Look, I have no love for the Epic Games store right now. I think Steam needs some good competition. I wish Steam hadn’t had fifteen unchallenged years to become such an entrenched juggernaut that the best way for another platform to grow and compete with it is securing exclusives to draw business. It would be nice if things could happen more organically.
But regardless of any of that, there is no feeling or point of view on the matter that can justify sending video game developers threatening and harassing messages over it. There is no equivocation here; I don’t care how upset you are about the Epic Games store (or the tone of a developer’s message or microtransactions, or a pushed release date, or anything else), there is an appropriate way to express unhappiness and make your voice heard, and threatening another human being is not one of them.
The hatefulness of this behavior drowns out and invalidates any sort of criticism these people were hoping levy at the subject of their dissatisfaction in the first place, and makes us as a community of gamers look toxic and entitled as fuck. You’d think that this wouldn’t need to be said over and over again, but, whelp.
under no circumstances you can send death threats to dev
you can, however, tell them to eat a fat bag of dicks for betraying your trust
The marketing departments on the other hand are in permanent Open Season.
The marketing department are a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
I recommend that you check AND read this comics here -> https://cad-comic.com/comic/it-will-be-on-the-quiz/
I found a future version of an encyclopedia that confirms this.
So many dislikes! I guess there’s no love for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
There’s a time and place.
What did we just say!
So you were planning to get the game and support them?
Be careful what you wish for because I’m pretty sure someone will be ready to betray your trust just to be able to eat a fat bag of dicks.
Unless I’m lost in translation, there is nothing wrong with eating dicks!
I do that silently, dev that goes egshitlusive is developer I cross from list of acceptable vendors. for all games thereafter and likely for eternity.
What is someone is threathening their lives and will murder the whole dev team if you don’t?
Judging by your score, people here don’t exactly read what other people are writing, aren’t they?
But what if they make their game Epic exclusive after saying it won’t be and insults their community in their post about it?
don’t know if trolling or…
The death threats come from someone who read 5 all caps rants…
The rants came from 5 someones who each read 5 angry opinion pieces…
Ect…
Ect…
Eh.
The whole internet enables a lunatic, who undoubtedly isnt reading this comic.
Is this based on a particular case or just the internet in general?
Few days ago some indie dev switched to Epic and proceeded to mock & belittle their fans and backers for getting unhappy over it. The fanbase wasn’t pleased, and went a bit too far in vocalising their outrage, including faked ‘evidence’ and death threats apparently.
Ugly case altogether.
I definitely don’t think he was trying to mock and belittle them. After reading the post it definitely read as satire.
BUT communication is a two way street…
The Ooblet devs most certainly did NOT “mock and belittle” their fans. They posted in the same lighthearted “don’t take everything so seriously” tone they always post in and some people, most of whom probably had no idea who this 2-man developer team was, read it and decided to misinterpret as “mocking.” If they came close to belittling anyone, it’s the potential people that might decide to threaten them or threaten to steal their work because they didn’t like the choice to move to Epic, which coincidentally are the very same degenerates throwing a shitfit right now. https://ooblets.com/2019/07/we-did-the-thing/
That post is far from lighthearted. The developer goes out of his way to insult as many people as possible, and continued in the same way on their Discord server ever since, providing very rude and insulting replies to all sorts of questions, no matter how politely asked. Seriously 80% of that post is dedicated to telling people how stupid they are to be opposed to this deal.
PLEASE show me where they suggested anyone is stupid in that post. Please show me where they insulted anyone in that post. Please show me where they did anything but provide some counter-points to the common complaints they thought people might raise re: The EGS platform?
Hey Tim. I’m pretty sure this counts as insulting/mocking.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBFV4UHXoAEJku8?format=jpg&name=large
https://twitter.com/SammyofTocktown/status/1157461122166996993
Anyway, have a nice day.
