The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[crazy canuck]

The new Anno 1800 game, however, looks fucking ace.

Yeah, I eagerly await that release

[Syt]

For those who care about these things: Anno 1800, as a UbiSoft game, will be exclusive to Epic Games Store and uPlay.

[garbon]

For those who care about these things: Anno 1800, as a UbiSoft game, will be exclusive to Epic Games Store and uPlay.

Though apparently if you pre-purchase on Steam that'll allow you to have on Steam and dev has promised Valve support for those customers with dlc, etc.

[Zoupa]

What's the big nerd meltdown about Epic getting exclusives? Can someone break it down for me, because I don't understand the outrage. All i could gather was that folks didn't want to have an extra launcher. Big deal.

[Solmyr]

What's the big nerd meltdown about Epic getting exclusives? Can someone break it down for me, because I don't understand the outrage. All i could gather was that folks didn't want to have an extra launcher. Big deal.

The Epic launcher is also crap and does shady things on your PC without your permission.

[Syt]

I don't think "another launcher" is a problem. I have Uplay, Origin, GOG, Steam, Battle.net, and launcher-less games I bought directly from the devs (you're welcome, Tamas ).

I think people were in general happy when Epic first said they want to become a competitor to Steam. People have been complaining about Steam for year, especially since they opened the floodgates to all kinds of garbage (I'd like to think there could be a happy medium between overly restrictive curation as existed in the past and letting everyone in). It's also great that they offer a bigger cut of the revenue to developers publishers. On top of it, they're well placed to take on the juggernaut - they have deep pockets (thanks to Fortnite) and they have a huge existing user base (thanks to Fortnite).

So when people heard they wanted to compete with Steam, they expected something along the lines of, "like Steam, but better", or "without the garbage".

What was delivered was a barebones shop that didn't even have a search function or two factor authentication until recently. It still doesn't have features like user reviews, wishlists, shopping carts, forums (game specific or otherwise), mod support etc. A lot of this is on their recently published road map, but it looks like it will be 6-12 months until they have a fully featured store at which time it might be a joy to use. If they had waited another year to finish the shop and release it fully featured, I think acceptance would have been higher.

Epic CEO has said that what will win the battle will not be a better store, but getting devs to use Epic exclusively. Now, Steam has a quasi-monopoly, because a lot of devs find it, overall, convenient to use for their distribution, but they never had any exclusivity deals like Epic is signing them with publishers right now. If someone wanted to sell their game outside of Steam, they were ok with it. However, Epic's brute force approach is rubbing a lot of people the wrong way (I'm sure a lot of people won't care either way). It's especially galling in some cases, where a game is available for pre-order on Steam and then becomes a timed exclusive on Epic (at least they said they'd honor existing pre-orders). Or in the case of a Kickstarter game that promised their backers GOG or Steam keys (backer's choice) and now is a timed Epic exclusive (not sure how they resolved this).

Additionally, Epic has been plagued with security issues over the last year or so. There were numerous cases of hacked accounts in the past (as said, they only recently added two factor authentication), recently people said they couldn't register on the store because their email address had already been used (it seems the email confirmation system was spotty), and users have also found Epic to snoop through their Steam contacts lists without authorization. It also took them a few weeks or month to make their shop GDPR compliant. Some people are bothered that Chinese company TenCent is a major investor in Epic now, but to me that's not too problematic.

Might be that we're seeing teething problems of what will end up to be a great store. Mostly they seem keen on squandering the initial goodwill that a lot of people had towards them.

[garbon]

I remember back when I was very skeptical of steam. Now though it is so easy. What advantage is there for me as a consumer to learn a new platform that is likely clunky and unintuitive?

[crazy canuck]

For those who care about these things: Anno 1800, as a UbiSoft game, will be exclusive to Epic Games Store and uPlay.

Though apparently if you pre-purchase on Steam that'll allow you to have on Steam and dev has promised Valve support for those customers with dlc, etc.

I have it on my Steam wish list. Just checked it and this message appears:

Notice: Sales of Anno 1800 will be discontinued on Steam after April 16th due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store.

The publisher has assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam.

We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale after the April 16th release date.

[viper37]

What advantage is there for me as a consumer to learn a new platform that is likely clunky and unintuitive?

that's why they force exclusive deals...

EA did the same with Origin.  I hated it.

[garbon]

Yeah, Origin is an example of an awful, clunky platform (or at least was when I was forced to use it for Inquisition).

[Josquius]

Rather than all these different  platforms the steam competitors ought to get together and come up with an independent platform. That's the only way steam will be defeated.

[Tamas]

I am sure there are valid reasons to dislike the Epic store but I remember the same level of aggravation when Steam started to become a platform hard to avoid.

[The Brain]

Wake me when Epic becomes hard to avoid.

[Iormlund]

Rather than all these different  platforms the steam competitors ought to get together and come up with an independent platform. That's the only way steam will be defeated.

They don't want to defeat Steam. They want to become Steam.

[crazy canuck]

If that happens, I can live with checking two sites