PC Gaming Era | April 2019 - Goodbye, Uzzy is your new King

Tombstone for Orange should say:


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Oct 26, 2017
1,263
France
hard to recommend since being transparent about these things opens them up for them to be exploited
And being open in an algorithm sense is probably the worst thing ever. It will just lead to more exploitation of the system, as they will just find ways to cheat the system.
The problem is that you cannot be fully honest about algorithm cause devs will always try to exploit it.
Valve is continuously playing a catch and mouse games with bad agents that try to exploit some of the avenues of discoverability (while improving the tools).
That is hardly an argument. It is like we are back in the 90s when people would use this argument to advocate closed-source softwares.

If you need to keep your system secret to avoid any exploit, then:
  • there is suspicion, because nobody knows what you are doing,
  • you openly admit that your system is fragile, and that you do not trust it,
  • there will be exploits, it will just be slightly harder to find them,
  • you admit that you do not have time to fix the exploits,
  • you cannot benefit from others to improve your system of rules.
 
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BronsonLee

Assistant (to the) Regional Administrator
Moderator
Oct 24, 2017
12,935
If I may recommend something for your beginner thread, do not mention the whole 'Steam pays the 15% for their retail cards' thing. That is a standard fee to get retail cards into brick and mortar stores, and the company always pays it to get the cards into stores/logistical purposes (why would the retail store ever pay this???). I have no idea why that Valve rep put that out there.
 
Oct 25, 2017
2,096
If I may recommend something for your beginner thread, do not mention the whole 'Steam pays the 15% for their retail cards' thing. That is a standard fee to get retail cards into brick and mortar stores, and the company always pays it to get the cards into stores/logistical purposes (why would the retail store ever pay this???). I have no idea why that Valve rep put that out there.
Because it was an example of why 12% is not viable for Steam. It was part of the talk where they focused on how nearly 90% of the sales of Steam in Asia where through "non standard" methods (aka the ones with higher than 5% in cost).

Basically, it was a GDC part of the talk about: yeah, Epic is saying we are stealing from you all the time but this is our reality.
 
Oct 27, 2017
1,174
That is hardly an argument. It is like we are back in the 90s when people would use this argument to advocate closed-source softwares.

If you need to keep your system secret to avoid any exploit, then:
  • there is suspicion, because nobody knows what you are doing,
  • you openly admit that your system is fragile, and that you do not trust it,
  • there will be exploits, it will just be slightly harder to find them,
  • and you cannot benefit from others to improve your system of rules.
Tbf a closed source OS like Windows is lot more secure than it used to be, but that has more to do with MS getting their act together rather than the source not being publicly available.
 

BronsonLee

Assistant (to the) Regional Administrator
Moderator
Oct 24, 2017
12,935
Because it was an example of why 12% is not viable for Steam. It was part of the talk where they focused on how nearly 90% of the sales of Steam in Asia where through "non standard" methods (aka the ones with higher than 5% in cost).

Basically, it was a GDC part of the talk about: yeah, Epic is saying we are stealing from you all the time but this is our reality.
That's the reality of literally every retail card provider though, I'm not impressed by when the vibe they're trying to give off is a 'we're doing this to be altruistic' when it's really 'we do this because that's what has to be done to get our retail cards in at all'

Also thinking about it I know one company that actually does put the extra cost for retail cards onto the consumers themselves

It's American Express
 
Oct 25, 2017
22,579
Real talk, if MK11 is EGS exclusive then WB, Netherealm and Boon can all fuck off. Their ports are usually terrible as is and they always treat PC customers like absolute shit.
 
Oct 25, 2017
2,096
That's the reality of literally every retail card provider though, I'm not impressed by when the vibe they're trying to give off is a 'we're doing this to be altruistic' when it's really 'we do this because that's what has to be done to get our retail cards in at all'
Also thinking about it I know one company that actually does put the extra cost for retail cards onto the consumers themselves
It's American Express
I mean, if we go back to the thread where that was said, lots of people here in era didnt seem to realize how much getting something into retail actually costs. I wouldnt be surprised if most developers just dont seem to realize how the transactions costs cost, heck even Epic was probably surprised when a lot of them went over their "limit".

Again, this was said in GDC with a clear objective for the audience (devs): show why 12% is not really viable for Steam after having Epic saying for more than a year now that Steam is stealing their money.
 
Oct 26, 2017
1,252
If it really shifts to 6 months we can tell thats Epics money bags are running dry lol
I don't think so. They probably have enough money to do this for a long time. In the case of Borderlands it could be 2K wanted too much for a full year or didn't want to commit for a full year.

