Metro Exodus [PC, PS4, XBone] - 15th Feb 2019

[Achtung Englander]

genuinely thanks for that as I work in this industry and knowledge is POWER !

Guys - its a timed exclusive for the first year. Its coming to Steam in 2020

Panic over
https://www.pcgamer.com/metro-exodus-wi ... -honoured/

[Sly Boots]

genuinely thanks for that as I work in this industry and knowledge is POWER !

Guys - its a timed exclusive for the first year. Its coming to Steam in 2020

Panic over
https://www.pcgamer.com/metro-exodus-wi ... -honoured/

What panic?

We knew it was a timed exclusive and the most any of us have said about it is that we're prepared to wait a year for it.

[DjchunKfunK]

I think he is being sarcastic.

[Lee]

Aye I think it was sarcasm to be honest mate

Let's be honest Epic has probably given enough money to sweeten the deal if they don't sell enough copies of the game. And have been courting the same way for all these stupid dev's buying into it.
Tim Sweeny made a stupid comment on how it means more for the dev's and could make games cheaper to buy. Now I ask where have you heard that bullshit before... would it be the whole going digital donks ago?

The one thing that really hits the bottom line is when the fans turn away from your IP for whatever reasons and you start to lose even more money. All the publishers have seen it recently in their stock prices and no amount of Epic cash is going to help that.

I just hope that Valve doesn't start this bullshit of buying dev's for exclusivity.

Let's leave that shit at the door.

[Animalmother]

Wasn't the previous game developed by a tiny team in an Eastern European apartment which they then got evicted from weeks before finishing the game? I'm not surprised if they decided to maybe make a bit extra cash on this one. Assuming they had any say in the matter that is.

[Mantis]

Does PC exclusivity really matter that much when the only thing you're locked into is what storefront/interface you launch the game from? There are so many already that I really don't care about having multiple clients installed anymore and Steam is really not that competitive when it comes to pricing. It's not like consoles where I need to drop another £300 to play the game on a different platform, all PC game clients work on my PC.

Incidentally, will key resellers appear for the Epic store in the same way places like CDKeys sell Steam codes? Would probably help alleviate certain people's fears over the only option to purchase the game on the Epic client being too pricey.

Steam has been awful for years, I really hope all this poaching on their monopoly kicks them into gear to start sorting their storefront out.

[Achtung Englander]

Koch Media have really cocked this one (did you see what I did there. I am so funny)

Apparently all physical pre-orders will redeem in the Epic game store and not Steam

What is it with game publishers being toned deaf to their consumers what with Bethesda and Fallout 76 and Blizzard with Diablo Immortal. This lack of not giving a fuck and show me the money is very disturbing.

[Snowy]

Steam has been awful for years, I really hope all this poaching on their monopoly kicks them into gear to start sorting their storefront out.

This 100% - Steam is fucking awful these days - seems every change they make is for the worst.

[DjchunKfunK]

Steam is a victim of it's success and are an easy target and in the rush to criticise them people forget about everything they have done for the industry. They have made some poor decisions but at the same time that everyone decries their discoverability issues I have not heard one person come up with a viable alternative. People talk about employing people to curate the games however with the amount of games on there I don't think that is even possible and will just lead to it's own problems of the bigger games being more likely to be promoted.

I don't disagree that competition is good for the industry but right now the Epic store isn't really providing competition., itprovides a worse feature set than Steam and they are forcing you to buy into that by using exclusives. On top of that their idea of paying influencers to promote your game in order to deal with discoverability is no better, and probably worse, than Valve's.

As it stands the only good thing I can see coming out of this is that Valve drops the percentage cut they take from developers and publishers. Other than that I don't really see how Epic is providing competition that Valve should be worried about. They still have the better feature set, their store is easier to navigate than Epic's, which will only get worse as they put more games one it, and prices on the Epic store are comparable to Steam despite developers/publishers making more money per game. If you then factor in that you can buy Steam games cheaper off key sites then the Epic Store is actually more expensive than Steam.

If Epic had launched with a fully featured store and had tightened up their payment security, then yes I would say there isn't a big issue with them buying up exclusives, but as it stands I think they are currently making things worse for consumers, not better.

[Sly Boots]

Steam is a victim of it's success and are an easy target and in the rush to criticise them people forget about everything they have done for the industry. They have made some poor decisions but at the same time that everyone decries their discoverability issues I have not heard one person come up with a viable alternative. People talk about employing people to curate the games however with the amount of games on there I don't think that is even possible and will just lead to it's own problems of the bigger games being more likely to be promoted.

I don't disagree that competition is good for the industry but right now the Epic store isn't really providing competition., itprovides a worse feature set than Steam and they are forcing you to buy into that by using exclusives. On top of that their idea of paying influencers to promote your game in order to deal with discoverability is no better, and probably worse, than Valve's.

