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Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
This is the single most complete set of bad faith arguments I've ever seen in my life. Let me finish this league game, because this needs properly addressed.
 
Nothing bad faith about it, Valve doesn't have any moral high ground here.

They're not defenders of consumers and have done plenty of awful shit. It's just far enough in the past that people have either forgotten about it, or are just used to it. The devil you know and all that.

It amazes me now much bending over backwards for revisionism to excuse the various bullshit Steam has pulled just to make them seem like they are the good guys in this scenario is going on.

It's like being back in 2001 again, hearing about how the evil giant mega corporation Microsoft was going to ruin video games with their new console forever, out spending and pushing out poor companies of the people and underdogs Sony and Nintendo by burying them with exclusives. All those horrible things Microsoft did in the past were going to just infect the pure video game market! Boo-fucking-hoo!

Epic is treating Steam the way Steam has treated everyone else in the industry for the last decade at least. It's hard to be mad about that.

It was Steam's own complacency and policies that led to this even being possible. They dug the hole, and Epic came along and is using it against them.

Steam literally introduced the concept of launcher based exclusives in the first place. Why it happened isn't really relevant, the impact on consumers is the exact same. For all the cries about how Epic is "taking away choice", Steam had already done so long ago for tons of titles. There are a huge number of games you have to have Steam to play on PC. They literally invented this game.

What Epic is doing is working, and no one but a handful of hardcore hardliners with a personal beef with Epic are going to boycott them, and it will amount to nothing because that isn't that many people.

Gamers don't have patience, backbones, or principals as a culture. If they did, we wouldn't still have microtransactions, pre-orders, patch culture, loot boxes, enough editions to need a spreadsheet to keep track of, DRM, early access games, digital downloads [remember when everyone was going to boycott digital to save physical copies that we "own"? Pepperidge Farm remembers,] or any of the other bullshit they were going to boycott and take a stand against.

I could see maybe one of those games as an absolute long shot boycott working, but all of them is a snowball's chance in hell. Pretty much no one outside of those handful of hardcore folks I mentioned above is going to wait however long those timed exclusives last to play them. It's not going to make any difference.

Epic is going to be just fine, and so is Steam. I don't have time to waste being butthurt, and I'd rather play Borderlands 3 and Outer Worlds than care and waste time worrying about "principals" regarding two equally evil mega corporations that are only concerned with their bottom lines. Both are evil, and neither is particularly lesser to any real degree.

I've ridden this train far too many times, and I've already seen where the ride ends. I'd just as soon save my fare and go about my business, thanks.

Nearly everyone will calm down accept it eventually, just like they did with Steam, and Microsoft, and whatever other shifts of paradigm we've adjusted to in the games industry. I'm just skipping the "pissed off" stage and moving on to acceptance ahead of a lot of other people because I've seen this nonsense before and just don't feel like bothering with it this time.



You can say you personally won't, but that doesn't really impact what everyone else will do.

This is not about what anyone wants to happen, it's about what realistically will most likely happen.
 
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Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
Regarding the whole "racism" nonsense...

I'm pretty sure you know better than that. You've shown that you are aware enough of the topic to be aware of the accusations flying around regarding Epic and Tencent and the context of them.

My comment was referencing global politics and the modern "red scare". It's about the numerous accusations of espionage regarding Tencent being an actor and data gathering for the Chinese government, and accusations that Epic is complicit and enabling it. Accusations that thus far have no real evidence and seem to be little more than attempts to prey on people's political biases, and the new chilled pre-post-war slap fight.

That has nothing to do with anyone's ethnicity. Accusing the Russians of espionage by way of election tampering doesn't make someone racist against Russians, and that's true regardless of how much truth there is to the allegations. This is no different.

It's not "*Gasp* CHINESE PEOPLE!"

It's "*Gasp* COMMUNISTS!"

You can go fuck yourself for falsely trying to tie it to racism.
Falsely? You're the one who started the entire fucking racism narrative. Don't try to toss that on me, I just said Epic was scummy, which they are, and you suddenly started crying about China.

Moving on to everything else...

Valve got lucky that it wasn't worse than it was, that's all. The point is they are not immune to the same kinds of issues that every other online service might experience for various reasons.

There have been several large data breaches at Valve over the past several years, often involving financial information, usually by way of hacking. Valve itself said back in 2015 that around 77,000 accounts are hacked every month, and at the time said that number was growing. That means probably at least around a million accounts are hacked per year. That can be defined as "secure" exactly why?
Are you ignorant, or just intentionally misleading here? There's a difference between an account getting hacked because of poor user security, and because of poor VALVe security. 77k accounts get hacked every month because users are dumb, VALVe isn't fucking leaking 70k+ fucking accounts every month jesus christ.

