Epic is giving away the entire Tomb Raider trilogy

[scavengerspc]

Neah, I just have better standards than you and I also hate anti-consumer practices like the cancer that is "third party exclusivity deals" that destroy the market (especially for the smaller stores).

For me, I support Epic anytime I can. They take 12%, that Microsoft matched by the way, of the revenue while Steam and yes, GOG, takes 30%.

 

[amghwk]

Got them without problems. Enjoying them.

It's nice to see Epic giving back to the community (and developers with less cuts) with free games. Not just ordinary ones but blockbusters too.

Thanks for the heads-up.

 

[Puiu]

I expect because of this you must also be hating on UE5 although it's an amazing engine and a game changer for next gen, right?
Or can you differentiate enough to not hate Epic as a whole?

Like for me for example, I still dislike intel for all the scummy things they did in the past (related to CPUs mainly) so I am not interested in their Alder Lake CPUs, but I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and a new chance with Arc GPUs, until they disappoint me on that front too, if it ever happens.

I use UE5 and Unity. Work goes beyond my personal feelings. I'm just talking about the store.

 

[Puiu]

For me, I support Epic anytime I can. They take 12%, that Microsoft matched by the way, of the revenue while Steam and yes, GOG, takes 30%.

If I want to support the devs I buy the game, I tell others to buy the game and support them on social media.

I don't need to support devs that get too greedy and do things that are against the consumers. They are trading an upfront sac of money from Epic because they know that people like me won't buy exclusive titles.

 

[Puiu]

Holy pretentious! Internet is alive and well in 2022. I bet you use that wet wipe toilet paper that biodegrades into avocado.

Yeah, it is alive and well and you defending anti-consumer practices won't change that.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I would download them, but I have no desire.

 

[scavengerspc]

I don't need to support devs that get too greedy and do things that are against the consumers.

Well first off it's not anti consumer. It's limited anti competition and, like the first iPhones and AT&T, is just as temporary.

But as a side, I'm pretty sure that once DRM is stripped, GOG wants exclusive rights to sell it that way. Having done zero research on the subject, I'm pretty sure they do get limited exclusives.

 

[Puiu]

Well first off it's not anti consumer. It's limited anti competition and, like the first iPhones and AT&T, is just as temporary.

But as a side, I'm pretty sure that once DRM is stripped, GOG wants exclusive rights to sell it that way. Having done zero research on the subject, I'm pretty sure they do get limited exclusives.

No, GOG doesn't have exclusivity to games without DRM or any other third party titles.

And there is no such thing as "limited anti-competition". Just AT&T selling iPhones was and still is an anti-competitive move. It allowed them to gain a huge boost in sales and userbase as it was the only choice consumers had (exactly what the Epic Store is doing).

Right now exclusivity deals are a huge issue for the gaming community. For example, facebook/meta is pretty much buying anything VR related that is remotely good.

Here's the thing, I can tolerate limited exclusivity deals for consoles, but PC is where I draw the line, and I will continue to call it a cancer on the gaming community and vocally appose it. F Epic for what they are doing right now.

 

[scavengerspc]

No, GOG doesn't have exclusivity to games without DRM or any other third party titles.

And there is no such thing as "limited anti-competition". Just AT&T selling iPhones was and still is an anti-competitive move. It allowed them to gain a huge boost in sales and userbase as it was the only choice consumers had (exactly what the Epic Store is doing).

Right now exclusivity deals are a huge issue for the gaming community. For example, facebook/meta is pretty much buying anything VR related that is remotely good.

I think you may have missed what I'm saying, and I should have explained it better.

First off, I'm not claiming that "limited anti-competition" is an accepted term. Only that , that is exactly what it is. It's an exclusive deal to cut out competition for a certain amount of time. You may notice I highlighted your favorite word for you, which leads to my 2nd point.

There is absolutely nothing anti consumer about an exclusivity deal. Nobody is stopping you from buying what you want. It doesn't stop you from going to where it is available to get it.

Want a Die Hard battery? Advance AP has the exclusive deal.
My niece had to have the Mary-Kate and Ashley collection clothes. They signed a deal with one retailer to sell them (Target, I think).

Collusion for example is a hard anti consumer act.

Exclusive agreements are everywhere brother. I think you just cherry pick the ones you dont like. And it's kind of funny, but that is YOUR exclusive right.

 

[Puiu]

I think you may have missed what I'm saying, and I should have explained it better.

First off, I'm not claiming that "limited anti-competition" is an accepted term. Only that , that is exactly what it is. It's an exclusive deal to cut out competition for a certain amount of time. You may notice I highlighted your favorite word for you, which leads to my 2nd point.

There is absolutely nothing anti consumer about an exclusivity deal. Nobody is stopping you from buying what you want. It doesn't stop you from going to where it is available to get it.

Want a Die Hard battery? Advance AP has the exclusive deal.
My niece had to have the Mary-Kate and Ashley collection clothes. They signed a deal with one retailer to sell them (Target, I think).

