That’s one interesting thing about this: They trained the players so hard to associate their store with the free weekly giveaways and only the free weekly giveaways, that’s all everyone uses the client for now, and never mentally considers it to be usable for anything else.
The effect is pervasive, too. Games factually have not released if they’re epic-exclusive. They’re not discoverable on PC, as nobody would ever imagine checking the Epic catalogue for a game they’re looking for. That’s not what you open Epic for, it’s those 1-2 free weekly games and nothing else.
In their bid to vie for developers not consumers they went so far too far that they have managed to alienate the concept of “selling games to players” in the consumers’ minds, therefor making their store automatically unable to compete at its main intent.
Mind you, there are far more problems with it. Among which is that despite having so little in there, discoverability and navigation are downright terrible! It’s an interesting lesson for frontend/UI design I imagine.
Exclusivity is bullshit. I had to wait ~7 years (IIRC) before I could play Borderlands 2, because it was Steam exclusive. I refuse to spend money on any game that’s not available on at least two launchers. (Or, ideally, doesn’t require a launcher at all.)
Why the fuck didn’t the launchers just have a standard API so that every game is available on every launcher? That would have been best for consumers, as it would’ve made exclusivity impossible for every launcher. Instead we have this awful system where it feels like 90% of games are exclusive either because of greed or laziness.
This is a good point. Everyone harps on Epic’s exclusivity, but there are a huge amount of games that only exist on Steam. Most of these never go on other platforms, and many that do, do so only years later.
When put like this, it sounds a lot like Steam and Epic are similar. Of course the difference is that, as far as we know, Valve doesn’t pay for this exclusivity - except indirectly by visibility.
Most people seem to be at least aware of this fact, but they seem to be okay with it because it’s (at least not publicly known to be) paid exclusivity on Steam.
I always thought this was the strangest viewpoint. As a consumer, I’m inconvenienced by exclusivity exactly the same whether someone was paid or not. I’m really surprised that any consumer would care whether it’s paid. In my mind, if a consumer goes to their local store specifically to buy Product Y, and they find that the store doesn’t stock Product Y, they’re disappointed / upset no matter the reason it’s not stocked at that store. But apparently there are consumers out there who would withhold their opinion until they went home, did some research, and established whether the manufacturer of Product Y was paid to exclusively sell the product at another store. Only at that point would they be upset. If they learned that Product Y simply wasn’t stocked because the manufacturer refused to stock it in their local store, these consumers (apparently) remain happy that the system “works as intended.”
Also, most/all of the launchers encourage exclusivity by encouraging developers to make their games rely on a proprietary API. This encourages technical lock-in, and it’s basically a fee (in terms of development hours required) the developer needs to pay to launch the product on additional platforms. Consumers are apparently okay with this too, and I also find this strange.
Anyway, my opinion is that consumer view on launchers is wrong, obviously. Nearly all of them have features about them that encourage exclusivity, and they’re pretty much all bad for that reason.
That’s one interesting thing about this: They trained the players so hard to associate their store with the free weekly giveaways and only the free weekly giveaways, that’s all everyone uses the client for now, and never mentally considers it to be usable for anything else.
The effect is pervasive, too. Games factually have not released if they’re epic-exclusive. They’re not discoverable on PC, as nobody would ever imagine checking the Epic catalogue for a game they’re looking for. That’s not what you open Epic for, it’s those 1-2 free weekly games and nothing else.
In their bid to vie for developers not consumers they went so far too far that they have managed to alienate the concept of “selling games to players” in the consumers’ minds, therefor making their store automatically unable to compete at its main intent.
Mind you, there are far more problems with it. Among which is that despite having so little in there, discoverability and navigation are downright terrible! It’s an interesting lesson for frontend/UI design I imagine.
This. I visit the site every week to claim the free games. If a game is epic exclusive, I consider it not released yet.
Protip: isthereanydeal.com has an RSS feed which will also alert you to other givaways.
Exclusivity is bullshit. I had to wait ~7 years (IIRC) before I could play Borderlands 2, because it was Steam exclusive. I refuse to spend money on any game that’s not available on at least two launchers. (Or, ideally, doesn’t require a launcher at all.)
Why the fuck didn’t the launchers just have a standard API so that every game is available on every launcher? That would have been best for consumers, as it would’ve made exclusivity impossible for every launcher. Instead we have this awful system where it feels like 90% of games are exclusive either because of greed or laziness.
This is a good point. Everyone harps on Epic’s exclusivity, but there are a huge amount of games that only exist on Steam. Most of these never go on other platforms, and many that do, do so only years later.
When put like this, it sounds a lot like Steam and Epic are similar. Of course the difference is that, as far as we know, Valve doesn’t pay for this exclusivity - except indirectly by visibility.
Most people seem to be at least aware of this fact, but they seem to be okay with it because it’s (at least not publicly known to be) paid exclusivity on Steam.
I always thought this was the strangest viewpoint. As a consumer, I’m inconvenienced by exclusivity exactly the same whether someone was paid or not. I’m really surprised that any consumer would care whether it’s paid. In my mind, if a consumer goes to their local store specifically to buy Product Y, and they find that the store doesn’t stock Product Y, they’re disappointed / upset no matter the reason it’s not stocked at that store. But apparently there are consumers out there who would withhold their opinion until they went home, did some research, and established whether the manufacturer of Product Y was paid to exclusively sell the product at another store. Only at that point would they be upset. If they learned that Product Y simply wasn’t stocked because the manufacturer refused to stock it in their local store, these consumers (apparently) remain happy that the system “works as intended.”
Also, most/all of the launchers encourage exclusivity by encouraging developers to make their games rely on a proprietary API. This encourages technical lock-in, and it’s basically a fee (in terms of development hours required) the developer needs to pay to launch the product on additional platforms. Consumers are apparently okay with this too, and I also find this strange.
Anyway, my opinion is that consumer view on launchers is wrong, obviously. Nearly all of them have features about them that encourage exclusivity, and they’re pretty much all bad for that reason.