It took ten years for them to patch a known bug in the client that allowed remote access to user's PCs.
It also took 10 years for dedicated security researchers to find it, and it was never actually exploited, and the second it was brought to their attention, they fixed it, iirc in less than a day. That's an ABSURD turnaround!

You are not "safer" on Steam than you are on any other service.
PS Online says hi with their plaintext passwords that get leaked every other year. In all it's years of running, there has been a SINGLE breach in Steam that was actually VALVe's fault- in 2011, there was a hack that allowed a single malicious entity access to a database that had usernames, hashed+salted passwords (which, if they were trying to crack those, they should accomplish that by about the year 2260), game purchases, email addresses, billing address (the big no-no here) and encrypted CC information (which will be decrypted by... possibly the heat death of the universe. Assuming you have access to a supercomputer cluster. Or five.)

Within an hour of the breach they shut the whole thing down, fixed it, then announced it. Also, they said there's no evidence any information was actually exfiltrated, and in all the years past that data has never shown up, not in any collections, not in any darkweb sales, nothing, not even a mention of anyone having it- which means that with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, more than likely no data WAS exfiltrated, they caught the intrusion fast enough.

That's it. One breach, on a properly encrypted table, with proper data seperation, that gave away pretty much just billing addresses, and the entire thing was dealt with quickly and professionally, in 15 years. Steam has, by far, the best security history of any distribution platform.

Also, "class act"? You're seriously remembering that with rose colored glasses.
Remembering what? The CDN cache data breach that VALVe had nothing to do with, refused to name and shame the company, took responsibility for it even though there was literally nothing they could have done other than run their own CDN? Or do you mean the 10 year bug, which they had no reason to even disclose, yet the responsibly disclosed it (responsible disclosure is a huge deal in the security world) after they fixed it, and then allowed the security researchers that found it full credit when that's NOT standard?

Funnily, people said the same things about Steam's "anti-competitive" and "anti-consumer" practices when Fallout NV launched, followed by numerous other games that required Steam to run on PC. Look how that turned out.
Pretty well? NV fans were bitching because there was DRM and none of them understood how to mod, and there was a lot of assumptions that Steam wouldn't allow them to mod, they couldn't lend it to friends, and there was no manual, it owuld be more expensive, that it would be always-online. Except, surprise surprise, steam's DRM is one of the lightest around, it's not always online, it's not more expensive, and certainly doesn't stop modding- hell, workshop's entire point is modding. It was an over-reaction that was tempered to realism after it launched. And frankly, the rest of the shit like box copies and manuals isn't VALVe's fault, take that up with Bethesda/Obsidian.

I've seen and heard all this before, directed at Valve. This is the same shit, on a different day. I see no reason that the end result will not be the same.
Yeah, a decade and a half ago, when text messaging still costs money, AIM was the primary communication tool if you weren't using Xfire, and Google was barely out of diapers. Things change over time, lessons are learned.... except not only is epic's launcher making the same mistakes Steam did a decade and a half later, they're adding security problems on top of it.

My issue isn't the idea that Epic sucks, because they absolutely do. My problem is the double standard falsehood that Steam doesn't and is somehow better or safer. They absolutely are not.
You are factually and categorically wrong, as proven all throughout this post.

There is no "good guy" in this scenario, it is two huge lawful evil entities competing that don't give a fuck about anything but their own bottom lines. The only real difference is that one is more established than the other and we've grown accustomed to their bullshit and have had time to get over it.
No. VAVLe has proven, time and time again, that given the option between an option A that greatly benefits VALVe or an option B that slightly benefits VALVe but ALSO benefits consumers, they will choose option B every time. One only needs to look at the sheer amount of money they've pumped into open source projects.

The only reason I'm even slightly for the situation at all is because of the effective monopoly Steam has, and the problems it is creating. Despite what some might argue, GoG, Uplay, and Origin aren't enough to say that isn't true. Just because they don't have a literal monopoly, does not mean that they do not basically have complete control of the market just due to how much of it they control.
And have they ever abused that monopoly? Forced exclusives? Denied you access to your games? Refused refunds? There's a reason GoG, Uplay, and Origin haven't broken their monopoly, and it's not because of anti-competitive practices from VALVe.

Epic is a shitty company too, but the two of them being in direct and serious competition may actually force them both to be slightly less shitty as they vie for the attention of consumers and be better for the overall industry.
Except all Epic is doing is being shitty towards consumers to try and force them away from Steam, who is responding by.... continuing to not be shitty, even in the face of Epic Game's CEO publicly taunting VALVe. Like, how much 'less shitty' are you wanting VALVe to become here? They aren't going to give out free games, they've never forced exclusives, they don't jack up prices, they have one of the greatest gaming refunds policies of all time, they engage the community and dump money into open source that increase consumer freedom of options. What are you wanting from them?

