this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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They're not making enough profit on Epic because people prefer feeding Steam's monopoly and would rather wait for the game to come to that platform than purchase it on a platform where the devs would get a bigger share of the sale. It's not that they don't make enough profit per copy on Epic, it's that the number of customers isn't high enough to compensate.
The social stuff is bloat, you need the platform to purchase and launch your games, that's it, they already have all essentials like being able to automatically join friends in multiplayer games, why do they need crap like cards or forums (which are better as a third party administered by people who don't have a financial incentive to hide complaints).
No matter how much they make their platform similar to Steam, you'll find another reason not to buy on it, people are still complaining about shit they fixed years ago like not having a cart or achievements.
It's very funny to see people on Lemmy (of all places) pushing for centralization.
The social stuff may be bloat to you, but it helps me to see which friends are online, and let's me join their games or invite them to mine.
There's nothing that epic adds that I care about and I refuse to buy their exclusives, because that encourages them even more to keep doing that.
Steam may not be perfect, but it's pretty damn good. I have enough with GOG and Steam, and don't want to add multiple storefronts to the list of launchers on my PC.
So the thing that you want is something that is available on Epic.
Yay monopoly!
Personally if there's no technical reason for a game to be exclusive, then I just want that game to be freely available for people to buy on their platform of choice that has the features they want, or supports their values. Personally, I would prefer to see a GOG release over Steam, as I highly value that they allow me to actually download and own my game installers, they have done amazing work making older games playable and accessible on modern systems.
There's no technical reason for Alan Wake 2 to be an Epic exclusive, it's simply that Remedy got a financial incentive up front from Epic to release that way. This isn't Epic trying to compete with other game platforms, but rather betting that by being the only platform to offer the game will be sufficient to attract players.
This has all played out before with other publishers pulling their games from Steam and releasing on their own platforms (Origin, uPlay etc), but both have vome.back as players will simply go and play something else rather than flock to another games.platfork.in which they have no investment. It's something that even Sony has seen the light on and why we are now seeing historically console exclusive properties coming to PC like God of War and Last of Us.
Steam may be the biggest game in when it comes to games distribution, and monopolies are bad, but to advocate for Epic Games of all companies as an alternative is a weird position to take.
So you don't see value in studios getting guaranteed financing in exchange for timed exclusivity instead of having to rely on the lottery that comes with releasing on all/other platforms?
It's not as if the studios were obligated to sign with Epic either, they just look at the offers on the table and they figure that "Hey, we've got financial obligations to meet, including paying our employees, maybe it's not such a bad idea to get some money upfront."
It's the same as choosing between a salaried job vs one where you're working 100% for commission...
Also your argument would work if you and others were boycotting games that only release on Steam because they end up having a ton of exclusives, the only difference is that they have them because of the size of their user base, they don't need to give anything in exchange for it, just the hope that the game will sell more is enough to make devs and publishers ignore the other platforms and if their games don't sell enough on Steam only then too bad, they don't have anything to back themselves with.