AMD Radeon VII? MSRP is $699… HMMMMMMMMMMM…
6 Likes
Sort of. Valve offers a form of DRM through Steamworks. A similar model is something Epic apparently lacks entirely, though they offer a better rate on sales commission. This is why I see major publishers (such as those already using Denuvo) going for the bigger cut Epic offers.
Although seeing publishers go with Epic may seem like a bummer, all is not lost. This means Valve has to stay on their toes and that often often leads to innovation in order to stay competitive. The problem Valve faces with Epic is that they’re going for a lean, no frills storefront. They’re almost trying to be the anti-Steam. Watch for price cuts on Uplay (& Epic’s storefront). We’ve already seen this with games like AC: Origins and Odyssey being undercut on Uplay over Steam.
5 Likes
no, it’s literally what steam offers, the choices of;
DRM free (have to use client to download game, then free to play/store game whatever, that’s it, -same as epic)
Steamworks drm
Proprietary platform linking, ie, uplay, origin, X mmo, insert whichever other title uses own client game is launched in through steam
Selective drms, Denuvo etc
^all of these are free for devs/publishers to utilize as they see fit and none is mandatory, just like Epic launcher again nothing that it does different,
meaning again no real reason to use that as cause to go Epic exclusive, since steam already did so pretty seamlessly
they cost 60$ both places tho
and as far as undercutting goes/lower prices on Epic, usually that doesn’t happen due to disgruntled business relations, where other places might just not stock your games, (tho they might not “fear” gamestop/retailers etc as publishers used to)
or switching to epic for bigger cut, see previous reply; makes 0 sense unless removing all 3rd party sales, since they all take the same cut, steam is no big aggressor on this, it’s been the industry-wide standard for years
perhaps, but only have a handful of games in store atm sorta takes care of the sleek storefront on its own atm 
,
and if no frills store was what they(Ubi/other devs/publishers) were after, why not GoG?, why not rely entirely on their already existing own and just adjust its design?
7 Likes
Why would you wanna do that, though?
I‘d be happy if the messaging would work on mobile browsers before they do that.
4 Likes
Succinctly, this is something Ubisoft decided was in their best interest. I’m not trying to cut a meaningful discussion short but that’s as simple as it is.
Now I’m no fan of Epic - in other news they received an F from the BBB (who’ve received their own ‘accolades’), but Ubi decided there was better growth with the title choosing them over this. I’m only looking for their reasoning in doing so and what I’ve proposed is why I think they’ve decided to go with Epic for this release. Maybe we’ll see them switch back or offer a dual platform release later on.
4 Likes
in other news they received an F from the BBB
It’s well deserved, I spent over a week trying to delete my account with them only for them to tell me that they couldn’t change my email address since I apparently couldn’t prove that I owned my account outside of giving them information which I simply either don’t have or they shouldn’t have.
6 Likes
yeye, i’m not trying to make you the front man for Ubisoft 
, i’m well aware of not only would you not be making decisions for them, nor privy to their reasoning,
-i’m just shooting holes in the reasons i find(as i see them), “whomever makes them”
And not that it matters to me, (for this game), it’s an Ubisoft game, and it’s the division franchise, neither of which i’m particular interested in myself, so i’ve no horse in this race
see that’s the question isn’t it, if that’s the reason, because if their numbers backed them up, sure it would seem to make sense, but
given that the sales/cut argument doesn’t really seem to hold much water (given other 3rd party sales still allowed, -for now), neither the platform functionality, flexibility etc, so one could question what figures was used
since Epic is a brand new store, they don’t exactly have any sales figures to compare with steam, -and despite their vast userbase, most of those are mobile and console apparently, for which the Epic store would matter little as it would only pertain to the PC section of their fortnite base (tho substantial that that still is and probably grown to more than 10% by now)
nor do they have the same visibility, tho they are definitely working hard and pumping that pr machine to rectify that 
and then one cynical person could arrive at my previous mention
i’ll float something out there, might not mean anything, might even be completely coincidental and unrelated, but, founded or just completely conspiracy nutjob theory, something that i’ve seen mentioned: Tencent
they have stake in both parties in this game
then again, all of this makes about as little sense as Ubisoft cramming 4 layers of drm into their games 
TLDR; all in all i don’t care if it’s some misplaced greed by Ubisoft, some global evil plot by Tencent to take over the world, or if it’s just Epic being charming or people making decisions that appear strange from from the outside.
