Comment on What's up with Epic Games?
darganon@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The multi-billionaire owner with the backing of the Chinese government is claiming that he’s the underdog against a popular company/piece of software/GabeN. He’s made some poor choices interacting with the community.
Yes, it’s probably nice for a publisher to have a guaranteed income, which is why they sell exclusivity. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth, so I choose not to support it.
The rest about the launcher being bad sounds unhinged to me, but some people are really into that.
They bought Rocket League and actively made it worse.
The multi-billionaire owner with the backing of the Chinese government
Who cares about the backing if it has no effect on anything? I’m more concerned about Valve having a separate Steam client for China, censoring their games specifically for China and even reportedly banning for bringing up Winnie the Pooh.
Who cares about the backing if it has no effect on anything?
It’s more illustrating that Epic isn’t underfunded. I don’t know anything about steam in China.
Epic not being underfunded is stating the obvious. Just look at the scope of their Fortnite collaborations.
lol XD, let me tell you, if someone is financing something like that, they sure as heck expect something in exchange someday.
So, you believe a government powerful enough to make unaffiliated companies bow to their liking won’t leverage their investment?
Why do you think they invested? Just for fun?
You invest to gain influence, not to have less influence.
Tencent also own WeChat.
Since this is a gaming community, it would be more relevant to say that Tencent likely has a stake in something that you already play or use, like Discord.
Most investments aren’t to gain influence but to profit. At this time, there is no sign of Epic doing anything that could be explained by the alleged influence of the Chinese government, and as the majority owner, Tim Sweeney has the final say anyway.
I never said it was not for profit. I said you invest to gain influence, which is true by fact, not an opinion. If I buy a significant number of shares in a company, I do so because I want more than money; I want influence on decision-making. I do not think the Chinese government is only interested in monetary gains; do you think that’s their only goal?
And again, do you believe a country/government able to indoctrinate any business that wants a share of their market, like the Steam example, is only invested for monetary gains and nothing else?
Tim Sweeney can do and decide many things, but opposing the Chinese government is certainly not one. And I don’t know how you imagine influence, but having 40% of a company is something I call influence, wouldn’t you? Even if they can’t tell him how to run the business, he sure as hell will do nothing that could worsen the relationship between him and his biggest investor, aka Tencent. And who is behind Tencent? The Chinese government.
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I don’t disagree with everything you said here but come on, Steam is basically a privately owned PC games store monopoly that has now been going on for 25 years. Since it’s not public we can’t really know for sure but there’s a very real possibility that Epic is the underdog here
darganon@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I don’t think steam has any anti-competitive behavior that I’m aware of.
Fortnite has roughly 100 million more monthly active users than steam, to say nothing of every piece of software running Unreal Engine, Epic is huge.
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
Steam somehow prevents publishers from selling games at a cheaper price in competitors’ stores, even if their cut from the store is lower. That is extremely anti-competitive and has to be illegal.
asret@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
If you sign up to use Steam to distribute your game then one of the things you agree to is to make it available on Steam at the same price you offer anywhere else. This protects Steam’s business and ensures that Steam customers aren’t disadvantaged.
However, it also applies even if the alternative channels don’t make use of Steam directly (e.g selling on Epic). This is where the Wolfire Games lawsuit comes in. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 10 months ago
True. I forgot about that in my comment actually. I think they calmed down on that because it was basically illegal in a lot of countries
dotMonkey@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Steam was fined in Australia for not providing refunds for games
Firenz@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It was a bit more than just an issue of Valve not providing refunds.
Read about it here and here.
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Epic doesn’t make nearly as much money from Fortnite’s players as steam makes from their users though. Same for UE royalties. I don’t think there’s a single UE license that has a 30% rev share (which is what you get on steam if you don’t have big AAA sales)
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Gabe had a say in greenlighting horse armour? What?