The first one? No. The platform the game is on does not support his currency (and for some reason he can’t convert it). The response is pretty straightforward? He has to wait for it to go to a platform he can use. What other answer did you expect? That’s no different then saying “The game is a PS4 exclusive for six months, but I only have an XBox? How am I supposed to play this game?!” Uhh… you wait. As far as the second batch of screenshots, the only mocking/insult I see there is referring to some of the outraged… Read more »
While the post itself isn’t that bad, there is one comment from the Discord follow-up that really rubs me the wrong way. Someone brought up the fact that they live in a country which uses a type of currency that Epic doesn’t accept (at the moment), and switching to a different currency costs obnoxious conversion fees. As such, Epic is actually something bad for them, and not just “another free launcher to download”. Perplamps’ response was “Guess you’ll just have to wait :)” Which, to me, is an incredibly rude thing to say as a community manager. Someone brings up… Read more »
Poorly thought out? Probably. Perplamps is not a “community manager” like he works for some big developer. He’s one of a two-person team making the game. So yeah, A)this comment is made in the middle of what is probably the shittiest weekend of his life and B) he’s probably not trained in community interaction and he’s more than likely a little stressed. So the “nobody owes you the game” comment (while true) was unecessary and could have been avoided. But the “You’ll have to wait” part? While it might not be what the guy wanted to hear, I’m not sure… Read more »
Let me quote: “You’ll have to install EGS if you wanna buy Ooblets on PC. I know that’s asking a lot but I believe in you and your ability to download a free thing and create a user account (if you haven’t already done so to play Fortnite which I KNOW YOU HAVE).” if this isn’t an insult to the intelligence of their potential customers, I don’t know what is. That’s not funny, snarky or sarcastic they have overstepped the line. It’s not about the ability to download something it’s about the willingness which they clearly ignored. I have also… Read more »
1) I mean, sure, if you WANT to be insulted by that sentence, I believe in you and your ability to make it happen. But, unless you’re going into that post LOOKING to get angry, no, it seems pretty clear they’re trying to be playful. “Calling you a liar…” FFS dude, you’re clearly trying to be insulted so you can justify some outrage. 2) They did not say “It will not become an Epic exclusive.” What they said IN THE POST YOU LINKED FROM NINE MONTHS AGO is “It is still our plan to release on all platforms.” Guess what?… Read more »
This one conversation is the most epic owning ever and has totally made my day.
I never heard about this game until today, and I just read the blog post… i don’t feel insulted. what part should have been insulting? They explained their decision (financial stability, a super valid concern for indie devs) and then explained that while they understand people have problems with the epic game store, they don’t agree they’re problems. It was pretty light hearted and taunty. What part was insulting to me?
Probably none of it.
Gamers just enjoy behaving like spoilt toddlers who need their diapers changed.
Well time to remove your comic from my reading list. People who support anti-consumer practices can go fuck themselves.
Telling people not to threaten the lives of other people is supporting anti-consumer practices? XD
The internet, man, amirite?
Must be one of those people who buy into “The Customer is ALWAYS right. ALWAYS.”
That’s the whole black and white “if you’re not with me you’re against me!” bullshit…
If it helps, I don’t think you lost a particularly evolved specimen there Tim.
I’d ask myself who the fuck thinks it’s okay to threaten people’s lives *period*, but the comments here alone have enough crawling out the woodwork. And not all ironically or edgy either…
Dude, pick your battles. I think Epic is kinda scummy for what they’ve done too, but really, no blood need be spilt over this. That’s all we’re saying here, but if you wanna go, go. You do you, chief.
Maybe try and talk some sense into those idiots planning to storm area 51.
Please don’t, if they storm area 51 it will be good for the gene pool. It will be like the Guinness book record for most Darwin awards in one day. “They can’t stop all of us” *A10 Warthog passing by* Brrrrrrrrrrrrt
Please don’t. Let Darwinism take it’s natural course.
Like the “natural course” of natural selection is the US army
Spoken like a true coward.
The fuck’s wrong with people in these comments? It’s -never- okay to threaten game devs, marketing & PR people or anyone like that at ANY point.
Feel free to not endorse them by not buying their products (I for one haven’t bought an EA game in about a decade) as that serves as a peaceful protest.
I don’t think he knows about second sarcasm, Pip
I get that everyone wants to be funny by being “that guy” but considering the context and the comic I still think it’s in poor taste to say “But it’s ok when its (insert other target)!”.
Even telemarketers?
I frequently tell telemarketers that I hope they get cancer and their children starve.
