My response to this is kinda “so what?” Of course they’re not doing it for nothing. Both parties are helped. It’s a business deal. Sometimes it feels like when something good happens people on this board are too quick to say “well it’s gonna be bad eventually.” Maybe it will be! But the pessimism for every potential solution on display is frustrating.
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While their material benefits are really and can be good for indie devs, I just can’t see giving them such the benefit of the doubt when they made Fortnite, a game designed to be awful until you give them more money.
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I think “Which one of these billion dollar entities is good, actually”, kinda misses what’s going on here?
The people doing the harassing are thoroughly awful. Nothing any of the entities may have done, nor anyones possible emotional reaction to it, could possibly justify this behavior. You’re allowed to strut a bit when you get a win (even if that annoys people some) and that’s all Epic (via Tim Sweeny) and Glumberland did here. I don’t think anyone should have to plan for this crap. Game makers should be making games, hopefully having fun, and ideally making some money doing what they love.
That this is a real thing that happens, something in this culture is broken.
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My basis is on Epic’s history as a company, which includes the unethical pricing schemes of Fortnite (already brought up) and how they treat their own employees (aforementioned crunch).
I want them to do good, but we’re talking about capitalists here, and this particular company has a massive share of it owned by Tencent, a mobage and freeium power player. I can’t ignore those warning signs.
Remember when Sterling did a whole video about how capitalism was bad and then went back to talking about microtransactions - the thing gamers talk about when they don’t understand capitalism? I think the guy means well but he’s a product of gamer culture and speaks in a tone that routinely attracts reactionaries who agree with his half-correct diagnoses of the industries’ problems.
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Which is frustrating because that’s actually a thing we should be concerned about. Speaking as someone with addiction issues, microtransactions, even devoid of newer schemes like loot boxes, still prey on people with addictive tendencies. The key to that is the obfuscation they present to actual costs. Loot boxes just made the problem worse by gamifying it further.
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I’ve decided I like Ooblets better than Gamers.
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One point of concern over the exclusivity that had some merit was backers of the project who live in other territories that the EGS currently doesn’t support, effectively locking them out from being able to play the game they’ve been helping to support development of.
But the aggression towards them seems more rooted in the perceived loss of “value” in sunk cost towards the Steam platform via the existence of a true competitor service, than anything to do with the potential inconveniences of switching over or the real discomfort with a big money business throwing their weight around like this.
That, coupled with a small dev making snide comments towards gamers as a whole (while not being Edgy Rockstars like Hideki Kamiya or Katsuhiro Harada who get free passes on this stuff), highlights how little some things have changed in games communities since 2014.
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Tens of millions of people enjoy the game without spending anything and, AFAIK, the only thing to buy is skins.
It’s a pretty big leap from arguably predatory monetization and crunch motivated on trying to catch lightning in a bottle, to the conviction that they have no interest in helping indies succeed. One has nothing to do with the other.
What territories? This still comes up, but the EGS has been available globally for months. The last big hold out was China which was added a few months ago. They have regional pricing in more places than Steam.
There are some troubling ethical quandaries in that statement. It reads like you’re excusing the abuse of workers because they made a successful game.
Yes, that indictment was intended.
That isn’t their entire stated strategy. Another facet is their public commitment to quality control on their store, denying what Tim Sweeney calls “crappy games.” That seems reasonable on the surface, but the subtext of the quality-control debate has historically been that “good” indie games are primarily marketable and marginal games are “crappy.” Epic seems to envision a future where they’re the XBox Live Arcade of PC indie, the store full of polished product that appeals to their targeted market segments, and Steam is XBox Live Indie Games, the store full of weird, messy, interesting games that hardly anyone sees. Their idea of helping indie developers is to work with mostly the high-profile small studios who need help the least. It’s building a wall between indies with resources and connections and commercially-viable product, and the ones on the edges making weird games that aren’t actually any less worthy despite their tiny audience. The most valuable thing about modern-day Steam to me is that nearly anyone (the submission fee is an actual barrier) can get their work in the same space as AAA blockbusters and indie smash hits, can put their game where the players are. It’s frustrating that Epic rejects that attribute as a critical flaw, and appears to be trying to reshape the market to fix that flaw.
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Sure. Which is why it’s great that’s not going anywhere and nothing Epic does will have any effect on that (other than potentially advancing the cause of increasing their rev-share). There’s basically no scenario where Steam fails and the EGS achieves its former market share that would really justify this fear. And if that did occur, there’s not really any reason to assume access to the EGS would remain as strict.
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Idk if you meant this in regards to Ooblets specifically, but this is actually a misunderstanding going around so I’ll clarify anyway. Backers on Ooblets Patreon were never in any way promised a copy of the game or even early access. It was just a way to support the devs and get updates and stuff. They were very clear about that.
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In what way? I haven’t played since Apex came out but I never felt like I was missing out on anything by not owning a skin or dance. I’m sure cosmetics mean more to some then me but it wasn’t like I never wanted to play the game because I didn’t look like John Wick and do the floss dance.
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I feel like whenever someone says “well you don’t HAVE to engage with the harmful monetization stream” kind of misses the point? Like, regardless of your need to engage with Fortnite as a storefront, lots of people do? And when they do, they’re beset by systems that push people to spend money, and spend more money than they would actually need to get the thing they want. Sorry if this is a little pointed, but just because you played a game once and didn’t want spend money on it, doesn’t mean that people didn’t?
I would really suggest watching Dan Olson’s break down of how montization works in Fortnite, but in short the game is made more unpleasant to play without spending money, while it advertises constantly, both through landing menus and UI, but also by creating a clear divide between players that spent money and players who haven’t. They literally bombard you with advertising.
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First off I played Fortnite for several seasons, hardly once or twice.
Second Fortnite monetization is nowhere even close to being as predatory to other highly popular games like League, CSGO, Dota2, TF2, and Smite to name a few.
Fortnite isn’t putting things in loot boxes and telling you for the low price of $10 you can spin the wheel and maybe you’ll get what you want or maybe instead you’ll get that much more basic skin for a character you have no interest in or don’t even own.
CSGO literally shoves gun skin used to kill you, the stickers on it, what the person paid to name it and their $200 glove skins in your face every time you die. Also you can name that gun anything they have no filter last I checked.
TF2s marketing literally calls people who don’t own hats poor and irish.
League locking you out of characters until you grind or buy leaves players who don’t own them feeling at a disadvantage.
Is Fortnite perfect? Hardly. Is it as bad as other games on the market, not by a long shot.
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“there are worse forms of predatory capitalism so we should forgive this one” is a weird flex, but ok
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No I’m saying there is much worse practices that have been for a long time over looked that we should be focused on getting rid of in this industry before we go after Fortnite.
Fortnite monetization is not great but it isn’t preying on people with gambling issues or teaching kids gambling is okay at a young impressionable age.
I say we focus on it all because it’s all using the same base strategy. Fortnite is also far more than fare game since it’s basically the biggest video game phenomenon of all time. It has more reach than anything else out there, which is how you get news stories about kids excluding other kids who use default skins or animations.
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I think what the developers did is completely understandable given that they need to make money. The fact that people take this out on them is abhorrent and that a discussion about the relative merits of Epic over Valve has to happen because of this is ridiculous. Neither are good, but at least one is paying more.
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