Discussion MechWarrior 5 developer leaves Steam for the Epic Games Store

[BudAshes]

i know those 5 minutes to install egs will haunt me forever

I don't get to game very often, then I come back to my PC and I have the blizzard client, the steam client, the origin client, and now the epic client. I just want to play a game for a while and it seems like I have to do administrative work each time just to open shit. Honestly some of the games I still play the most I paid for them but I just play a pirated version that is modded so I don't have to deal with DRM.

 

[KMFJD]

I don't get to game very often, then I come back to my PC and I have the blizzard client, the steam client, the origin client, and now the epic client. I just want to play a game for a while and it seems like I have to do administrative work each time just to open shit. Honestly some of the games I still play the most I paid for them but I just play a pirated version that is modded so I don't have to deal with DRM.

I get that, i disliked steam for the longest time (mainly because my internet was painfully slow and it forced you to keep the game updated in order to play it)

 

[Craig234]

Yeah, I know Epic currently takes a smaller cut than Valve does. And I am fine with Devs deploying to both. Its when Epic pays the dev to only deploy to their ecosystem that makes it suck for consumers. A lot of gamers have all their friends on Steam, so its easy to get match making going and such. Epic's match making system is junk, and most people aren't on it. So the timed exclusives basically just make it so people have to wait 6-12 months to play the game. Which isn't helping the dev any.

And that's the problem, that Steam has value as a monopoly from things like 'all their friends are there', which they abuse to gouge both the consumer and developer. It doesn't do the developer much good to sell on both for the same price if 95% buy on Steam and Steam takes the extra money. And I bet Steam won't let them sell for less on Epic.

This is why I've long said we need some 'open standard' for clients to use any vendor's games, which is hopefully what Galaxy 2.0 can do.

 

[zink77]

Clients wouldn't exist if the gaming masses were not such sheep, everyone fell all over themselves 20 years ago to buy Ultima online, everquest, Guild wars and world of warcraft, after they saw how stupid gamers were to pay for role playing games without ownership and a subscription... then came steam in 2004 by valve to get on the action of all that stupidity.

We have launchers and "DRM" (aka stealing your game) because gamers bent over by the millions and took it up the ass instead of calling the FTC.

Looking back from 20 years on after the great game heist of the late 90's and early 2000's... those of us with a clue knew the game industry being a part of the greater silicon valley tech community like microsoft always hated customers controlling their software, so they've always had it out to undermine software ownership to get it off the publics PC's so they could take control for monopoly profits.

Anyone with an inkling of a clue regarding trusted computing and palladium back then - early discussions about drm in the operating system of windows, would have known not to buy wow, Ultima online or, Guild wars.

Either way the internet has been the greatest force for software fraud, theft and undermining ownership of our own PC's and software ever created by man. To think I'd live to see DRM and spyware in windows 10.. it's basically malware because our species is so god damn stupid, computer illiterate and complacent.

 

[JTsyo]

Clients wouldn't exist if the gaming masses were not such sheep, everyone fell all over themselves 20 years ago to buy Ultima online, everquest, Guild wars and world of warcraft, after they saw how stupid gamers were to pay for role playing games without ownership and a subscription... then came steam in 2004 by valve to get on the action of all that stupidity.

We have launchers and "DRM" (aka stealing your game) because gamers bent over by the millions and took it up the ass instead of calling the FTC.

Looking back from 20 years on after the great game heist of the late 90's and early 2000's... those of us with a clue knew the game industry being a part of the greater silicon valley tech community like microsoft always hated customers controlling their software, so they've always had it out to undermine software ownership to get it off the publics PC's so they could take control for monopoly profits.

Anyone with an inkling of a clue regarding trusted computing and palladium back then - early discussions about drm in the operating system of windows, would have known not to buy wow, Ultima online or, Guild wars.

Either way the internet has been the greatest force for software fraud, theft and undermining ownership of our own PC's and software ever created by man. To think I'd live to see DRM and spyware in windows 10.. it's basically malware because our species is so god damn stupid, computer illiterate and complacent.

Guild Wars didn't have a subscription.

 

[zink77]

Guild Wars didn't have a subscription.