Wow that’s stupidly harsh. I hate getting a telemarketing call as much as the next guy, but I either ignore the call, or hang up if I got fooled by the spoofed number. They are just human beings trying to earn a paycheck. The only people I’ll mess with are the scammers, and even there I don’t threaten their lives or wish cancer on their kids, I just keep them on the phone and waste their time as long as possible. I might ask them if they think their parents are proud of how they are trying to rip people… Read more »
Indeed. The problem is that the failure mode of clever is asshole so when you try to be clever and epically fail you become an asshole.
Without putting too fine a point on it, the general climate in much of the Western world has reached a point where people’s sense of alleged injury is deemed as a right to spew hate, carry out harassment and marginalization, and to even justify mass murder (only a small %, but too high of a % still). With that sort of general climate on matters of race, religion, culture, race, political affiliation, etc., one can only see this sort of hate spewing towards game devs as arising from the same exaggerated sense of personal injury coupled with a feeling that… Read more »
Did I miss someone dropping death threats recently?
You should check up on the Ooblets EGS announcement disaster. While the devs didn’t really endear themselves in how they handled the annoucement itself and how they handled some of their Patreon supporters that raised concerns because EGS isn’t (yet?) selling in or does have regional pricing for their respective countries, it was probably unavoidable that some would lash out with anger and send death threats to them. Add to that that Tim Sweeny added fuel to the fire and that now you have huge swathes of the gaming media and Epic defending the devs, while ignoring the behavior of… Read more »
The comic is not one-sided, because there is no other side. This is not a topic that needs a balanced counter-argument or victim blaming to somehow justify people’s reprehensible behavior. You can take issue with the tone of the developer’s post if you’re offended that they had the nerve to be lighthearted in trying to head off the stupid, expected outrage.
But saying “Sure, death threats are bad… BUT, the dev is not without fault either” is exactly the problem here; people that think that ANY of this game development drama warrants the sort of vitriol and backlash it receives.
Eh… I always found the approach of “there’s just no excuse for [insert such and such a behavior here]” as being narrow minded, and amounts to little more than virtue signalling. You start to explore the reasons in the mind of a potentially unstable individual, you might start to come across more in-depth societal problems, and maybe a means to prevent another El Paso impromptu gun expo. Take a journey with me here, Mr CAD man. So, our test subject, we’ll call him Incel, sends a death threat to say, Tim Sweeney. Why? Well, he’s obviously upset over shady business… Read more »
All you’ve done is argue that there’s a variety of root causes that could potentially lead someone to a state of mind in which they think that threatening someone over a video game is acceptable (or simply don’t care either way.)
You’ve not made an argument for why that behavior should be excuseable (my argument being that there are NO underlying causes wherein we as a society should say “oh well that’s okay then…” to this type of reaction).
Nor do I intend to. I’m just stating that to outright dismiss this as behavior of psychopaths that is unacceptable in any situation is to miss the forest for the trees. You either know yourself and your adversary or you lose. Me personally? I like analyzing the mechanics of madness in the human mind. This most certainly qualifies, don’t you think? I do think we’re both arriving at the same conclusion, that this situation is completely unacceptable, just taking different paths to get there, and I’m giving some mind as to maybe prevent the ventilation of an unsuspecting devs’ skull… Read more »
It qualifies, and there’s certainly merit to examining the why of situations… it’s just that it’s beyond the scope of the comic, which is simply stating “this behavior is not okay.”
Well, I’m glad that you agree, Tim. =.= I’m slightly less thrilled about getting down voted to death just because I wanted to analyze this a little. Not like I was supporting either side or saying anything controversial, but just thinking “Well, THAT’s weird. Why is that a thing?”, expecting folks to act like thinking, reasoning adults. Guess we can’t have that here. God, I hate gaming politics these days…
Be super neat if you didn’t use my city’s tragedy at the hands of a white nationalist to argue in favor of issuing death threats.
Probably. It is, unfortunately, something that I tend to take for granted these days. Let’s see, most recent controversies that come to mind… The National Dex fiasco for Pokemon, the Epic Store Exclusivity blunder for Ooblets, the insertion of microtransactions into Crash Team Racing, anything involving Anthem…
Honestly, death threats happen with ridiculous frequency across the internet. They’re never okay, and it’s disturbing how much our culture has normalized them.
E3 doxxed their ‘attendeee’ list, accidentally releasing journalist info.. small indi info.. etc.
Already threats etc etc etc going out.
A small Indi two man developer team announced that they will release the PC-version of their game exclusively in the Epic store for some time.
