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'The gold rush is over:' Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon devs say that big Game Pass and Epic exclusive deals have dried up for indie devs (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] 109 points 2 years ago (1 child)

I mean it's a play as old as time; "we give great deals to the sellers and the buyers, until we own the market"

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Does Epic have any market share past free games and fortnight?

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  • [–] 57 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Developers. UE5 is chalking up to be the defacto standard for modern titles that don't have budgets large enough to make their own engine.

    EGS, on the other hand, is still an abysmal failure beyond the lure of free (and increasingly shittier) games and a yearly 25% off discount coupon that people fall for.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    I really wish they'd start by not making the EGS program a fucking UE5 app. Seriously, using the whole ass engine to render html is stupid beyond belief

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Wait, is it seriously a full-blown UE5 application?

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I was going to call shenanigans, but then I looked at the details of the application:

    https://i.imgur.com/J30SGAr.png

    So it seems there is something to it.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    If you peruse the folder where it's installed and compared to any UE4 or UE5 game, you'll notice all the other similarities in .dll files, folders and whatnot. Even the CrashReporter.exe is the same you see in unreal games. Or you can check the config files at Epic Games\Launcher\Engine\Config which has stuff like BaseEngine.ini which, among other networking configurations, also has this:

    [/Script/Engine.Engine]
ConsoleClassName=/Script/Engine.Console
GameViewportClientClassName=/Script/Engine.GameViewportClient
LocalPlayerClassName=/Script/Engine.LocalPlayer
WorldSettingsClassName=/Script/Engine.WorldSettings
NavigationSystemClassName=/Script/NavigationSystem.NavigationSystemV1
NavigationSystemConfigClassName=/Script/NavigationSystem.NavigationSystemModuleConfig
AvoidanceManagerClassName=/Script/Engine.AvoidanceManager
PhysicsCollisionHandlerClassName=/Script/Engine.PhysicsCollisionHandler

    Meanwhile, in Epic Games\Launcher\Portal\Config, the "game" part of the launcher, you have DefaultGame.ini and DefaultEngine.ini, the latter's first 2 lines pointing back to the Engine folder: [Configuration] BasedOn=..\Engine\Config\BaseEngine.ini

    So, yeah, it's the actual engine. I was going to complain about disk bloat, but my Steam install is currently sitting at 1.3GB and I'm not entirely sure how much of that is from cached stuff. GOG Galaxy is taking ~980MB, but roughly 650MB are from redist installers (MSVC2005, 2007, dotnet, etc), so a "clean" install would be way lighter than Steam or EGS, the latter at 1.1GB on a clean install.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    Nope. Godot, a fully free Unity-like Engine is shaping up to be the defacto standard for good games (AAA garbage is being ignored purposefully)

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    I know Godot exists, and it's preferable to supporting Epic, but it isn't up to feature parity with UE5. Particularly, when it comes to asset streaming and open world games, Unreal has better support out of the box.

    I would love for Godot to be the standard and first choice for every developer (including AAA), though.

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    • [–] 94 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Exclusive deals suck ass. So good.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    They are anti-consumer, but for smaller devs in particular, they can mean the difference between between canceling and releasing a game, between bankruptcy and the studio's continued existence.

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    • [–] 51 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah, game publishers are in their "cash out" phase after realizing there's no competing against steam.

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    There is if they're interested in competing with Steam. Epic made some very competitive offerings for the supply side of things and then provided very little reason for customers to ever shop there, which it turns out is just as, if not more important.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Let me gift games, let me wishlist games to receive gifts. There's lots of other features I would also like but if other stores had that I'd be much more inclined to use the other stores.

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    • [–] 43 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I really wonder how the palworld devs feel about being gamepass day 1. I have no idea what the payouts look like for them. It probably got a lot more people to try their game, but would they have done better selling it only on steam? They probably weren't in a position to negotiate a very favorable contract with Microsoft.

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  • [–] 44 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I think that's looking at the deal in hindsight. Palworld had just as good a chance at flopping completely as hitting #1 worldwide, I imagine they were grateful for the opportunity to have some guaranteed income at the time.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Some? Didn't they make over 400m?

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago

    Because craftopia and palworld have a social aspect getting a big seed of players who only played it because it was free (for them) was I think a catalyst in making palworld blow up like it did. There are too many games out there for people to look through so it probably helps get word out effectively to sell out cheap for a big initial audience like gamepass when you're a small dev. I only knew of craftopia or palworld because of gamepass at least

    The flip side is Microsoft is 100% giving the above as a sales pitch to devs why they should put their game on gamepass for peanuts (paid in exposure!). That's probably some of what drives the shittier deal devs get now

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    • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Maybe... just not make exclusive deals? Especially not on mediocre game distribution platforms.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    "I talked to at least five small teams, like 35 [members] and under, during GDC, and they're like: Cuts, cuts, cuts, funding canceled, talks that were going on for a year, canceled," said Casey Yano, the co-founder of Slay the Spire studio Mega Crit. "It sounds like it's shit. We're definitely very privileged to be able to self-fund. [Otherwise] I'd be very, very, very scared right now."

    If these deals didn't exist, lots of games simply wouldn't get made. You can hate on the platforms all you like but the deals are one of the only sources of funding for small & solo developers.

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    • [–] 25 points 2 years ago

    Hawkish monetary policy has a way of making it hard to turn a profit on long horizon projects.

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