The Outer Worlds goes Epic Games Store-exclusive (also Windows Store)

[Gangrelrumbler]

But if they got the Fortnite audience to continually buy from them, that would be massive.

Hm, this really reminds me of the beginning of Steam. It seems most people have forgotten or are too young, but Valve did exactly the same at the time: If you wanted to play the most popular MP game, Counter-Strike, you needed to install Steam. Also claiming no Steam exclusivety is a joke, all Valve games were always Steam exclusive! Also most PC games were before Origin, Uplay and GOG appeared. I have retail games on DVD who need Steam to run! Steam still sells game that won't run on modern PCs unless you use third party software like my Bloodlines patch because Valve just don't care. They bloated their store with shitty Early Access, Greenlight and Steam Direct games and even tried to monetize mods, because Valve's greed is endless. Maybe the Epic store has issues right now, but it's just a few weeks old. They will be fixed and after that I'll say, the more competion to Steam the better!

Aside for Valve games you were forced to use Steam on PC for retail games not because Valve outright bribed the publishers, but because developers wanted some DRM platform to protect their games. So it was all on dumb publishers, not Valve. Oh, and Steam was hardly a monopoly at that time. Microsoft had their own DRM called game for windows live. It was a terribly, buggy mess that made playing games like Street Fighter IV and Dark Souls a nightmare. Thankfully it had been completely shut down now.
And no, Epic store will not get better. The lack of features is not the result of lack of experience. It's a deliberate decision by Epic. If GOG could offer better service from day 1 when they were just selling a couple of old games packaged with Dosbox installer so can Epic.

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeh, things eventually fail. You lot keep wanking over Rome or the Vikings or whoever and they’re gone too. Entropy is a bitch, the best you can do is break even, and that only at absolute zero.

 

[Jarpie]

Just one word for you: Valio. That turned out so well for the dairy farmers. You are a fucking naive dimwit if you think that they wouldn't screw over the others the first fucking chance they'd get. All commies are so fucking naive about the real human nature.

Didn't Valio work just fine for the longest time, but eventually the farmers who started it got sidelined and human greed took over and farmers paid the price when Valio had a monopoly position in the dairy business.

The same would happen with any game developer cooperative, but in modern times the greed would take over much quicker, and it might not even get to that point as it'd probably collapse on infighting and bickering before that.

 

[pomenitul]

'Look into my eyes and repeat after me: "It's not cuckoldry if GabeN's doing the screwing."'

 

[Jenkem]

I dont understand why people keep going over this, Valve changing that would change nothing.

What Epic is doing is offering "assured sales" meaning they are telling publishers that they will meet a projected line in return for a exclusivity deal, the only way for Valve to "counter" that would be offering the same deals but this hurts customers because that particular bucket is given to them, exclusivity means no price competition in relation to digital stores as the customer will be expected to carry out the deal cost.

This is not capitalism, its COMMUNISM .

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[Grauken]

Yeh, things eventually fail. You lot keep wanking over Rome or the Vikings or whoever and they’re gone too. Entropy is a bitch, the best you can do is break even, and that only at absolute zero.

I think you forgot to take your happy pills

 

[Flou]

Obsidian wants the advance from Epic. It has already been explained in another thread that even if an exclusive on the Epic store bombs, Epic would still make back the money in 2 to 3 years. The dev also would not care about how the game sells because the deal with Epic means a certain level of income from the game, effectively a guaranteed payday for the dev instead of the need to roll the dice on Steam.

Fucking simpletons who have no idea how the gaming business works. Yes, you and bunch of others on this thread.

1) Obsidian isn't getting paid since Private Division is the publisher (and have paid the for the development costs)
2) Therefore, all advances go to Private Division
3) Microsoft owns Obsidian.
4) Therefore any income actually goes to MS, not Obsidian (Obsidian't cut on any profits)

Feargus would be a fucking mastermind if he somehow managed to get an advance for himself and the other owners on this deal when development has been paid by others.

I seriously doubt anyone at Obsidian is happy about this. They've been outspoken about it coming to Steam. This is a fucking PR disaster for them, but Private Division sold the exclusivity among (probably) all of their upcoming games.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Is it worth it in terms of sales? I mean, if you are going to rerelease the game 1 year after the epic store release, you can hardly justify asking full price? And by that point a lot of prospective buyers have already pirated it.

 

[Moink]

Personally can't wait until the Denuvo announcement as well as the tiered preorder packages.

 

[Jenkem]

Tim and Leonard both signed off on this and are looking forward to working with Epic.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Is it worth it in terms of sales? I mean, if you are going to rerelease the game 1 year after the epic store release, you can hardly justify asking full price? And by that point a lot of prospective buyers have already pirated it.

Phoenix Point devs said at one point that the cash they've gotten from epic was so substantial that even if they had to refund every single pre-order they'd still be in the black.

 

[moon knight]

We should've known this, after they prostituted themself to Microsoft. Obsidian is dead, like Bioware and Bethesda.

 

[CyberWhale]

Steam is a monopolistic parasite that takes 30% of every sale, yet you swear to defend it to your last torrent. Fucking sheep.

 

[Quillon]

So is MS for or against epic store? Since they didn't bring their Halo shit to Epic which woulda made perfect sense if former, and they prolly pushed for the option for MS store for TOW... was this all Private D./T2?

Ima tell you now, when they announce GTA6 epic store exclusivity in 2026, after the 2024 console release, there will be serious shitstorm, hold your breath!

