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Re:Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google by viraptor on Friday September 11, 2020 @08:43AM (#24442107)
> they cost game devs money in lost sales from me.

I still don't get how the exclusives are a good deal for the creators. They get more publicity and probably some extra money for the contract. But does it really offset the lost sales? There was a large number of times when I went though: this game looks awesome, I'll buy it, oh it's exclusive for whatever-platform-i-don't-have, ... and likely not remember about it ever again. I even bought similar games which are available on platforms I already have instead.

Re:Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google by doikor on Friday September 11, 2020 @08:53AM (#24442203)
Epic pays the developer for X units sold before selling anything. Basically guarantee the developer to make at least that much sold. The developer still stands to make extra buck if the game sells really well (when selling more then those X units Epic paid them beforehand)

This is great for smaller devs as you basically have 0 advertising budget and rely on worth of mouth for your game to be a success or not. So you can take guaranteed money and pay yourself (and your employees) or take the gamble and hope your game sells well.

Also Epic takes smaller cut then Valve does on Steam. (12% vs 30%)

Also these exclusives to Epic are timed. So after a couple months the developer is free to publish their game on Steam/GOG/Windows Store/whatever PC platform (Epic store exclusivity does not apply for consoles)

Re:Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google by paulryanrogers on Friday September 11, 2020 @08:50AM (#24442184)
Is installing another store really so burdensome? It costs nothing but a few minutes of time. GOG Galaxy can even help consolidate them.
Re:Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google by viraptor on Friday September 11, 2020 @05:57PM (#24447774)
Until epic supports proton, yes. It requires a whole new OS.

But I was also thinking in terms of actual platforms like "Xbox only for N months"

Re:Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google by tpxl on Friday September 11, 2020 @09:22AM (#24442478)
Yet another US service to slurp my data and give it to the NSA.
Re:Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google by paulryanrogers on Friday September 11, 2020 @10:12AM (#24443042)
Sadly the only alternative is to buy used, disc copies.

Digital collections certainly have privacy tradeoffs. Though I'm quite happy with many of the upsides: cross-play, automatic cloud save, (sometimes) cross-save, no disc swapping, fewer things to clutter my living space.

Re:Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google by tpxl on Friday September 11, 2020 @08:48AM (#24442159)
In the case of Epic games, they shovel money their way with a _biiig_ shovel, even for free games.

I don't know about PS/Xbox, but the situation is probably similar.