The sadly expected consequences followed.
Just google Ooblets if you want to loose any remaining respect for the “selfappointed gamer culture”. (I use the term “selfappointed” to differentiate between actual gamers and this selfentitled, egocentric mob.)
Unless they are EA
you missed the point, right?
There is an exception to every rule
Not this one.
Invoking Godwin’s law.
“Case: Game dev is literally hitler” 😉
That first panel could probably become an easy meme. I expected this to go in a different direction, I forgot that this was even a problem. The best thing you can do is not buy their games, and remind your friends of previous transgressions as cool new games are nearing release.
I tried! https://www.reddit.com/r/MemeEconomy/comments/cnclin/brand_new_format_fresh_from_the_legendary_creator/
It was not a sound investment on memecononemy. I may take my wares to incel tears and post “women who reject you” but it may not be funny enough.
But it’s so easy to kill someone who slightly irritates you in a video game. Why should it be so difficult in real life?
Because there are no re-spawns in RL?
That seems like a plus to me
Reincarnation?
People never seem to understand that these companies don’t tend to treat their employees with any more respect than they do their customers.
Telling the CEO of these companies that he both is and has a micropenis is the way to go!
I don’t understand the dislikes. Hearing that some Bioware employees hoped DA Inq would fail so they might be hounded less by EA execs drove that home to me.
Sticking it to the head office that they are bad at their job, because the games could be even better and sell even better both due to quality and a community desire to support good business practice if they weren’t such asshats is the way to go.
Worked on video games. The preferred devs are fairly junior, willing to work insane hours for miniscule pay, and who are subject to bullying by intimidating management. The treatment of game devs in the places I worked or talked to friends who had worked at illuminated the reality that the companies wanted to squeeze every micro-credit out of their audience (I’d call them customers or clients, but the way game companies treat them, audience is the most lenient term that doesn’t feel dishonest) and every iota of work out of devs. The treatment of game is vastly crappier than devs… Read more »
Given the shit show the comments are I guess I’m not surprised
The dislike comes from the fact this comic was written about a two people team’s situation. The CEO of that two people’s company (if there even is one) isn’t going to treat his only coworker so bad!
*Adds names of people who make said threats to own DeathNote. (Eyes see real names :>)
*Contemplates the sheer number involved.
*Asks for a bigger book.
So very true, calm down people it is going to be ok. This is part of the reason why we gamers get a bad rep sometimes.
Also this should have been being taught by the Gaming Etiquette teacher from way back. =)
The Gamer’s Glossary was specifically for in-game terms.
Nothing about out-of-game terms I’m afraid.
The only acceptable threat is to threaten to not buy the game ,and then buy the game when it’s on a deep, deep sale.
Okay the one time would be they just kidnapped your daughter, and you have ‘a certain set of skills’?
tough crowd.
Not ever is it. But people these days don’t quite get that concept
Death threats to ANYONE is never ok. Doesn’t matter if it is Devs or anyone else. It is also not ok to harass, demean, insult or otherwise defame anyone. You don’t like someone’s opinion, state your opinion on the issue or why you think it is wrong. Don’t like a developer just state what you think is wrong with them. Making personal attacks or threats only reflects on the person making the attacks or threats. On a side note for the actual issue of Epic games. My issue with the Epic games store goes to the overall issue of games… Read more »
But what if you are Liam Neeson and they have your Daughter/Wife/Son?
Then I hope you call the police, because you are actor and they are better trained to handle it than you are.
Lucky. I made the same joke and got five down votes.
But I have to joke. I get angry and generally upset every time a member of a group I belong to, IE gamer, does or says something hateful and I will not only have no past times. But probably need to cry myself to sleep in a padded cell because there is too much hate.
Sorry I need to go find something funny now.
I guess they can’t tell when people are joking or being serious. I would have thought this one was obvious though.
Nealithi – Wow, how did 3 of us make the same reference from 3 different angles and not notice one another? I’m ashamed of my lazy internet-ing. Personally, I don’t feel like any of the three posts crossed the line in terms of intent, but I certainly did feel the need to qualify my dad-joke with a little context of what I really think about the issue at hand. The point that death threats are an inexcusable over-reaction to any business decision (shy of murder) is valid, important and I didn’t want to detract from that. I think the problem… Read more »
death threats are NOT childishness. No, sorry, never. You have kids, how often do they threat other kids of killing them? it’s an adult (hatefull and fucktard) behavior.
