To be honest what sold it for me instantly was the combination of graphics, animation and these monty-pythonesque villagers. There are not that many humor-based games in any given year. So viral marketing or not, this game fills the rare niche of games I would give any non-gamer friend because they would enjoy it

I can only speak to my opinion on this matter, but I hate the idea of using 'manufactured'--for lack of a better term--fanart and memes as mediums of advertising. Just looking at the meme, I immediately think "someone loved this game so much they took the time to create something about it". The thought of a company 'manufacturing' memes to try and advertise for something just seems like it's taking such a cool form of expression and commodifying it.

As an example, Wendy's Twitter account has become pretty popular for all their pop culture references and crazy projects like a Dating Simulator and a Tabletop RPG--but at the end of the day, they're advertisements. Personally, it's hard to recognize the time and effort that went into these projects because they were only made to sell fast food; Wendy's isn't releasing these projects because they think they're cool, but because they have a bottom line they want to bring up.

I use an ad-blocker. I haven't seen a television ad in forever. However, I'm sure that this isn't the first time that memes and social media have been used as advertising. It's antithetical to what I've said previously, but I guess the most effective uses of memes as advertising are so good that you can't tell they're ads. Ultimately, if it's funny and not forced, then it's going to spread. And weirdly, I'm okay with it.

I just can't bring myself away from the comparison to how stuff becomes unpopular as soon as your parents start doing it. Facebook became ~uncool~ when our parents started using it, and I don't want to see memes become less of a cultural touchstone because of corporations starting to abuse them.

I've seen a few people on Reddit insist that it must be an astroturf campaign. Because Reddit would never latch onto some random thing and meme obsessively about it for months, otherwise.

It's extremely streamer-friendly (i.e. "fun to watch other people play and react to"), which is a big boost to virality, and it got featured by a hugely popular YouTuber (Dunkey) four days after its launch. And it got lucky. It's not an uncommon story.

People were meme-ing the goose game hard much before its launch, and much before Dunkey covered it, but that probably helped sustain its exponential growth.

More than streamer-friendly, it's Reddit- and Twitter-friendly. Any small clip of the game is automatically funny and share-able. The bird's simple design makes it easy for fan artists to make more memes.

Agree 100%. My daughter and I played the hell out of it for a weekend and then after football on Sunday we turned it on and every adult in the house (6 or 7) took a turn, regardless of whether they like videogames. It's fun to do bad things.

If anything, the EGS hate feels like an AstroTurf. I just do not get it.

It's a crappy store that seeks to compete with the dominant market player not through being better, but through throwing shit-tons of money at timed exclusives. Which itself isn't really that bad, but it doubled down on being hated when it started snatching up community funded games that were otherwise intended for release on several other platforms.

Epic is a better store for game creators.

It's about on par with or better than what Steam was when it first launched. Steam was an absolute clusterfuck when it first launched, and Valve only got away with it because they tied Half Life 2 to Steam.

Steam launched 16 years ago. Saying Epic is at most 16 years behind is not really a good argument.

If you look at it from the point of the view of the game creator, Epic is better - they take smaller cut and they will outright give you money for exclusivity.

This might not seem necessarilty better for the players, but considering how many smaller game studios / creators are on the verge of profitability, this might mean we get to play games we wouldn't otherwise.

They should try pushing that angle a lot harder I think. I wasn't aware of it (I've only used their store for some of the weekly free games).

Most of the pushback seems to be because everyone is fine with Steam, yet another store seems unnecessary, and it smells a lot like a rich company buying their way into our hearts (exclusives from all that Fortnite money). I think that's why it doesn't sit too well.

FWIW I also saw it covered on sites like RPS for what feels like years (and might be, it had a very long dev time).

I ended up buying it on Switch shortly after its release.

I spent a very fun couple of hours on this game and memed a lot about it with my partner.

It is not going to have the profound emotional impact that e.g. Outer Wilds had on me but that goose animation and sound designs are perfect and make for good memes that I will also remember.

It's an accidental success and the game took 3 years to make. Unless they can turn around viral marketing campaigns in significantly less time, with a clear strategy for success then it's unlikely that they'll be able (or even want) to switch markets from game design to marketing consultancy.

Additionally the whole meme is pretty far from commercialisable. It's the simplicity and wholesomeness of the goose that gives it strength. It would be difficult to attach the image to a brand without killing the feel.

It nearly got me to purchase something on the Epic Store.

Nearly.

* Make a tribute to coffee mugs in the middle of the office

* Make a developer spit their coffee out.

* Preside over the morning's stand-up.

* Force SketchySeaBeast to buy something on the Epic Store

* Lock somebody out of their office.

* Water the office plants.

FWIW I’m playing on Switch. It’s a great format for a little game like this.

I bought Outer Worlds on the Epic store. Bah. I don't like the Epic store but I really wanted to play that game. Game is awesome, I'm really not sure what deal ensured it wouldn't be on Steam.

> I'm really not sure what deal ensured it wouldn't be on Steam.

The simple fact that Epic offers a much better deal in terms of cost to be on the store. Half of what Valve demands per sale.

