I've bought a few games on Epic, and had no problems. The lack of junkware like on Steam is great – I can honestly browse the store knowing that every game is high quality (even if not necessarily in the genre I enjoy).
Achieveemnts not popping up helps focus on the actual game.
Cloud save, family sharing etc. are of marginal use for me and I imagine 99% of consumers outside the vocal minority.
Well, I was about to comment that the lack of cloud save is the absolute dealbraker for me as I play games at home and at work, so if I can't sync saves automatically then I won't buy a game from there(#1 reason why I haven't bought Metro Exodus for instance, game which I am otherwise super interested in).
Yes, that would be an option if my work allowed any services like that(and yes, it's slightly odd that dropbox/google drive are not allowed, but Steam cloud sync is).
Oh but it's not a technical issue - both dropbox and google drive would install and work fine, we have full administrative access on our machines with no restrictions. But it is against policy.
One man's Junkware is another's charming indie. GOG is a curated store and, among others, initially denied Zachtronics game Opus Magnum. I personally appreciate the fact that Steam and Itch don't curate.
The link you provided doesn't say what you claim it says. The parent post is discussing giving away free games, not acquisitions. What is unhealthy about the way Epic is trying to attract users? I know they've received some negative press but I have yet to see a good argument for this.
From the update at the very top of the article the GP linked:
> Epic has offered an update on the confusingly worded statement issued to press earlier today regarding Rocket League's future status on Steam, now insisting that it has "not announced plans to stop selling the game there".
Even if they do pull future sales of Rocket League off of Steam why is that a problem? Valve has purchased game companies. I've never seen anyone complain that you can't buy Left 4 Dead on GoG.
When EA pulled their games from Steam, Valve replied in kind.
One thing that irks me is that Valve seems way more committed to interoperability, open standards and its consumers' wellness than its competitors (likely as a result of being privately owned); while the competitors in question use every trick in the evil corporate playbook to try to increase their marketshare. We've seen how they play, and the friendly façade is likely to change to ad more value-extracting one once/if they gain marketshare.
Valve made L4D2. Or at least did a significant portion of the work. The problem with Epic is that they are either paying publishers for timed exclusives, or purchasing publishers outright in order to create artificial monopolies, and restricting consumer choice.
What Valve did on L4D2 isn't relevant. My point was that Valve did the same thing with L4D as Epic is doing with Rocket League. Talking about L4D2 does not show that this point was wrong.
> competing on quality, price, customer service, etc, etc, etc.
What metric are you using to define quality and how would it make people use this store over Steam? How much cheaper would you need to sell games to get people to go to the Epic store? Would developers put there games on the Epic store if the price had to be so low that they made more per sale on Steam? Good customer service being a factor requires having customers to experience it. It helps long term but won't get your first wave of customers.
Quality in this case could be website design, the overall quality of games, or discoverability of good games.
Price in this case would be margin. If Steam takes 10%, Epic could take 5%. Games makers could pass the savings on, or increase their own margins.
Yes good customer service requires customers. What's your point? Your first customer experiences good customer service, mentions it to their friends, who then shop with you, who then mention it to their friends. It's called word of mouth. It's a powerful marketing tool.
Website design won't drive customers to a new store instead of Steam. Epic is curating their store so that should already cover quality and discoverability. Apparently they think that isn't enough.
> Price in this case would be margin. If Steam takes 10%, Epic could take 5%. Games makers could pass the savings on, or increase their own margins.
Steam takes 30% and Epic takes 12%. Very few games have chosen to reduce their price to go with the increased percentage.
For a web based store customer service only matters when things go wrong. Most customers should get a fairly standard experience of paying money and receiving their product. Do you consider Steam's customer service bad? Would a marginal improvement in customer service convince you to deal with the hassle of installing another launcher, setting up a payment method on a new store, and splitting your game library?
You asked for a viable strategy, this is it as evidenced by the fact they're already trying it. Is it guaranteed? No. But nothing in business, or life, is.
I asked for a viable alternative strategy that didn't also involve paying for exclusives to initially attract customers. Apparently Epic doesn't agree with you about this being viable by itself.
This is really a big part of it for me. I have no problem using multiple launchers, but Epic has given me little reason to think that they'll secure my payment info or account details.
I've seen several comparisons showing that Epic's prices are not actually lower than Steam's (in general).
Can't find them right now, and don't have the time to do a thorough comparison, but looking at the first three games on the Epic Store front page that also have Steam pages with prices seems to confirm this. That's "Oxygen not Included", "Vampire: The Masquerade® - Bloodlines™ 2" and "Outward", all of which are priced the same on both stores (€22.99, €59.99 and €39.99, respectively).
> If paying for exclusives is bad what viable alternative strategy should Epic be using to get users to their store?
Offering the games DRM-free (the audience that GOG is aiming - though I am really concerned about what GOG is currently doing with GOG Galaxy and cloud synchronisation).
Epic are trying to do with gaming what Disney are doing with TV -- not pay distributers when they can do that but themselves, and use a strong monopoly on a sector of popular material to leverage their way in to distribution.
I've loved Super Meat Boy ever since it was first released all those years ago and will be buying Super Meat Boy Forever - in 2020. There's plenty of other stuff out there to distract me until then.
Rocket League hasn't been removed yet. There's no real confirmation it's going to be removed, and is still for sale, and currently being reviewed bombed on Steam.
