Rev, didn’t your parents ever teach you two wrongs don’t make a right? It is not right that people spew hate. Isn’t it also not right for a dev to do the same.
How that dev handled the announcement by insulting gamers was wrong and only served to fan the flames they knew was coming. That blog post is insulting.
How a company handles consumer backlash is very telling.
As I said about this is the correct way of announcing a partnership with epic games.
Industries of Titan to launch on Epic Games Store!
20th March 2019
Citizens of Titan, we have some news to share. Industries of Titan will be launching in Early Access exclusively on the Epic Games Store!
Brace Yourself Games is a talented team of indie developers, but we are making a very complex game. Epic’s support will allow us to grow our team further, and to make Industries of Titan the best it can possibly be!
We will be updating Industries of Titan frequently throughout the exclusive period, and we plan to 1.0 a year later on both the Epic Games Store and on Steam.
As always, we’d like to thank you for your support! We are working extremely hard to make Industries of Titan something special, and we know that the game will be much stronger, both at the Early Access launch and at the 1.0 launch, thanks to Epic’s help.
We’ll have more news regarding our launch date in the future, but for now, please visit the Brace Yourself Games booth at PAX East 2019 to try our new city building demo, and to pick up our new Fangamer shirts and exclusive Pinny Arcade pins! See you in Boston!
This is how the ooblets dev did it.
Everyone kept talking about this “Epic” thing, so we thought we’d see what it’s all about.
Here’s what these Epic folks are doing: First they teach every kid in the world these obnoxious dances and now they’re offering funding to game developers in exchange for PC exclusivity on their game store.
This is exactly what Marx warned us about!
Just imagine if other companies got it in their head to offer funding in exchange for exclusives. What’d be next? Game consoles paying for games to be exclusive on their consoles? Netflix paying for exclusive shows? Newspapers paying for exclusive articles? It’d be some sort of late capitalist dystopia.
Some foreshadowing of something some gamers are not going to like but it seems ok for now.
Okay so goofing aside, yes, we’ve signed with Epic for PC launch exclusivity . It’s incredible news for us and I’m hoping you all can be excited about it, too.
This is cool. Partnering with a distributor has been done before and holds many benefits especially for a little dev like them.
We asked Epic if we could talk frankly about the situation and they were like whatever, so here’s a bit of insight into what this all means and why we did it:
Who is Epic and what are you talking about?
Epic is a company that makes the Unreal game engine, a bunch of popular games including Fortnite, and the Epic Game Store (EGS).
EGS is a PC game distribution platform like Steam, Origin, Itch.io, and GOG Galaxy.
Epic paying for PC exclusives has become the latest thing Gamers™ have gotten angry about, which I’ll talk more about a bit further down.
This is where it starts to go wrong. They use Gamers with a trademark symbol as if being a gamer is somehow bad. They are using it as a negative lable.
What it means for Ooblets:
- Ooblets will be launching on PC through EGS. We won’t be selling the game on other PC stores for a pretty long while (that’s the exclusivity bit).
- We’ll still be launching on Xbox One. The Epic exclusivity is just limited to PC.
- We got some cash money upfront from the deal so we can make the game we always wanted to with fewer compromises.
It’s quite clear from this point on that the purpose of this post is not just announce their partnership to Epic but to also incite gamers.
What it means for you:
- 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 ).
Now here they start using language to belittle gamers. Like I said to incite them to anger. Is it any wonder they are so angry?
Why’d we do this?
So we had a big decision to make, and we didn’t take it lightly.
Because Epic doesn’t yet have the same market share as their competitors, they offered us a minimum guarantee on sales that would match what we’d be wanting to earn if we were just selling Ooblets across all the stores. That takes a huge burden of uncertainty off of us because now we know that no matter what, the game won’t fail and we won’t be forced to move back in with our parents (but we do love and appreciate you, parents!).
Now we can just focus on making the game without worrying about keeping the lights on. The upfront money they’re providing means we’ll be able to afford more help and resources to start ramping up production and doing some cooler things.
I don’t have an issue with this part. Seems straight forward.
We feel the same impatience about launching Ooblets as a lot of you are probably feeling. I think it’s felt like the game is taking forever because:
- We announced the game and have been sharing everything about it since basically the day we came up with the concept. Most studios only start talking about their games when they’re close to the finish line.
- We’ve only ever had the resources for just one programmer, Rebecca, who makes everything. And she also does most of the art, UI, and other stuff on the game.
The investment we’re getting upfront from Epic will allow us to ramp up our development resources which will lead to faster development in the long run, but it might also delay our initial launch a tad because it takes some time to ramp things up and because we won’t have as much financial pressure to prematurely shove something we’re not happy with out the door.