Yes but it did have login authentication and that made it essentially a "service" based game, aka it requires the service of a remote computer in order to function. Arena net owns the server that allows GW to function, and can shut down the game.

So "Service based game" = game you do not own or control and can be shut down remotely, it doesn't necessarily need to have a monthly fee or subscription, just the fact it is a mainframe - dumb client model of software ownership - aka the "main" computer goes down, and there goes your game.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Ugh these extreme anti drm positions bother me.
Why would anyone want to play an ONLINE mmo in a local machine manner. As in not connected to the internet?
Makes no damn sense. The game wasn’t advertised as being a single player offline experience.
Some level of drm is to be expected because we (as consumers) are not honest, we’ll say we would pay for every game but reality says that is unlikely
Game drm has become a lot less obtrusive and really isn’t worth the level of drama I tend to hear about it.

Regarding the game launchers, how often do people break out 10+ year old games is it really a big deal that some games will be rendered unplayable because the launcher doesn’t work is your life really damaged by not being able to play a game you purchased a decade ago? Would the game even launch with modern OS updates and drivers and video cards.
Too much drama regarding such a trivial thing.

 

[zink77]

Ugh these extreme anti drm positions bother me.

You don't seem to understand son anything about privacy or owning your own personal computer. MMO's were the battering ram to undermine software ownership on the personal computer. When clueless people like you appeared and started mindlessly giving money to these companies stealing computer role playing games by calling them mmo's and programming them on the mainframe dumb terminal model. That means you give the market signal to software companies that you're a sheep who's privacy doesn't matter and who is clueless about the corporate agenda.

DRM is literally stealing your software. It's not something innocuous, it means literally buying a piece of software that is controlled remotely from a corporations PC's. You don't seem to grasp the political and privacy implications of accepting such things.

It undermines your freedom to own your PC and the technology you buy without your basic rights as a human being to be maintained.

Basically that the entire model that the software industry is using to create software is antithetical to fundamental freedoms that everyone should have. Writ large the principles of not owning what you buy are extremely destructive. This is an idea that needs to be squashed for the good of everyone long term.

So if you are for DRM, you are basically anti basic freedoms any human being should have to own the things they buy instead of being a yes man/serf to corporate america.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

You don't seem to understand son anything about privacy or owning your own personal computer. MMO's were the battering ram to undermine software ownership on the personal computer. When clueless people like you appeared and started mindlessly giving money to these companies stealing computer role playing games by calling them mmo's and programming them on the mainframe dumb terminal model. That means you give the market signal to software companies that you're a sheep who's privacy doesn't matter and who is clueless about the corporate agenda.

DRM is literally stealing your software. It's not something innocuous, it means literally buying a piece of software that is controlled remotely from a corporations PC's. You don't seem to grasp the political and privacy implications of accepting such things.

It undermines your freedom to own your PC and the technology you buy without your basic rights as a human being to be maintained.

Basically that the entire model that the software industry is using to create software is antithetical to fundamental freedoms that everyone should have. Writ large the principles of not owning what you buy are extremely destructive. This is an idea that needs to be squashed for the good of everyone long term.

So if you are for DRM, you are basically anti basic freedoms any human being should have to own the things they buy instead of being a yes man/serf to corporate america.

Then don’t buy any games that require any internet & are guaranteed to be supported forever.

I totally get your point and I agree in the perfect world everyone would charge and everyone would pay a fair value for the software.
That world doesn’t exist.
Buy some board games and play them. No support is ever required and board games will last until you lose them or they wear out.
Games are just that games. We are not talking about basic human rights in any game context.
Basic human rights/freedoms are like food, housing, health, some sort of freedom.
Games are not a basic human right nor is any software a basic human right. Full stop on this talk.
You still own your PC, you can choose what OS to use, you can choose what game to load or delete from your PC. Nothing about steam or epic or EA takes away ownership of your PC. If you don’t want to support major corporations because you don’t like whatever about them, don’t do business with them.

 

[zink77]

Then don’t buy any games that require any internet & are guaranteed to be supported forever..

You don't seem to grasp that there is no market in gaming, the average person on our planet is too computer illiterate to make any kind of rational free market decision, not only that you as a consumer do not have any market power when the computer illiterate masses keep shovelling money to criminal software companies.