As long as “my” games don’t go up in price, still great quality and fun to play, and maybe get blessed with the occasional freebie here and there 
, then i’m a happy camper whatever goes on with some suit and tie
-i also hear there are thoughts of a Grim Dawn sequel, so i’ll imagine i’d be set for games to play for years anyway 
. And whatever happens after, we’ll probably have the zombie apocalypse, rise of the machines, alien overlords doomsday, so i probably wont get disturbed much by this “battle of the storefronts” by then 
8 Likes
Fuck yeah! Disrupt the monopoly, force Steam to actually improve itself to benefit consumers! I don‘t intend to use Epic at all, but I hope more major titles move there to change the landscape of video game distribution!
6 Likes
how would that accomplish this? wouldn’t it just make steam schmooze more up to publishers/devs, (if anything), -potentially at the cost of consumer benefits if they so wanted?
but how does this change it, or anything even? it just swaps one “name” for another, 1 launcher/company, “who’s pocket you line with $”, for another. It not only doesn’t really change anything, it doesn’t even offer you the simplest and smallest option; choice, (to support whichever you like best/offer the better service to you as the consumer, “which establishment has the better customer bathrooms”, etc.)
(potentially) swapping 1 giant for another doesn’t so much disrupt the status quo as it merely shifts which legs it rests on… or something… 
-might just be around that time where i should catch some zZz’s instead of thinking
9 Likes
Epic seems to become the first real competitor to Steam and with the millions of players that Fortnite has it‘s really smart to use their client as a store front for other games. This will force Steam to adapt. We‘ll have to see what they do, so yes my hopes are only speculation, but it is a potential catalyst.
5 Likes
What are you even basing that on?
We have no data what so ever, a few games have chosen/been bribed into launching themselves on Epic exclusively. That means nothing. Gog has been a viable competitor to steam for a very long time and they’ve offered actual competition by selling the same games for different prices and with different perks for the customer to chose from. They’ve improved their storefront to directly compete with steam, developed their client to directly compete with steam while still keeping it an optional tool.
Gog is the kind of competition that benefits the customer, they give you options, they give you an ability to “vote with your wallet”, Epic does no such thing. Epic does nothing for the customer what so ever.
Yeah whoo they’ve given away a couple of freebies, that’s nice and all but that’s not competition that’s not even really FOR the customer, that’s all just marketing strategy to gain an installed userbase. They want accounts created, they want their client installed because that gives them numbers to show to publishers. As with social media we’re not the customers, we’re the product in this situation.
16 Likes
yea, but, that’s about “taking off the ground” -for epic
as such that on its own would not be much of a threat to Steam, and epic knows this, which is why they ofc are banking on so many exclusives as they can grab, because this is where in the end the business is decided.
If Epic can gather enough inventory, it doesn’t matter if steam is the old family dog or most popular or established, if they don’t have “any” games to sell, because epic either bought them or undercut them.
So that means Steam’s competition is not on the consumer side or popularity contest, but a matter of available goods. And to this my question is, what can Steam do, to promote relationship and dealings with devs/publishers, that would so, to many of "you guys’"hopes; benefit the customer? -when it’s the devs/publishers steam would need to schmooze up to?
Think about it for a moment,
what improvements can steam offer devs/publishers that benefit “us” to where it would incentivize them to disregard the raw cash Epic is hurling at them?
Steam isn’t bleeding now, it has over 27000 games in stock currently (and i’m sure a couple of those are not just greenlight crapola), so they wont go out over night obviously. But epic is being smart, and taking hold of new games from under steam.
And with epic slashing the pc charge in half, to a business that mainly cares about money, what move is there for steam to make, that wouldn’t be at least somewhat monetary. (hell it took them but a few days to halfarsed cough up some green) But besides desperation it also reads slight arrogance to “only apply” to such high volume sales, when on Epic it’s every single $ turned.
