Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements)
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@MrL said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
The only kind that exist.
Well yeah. We haven't been doing this long enough.
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@MrL In fact the multiplayer component is optional, and the stages aren't really randomized - there's only five of them, all hand-designed, and the 'random' is which of two is picked for the first stage. The randomized bit is where the chests are and what they contain.
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@xaade said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Grim Dawn uses a very very mild form, where there's a fixed set of replaceable walls and the game selects which ones are blocked on each run, making sure not to make it impossible to get from point to point. It's just enough generation to have me lose recognition on some levels, or at least feel less repetitive because I end up taking new paths each time.
Hypatia's hedgemaze does this, actually. My spatial cognition is poor enough that even so, I easily get consistently lost.
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@pie_flavor said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
and would it be that much more interesting if it was not procedurally generated and had five hand-designed maps instead in this game that is meant to be played over and over? Like Risk of Rain 2?
That has 6 maps in the main cycle (pick one from two, pick one from two, one fixed, one fixed), plus 3 hidden maps. </
>
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@dkf oh, I guess I haven't seen the second map for the second slot then. And I was talking about gameplay maps, not hidden maps.
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@DogsB said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@acrow said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@Jaloopa said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@DogsB said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Money usually isn't a factor. It's time
Remember, @pie_flavour is a student so the priorities are reversed
Depends on their far-sightedness. If I'd spent my free time on making crappy cellphone apps, instead of reading comics, when I was studying, well... Now that I have a day job, I don't have that kind of time anymore, and I could really use the extra income.
Most apps make fuck all money. Most of the big ones are hemorraging VC money. Time invested vs money earned appears to be very low. Probably better off finding a weekend job digging ditchs. Steady stream of income and you'll probably never have to go to the gym ever again.
If the only input is a student's free time, which would otherwise be wasted, then the return of investment will always be positive. Of course, I assume that the student had a gaming rig suitable for programming at hand, or otherwise used university resources for this, so that there is no hardware investment.
Even a modest advertising income would then be on top of whatever income you trade your time for later. Plus, consider return-on-resumé when the student is looking for their first job.And all this ignores the chance of a Flappy Bird -hit, which was still possible when I was in universty.
Or, if you meant that I could've skipped university altogether, and gone to do something wholesome and less hazardous to my mental health, like say driving a truck, then... you're absolutely right. I regret that I didn't do that while I still had the chance.
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@pie_flavor said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
I guess I haven't seen the second map for the second slot then.
So you've always had just one of the desert or the waterland? (The first slot is the “plains” and the eyrie.)
And I was talking about gameplay maps, not hidden maps.
The hidden maps aren't very hidden. (One is for what passes as the superboss, one is for the in-game shop, and one lets you end your run without dying.)
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@pie_flavor said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@Jaloopa said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@pie_flavour
@boomzilla what if there was a pie_flavour group like one does with @Gaska
Ask me again next week.
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@acrow said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
do something wholesome and less hazardous to my mental health, like say driving a truck
There are some YouTube videos that may change your mind about that.
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Epic is so desperate that it's snatching exclusives of crowd-funded games that planned to release elsewhere, and are even offering refunds themselves for those crowdfunders that are getting in a big huff over this.
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@kazitor said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Epic is so desperate that it's snatching exclusives of crowd-funded games that planned to release elsewhere, and are even offering refunds themselves for those crowdfunders that are getting in a big huff over this.
For me that doesn't do crowd funding, it just comes down to "Well fuck that game then, I'll buy it when it ends up on a steam summer sale in 5 years instead then, instead of on release."
Steam might be shit, but the other ones I've tried have been even worse, so I am not going anywhere near epics turdfest. No matter what titles they drag down into the turd wrestling ring.
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@Carnage said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Steam might be shit, but the other ones I've tried have been even worse, so I am not going anywhere near epics turdfest. No matter what titles they drag down into the turd wrestling ring.
Case in point; I bought FarCry 5 because it was in the steam sale, it launches from Steam but is still UPlay under the hood (UPlay was the first alternative launcher I installed, and the reason it'll be the last).
Last night I got:
This product cannot be activated right nowAt least Steam fucking works.
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@kazitor said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Epic is so desperate that it's snatching exclusives of crowd-funded games that planned to release elsewhere, and are even offering refunds themselves for those crowdfunders that are getting in a big huff over this.