I don't want Epic to "win", because that would mean they would take over Steam's effective monopoly and they'd be just as bad if not worse once they had that position. What I want is a stalemate, which would be better for the market overall and could lead to others having a better chance to grow and compete as well.

I still maintain that if Steam is left in the position it has unchallenged, we're heading for another games collapse just like the one that happened in '83, for the exact same reasons, because Valve apparently has no concept of hindsight.
The gaming collapse of '83 was because of lack of regulations, lack of oversight, and trying to force games on consumers by limiting choice even when the market had shown what it wanted.

Would I prefer to see someone besides Epic do it?

Sure, but Epic is pretty much the only one bothering with even attempting it at all and I think we need that second big storefront to be there and wrest the near total control of the digital distribution market Valve has away from them for the sake of a healthy market long term more than I dislike Epic as a company. Epic is pretty much the only one to ever even really threaten to be a contender, Origin and Uplay never even came close.
Again, you're project some kind of near-fanatical hatred towards either VALVe or VALVe's dominant position and assuming it's 'bad' for the gaming market.

If simply being a good service was enough, GoG would already be in that position. We've seen how that has worked out.

Epic isn't even really the worst option. Better them than EA, Activision/Blizzard, or god forbid, the fucking Yakuza money laundering scheme, otherwise known as "Konami".
I mean, yes, of course, Genghis fucking Khan could ressurect himself and force you to buy games he publishes at axe-point, that doesn't make Epic any less shitty. This isn't even a valid argument.

At any rate, at the end of the day, if someone is really that worried about their personal information and security, they need to just stop buying things online period.
As apparently the only person in this conversation that understands PII, that's not how that works. At all.


The tl;dr of this is that you seem to think VALVe cannot be trusted with any kind of virtual digital distribution monopoly, and that anything justifies Epic's actions since they're attempting to break it. VALVe has had this monopoly for over a decade, and has done nothing with it but tried to move gaming forward. Epic's very first actions on getting money has been to play fast and loose with customer data, disregard customer opinions, and force an exclusivity war on gamers who have traditionally mocked the very concept.. VALVe can, in my opinion, be trusted to hold gaming together until a true competitor emerges. Pinning all your hopes on Epic while ignoring their etiquette in the gaming community, will be bad for gaming.

Just wait for a better competitor, VALVe isn't going to ruin PC gaming any time soon.
 
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[Clipped for size.]

Absolutely falsely. I already explained why. Simply mentioning China does not equate to racism or accusations of racism, and it is clear in the context of the discussion that I was referencing the Chinese government because of Tencent. There are, thus far unsupported, allegations of espionage going about regarding Epic and Tencent, the latter of which you brought up.

If it's any "-ism" it's nationalism, not racism.

I am not dumb enough to believe that you did not know about that considering how you've obviously been keeping up with this topic and it is nearly impossible to have missed it if you have. I'm not playing the offended snowflake game with you. In fact, I can't see a reasonable conclusion someone could make where mentioning "China" would be taken that way in the context I used it.

Nobody called you a racist, and I have run out of fucks to give regarding this particular subject beyond that. Be offended about it if you must, it is no longer my problem at this point.

See my reply above your last post for more detail about some of my points here.

We're kind of moving off point with a lot of this and getting bogged down.

At any rate, you're jumping through a lot of hoops to put up as many excuses for Valve's failings as you can dig up.

I would also point out that I have repeatedly said that Epic is not any better. So this isn't about valiant Knight Epic taking down the evil Dragon Valve for the fate of the PC games industry.

You're making it sound like I'm choosing one over the other, or taking a side, and that isn't the case at all. I don't have to make that kind of decision. This is not a case where I have to choose an Xbox 1 or PS4 because I can only afford one or the other. I get to have both if I want and it doesn't cost me a damn thing extra, and I'm perfectly okay with that. That's kind of my entire point.

I don't "hate Valve" I just see them as what they are, a mega corporation. All mega corporations are lawful evil by default.

I buy shit from plenty of mega corporations despite that, including Valve, and will continue to do so.

I'm also not dumb enough to trust any mega corporation. They are not looking out for my interests.

I see no reason to treat Epic any differently.

I'm just being realistic about what will happen and have already gotten over it.

This isn't about what anyone wants to happen, it's about what likely will happen based on past experience.

That scenario is as follows:

Gamers make a lot of noise, and then Epic succeeds anyway. Steam is also fine.

We have another storefront, people buy games from it. It will build up over time, do shitty things on occasion, other times it will do halfway decent things for good PR, and Steam will do the same. Both will continue to be fine.

Most people won't care about anything you mentioned. Things will stabilize, features will be built up, more and more people will warm up to the Epic Store.

Some people will never buy anything from Epic regardless of how well they do in the future as a service.

That will be about as effective as the people who don't buy anything from EA.