And this for an industry that has been keen to console exclusive deals if the projected sales could benefit it, despite console games earning publishers much less per sale than digital pc distribution.
To me it looks like the only out steam has is to fork over some money, be it lower fees or straight up buying exclusives. -which means money out of Steam’s pocket, which means more ways for them to think of fleecingmonetizing their existing users to make up the shortfall. Which doesn’t exactly lend to the thought of “improving benefits for customers”, imo.
It’s not like Valve don’t have money to spend on Steam, and while they do have “stupid money”, they don’t have Epic’s levels of "batsht crazy"money, but Valve has been notoriously unwilling to “spend” money on Steam in the past, relying a lot on “community efforts” to run things etc,
can’t imagine they’ll be happy about having to pony up some dough, until they start taking the “threat” of Epic serious, at which point (in good Valve fashion), it’s probably “later, down the line”, when it’s more of knee jerk reaction and past the time for opportune action.
devs/publishers wants money. They get that from sales and deals struck, and before anything background stuff going on with bonus epic deals, they now need a minimum of 25% extra sales, to earn the same on Steam than on Epic, that’s not insignificant. Not just that it shifts the amount of suddenly when a product is profitable, but to only need to reach ¾ of a group can be a lot easier and attractive.
Compared to some imagined features or benefits Steam might give “us”/the customers.
What steam could do, that would benefit us, would be to lower their prices, dipping into their own margins. But that ofc would just be a different side of just lowering their fee, and could be much harder, given the dealings and rules by some publishers setting uniform pricing so they don’t upset other retailers.
Idono, i might just not be imaginative enough, but i find it mighty hard to see Steam combat this in another way than “cash”. Much less by some miracle that would let them do it by (merely) improving customer relations/benefits, if at all.
-but i’m a grump, so it’s easy for me to see 10 negative outcomes and not a single positive 1, other than “What Remains of Edith Finch” going free on Epic store later today
9 Likes
lol
6 Likes
Personal gripe…it’s why I’m probably going to play The Witcher 2’s gog version instead of the Steam one.
Steam could add
- Ability to type notes for each game within the overlay
- Chatbox spellcheck
- A better big picture layout
- Better Library management
- More customisable interface
- Support for custom tags for your games
- Ability to exclude games from your weighting/recommendation system
- More intuitive workshop
- Tabs in the client
- Patch/Game version rollback
- Actually useful filters for the game store…they’re currently virtually useless.
- Enhanced Steam features as standard
- Integration of Steamchart data for playercount
- Better moderation/support
- Messaging working on mobile browsers
In reality that’s going to cost less than a massive sale and it’d please a lot of people.
Regardless, this is interesting but the real gauge will be in 12 months time.
9 Likes
Pro Tip: Buy Division 2 on Uplay since Uplay is required anyway to play it and set it up as non steam game. All problems solved it will still be in your steam library and you wont have to use epic launcher.
On a side note it’s AAA other than some console exclusives like GoW and RDR2 just to name a couple I haven’t personally found AAA all that exciting in a long time. For me Indies are where it’s at now and for the foreseeable future.
9 Likes
Anno 1800 is coming to Steam, I would say that is one of their bigger titles as well. I assume Epic just paid money to have it become exclusive in the first place.
4 Likes
I don’t like exclusivity and I’m more concerned about Ashen not being on Steam or PS4.
Having the same titles on all platforms would be real competition. As it is now, it’s a game of strongarm between two giant companies, and in all this struggle, both the users and the devs will suffer some kind of consequence.
7 Likes
The Dev’s have said that it’s coming though, so just work through your backlog and you won’t notice it being a problem, plus it’ll probably be a tad cheaper!
5 Likes
Radeon VII is actually AMD’s answer to RTX. The Division 2 is going to support RTX enhancements, meaning you need some insane hardware to run it at max settings (and even then, I doubt 4K 60FPS is possible with everything enabled).
3 Likes
It’s not like i would be interested in playing it anyway
3 Likes