You don't seem to understand we've radically transformed our societies and the law hasn't caught up and right now it's the wild west (total lawlessness).

Any piece of software requiring internet, is literally stealing your software. Now we have this stuff in windows 10. The idea that you can solve this as an individual consumer is nonsense.

The free market fairy won't solve these problems because the internet collectivises bad decisions made by the technology illiterate. Their bad decisions spoil it for everyone. This is how valve, EA and Activision won the war on PC gamers, they could just program their games in software stealing ways and the people who were actually literate get sucked into the masses madness because we'd have to be standing physically right next to them to have a market to push back against their back behavior.

Pre internet they were forced to ship you a complete piece of software on a disc, after the internet, they can simply hold piece of the software back and call it a "service". Now if you buy into that nonsense, you are a part of the problem. I'm sorry to tell ya, since that was the agenda of corporate america from the very beginning - to undermine basic rights and freedoms and since they control how software is produced, they have no incentive to going back because their are an abundance of stupid people voting away our rights and freedoms.

AKA there is no market in software after the internet, it's a market for lemons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

 

[NTMBK]

Anyone remember the early 90s, when pretty much every PC gamer had a stack of copied floppies full of software they didn't pay for? That's why DRM is a thing. Software developers spend their lives creating software, and would prefer to be paid for their labour.

 

[Dave_5k]

I'd prefer developers to pass through the price difference rather than going exclusive (i.e. Steam games would be priced ~20% higher than on Epic in general, can choose to use Epic for discount if you want), but likely Steam blocks that option with their abuse of monopoly power

 

[GodisanAtheist]

It will be interesting to see how the "second wave" of games from these devs/publishers are distributed to see whether the Epic exclusivity thing is working out for devs.

If we get a "we heard you and are launching everywhere" blurb, then we know that the number crunchers figured out that exclusivity hurt these titles more than it helped.

Timed exclusives don't necessarily bother me since I have fully given up on paying full price for new games or playing games within even a couple years of being new.

 

[Craig234]

Anyone remember the early 90s, when pretty much every PC gamer had a stack of copied floppies full of software they didn't pay for? That's why DRM is a thing. Software developers spend their lives creating software, and would prefer to be paid for their labour.

No, I remember when there were a lot of pirates and a lot of not pirates, but the pirates would love to claim 'everyone does it' to justify their actions. But ya, it was a problem. Also a genre of software to make copies and defeat protections that pretended to be 'just to make your own backups'.

 

[Craig234]

I'd prefer developers to pass through the price difference rather than going exclusive (i.e. Steam games would be priced ~20% higher than on Epic in general, can choose to use Epic for discount if you want), but likely Steam blocks that option with their abuse of monopoly power

I suspect you're right that Steam won't allow that.

 

[zink77]

Anyone remember the early 90s, when pretty much every PC gamer had a stack of copied floppies full of software they didn't pay for? That's why DRM is a thing. Software developers spend their lives creating software, and would prefer to be paid for their labour.

That doesn't justify stealing peoples software by abusing their technological illiteracy, selling them incomplete games by removing functionality like LAN, or inserting stupid matchmaking on a remote server somewhere that you control and removing their privacy.

The way games are coded are consumer hostile. Don't try to pretend drm is anything but software theft. You could only take parts of software hostage because the internet allows you to steal parts of the code and trap them on a server in your office. You used the the network infrastructure to defraud the masses.

When valve inserted drm into half-life 2 his customers were 100's of miles away, in a capitalist society he can force policy because most people are computer illiterate.

Gabe newell would have gotten a giant beat down if any of us had been close to him during the initial massive invasion of privacy and trying to turn the local application it o a client server based extortion racket that modern gaming has become.

Let's not mince words here, the game industry and microsoft are stealing software and basically blackmailing the computer literate among us because we cannot co-ordinate against their attacks since they are using the masses that are illiterate to attack those of us who understand how computers work to remove our basic rights and freedoms.

 

[NTMBK]

That doesn't justify stealing peoples software by abusing their technological illiteracy, selling them incomplete games by removing functionality like LAN, or inserting stupid matchmaking on a remote server somewhere that you control and removing their privacy.