I would be willing to bet there was a large cash payment from Epic for exclusivity, in addition to the smaller cut.

I think that a lot of these are all coming to steam a year after launch - I'll wait until then. I've been finding it very rare that I need to play a game day one these days.

I haven't bought a game this close to launch in years. A bunch of my friends bought Outer Worlds and vouched for how awesome it is, so I caved and bought it. IMO it's really great so far, the dialog choices are quite entertaining. I think this game might be an instant classic.

You could've gotten TOW for $1 on the Microsoft store through gamepass.

I don't use gamepass, I don't have an xbox account and my desktop that I only use for casual gaming is still running Windows 7.

If you can sell through one storefront for 70% and another for 85%, it's kind of obvious.

Yes, choose the 70% ... apparently (latest figures I could find) Epic has 85M registrations vs. 1000M (yes, a billion) for Steam.

Steam are claimed to have 90M active monthly users, I can't find a figure for Epic; it stands to reason it's less though, maybe half their registered users (now Fortnite lost its shine??) would be a reasonable guess?

It probably depends on your demographic considerably; basically if Epic have less than 79M active and the demographics are the same then revenue from Steam will be greater, across a wider user base (which might improve ongoing prospects?).

I'm not sure those numbers are that relevant. People don't choose gamestores, they choose games. I personally will register on any gamestore if it has the game I'm interested in. I'm not on Steam because I'm loyal to it, I'm on Steam because it sells games I want. The moment a game is available on both Steam and EGS, I'm buying it on EGS.

You're possibly right about the relevancy, the figures aren't accurate either.

Your final sentence seems to contradict the rest of the paragraph. If the games are the same price, why are you choosing EGS (to contribute more to the company? but that would be choosing a game store).

I guess I was trying to illustrate to point that I don't choose the store, but games. Choosing stores only kicks in when multiple stores are available for the same game, which rarely happens.

Thanks for the clarification.

Why not both?

Because every sale on the storefront that charges more is less margin? Unless the more expensive storefront is doing some sort of marketing for you, what's the point losing that 15%?

Steam's discoverability is pretty piss-poor, and most of the marketing is sales that have convinced your customer base to never buy anything new, just wait for the sale (which cuts into your income with 50%+ discounts).

I'm more bemused by the fanatical loyalty to Steam.

> Because every sale on the storefront that charges more is less margin?

There's a simple solution to that. Just charge more for the game on Steam et al.

For example. Untitled Goose Game is £15.99 on the Epic Game Store, so charge at least £18.39 on Steam.

I don't understand why people have problem with Epic Store. Isn't this just the competition everyone should want? Steam takes 30 % of your money. Epic takes 12 %. They are competing on cost. Why would that be a problem?

Why is that part of capitalism where Steam has near-monopoly on Games okay, but not the part where they have to compete with someone? Why would someone have loyalty to one huge corporation over another?

I don't get it.

What bugs me is locking stuff in to exclusives while having a half-baked store platform. It'd be one thing if their service was near parity with Steam, but they started doing this while it was missing essential features.

Stuff like cloud sync for game saves or being able to buy games as a gift to someone else's account. It's 2019. You shouldn't launch a game platform without syncing saves to the account. Looking at you too, Oculus.

It's catching up and I haven't minded the platform for Borderlands, but I'd have felt better about using it if they'd had a more fully baked system to launch with.

I also don't love having yet another game store/updater/launcher platform, but that ship has sailed.

If that were the motivation, the publisher would sell on both platforms and just charge more on Steam due to the markup. That is never what happens. Epic is locking content creators into exclusive contracts, because their business model requires on-boarding tons of users onto their platform and they are willing the throw cash at the problem. Steam does not monopolize games. You can usually download them directly from the publisher and other retailers like Humble Bundle. Epic is uniquely hoarding high-profile releases. Unfortunately they are also providing a sub-par user experience, which is what a lot of the negativity stems from.

The steamworks agreement does not allow charging more on steam than on other platforms, while still retaining the ability to sell steam keys. If one wants to use steam keys, such as for use in a bundle, their documentation mentions:

> Please note that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

You can still charge less on other platforms and still use steam keys. You just can't charge less for steam keys. If you're selling on other platforms, use that platform's keys instead.

The problem is that on top of that Epic has been paying developers extra money to release exclusively on the Epic store (and in some cases it seems they've struck deals for the dev to just not release on steam specifically, but still release on other Epic store competitors). This seems like blatantly anti competitive behaviour to me and I don't want to support it.

If devs were just choosing to not release on steam because epic gives a bigger cut that would be fine, but that isn't the case.

My problem isn't with an alternate platform to Steam as I have bought things from both Gog and the Humble Store. My issue is with Epic exclusively and it is exclusivity.

To be specific I have issues with Epic offering exclusivity deals, especially to games that are KickStarter and had promised to release the product on other platforms. That's it. If games were only available on Epic because Epic offered a better cut I wouldn't take an issue with it.

You might say that in those cases the developers/publishers are more at fault than Epic is, which is fair. However it is kind of like sleeping with someone who is in a monogamous relationship vs. cheating. Sure it isn't as bad as cheating yourself, but I still view it as bad thing to do morally speaking.