As it stands the only good thing I can see coming out of this is that Valve drops the percentage cut they take from developers and publishers. Other than that I don't really see how Epic is providing competition that Valve should be worried about. They still have the better feature set, their store is easier to navigate than Epic's, which will only get worse as they put more games one it, and prices on the Epic store are comparable to Steam despite developers/publishers making more money per game. If you then factor in that you can buy Steam games cheaper off key sites then the Epic Store is actually more expensive than Steam.

If Epic had launched with a fully featured store and had tightened up their payment security, then yes I would say there isn't a big issue with them buying up exclusives, but as it stands I think they are currently making things worse for consumers, not better.

Agree with this. And with what RPS published yesterday. Competition is good and this could still lead to Valve making improvements to Steam which is a positive, but this just feels like going about providing that competition in the wrong way. By (effectively) forcing people to use an inferior storefront with possible security issues re personal details all they're going to do is breed resentment among players, while I can see many also like myself and others just being content to wait, by which time it will be cheaper anyway.

[Mantis]

Whilst it may be inferior at the minute, I think people need to take into account the fact that it has been around for mere weeks whilst Steam has fifteen years plus of progress on it. Remember how god awful Steam was when it first launched and how many years it took to iron out some basic features? It wasn't even stable for me for a long time. Epic will iron out the wrinkles in time, they've already shown that they're quite quick to react to feedback with their changes to the refund policy.

I remember the same thing happened when Origin launched, it was awful. It's much better now but EA have never really tried to pinch Steam's userbase, they just use it to support their own games primarily.

[DjchunKfunK]

Whilst it may be inferior at the minute, I think people need to take into account the fact that it has been around for mere weeks whilst Steam has fifteen years plus of progress on it. Remember how god awful Steam was when it first launched and how many years it took to iron out some basic features? It wasn't even stable for me for a long time. Epic will iron out the wrinkles in time, they've already shown that they're quite quick to react to feedback with their changes to the refund policy.

I remember the same thing happened when Origin launched, it was awful. It's much better now but EA have never really tried to pinch Steam's userbase, they just use it to support their own games primarily.

Sorry Mantis but that excuse doesn't fly with me. Valve were doing this for the first time when they launched so have had to make it up as they go, but Epic have had time to look at what Steam has done and go from that. If you want to rush your product out that is your prerogative but you need to be expect the criticism if you do.

[sohei]

Whilst it may be inferior at the minute, I think people need to take into account the fact that it has been around for mere weeks whilst Steam has fifteen years plus of progress on it. Remember how god awful Steam was when it first launched and how many years it took to iron out some basic features? It wasn't even stable for me for a long time. Epic will iron out the wrinkles in time, they've already shown that they're quite quick to react to feedback with their changes to the refund policy.

I remember the same thing happened when Origin launched, it was awful. It's much better now but EA have never really tried to pinch Steam's userbase, they just use it to support their own games primarily.

Sorry Mantis but that excuse doesn't fly with me. Valve were doing this for the first time when they launched so have had to make it up as they go, but Epic have had time to look at what Steam has done and go from that. If you want to rush your product out that is your prerogative but you need to be expect the criticism if you do.

I'm just miffed that of all the titles out there it had to be Metro Exodus that's affected. That sucks

I hate it when things suck.

[DjchunKfunK]

CEO of THQ Nordic has made the following comment to shareholders about this issue.

I fully support our sub-groups’ autonomy to run their respective businesses. I believe it’s in the group’s, and ultimately the consumers’, best interest that business decisions are made close to the market and this is the group’s consistent business model.

I firmly believe that Deep Silver and Koch Media have carefully considered the advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and risks in their decision to go solely with Epic Games Store. The decision has my full support.

I have noted that there is some confusion about the two different THQ Nordic entities, the parent company and the operating entity in Vienna. As already communicated to shareholders last year, the parent company will change its name to better reflect its status.

[Mantis]

Whilst it may be inferior at the minute, I think people need to take into account the fact that it has been around for mere weeks whilst Steam has fifteen years plus of progress on it. Remember how god awful Steam was when it first launched and how many years it took to iron out some basic features? It wasn't even stable for me for a long time. Epic will iron out the wrinkles in time, they've already shown that they're quite quick to react to feedback with their changes to the refund policy.

I remember the same thing happened when Origin launched, it was awful. It's much better now but EA have never really tried to pinch Steam's userbase, they just use it to support their own games primarily.

Sorry Mantis but that excuse doesn't fly with me. Valve were doing this for the first time when they launched so have had to make it up as they go, but Epic have had time to look at what Steam has done and go from that. If you want to rush your product out that is your prerogative but you need to be expect the criticism if you do.

I'm not saying that I think they should be exempt from criticism. I'm saying that every store that has launched in the last decade has had teething problems and that people should give it a chance to fix things. Criticising the shoddy parts is how they will actually improve things.

Just because Valve have done something before doesn't mean that the developers behind Epic have had the similar experiences or any exposure to the back-end stuff that has gone into improving Steam. Different developers, different platform.

I don't disagree with them poaching exclusives to try and boost their userbase either. It's just a store, it's no more or less expensive than the game would have been on Steam and I'm sure they will have it discounted on a sale eventually anyway, I actually don't care at all about that.