We’re not going to be perfectionists about our initial launch, but there’s still a lot of foundational stuff we need to sort out before we’re even ready for an early access launch.
Same with this.
Angry at Epic, us, the world?
We’re aware of the backlash that’s been hitting games that sign with Epic. I don’t expect much of our uniquely-lovely community to fit into this weird anti-Epic contingent, but I figured I’d share our thoughts and have an open conversation about the issues.
I’ve read through all the arguments against Epic and they all basically come down to a couple core issues:
A bit condescending to people that don’t like epic but I can’t fault them for being a little frustrated.
“EGS doesn’t have as many features as other stores”
As a user of both Steam and EGS myself, I haven’t had any issues with using EGS to buy and play games personally. But regarding the features that are still missing, that’s just sorta the way software is developed. Things take a lot longer to develop properly than people tend to realize and nobody comes to market with perfect software.
I remember waaay back when I plopped the disc for Half Life 2 into my PC for the first time and was forced to install this new thing called Steam. It was a barely-functional mess back then, as anyone who used it from that time period can tell you. It’s had like 15 years to improve. If it wasn’t worthwhile to improve, it wouldn’t have been and you wouldn’t still be using it.
I’m sure there’s a team of folks working on launcher features for EGS, but their work depends on the platform being worthwhile from a market-share perspective to keep going.
This is true both the statement and their anecdote. The EGS isn’t feature complete and that IS a valid reason not to like something. Nobody has the right to force somebody into liking something they don’t like. I have no issue with this statment.
“It’s anti-consumer to have exclusives”
This is the most common complaint about Epic, but I don’t think people have really thought it through.
This is true. It is anti-consumer to have exclusives. People should be able to have a complete game on whatever system the game is released on. This is the same issue with preorder bonuses. Look at Cyberpunk 2077 or even Witcher 3. You get all that stuff with it no matter where you bought it weather at launch or 2 years later.
I can understand the frustration of having to buy different consoles to play the games you want, but there’s no extra cost to use EGS. The store and launcher just require a free signup. It’s not like having to pay for HBO and Netflix and Hulu to watch all the shows you want, it’s more like just having to press a button on your remote to change between free TV channels.
This is false equivalence. None of those require you to install anything on your computer.
It’s also really disappointing to see folks threatening to pirate a game just because they can’t get it on the game launcher they’re used to. 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.
The first part I completely agree with. Software piracy is evil. I don’t support this one bit. I don’t suport gamestops used games market. I consider that legal piracy.
The next part I have a problem with. The words Entitled and toxic are used by devs and game media to shut down people that have a difference of opinion from them. People backed them, ie paid money, and expected to get it on steam. This is the kind of behavior that has turned people off the EGS. Epic has a habit of throwing money at a dev and enticing them into an exclusivity agreement when that same dev was going to release their game on steam. And they sometimes do this without warning and in the case of the Mech Warrior dev, They knew they were going to EGS as exclusives in April and didn’t tell anyone and let them continue spending money preordering and dropped the bombshell just recently.
I get the appeal of wanting to seek out things to get angry about. Venting anger is cathartic and natural, but let’s have just a little perspective about what we decide to get angry about. Look at the things going on around you and ask yourself if there might be anything just a tad more worthwhile to be upset about.
Here are just a few suggestions:
- Climate change
- Human rights abuses
- The new Twitter desktop UI
- The last season of Game of Thrones
(Those last two were jokes, please don’t yell at people about them)
So let’s remember that this is all low-stakes video game stuff we’re dealing with here. Nothing to get worked up about. And I (Ben/perplamps) will be around on our Discord to answer any questions and talk through any concerns or confusion you might still have.
Okay, that was a lot so thanks so much for reading through it all. We’re really hoping this Epic stuff is something you can all celebrate with us for the good thing that it is, and we’ll have a lot more fun stuff to share with you moving forward.
P.S. Yes, we got out our mocap rig, spent ages setting it up and recording everything just to get a flossing gif for this post. And no, we don’t know how to floss.
Making light of what people are angry about making them even angrier. Telling people that their anger is without merit and that they have better things to be angry about makes people more angry.
I have to admit the animation is cool.
You can see it in the article if it doesn’t show up here. It’s pretty cute.
Now the story doesn’t end here but continues on in the devs discord server where he proceeds to go all Soderlund on people.
There is one screenshot going around that he said: “gamers would be better off in gas chambers” but this has been proven fake. Which I believe, if for no other reason then that the guy is Jewish. People were believing it too because of all the other crap he posted.
https://twitter.com/DontKillMeJay/status/1158709833350176768?s=20
I don’t hate epic game store. I just don’t like it so I won’t use it. I don’t care that you or others like it. That you do has nothing to do with me. People have different likes and dislikes. Nothing wrong or abusive about that.