That's how competition works - people voting with their wallets that the product sucks so much that being cheaper is not enough. Steam is competing with Epic store, and succeeding - for me it's the same, if it's exclusive to Epic store, then they apparently don't want my money because I'm not going to buy it there.

> because I'm not going to buy it there.

But why not?

That game is 'nice to have' but not a 'must have' for me, and the inconvenience of having to setup and use another sucky third party game store makes it not worth it. I tried Epic store once and didn't have a good experience, so I don't have it right now, it would be a bother to install it and remember the account/password, and in any case I don't want the bother of having my library split among multiple tools, having to remember which game is where, etc. I mean, it's not a big inconvenience, it is an inconvenience, and getting access to yet another game isn't a big benefit; if it was on Steam I'd likely try it because it seems interesting and the price is trivial but since it's not available in a way that's convenient for me, why bother?

In any case there are many more other interesting games out there than I have time for, there's some stuff in my Steam library that I have yet to play, so if some games aren't accessible in the way I prefer, then those will be among the games I'll skip. For the makers of the game their game probably is important and special, but for a customer like me it's not, the competition between games for my time is huge, there's so much good stuff out there that there's no possible reason to jump through hoops (even if they're not that difficult) to get to any particular game, so if any particular game is not in the place where it's most covenient for me, it might as well not exist. There are some exceptions for nostalgic reasons that have driven me to e.g. gog.com for a few games I enjoyed decades ago, but there really has to be a special reason to do so. There was a time in my life where I'd be eager to invest a lot of time and effort just to get a particular game (worldwide distribution of games on floppies and CDs was awkward to say at least) but that's not the case anymore. Especially for short niche/fad games like this one seems to be, their role is like that of an impulse buy or a comfort food - it has to be a 'click here, pay a dozen bucks, enjoy your stuff immediately' experience without having to bother with making yet another account and installing extra stuff that you have to care about.

Because their business model is that games are only available in their store so they are a cancer in the PC games industry. we dont need more walled gardens everywhere.

Because they don't have a Linux version of their client.

Valve and by extension Steam have built a very positive reputation.

IMO they have squandered a lot of it lately but they remain very popular and people are just extremely used to the steam launcher.

I for one am VERY happy that somebody is forcing Steam to stop being complacent and is competing on margins (30% is a LOT of money).

They're not competing on margins, they're "competing" by making game developers sign up for exclusivity deals.

How do you call the lower store fees ?

30% is not much when you consider that is an access to a huge market you buy. A larger market than any brick and mortar publisher ever provided when you were selling with physical game copies. Plus, they do not charge you for game updates, traffic, online gaming capabilities, etc...

It is much compared to 12% though ;)

I think it's less about the price and more about the fact that their 'winning strategy' seems to be to just throw money at exclusives until they win.

Maybe that's the push-back?

Aside from the Epic Games Store:

I don't mind purchasing games from Steam. I've purchased a game or two on the EA store. I don't know if I purchased anything on the Ubisoft store, but I know it's needed for some of their games. I've purchased games from the Microsoft Store.

I've purchased games from sites like Good old games, Humble Bundle.

I think in practical terms, it's a bit annoying to have different, heavy clients to use to have these different games. It'd be less of a hassle if they all had a Single Sign On, I guess. But, yeah, the vast majority of my games are on Steam and I only use the EA store when I want to play a game that's exclusive to that store.

It makes sense to say "but it's market competition, why would you dislike Epic", but I don't think it appeals to the gamer identity/ethos. Idk how many people actually care about it; it's probably a vocal minority.

The Epic Store won't allow me to create an account because I was a victim of reverse identity theft (https://www.xkcd.com/1279/) years ago. I guess Epic doesn't want me buying this or any other game from them.

Too bad this game is only available there.

If someone else registered with an email address you actually own, why not just reset the password?

I'm guessing you wouldn't be screwing over whoever registered the account, since presumably they wouldn't have had a chance to validate their (your) email address.

For gmail addresses, I usually attempt to solve duplicate email detection by adding either a + string or throwing in random periods. So you could try `[email protected]` and `[email protected]` and see if any of those work.

Unfortunately or fortunately gmail essentially ignores added or removed predomain dots. So [email protected] is the same as [email protected].

I have gotten emails from gmail forgetting to pin in my middle initials with periods.

They hyped up this game for over a year, promoted it on Steam, then sold out to the Epic store at the last minute claiming the decision was for "financial stability due to the uncertain nature of the game's popularity". They had a mailing list on their home page as soon as it went up. They knew exactly how many hundreds of thousands of people were waiting to buy the game.

Mailing lists represent potential buyers, not actual buyers.

There have been articles on HN about mailing list conversion rates. Depends on the product, but the usual # was 1-3%, with outliers being as much as 15%.

Popular art does this. Stardew valley spent zero dollars on advertising. UGG was well placed to hit a transition point between themes and it's paying off.

I haven’t played it but videogamedunkey spent enough time with it to give me a few laughs. It’s almost like it was made for him.