An Epic Problem (The Jimquisition)

Its a shame, civility is so hard to find on the internet.

Afflickted

Man, I dropped out of this race so long ago. I hardly have time to play games, and none whatsoever for games I need the internet for.... the net drops so often in my area it may as well be a daylight service.

Trevor Bond

Is it known, what is the split GOG offers to devs?

Lauma

On the flipside there are small towns that refused to let a Walmart be built and the small businesses there tanked anyways(Penn and Teller: Bullshit dedicated an entire episode to Walmart and Penn visited his hometown of Garrison, MA which refused to build a Walmart and we see the streets lined with closed up businesses) I mostly play on consoles so I don't really have a dog in this Steam vs Epic fight.

RedBedroomRecords

Definatly agree with Jim, I like to play epic games.

TinaUniverse

That's a shame, about your Ooblets video. I liked that one. But I understand wanting to remove yourself from that discussion once it's turned that ugly and rotten.

Ben L.

Wal-Mart has a reputation for moving into small towns, using their company's financial resources to drop their prices beneath those of local stores, and then raising the prices again once their competition has been forced out of business. Epic's tactics have a similar ring... And I have to wonder if their generous revenue split would outlast the demise of Steam by even a couple of months. This is the first I had heard of Epic *demanding* exclusivity to sell games on their storefront at all. That's really grim. Thank you for bringing that to light. "Darq" is available on GOG, for those who might want to bypass Steam or avoid DRM; I hope that a refusal to play along with Epic's tactics becomes an effective marketing tool of its own. I've gone this long without putting Origin on my computer. I'm not putting Epic's launcher on, either. I'm not a strict Steam loyalist by any stretch of the imagination (note the reference to GOG, among others...), but companies that think they can strong-arm me rather than courting me need a reminder that they're offering an entertainment product, not a necessity.

Kraken

That ending is everything I needed in my life today.

Flamie

He tweeted about it earlier too, so it's a safe bet he is.

Hansbert Emmer

I'm a bit surprised Epic actually turned down money that they would've gotten from selling those games.

RedBedroomRecords

Have you heard about Respawn devs mocking people who have legitimate problems with Apex's monetization? That kind of ties into what you were saying about the Ooblets devs, as a lot of the comments on sites like Polygon are conflating legit criticism of the devs and this shady business model as gamers being "whiny and entitled manchildren" and i've seen them trot out bullshit defenses of lootboxes like "just don't buy them" or "it's just cosmetic" Don't read the comments of the Polygon article unless you don't mind losing some IQ points.

RedBedroomRecords

Honestly, I don't see it. As far as I can tell, both devs in question had no issues with Epic's stance. Epic made an offer, it didn't suit them; in one case the dev made a counter offer, that didn't suit Epic. End of story. I really don't see anything wrong about Epic saying they only want to sell a game if they can do so exclusively. Sure, if you contrast it to the idea that Epic's ultimate aims are purely philanthropic, then it might seem a bit hypocritical, but everyone knows that's bollocks, they're a company. I think framing it as ultimatums and strong-arming is pushing it.

Does that little fanfare at the end mean you're playing Grandia at the moment Jim? That was my favourite game when I was younger.