Path: local-1.nntp.ord.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-2.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2024 22:38:25 +0000 From: Spalls Hurgenson Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Subject: Re: I bet Remedy regrets that deal now... Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2024 18:38:25 -0400 Message-ID: References: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 68 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-Ay5xn2F4vi2Cgaq8kIc10cHwtW1jsar/q55Noh85OfDKd9UXzCERwcSCF6ilfKC1T/nkB1Xm40MFt1I!HD+fckHba7bKbYtlyyzn8Tzn6lIXn78XJ9Q2f8KLWHT5JgHe749qM+kXgRobzkMAPFZ8vOI= X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 4621 On Mon, 10 Jun 2024 08:13:40 +0100, JAB wrote: >On 08/06/2024 19:10, Spalls Hurgenson wrote: >> But Remedy is, sadly, stuck with their current publisher and that >> publisher has said, "No Steam release for this game", even if it costs >> the developer its much-needed success. At the time, the deal probably >> looked pretty good, but I bet Remedy is regretting that partnership >> now. > >I've heard that sentiment from a few sources that an exclusive deal with >Epic looks good on paper but the reality is the game just gets 'lost' on >their store=front. I've read similar. To the point that (at least some) Indie developers don't really consider the Epic games exclusive a 'real' release for the game, but an extended 'early access' for which Epic is paying them; a way to keep the lights on while they bring the game up to their hoped-for standards and actually release it on Steam. Epic is purportedly very poor on promoting games, and the audience just isn't there. The release on Epic isn't something they really expect to make money on; it's not where the profit comes from. But that's not really the case with "Alan Wake II". It is, after all, not just released on Epic Games Store, but actually /published/ by Epic Games themselves. As such, the exclusive makes sense -for Epic, at least- in the same way that "Portal" or "Left4Dead" being exclusive to Steam makes sense. It's a big-name game designed to push Epic's storefront. It makes less sense for Remedy, though. Given the cost of the game's development, it was probably a necessary sacrifice, the same way that they had to make a deal with Microsoft to get the original "Alan Wake" out the door. That game was locked to the XBox 360 for years before a PC release was authorized. Without the influx of cash from Epic, it's quite possible that "Alan Wake 2" might never have been finished. So I get the allure of the exclusive. But it was based on the idea that PC gamers would rush to buy the game /despite/ it being on EGS, and the evidence is that just isn't happening. And with the game being almost 9 months old, it seems unlikely it ever will. What excitement there was around the game's release has been diluted by almost a year's worth of new releases. The video games industry is fast-moving, and yesterday's games are quickly forgotten. I mean, until I brought it up, how many people here even remembered that "Alan Wake 2" had been released at all? Which is a tragedy, because I /like/ Remedy's games. But they're a mid-tier studio, and extremely vulnerable to the twists of fortune. They release maybe one game every two or three years; the profits from the last game are all that keep the company alive to make the next product. Big-name publishers can weather a flop because they have the resources. Even Indie studios can survive a failure more easily, because their overhead is so much less. But the mid-tier studios are often one bad game from closing. And "Alan Wake 2" might be that bad game. >I don't really follow games news so for me if it's not on Steam I >probably won't hear about it. Of course it doesn't help that I have an >aversion to giving any money to Epic! Same. Again, it doesn't help that Epic doesn't really do much to broadcast its exclusives. And many people, they hear a game is on Epic, they go, "Oh, well, I'll just wait until its on Steam", and then forget the game exists until it arrives on Valve's platform.