The Outer Worlds won't launch on Steam

[kanisatha]

 

 

As for the devs, they should say something. Top of my head, what would probably get the community off of their backs would be an admission, hey... publisher sprung this on us and we hate it too. Second, if they really wanted to come out as the good guys, state that all sales of the game from the MS store can be transfered to steam at the end of the 12 month waiting period....

Non Disclosure Agreement. They can't say **** publicly about this until the NDA runs out.

 

Would Microsoft ever agree on such transfer of games? I seriously doubt that.

Aside from just plain NDA considerations, it's bad business to publicly disparage your business partners.  That's a quick way to turn needless drama into needless drama with a lawsuit attached.

 

And as far as Microsoft goes, it does look like they already did throw their weight around.  If they didn't intervene, TOW would likely be a true Epic exclusive, and not have a simultaneous PC release on the Microsoft Store.

Well, they don't have to disparage anyone. Couldn't Obsidian just say something like: "This was entirely a Private Division decision as the publisher of the game, and we had nothing to do with it. Please refer all questions to Private Division."

[Malcador]

That won't get the community off their back and can only make things worse potentially.

[Boeroer]

 

Let them express their concerns and take them seriously as long as they can explain (in a somewhat decent way) why they don't like it.

Eh, it's nothing new after a point. Amusing to hear you label it as 'constructive criticism', even if that is the usual fallback point for grousing. Also, your point 3 means you're just beholden to Steam ?

 

When I say constructive I mean constructive. Not whining and ranting. You should be able to accept different opinions even if you don't agree with them as long as they are brought forward decently and are somewhat well-founded.

 

I'm beholden to Steam and GOG since they are the only ones that support Linux games - and I'm on Linux. Sometimes Humble Bundle or direct purchased from the developer will work as well.

But since Steam offers the most convenience and was the first one to support Linux titles and are trying to bring more games to Linux via Proton I usually stick to Steam.

I change computers rather often and that means having my games in one place to download and install from is convenient. Also Cloud Saves are convenient.

 

I'm not emotional at all about TOW and Epic Store. It wasn't a game I was longing for. I was interested though. I think dismissing criticism entirely is as ignorant as ranting like a five year old about this situation is silly.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Well, they don't have to disparage anyone. Couldn't Obsidian just say something like: "This was entirely a Private Division decision as the publisher of the game, and we had nothing to do with it. Please refer all questions to Private Division."

Even if that was true (which I seriously doubt) it would be a bad move towards a business partner. Even if that partner didn't consult you before (which I don't believe for one second).

You don't want to point with fingers at each others and go like "It wasn't me!". That would be very unprofessional.

 

If Obsidian and PD thought this deal is worth the backlash (which they most likely knew would happen) then it must have been a really good deal. I'm not grumpy that they chose something that is good for them. But it's not very good for me, so I guess I can express that opinion without looking too silly.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Boeroer

[kanisatha]

Ok, fair enough. And yes, I also don't buy that Obsidian was entirely uninvolved in all of this.

[nocoolnamejim]

What I find funny about all of this is, when Steam launched, I heard so many insane things about how bad Steam was and how anti-cosumer and just awful in every way Steam was, would forever be, and I was an idiot for preferring it to going into Gamestop and telling the employee what I wanted. They would stare at me like I had a second head, and then ask the second head if I wanted the game for one of the game consoles. Or, better, they would tell me that such a game did not exist. I would kindly tell them to look into their computer, they would snark off after they found it and I prepurchased it, and leave.

 

Steam was met with not a small amount of pushback, Steam was pretty well loathed for years by many people who are now regular users. I mean, when Steam started their big push they had The Orange Box so I could not only play my games on Steam but also give a free copy to Half Life 2 to people since I had already owned it. The entire rigmarole was trotted out, what happens when their servers go offline permanently, what happens when the sky falls, what happens when we get hit by a gamma ray burst... like a software platform can deal with literally everything.

 

I say more power to companies opting to go to the Epic Games store. Epic Games, while not the best storefront yet, is still in the stage where Steam routinely had the kinds of errors that made me avoid it for over a year until they gave me beta access to TF2.

 

I don't like splitting up my library any more than anyone else, but the thing is, the Epic store being a storefront that other companies want to sell their titles on means that potentially even those morons in charge of companies that decided just their company alone was worthy of a storefront that barely works and has no effort put into it. So far Epic's storefront hasn't caused me any major problems (or any problems at all that I've noticed tbh) and their software WORKS.