Fuck appropriation
this is just another part of the whole back and forth devs do something realy shitty then make up some bs insult (like entiteld the first time) and then gamers responding way out of line in that this goes back and forth alot it all started when devs realised they could bribe/fake game review websites and the fact that everyone hates microtransactions BUT THEY STILL WORK honestly at this point im not on the epic store not becaus of some complicated reason but becaus 2 of my friends hate it alot i legit dont even know what part of the… Read more »
Probably because gamers act like entitled babies with dirty diapers.
I’m sorry, I have vote this comment down for sheer lack of punctuation!
Well said, sir. Thank you for being a reasonable human being…
The internet has become Fort Annonomys for cowards to hide in while launching their attacks on everything that does not personally please them. If they all had their real names, faces, and addresses displayed it would be a little more civil on the Digital Front.
Okay, about that, go take a look at the r/entitled parent or r/choosing beggar reddit boards and tell me how civil those people tend to be face to face. Or, heck, go work retail at all. People are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling in ANY situation, regardless of anonymity.
Exception: You are Liam Neeson and you are on the phone with your daughter, when Game Developer bursts in and attempts to kidnap her for sale in human trafficking. Caveat: You must first warn said Game Developer of your particular set of skills, and offer them unconditional amnesty in exchange for immediately releasing your daughter. On a more serious note, it really concerns me we’ve reached a point in society where a comic like this is relevant, let alone necessary. There’s nothing wrong with investing time and energy into something (admittedly rewarding and enjoyable) as ultimately trivial as a video… Read more »
I wish we could stop pretending like this whole situation over the past week has anything to do with Epic. There’s a reason it hasn’t happened like this before – it’s entirely due to the developer’s condescending and derogatory tone both in the announcement post and continually on their Discord server.
No it’s never ok to send someone threats, but acting like the developer didn’t create this problem benefits nobody.
Oh stop with the “It’s not okay BUT…” bullshit. It’s not okay, PERIOD. I don’t care how much you perceive the developer to have hurt your feelings.
There was nothing condescending or derogatory about the developer’s tone just because they didn’t treat this announcement with the level of somber deference all of the ridiculously outraged vocal minority demands.
But it’s okay for death threats to be sent to anyone else? Like a YouTuber, politician, stranger on Twitter, etcetera? You’re awfully big into defending game devs specifically, and don’t seem to give a damn about anyone else, even though there are people getting multiple death threats every day online.
Yes of course, just like if I say “Please donate to Cancer research” that obviously means I’m saying “AIDS IS AWESOME, GIVE EVERYONE AIDS.”
Really, skyblade? Tim’s comic is a gaming comic about gamers for gamers.
Tim is not bringing up youtuber/politician/stranger on twitter etc death threats, because they are not in the industry that he works in.
Of course those death threats are not ok, but Tim is bringing up an incident that occurred within the industry that he works.
I couldn’t find anything derogatory in that post. They were making a joke about peoples’ overreactions to developers *gasp* selling their content, and a bunch of people seemed all too eager to prove their exaggerated take on the situation to be reality. They’re not distributing open source software here. They sold exclusive rights to distribute their game to a large company. They can finally afford a step up in food and lodgings. We should be happy for them, not crapping on them. This is the system at its best: work hard and reap the rewards.
Yes they were joking but the didn’t do a good job of tailoring their joke to the audience and it kinda kicked up a backlash. Think CountDankula’s nazi pug prank. Funny to internet edge lords, however play it at a holocaust survivors gathering and the crowd will be a tad miffed. In the same vein their joke is hitting a community rather split over the whole epic store and their shenanigans. To those that dont mind epic it seems light hearted, To those that dont like epic it sounds somewhat condescending and patronizing. Like so much in todays world people… Read more »
Except that the Nazis murdered a bunch of people, whereas these guys sold distribution rights to an application that they developed. One joke is about an atrocity of epic proportions and the other is about a perfectly legal transaction that occurs hundreds of times a year worldwide. I don’t understand how these even compare.
What’s the rhyme we all learned in preschool?
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
There’s no scenario where a party’s words on the internet will justify a response of threatened physical harm to said party.
