• Caught_You_Looking_Moron
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        11 months ago

        How was it exclusive if it was available to purchase in two separate places? Maybe if your comment had a qualifier like “digital download version exclusive” it could be considered correct

        • @cottonmon
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          911 months ago

          Based on the other poster above, it was the Darwinia devs who reached out to Steam. So Darwinia isn’t a particularly good example either.

          • @Rose
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            -211 months ago

            What’s your point though? Every one of Epic’s exclusivity deals is done with the consent of the game publisher. Does it matter who makes the offer? Do we even know that there aren’t cases of publishers reaching out to Epic?

            • @cottonmon
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              211 months ago

              Does anyone know how to permalink a post on Lemmy? Anyway, here’s what Snot said:

              Also, to be clear on the differences, Valve didn’t reach out offering to pay for a massively popular upcoming game, which is what Epic does as a business model. They had a company that was about to fail reach out to them, and they made an exclusivity deal with them, but Valve did not pay them for this deal. If you really fail to see the difference between those two things, I don’t know what to tell you.

              • @Rose
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                -111 months ago

                Gamers and developers benefit from the developers being paid rather than not being paid for the same thing.

      • @Voyajer
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        2111 months ago

        Are we pretending publishers not bothering putting their games on every storefront is the same as paying publishers to not put those games on competing storefronts?

          • @Voyajer
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            1211 months ago

            Intention matters too.

            • @[email protected]
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              -311 months ago

              Not to me. I just want to play games. Already have multiple launchers. Doesn’t make a difference.

          • @[email protected]
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            511 months ago

            The end result is the same for the consumer.

            It really isn’t.

            In one case a publisher is choosing to publish where the customers are. If consumers don’t like that service they are free to publish somewhere else

            In the other case a company is trying to force consumers to use their service, instead of providing a better service that they would want to use.

            • @[email protected]
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              -311 months ago

              Either way you install a client and play a game. Already have a few so it doesn’t really matter.

            • @Rose
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              -511 months ago

              Steam was literally forced on those who owned a physical copy of Half-Life and wanted to play it. The dominant position has nothing to do with the service offered by Steam. It was dominant when it barely had any features. GOG competing with it on features and in fact offering the bonus of DRM-free games hasn’t improved its market share of about 0.5%.

              • @[email protected]
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                311 months ago

                No one is upset about having to use EGS for Fortnite. Their own games that they develop themselves they can do what they want with.

                The issue is when Epic approaches other developers, especially those that have already announced a Steam release, and try to get exclusivity out of them: https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7

                Epic: We would love to have you on our service
                Dev: I’m not interested in exclusivity
                Epic: then we have no interest in having you on our service

                Having more options for their customers makes their service better, but Epic isn’t interested in being a better service.

                • @Rose
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                  -311 months ago

                  Dev: I’m not interested in exclusivity

                  Epic: then we have no interest in having you on our service

                  If anything, the example you brought up proves the opposite. Darq is on Epic and its developer even took money from Epic to make it free, so there is no grudge even past the dev’s publicity stunt.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    211 months ago

                    Their attempt to strong arm an exclusivity deal failed and at some point they relented and put the game on their store.

                    If they had just hosted in on their service at the same time in launched on Steam it would have been better for their customers and more profitable for Epic. But they are more concerned about trying to force exclusives than do what is better for their customers, even if it loses them money.