 

Meanwhile Bethesda got the "Boohoo they got mad at me for selling paid mods, this is your fault Steam!" affliction and rolled out Bethesda.net which is handily the worst piece of software for acquiring content that exists. Alt tab away from it and it pauses, because you WANT to watch that DL number get bigger. Shift tab into a browser window? It interpreted that as you backing out of the file you were looking at so now you just have to guess whether or not that file finished downloading. Lists of files being downloaded? What do you think this is? Some free software provided by modders(who BTW offered to currate Bethesda.net for free and were rejected)!?

 

My point is that the Epic games storefront isn't offensive, it's at worst a bit bland and they could probably use more servers to avoid congestion at peak hours, in other words the kind of growing pains every single storefront encounters.

 

To me all of this is just as laughable as everyone calling this an Epic exclusive when it has said in every single article that it is also going to be available at the Microsoft store as well as on M$' rival console. Exclusivity sure has changed since my day when it meant that you could only acquire the item in one location.

 

The point missed in your tale is that other people still had the OPTION to go to their preferred place to get the game when Steam was not liked, unlike now with the Epic Store.

 

With your analogy, it would be like if Steam were the ONLY place you could get your games in its infancy when it had problems because it had bought out the game from every Gamestop and other store, everywhere, and there would be no PC copies available to buy for a year. 

Edited March 25, 2019 by nocoolnamejim

[Malcador]

When I say constructive I mean constructive. Not whining and ranting. You should be able to accept different opinions even if you don't agree with them as long as they are brought forward decently and are somewhat well-founded.

Will have to keep an eye out for this, doesn't really seem much constructive as every random person is letting us know what they think. Also, have to think it's pointless to provide such here - Obsidian isn't going to listen to stuff posted here for their business decisions.

[Wormerine]

There is only one person worth listening to and that’s Jim****ingStelingSon (thank God for him).

 

[nocoolnamejim]

I think Sterling did a fairly balanced take there.

 

In the short term, there's absolutely nothing good for us, the customer, with regards to the Epic Game store. To call it "threadbare" would be generous. (Lacking even a shopping cart feature? lol) Publishers and developers taking a game to Epic exclusively can make sense from a financial standpoint, but it blows from a customer experience standpoint. A game launching there is objectively worse than a game launching on Steam because of all the missing features like cloud saves, mod support, forums, etc.

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation, but there is the risk of over-fragmentation of the industry where everyone has to maintain 12 different launchers/storefronts for each game from the various major publishers.

[JBento]

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation

 

It does not, unless by "more competition" you mean "more games going exclusive." In fact, the SMART move by Valve would be to immediately tank any and all projects it has going to improve Steam and funnel that money into getting exclusives themselves. I mean, there's literally no feature Steam can implement to have me buy TOW with them before the exclusivity year is up, so why would they try?

[nocoolnamejim]

 

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation

 

It does not, unless by "more competition" you mean "more games going exclusive." In fact, the SMART move by Valve would be to immediately tank any and all projects it has going to improve Steam and funnel that money into getting exclusives themselves. I mean, there's literally no feature Steam can implement to have me buy TOW with them before the exclusivity year is up, so why would they try?

 

 

In fairness, Epic has stated that they intend - at some point - to stop buying exclusives and HAS put out a roadmap towards adding new features to try and draw closer to parity with Steam.

 

Clearly it's light years behind at this point on both fronts, but it is at least saying the right things.

 

I agree with you that the smart move for Valve would be to stop sitting on their hands, although I think a better approach would be to reduce the cut they take for hosting games on their store vs. what Epic does of outright buying exclusives. That's going to get expensive quick if both storefronts are running up the bidding. But if these moves by Epic do force Steam to innovate, reduce the amount of revenue they take from developers, etc. it could be a good thing in the long run.

 

It's hypothetical at this point that it will be healthy in the long run, but it does have the potential. 

[JBento]

 

 

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation

 

It does not, unless by "more competition" you mean "more games going exclusive." In fact, the SMART move by Valve would be to immediately tank any and all projects it has going to improve Steam and funnel that money into getting exclusives themselves. I mean, there's literally no feature Steam can implement to have me buy TOW with them before the exclusivity year is up, so why would they try?

 

 

In fairness, Epic has stated that they intend - at some point - to stop buying exclusives and HAS put out a roadmap towards adding new features to try and draw closer to parity with Steam.

 

Clearly it's light years behind at this point on both fronts, but it is at least saying the right things.