The way games are coded are consumer hostile. Don't try to pretend drm is anything but software theft. You could only take parts of software hostage because the internet allows you to steal parts of the code and trap them on a server in your office. You used the the network infrastructure to defraud the masses.

When valve inserted drm into half-life 2 his customers were 100's of miles away, in a capitalist society he can force policy because most people are computer illiterate.

Gabe newell would have gotten a giant beat down if any of us had been close to him during the initial massive invasion of privacy and trying to turn the local application it o a client server based extortion racket that modern gaming has become.

Let's not mince words here, the game industry and microsoft are stealing software and basically blackmailing the computer literate among us because we cannot co-ordinate against their attacks since they are using the masses that are illiterate to attack those of us who understand how computers work to remove our basic rights and freedoms.

You keep using the word "stealing", I don't think that it means what you think it means Nothing was taken from anyone. Feel free to not buy the product, and have fun playing Tux Racer.

 

[zink77]

You keep using the word "stealing", I don't think that it means what you think it means Nothing was taken from anyone. Feel free to not buy the product, and have fun playing Tux Racer.

Stealing the files for the game so it doesn't function, very simple. AKA many games not including the server and mulitplayer functionality within the game executables. Anyone with a brain would call that stealing basic game functions and trapping them on the other side of the internet. Notice before highspeed internet penetration reached the ignorant masses, we got the multiplayer portions of game code game inside the game. The were complete games.

This whole bullshit the masses have bought into of buying incomplete game applications is why modern gaming is an abusive disaster of micro-transactions and lootboxes.

This whole bs free market theory you have going on in your brain is the issue, no one has a choice because in an internet enabled society, the people who don't care about gaming now effect all of gaming with their bad purchasing decisions.

Let me give you an example:
'
Someone like me from the 90's in gaming who wanted complete games vs the mmo buying generation, when you send your market signal to activision buying a server locked game, you now give activision the green light to do that to EVERYONE of their properties, thereby fucking up gaming for someone like myself who is computer literate and did not want abusive game practices that other consumers are voting for.

Note that the internet enabled society, means you can vote to make gaming worse for other gamers, pre-internet your stupid consumer decisions couldn't effect the whole. The internet undermines the whole concept of markets and changes society because the computer illiterate can no vote away the rights and freedoms of the computer literate.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Stealing the files for the game so it doesn't function, very simple. AKA many games not including the server and mulitplayer functionality within the game executables. Anyone with a brain would call that stealing basic game functions and trapping them on the other side of the internet. Notice before highspeed internet penetration reached the ignorant masses, we got the multiplayer portions of game code game inside the game. The were complete games.

This whole bullshit the masses have bought into of buying incomplete game applications is why modern gaming is an abusive disaster of micro-transactions and lootboxes.

This whole bs free market theory you have going on in your brain is the issue, no one has a choice because in an internet enabled society, the people who don't care about gaming now effect all of gaming with their bad purchasing decisions.

Let me give you an example:
'
Someone like me from the 90's in gaming who wanted complete games vs the mmo buying generation, when you send your market signal to activision buying a server locked game, you now give activision the green light to do that to EVERYONE of their properties, thereby fucking up gaming for someone like myself who is computer literate and did not want abusive game practices that other consumers are voting for.

Note that the internet enabled society, means you can vote to make gaming worse for other gamers, pre-internet your stupid consumer decisions couldn't effect the whole. The internet undermines the whole concept of markets and changes society because the computer illiterate can no vote away the rights and freedoms of the computer literate.

Then don't buy incomplete or loot box based games. You keep talking about intelligence, you really should understand that concept.

 

[JTsyo]

Then don't buy incomplete or loot box based games. You keep talking about intelligence, you really should understand that concept.

zink feel everyone else is too stupid to make decisions on which games to buy and he's the one that understands things enough to make the call for everyone.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

zink feel everyone else is too stupid to make decisions on which games to buy and he's the one that understands things enough to make the call for everyone.

I was thinking the same thing

 

[zink77]

zink feel everyone else is too stupid to make decisions on which games to buy and he's the one that understands things enough to make the call for everyone.

It would help both of you actually had any valid arguments at all which none of you do, aka many of our favourite franchises and modern abuses like p2w, micro-transactions and lootboxes are direct results of your behaviors.

