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Epic Games Is Acquiring Psyonix

226 points by yobananaboy 7y ago

soup10 7y ago
Kind of a weird acquisition if they don't want them for Fortnite dev, why not just make a publishing deal.
- quakenul 7y ago
  Rocket League is mostly about its potential as an esport. Buying everything seems like the straight forward way to handle this.
- PaulBGD_ 7y ago
  Having two big esport games under their belt is a pretty big deal, as well allows them to consolidate those teams under the same company. Psyonix has a lot of experience with developing an esport and Epic Games might also be looking for help developing Fortnite as an esport.
- cuban-frisbee 7y ago
  I think it makes good sense. A lot of the things they used to scale Fortnite to the behemoth it is today could also be used for Rocket League. Fortnite's frequent content updates, game events and their business model, could help Rocket League achieve some of the same success (not that is not already big but Fortnite is another level). They already use unreal so another opportunity to leverage existing talent. Lastly the 250 million Fortnite players might also be interested in Rocket League if it was pushed a little.
kgwxd 7y ago
Will it remain on Steam and playable on Linux?
- minimaxir 7y ago
  It is being removed from Steam (EDIT: rather, staying on Steam for now) for Epic Games Store exclusivity, and EGS does not support Linux: https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1123674492566372352 https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1123674492566372352 EDIT2: "Epic clarified to Variety that continued patches, DLC and all other content that hits the PC version of the game through the Epic Game Store will also appear on Steam for those who already own the game." https://twitter.com/crecenteb/status/1123690436604960771 https://twitter.com/crecenteb/status/1123690436604960771
  - montecarl 7y ago
    That feed makes it clear it if you already purchased it on steam that it will be supported there for forever. Not sure if that also applies to linux though.
    - canadaj 7y ago
      What does "supported" usually mean in these cases? Will the Steam version receive the same features as the Epic version, or will the Steam version only receive bugfixes? I'm not a fan of Epic's store feature and usability-wise already, and I don't feel good about Epic's decision to remove RL from the store on Steam.
      - asadlionpk 7y ago
        I think it will have to support same features for multiplayer to work.
      - izacus 7y ago
        They're already talking about using EGS specific features. With their user hostile approach to everything EGS, I doubt you'll keep the same experience on Steam.
        canadaj 7y ago
        Do you have any sources for EGS specific features? I really don't want to speculate because I really want to root for Psyonix here, but this is what I'm afraid of. New maps and queues only being available on the Epic version, being able to purchase/unlock DLC/items on the Epic version only etc.
- kgwxd 7y ago
  I'm not sure why I even asked, because no matter what they say, it's not going be accurate, what I want to hear, or within my control. 2 games I've paid for that go against my rule of not buying centralized or DRM'd, Rocket League and 7 Days To Die. 1 now has a very uncertain future. I have 51 games on GOG, all of them work on Linux, multiplayer servers can run on any machine, and I can back up my standalone installers in cold storage. I have no concern any of them will ever be unplayable. I'm sticking to the rule from now on.
- pier25 7y ago
  Yes. > Editor’s Note: We wanted to clarify something for you after today’s news: Rocket League is and remains available on Steam. Anyone who owns Rocket League through Steam can still play it and can look forward to continued support. Thanks!
Circuits 7y ago
I am not sure how I feel about this. So long as I can continue to play without interruption then its all good. However, if they try to force me to pay more I am going to be very upset.
- minimaxir 7y ago
  If anything, Rocket League will go F2P.
  - skellera 7y ago
    I believe it already is in China. So not too surprising if it does. Sadly RL has been very good about not trying to milk it’s users. Crates suck but whatever. They give free keys with seasonal stuff. Hope it doesn’t change too much.
HelloFellowDevs 7y ago
Great.. another installer to download. I play RL on the lower (very low) pro levels, I just hope it doesn't spark a wild shift. RL has been pretty solid for it's ESports partners and I hope this only brings good things to come. Psyonix deserves it for all their hard work.
- canadaj 7y ago
  I usually appreciate Steam competition, but the Epic launcher is just bad. I agree with you that RL has been great as an ESport, and I really am rooting for Psyonix here, they do definitely deserve it. If anything, I hope this succeeds in spite of Epic.
Glyptodon 7y ago
Why did Psyonix want to be acquired?
- Radle 7y ago
  Most likely classical start up cashout.
  - gatherhunterer 7y ago
    This seems likely. They began piling on sponsorships when the game became feature-complete and since then the only significant changes have been additional micro-transactions. There is little left to squeeze out of Psyonix in terms of innovation. The acquisition will help drag Steam users kicking and screaming into the Epic Store.
- zapnuk 7y ago
  Why not? Rocket league is a finished and established product. They also don't seem to have any big plans in the near future. They are totally fine with selling season pass and crats/keys. They don't seem to care about new content in form of gameplay changes, or fixing month old bugs for that matter. I'd argue that it's the perfect time to 'sell out'. They already won, it is now a good point in time to move on and do something else.
