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Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford says his hopes on Epic Store were 'overly optimistic or misplaced' (www.tweaktown.com)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm genuinely shocked how much Epic poured into the store and it still lacks so much basic features. Sorting games is still extremely barebones, store is filled with NFT/crypto garbage, the store still looks like a college student's first front-end project, and last time I used the launcher to pick up free games (last year), it was still slow as hell. What were they doing in the past 5 years aside from dropping millions on exclusivity deals?

Epic is going to have to prioritize the store and try some new initiatives while also doubling down on earning pivotal exclusives if it is going to have a chance. I also hope other viable competitors arrive.

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[–] [email protected] -5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I want to point out that Valve won't allow games to be sold on Steam and be cheaper anywhere else. With the lower cut Epic takes games could be cheaper there, but Valve uses their dominant market position to force developers to set the same price on other marketplaces if they want to also be on Steam, which is essentially required.

I get some of the hate, but the "fuck Epic" crowd always annoy me. It's such an ignorant position. That said, I don't use the Epic store because it sucks to use. Fuck monopolies though. Steam has too much control. We need competition or we're going to suffer in the future.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

With the lower cut Epic takes games could be cheaper there, but Valve uses their dominant market position to force developers to set the same price on other marketplaces if they want to also be on Steam, which is essentially required.

I've heard that brought up, but I've never seen actual proof of it. It clearly doesn't apply to sale prices though, because other stores basically always have lower sale prices than steam itself.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Guild Wars 2 expansions are cheaper on the company’s storefront than on steam, without sales. Not sure if they get an MMO pass, but it’s not a hard and fast rule.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

That's because the versions sold on the company site are for ArenaNet keys, not Steam keys.

The rule is only for selling Steam keys.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

As has been pointed out by many other people in this thread, this is untrue.

If you are providing a Steam key, it has to be the same price as Steam. Otherwise, you can set whatever price you want (e.g. if you were selling on both Steam and Epic - like Borderlands 3, which frequently had sales on Epic where the price dropped below the Steam price)

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

It's even fine to sell your Steam keys at a lower price in another place - as long as you're planning to have a similar sale on Steam at some similar time.

It's OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.

TL;DR: Games sold on Epic could be any price they want. They're no different to Steam, in general, because that's what publishers choose.