I'm one of those people by the way, and it's got nothing to do with principle. I just don't want to deal with the nonsense they put in any of the games they publish that I might have wanted to play, so I don't. A shift in their policies could easily change my position, but I don't actually expect that to happen.

I also don't support Konami anymore, but that actually is somewhat based on principal, because as I said above, they are pretty much money laundering for the Yakuza. It's kind of an open secret in Japan really. I'll probably never buy anything from Konami ever again. I don't expect that to destroy the company.

I don't have strong feelings about Epic as a company either way, much like I don't with Valve. I understand the nature of both as corporations, and considering that, both are "fine". I'll do business with them to get things they publish or make that I want, but that's the extent of it. I will never love them, nor would I call myself a "fan" of either.

I am confident that is very likely an accurate assessment. Like I said, I've seen this before, have ridden this outrage train, and have already seen where it lets off. Right back where it started.

You have not encountered fanaticism here, but indifference. I have a finite amount of energy to spend on giving a fuck, and picking a side between Epic and Valve does not come close to warranting a single drop of fuck.

To be clear, I am interested in the topic and how things will turn out regarding the overall situation. I just don't see any good reason to pick a "team". It won't change the outcome, and I'm not really against another storefront that actually competes with Steam. I don't see Epic as any worse than any of the other options that might realistically manage it.
 
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Karnath

Well-Known Member
One of my main problems with Epic is them paying for timed exclusives, If they want exclusives they should pay for their development or make the games themselves. I don't mind console exclusives, heck most of my favourite games are console exclusives but the reason they are exclusive is because the console manufacturer either financed the development or it was made first or second party. Good exclusives are needed in the console race, Xbox hasn't put out a single exclusive this generation that I even remotely care about, if I hadn't received an Xbox One as a gift I wouldn't have one, while Sony has put out multiple high quality games that interest me. When a company pays someone so that their competition won't have the games at launch it just pisses people off.
 
One of my main problems with Epic is them paying for timed exclusives, If they want exclusives they should pay for their development or make the games themselves. I don't mind console exclusives, heck most of my favourite games are console exclusives but the reason they are exclusive is because the console manufacturer either financed the development or it was made first or second party. Good exclusives are needed in the console race, Xbox hasn't put out a single exclusive this generation that I even remotely care about, if I hadn't received an Xbox One as a gift I wouldn't have one, while Sony has put out multiple high quality games that interest me. When a company pays someone so that their competition won't have the games at launch it just pisses people off.
Except that's exactly how timed exclusives work on consoles.

It's why they are timed exclusives to begin with, because they aren't first party games and the console makers didn't finance them. If they had, they would be true exclusives and never migrate to other platforms.

This is why you don't see Mario games ever make their way to Playstation, and why you used to see Rockstar games eventually show up on PC and other consoles after being exclusive on Playstation for a while.

Sony never owned Rockstar, and did not finance their games, they just paid for a timed exclusivity contract. Just like Epic is doing with the exclusives they are renting. None of them are permanent exclusives that I know of outside of what Epic developed themselves, such as Fortnite.

Again, just like how console timed exclusives work. Exactly the same way.

Even a lot of "permanent" exclusive games aren't financed or developed by the console makers. Final Fantasy was "permanently" exclusive to Sony for a long time, and earlier Final Fantasy titles were exclusive to Nintendo prior to that. Square has always been a separate company that financed development themselves. They were never owned by Sony or Nintendo.

They are now a multiplatform developer because they were always an independent company that finances their own development. Pretty much their contract ran out, and they didn't renew for whatever reason.

Epic is doing the exact same thing for the exact same reasons that console makers do it.

Epic isn't even really exclusive in anywhere near the same sense as console exclusives, because with console exclusives you have to buy specific hardware to play exclusive games. Epic "exclusives" will work on any PC that will run Steam. No one has to wait or buy anything new to play them just because they are on the Epic Store. No one has to choose one or the other. You just buy an "exclusive" game from a different digital store, and then play it on the same hardware you play your Steam games on.

In my experience, you can even run games you bought on Epic through the Steam client if you want. I do that with Super Meat Boy and a few other titles like Ashen and Axiom Verge so I can use my Steam Controller to play them. I can also run Subnautica through Steam so I can use Steam's VR support for it as well.
 
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Karnath

Well-Known Member
I hate when anyone pulls paying for timed exclusives. I'm more talking about games like Last of Us and God of War which are made by first party studios owned by Sony, as well as Nintendo's extensive first party catalogue. If a company wants something to be exclusive to them they should have some hand in making it, not just throwing money at the developer until they agree to make it an exclusive.
 
I hate when anyone pulls paying for timed exclusives. I'm more talking about games like Last of Us and God of War which are made by first party studios owned by Sony, as well as Nintendo's extensive first party catalogue. If a company wants something to be exclusive to them they should have some hand in making it, not just throwing money at the developer until they agree to make it an exclusive.
It's something literally everyone in the industry is guilty of though.

