This article is very pointedly editorial in what is in my opinion kind of a stupid way. It says over and over again things like Epic is certainly spending money. And, clearly, they're getting...
This article is very pointedly editorial in what is in my opinion kind of a stupid way. It says over and over again things like
all the money Epic was losing
Epic is certainly spending money. And, clearly, they're getting something for that spend—they're not just withdrawing cash from a bank, throwing it in a big hole, and setting it on fire. (Epic has purchased all of the literally dozens of games in my EGS library, for instance.) The money's not lost until Epic goes bankrupt, or hits some other clear failure state where the fruits of all that spend are forfeit. (And, as long as they can afford to keep operating hundreds of millions in the red, they are clearly not there.)
So the author obviously expects Epic to hit such a failure state. It's certainly a possibility, which is one reason (of several) that Epic has purchased all of my EGS games and I have purchased none. However, is it such a foregone conclusion that editorials like the linked article are reasonable? If it were, then Epic's entire ownership and upper management would be grossly incompetent—which is certainly improbable.
Is this just another expression of the widespread hostility to Epic?
Cheap article taking cheap shots at a currently very hated company by the core gaming demographic. It brings nothing new to the table and does not care to try and highlight the issue from multiple...
Is this just another expression of the widespread hostility to Epic?
Cheap article taking cheap shots at a currently very hated company by the core gaming demographic. It brings nothing new to the table and does not care to try and highlight the issue from multiple perspectives.
Epic is just spending money in an attempt to secure market share, turning a profit isn't expected yet.
But I wonder how well that will go over for them - they are "encouraging" hostility towards them by creating platform exclusives. Are they creating enough goodwill by giving away some of them for...
But I wonder how well that will go over for them - they are "encouraging" hostility towards them by creating platform exclusives. Are they creating enough goodwill by giving away some of them for free? I think the "Fuck you, but I'll take the freebie" attitude is what will remain. People will not go to Epic in 5 years because they had to create an account today to grab a freebie. They would go to Epic in 5 years if Epic was the better platform or sustainably offered a better selection of games. But right now the platform isn't better and the selection is only better because of anti-competitive practices.
I really wonder about Epic's strategy here. IMO they launched the platform too soon with too much investment into exclusives and not enough into the platform.
That said, the article is a cheap shot and does not touch upon my points at all.
Some detractors claim that Epic has made zero progress on the storefront, and it always has baffled me since this roadmap has been public since the beginning. in 5 years time, I imagine all the...
Some detractors claim that Epic has made zero progress on the storefront, and it always has baffled me since this roadmap has been public since the beginning. in 5 years time, I imagine all the listed features and more will be implemented, so the platforms argument is a temporary one. Whether that is "fast enough" is a more interesting argument. Personally, I don't think people will care by then; no one mentions how 5 years ago Steam lacked chat or a modern interface after all.
As for core features by this theoretical point, It will likely lack Proton for that Linux userbase even that far out, but it may expand to have some kind of mobile storefront as an advantage of reach. But I fail to see anything missing that would make or break the store outside of user preference by this point. For the extremely Steam invested, they will always be deterred by developers being able to opt out of user reviews, the lack of a public forum, and various other personal points.
Steam lacked chat five years ago? 2016? More like 15 years ago, Steam has had chat since the mid-2000's. Steam Community was launched in 2007, chat existed before it. Steam has many more features...
Steam lacked chat five years ago? 2016? More like 15 years ago, Steam has had chat since the mid-2000's. Steam Community was launched in 2007, chat existed before it.
Steam has many more features than Proton though, their controller API is still the best in the industry and it doesn't seem like anyone else is even trying to fill that gap. Trying to get a non-Xinput controller working through other games in other launchers can be a pain, especially older titles. Their Remote Play feature is also quite a huge boon. Of course, Steam also offers these to non-Steam games in quite an act of non-competitiveness.
On top of that, Steam has proven to be extensible in ways other launchers are not. SKIF is a tool that can automatically act through Steam-launched games to add SpecialK features including some in-depth HDR configuration onto games that otherwise do not offer it. Otherwise, the Steam Workshop is still almost entirely unmatched by any game store launcher.
Steam's Marketplace will probably never be copied by any other launcher either, since the appeal of direct MTX payments is too great and it would have to take a company like Valve, who seemingly don't care about ROI, to eschew a greater payday in order to provide a user-run marketplace. Outside of Diablo 3's real-money auction house, I've never made a dollar playing a video game like I have with Steam's marketplace and cards. I've made at least $400 playing CSGO. Any other game, on any other launcher, by any other company, and I'd be sitting with a stockpile of worthless cosmetics for a game I don't play anymore.