 

I agree with you that the smart move for Valve would be to stop sitting on their hands, although I think a better approach would be to reduce the cut they take for hosting games on their store vs. what Epic does of outright buying exclusives. That's going to get expensive quick if both storefronts are running up the bidding. But if these moves by Epic do force Steam to innovate, reduce the amount of revenue they take from developers, etc. it could be a good thing in the long run.

 

It's hypothetical at this point that it will be healthy in the long run, but it does have the potential. 

 

 

Light years is putting it mildly: it's a digital storefront WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A SHOPPING CART*, which is so absolutely ridiculous that if it came up in a work of fiction it would be called out. To be honest, I don't really care what Epic says, because I don't trust them anyway (and even if I did, everything the head of Epic says starts as insulting as goes up from there, so it's not like there's a stellar record there). When they start DOING, then we'll talk; unfortunately, all they've done so far is screw over consumers.

 

There's no lower cut that Valve can take to change this: Epic is guaranteeing minimum sales, menaing what they're offering is guaranteed profit, which is something lower cuts don't do.

 

And, again, this gives Steam no reason to innovate, because Epic isn't doing "look at this awesome feature we came up with," they're doing "haha, features are for suckers, it's our way or bust," and there's no feature that can change that.

 

*The lack of shopping cart doesn't really affect me, but it's an example of how the EGS fails at even the most basic of functionalities. As someone who plays on two computers, though, the lack of cloud saves automatically means I'm not touching it, anyway.

[Tyelkormo]

I think Sterling did a fairly balanced take there.

 

In the short term, there's absolutely nothing good for us, the customer, with regards to the Epic Game store. To call it "threadbare" would be generous. (Lacking even a shopping cart feature? lol) Publishers and developers taking a game to Epic exclusively can make sense from a financial standpoint, but it blows from a customer experience standpoint. A game launching there is objectively worse than a game launching on Steam because of all the missing features like cloud saves, mod support, forums, etc.

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation, but there is the risk of over-fragmentation of the industry where everyone has to maintain 12 different launchers/storefronts for each game from the various major publishers.

 

Having exclusives does the precise opposite of forcing competition and innovation, except for competition on buying exclusives, which is nothing the consumer benefits from. Competition happens when several stores offer substitutable products. Then the consumer can pick one over the other because the overall package appeals to them the most.

[nocoolnamejim]

 

 

 

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation

 

It does not, unless by "more competition" you mean "more games going exclusive." In fact, the SMART move by Valve would be to immediately tank any and all projects it has going to improve Steam and funnel that money into getting exclusives themselves. I mean, there's literally no feature Steam can implement to have me buy TOW with them before the exclusivity year is up, so why would they try?

 

 

In fairness, Epic has stated that they intend - at some point - to stop buying exclusives and HAS put out a roadmap towards adding new features to try and draw closer to parity with Steam.

 

Clearly it's light years behind at this point on both fronts, but it is at least saying the right things.

 

I agree with you that the smart move for Valve would be to stop sitting on their hands, although I think a better approach would be to reduce the cut they take for hosting games on their store vs. what Epic does of outright buying exclusives. That's going to get expensive quick if both storefronts are running up the bidding. But if these moves by Epic do force Steam to innovate, reduce the amount of revenue they take from developers, etc. it could be a good thing in the long run.

 

It's hypothetical at this point that it will be healthy in the long run, but it does have the potential. 

 

 

Light years is putting it mildly: it's a digital storefront WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A SHOPPING CART*, which is so absolutely ridiculous that if it came up in a work of fiction it would be called out. To be honest, I don't really care what Epic says, because I don't trust them anyway (and even if I did, everything the head of Epic says starts as insulting as goes up from there, so it's not like there's a stellar record there). When they start DOING, then we'll talk; unfortunately, all they've done so far is screw over consumers.

 

There's no lower cut that Valve can take to change this: Epic is guaranteeing minimum sales, menaing what they're offering is guaranteed profit, which is something lower cuts don't do.

 

And, again, this gives Steam no reason to innovate, because Epic isn't doing "look at this awesome feature we came up with," they're doing "haha, features are for suckers, it's our way or bust," and there's no feature that can change that.

 

*The lack of shopping cart doesn't really affect me, but it's an example of how the EGS fails at even the most basic of functionalities. As someone who plays on two computers, though, the lack of cloud saves automatically means I'm not touching it, anyway.