Will all this won't matter in couple of years and google will take over gaming in a few years? :D

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It's really sad that gaming got way too big to suffer a genuine crash and burn, near extinction-scale event. It's absolutely the only thing that could save it at this point.

 

[Jarpie]

So is MS for or against epic store? Since they didn't bring their Halo shit to Epic which woulda made perfect sense if former, and they prolly pushed for the option for MS store for TOW... was this all Private D./T2?

Ima tell you now, when they announce GTA6 epic store exclusivity in 2026, after the 2024 console release, there will be serious shitstorm, hold your breath!

Will all this won't matter in couple of years and google will take over gaming in a few years? :D

This is probably test run for Take Two to see how well it turns out, and what are the long-term consequences from the customer base.

 

[Prime Junta]

google will take over gaming in a few years

Once Kwanzania gets decent broadband, I've no doubt.

 

[GrainWetski]

Phoenix Point devs said at one point that the cash they've gotten from epic was so substantial that even if they had to refund every single pre-order they'd still be in the black.

That just means more than ~1 million as far as I know which is merely 20-50k copies sold depending on the price of the game. Might sound impressive to a single person, but it's absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.

If they believe their game won't sell more than 50k copies, it's no doubt a good deal for them.

 

[Flou]

So is MS for or against epic store? Since they didn't bring their Halo shit to Epic which woulda made perfect sense if former, and they prolly pushed for the option for MS store for TOW... was this all Private D./T2?

Ima tell you now, when they announce GTA6 epic store exclusivity in 2026, after the 2024 console release, there will be serious shitstorm, hold your breath!

Will all this won't matter in couple of years and google will take over gaming in a few years? :D

This tells me that Take-Two isn't going to launch it's own storefront anytime soon. They are testing the market with Private Division games and whenever their next big game comes on PC this test will be a factor.
I'm sure they will rather get more money from Epic Store than less from Steam. It will be a matter of tens of millions of dollars if Steam doesn't cut the percentage by then.

MS will be against EGS, or they will treat it like they treat Steam. Their own store will be first option for their games in the future. They will later on bring games on to other stores. Microsoft can use Epic as a leverage towards Steam to get them to lower the percentage they take. Eventually Steam will have to react to games escaping into other stores. Otherwise they risk of becoming a bargain bin for games.
Sure, they would still sit pretty and make profit, but I doubt they are willing to just hand over the PC gaming market place to Epic.

 

[Reinhardt]

Private Division

Moar like Pirate Division amirite?

 

[Arnust]

Is it worth it in terms of sales? I mean, if you are going to rerelease the game 1 year after the epic store release, you can hardly justify asking full price? And by that point a lot of prospective buyers have already pirated it.

Phoenix Point devs said at one point that the cash they've gotten from epic was so substantial that even if they had to refund every single pre-order they'd still be in the black.

I’m pretty sure the bribe was around two million. Which is 2.5 times the total Kickstarter funding. I don’t know how are the backers not foaming when they essentially became redundant in a single swoop. The point of exclusives once was to make games that wouldn’t have otherwise come true and have a guarantee of quality, this is literally just a bribe with none of the effort of supporting the devs while they are making it.

 

[Reinhardt]

Funny how people change to "fuck you, customer" when they don't have to beg for kickstarter money anymore.

 

[Quillon]

Isn't Steam way bigger than Epic/Fortnite? Why aren't you guys blaming Steam for not fighting back? Is it because the only logical option for them is to cut their take by half or something and they don't wanna do that? :D They are used to sitting on a pile of cash and not making games anymoar...and players don't want change, especially to a inferior platform so they support Steam's greed by necessity. If Epic are not to do what they are doing atm they'd have no chance against Steam and Steam's unwillingness to do anything about it gives them a real chance to compete. Just cos Steam is convenient, they are the good guys(to you) but in the greater scheme they'd seem more evul I tell ya

 

[Reinhardt]

wat

 

[Dexter]

So is MS for or against epic store? Since they didn't bring their Halo shit to Epic which woulda made perfect sense if former, and they prolly pushed for the option for MS store for TOW... was this all Private D./T2?

Ima tell you now, when they announce GTA6 epic store exclusivity in 2026, after the 2024 console release, there will be serious shitstorm, hold your breath!

Will all this won't matter in couple of years and google will take over gaming in a few years? :D

Microsoft bought Obsidian, to be able to use them for their new console cycle/service or whatever the fuck they're planning. Since they outright own the studio, they have likely reserved the right to release it on Windows Store.

Before that happened, Private Division, a wholly owned Subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive did a contract with Obsidian to develop and publish this game. It's important to note here that Strauss Zelnick is the CEO of T2, which has it's own leadership and while Private Division is a Subsidiary, it has its own management with Michael Worosz as Founder and "Head of Label" and their own VPs etc. (so I wouldn't necessarily draw from their decision to that of the parent company, this is a similar situation to THQ Nordic AB having acquired Koch Media, which also has it's own Deep Silver division, which holds the Metro IP, and all of these can act autonomously).

Epic Games likely approached Private Division and offered them a payment and sales guarantee for 1 year Exclusivity on their Store in return, which they apparently accepted - since no matter how the game actually does, they might have already made a profit that way and washed their hands clean from any potential commercial failure. Maybe they're also just weighing the risks and think it might be more profitable to release there first and on Steam a year later and think they're not going to lose out on too much. It's well possible that (large parts of) Obsidian only found out about their Exclusivity deal about at the same time as everyone else.