Good comic Tim – straight to the point!
“Sticks and stones may break your bones – but words can leave psychological wounds that may never heal” I find this version more accurate, even if there is a percentage out there that will never be convinced otherwise.
Funny because according to that logic a spoken or written death threat can’t actually hurt anybody … which is of course wrong.
Having now read the initial Ooblets post, I’m having a hard time finding things to validate the “mocking and belittling” comments. I’m wondering how much this one sentence is at the center of everyone’s outrage? “Feeling like you’re owed the product of other people’s work on your terms or else you’ll steal it is the epitome of that word “entitlement” that people use to discuss immature, toxic gamers.”
Yeah you are absolutely correct. They pretty much said, “hey, some of you might act like whiny babies because it’s happened before. Instead, don’t” and then Gamers(tm) took that as THE WORST INSULTS EVER.
Yes, condescending tone and aura of untouchable smugness towards your target audience are insulting.
HUMAN DECENCY 102
Are you saying that their target audience is whiny babies? Because those are the only people who would take offense at what they said. If you’re not “feeling like you’re owed the product of other people’s work on your terms or else you’ll steal it,” then there is no insult. The only people who would feel insulted by this are, frankly, the ones who deserve it.
Fair, don’t send them death threats. In fact don’t send anybody ever a death threat. Instead consider the following: You can tell them to piss off. You can not buy their products. You can also stop listening to self righteous comic artists telling you what you can and can’t do. You can also stop listening to self righteous people posting comments telling you what you can and can’t do. Bye forever.
I have to say I use the Epic games store exclusively as I have never had any issues with them or the games they carry. Which is a far cry from the grief that Steam has given me over the years. Everything from bait and switch tactics, to taking my money and then not allowing me to a download for over two weeks as they stated my transaction was “in process” even though the $$$ came out of my account within seconds of my pushing the payment button. I will never use Steam again.
I think there are legitimate reasons to have concerns over EGS. There are legitimate reasons to be upset if a developer says they’ll release on Steam and then switches gears to EGS after taking money. There are legitimate reasons to be upset if a dev says things like, “Why so upset? Global Warming!” in pre-emptive defense against (some) people’s legitimate concerns. NONE OF THAT IS TO SAY that death threats or harassment is ever in any way acceptable! Fuck no, good gods! If you’re upset, just don’t buy the game. If you’ve put money in, try to get it back… Read more »
100% agreed.
I want Outerworlds.
I want Steam to finally have a decent competitor, and make sure everyone can play on an even playing field with healthy market completion, and using another Storefront platform to play other games isn’t a big deal for me.
If it wasn’t for the security concerns I personally would buy from Epic in a heartbeat. As it stands, I also am concious of my online footprint and data security, so until those are comfortably and reassuringly addressed, I won’t sign up to Epic yet.
Steam already has competition but the noDRM GoG apparently is too consumer friendly so some developers avoid to sell on this store. Which is fine I don’t “buy” from these developers.
Wow! I never thought I’d see video gamers thinking they were as entitled as gun owners!
God, this comment section is really a shitshow, huh?
I don’t even know the context of this whole situation – basically all I know is what’s in the description – but the comic itself doesn’t seem like it’s directed at any one particular situation at all, honestly. It can really apply to literally anything in the gaming community. And that’s the sad thing about it.
Everyone seriously needs to get their act together. No shit, no excuses, no “what if’s,” just… stop.
Well, in the name of the Internet, go die in a fire. Of course I’m kidding. People that give out death threats like candy should drown in frigid saltwater.
Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.
Try reading your post again because you just wished for the death of people yourself …
I think that was the point?
It’s sad but normal that you can’t have a conversation online that is positive dispite different opinions.
You know, where people listen to each other, consider the arguments/concerns etc.
There are always some people starting insults (or in this case much worse comments).
I mostly avoid multiplayer games (or ignore the chat) because of people taking it way too seriously and insulting others.
It’s supposed to be fun to play (even if you lose).
It’s not a problem of the gaming community alone.
(sorry for bad grammar -> not a native speaker)
I am still so confused about the EGS vs Steam thing. You just open up a second program, you can even put the shortcuts next to each other on your desktop! Why is this a big deal for so many people? Saying a game is exclusively on EGS is like saying that a game will only be placed on odd numbered shelves at Gamestop. It has literally 0 impact on your ability to play it.