Even Steam.

The thing about how they were "DRM" is just an excuse to justify it. They did it for the exact same reasons everyone else does. To get an install base in place by getting their launcher installed, or in the case of consoles getting people to buy the hardware, using exclusives. They also exist to retain consumers so they don't uninstall or sell off the hardware.

Renting or leasing exclusives is a lot cheaper than developing titles. So of course they're going to do that. Sure, a lot do in house development too, but all of them supplement it with 3rd party exclusives because it is cost effective. Developing these big first party games is expensive, and they often barely break even, or even lose money, even when they sell well.

The first party games act as cornerstones for a library, but most of these companies can't afford to build up a library of exclusives big enough to keep consumers consistently engaged by developing them all themselves.

It's not an "anti-consumer" practice, it is just how the industry has always worked.

Before anyone brings up Nintendo, it is important to understand that they really only do one big project every year or two. Most of their first party games aren't that expensive to make. They develop the tech with their big budget titles, the games like the main series Zelda, Mario, and Metroid games, and then sell a lot of small niche titles, side scrolling platfomers, party games, mini game collections, etc... that use that same technology and have very quick and cheap development cycles.

No, not everyone can do that, and even then Nintendo still gets 3rd party exclusives from outside companies.

Even GoG uses exclusives for this purpose, including games they didn't develop and didn't really have to do anything to get them to run on modern systems.

Project Warlock was a timed exclusive on GoG and came out a couple of months before it did on Steam.

Both of The Suffering games are GoG exclusives.

Why single out Epic for this as if they are the only ones who do it, or as if it is somehow something new that wasn't a thing on PC before they came along?

Everyone does this and always has, but for some weird reason Epic is getting singled out for doing what has long been standard practice.
 
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Karnath

Well-Known Member
Because despite what you say about the problems those other launchers have had in the past it is just that and a great many bugs and problems have been fixed over the years, Epic may be having those same problems now but the thing is why would I want to use an inferior launcher that hasn't had all these problems smoothed out.
 
Because despite what you say about the problems those other launchers have had in the past it is just that and a great many bugs and problems have been fixed over the years, Epic may be having those same problems now but the thing is why would I want to use an inferior launcher that hasn't had all these problems smoothed out.
That's a completely separate issue.

It also plays into my point that this is shit people will get over and be fine with down the line once things have settled.

It's just complaining for the sake of complaining because people are just used to shit being how it is now and getting used to new shit is annoying at first.

If you don't want to use the launcher because you think it needs time to develop, then don't, but that's on no one but you.

Within a year or so all those problems will be fixed just like with the other launchers. So the end result, if you want to wait for whatever reason, is having to wait a bit to play something, which is a minor inconvenience at worst and something PC gamers do all the time.

How many people didn't play GTA V for months after it was released because it was a console exclusive?

How many of them are complaining about it now?

What Epic is doing is completely normal within the industry and has been since the home game market came into existence. Atari, Coleco, Apple, IBM, and Intelevison were all doing the same thing back in the 70s and 80s.

None of this is new, and I see no reason why it won't go just like it always has. Epic "wins", Steam is fine anyway, and the vast majority of us get over it and move on with a new place to get games from. In the end nothing is really any worse than it is now.
 
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chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
Steam literally introduced the concept of launcher based exclusives in the first place. Why it happened isn't really relevant, the impact on consumers is the exact same. For all the cries about how Epic is "taking away choice", Steam had already done so long ago for tons of titles. There are a huge number of games you have to have Steam to play on PC. They literally invented this game.
I just want to highlight this. Because it's true. Steam was the first to introduce, or at least the first to make it popular. But ... it's hard to be mad at the for it. PC gaming as a market would not exist without the steam launcher to act as a walled garden of-sorts. Consoles have that naturally due to custom-ish hardware.

The concept of "ownership" - you buy something which no-one can take away, only exists on consoles with disk or cartridge purchases. It troubles me that there is an industry trying to push consumers towards "licenses" instead.

While I'm personally not happy to install too many launchers on my PC, I really hope Epic succeeds. And after that, hopefully we'll have multiple stores on our phones too. The entire Google/Apple monopoly that exists there makes me too uncomfortable.

-chronodekar
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
Steam literally introduced the concept of launcher based exclusives in the first place.
I would just like to highlight this because it's a blatant, baldfaced lie. The only games that are 'exclusive' to steam are only exclusive because their owners (typically indies) didn't sell them anywhere else. There's never been contracted exclusivity.

Hell, VALVe's own games aren't even exclusive on Steam- nearly all of them have console releases, and they were all on Origin too. (VALVe removed them from Origin after EA pulled all their games from Steam- something which, I'll remind you, every owner has the right to do- VALVe does not contract or lock you into Steam, timed or otherwise.)
 