Collusion for example is a hard anti consumer act.

Exclusive agreements are everywhere brother. I think you just cherry pick the ones you dont like. And it's kind of funny, but that is YOUR exclusive right.

It's the wrong way to look at things. You are not cutting the competition for a "certain time", you are cutting the competition from the vast majority of the sales. Game sales very front loaded, if you don't have access to the launch window then you are pretty much getting only scraps. I remember seeing charts that showed that 90% of the sales happened in the first 3 months (50% in the first month).

"There is absolutely nothing anti consumer about an exclusivity deal. Nobody is stopping you from buying what you want." - and this is your biggest issue. You don't know what anti-consumer means. It's not not about stopping you from buying something (although it can happen), its about limiting your choices to: 1 store, 1 platform, 1 price, the end.

Do you have any idea just how many thousands of $ I saved up from buying from different stores? GOG, Humble, GMG, Original, Amazon, Steam, I use all of them and most games I bought are not from Steam.

I'm too lazy to explain things in detail so I'll just copy-paste the definition:

Anti-consumer practices can be defined as “improperly favoring the interests of businesses over the interests of consumers.” To this end, any business practice that limits/restricts consumer choice and/or seeks to extract money from consumers in a predatory fashion is anti-consumer.

 

[scavengerspc]

It's the wrong way to look at things.

Wait. Are you serious? You don't get to tell others how to look at things that are a matter of opinion.

You don't know what anti-consumer means.

I am an Architect. I buy millions of dollars in materials, labor and time with politicians every year. I have seen some very anti consumer attempts in all phases more times than I care to remember. DO NOT presume to tell me you have it all figured out because of where you buy your video games. You have no idea how clueless, petty, and small-time your personal ideals on this are.

 

[Puiu]

Wait. Are you serious? You don't get to tell others how to look at things that are a matter of opinion.

I am an Architect. I buy millions of dollars in materials, labor and time with politicians every year. I have seen some very anti consumer attempts in all phases more times than I care to remember. DO NOT presume to tell me you have it all figured out because of where you buy your video games. You have no idea how clueless, petty, and small-time your personal ideals on this are.

It's not a matter of opinion if what I said is a fact. I'm not here to discuss well known definitions and statistics as if their my "opinion". It's what is happening right now.

And I don't care about you being an architect (some of my best friends are architects), if you don't know what anti-consumer means or have your own "definition" then that's your problem not mine.

I only use my position as a programmer and IT&C specialist when the topic is relevant not willy-nilly. As a small side-note, I have someone in the family close to me who did large construction projects hiring thousands of workers in Bucharest, you are not "special". I know all of the problems in the construction sector from shady land ownership, bad construction materials, bureaucracy, bad workers, corrupt inspections, etc etc .

FYI Just because you think you've seen anti-consumer worse practices in other places doesn't this situation any better. It's like saying that Russia is only doing "limited" censorship because China is worse. It doesn't work like that.

In the end you are just accepting something bad because you think it isn't as bad as it could be yet. Do you also wait for your building to be finished and collapse before you fix a mistake?

It's really annoying to see people look for excuses for something that they know is bad. Wake up, or at least come up with some believable arguments.

 

[Goamist]

@Puiu: How exactly is the consumer losing when Epic signs an exclusivity? Only the the choice of the platform it launches the game from, which is arguably a matter of preference and not a loss, since it cannot be quantified. Moving forward, I'm yet to see a game that launched exclusively on Epic with a jacked-up price, compared to games that launched on Steam.
Also, did you notice the news in the past year, saying that Epic is bleeding money because of the store, what with all the free games and all? So the little profit that it gets form an exclusivity (if at all, since signing an exclusivity means the store has to pay the publisher / developer money up-front) is most likely lost when giving away those weekly games.
If anything, Epic can be accused of bad business, with the only credit going to them for building up brand visibility via free games and the occasional exclusivity deals.

 

[Ashford]

Wait. Are you serious? You don't get to tell others how to look at things that are a matter of opinion.

I am an Architect. I buy millions of dollars in materials, labor and time with politicians every year. I have seen some very anti consumer attempts in all phases more times than I care to remember. DO NOT presume to tell me you have it all figured out because of where you buy your video games. You have no idea how clueless, petty, and small-time your personal ideals on this are.

Don't waste your breath on someone so blinded by their own self righteousness that they believe they are the authority on a such a complex sociopolitical ideology as anti-consumerism because they download video games from one site versus another that they are somehow more "woke", intelligent or whatever. You gain nothing.

 

[scavengerspc]

Don't waste your breath on someone so blinded by their own self righteousness that they believe they are the authority on a such a complex sociopolitical ideology as anti-consumerism because they download video games from one site versus another that they are somehow more "woke", intelligent or whatever. You gain nothing.