Because it’s security is questionable at best right now and it lacks basic features because it was incredibly rushed. Epic is also generally disliked because of Fortnite. Yeah, the kids are a bit cringe-worthy what with the dumb dances and all, but they’re kids. It’s what they do. We weren’t really a lot better back in the day with Pokemon Red and Blue. GameBoys, clunky cables, cards and merch every where, man. What bothers me is how the game takes advantage of those same dumb kids with the microtransactions.. I mean, adults joke all the time about the amount of… Read more »
Because: * Epic only cares for developers and not it’s customers. Developers should get more money on the platform but the player should still pay the same amount of money. If they actually would want competition that could be done with the price for the customer but they don’t want that. They actually guarantee sales numbers. So if your game sells less then you wanted you still get the minimum money you hoped for. * They don’t support Linux. Apparently something important for some. * They support less currencies. Apparently something important for some. * They offer less features then… Read more »
That Kickstarter thing was insane.
“You give me money. I make some goods. Oops, I was bought, gut-n-feathers, by some megacorp, so goods that I made are not the ones you wanted. But I still get to keep your money, you whiny baby, hahahahahaha! 🙂 🙂 🙂 $$$”
*I think Steam should show a little more love to its developers, honestly looking at EGS and Steam as an amateur game designer I would be much more inclined to go EGS exclusive if I ever tried to publish a game. If that pressures Steam into doing better by their developers than that’s great. *The Linux thing I did not know about, and does make this a bigger issue as far as exclusives are concerned. Probably something that will be fixed soon. *I think currency and the Linux thing are probably a function of trying to not go too big… Read more »
Do you understand that “Steam” and “EGS” are not just programs on your PC?
That they are both not “just a game launcher”?
Care to elaborate? Maybe I’m missing something, but for me Steam is nothing more than a way to find games and buy them. I guess there are some community and multiplayer features too but they always seemed half baked to me. And the workshop is ok but almost every mod I use comes from an external website instead
exception is if it is ANOTHER bad EA game that ruins a franchise, involves microtransactions AND loot boxes. the unholy trinity deserves to be purged.
“People are just people.
People are just people.
People are just people like you.”
-Regina Spektor, the Ghost of Corporate Future.
I will also point out that while such threats are definite in fact criminal, and thus never ok in any context and i wholly agree with the strip, having read a little more about the cases most recently I also do note I can understand that there is backlash. It is certain often voiced in a far overblown manner but I work in customer service. When complaints or issues are raised there is a serious protocol for handling them, with empathy and care, resolving or at least outlining why they cannot be resolved in a careful manner; to be told… Read more »
It’s sad to see how thousands of people who have never been close to produce (decent) content feel they have the right to criticize those who do. You don’t like it? Move on. What do these people do in real life? Do you think they go like “I hate McDonald’s, so I’ll go to one and talk trash to their employees! Fucking sellouts!”? It’s ridiculous.
Quite a bit of spice in the comments today…
I miss when games just came on a disk and you installed them on your computer. Then you could play the game as long as you wanted and didn’t even need your internet on.
Simple times. Good times.
Yeah I also feel like I’m getting too old for this shit.
I miss those days too. More often than not if you buy the physical box these days all it contains is a card with a product key and download instructions, maybe some swag if its a collectors edition.
