]

Steam may not be perfect, but at least I can understand their business and motives (cornering the market and greed). Epic.... with Tencent owning 40% is a bit more obscure. If backed by the Chinese government, they can offer developers/publishers the kind of money that privately owned corporations are struggling to compete with, because their ultimate motive may not be profit from games sales.

[Zoraptor]

Epic Store is literally, literally literally- banned in China though. Unlike Steam.

 

The accusations about Epic Store are even more nebulous than those against Huawei- where it's increasingly looking like the complaints are because there aren't NSA backdoors built in rather than there being Chinese ones present.

 

There seems to be a gab between press/publishers/developers and customers perception of Epic Store.

 

Bit of an open question though as to how many/ what proportion of customers are outraged about it or have a negative perception of the Epic Store. Some certainly do, but whether it's enough to generalise about customers in general is certainly not clear. I'd suspect most don't really care or don't know and only the enthusiast social media types care.

 

While it could be explained as a financial gain (paying of game creators) I feel there is more to it. Do they feel the rule of valve, as a negative influence on their business and welcome serious competition in spite how imperfect it is? Is there more to how Epic and Steam deal with game publishers which makes them supportive toward the former? So far the gaming press I have seen is pretty lax about Epic behaviour. The worst article I saw was: "not the best way of gathering new customers". By press I don't mean youtubers who, while many of them I respect, feed on controversy and drama.

 

 

From Epic's POV Tim Sweeney has seen Steam as a negative for years, them leaving Steam is hardly surprising and per the Borderlands 3 hints I wouldn't suggest anyone hold their breath for it not being Epic exclusive, I'd guess that's half the reason it's being made and it will be ES's Halflife 2/ Steam equivalent. You don't generally hear devs complain about Steam publicly, but then you wouldn't expect most to since Steam is the biggest and by far the most powerful store so you have to be careful about offending them, but there have been issues bubbling under the surface for a while. Very few devs like the current approach to Discovery for example and the inundation of low effort shovelware burying their products for example but without an alternative what can they really say about it? Similarly many question why Valve takes a near retail sized cut despite being being a digital store with digital store overheads.

 

Game journalists on the other hand are just utterly useless and a fair few literally literally hate gamers and will think any outrage from them has to be unjustified and any criticism of anything by them has to be entitled gamers throwing toys from cots.

[Katphood]

 

Eh, going by that, there have been far worse game dev kickstarters, imo.

Yep, they just added their **** to the pile.

Yeah, I'd feel really awfull if I had backed SpaceVenture. That game has been in limbo for a long time now and I doubt it will ever see the light of day. :/

[Fenixp]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-03-14-original-x-com-creator-faces-backlash-after-signing-epic-games-store-exclusive-deal-for-phoenix-point

 

"It was not our intention to scam anyone. The best we can do is offer compensation in the form of free extra content, which we will deliver throughout the launch year. This will include at least three major DLC packs. They will also receive a Steam key or GOG key, in addition to their Epic key, at the end of the exclusivity period. If they are not happy with this, we will give a full refund."

May have been obvious, but that answers my question to:

- Yes, backers receive both Steam/GOG and Epic keys

- Yes, even crowdfunding backers can withdraw their pledges, not just people who pre-ordered

 

"We sent an email to all our 47,000 backers on Tuesday informing them about the Epic deal," he said. "The following day we had 1300 requests for refunds. The day after it increased to 1600. We don't anticipate that more than five to six per cent of our backers will actually request refunds in the long run."

In other words, the impact of this decision on their backers appears to be minimal. Then again, question is how many backers actually registered the switch - internet drama and sending out emails is good and all, doesn't mean all backers get the memo. For all I know some of the money I sent out to crowdfunded projects are now used to start forest fires.

 

Incidentally, as it turns out, it wasn't Epic that invested into Snapshot games - it was Snapshot games who approached Epic asking about the deal.

[kirottu]

Epic games launcher/store seems to be collecting your steam data: Reddit post and Metacouncil post.

