1st November 2019, 6:48 PM
(29th October 2019, 12:59 PM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: I dislike Epic Games Store not for any reasons specific to it, but rather because it is run the same as other alternatives like Origin, and they basically bought their way into it and forced themselves to be relevant without actual merit. They also lack a number of features, indicative of the "bum rush" nature of Epic Megagame's business model as of late.You bring up a good point here, though -- what do we want? What is ideal here? I'd love if buying a game from one online storefront didn't lock you to that storefront for, say, any DLC or addons or such the game may release, for example -- I have bought games before from GOG and then kind of regretted it when the Steam versions of the games got patches sooner, had DLC sales that GOG rarely got, and such. It can be frustrating. But that's pretty much impossible without a single repository like you mention, but yeah, who would you trust to run that repository? There's nothing in such a database that could be used for questionable means, oh no...
That said, I did buy Outer Worlds, so there's that. I want real competition, and for the most part I've been willing to wait out exclusives until they end up on the GOG store, which is by and large my favorite platform for this.
I don't know what a solution would look like short of a FTC mandated singular repository of digital sales which stores all have to sync to, but that runs into it's own issues that I personally am not prepared for. However, it can certainly be better, a lot better, and there's got to be SOME outside pressure, some shifting of the systems these companies operate under before they'll be compelled to change anything. They certainly won't be doing it for us.
But anyway, as for the EGS, paid exclusivity is very far from new -- that's what console makers have been doing for a long time after all, paying third parties for exclusivity on consoles. It's just not something that has been seen much before within the PC business, and maybe that's part of why it's so controversial... though when a console maker pays for some big exclusive that casues a lot of controversy too, this controversy won't go away in a way you rarely see with such things.
If the Epic Games Store actually worked as well as Steam I think this would be a different conversation. It doesn't though, not even close, and that's a big part of the issue -- that Epic is paying for exclusives that work a whole lot less well than Steam versions of those games would due to all of their stores' missing features when compared to Steam. And the whole thing about friends lists and Steam achievements and such is a big point for many people, too; the PC certainly has plenty of messaging and friendslist options, but Steams' is a very convenient one. So yeah, I've never agreed with the "Steam or nothing!" people and still don't, but even so Epic is being irritatingly aggressive here, I'd rather use a launcher which actually works well and is feature-rich like Steam or GOG over the Epic launcher... and sure, if you follow that line of thinking it would be hard for some new player to get into the PC digital storefront business, but that's okay; after all, you're giving these companies money and hoping that they continue to exist to allow you to have access to that game in the future, after all. And there's no guarantee of that. I don't think any of the digital stores I've bought games from have shut down other than Microsoft's Windows Live store, but it could happen... like, clearly somebody still buys from Gamersgate as the site is still up and while I haven't bought from them in years, I can still re-download the games I did buy there years ago (yes, they don't just sell Steam keys though I think they have those too), but who knows how long that will last... or anyone else, you never know. Nobody likes spending money on something that later vanishes with no recompense. Right now, both Valve and Epic are probably very good bets in the money front, so that probably is not an issue between the two of them, but for some of the smaller stores it sadly could happen.
On that note, if Google Stadia has as many problems after launch as it seems to be having before it, I wonder if all the 'Google will just kill the thing off like they do with failing projects' speculation will actually happen...