The important thing here isn't quite what the features are so much as how Steam has approached these features. They don't seem as interested in locking in users and applications so much as they seem interested in making everything work together in increasingly seamless ways.
The steam UI is fugly and slow. Especially the store page, which just opens a webview of the store's page, but the store isn't even a SPA so it feels extra bad. The new chat UI classes horribly...
The steam UI is fugly and slow. Especially the store page, which just opens a webview of the store's page, but the store isn't even a SPA so it feels extra bad. The new chat UI classes horribly with the old parts of Steam. I also wish there was a more ergonomic way to turn offline mode on.
It's also bloated and uses far more resources than a launcher should, even in comparison to all the electron ones that are out there.
Steam is the #1 program I wish I didn't need to have launched, but do.
fwiw, I likely meant "voice chat" instead of just chat. The specific feature was less important than the general concept of there being features missing from steam that other competitors have...
fwiw, I likely meant "voice chat" instead of just chat. The specific feature was less important than the general concept of there being features missing from steam that other competitors have risen to the occasion to ad first, often years before Valve did. I recall regional pricing (due to Origin providing it a few years before Steram) and voice chat (due to Discord) being some of the larger negatives from recent times.
That is commendable, but ultimately not a dealbreaker for the majority of the audience. This is the classic Apple v. Android argument, where two different philosophies manage to succeed in...
The important thing here isn't quite what the features are so much as how Steam has approached these features. They don't seem as interested in locking in users and applications so much as they seem interested in making everything work together in increasingly seamless ways.
That is commendable, but ultimately not a dealbreaker for the majority of the audience. This is the classic Apple v. Android argument, where two different philosophies manage to succeed in different ways. My ulimtate argument isn't whether or not Epic will "win" over Valve, but more of one where many of the short term arguments some argue about as fatal mistakes are just that: short term inconvenience.
As for the individual points made
better controller support is a feature I see Epic adding over the years. Not an immediate priority, but it would certainly be a feature they'd see value in if they plan to have their store work on PC and mobile. I imagine UE already has some facilities they can build off of and use in a launcher context.
SKIF isn't something I've heard of before, but it's not the only solution I've seen to this gametime injection. It also doesn't seem to necessarily be something built for steam, but has some niceties added in. This is a very niche feature to begin with, but I don't see anything here that wouldn't let you use this from any other launcher.
Steam marketplace is one thing I never considered. And to be honest, I still don't fully understand how or why it works. I can only speak for myself on this instance, but I don't have much interest in making money off of items I grind in-game, nor buying others' drops/trading cards. But I avoid many social features in general outside of the bare basics (text chat/forums), so this point may be on me being out of touch with the modern PC market.
SKIF is actually the latest from one of the most popular gametime injection authors, Kaldaien. He's the one who made the FAR mod for Nier Automata and made critical improvements to a number of...
SKIF is actually the latest from one of the most popular gametime injection authors, Kaldaien. He's the one who made the FAR mod for Nier Automata and made critical improvements to a number of Japanese ports. SKIF is notable because it's the only widespread HDR injection method right now. A bit niche but quite a feat of engineering, Digital Foundry even covered it to assess its results. It's like a more manual version of Microsoft's AutoHDR technology that can be tweaked, fine tuned, and debugged by a user.
It's certainly not locked to Steam but it features native integration with Steam. When you install it, it works across all your Steam games and presents you with a list of your compatible Steam games. It's not just this, but there are many other tools and add-ons that take advantage of Steam's APIs and extensibility to add or manipulate functions, like AugmentedSteam, SteamDB, SteamSpy, and more.
It's not really something that should be Steam exclusive but they really have been the only launcher even planning for such things from the outset and have only encouraged it. I haven't seen any of the other launchers become able to support so many third party tool integrations, if any at all. I don't think this is something that can just be added to a launcher either, this is something that has to be built-in throughout its design. I think this is something that kind of gets lost when people point to launchers as being nothing more than storefronts with skins—it's something that is true of every launcher except Steam because Steam did not start as a video game storefront but as a way to unify games together behind the scenes.
To be clear, it's not that I'm opposed to EGS or think they won't improve. It's just that I think people have started thinking about Steam the wrong way because of what the market looks like. The reason it's so successful and widespread is because it's specifically not trying to compete with other storefronts and launchers.