[misterjimmy]

Epic games launcher/store seems to be collecting your steam data: Reddit post and Metacouncil post.

Why am i not surprised ?

 

[LadyCrimson]

Epic games launcher/store seems to be collecting your steam data: Reddit post and Metacouncil post.

That is ... well, not exactly encouraging. I wonder what they'll come up with as a rationale.

[Zoraptor]

Given the "Origin read my medical records" FUD* I'm going to be a bit skeptical about such accusations- if it's privileged information then fundamentally it ought to be encrypted by steam and thus not be publicly accessible.

 

*He was storing his medical records in the programdata folder for some weird reason- well, I always suspected it was recursive and he put his medical records there deliberately because he'd chcecked Origin scanned the folder. Plus there was the "Origin will sell your private info to 3rd parties" FUD, when actually Origin's policy was way more stringent than steam's which specifically excused 3rd parties from following its privacy policies, unlike Origin which made them follow its more stringent ones.

[Fenixp]

Meh, if data mining was their goal, I'm pretty sure it'll happen a lot more subtly than by creating a file in Epic's folder - Epic client has the thing that allows you to find friends based, among other things, on your Steam friends. Not sure about games played.

 

Nonetheless, Steam makes all of that information publicly available via their API as long as you've not set it specifically to be private, so ... Y'know ... As far as master plan for spying on Steam's users, this sounds extremely convoluted

[Malcador]

Nothing wrong with hating gamers. It's their money you need to love

[marelooke]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-03-14-original-x-com-creator-faces-backlash-after-signing-epic-games-store-exclusive-deal-for-phoenix-point

 

"It was not our intention to scam anyone. The best we can do is offer compensation in the form of free extra content, which we will deliver throughout the launch year. This will include at least three major DLC packs. They will also receive a Steam key or GOG key, in addition to their Epic key, at the end of the exclusivity period. If they are not happy with this, we will give a full refund."

May have been obvious, but that answers my question to:

- Yes, backers receive both Steam/GOG and Epic keys

- Yes, even crowdfunding backers can withdraw their pledges, not just people who pre-ordered

 

"We sent an email to all our 47,000 backers on Tuesday informing them about the Epic deal," he said. "The following day we had 1300 requests for refunds. The day after it increased to 1600. We don't anticipate that more than five to six per cent of our backers will actually request refunds in the long run."

In other words, the impact of this decision on their backers appears to be minimal. Then again, question is how many backers actually registered the switch - internet drama and sending out emails is good and all, doesn't mean all backers get the memo. For all I know some of the money I sent out to crowdfunded projects are now used to start forest fires.

 

Incidentally, as it turns out, it wasn't Epic that invested into Snapshot games - it was Snapshot games who approached Epic asking about the deal.

 

 

That first sentence is an outright lie. They said they had the money to deliver on the KS promises. The deal with Epic is just to secure future funding. So they threw their backers under the bus out of pure greed, not even because "whoops we miscalculated and we really need this money to be able to deliver", which is often the case (and while still sad, would at least be more understandable). Offering a refund is just cynical, since they literally just used their backers to get an interest free loan so they would have something to shop around with.

 

If this doesn't have any serious repercussions then then this might just be the deathblow for crowd funding. Teams failing to deliver is one thing (and a risk you knowingly take on when you back) but a successfully funded project in no financial trouble rewriting the agreement when it suits them is something else entirely.

I don't necessarily have any interest in getting my money back (hell, since I backed a physical tier me refunding would probably be better for them as that would absolve them from needing to provide the physical rewards). What I want to see is a crackdown on this outright scummish behaviour, if it turns out there is no protection for either backers or pre-order customers (without literally going to court, which besides expensive is also extremely slow, and absolutely not worth it given the money involved) even in the EU (as mentioned previously, Snapshot Games HQ is in Bulgaria) then I fear crowd funding is just dead as that would mean there's literally no guarantee a company will live up to any part of the agreement they have with backers and thus opening the floodgates to this type of behaviour.

Edited March 15, 2019 by marelooke