Or they realise that getting a good number of exclusives will pay back more than the costs they're footing now. Similar to Microsoft losing billions by some estimates on the first Xbox because they wanted to get established quickly in the gaming market and could afford to speed up the process
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@Jaloopa said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Or they realise that getting a good number of exclusives will pay back more than the costs they're footing now.
Yes, and they're desperate to do so :)
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@Cursorkeys said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Last night I got: This product cannot be activated right now
UPlay website is one of those turds that are so enterprisey they are checking the referer. Once I tried to login for some trivial thing, but RefControl addon had blanked out the field and therefore "something went wrong". Before I noticed, Ubisoft marked my account with "suspicious activity". It did allow me to login using UPlay and start the game, up until I wanted to check gameplay stats in the overlay where "something went wrong" again. And when I tried to start the game again? Yeah, "something went wrong". Took, I think, 24 hrs for "something" to become unwrong again...
Can't say Steam always fucking works, but at least their
prevents from making crap that redirects five times all around the world before delivering the page. And dog forbid you want to change anything (like Origin subscription), because that's again on a different domain. Together with a "we're sorry to see our money go" survey, which, curiously, is being displayed even when you're not logged in (the submit just doesn't work).
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Ubisoft marked my account with "suspicious activity".
That doesn't really mean anything. A few months ago I got an email saying that my account was flagged for suspicious and unusual activity, which was that I logged in.
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@hungrier said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
my account was flagged for suspicious and unusual activity, which was that I logged in
Yes, I can see how actually wanting to use UPlay and/or play any Ubisoft games might have been suspicious
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@kazitor said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Epic is so desperate that it's snatching exclusives of crowd-funded games that planned to release elsewhere, and are even offering refunds themselves for those crowdfunders that are getting in a big huff over this.
They should also pay interest on the money that they borrowed, which would make this a reasonable way to invest. (“I'm now waiting for my Epic Sellout Futures to mature.”)
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@kazitor said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Epic is so desperate that it's snatching exclusives of crowd-funded games that planned to release elsewhere, and are even offering refunds themselves for those crowdfunders that are getting in a big huff over this.
You see desperation. I see more of what I talked about upthread, which is that Epic actually gives a shit about its developers.
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@pie_flavor said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
You see desperation. I see more of what I talked about upthread, which is that Epic actually gives a shit about its developers.
Perhaps I'd agree more (that is: still not really) if it wasn't patently wrong. The specific words "future games" should clue you in that this policy was only invented by Swindley after lots of people got angry about Shemshank 3. It isn't exactly the first where crowdfunding money was taken and mishandled.
Epic has been adjusting things as they go along. This wouldn't be bad as such if the starting point hadn't been a complete disregard of the quality bar.
Butt fuck Epic. The disturbing trend of the whole goddamn industry is that
feedbackoutrage is the only way by which anything can be done anymore.(wasn't me who downboated, though; you have your right to your completely wrong opinion)
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@Applied-Mediocrity outrage over things such as a black-box and variable cut of the profits by a store?
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@pie_flavor said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
outrage over things such as a black-box and variable cut of the profits by a store?
What does it even have to do with profits at this point in particular?
I said the whole industry. It's become a generally accepted practice to pretty much make a mess of things and ask for feedback afterwards, as if that makes it all ok. This is just one tiny example of it.
In fact, this isn't even Epic's fault as much as developers' themselves. Swindley only offered them some free money. It was fly by the seat of pants developers that didn't have any plan in place before they signed on the dotted line.
When they took Fortnite money, I can't believe anybody was that much stupid to not understand that some backers will get very angry. Generally, people will get angry all the time, do or don't, it's the cost of doing business. Except in this case developers had entered in a legally binding contract with said people. And they didn't care that they did.
If this had been Swindley's policy from the very first day, I'd take a somewhat less dim view on it. These developers took an interest-free loan from people and then didn't deliver. It's a breach of contract. This contract does allow for "all possible effort, honest explanation, yada-yada", but a) it must be agreed upon that it indeed was (and it wasn't), otherwise a legal action is fully justified, and b) the trust has been broken. Whether I'd personally bother depends on the amount involved, of course.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@pie_flavor said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
outrage over things such as a black-box and variable cut of the profits by a store?
What does it even have to do with profits at this point in particular?
I said the whole industry. It's become a generally accepted practice to pretty much make a mess of things and ask for feedback afterwards, as if that makes it all ok. This is just one tiny example of it.