I would just like to highlight this because it's a blatant, baldfaced lie. The only games that are 'exclusive' to steam are only exclusive because their owners (typically indies) didn't sell them anywhere else. There's never been contracted exclusivity.

Hell, VALVe's own games aren't even exclusive on Steam- nearly all of them have console releases, and they were all on Origin too. (VALVe removed them from Origin after EA pulled all their games from Steam- something which, I'll remind you, every owner has the right to do- VALVe does not contract or lock you into Steam, timed or otherwise.)
Fallout New Vegas alone proves that is false. Do you seriously think they released that game exclusively on Steam without a contract? A reminder, it wasn't just the digital release, but also physical copies, which easily could have used any number of other options for DRM, including simply requiring that the disk be in the tray to authenticate and run the game, which wasn't unusual at the time.

It doesn't matter why in the end, as it was effectively the same result for consumers. You play on Steam, or don't play the game on PC at all. It was taking a choice away from consumers, and a much bigger one than the one Epic is supposedly "taking away" from consumers now. That choice that was taken from consumers was being able to buy a physical copy that would run without Steam. You couldn't just install and run the game using only the disk. Steam was not optional.

Again, we went through all this back then. The same outrage, the same "boycott", the same everything. Then we got over it, and Steam was fine. Still is in fact.

If we're allowing console releases into this, then you're shooting your own argument in the foot by doing so, as all of the Epic "exclusives" are also getting console releases on the same day they launch on Epic. Suddenly they aren't so "exclusive" anymore which pretty much destroys your point of contention regarding "exclusivity" entirely.

In fact, everything about your post contradicts the entire argument you've put forth so far. Every owner of the rights to the games that are "exclusive" on the Epic store has the right to make those deals. Epic didn't force anyone into those deals and both sides were well within their rights to make them.

Why should they not have the right to sell their games where and how they want based on whatever deals they want to make? Why shouldn't they take Epic's deal if they think it's better for them than the one Steam is offering?
 
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Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
Fallout New Vegas alone proves that is false. Do you seriously think they released that game exclusively on Steam without a contract? A reminder, it wasn't just the digital release, but also physical copies, which easily could have used any number of other options for DRM, including simply requiring that the disk be in the tray to authenticate and run the game, which wasn't unusual at the time.
You've literally devolved to making shit up and admitting it. You have absolutely zero proof that VALVe has ever once made a exclusivity contract with anyone- which is hilarious, given your strident pleas that exclusivity contracts 'aren't actually all that bad.' JUst admit you have a narrative, and that narrative is trying to pretend VALVe is evil. Did you get VAC banned for cheating or something? Is that what this is about?

It doesn't matter why in the end, as it was effectively the same result for consumers. You play on Steam, or don't play the game on PC at all. It was taking a choice away from consumers, and a much bigger one than the one Epic is supposedly "taking away" from consumers now. That choice that was taken from consumers was being able to buy a physical copy that would run without Steam. You couldn't just install and run the game using only the disk. Steam was not optional.
I like how, with ZERO EVIDENCE that VALVe has ever even forced an exclusivity contract, you have decided that VALVe's mythical exclusivity contract is worse than Epic Games doing so and then gloating about it.

If we're allowing console releases into this, then you're shooting your own argument in the foot by doing so, as all of the Epic "exclusives" are also getting console releases on the same day they launch on Epic. Suddenly they aren't so "exclusive" anymore which pretty much destroys your point of contention regarding "exclusivity" entirely.
Interesting attempt to sidestep the actual point- there were never exlusivity contracts from VALVe, as proven by the multiple releases everywhere available. The fact that Epic's exclusivity contract allowed consoles specifically to indicate they were trying to wave their dick at VALVe does not change my point, and only makes that point that Epic Games are a bunch of morons bad for the gaming industry. I also see you pointedly ignoring the part about Origin because it doesn't fit your narrative.

In fact, everything about your post contradicts the entire argument you've put forth so far. Every owner of the rights to the games that are "exclusive" on the Epic store has the right to make those deals. Epic didn't force anyone into those deals and both sides were well within their rights to make them.
Wow what a strawman! Are you intentionally making shit up, or is your reading comprehension outright failing you? Did you only read every other word of my post? You are, once again, either intentionally arguing in bad faith, or just intentionally bullshitting to try and force your argument. I never said jack fuck all about Epic 'forcing' people into contracts. In fact, I was pointing out exactly that- nobody is forcing people into any kind of exclusivity contracts, which makes it all the striking that VALVe has taken such a stand, given how lucrative they are.

Why should they not have the right to sell their games where and how they want based on whatever deals they want to make? Why shouldn't they take Epic's deal if they think it's better for them than the one Steam is offering?
At this point you've completely derailed into trying to argue your strawman.

