Ok that does look sick. Especially that wolf boss fight. Sekiro feels.

 

My only complaint is that they stopped translating the Chinese

 

Hahahah. Game people having unions? That's a good one.

 

Looks like the game is going to be a surprise hit.
Impressing part is that the game is being made by a small Chinese team and it looks way better than the 500$mil Halo but let me stop there I don’t want to jinx it.

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-20-epic-snaps-up-hitman-3-as-another-pc-store-exclusive

Yeah, totally not in it for the money. All in all, a shame and I now regret buying the previous two games.

 

I mean, just because its on Epic does not mean that the quality of the game somehow diminishes.

Other than moral indignation at a business company trying to make profits, what's so wrong about this decision?

 

It definitely gives me more Nioh + GoW vibes. I can see why people see Sekiro/DS, but the combat doesn't look as weighty and deliberate. Especially when Wukong starts taking on over a dozen foes at once.

 

Yeah I really have no problem with Epic Games' exclusivity deals. Maybe it'll force Steam to innovate for once, and wouldn't that be nice!

Also yes of course video game companies are in it for the money. That's called capitalism.

 

I think that Paradox employees have a collective bargaining agreement? Certainly don't know of any others.

I'd actually go a step further and say steam has enjoyed a defacto monopoly for so long that a competitor is necessary. The fee's they get are just...

 

Mortal Shell (a Soulslike) was a pretty big disappointment for me. It was short (10 hours), had limited classes and weapons, only a few areas, and the lack of budget clearly showed in animation and sound. At least it's not a full price game, but it still felt more like a prolonged demo.

The combat was probably the best part of it, but it was slow and clunky, and despite its heaviness, it lacked impact. The enemies had terrible AI and moved like janky dolls.

 

It inconveniences me. I never liked having to use Steam to play games to begin with. Then the other storefronts started popping up, Uplay and Origin among others. Then Epic started doing its thing and I can't say I really appreciate that either. And it does say something about the devs themselves most of the time when they take the exclusivity deal. Look at that latest Predator game, dead in the water just a few months after release. What about Phoenix Point? Got all the money to create the game from fans and backers, promising Steam release and what not, and then took up Epic because they were given so much money that even if everyone refunded they would still be in the black.

IO has a bit of a different history. It's familiar to people in the Hitman fandom that IO has more or less said that everything that people didn't like about the previous two titles - always online, for one - was somehow the fault of the publisher. Except now they're self-publishing and what do they do? Go to Epic for piles of cash. Sure, everyone wants to make money, I'm not surprised by that. Do you think they'll cut down on the always online requirement or the DLCs added to the game over time? Somehow I doubt it.

I'll quote a fellow from Reddit to give you more context:

The previous two titles were released on Steam, so I think it's been a fair assumption that the third one would as well. No one would have given a shit if it also released on Epic, because most people don't use that storefront, other than Fortnite players and the ones getting free games. But blocking it from Steam for presumably a full year? That's only going to encourage folks to pirate, if anything. It's certainly easier than making yet another storefront account, let alone one like Epic, who apparently still don't have a shopping cart, community, reviews, achievements and the like for any their games. I had a good laugh the other day when seeing screencaps from Steam community forums asking for troubleshooting help about a game that's still exclusive to EGS.

How is exclusively gatekeeping games to one storefront exactly going to get Valve to innovate? What is innovative about exclusivity? Is this a console owner mindset? I honestly can't see how games being exclusive to any one platform, physical or digital, benefits the consumer.

I wasn't aware Steam went up to devs, offering them piles of cash to publish exclusively on their storefront, thereby preventing it from selling through other stores. I'm not defending Steam's fees from sales, ultimately I really don't give a shit, it's just people act like Steam is alone in doing business like that when every major publisher does it as well.

And it's not like Epic is doing a better deal with devs for the sake of the deals, but simply for the sake of undercutting Steam. And for the most part it's still not working. It doesn't matter how often they offer up free games, my backlog is big as it is, I don't need more shit added to it. And in any case, if I really feel like getting games for free, I might as well pirate it and be done with it.

 

So your problem is that devs are getting piles of cash, have to pay 12% of revenue instead of 30%, and you have to open another app? Seems pretty selfish. I remember when steam wasn't viewed so favourably, what on earth happened?

 

That's a bummer. It finished downloading for me last night.

I picked up a few new games alongside that one recently. Maybe I'll do Hard West or Hotline Miami before Mortal Shell.

 

To be fair, if that 12% revenue thing was actually as great as people are touting, Epic wouldn't need to pay for exclusives.

Mind you, I don't use Epic because I remember the horror stories of supposed trojans and such in early days. Now I just stay away because last I heard they're still missing basic features like wishlists etc.

 

Good Old Games is best....

 

@kinetique: They are missing all the fucking features and surprise exclusives always rub people the wrong, I really don't understand what you find surprising here

 

Yeah that's great, I don't think it's wrong for Epic to open up another store, even if the store sucks.

 

The way I see it, it's a 'too many cooks' perspective? There's nothing wrong with Epic starting a game store, or convincing devs (with oodles of $$$) to make their games exclusive.

But for a while, Steam was basically *the* winner. You installed one application and all the games were there, for an affordable price. It was like the Netflix of games. But with Epic (or before them, but Epic being the highest profile), the flood gates started opening for publishers and games to require their own launchers, their own crapware, their own stuff, and it loses what made Steam good, without making up for it in convenience or price or anything.

Netflix is actually a great example -- when they started, they were the only streaming place and everything was there. Everyone loved it. But the success of it led to everyone and their mother developing a streaming platform and removing content from Netflix -- not only did the competition not improve the customers' life, but it actively made the thing that people liked (Netflix) significantly worse because of it.

That said, I think it's actually inevitable -- there's way too much money in being a marketplace and taking a cut of sales, so I'm really surprised there hasn't been a stronger push before Epic.

 

For what it's worth I'm not arguing that from consumer convenience we win out with only one store (at least in the short term), I'm just a little more empathetic to devs getting ripped off by steam.

 

And before Epic and GOG started going, you really had no other options if you, say, had a terrible customer experience with Steam and refused to ever give them another cent. That's insane. For years I basically only used my PC for bnet and LoL exclusively (tbf... a lot of hours went there).

Now I'm fine with using EGS, GOG galaxy and even fucking Microsoft if I wanna play any of their games like Outer Wilds etc.