In fact, this isn't even Epic's fault as much as developers' themselves. Swindley only offered them some free money. It was fly by the seat of pants developers that didn't have any plan in place before they signed on the dotted line.
When they took Fortnite money, I can't believe anybody was that much stupid to not understand that some backers will get very angry. Generally, people will get angry all the time, do or don't, it's the cost of doing business. Except in this case developers had entered in a legally binding contract with said people. And they didn't care that they did.
If this had been Swindley's policy from the very first day, I'd take a somewhat less dim view on it. These developers took an interest-free loan from people and then didn't deliver. It's a breach of contract. This contract does allow for "all possible effort, honest explanation, yada-yada", but a) it must be agreed upon that it indeed was (and it wasn't), otherwise a legal action is fully justified, and b) the trust has been broken. Whether I'd personally bother depends on the amount involved, of course.
From what I understand, Shenmue games are known for not making anywhere near the amount of money that they cost to make, so it's no real surprise that the developers/publishers jumped at the chance to get that fat pile of money from Epic.
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@powerlord said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
From what I understand, Shenmue games are known for not making anywhere near the amount of money that they cost to make, so it's no real surprise that the developers/publishers jumped at the chance to get that fat pile of money from Epic.
As far as I was aware, Sony had already ponied up some money for it to be made, but this time it probably feels like Ys Net are just spitting in their fans' faces.
Just like with the announcement that backers also won't be getting the "retail" pre-order bonuses and would have to buy them separately later (though anyone complaining that they also won't get the season pass is a bit more unfounded).
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I guess I'll get ahead of this one that is making some rounds:
https://twitter.com/AboveUp/status/1151177530797436928
Thing of note, the linked Reddit post appears to have been deleted by the original poster, and others in the Twitter thread are saying they don't have the same thing happening to them, but there are two cases of "games now missing" from that subreddit that I could find linked to uninstalling the launcher, both a month old and neither with any follow-up.
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@ChaosTheEternal e no repro.
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@ChaosTheEternal As much as I mistrust what Epic Games is doing to the PC market, this is one of those claims that's going to need proof.
Also, how is it that Epic Games still hasn't managed to write a proper storefront despite selling games through it since January 1, 2016?
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@powerlord said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
this is one of those claims that's going to need proof.
Dude, someone posted about it on Reddit. Case closed.
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@powerlord said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
this is one of those claims that's going to need proof
That's why I mentioned "getting out ahead of it" since the only claim has been deleted and I don't see it being talked about, only the now deleted Reddit post as "proof" of it.
I don't have any desire to acquire any more games from Epic or use their launcher, but it doesn't help anyone's case to promote lies. Best to get the info closest to the source out there before it ends up making the rounds on social media and other sites as "quote of a quote of a quote" with the context lost.
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I thought we had an "In other news today" thread, and indeed it's been a long running thread and quite easy to find so I posted this there first
Rocket League is dropping Mac, Linux because of crazy-low player counts [Updated]
![Rocket League is dropping Mac, Linux because of crazy-low player counts [Updated]](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/rocket-league-listing-760x380.jpg)
"0.3% of all active players" stat comes after vague explanation last week.
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@hungrier said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
I thought we had an "In other news today" thread, and indeed it's been a long running thread and quite easy to find so I posted this there first
Rocket League is dropping Mac, Linux because of crazy-low player counts [Updated]
"0.3% of all active players" stat comes after vague explanation last week.
2020 truly is the year of linux on the desktop.
THIS TIME FOR SURE!
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@Vixen They'll have plenty of time to do productive work to get there if they're no longer distracted by Rocket League
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@hungrier said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@Vixen They'll have plenty of time to do productive work to get there if they're no longer distracted by Rocket League
that would help them get that final push and finally become the dominant desktop environment for the desktop world wide.
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@hungrier said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
They'll have plenty of time to do productive work to get there if they're no longer distracted by Rocket League
It's been confirmed: Linux is a great development platform and Windows is just a gaming and/or advertising platform
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@TimeBandit said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
It's been confirmed
Funding secured.
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Well, I can just add this to the pile of reasons to stay away from anything Epic Games. If I ever get to the point of releasing a game they can dangle all the cash they want in front of my face for exclusivity and I'll still refuse it.
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'Fortnite' resurrects Rickrolling so you can absolutely decimate your foes
Fortnite's new emote, 'Never Gonna,' will have your in-game character doing Rick Astley's dance from hit song and meme 'Never Gonna Give You Up.'