It certainly helps that Steam provides a public API to query for relevant information. But API's by their nature rely on the community to make them valuable. So they are only as valuable as the...
I haven't seen any of the other launchers become able to support so many third party tool integrations, if any at all.
It certainly helps that Steam provides a public API to query for relevant information. But API's by their nature rely on the community to make them valuable. So they are only as valuable as the market they attract.
For example, GOG seems to also have the endpoints necessary for theoretical SKIF integration. Not as robust as Steam's API's from a glance (there doesn't seem to be exposed sales/player info for a SteamDB kind of plugin), but it has enough of the basics to fetch when an account owns, compare it to its list of supported games, and build an convenient interface around for the user.
But work on that hasn't been done (to my knowledge), likely for the simple reason that a steam integration would take higher priority1 . User-created content can be a powerful motivator, but it won't ever be the motivation to sell your service (see: Dreams on PS4/5).
I do acknowledge that Valve is in a very unique position at the end of the day. It is a truly independent, privately funded company worth billions with a reportedly flat-level organization, under virtually zero obligation to do much more than maintain Steam and some 15+ year old multiplayer servers. This has its downsides, like their game output reducing to 1-2 per decade and overall disorganization on what features to tackle, and when. But overall, it's about as close to a techie's dream studio as you can get. But that ability to experiment came after some early days where they were more focused on making money first; I doubt Gabe Newall started this project off as a billionaire and keep things as loose in 2005 as he does in 2021.
1. unless CDPR decided to pay the API developers to prioritize them, which comes back to a core "issue" causing the Epic v Valve discourse elsewhere. would it be right to acknowledge that you are the less popular service and "bribe" value out from others instead of funding your own auto-HDR competitor? If you don't pay 3rd parties, would an auto-HDR feature even be valuable enough to pay for internally
I don't think this is something that can just be added to a launcher either, this is something that has to be built-in throughout its design
fwiw, a public API CAN be added in later on. It's ideal to add it sooner rather than later, but not impossible if you fail to do it at launch. But the logistics of maintaining such an external API is a complicated matter.
Of course the platform argument is a temporary one. But my point is by forcing an unpolished platform down people's throats, that leaves a sour taste. My thought would be that a better business...
Of course the platform argument is a temporary one. But my point is by forcing an unpolished platform down people's throats, that leaves a sour taste. My thought would be that a better business model is to finish the platform to a point where it can theoretically stand on its own and all that's holding you back is network effects / lock in effects. Then, you need to break that by aggressively pushing your product. That would work, and it wouldn't piss people off nearly as much.
But that's not what they did. They decided that they should agressively push their store when there was pretty much only their own games and a few exclusives on there, and when their software was half-baked.
Remains to be seen how much of a grudge gamers are going to carry. I can easily imagine people sticking with the resentment, because fuck epic that's why. (No judgement on whether that's a good attitude) It doesn't help that Epic as a developer have next to no goodwill with the community because basically all they did recently was fortnite and their store. Valve on the other hand created and continues to create a lot of really good games that afford them a lot more credibility.
[I'm not arguing for these views as my own. Some of them I do hold, some of them not. But I can easily imagine a lot of gamers (and Gamers in particular) holding these views.
I suppose my main point is that the grudges are either temporary, or ultimately eclipsed by the apathetic or unknowing audience. Steam wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms either, back in the...
Remains to be seen how much of a grudge gamers are going to carry.
I suppose my main point is that the grudges are either temporary, or ultimately eclipsed by the apathetic or unknowing audience. Steam wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms either, back in the days where PC consumers preferred physical media. This would be far, far, FAR from the first time the "less generous" company would become a viable competitor to a scene, and if EGS does shutter I doubt the reason for doing so would amount to "they didn't put in a shopping cart fast enough".
But I'll admit as a developer I have my own biases. They provide one of the most popular third party engines in the industry, have decades of games under their belt, and have provided some major grants to open source initatives, no strings attached. The current discourse reminds me a bit of late 00's/early '10's Microsoft, in the days where consumers feel they killed everything they touched (Skype was the big one). But developers always had a relatively smooth experience with the company, even in more rocky times with consumers. It's much easier to turn about public opinion than rekindle a business relationship.
all they did recently was fortnite and their store.
(as an aside, it does slightly sting everytime I read reports saying "Fortnite developer Epic Games", this article included. like that is their biggest accomplishment in 25 years).
I would think the next logical step in their strategy is build up enough of a catalogue to offer a subscription like gamepass. I could see them continuing with the free games, but offer an EGS...