So yeah anyone who cares about the hobby has seen the internet blow up their basic rights to own their own software, by the misguided half of humanity. To think the computer nerds were being protected for the first 30 years of computing by not having internet penetration reaching the not so bright half of mankind. The last 20 years of videogaming on the PC has been the biggest raid and theft on software rights in all human history by valve, EA, activision and their ilk because the worlds consumers are incapable of seeing the danger of allowing companies to control the game.

People who've given up their basic rights and freedoms for convenience not to be spied on using their personal computer aren't people who's decisions should be commended by anyone with a functioning brain because in an internet enabled society, your consumer decisions now have negative effects on the entire software ecosystem. We're being abused because the average consumer is so functionally lacking in basic computer literacy.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

It would help both of you actually had any valid arguments at all which none of you do, aka many of our favourite franchises and modern abuses like p2w, micro-transactions and lootboxes are direct results of your behaviors.

So yeah anyone who cares about the hobby has seen the internet blow up their basic rights to own their own software, by the misguided half of humanity. To think the computer nerds were being protected for the first 30 years of computing by not having internet penetration reaching the not so bright half of mankind. The last 20 years of videogaming on the PC has been the biggest raid and theft on software rights in all human history by valve, EA, activision and their ilk because the worlds consumers are incapable of seeing the danger of allowing companies to control the game.

People who've given up their basic rights and freedoms for convenience not to be spied on using their personal computer aren't people who's decisions should be commended by anyone with a functioning brain because in an internet enabled society, your consumer decisions now have negative effects on the entire software ecosystem. We're being abused because the average consumer is so functionally lacking in basic computer literacy.

We’ve presented our argument but you fail to let go. You’re opinion is just that yours.
Software is not a right
Developers & coders deserve to be paid for their work
People will pirate stuff
Nobody is forced to buy any game
Nobody’s life will be changed by playing or not playing a game
Everybody has the right to purchase something else instead of drm protected games.

There isn’t anything else to talk about.

 

[DrMrLordX]

And personally I despise the idea of Epic paying off game developers to be exclusive to their store.

That's the thing that annoys me the most. Why does it have to be an exclusive?

How many times has GabeN paid off a developer to release only on Steam?

vote with your wallets. wait the 6-12 months period of exclusivity and get the game, preferably on sale, on other platforms.

Is that actually going to happen? That is, MechV showing up on GoG or Steam a year later?

I think GOG Galaxy 2.0 also finally makes an effort to give people one interface for all the vendors, so you can buy on Steam or epic or gog or wherever, and play from one interface, reducing the Steam advantage?

If that's true, then that's great. Being able to hook Steam, Origin, Battle.net, Epic, Uplay, and who-knows-what-else into one interface would be really nice. I'm sure the publishers will do what they can to break that functionality, though.

the average person on our planet is too computer illiterate to make any kind of rational free market decision,

Admit it, you just don't like people very much. Certainly not us.

have fun playing Tux Racer.

Why not SuperTuxKart?

. . .

 

[zink77]

We’ve presented our argument but you fail to let go. You’re opinion is just that yours.
Software is not a right
Developers & coders deserve to be paid for their work
People will pirate stuff
Nobody is forced to buy any game
Nobody’s life will be changed by playing or not playing a game
Everybody has the right to purchase something else instead of drm protected games.

There isn’t anything else to talk about.

There is you're basically allowing companies to undermine your basic rights to own the redacted you pay for, and literally helping these companies defraud the world. There is no reason for any piece of software to be split between two machines. To think anandtech of 20 years ago is now filled with computer nerds who literally want a giant corporate redacted

No one is saying devs can't be paid for their work, the problem is developers are selling incomplete software via propaganda to the public. They're using the internet to sell incomplete software and take advantage of public ignorance regarding technology - aka fraud. Since we have the previous versions of games we own and control, their newer versions are just stolen version of past games. To not see that is to be pretty blind and obtuse.

There is no market in games since the internet has undermined any consumer power at all. The modern software market is a market for lemons. To watch the sea change in perception from 20 years ago is pretty alarming, you're literally enabling criminal behavior.

Profanity (and sexual references) are
not allowed in the tech areas.

AT Mod Usandthem