As I've said, VALVe does not do contracts that say 'you can only release the games on XYZ,' which Epic does, locking them into a timed exclusivity contract. VALVe has not done that, and has spoken against that sort of thing. Straight up, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
 
Only one of us has a clear bias here, and it isn't me.

You've already admitted to having a hate boner for Epic, and it's clear that's influencing your position.

You're making a lot of bald claims about contracts you've never seen and don't have access to, and are ignoring the effective results of Steam's past practices based on the flimsy justification that "you can't prove that the contracts explicitly stated it".

You also can't prove that they didn't. That's semantics though. We don't know what the details of those contracts were at the time, or whether they included restrictions on distribution. I would be surprised if they didn't on at least some level, but that's not really relevant to the point.

It doesn't matter whether Steam had signed exclusivity deals or not, what they did had effectively the same result on consumers. That's all that matters. They normalized it a decade ago, whether you like the way it sounds or not.

I would also point out that I am not "dumping" on Steam and am in no way saying they are worse than Epic, that I want them to fail, nor do I really have anything against them. I have a lot of games on Steam, and will continue to buy games from there. While Steam has done some not so consumer friendly things, their existence also brought a lot of benefits, and overall probably helped the PC gaming market more than they harmed it.

That doesn't mean their shit doesn't stink though, or that continuing to forge on as they are now is going to continue to benefit the market long term.

I also don't see any good reason not to buy games from Epic, be they exclusives or just a better deal. I don't care who likes it and am not on any sort of crusade against Steam because of it. I just don't see them as a worse option, both have plenty of problems with their policies and business practices, and I don't see one as particularly worse than the other.

Neither is "good". Both are corporations, big businesses more concerned with their bottom line than anything else. Neither should be trusted, though both can be dealt with. In either case I need to look out for my own interests when dealing with them, because neither is going to do it for me.

I'm not taking a position where I have to choose one or the other, I don't have to. There is no team here, this isn't a sports match where I'm rooting for one or the other, and I owe neither any loyalty. The only reason I might seem negative towards Steam overall is because I'm dealing with you being an apologist.

For all your bluster, you've still yet to come up with a compelling reason why I'm wrong about how this is probably going to go down.

It's clear how you want it to go, that's hard to miss, but that isn't really relevant in regard to what will most likely actually happen.
 
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Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
Only one of us has a clear bias here, and it isn't me.
Laughable.

You've already admitted to having a hate boner for Epic, and it's clear that's influencing your position.
You seem to be making the mistake of thinking that 'reasonable dislike for a company's actions that harm consumers' equals a hateboner. No, I dislike them because they take actions that harm consumers and the gaming industry as a whole. They will not get my money, and I will advise other to vote with their wallet as well.

You're making a lot of bald claims about contracts you've never seen and don't have access to, and are ignoring the effective results of Steam's past practices based on the flimsy justification that "you can't prove that the contracts explicitly stated it".
Oh yes, let's just pretend that the same company who has been offering interest free, no strings attached loans- so devs have options other than exclusivity contracts- for over half a decade is just knee deep in exclusivity contracts. And when I say no strings attached, I mean no strings attached. You can use that money and never release it on steam, that's *explicitly* allowed.

It doesn't matter whether Steam had signed exclusivity deals or not, what they did had effectively the same result on consumers. That's all that matters. They normalized it, whether you like the way it sounds or not.
Strawman. This is like saying 'DVD players normalized exclusivity deals! You should be able to play DVDs on your VHS player!'

I would also point out that I am not "dumping" on Steam and am in no way saying they are worse than Epic, that I want them to fail, nor do I really have anything against them. I have a lot of games on Steam, and will continue to buy games from there. While Steam has done some not so consumer friendly things, their existence also brought benefits, and overall probably helped the PC gaming market more than it has harmed it.
Steam has done very few consumer unfriendly things. About the worst thing you can lay at their feet was that they gave publishers easy access to simple, easy DRM that worked, and doesn't really get in the way of consumers. Which, sure, if you're a pirate that sucks, but it's not like this is Denuvo or something, half the time people forget Steam is technically DRM, and statistically at that point you weren't going to be a paying customer anyway. On the other hand, there's a pretty hefty list of things VALVe has done for the gaming community at large, often in ways that don't make them any money at all, and is simply good for gaming. There's also the fact that it's been publically stated, on record, multiple times, that Gabe Newell will unlock the DRM servers if VALVe ever goes under- it's not like you don't own your game through Steam. And yes, he can do that. And yes, this has been re-confirmed multiple times, it wasn't just a 'yeah that'd be nice when we make it big.' There's no shareholders to stop him, and every publisher on steam knows this going into it.

That doesn't mean their shit doesn't stink though, or that continuing to forge on as they are now is going to continue to benefit the market long term.
I'm not saying I wouldn't like a good competitor for Steam, but as I've said- Epic has proven that they aren't worthy, and they won't be good for the gaming community as a competitor.

