I usually can't stand playing anything at 30fps, but the combat and pacing are deliberately slow in Alan Wake II, and I've been surprised how little it has bothered me (quality mode on PS5).
That's fair, as it's your preference. It's my preference too to use steam just because it's where I have the most games and I like keeping things tidy and in 1 place. Though it's not an ideological stance, which "refuse" leads me to believe. I'm genuinely curious about the reason an adult would take that position. Last time I asked (a couple of years ago) on Reddit I didn't get, ummm, mature responses.
If there is a game I'm interested in, I'd use whatever is cheaper/available for it.
My reason for refusing to give the Epic store money is pretty simple: Paid exclusives are bullshit. Especially when they're used as fodder to promote "competition", when such things are anything but.
A lot of games are exclusive to Steam. People are currently pretty angry about Sea of Stars, which explicitly committed to a GOG release, and then decided not to have one.
Return to Monkey Island also released as a Steam exclusive.
That’s fair. I view it as just business. It certainly doesn’t affect me or any consumer. It only affects Valve, which I don’t care about. Maybe valve should pay developers more. Epic takes far less than steam does from developers, so I definitely understand the appeal to developers.
No it isn't. I can play lots of games on my machine. I can't play, specifically, Alan Wake 2, since it's unavailable for purchase either standalone or an a platform that supports Linux.
Of course it's their choice where to release it, but saying, specifically, that it doesn't affect any consumer is just plain wrong.
It does effect you. Its a reduction of choice that benefits no one.
And since there's a vastly bigger audience on Steam vs the Epic Store, I don't really think that split matters as much as people would have you believe.
As long as storefronts have to compete for games, this is what that looks like. There's not really any way to get rid of exclusives without hurting competition. Would you want a law passed for games to be required to be put on certain storefronts? For storefronts to be required to accept all games submitted to it? Either one would hurt competition by giving too much power to either the game publisher or the storefront.
No I think what I want is pretty obvious. No exclusives. I don't honestly care what shitty storefront something is on, as long as its not limited to one. That's literally my only gripe.
Besides publishers are already free to decide where the games they publish go or don't, so I'm not sure where the "too much power to publishers" thing is coming from.
>I don't honestly care what shitty storefront something is on, as long as its not limited to one.
But that's not unique to paid exclusives. That's not even unique to Epic, Valve's own games are exclusive to a single storefront. You should boycott them for the same reason.
There is a cost to releasing games on multiple storefronts, forcing games to release on multiple stores only hurts smaller developers. Some smaller developers also skip storefronts altogether. Minecraft and Factorio were initially sold without any storefront. Is that still considered limited to one and therefore an exclusive?
>Besides publishers are already free to decide where the games they publish go or don't, so I'm not sure where the "too much power to publishers" thing is coming from.
I'm talking about cases where the storefront doesn't want to sell the game. Say the game has adult content, or the game has is just unfinished and not good. If storefronts are required to carry games. Otherwise games that only get accepted to a single store will continue to be exclusive to that single store.
Same thing with smaller developers, are they expected to cater to the whim of multiple storefronts to be able to release a game? One of my favorites, Zachtronic's Opus Magnum was rejected from GoG initially.
I'm strictly talking about the ones that are paid timed exclusives, nothing else. No where did I say anything about being anyone being required to do anything. You added that.
If a publisher chooses to do a single store front, then fine w/e. I don't have a problem with that. Its when a storefront bribes a publisher to keep a product exclusive to one store, in an attempt to force consumers on to that store that they likely otherwise wouldn't have used, that I have problem with.
I was going off your initial point of what you want: No exclusives. Not just paid timed exclusives.
>Its when a storefront bribes a publisher to keep a product exclusive to one store
That's not a bribe, that's a business transaction. Do you bribe a store to give you a product?
>If a publisher chooses to do a single store front, then fine w/e.
This contrasts with your previous: "as long as its not limited to one"
So now publishers are allowed to choose one storefront, but somehow they can't be paid to make that choice? How should they be making that choice if not by how much each storefront is offering?
This usually applies but for Alan Wake 2 Epic is the publisher. So your argument is like getting angry at Valve for not releasing their games (dota, cs, half life, etc) on Epic store or GOG.
Well I wasn't specifically thinking about Epic the publisher there, because yes I agree that is dumb and I didn't actually know that Epic was the publisher here. I thought it was just another dumb exclusivity thing.
I agree with you. I want to play Alan Wake 2 on PC and since it is only sold on the Epic Store I will buy it there.
If it was on Steam I would have likely bought it on Steam. But it’s not. So in my case at least, this exclusive is effectively driving me to buy on the Epic Store.
I find it sort of funny that many (not all) complaints about the Epic Store are the same things gamers complained about when Steam was released 20 years ago.
I think it is only fair to compare the Epic vs modern Steam. That Steam had the same issues 20 years ago, is kind of irrelevant if expectations have risen.
Same reason I don’t want to have a half dozen streaming providers. I don’t want to have a bunch of different stores and launchers with different games on each.
Plus it’s a terrible store front from all I’ve heard and I do not wish to support it