I would think the next logical step in their strategy is build up enough of a catalogue to offer a subscription like gamepass. I could see them continuing with the free games, but offer an EGS premium pass for the exclusives on their store or a select group of top AAA games. Gamepass has proven this works very well and with multiple publishers going this route it would make sense for epic to jump on that business.Epic has always been very good at sustainability of their individual services, unreal engine and the unreal marketplace, fortnite and it’s skins and mtx’s, and most likely egs and it’s subscription plan.
Since they own Rocket League, Fall Guys, and Fortnite now, I could see them doing some kind cross-game battle pass-like thing, where one purchase gets you MTXs and things in all 3 games. Could be...
Since they own Rocket League, Fall Guys, and Fortnite now, I could see them doing some kind cross-game battle pass-like thing, where one purchase gets you MTXs and things in all 3 games. Could be compelling.
I always try to keep distance from all the gaming drama and because of that I'm still out of the loop. Why is Epic so hated by gamer? (beside the "Fortnite bad" excuses)
I always try to keep distance from all the gaming drama and because of that I'm still out of the loop.
Why is Epic so hated by gamer? (beside the "Fortnite bad" excuses)
This probably isn't a common reason, but personally I hate them for being the worst thing to happen to gaming on linux in over a decade. While valve's spent much of the last few years working on...
This probably isn't a common reason, but personally I hate them for being the worst thing to happen to gaming on linux in over a decade. While valve's spent much of the last few years working on both direct ports and compatibility layers, Epic has actually retroactively _un_ported games from linux by buying them and taking them off steam, making their linux versions inaccessible from the windows and Mac exclusive EGS, the most prominent example being rocket league.
That's a long and dramatic history spanning 2 years, but if I had to try and summarize it: The most common talking point is their reportedly anti-consumer practices with securing exclusives. The...
That's a long and dramatic history spanning 2 years, but if I had to try and summarize it:
The most common talking point is their reportedly anti-consumer practices with securing exclusives. The EGS was revealed and off the bat they used Jouney as a "PC exclusive" which is indicative of their plans. From here, they have aggressively secured many other PC exclusives, some being from games that previously promised Steam releases and had to take that back. Some were even kickstarters that promised a Steam key. This continued to the point where Epic even acquired some desired studios like Psyonix (Rocket League) and recently Mediatonic (Fall Guys). Some consumers see this as anti-competitve and not the right way to try and compete with steam.
The store came out in late 2018 in an extremely barebones state, and left a bad first impression to the more vocal parts of the gaming community. Some also claimed security issues like the lack of 2FA and even email verification. For some, this impression never recovered and they feel the store is coasting on the exclusives they procure and doing nothing to improve the platform itself. The lack of a shopping cart is a common talking/mocking point for the store, for example.
as an extension of #2, some of the initial "anti-promises" turned off people. They were forthfront about having the developer control reviews and comments on the platform, which can be interpreted as a way complying to shut out criticism from developers on their storefront.
Overall, critics don't feel Epic is making a store "for the gamers", which is a common theme in much of their marketing, including the marketing used when they sued Apple for the currently ongoing case of allowing external stores on a "dominant platform". The Fortnite campaign for that lawsuit was in particularly bad taste and see them as no different from other big coporate. Certainly not like Valve who has continually provided useful features, no matter how niche.
These were the big ones I can gather. There's a LOT of drama out there, but I want to try and be impartial to the side you asked about. Anyone who feels like these resonate with them, feel free to point out anything I missed or embellished. It's not my intention to do the latter.
Epic opened a new online store front called the Epic Game Store (EGS) and decided that the best course of action to gain market share was buying out exclusives. At the start they even bought out...
Epic opened a new online store front called the Epic Game Store (EGS) and decided that the best course of action to gain market share was buying out exclusives. At the start they even bought out games that were very close to release (e.g. Metro: Exodus), where the Steam page was retroactively taken down and a bunch of other games which were announced and then changed course.
As you can imagine, it makes you very unpopular, especially because the set of features on the EGS is incredibly small. Last time I used it, it didn't even have a shopping cart, you had to buy everything one by one.
They mention over and over how much they have lost, which is around ~600M, keep in mind that Epic just last year made 9.6 billion in 2020 with $3.85 billion in profit and that is up 46% YoY. This...
They mention over and over how much they have lost, which is around ~600M, keep in mind that Epic just last year made 9.6 billion in 2020 with $3.85 billion in profit and that is up 46% YoY.