That's the reality of literally every retail card provider though, I'm not impressed by when the vibe they're trying to give off is a 'we're doing this to be altruistic' when it's really 'we do this because that's what has to be done to get our retail cards in at all'

Also thinking about it I know one company that actually does put the extra cost for retail cards onto the consumers themselves

It's American Express
I don't think it was to say "Look how altruistic we are!" but more to show that they do something with the 30% cut. Because there is the sentiment that they don't do enough for their 30% since two years(?).
 
Oct 25, 2017
3,084
That's the reality of literally every retail card provider though, I'm not impressed by when the vibe they're trying to give off is a 'we're doing this to be altruistic' when it's really 'we do this because that's what has to be done to get our retail cards in at all'

Also thinking about it I know one company that actually does put the extra cost for retail cards onto the consumers themselves

It's American Express
And every other retail card provider I know of has a similar cut.
 
Oct 25, 2017
1,344
Italy

(credits to Gizmo)
Don't think dev would say this if an exclusivity deal was on the works, but there're no guarantees these days.
They have a publisher though (Humble) so there's no guarantee on it. We've already seen how much of a voice the actual devs have in this kind of decisions when there's a publisher handling their business.
 
Oct 25, 2017
7,417
Disco Elysium being an exclusive would be disastrous that game needs every sale it can get.

Getting money from Epic for the now is all well and good but if no one buys your game good luck getting funding for another game.
 
Oct 25, 2017
2,096
That is hardly an argument. It is like we are back in the 90s when people would use this argument to advocate closed-source softwares.

If you need to keep your system secret to avoid any exploit, then:
  • there is suspicion, because nobody knows what you are doing,
  • you openly admit that your system is fragile, and that you do not trust it,
  • there will be exploits, it will just be slightly harder to find them,
  • you admit that you do not have time to fix the exploits,
  • you cannot benefit from others to improve your system of rules.
To be honest, I am with you on that open source code IS better to find bugs and exploits, performing much better in most statistics, as well as being much more sustainable long term (due to not relying on a single code provider).

I am just unsure about it being good for recommendations, as having the rule set open would lead to devaluation of the good practises and just pure optimization from all agents (both good and bad).
 
Oct 25, 2017
6,124
Disco Elysium being an exclusive would be disastrous that game needs every sale it can get.

Getting money from Epic for the now is all well and good but if no one buys your game good luck getting funding for another game.
I assume no small Dev can say no to a huge bag of money upfront compared with the real and fairly scary possibility of your game just not doing enough on its own.
I am not blaming any indie dev for taking that pay check. I don't like it, but I get it. Also, the money they get from Epic would go into making their next game, I'd assume.
 
Disco Elysium looks great and I will buy it day one if it’s not exclusive. Otherwise, I’ll wait. But, I won’t take those posts as confirmation of anything. Epic + any game that has a publisher = what devs say can’t be trusted. They’ve been out of the loop when it comes to these deals. I do hope the game can avoid any of this Epic BS though.
 
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Oct 29, 2017
94
I thought the 15% retail fee on a cash card was brought up to point out that they are left with 15% on each of those sales. If their store fee was 12% they would be taking a 3% loss on every single purchase made with a cash card. Valve provides the cash card option because it opens up even more customers to the store. Epic does not offer cash cards in stores for EGS?
 
Nov 3, 2017
3,097
I assume no small Dev can say no to a huge bag of money upfront compared with the real and fairly scary possibility of your game just not doing enough on its own.
I am not blaming any indie dev for taking that pay check. I don't like it, but I get it. Also, the money they get from Epic would go into making their next game, I'd assume.
If you still have an audience that buys your next game.
Borderlands? will be fine, unless they bomb spectacularly on all platforms, there will be a new game.
An Indie dev with a niche audience? Good luck.
 
Oct 25, 2017
4,854
USA USA USA
I thought the 15% retail fee on a cash card was brought up to point out that they are left with 15% on each of those sales. If their store fee was 12% they would be taking a 3% loss on every single purchase made with a cash card. Valve provides the cash card option because it opens up even more customers to the store. Epic does not offer cash cards in stores for EGS?
Yeah I'm not sure where people thought they were doing it altruisticly. Just showing that overhead could be suprisingly higher for large portions of newer markets.
 
Nov 1, 2017
1,285
is Dark Souls remastered worth playing?

i already have prepare to die edition
Yeah. I mean, its basically the same as before with the DSFix but i think its slightly improved in some areas. Some graphical updates/improvements. 60FPS everywhere (even Blightown i think). I played through it at launch, if you are a fan of DS then yeah. Its worth it.
 
Oct 25, 2017
5,533
MK11 better not be Epic exclusive. I preordered that on GMG...

I feel like Katana Zero is the most Epic Store-ish game that hasn't been snapped up and it's 2 weeks 2 days off...