It is amazing how limited someone's knowledge can be on even the basics and yet still come on strong with the internet expert bullshit. You get me? It's like all the experience I have on this means nothing because of how he believes video games should be sold.

 

[cliffordcooley]

I hate exclusives as well. If I want to play a game, I shouldn't have to buy into an entire platform to do so. At least with Epic, it is not a platform exclusive. And grabbing all Epic's freebies is not supporting them financially.

Fortunately for me. All the games they want to use for exclusives. Are games I have little to no interest in. If that was to change. I would still only consider games on PC.

There is only one store on PC I have blacklisted. That is Origin for their limited non-phone customer support. Blacklisted as in I'm not calling them or creating another account just to get in their store. I have all the information I need to verify my account by email. I even have a few hard copies that was activated in Origin. All of which can not be verified by phone verbally.

 

[Puiu]

@Puiu: How exactly is the consumer losing when Epic signs an exclusivity? Only the the choice of the platform it launches the game from, which is arguably a matter of preference and not a loss, since it cannot be quantified. Moving forward, I'm yet to see a game that launched exclusively on Epic with a jacked-up price, compared to games that launched on Steam.
Also, did you notice the news in the past year, saying that Epic is bleeding money because of the store, what with all the free games and all? So the little profit that it gets form an exclusivity (if at all, since signing an exclusivity means the store has to pay the publisher / developer money up-front) is most likely lost when giving away those weekly games.
If anything, Epic can be accused of bad business, with the only credit going to them for building up brand visibility via free games and the occasional exclusivity deals.

It's simple: you get screwed with both price and platform.

Let me give you an example I easily found in just a few minutes:
F.E.A.R The Complete Pack is 55 euro on Humble, 8.24 euro on Steam and 6.60 $ on GMG. GOG also has a great sale on F.E.A.R. but it only has the first 2 titles.

F.E.A.R not being an exclusive allowed me to find an amazing deal. Imagine it being exclusive to Humble.

Seriously though, how is this that complicated to understand? It's not a "grey area", it's an 100% an anti-consumer practice. I've only seen such fervent and nonsensical defence of BS from Apple fanboys.

Whenever I wanted to buy a game I would just pick the platform that either had the best price or the best features. You can't do that if it is on just 1 platform.

"Epic is bleeding money because of the store" - who the hell cares if they are bleeding some small pocket money? What does it have to do with the topic of our discussion? They make so much money from fortnite that they can bleed out until the competition dies out (stores like gog are already in the red, it doesn't take much to destroy them).

This is for everyone who keeps defending Epic on this. Use some common sense people! You accepting BS doesn't make it any less of an cancerous BS.

 

[Puiu]

Don't waste your breath on someone so blinded by their own self righteousness that they believe they are the authority on a such a complex sociopolitical ideology as anti-consumerism because they download video games from one site versus another that they are somehow more "woke", intelligent or whatever. You gain nothing.

"complex sociopolitical ideology" - please do write some more on how complex 1+1 is.

I like it when people use big words as their main "argument" thinking that they will look smart when they can't find proper arguments.

 

[Goamist]

The developer / publisher is a private company offering a product oriented towards entertainment, therefore they are free to sign an exclusivity contract with anyone, if they so wish it - it's their right in a capitalistic society. It's not necessarily going to benefit the consumer (maybe, depending on the conditions of the contract), but the developer gets a helping hand when they might need it, so that they can assure the support of the newly released game and possibly develop other games - of course, this is in theory, there are other factors that can influence what happens with them after the release. So, please grant the developer / publisher the assumption that they know what is best for their business when they opt for an exclusivity.
Your right for looking for bargain deals when it comes to games is not covered by the anti-consumer law.

 

[Puiu]

The developer / publisher is a private company offering a product oriented towards entertainment, therefore they are free to sign an exclusivity contract with anyone, if they so wish it - it's their right in a capitalistic society. It's not necessarily going to benefit the consumer (maybe, depending on the conditions of the contract), but the developer gets a helping hand when they might need it, so that they can assure the support of the newly released game and possibly develop other games - of course, this is in theory, there are other factors that can influence what happens with them after the release. So, please grant the developer / publisher the assumption that they know what is best for their business when they opt for an exclusivity.
Your right for looking for bargain deals when it comes to games is not covered by the anti-consumer law.

Never said it is. But just as companies have the right to screw consumers I also have the right to complain about it.

What I don't get is why some people think it's best to just be silent and accept these things when the hate towards such a practice actually worked in convincing many devs that their reputation and their costumers are more important than short term gains. I even gave an example of this.

I'm actually curious to understand why people think they can't make a difference. When it clearly works.

Internet "rage" is not just destructive, it can help in many ways. The most extreme example I can give you is the Sonic movie. Remember the storm the first trailer generated on the internet? Now they are making a sequel after they listened to what some here call "woke" people.

I'll continue to make my voice heard on this topic and many others are doing the same. Whether you or anybody else here like it or not, you'll get to benefit from it like you done in the past so, so many times.