This is scrap for them, Epic Store could remain a loss leader for the next decade and they will be just fine, and that is their goal to be competitive. They likely bring in more money through people downloading the Epic store to get a exclusive, and then going ahead and playing and spending money in an Epic game. They are making all the right calls, even if this article seems to be trying to be a secretive hit piece.
If I recall correctly, when online shopping was really starting to boom, Amazon intentionally reduced their prices on their store to make themselves seem cheaper than the competition, even though...
If I recall correctly, when online shopping was really starting to boom, Amazon intentionally reduced their prices on their store to make themselves seem cheaper than the competition, even though it was done at a loss. I distinctly remember there being quite a lot of major online retaillers selling stuff online and Amazon just dwarfed them due to competitive pricing. Stores now exist, but a lot of big chains had to close down due to competition from Amazon.
Hell, Amazon has perfected the strategy so much that they appear to be the cheaper option even in the rare cases that they blatantly are not. It definitely is a strategy and it absolutely can work. Hell, I got a few games on Epic Store that I really wouldn't have bothered on Steam due to cheap pricing (RDR2 for example). Not only that, but it's clear that Epic Games have been funding games that other publishers either struggle to or outright refuse to fund.
That's not to say that EG are without criticism - their crunch culture - especially around Fortnite - is barbaric and disgusting. And their efforts of rapidly expanding has meant that a lot of the features in the store is painfully missing or broken (I remember trying to change my email address and it couldn't handle something that trivial). Also while I do respect someone "sticking up" to Apple, I really wish it wasn't EG as it's so obviously clear that they want all of the money to their benefit, and aren't really fighting Apple "for the small guys" as they try to make it out to be whereas smaller indie devs want to survive on Apple's platform without all the mess (myself included).
But like others said, this article isn't the best take.
I really, really try to cast aside my past biases for modern journalism when seeing headlines and knowing that they aren't always made by the author, appeal to SEO, etc. But man, articles like...
I really, really try to cast aside my past biases for modern journalism when seeing headlines and knowing that they aren't always made by the author, appeal to SEO, etc. But man, articles like these make me glad I no longer need to click on Kotaku just to read Jason Schreier's interesting pieces.
There wasn't much new insight here past the title, as expected. A company entering into a competitive and expensive middleman role spends a lot of money early on and loses profits in hope of long term gains. All presented with a negative editorial twist despite this being relatively normal process. Happened with YouTube (and may still be happening), happened with Amazon, happening with Uber, happening with Twitter.
It will be interesting to see if this can pay off and if Epic will stay in the game long enough to potentially profit, but outside of that speculation I don't see much of a smoking gun that other... "invested" critics of Epic may interpret from this news. I can't exactly think of a better way to compete in the gaming market, and other ventures have proven that "competing on features" alone (the most common complaint against EGS) won't break people away from a service they invested in. And we're certainly well past the days where even a large publisher can create 20 exclusives a year for their storefront.
This article is very pointedly editorial in what is in my opinion kind of a stupid way. It says over and over again things like
Epic is certainly spending money. And, clearly, they're getting something for that spend—they're not just withdrawing cash from a bank, throwing it in a big hole, and setting it on fire. (Epic has purchased all of the literally dozens of games in my EGS library, for instance.) The money's not lost until Epic goes bankrupt, or hits some other clear failure state where the fruits of all that spend are forfeit. (And, as long as they can afford to keep operating hundreds of millions in the red, they are clearly not there.)
So the author obviously expects Epic to hit such a failure state. It's certainly a possibility, which is one reason (of several) that Epic has purchased all of my EGS games and I have purchased none. However, is it such a foregone conclusion that editorials like the linked article are reasonable? If it were, then Epic's entire ownership and upper management would be grossly incompetent—which is certainly improbable.
Is this just another expression of the widespread hostility to Epic?
Cheap article taking cheap shots at a currently very hated company by the core gaming demographic. It brings nothing new to the table and does not care to try and highlight the issue from multiple perspectives.
Epic is just spending money in an attempt to secure market share, turning a profit isn't expected yet.
But I wonder how well that will go over for them - they are "encouraging" hostility towards them by creating platform exclusives. Are they creating enough goodwill by giving away some of them for free? I think the "Fuck you, but I'll take the freebie" attitude is what will remain. People will not go to Epic in 5 years because they had to create an account today to grab a freebie. They would go to Epic in 5 years if Epic was the better platform or sustainably offered a better selection of games. But right now the platform isn't better and the selection is only better because of anti-competitive practices.
