This is a pretty big game for Steam to lose. The Division wasn't huge, but it was definitely significant. It's still in the "Bronze" section of Steam's top sellers of 2018 even though it came out...
This is a pretty big game for Steam to lose. The Division wasn't huge, but it was definitely significant. It's still in the "Bronze" section of Steam's top sellers of 2018 even though it came out almost 3 years ago now.
I expect Ubisoft is also planning to use this as a test to see if dropping Steam for more of their games is a good idea, and they definitely have enough big-name games to make an impact.
I think they'll probably just need to reduce their cut if this continues. Right now, for consumers, Steam is better than Epic (and other alternatives) in almost every way. It has a lot of features...
aside from cutting the amount of money they take from developers, what can Valve really do to compete at this point?
I think they'll probably just need to reduce their cut if this continues. Right now, for consumers, Steam is better than Epic (and other alternatives) in almost every way. It has a lot of features like forums, reviews, achievements, more currencies, a better refund process, and so on. In the current state, if the same game is available at the same price on both the Epic store and Steam, almost nobody would choose to buy it from Epic, there's no reason to. Epic clearly knows this, and that's why their strategy is based so heavily around exclusives.
How bad is Epic's if Steam has a better one? They've been famous for years for being godawful at that, and only the EU and later AU threatening to fuck them in the wallet has had much impact.
a better refund process
How bad is Epic's if Steam has a better one? They've been famous for years for being godawful at that, and only the EU and later AU threatening to fuck them in the wallet has had much impact.
This is the kicker - something can be unplayable and not merchantable and you don't find out for longer than 14 days of 2 hours of play. Thankfully, there are countries (like the one I live in)...
if purchased in last 14 days with <2hr playtime' kind of deal
This is the kicker - something can be unplayable and not merchantable and you don't find out for longer than 14 days of 2 hours of play. Thankfully, there are countries (like the one I live in) that understand this and legally force companies to refund when they've sold horseshit. Without that I would have been burned by Legends of Pegasus, which was released with a workingish tutorial (approx 3 hours) but with the rest of the game bugged to complete unplayability.
Also keep in mind, though, that if your game keeps crashing and whatnot then there might be times where you're debugging and the game is closed, but it's not "officially closed" and still counts...
Also keep in mind, though, that if your game keeps crashing and whatnot then there might be times where you're debugging and the game is closed, but it's not "officially closed" and still counts you as playing.
I recently had the displeasure of trying to get Black Ops 4 to work on my laptop. Took 3 days of blindly trying config files and hoping it wouldn't crash after the loading screen. Each attempt was easily 15-20 minutes of "play time" plus however long it takes for it to notice the game has crashed/process was terminated.
Same story for a friend with that new Just Cause (5?). It just wouldn't act predictably. He'd update the drivers and it'd last a bit longer then fail in another spot. Then he'd try some fix on a forum that everyone says worked for them, nada.
Are there any penalties for just saying "fuck that noise" and insta-refunding games that don't work out of the box without even trying to fix them. Or do the retailers not care about your actual reasons and just give you X amount of refunds per Y?
They will all remain on uPlay, launching Division 1 on Steam still launched through uPlay. Moving to Epic will likely just cut out the middle man for most people (including me) and will just...
They will all remain on uPlay, launching Division 1 on Steam still launched through uPlay. Moving to Epic will likely just cut out the middle man for most people (including me) and will just purchase and run it with only uPlay.
This is a pretty big game for Steam to lose. The Division wasn't huge, but it was definitely significant. It's still in the "Bronze" section of Steam's top sellers of 2018 even though it came out almost 3 years ago now.
I expect Ubisoft is also planning to use this as a test to see if dropping Steam for more of their games is a good idea, and they definitely have enough big-name games to make an impact.
I think they'll probably just need to reduce their cut if this continues. Right now, for consumers, Steam is better than Epic (and other alternatives) in almost every way. It has a lot of features like forums, reviews, achievements, more currencies, a better refund process, and so on. In the current state, if the same game is available at the same price on both the Epic store and Steam, almost nobody would choose to buy it from Epic, there's no reason to. Epic clearly knows this, and that's why their strategy is based so heavily around exclusives.
I thought this was an interesting article about it, by an indie dev that I really like (the guy behind the "Cook, Serve, Delicious" games): The Epic Store, In Its Current State, is Not Good for Anyone
How bad is Epic's if Steam has a better one? They've been famous for years for being godawful at that, and only the EU and later AU threatening to fuck them in the wallet has had much impact.
This is the kicker - something can be unplayable and not merchantable and you don't find out for longer than 14 days of 2 hours of play. Thankfully, there are countries (like the one I live in) that understand this and legally force companies to refund when they've sold horseshit. Without that I would have been burned by Legends of Pegasus, which was released with a workingish tutorial (approx 3 hours) but with the rest of the game bugged to complete unplayability.
Also keep in mind, though, that if your game keeps crashing and whatnot then there might be times where you're debugging and the game is closed, but it's not "officially closed" and still counts you as playing.
I recently had the displeasure of trying to get Black Ops 4 to work on my laptop. Took 3 days of blindly trying config files and hoping it wouldn't crash after the loading screen. Each attempt was easily 15-20 minutes of "play time" plus however long it takes for it to notice the game has crashed/process was terminated.
Same story for a friend with that new Just Cause (5?). It just wouldn't act predictably. He'd update the drivers and it'd last a bit longer then fail in another spot. Then he'd try some fix on a forum that everyone says worked for them, nada.
Are there any penalties for just saying "fuck that noise" and insta-refunding games that don't work out of the box without even trying to fix them. Or do the retailers not care about your actual reasons and just give you X amount of refunds per Y?
They will all remain on uPlay, launching Division 1 on Steam still launched through uPlay. Moving to Epic will likely just cut out the middle man for most people (including me) and will just purchase and run it with only uPlay.