It appears to be the first Fornite emote backed by a well-known song. Since copyright protection for songs is well established, it likely means that Epic — the company behind Fortnite — licenced the music.
I hope they didn't, and Rick Astley sues them into bankruptcy
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@hungrier said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
'Fortnite' resurrects Rickrolling so you can absolutely decimate your foes
Fortnite's new emote, 'Never Gonna,' will have your in-game character doing Rick Astley's dance from hit song and meme 'Never Gonna Give You Up.'
It appears to be the first Fornite emote backed by a well-known song. Since copyright protection for songs is well established, it likely means that Epic — the company behind Fortnite — licenced the music.
I hope they didn't, and Rick Astley sues them into bankruptcy
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@hungrier said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
'Fortnite' resurrects Rickrolling so you can absolutely decimate your foes
Fortnite's new emote, 'Never Gonna,' will have your in-game character doing Rick Astley's dance from hit song and meme 'Never Gonna Give You Up.'
It appears to be the first Fornite emote backed by a well-known song. Since copyright protection for songs is well established, it likely means that Epic — the company behind Fortnite — licenced the music.
I hope they didn't, and Rick Astley sues them into bankruptcy
I wonder if this is going to cause copyright flags for streamers (which on Twitch just gets the recorded video muted for that song)... although on second thoughts it might be short enough to not trigger it.
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Randy Bitchford strikes again!
Borderlands 3 devs accuse Gearbox of shorting bonuses
Gearbox yesterday informed a number of its developers that the Borderlands 3 bonuses they had been expecting would be g…
Guess it's good Epic bought a bunch of copies, otherwise there would have been no bonuses whatsoever, right?
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Randy Bitchford strikes again!
Borderlands 3 devs accuse Gearbox of shorting bonuses
Gearbox yesterday informed a number of its developers that the Borderlands 3 bonuses they had been expecting would be g…
Guess it's good Epic bought a bunch of copies, otherwise there would have been no bonuses whatsoever, right?
Wha the fuck is up with that characterset? "st" gets cancerous crud connecting them.
Edit: Reloading made it go away.
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@Carnage Weird ligatures confirmed, and they stick around for me after reloading:
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@hungrier said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
@Carnage Weird ligatures confirmed, and they stick around for me after reloading:
The page seems to pick fonts at random, I've seen 4 different one when reloading the page.
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I don't see it. Use proper browser, folks. Like FFVII and FFX or something
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@hungrier Update: In Opera on Windows, I don't have the ligatures
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SnowRunner is getting four phases of DLC and expanded modding support
Hunt down a World War 2 bomber and help build a town.
Complete Edition coming to Steam, April 28, 2021. Thanks, Timmy, your contribution is appreciated
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So Epic is now going after Apple (and Google) by breaking store policy and sneaking in their own payment solution to avoid the 30% cut that Apple and Google takes. Knowing they would get kicked out for doing so they already had lawsuits and a Fortnite event ready to go.
Then Epic goes to court to cry about Fortnite being kicked out of the App Store. The judge sides with Apple and tells Epic this situation is their own damn fault and can be easily rectified.
And even though Epic could continue to update Fortnite for macOS even if they keep refusing to fix the iOS version to allow it back on the App Store, Epic has decided to throw their entire Apple userbase under the bus for this thing and refuses to keep updating the Mac version too.
And why only Apple and Google? Should not Epic also go after Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft for also having a "monopoly" for their respective console and also taking a 30% cut? Oh, wait, most of their userbase is on console and they money loss and fallout from getting banned from consoles wouldn't be worth it...
Also, to show how lazy Epic were with their lawsuits, the search-and-replace failed to replace some instances of "Google Play" with "App Store" in the Apple lawsuit. Herpderp.
Sure, can debate if the 30% cut and forced to use the store payment solution is the right way to go for any platform store, but I think Epic is going about this the wrong way and this will backfire harder onto them than any gain they will see regardless of outcome. And it's kinda hard to sympathize for either side in this war tbh.
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@Atazhaia said in Epic Store (and other "Occupy Steam" movements):
Then Epic goes to court to cry about Fortnite being kicked out of the App Store. The judge sides with Apple and tells Epic this situation is their own damn fault and can be easily rectified.
But Apple were stopped from removing Epic's developer access entirely and blocking the Unreal Engine.