I really wonder about Epic's strategy here. IMO they launched the platform too soon with too much investment into exclusives and not enough into the platform.
That said, the article is a cheap shot and does not touch upon my points at all.
Some detractors claim that Epic has made zero progress on the storefront, and it always has baffled me since this roadmap has been public since the beginning. in 5 years time, I imagine all the listed features and more will be implemented, so the platforms argument is a temporary one. Whether that is "fast enough" is a more interesting argument. Personally, I don't think people will care by then; no one mentions how 5 years ago Steam lacked chat or a modern interface after all.
As for core features by this theoretical point, It will likely lack Proton for that Linux userbase even that far out, but it may expand to have some kind of mobile storefront as an advantage of reach. But I fail to see anything missing that would make or break the store outside of user preference by this point. For the extremely Steam invested, they will always be deterred by developers being able to opt out of user reviews, the lack of a public forum, and various other personal points.
Steam lacked chat five years ago? 2016? More like 15 years ago, Steam has had chat since the mid-2000's. Steam Community was launched in 2007, chat existed before it.
Steam has many more features than Proton though, their controller API is still the best in the industry and it doesn't seem like anyone else is even trying to fill that gap. Trying to get a non-Xinput controller working through other games in other launchers can be a pain, especially older titles. Their Remote Play feature is also quite a huge boon. Of course, Steam also offers these to non-Steam games in quite an act of non-competitiveness.
On top of that, Steam has proven to be extensible in ways other launchers are not. SKIF is a tool that can automatically act through Steam-launched games to add SpecialK features including some in-depth HDR configuration onto games that otherwise do not offer it. Otherwise, the Steam Workshop is still almost entirely unmatched by any game store launcher.
Steam's Marketplace will probably never be copied by any other launcher either, since the appeal of direct MTX payments is too great and it would have to take a company like Valve, who seemingly don't care about ROI, to eschew a greater payday in order to provide a user-run marketplace. Outside of Diablo 3's real-money auction house, I've never made a dollar playing a video game like I have with Steam's marketplace and cards. I've made at least $400 playing CSGO. Any other game, on any other launcher, by any other company, and I'd be sitting with a stockpile of worthless cosmetics for a game I don't play anymore.
The important thing here isn't quite what the features are so much as how Steam has approached these features. They don't seem as interested in locking in users and applications so much as they seem interested in making everything work together in increasingly seamless ways.
Yup. Outside of the early days of linux support I can't think of a single major gripe I had with the steam client since... probably 2010?
The steam UI is fugly and slow. Especially the store page, which just opens a webview of the store's page, but the store isn't even a SPA so it feels extra bad. The new chat UI classes horribly with the old parts of Steam. I also wish there was a more ergonomic way to turn offline mode on.
It's also bloated and uses far more resources than a launcher should, even in comparison to all the electron ones that are out there.
Steam is the #1 program I wish I didn't need to have launched, but do.
fwiw, I likely meant "voice chat" instead of just chat. The specific feature was less important than the general concept of there being features missing from steam that other competitors have risen to the occasion to ad first, often years before Valve did. I recall regional pricing (due to Origin providing it a few years before Steram) and voice chat (due to Discord) being some of the larger negatives from recent times.
That is commendable, but ultimately not a dealbreaker for the majority of the audience. This is the classic Apple v. Android argument, where two different philosophies manage to succeed in different ways. My ulimtate argument isn't whether or not Epic will "win" over Valve, but more of one where many of the short term arguments some argue about as fatal mistakes are just that: short term inconvenience.
As for the individual points made
SKIF is actually the latest from one of the most popular gametime injection authors, Kaldaien. He's the one who made the FAR mod for Nier Automata and made critical improvements to a number of Japanese ports. SKIF is notable because it's the only widespread HDR injection method right now. A bit niche but quite a feat of engineering, Digital Foundry even covered it to assess its results. It's like a more manual version of Microsoft's AutoHDR technology that can be tweaked, fine tuned, and debugged by a user.
It's certainly not locked to Steam but it features native integration with Steam. When you install it, it works across all your Steam games and presents you with a list of your compatible Steam games. It's not just this, but there are many other tools and add-ons that take advantage of Steam's APIs and extensibility to add or manipulate functions, like AugmentedSteam, SteamDB, SteamSpy, and more.
