OP
- Thread Starter
- #3,201
why would you want to know what your playtime is? how entitled, smh
j/k, obviously, lol
Community MetaSteam | April 2019 - "Objection!" the One Finger Fatality
- Thread starter lashman
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j/k, obviously, lol
Think of the devs, you ungrateful heathen. If they wanted for you to know how much time you spent on their game, they'd add a timer to the menu.
lol. I do actually really like when devs do this though. Like in Final Fantasy, you can always track your playtime in the party menu.
for us backloggers and game trackers though it really is a blessing Steam tracks these things on a global and public-facing basis.
Silly they won't show the playtime, considering the refund window is no more than 2 hours played (within 14 days). Information like that should be available to you.
Anyone know of any online jp retailers that sell jp steam keys?
Then how do we know what actually constitutes playtime for such things? I guess it's exe is running and thats it?
I'm entitled and proud of it :
OP
- Thread Starter
- #3,207
possibly ... since EGS plugs into pretty much everything in your system anyway
Interesting. Maybe WB got too greedy? In any case, Epic having limits to what they're willing to spend is noteworthy.Epic was trying for a mortal kombat deal last month but i heard talks fell through briefly mentioned it in discord at time
Think of the upside, there are now several well-known indie studios that don't really need EGS cash that can be given Epic's moneyhats. So, really, Warner is doing indieGod's work thinking not of themselves but of the indie devs
Oh... I hadn't thought that they need to track playtime because of the refunds - then again, if I'm not mistaken their refund system it still is completely manual.
I'm sure once people actually start really using EGS (Borderlands 3?) these features will be implemented hastily... because rant or not they are very basic things to have on any store. Still, as always is shows how they aren't planning anything beyond "throw money". Cloud saves in particular would have been so much easier to put in place before starting the big push on the store. Now every developer will have to patch the game or Epic is going to have to manually set save locations.
Between this and BL3 being "just" 6 months it really shows they have their limits. Still, if the calculations on the Fig numbers in that Era thread are correct.... those limits are very high.
OP
PC gaming is saved!
True, but are they getting the returns in userbase that they expected? That's what I'd love to know.
Yeah I would not for a moment think it's due to WB having some kind of moral compass and thought of their customers' desires and it made them turn Epic down. They probably asked for BL3 money and Epic laughed and walked away.
Look on the bright side. Maybe they asked for lots of money because they made a competent port for once!
As a developer (not of games but still) this is one of the things that bother me the most.
Having to react to API changes and update years old code is a major pain in the butt, and one of the most time and money wasting part of our job, and cherry on top, almost always make the code more brittle as a result of rushing to fix and improve things.
But it doesn't matter, does it?
The narrative will be that games don't really need cloud saves, achievs, leaderboards, etc. so developers won't really have to patch them in.
And as a result gamers will have crippled games for no good reasons.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #3,216
well QLOC are on the port from the start this time around, so ...
You just made me think that them not showing playtime numbers is intentional.
"We have refund time limits, but we don't show the players how close they are to those limit so they will unknowingly go over them and won't be abe to refund anymore! For the devs!"
I think if their plans were working we'd be hearing quite the different PR statements.
Doubt that. Epic has a gigantic user base thanks to Fortnite but I don't think that many of those will be returning consumers. Maybe Borderlands 3 change that, temporarily, but even then we can't ignore that EGS is doing a horrible job of keeping users and building an ecosystem. Shit, the most used argument to defend Epic is 'it's just another launcher', and if that's the biggest argument to throw in a discussion in favor of your product, you're failing to build any sort of consumer engagement.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #3,219
yeah ... if any of those exclusives had sold INCREDIBLY well i'm sure we would've seen at least one press release stating that ... and yet - we've got nothingI think if their plans were working we'd be hearing quite the different PR statements.
and the ONLY stat regarding sales they gave us is (intentionally) vague as all fuck
Must be really nice having to "compete" with whole Fortnite userbase to get attention from support
Well, I'm still going by the rule that if Tim and Sergey aren't shouting on Twitter then the numbers aren't what they hoped for, at least so far. The walking back on the "500m in sales" and the stupid "multi-store future" tweet reinforce it for me.
BL3 will be the true test, bet then again it depends on how much they payed.
Yeah, anyone who had to deal with API changes knows the headaches they are. And Epic has good programmers (including Tim), so this is entirely on their lack of planning. And now I'm remembering people on Era defending that EGS doesn't need any of that (cloud saves, screenshots, etc) because you can always use external programs to do the same....
Personally I'm not fond of the term 'Launcher'. I think it implies the only use of it is to "launch" a game and that's all it does and all it needs to.