 

 

But outright guaranteeing profit is not sustainable. It's probably being done in the short term to A) Try and get their foot in the door and B) Give them time to try and get their storefront even remotely respectable.

 

Eventually it will be put up or shut up time because Epic won't be able to just buy up exclusives indefinitely. That part has to be a short term play.

 

Regardless, Steam and GOG for me remain the way to go until someone, anyone, shows me something better than either of those two.

[nocoolnamejim]

 

I think Sterling did a fairly balanced take there.

 

In the short term, there's absolutely nothing good for us, the customer, with regards to the Epic Game store. To call it "threadbare" would be generous. (Lacking even a shopping cart feature? lol) Publishers and developers taking a game to Epic exclusively can make sense from a financial standpoint, but it blows from a customer experience standpoint. A game launching there is objectively worse than a game launching on Steam because of all the missing features like cloud saves, mod support, forums, etc.

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation, but there is the risk of over-fragmentation of the industry where everyone has to maintain 12 different launchers/storefronts for each game from the various major publishers.

 

Having exclusives does the precise opposite of forcing competition and innovation, except for competition on buying exclusives, which is nothing the consumer benefits from. Competition happens when several stores offer substitutable products. Then the consumer can pick one over the other because the overall package appeals to them the most.

 

 

Well aware of all of that. Check out some of the other posts I've made. I definitely agree that, in the short term, the way Epic is choosing to "compete" only benefits them and not the end customer.

[Gorgon]

 

I think Sterling did a fairly balanced take there.

 

In the short term, there's absolutely nothing good for us, the customer, with regards to the Epic Game store. To call it "threadbare" would be generous. (Lacking even a shopping cart feature? lol) Publishers and developers taking a game to Epic exclusively can make sense from a financial standpoint, but it blows from a customer experience standpoint. A game launching there is objectively worse than a game launching on Steam because of all the missing features like cloud saves, mod support, forums, etc.

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation, but there is the risk of over-fragmentation of the industry where everyone has to maintain 12 different launchers/storefronts for each game from the various major publishers.

 

Having exclusives does the precise opposite of forcing competition and innovation, except for competition on buying exclusives, which is nothing the consumer benefits from. Competition happens when several stores offer substitutable products. Then the consumer can pick one over the other because the overall package appeals to them the most.

 

Well, it IS competition clearly. Whether that will translate into a benefit for the consumer still remains to be seen. A shakeup of the STEAM monopoly is overdue in any case.  Nothing can happen without it. 

[moralitis]

Ye, if you don’t care for my convenience I don’t care for your game.

Sure have it on as many storefronts as possible, but as an exclusive ye….no thanks

 

[Alhoon]

Damn, I was really looking forward to playing this game. After these news, I most definitely will not buy anything from "Games for Windows LIVE" store or Fortnite moneygrubbers, not even this game, no matter how good it turns out to be. I know my opinion as an individual is worth pretty much nothing, but maybe this backlash as a whole will serve as a warning to future endeavours for Obsidian, their publishers and everyone in the gaming industry.

[JBento]

 

 

I think Sterling did a fairly balanced take there.

 

In the short term, there's absolutely nothing good for us, the customer, with regards to the Epic Game store. To call it "threadbare" would be generous. (Lacking even a shopping cart feature? lol) Publishers and developers taking a game to Epic exclusively can make sense from a financial standpoint, but it blows from a customer experience standpoint. A game launching there is objectively worse than a game launching on Steam because of all the missing features like cloud saves, mod support, forums, etc.

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation, but there is the risk of over-fragmentation of the industry where everyone has to maintain 12 different launchers/storefronts for each game from the various major publishers.

 

Having exclusives does the precise opposite of forcing competition and innovation, except for competition on buying exclusives, which is nothing the consumer benefits from. Competition happens when several stores offer substitutable products. Then the consumer can pick one over the other because the overall package appeals to them the most.

 

Whether that will translate into a benefit for the consumer still remains to be seen.

 

 

It does not, and it will not. Steam is actually throwing money at new functionalities (they have a new game-event display thing or whatever it is coming out of closed Beta now - whether it's good is anyone's guess), meaning it was something they'd alreayd started long ago before the trashfire that is Epic. Hells, they're even nice enough to let the TOW and Metro pages stay up* instead of nixing them. If this exclusives thing starts catching, you can say goodbye to that, because no-one's going to spend money developing, testing, and adding features that people may or may not like to a product when they can just spend it making sure people have no choice using that product regardless of how crappy it is.