It's not really something that should be Steam exclusive but they really have been the only launcher even planning for such things from the outset and have only encouraged it. I haven't seen any of the other launchers become able to support so many third party tool integrations, if any at all. I don't think this is something that can just be added to a launcher either, this is something that has to be built-in throughout its design. I think this is something that kind of gets lost when people point to launchers as being nothing more than storefronts with skins—it's something that is true of every launcher except Steam because Steam did not start as a video game storefront but as a way to unify games together behind the scenes.
To be clear, it's not that I'm opposed to EGS or think they won't improve. It's just that I think people have started thinking about Steam the wrong way because of what the market looks like. The reason it's so successful and widespread is because it's specifically not trying to compete with other storefronts and launchers.
It certainly helps that Steam provides a public API to query for relevant information. But API's by their nature rely on the community to make them valuable. So they are only as valuable as the market they attract.
For example, GOG seems to also have the endpoints necessary for theoretical SKIF integration. Not as robust as Steam's API's from a glance (there doesn't seem to be exposed sales/player info for a SteamDB kind of plugin), but it has enough of the basics to fetch when an account owns, compare it to its list of supported games, and build an convenient interface around for the user.
But work on that hasn't been done (to my knowledge), likely for the simple reason that a steam integration would take higher priority1 . User-created content can be a powerful motivator, but it won't ever be the motivation to sell your service (see: Dreams on PS4/5).
I do acknowledge that Valve is in a very unique position at the end of the day. It is a truly independent, privately funded company worth billions with a reportedly flat-level organization, under virtually zero obligation to do much more than maintain Steam and some 15+ year old multiplayer servers. This has its downsides, like their game output reducing to 1-2 per decade and overall disorganization on what features to tackle, and when. But overall, it's about as close to a techie's dream studio as you can get. But that ability to experiment came after some early days where they were more focused on making money first; I doubt Gabe Newall started this project off as a billionaire and keep things as loose in 2005 as he does in 2021.
1. unless CDPR decided to pay the API developers to prioritize them, which comes back to a core "issue" causing the Epic v Valve discourse elsewhere. would it be right to acknowledge that you are the less popular service and "bribe" value out from others instead of funding your own auto-HDR competitor? If you don't pay 3rd parties, would an auto-HDR feature even be valuable enough to pay for internally
fwiw, a public API CAN be added in later on. It's ideal to add it sooner rather than later, but not impossible if you fail to do it at launch. But the logistics of maintaining such an external API is a complicated matter.
Of course the platform argument is a temporary one. But my point is by forcing an unpolished platform down people's throats, that leaves a sour taste. My thought would be that a better business model is to finish the platform to a point where it can theoretically stand on its own and all that's holding you back is network effects / lock in effects. Then, you need to break that by aggressively pushing your product. That would work, and it wouldn't piss people off nearly as much.
But that's not what they did. They decided that they should agressively push their store when there was pretty much only their own games and a few exclusives on there, and when their software was half-baked.
Remains to be seen how much of a grudge gamers are going to carry. I can easily imagine people sticking with the resentment, because fuck epic that's why. (No judgement on whether that's a good attitude) It doesn't help that Epic as a developer have next to no goodwill with the community because basically all they did recently was fortnite and their store. Valve on the other hand created and continues to create a lot of really good games that afford them a lot more credibility.
[I'm not arguing for these views as my own. Some of them I do hold, some of them not. But I can easily imagine a lot of gamers (and Gamers in particular) holding these views.
I suppose my main point is that the grudges are either temporary, or ultimately eclipsed by the apathetic or unknowing audience. Steam wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms either, back in the days where PC consumers preferred physical media. This would be far, far, FAR from the first time the "less generous" company would become a viable competitor to a scene, and if EGS does shutter I doubt the reason for doing so would amount to "they didn't put in a shopping cart fast enough".
But I'll admit as a developer I have my own biases. They provide one of the most popular third party engines in the industry, have decades of games under their belt, and have provided some major grants to open source initatives, no strings attached. The current discourse reminds me a bit of late 00's/early '10's Microsoft, in the days where consumers feel they killed everything they touched (Skype was the big one). But developers always had a relatively smooth experience with the company, even in more rocky times with consumers. It's much easier to turn about public opinion than rekindle a business relationship.
(as an aside, it does slightly sting everytime I read reports saying "Fortnite developer Epic Games", this article included. like that is their biggest accomplishment in 25 years).