It kind of feels like handwaving away all the nice little features and uses for Steam (and to a lesser extent uplay, origin,... I guess).
EGS can totally be called a Launcher in that context tho, because it can do fuck all.
I bought Forager after playing the demo and I'm enjoying it quite a lot, it's not very complex but pretty addictive and very relaxing. It currently counts more than 600 Steam reviews and a Very Positive average vote. Out of curiosity I went on Metacritic to see how the press reviewed the game. Number of reviews available from so-called professional outlets? Not a single one (there's a negative one on OpenCritic though).
Maybe that's why we need user reviews?
Maybe that's why we need user reviews?
I feel like a lot of "AA" games are at risk of this, sadly. And THQNordic can toss all their games on their for all I give a fuck, not going to support their pedophile signal boosting shit.
Very much agreed. As soon as they get a major hit they'll shout it from the rooftops.I think if their plans were working we'd be hearing quite the different PR statements.
Now... that's not fair. It could also parse files on your Steam folder without asking for permission, but that was before those pesky users decided to make a fuss about it.EGS can totally be called a Launcher in that context tho, because it can do fuck all.
User reviews useful? Get out of here with these preposterous ideas!
As someone wrote in one of many... many... Epic threads.... imagine if a company wanted to start a huge online store to compete with Amazon, and one of the main selling points was, "no users reviews unless the seller wants them".
OP
- Thread Starter
- #3,226
people like to joke that the "most wishlisted" list on steam is epic's shopping list ... but i'm pretty sure that's not that far from the truth, honestly
they just want to poach all the games people actually WANT to play - to herd them over to egs like cattle
Are the devs allowed to talk their own EGS numbers? Only that vague "Metro:exodus did better at launch than LL did, but we won't say if we take into account all factors or not" statement. My guess is they aren't allowed and they aren't good.
How Epic doesn't feel that MK11 sales are going to stomp Borderland 3 sales is beyond me. Borderlands 3 feels like the consolation prize after missing out on MK11, but maybe that's just me picturing overall numbers and not the pc user base.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #3,228
honestly? i can see that being a point in the moneyhatting contract ... "you can't talk about sales numbers unless we let you"
I just hope people are keeping tabs on the exclusivity dates and when that lifts and holding EGS+devs to those promises. I'm guessing Borderlands 3 is going to be the first game to time out of their contract, right? I'm curious to see how it's handled in terms of sales and reviews. How do you protest this?
That's what I figure too. They're NDA'd on sales numbers until the exclusivity is up, and even then probably + six or so months so after steam and other sales roll in, they can say 'hey we've sold X since launch!'
OP
- Thread Starter
- #3,232
i know Mor is ... he has a spreadsheet with all the games and exclusivity info about them
it has the shortest exclusivity period, but no, it won't be the first one (it'll release around April 2020 on steam) ... the first ones will be the games that have already been out since last year when EGS launched ... like Hades (if they indeed manage to finish it before the end of exclusivity)
That's not a joke, I'm also sure that's what they do. They go after what's "shinny" and grabbing attention. Quality is a secondary concern (Dangerous Driving).
They also lurk forums, as evidenced by Sergey deleting the cloud saves tweet, so I'm keeping very quiet about what is the game that if it goes EGS exclusive is going to make me bang my fists on the table and scream "Damn you Epic!!".
Won't the first one be Ashen since it was also there when EGS launched? And the only effective way to protest this is to just not buy the games, at least untill they are at a very deep discount or in some sort of bundle. They got paid to ignore their audience and those who supported them in the past, it's only fair they get the same treatment back.
Alright, I forgot about that. Let's settle on Spyware then.
I doubt it.
That is something I'm also very curious about.
I've said it before, but I think this will be similar to late ports of console games. A lot of those games will be forgotton or get pretty much lower sales than usual because the marketing hype machine has long gone silent and the games are competing with fresh new games that have their marketing hype machine still on-going.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #3,236
i imagine most (if not all) won't share sales numbers (or at least store split) even when the exclusivity period ends .... i mean - we all pretty much know what those numbers would show ... and i can imagine none of them will want to piss off papa Tim - in case he wants to throw more money their way in the future, so ...
yeah, pretty much .... at this point i'm pretty sure their ONLY criterium towards throwing money around is "how bardly it'll hurt steam" ... nothing else
Not in
That is why i said "since launch" - EGS exclusivity can't sell poorly if you only let people know the total sales after its not exclusive
The Ubi deals shows that clearly. I mean, is there any reason to get an Ubisoft game on EGS? The store itself adds nothing since it has almost no features (community and otherwise) and the Ubi Store has regional pricing. I'm guessing that's the reason they modified the deal to remove Uplay keys from third party sellers...to try to get at least some sales for all the money Ubisoft got.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #3,239
yeah, wouldn't surprise me ... and you aren't even really buying the game on egs anyway ... you're essentially buying a key for the udontplay version ...
