re: this article.
The title is a joke. "Free, but you have to make an EGS account" is a bit too rich for me.
Not on Steam? No direct release? Steam released, but with a bunch of bolt on EULAs/Denuvo/3rd party launchers?
The seas will provide.
mmm... delicious fish
Epic: It's not right that if you want a game on your smart phone you have to go through Apple or Google!
Also Epic: if you want this game you have to go through US!
Tbf, devs don't have to, and in fact Epic will pay them to be exclusive, unlike Apple who makes devs pay for it and gives no choice.
Though it's still annoying that Epic does that, from a consumer standpoint. I can't play any Epic-exclusive games because their CEO has a personal vendetta against my platform (Linux), so their company can die for all I care.
Fair, but it shows that Epic only cares about Developers (like themselves) and not Consumers (their customers).
"It's not fair to force Devs to use a specific service. It's perfectly fine to force users to use a specific service."
Epic paid them a bunch of money for the exclusivity. Money they needed to produce the game. Remedy needs the money upfront. And Epic takes less of a cut than Steam.
I feel like you're mad at the wrong people?
The formula goes like this:
Sony's had great success when they started bringing first-party titles to PC. Square is feeling the squeeze after the disappointing sales of the FFVII remakes. DARQ's developer rejected third-party exclusivity and was met with praise and sales exceeding expectations.
The fact is, some people will never consider buying on EGS. Whether their reasons are legitimate or not is irrelevant. It is only by the choice of one ~~man~~ overgrown man-child that both Epic and Remedy are kept from greater sales and greater profits.
Sony releasing games on PC yet region locking them to countries with PSN access is beyond absurd.
It's almost like they hate money.
"epic takes less of a cut" yeah but they're getting 0 right now because they don't get any money at all from it until the money upfront is earned back by epic which at this rate they're not going to so while remedy got the money to make the game I don't think they'll ever see another penny for it
I'm not as salty about EGS as a lot of PC gamers seem to be.
......... But god damn is their default client trash.
Thank fuck for Heroic Launcher on Linux (I think it even got a Windows version?)
But honestly, people complain about exclusivity, and seem to not realise (or care?) that certain games would not exist without this kind of funding deal. They are only funded by the platform that pays for their exclusivity. If you want to be mad at something, don't be mad at the devs, don't even be mad at Epic, be mad at Capitalism as an institution, which rules that art needs money to exist.
You point out that the game wouldn't exist without exclusivity but then immediately point out that it totally could exist if the profit motive did not run our economy.
The existence of exclusives is a form of cultural capture by capitalists (As is copyright). I would argue that it would indeed be better if Alan Wake 2 was never made if it meant that exclusives stopped being made entirely, and Alan Wake 2 looks like a game I absolutely want to play.
store simping is really cringe ngl
Is it simping when Steam is just better though? So many useful things that Epic doesn't have. Especially on the Linux side.
Call me crazy, but I don't like it when somebody tries to hold me hostage and force me to do things their way..
From the article you posted nobody at Remedy complained that the game was underperforming because of Steam nor does Epic grant them any continuous revenue stream that they would rely on beyond AW2 shipping.
Remedy employs 300+ highly skilled and paid people in one of the countries with the highest standards of living while having no access to your live service cosmetics battle pass skibidi money. This means they HAVE to have upfront cash somewhere in the loop because they happen to make very technically bespoke, well crafted titles take years to make. That's the same reason why Tencent has a minority share in 80% of VG companies you know at this point - including Remedy - one time purchases just don't do the trick anymore if you want to even ship a game, especially if you don't crowd it with scammy monetization.
It's one thing not to like some frontend (and yea EGS is ass on many accounts) but blaming a company for making a sound business decision by safeguarding their ability to produce games that are very much a lost best from a purely financial standpoint is seriously odd. It's not just Alan Wake - do you know the proportion of game time players have spent on titles released in 2023 or 2024 during those same years? It's less than 10% - nearly all the rest is live service. Within that same group you're fighting against your BG3s (you know, the same game that was nearly cancelled because Larian was strapped for cash) and any other solo game that happened to be successful. It's dire.
Nobody at Remedy is pretending EGS is the better platform, seeing this under any other lens than basic business logic is honestly weird. Wanna know why anyone would sign an exclusivity deal with Epic? Just look at the state of the games industry.
My main gripe with it being on EGS is I just don’t know when it’s on sale. For Steam games I can add to my wishlist and get notified when a game comes on sale. If I can’t do that for a particular game I tend to forget it exists.
I can imagine Epic aren’t too concerned about sales, the funding probably comes from the same bucket that funds all those free games. The long term vision of getting to make EGS a think trumps short term profits.
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