I would think the next logical step in their strategy is build up enough of a catalogue to offer a subscription like gamepass. I could see them continuing with the free games, but offer an EGS premium pass for the exclusives on their store or a select group of top AAA games. Gamepass has proven this works very well and with multiple publishers going this route it would make sense for epic to jump on that business.Epic has always been very good at sustainability of their individual services, unreal engine and the unreal marketplace, fortnite and it’s skins and mtx’s, and most likely egs and it’s subscription plan.
Since they own Rocket League, Fall Guys, and Fortnite now, I could see them doing some kind cross-game battle pass-like thing, where one purchase gets you MTXs and things in all 3 games. Could be compelling.
I always try to keep distance from all the gaming drama and because of that I'm still out of the loop.
Why is Epic so hated by gamer? (beside the "Fortnite bad" excuses)
This probably isn't a common reason, but personally I hate them for being the worst thing to happen to gaming on linux in over a decade. While valve's spent much of the last few years working on both direct ports and compatibility layers, Epic has actually retroactively _un_ported games from linux by buying them and taking them off steam, making their linux versions inaccessible from the windows and Mac exclusive EGS, the most prominent example being rocket league.
That's a long and dramatic history spanning 2 years, but if I had to try and summarize it:
These were the big ones I can gather. There's a LOT of drama out there, but I want to try and be impartial to the side you asked about. Anyone who feels like these resonate with them, feel free to point out anything I missed or embellished. It's not my intention to do the latter.
Epic opened a new online store front called the Epic Game Store (EGS) and decided that the best course of action to gain market share was buying out exclusives. At the start they even bought out games that were very close to release (e.g. Metro: Exodus), where the Steam page was retroactively taken down and a bunch of other games which were announced and then changed course.
As you can imagine, it makes you very unpopular, especially because the set of features on the EGS is incredibly small. Last time I used it, it didn't even have a shopping cart, you had to buy everything one by one.
They mention over and over how much they have lost, which is around ~600M, keep in mind that Epic just last year made 9.6 billion in 2020 with $3.85 billion in profit and that is up 46% YoY.
This is scrap for them, Epic Store could remain a loss leader for the next decade and they will be just fine, and that is their goal to be competitive. They likely bring in more money through people downloading the Epic store to get a exclusive, and then going ahead and playing and spending money in an Epic game. They are making all the right calls, even if this article seems to be trying to be a secretive hit piece.
If I recall correctly, when online shopping was really starting to boom, Amazon intentionally reduced their prices on their store to make themselves seem cheaper than the competition, even though it was done at a loss. I distinctly remember there being quite a lot of major online retaillers selling stuff online and Amazon just dwarfed them due to competitive pricing. Stores now exist, but a lot of big chains had to close down due to competition from Amazon.
Hell, Amazon has perfected the strategy so much that they appear to be the cheaper option even in the rare cases that they blatantly are not. It definitely is a strategy and it absolutely can work. Hell, I got a few games on Epic Store that I really wouldn't have bothered on Steam due to cheap pricing (RDR2 for example). Not only that, but it's clear that Epic Games have been funding games that other publishers either struggle to or outright refuse to fund.
That's not to say that EG are without criticism - their crunch culture - especially around Fortnite - is barbaric and disgusting. And their efforts of rapidly expanding has meant that a lot of the features in the store is painfully missing or broken (I remember trying to change my email address and it couldn't handle something that trivial). Also while I do respect someone "sticking up" to Apple, I really wish it wasn't EG as it's so obviously clear that they want all of the money to their benefit, and aren't really fighting Apple "for the small guys" as they try to make it out to be whereas smaller indie devs want to survive on Apple's platform without all the mess (myself included).
But like others said, this article isn't the best take.
I really, really try to cast aside my past biases for modern journalism when seeing headlines and knowing that they aren't always made by the author, appeal to SEO, etc. But man, articles like these make me glad I no longer need to click on Kotaku just to read Jason Schreier's interesting pieces.
There wasn't much new insight here past the title, as expected. A company entering into a competitive and expensive middleman role spends a lot of money early on and loses profits in hope of long term gains. All presented with a negative editorial twist despite this being relatively normal process. Happened with YouTube (and may still be happening), happened with Amazon, happening with Uber, happening with Twitter.
It will be interesting to see if this can pay off and if Epic will stay in the game long enough to potentially profit, but outside of that speculation I don't see much of a smoking gun that other... "invested" critics of Epic may interpret from this news. I can't exactly think of a better way to compete in the gaming market, and other ventures have proven that "competing on features" alone (the most common complaint against EGS) won't break people away from a service they invested in. And we're certainly well past the days where even a large publisher can create 20 exclusives a year for their storefront.