Good times indeed. 🙂
But don’t forget the downsides also, when you upgraded Operating systems, and nothing worked from your old games… 😛
I don’t miss those times at all. No to slow internet? Bulky cellphones no one can afford? No Youtube or Netflix? naw man, if I have to be “inconvenienced” by downloading a game on my machine with my 100mb fibre connection that’s always on, so be it. If the internet goes down, I open my door and take a walk *gasp* outside. But saying that it was better back then? No thanks
Reminds me of the comics and blog post you did on the TF2 hatgate. Pardon my bad paraphrase but I believe back then you said something like “you shouldn’t have to be told not to punch kittens, lest we find you out there, punching kittens in the street with a bewildered look on your face saying ‘but nobody ever told me NOT to punch kittens, bdurrh“
americans tend to be “death-threaty” and it IS sad to see this, considering the mass shootings last weekend is being blamed on violent video games again. So those idiots who do this, now give the media even more ammunition to focus on the video game subject instead of the real issue
While I can understand the anger people have if this is a game they’d been looking forward to, they totally lost me when threatening to kill someone or to rape their wife is their “go to reaction”. I mean, if someone scratches your car, you don’t behead their mother for it, do you? At least I hope not.. If so, let me know your registration number so I can stay far away from your car. There’s such a thing as proportionality. If someone kills your wife, I can totally understand wanting that person dead. But this is a video game.… Read more »
Obviously, death threats are a no go. But I think folks are starting to get a little unhappy with the amount of launchers/stores/programs that house their video game collections. So far we have Battle.net, Origin, Steam, UPlay, Epic Game Store. And 10 years ago we had just steam, one NEAT place to access a library of games. Origin and the EGS are functional, but overall not great launchers and the EGS is a mess, even if functional. I think that is what people are more upset about, though exclusivity deals are just a little ridiculous when you can put a… Read more »
“Taking choice from the consumer is the bigger problem here.” You’re right. If you take great content and make it exclusive to a single platform, people will never stand for it and your business will fail. *Cough*NINTENDOSONYMICROSOFT*cough* Can we just call this for what it is? PC players were spoiled by only HAVING one true choice to begin with. That’s already exclusivity and “anti-consumer” on its own just by virtue of being the biggest fish in the pond. OCCASIONALLY we had to deal with another launcher like Origin or UPLAY (and we griped about that its fair share make no… Read more »
It is not about exclusivity, but about sudden switch to exclusivity, many times against earlier promises, many times with crowdfunded games, where people who already paid real money to dev, because they believe dev knows BASIC HUMAN DECENCY, get told to TAKE A HIKE LOL.#DumbGamersAmirite #SuckersAreFreeCash EGS does not challenge Steam. What EGS does has nothing to do with fair competition. Epic just BRIBES developers to be on their platform. EGS does not try to be a better option for potential customers. There are no good intentions in their actions in the slightest. Only crude powergrab with tons of money… Read more »
I can think of one instance where a Kickstarter game went to EGS after the fact. And the Kickstarter backers who wanted a Steam copy were refunded. I can think of another single instance where a game started taking pre-orders on Steam, and then the game went to EGS for launch excusivity. Everyone who had preordered the game on Steam already had their orders honored and got the game on Steam. In both those instances, the gamers were not shit out of luck. They either got their game or they got their money back. They can be justifiably upset about… Read more »
Let’s also talk about crowdfunded games, and people paying money to dev’s. In Ooblet’s case, they were being funded through Patreon. not Kickstarter or something like that. NONE of the Patreon rewards were actually access to the game. The dev’s queried or at least notified their Patreon supporters about their Epic move, and got no flak for it. They have had a very supportive community. Maybe because the people funding the game were not actually receiving the game, but were supporting for something else, I don’t know, I am not a paton of theirs. Their messages about multi-platform availability were… Read more »
GOG Galaxy 2.0 is working to fix that. I can manage my games for GOG, Steam, Epic, and Origin from it. UPlay is supported already as well. I suspect it will have other support as well by the time it goes live. It won’t fix the issues people in other countries have with currency acceptance, but it does give a single interface to manage all games.
Okay, but what if, say, some publisher (2k) sends goons to break into your house, interrogate you for an hour, and copyright strikes every video on your channel. All for reporting on some leaks about Borderlands 3. is it okay to grab my shotgun at that point?
I have written, and gotten responses from a few dev’s, the Rebel Galaxy Outlaw’s folks for example. Told them I can’t wait to play, in a year, when they aren’t on Epic exclusive. They were nice about it in their reply.
I just finally tried Rebel Galaxy from my game backlog. I’m enjoying it so far. I’ll have to add that one to my radar.
I want too, but I refuse to partake of Epic Store. I don’t like it, I hate it, it can go away please.
This comic brought to you by low-hanging fruit.
Well… this is my opinion of the situation, not an approval or disapproval of the method. I don’t know for others countries but in France, the usual hypocrisy become less and less tolerated by the standard population. Population who in return begin to use violence and vandalism since two years as a result. The politicians always says that they are open to discussion blablabla… but don’t listen and do the contrary. Lastly, the CETA treaty who is not wanted by the majority of the people was still accepted by our deputies. In fact, few of them (but not enough) didn’t… Read more »