If there is a game I'm interested in, I'd use whatever is cheaper/available for it.
And since there's a vastly bigger audience on Steam vs the Epic Store, I don't really think that split matters as much as people would have you believe.
$ ./EpicInstaller-15.17.1.msi
bash: ./EpicInstaller-15.17.1.msi: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error
Of course it's their choice where to release it, but saying, specifically, that it doesn't affect any consumer is just plain wrong.
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
As long as storefronts have to compete for games, this is what that looks like. There's not really any way to get rid of exclusives without hurting competition. Would you want a law passed for games to be required to be put on certain storefronts? For storefronts to be required to accept all games submitted to it? Either one would hurt competition by giving too much power to either the game publisher or the storefront.
Besides publishers are already free to decide where the games they publish go or don't, so I'm not sure where the "too much power to publishers" thing is coming from.
But that's not unique to paid exclusives. That's not even unique to Epic, Valve's own games are exclusive to a single storefront. You should boycott them for the same reason.
There is a cost to releasing games on multiple storefronts, forcing games to release on multiple stores only hurts smaller developers. Some smaller developers also skip storefronts altogether. Minecraft and Factorio were initially sold without any storefront. Is that still considered limited to one and therefore an exclusive?
>Besides publishers are already free to decide where the games they publish go or don't, so I'm not sure where the "too much power to publishers" thing is coming from.
I'm talking about cases where the storefront doesn't want to sell the game. Say the game has adult content, or the game has is just unfinished and not good. If storefronts are required to carry games. Otherwise games that only get accepted to a single store will continue to be exclusive to that single store.
Same thing with smaller developers, are they expected to cater to the whim of multiple storefronts to be able to release a game? One of my favorites, Zachtronic's Opus Magnum was rejected from GoG initially.
If a publisher chooses to do a single store front, then fine w/e. I don't have a problem with that. Its when a storefront bribes a publisher to keep a product exclusive to one store, in an attempt to force consumers on to that store that they likely otherwise wouldn't have used, that I have problem with.
>Its when a storefront bribes a publisher to keep a product exclusive to one store
That's not a bribe, that's a business transaction. Do you bribe a store to give you a product?
>If a publisher chooses to do a single store front, then fine w/e.
This contrasts with your previous: "as long as its not limited to one"
So now publishers are allowed to choose one storefront, but somehow they can't be paid to make that choice? How should they be making that choice if not by how much each storefront is offering?
Return to Monkey Island also released as a Steam exclusive.
If it was on Steam I would have likely bought it on Steam. But it’s not. So in my case at least, this exclusive is effectively driving me to buy on the Epic Store.
I find it sort of funny that many (not all) complaints about the Epic Store are the same things gamers complained about when Steam was released 20 years ago.