egs has ZERO integration with uplay - once you buy the game and activate it on uplay, you can just uninstall egs (unlike with steam integration)
Dear Sergey, those are the games that I want you to NEVER Moneyhat:
- Red Dead Redemption 2 throw away your money on this mediocre overhyped bland game. With that kind of money, you can't moneyhat 30 other games
- the next Call of Duty
- how about those Electronic Arts games? I would be devastated if you make them EGS exclusive cough
I just saw a ~12 year old wearing this fortnite shirt
That's part of the 80 million playerbase that's totally going to buy checks notes Satisfactory and Phoenix Point on the EGS.
I supposedly have only 5 hours in F:NV, despite playing it for probably around 300 over multiple playthroughs
Fighting games already aren't the most popular genre on PC and often struggle maintaining a good playerbase and past MK games on PC have been rather mediocre ports as well, i could imagine that WB (or maybe Netherrealm) were smart enough to realize that.
That's part of the 80 million playerbase that's totally going to buy checks notes Satisfactory and Phoenix Point on the EGS.
Too bad it does't track offline mode gameplay.lol. I do actually really like when devs do this though. Like in Final Fantasy, you can always track your playtime in the party menu.
for us backloggers and game trackers though it really is a blessing Steam tracks these things on a global and public-facing basis.
I supposedly have only 5 hours in F:NV, despite playing it for probably around 300 over multiple playthroughs
In the case of Mortal Kombat i would say that an EGS deal could have realisitically killed this franchises PC audience for good.
Fighting games already aren't the most popular genre on PC and often struggle maintaining a good playerbase and past MK games on PC have been rather mediocre ports as well, i could imagine that WB (or maybe Netherrealm) were smart enough to realize that.
MK11 is the kind of game you want to moneyhat so I do wonder what happened if something happened.
Maybe something related to arcade sticks and the client lol.
Maybe something related to arcade sticks and the client lol.
Fucking loved it, just needs a liiiiitle bit more of weapon variety (why not a spear, given there's tons of enemies with it, or a ranged weapon?) and combat arts balance.
Gratz Gevin!Got the True Ending in Nep2
Also
Imagine how fucked it would be if MK11 was an EGS exclusive and had a barebones support for gamepad / sticks. Glad that Warner decided to go with Steam, wouldn't want to go back to the days of searching the web for control emulators and all that mess. Not that I'd buy it on EGS though.
I don't personally, and here are some reasons why finding one could be so troublesome.
1. Most digital retailers in Japan prefer to have their own client. IE: DMM DMM GAME PLAYERとは？ - DMM GAMES
This goes for music/movies/books/manga too nine times out of ten. DMM is the closest to Steam you'll find in Japan btw. Nearly everyone else is doujin games/ ero games (like dlsite), or other such things.
2. If Japanese Steam users are specifically looking for Steam keys G2A, Kinguin, CDKeys, etc... Are often mentioned, but availability can be a problem because many publishers simply do NOT generate extra keys for games they publish in Japan. That's why most keys on these websites available to JP users are either region free or general APAC versions.
3. Even big stores like Amazon.jp carry a limited supply of PC games. Those they do sell are quite the mixed bag. Some games only come in physical copies in the sense that they come with a case/disc/manual and sometimes LE goodies. But the disc is just a Steam installer with a key you redeem in the manual. Some games are sold as Origin/uplay/Steam keys but they will NOT sell to overseas customers period. (JP CC and Address required usually.) You'd have to know a Japanese person who could place the order and give you the key. Otherwise it tends to be client free but strapped with some sorta activation DRM which is common for VN's or Japan-only Publishers.
This is why you so rarely see JP region locked games outside of Japan (at least in the PC space, much easier on consoles tbh). Usually it takes a screw-up like Tecmo recently with DoA Xtreme VV.
That's probably why Epic paid so much for BL3 exclusivity. While it will sell less than if it was on Steam as well, it will still sell millions on EGS and Epic will be shouting this from the rooftops.
I'm pretty sure indies and/or new IP's won't be that lucky tho. I'd love to know how many copies Operencia sold on EGS for example.
Don't buy it when it's being released on Steam. Support developers and publishers who don't make exclusivity deals with Epic instead.
Even if it doesn't, they'll [Randy] still come out with some kind of math proving the EGS deal was smarter than staying with Steam
OP
- Thread Starter
- #3,250
he pretty much already has ... in that
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