 

*I hear the Metro devs are telling people who bought the game on Epic to go to the Steam forum to report bugs - I have the entire Metro seires on my ingore list because the games never interested me and I'm SURE AS HELL not touching the EGS to find out, does anyone know if this is true?

[Flouride]

 

Well, they don't have to disparage anyone. Couldn't Obsidian just say something like: "This was entirely a Private Division decision as the publisher of the game, and we had nothing to do with it. Please refer all questions to Private Division."

 

They would most likely breach their NDA by doing so. Lawsuits would follow.

[Gorgon]

 

 

 

I think Sterling did a fairly balanced take there.

 

In the short term, there's absolutely nothing good for us, the customer, with regards to the Epic Game store. To call it "threadbare" would be generous. (Lacking even a shopping cart feature? lol) Publishers and developers taking a game to Epic exclusively can make sense from a financial standpoint, but it blows from a customer experience standpoint. A game launching there is objectively worse than a game launching on Steam because of all the missing features like cloud saves, mod support, forums, etc.

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation, but there is the risk of over-fragmentation of the industry where everyone has to maintain 12 different launchers/storefronts for each game from the various major publishers.

 

Having exclusives does the precise opposite of forcing competition and innovation, except for competition on buying exclusives, which is nothing the consumer benefits from. Competition happens when several stores offer substitutable products. Then the consumer can pick one over the other because the overall package appeals to them the most.

 

Whether that will translate into a benefit for the consumer still remains to be seen.

 

 

It does not, and it will not. Steam is actually throwing money at new functionalities (they have a new game-event display thing or whatever it is coming out of closed Beta now - whether it's good is anyone's guess), meaning it was something they'd alreayd started long ago before the trashfire that is Epic. Hells, they're even nice enough to let the TOW and Metro pages stay up* instead of nixing them. If this exclusives thing starts catching, you can say goodbye to that, because no-one's going to spend money developing, testing, and adding features that people may or may not like to a product when they can just spend it making sure people have no choice using that product regardless of how crappy it is.

 

*I hear the Metro devs are telling people who bought the game on Epic to go to the Steam forum to report bugs - I have the entire Metro seires on my ingore list because the games never interested me and I'm SURE AS HELL not touching the EGS to find out, does anyone know if this is true?

 

I don't consider STEAM or any other distributor to be worth anywhere near what they are charging and I don't think I've ever used one of their 'features'. The friends list maybe, sometimes a post on steam forum. I mean, how hard is that to do ?. STEAM, please don't continue 'developing' your platform, there is already too much bloat autoloading into my game. 

[JBento]

 

 

 

 

I think Sterling did a fairly balanced take there.

 

In the short term, there's absolutely nothing good for us, the customer, with regards to the Epic Game store. To call it "threadbare" would be generous. (Lacking even a shopping cart feature? lol) Publishers and developers taking a game to Epic exclusively can make sense from a financial standpoint, but it blows from a customer experience standpoint. A game launching there is objectively worse than a game launching on Steam because of all the missing features like cloud saves, mod support, forums, etc.

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation, but there is the risk of over-fragmentation of the industry where everyone has to maintain 12 different launchers/storefronts for each game from the various major publishers.

 

Having exclusives does the precise opposite of forcing competition and innovation, except for competition on buying exclusives, which is nothing the consumer benefits from. Competition happens when several stores offer substitutable products. Then the consumer can pick one over the other because the overall package appeals to them the most.

 

Whether that will translate into a benefit for the consumer still remains to be seen.

 

 

It does not, and it will not. Steam is actually throwing money at new functionalities (they have a new game-event display thing or whatever it is coming out of closed Beta now - whether it's good is anyone's guess), meaning it was something they'd alreayd started long ago before the trashfire that is Epic. Hells, they're even nice enough to let the TOW and Metro pages stay up* instead of nixing them. If this exclusives thing starts catching, you can say goodbye to that, because no-one's going to spend money developing, testing, and adding features that people may or may not like to a product when they can just spend it making sure people have no choice using that product regardless of how crappy it is.

 

*I hear the Metro devs are telling people who bought the game on Epic to go to the Steam forum to report bugs - I have the entire Metro seires on my ingore list because the games never interested me and I'm SURE AS HELL not touching the EGS to find out, does anyone know if this is true?

