I've had a Steam account long enough to know how terrible and annoying Steam can be. I've also seen how much Steam has done for the PC gaming community over the years, and I originally hoped Epic would push them into accelerating some of their timelines. There is value in Steam having competition, but that value diminishes as soon as someone comes along and competes for games instead of users. It took Steam a long time to become both useful (Workshop, Sales, Forums), and generally good for the customer (Returns, Curation, Support), and Epic isn't even trying to compete in those areas.<p>Epic isn't making a marketplace where I want to spend my money by being better than Steam, they're just trying to make a place where I <i>have</i> to spend money if I want to play certain games. Good luck with that one.
Played rocket league for years, really miffed here. At some future point all the steam workshop and custom content wont work for players, so anything there is now DOA.<p>Splitting the install base effectively across another platform just spits in the eye of people who've bought RL and want to make it easy to see/join their friends. They've had years of problems getting a unified platform going, and its still not nearly as simple and straightforward as using steam friends.<p>Probably going to ask for a refund on Steam when this game is no longer for sale.
I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I've played Rocket League for a long time and I think it's an incredible opportunity for esports. It's exciting, extremely fast-paced, the meta is easy to understand for traditional sports fans, and the skill curve is more forgiving at the lower tier than many games.<p>If Epic can use its reach and resources to promote larger tournaments and higher stakes for Rocket League as an esport, I think that'd be a win for the game.<p>If they overrun it with more loot crate/f2p stuff and make the game all about the meta, and just use it as an exclusive for their own platform, that will suck.<p>Congrats to the Psyonix team though. They seem like genuinely great, passionate devs.
I will stop playing this game if I have to make an Epic account. Their security is a joke. Some Russian made a fake account using my email address without Epic ever actually verifying that the email address they used belonged to the individual that made the account.
There are several people in this thread who don't understand a lot about modern PC videogame distribution. Just because "you don't care" or "you don't use" certain of Steam's many features it doesn't mean they aren't important or essential.<p>Thousands of developers rely on Steam, Epic, GOG, etc. for multiplayer networking/matchmaking features (all digital stores offer this type of service, AFAIK, but it's not the same service). In Steam's case this isn't limited to services provided in-game, but also inviting people or joining people directly through the Steam interface, which is invaluable.<p>Achievements are not unimportant. Millions of players play for the achievement; they are an essential part of their entertainment. In addition, they provide important metrics for developers, players and researchers.<p>The Steam Workshop is the best system out there for players to publish and obtain custom content and mods for games integrated with Steam. It's an essential part of several games; they literally couldn't exist in their current form without it.<p>The Steam Inventory can be used for holding a collection of meta-items provided by games to other games or for trading with other players who own the same game. It's not just used for trading cards. It would for example allow a Pokemon game to exist on Steam with tradeable Pokemon. It's used by SteamVR for allowing games to provide assets for SteamVR homes (not very important, but still quite interesting).<p>Steam's categorization, organization and search features are not excessive but insufficient. I want more of those, not fewer.<p>Family sharing is important for me to share some of my games with a small number of people from my family or close friends. GOG also allows me to share my games in this manner, since they are DRM-free.<p>Steam community pages/forums are often nowadays the best place to interact with developers and find important information regarding issues, upcoming patches, difficult bits of gameplay, and generally other people talking about that problem you just had.<p>I'm not saying Epic can't do all of this, and do it well. But saying that "all you need in a game store is to buy games" is incredibly naive. Any digital retailer that requires all of these services to be nonstandard and dispersed is doomed to lose.
Is what Epic Games doing with their exclusivity deals legal? It's one thing if they pay a developer to exclusively release on their store, but they are paying developers not to release on Steam, even though it's fine for them to put their game on other stores, like the Windows Store, Humble Bundle, etc. That seems super non-competitive, like if Google paid Microsoft to prevent users from installing Firefox, even if though there aren't any technical limitations preventing it.
There's a pretty big difference between just releasing a new game on a new storefront, and pulling a game (or games) from an existing storefront so it can be exclusive to that new storefront. Weak approach to "competition" if you have to buy your way to relevancy with zero other value to the customer.<p>To be fair I have basically zero trust of digital storefronts - for example, Steam will no longer run on my still-very-recent MacBook (OS X 10.10), so I can't play any of the hundreds of games I "own" on there anymore.
Sad news. They have a 50 million (!) player base, 350k+ online right now. That means over a billion USD in revenue, probably way more with crates/keys taken into account.<p>Unless the cost of their server infrastructure got wildly out of control, why would a company that is raking in cash sell out?
Its really time for Steam to respond. Eventually the Epic store will match the features of Steam, and open more broadly to upper-tier Indie games. What will be left on Steam? There has already been a notable lack of launches this year.<p>Steam needs to halve its 30% commission to 15% for all games, and increase the Steam Direct fee to $2,000 to increase average quality. Developers aren't just leaving because of the high commission, they are leaving because of the deluge of junk launching on the store daily.
Great.. another installer to download. I play RL on the lower (very low) pro levels, I just hope it doesn't spark a wild shift. RL has been pretty solid for it's ESports partners and I hope this only brings good things to come. Psyonix deserves it for all their hard work.
I am not sure how I feel about this. So long as I can continue to play without interruption then its all good. However, if they try to force me to pay more I am going to be very upset.
I guess I will go against the grain and state that I don't really mind Epic's aggressive foray into the marketplace, it seems like their best bet against incumbents and a prove strategy in the marketplace.<p>People had the same reaction to Uplay (No exclusive games but you still need to have an account) and Origin (Only way to play EA Games) and while the services still don't compare to Steam they were absolutely hated when they came out and now people mostly tolerate them to get access to the big AAA games (Apex Legends came and went but few people complained about Origin Exclusivity).<p>I'm pretty ambivalent when it comes to Steam, the client has become quite bloated with tons of unused / deprecated features and Steam Marketplace feels super scammy full of bots and phishing attempts, and their Chat leaves a lot to be desired but I still use it daily.<p>Only other services I can think of that has exclusive games and people have a positive / non negative reaction to is the Blizzard one but that has like 8 games in total.<p>I have read that Epic has no plans to remove the game from Steam so we shall see about that, but I for one am fine with more competition if it means that:<p>A) Exclusivity deals result in more stability for the devs in terms of receiving large cash inflow<p>B) Forces both parties to improve their services
Epic Games seem to be making a gambit that if they can become a marketplace that has significant market share compared to steam all the bad will will be worth it and people will forget. Since they know this Fortnite thing is kind of a limited windfall. So they are going HARD.
Awesome to see the Epic Game Store continuing to make waves. Hopefully the beatings will continue until Valve stops taxing game developers so hard.<p>Epic gets a lot of flack for being a fairly simple store at the moment, but Steam's had ten years to get where it is. Competition was sorely needed and we're finally getting it.<p>The CEO of Epic is a big fan of open platforms and cross-platform gaming and a loud and outspoken opponent of walled gardens. If there's anyone who will move us out of this model as much as possible, it's probably him. But exclusives is the only way to fight the Stockholm Syndrome people seem to have with Steam.
"Editor’s Note: We wanted to clarify something for you after today’s news: Rocket League is and remains available on Steam. Anyone who owns Rocket League through Steam can still play it and can look forward to continued support. Thanks!"