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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 7 months ago by mr_MADAFAKA@lemmy.ml to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] Cosmos7349@lemmy.world 109 points 7 months ago

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"

[-] BirdyBoogleBop@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 7 months ago

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

[-] pivot_root@lemmy.world 57 points 7 months ago

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.

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 34 points 7 months ago

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

[-] pivot_root@lemmy.world 22 points 7 months ago

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

[-] DdCno1@kbin.social 16 points 7 months ago

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.

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months 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.

[-] pivot_root@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

That is ridiculous. Even Electron would have been better...

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[-] Gabu@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

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)

[-] pivot_root@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months 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.

[-] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 3 points 7 months ago

"ignoring the major players in the industry"

UE5 had turned into the standard whether you like it or not. I personally don't like the engine, but that doesn't mean I'll lie about its position in the market, and neither should you. You aren't doing Godot any favours with it

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[-] Rose@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Steam is largely driven by Valve's own games and freebies as well. 1.5M currently playing Dota 2 and CS 2, with the next best being F2P games: PUBG with 370K online, Apex Legends, and Naraka.

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[-] hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 94 points 7 months ago

Exclusive deals suck ass. So good.

[-] DdCno1@kbin.social 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 29 points 7 months ago

If your success depends on a storefront paying you to sell your game to less people, maybe it is for the best that it doesn't succeed.

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[-] Donkter@lemmy.world 51 points 7 months ago

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

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 33 points 7 months ago

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.

[-] Lesrid@lemm.ee 9 points 7 months ago

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.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 21 points 7 months ago

GOG does those things, for what that's worth.

[-] Veraxus@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

GOG is great. I do wish Epic would improve their platform, though. It’s like they’re not even trying.

[-] johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 43 points 7 months ago

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.

[-] djsoren19@yiffit.net 44 points 7 months ago

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.

[-] _sideffect@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

Some? Didn't they make over 400m?

[-] JowlesMcGee@kbin.social 29 points 7 months ago

I think they meant guaranteed income prior to selling the game, since they had no way of knowing how successful (if at all) the game was going to be once released.

[-] _sideffect@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

Ah, makes sense

[-] sinceasdf@lemmy.world 22 points 7 months 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

[-] sonovebitch@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

Their previous game Craftopia was also on GamePass and somewhat successful. They probably had some leverage for negotiations.

[-] suzune@ani.social 27 points 7 months ago

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

[-] MurrayL@lemmy.world 20 points 7 months ago

"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.