 

I don't consider STEAM or any other distributor to be worth anywhere near what they are charging and I don't think I've ever used one of their 'features'. The friends list maybe, sometimes a post on steam forum. I mean, how hard is that to do ?. STEAM, please don't continue 'developing' your platform, there is already too much bloat autoloading into my game. 

 

If no distributor is worth what they are charging, why are all companies using them instead of doing the distribution themselves? You don't think that, say, Steam showing your game on the splash page or on the discovery queue during sales is a ridiculous amount of targeted publicity at *checks numbers* EIGHTY MILLION PEOPLE (holy crap)? On the user side, you've never checked reviews on a game before buying it? If you have a technical problem with a game, you never check the forums to see if anyone has encountered it before and if (and how) they've solved it? You've never bought more than one game/x-pac/DLC at a time (remember, Epic has no shopping cart, which is something i still lol at)?

 

Edit: Do the devs of the games you play not post announcements or patch notes on the forums? Do you not read those?

Edited March 26, 2019 by JBento

[amiable]

Since I have a huge backlog of games, and I am not in any great rush I will just wait a year and purchase it on my preferred platform.   I was already annoyed that I had to go to the Origin store to get Dragon Age 3 now I just can;t be bothered to keep downloading a thousand different storefronts.  If this deal is good financially for Obsidian and it helps them make more good games, then they should do it.  I don't really care, this just encourages me to wait for it to get to steam (or even better wait another 6 months on top of that and get it on a steam sale with all the DLC).

[Gfted1]

Maybe it will add longevity to the sales and become a case of "six of one, half a dozen of another". A steady trickle of sales over the course of a year can equal the normal torrent of sales expected at launch?

[Gorgon]

It's a good question. I think the on

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think Sterling did a fairly balanced take there.

 

In the short term, there's absolutely nothing good for us, the customer, with regards to the Epic Game store. To call it "threadbare" would be generous. (Lacking even a shopping cart feature? lol) Publishers and developers taking a game to Epic exclusively can make sense from a financial standpoint, but it blows from a customer experience standpoint. A game launching there is objectively worse than a game launching on Steam because of all the missing features like cloud saves, mod support, forums, etc.

 

In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation, but there is the risk of over-fragmentation of the industry where everyone has to maintain 12 different launchers/storefronts for each game from the various major publishers.

 

Having exclusives does the precise opposite of forcing competition and innovation, except for competition on buying exclusives, which is nothing the consumer benefits from. Competition happens when several stores offer substitutable products. Then the consumer can pick one over the other because the overall package appeals to them the most.

 

Whether that will translate into a benefit for the consumer still remains to be seen.

 

 

It does not, and it will not. Steam is actually throwing money at new functionalities (they have a new game-event display thing or whatever it is coming out of closed Beta now - whether it's good is anyone's guess), meaning it was something they'd alreayd started long ago before the trashfire that is Epic. Hells, they're even nice enough to let the TOW and Metro pages stay up* instead of nixing them. If this exclusives thing starts catching, you can say goodbye to that, because no-one's going to spend money developing, testing, and adding features that people may or may not like to a product when they can just spend it making sure people have no choice using that product regardless of how crappy it is.

 

*I hear the Metro devs are telling people who bought the game on Epic to go to the Steam forum to report bugs - I have the entire Metro seires on my ingore list because the games never interested me and I'm SURE AS HELL not touching the EGS to find out, does anyone know if this is true?

 

I don't consider STEAM or any other distributor to be worth anywhere near what they are charging and I don't think I've ever used one of their 'features'. The friends list maybe, sometimes a post on steam forum. I mean, how hard is that to do ?. STEAM, please don't continue 'developing' your platform, there is already too much bloat autoloading into my game. 

 

If no distributor is worth what they are charging, why are all companies using them instead of doing the distribution themselves? You don't think that, say, Steam showing your game on the splash page or on the discovery queue during sales is a ridiculous amount of targeted publicity at *checks numbers* EIGHTY MILLION PEOPLE (holy crap)? On the user side, you've never checked reviews on a game before buying it? If you have a technical problem with a game, you never check the forums to see if anyone has encountered it before and if (and how) they've solved it? You've never bought more than one game/x-pac/DLC at a time (remember, Epic has no shopping cart, which is something i still lol at)?

 

Edit: Do the devs of the games you play not post announcements or patch notes on the forums? Do you not read those?

 

The ease for customers in having everything in one place. That's it I think, that's the only real reason everyone doesn't have their own distribution and the reason change has been so long in coming. 

 

PS : are we really calling patch notes a 'feature'.