I also don't see any good reason not to buy games from Epic, be they exclusives or just a better deal. I don't care who likes it and am not on any sort of crusade against Steam because of it. I just don't see them as a worse option, both have plenty of problems with their policies and business practices, and I don't see one as particularly worse than the other.
For someone not on a crusade against Steam, you certainly like to talk about how much you hate Steam and VALVe's policies/actions/non-existent made-up contracts/etc/etc.

Neither is "good". Both are corporations, big businesses more concerned with their bottom line than anything else. Neither should be trusted, though both can be dealt with. In either case I need to look out for my own interests when dealing with them, because neither is going to do it for me.
You do realize one is a publicly traded company with thousands of employees and the other is 300 employees that all work directly for one guy who has spent 20 years dumping his own money into VALVe to make gaming better.... right? I mean sure, at the end of the day, they're both companies, but one of them clearly cares more about it's bottom line than the other, and the entire point of this argument is that VALVe can be trusted with their position in the digital distribution arena until a proper challenger approaches.

I'm not taking a position where I have to choose one or the other, I don't have to. There is no team here, this isn't a sports match where I'm rooting for one or the other, and I owe neither any loyalty. The only reason I might seem negative towards Steam overall is because I'm dealing with you being an apologist.
I just went back to check whether or not you started the negativity towards Steam, and surprise surprise, you were the one who randomly started ranting about Steam when we were all talking about BL3. I also see now where the hateboner for Steam is coming from, you got your own account hacked and you had to go through a whole exercise to prove it was actually you, because they don't want your account hacked because of them.

For all your bluster, you've still yet to come up with a compelling reason why I'm wrong about how this is probably going to go down.

It's clear how you want it to go, that's hard to miss, but that isn't really relevant in regard to what will actually happen.
Nice attempt to move the goalposts again, I'm not even going to allow this potential tangent to start.
 
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We're done here.

I'm not interested in continuing to argue against aggressive apologetics anymore. You want to have a completely different argument from the topic I'm actually discussing, which has really always just been predicting the likely outcome of all this. I've indulged the derailing, probably more than I should have, but the conversation is not going anywhere and you're clearly not interested in anything but having that argument.

I stand by my assessment of the situation.

Epic will probably "win". Their tactics will prove to be effective.

Those tactics are based on what Steam did to get to where it is.

The vast majority of those who are complaining will get over it, just like they always do.

Gamers don't have principals or a backbone as a group. Like I said earlier, if they did we wouldn't have: DLC, digital downloads, microtransactions, loot crates, numerous editions of games, pre-orders, early access, etc... This won't be any different.

People are going to buy games on Epic because they want to play them and have no sense of loyalty to Steam. Especially since it won't cost them anything extra to do so and doesn't require any additional hardware.

Epic will take a little time to get their launcher worked out, but people will warm up to it as they do. The exclusives will do their job and provide an initial install base. By the time the timed exclusives run their course, most people will be satisfied enough with the state of things and just stay with what they have.

Steam will be fine. They aren't "losing customers" most likely, just a portion of some sales. Most people will probably buy games from both stores.

We'll have two big digital store fronts going forward. There will be small groups of hardcore loyalists, most people will just buy from whoever offers the better deal at the time, which will vary.

A lot of people don't like how that sounds, but that doesn't mean it isn't what will most likely happen.

This has nothing to do with what I want. It's not a preference, or a desire. It's simply an objective assessment based past experience, the evidence at hand, and pattern recognition. New information could change my projections at any time, but currently that seems unlikely.

I choose to just accept it rather than bother with the drama this time. I've already seen how that ends up, and I'm confident this won't be any different and that my assessment is most likely correct. I'm also completely fine with that.
 
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I'd care more if Sony weren't trying to censor games even more than Nintendo.
 

Antimatter

Well-Known Member
I could honestly give no fewer fraks about censoring underage anime tits. They do need to clarify the exact policy though.
 
Ubisoft is giving away Assassin's Creed Unity free for a week on Uplay. From today until Thursday the 25th.

They donated about a half a million to the restoration of Notre Dame, and are giving away the game as a part of the donation because it features an accurate recreation of the Notre Dame Cathedral.
 

Antimatter

Well-Known Member
So, despite less than a third of consumers in the US at minimum being in on the extremely niche 4K TV fad, Sony wants to jump in on the even more niche 8K fad?
Been to a electronic store recently? It's pretty much all 4k now, and you can score a 55 or less inch for less then $450 these days for many fo the budget brands. And it's only going to fall further with even the budget 65 inches falling near $550 these days. 8k is a niche, and I doubt we'll ever see a AAA 8k game for a generation or two.

But not targetting 4k is silly at this point. That's where the market is going and it's not something they can ignore.
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
WoW_Classic_BETA was recently added to Blizzard's CDN manifest.
 
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