- asciimov 7y ago
  $$$
- gisenberg 7y ago
  I played a ton of Rocket League and I think there's some non-obvious benefits to Psyonix being acquired by Epic Games that boil down to "Psyonix can be more focused on the core game". Being acquired by Epic could reduce headaches in these areas: - Logistics behind eSports leagues. - Managing server scale, stability and performance. - Managing platform cross-play. - Managing publishing across multiple platforms. I think that the logistical overhead of keeping the lights on is at the expense of Psyonix's ability to provide meaningful content updates and keep the core gameplay fresh.
hobs 7y ago
Played rocket league for years, really miffed here. At some future point all the steam workshop and custom content wont work for players, so anything there is now DOA. Splitting the install base effectively across another platform just spits in the eye of people who've bought RL and want to make it easy to see/join their friends. They've had years of problems getting a unified platform going, and its still not nearly as simple and straightforward as using steam friends. Probably going to ask for a refund on Steam when this game is no longer for sale.
- VectorLock 7y ago
  Rocket League pretty much pushed cross-platform play to consoles. How would this split the community when they're pushing in precisely the opposite direction? Why wouldn't they do the same now that they're under Epic Games?
  - runevault 7y ago
    Epic has been buying games away from Steam for a while now, this time they are simply buying the developer outright. There is 0 chance the game remains on steam beyond for anyone who already paid for it, but 0 guarantees of new content after this.
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- sorenjan 7y ago
  Why would you ask for a refund when you've played it for years? Does that time not count? Was it not enjoyable?
  - Reedx 7y ago
    It's not uncommon to see gamers entitled to a comical degree. $20 for years of play time and server resource consumption. Thumbs down! 2,000 hours played? Thumbs down! (see Steam reviews for many examples of this) Ridiculous.
the_trapper 7y ago
I will stop playing this game if I have to make an Epic account. Their security is a joke. Some Russian made a fake account using my email address without Epic ever actually verifying that the email address they used belonged to the individual that made the account.
- sspyder 7y ago
  Same. Currently locked out of my own account due to hackers and support has been a bit painful to deal with.
- Havoc 7y ago
  >I will stop playing this game if I have to make an Epic account Haha Meanwhile I can’t even update my NVIDIA driver without loging into whatever their GeForce platform thing is now called. Can’t remember your password? Stuck on old driver
  - FreeKill 7y ago
    You absolutely can. The GeForce Experience is not necessary for anything. You can download drivers and install them without having to login to anything. GeForce Experience is just for the convenience of automation and for the extra tools it brings with it...
    - Havoc 7y ago
      Forcing login for a simple driver update is borderline malicious and you know it. Yes there are work arounds, but that doesn't excuse this kind of behavior in what I'd imagine is their main update delivery mechanism.
  - ux-app 7y ago
    you can visit https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us and download the driver any time you want, just like it always was. GeForce Experience is mostly for the convenience of receiving automatic notifications and download when a new driver version is released.
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Awesome to see the Epic Game Store continuing to make waves. Hopefully the beatings will continue until Valve stops taxing game developers so hard. Epic gets a lot of flack for being a fairly simple store at the moment, but Steam's had ten years to get where it is. Competition was sorely needed and we're finally getting it. The CEO of Epic is a big fan of open platforms and cross-platform gaming and a loud and outspoken opponent of walled gardens. If there's anyone who will move us out of this model as much as possible, it's probably him. But exclusives is the only way to fight the Stockholm Syndrome people seem to have with Steam.
- mavrc 7y ago
  Walled gardens and exclusives are mutually exclusive. Perhaps you're thinking of CD Projekt Red, who have actually been fighting exclusives and walled gardens for quite some time.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    CD Projekt Red and GOG is doing some great stuff, I think you'd find Epic is much closer to that than you might imagine. Epic has stated it will put it's games on Steam if Valve drops their cut down to 12%. Epic probably is a little more pragmatic than GOG on ensuring they operate profitably, with willingness to offer compensation for exclusive launches, allowing DRM (although not offering any of their own), etc. but if you've followed Tim Sweeney or read things he's said going back for years, it's obvious he's one of the good guys. He's a CEO of a large business and has to make moves to actually be successful and profitable, but he is strongly opinionated about what's "right" and pushes Epic in that direction where possible. Bear in mind, even if Epic wasn't offering incentives for exclusives, it would still be silly for game developers to release on both: Sales on Steam would hurt their sales on Epic, and they profit vastly more from Epic sales.
    - shapov 7y ago
      Steam allows you to sell your game and provide players with steam keys from your own website without taking any cut. So that 30% cut that steam takes gets diluted quite a bit. Epic does not allow for that level of distribution. It also doesn’t seem like they will. Your argument about walled gardens also falls apart as soon as you realize that Epic is pushing for exclusivity.
rocky1138 7y ago
Epic is getting big enough to consider regulatory breakup.
- vertoc 7y ago
  I hope this is sarcasm...?
dx87 7y ago
Is what Epic Games doing with their exclusivity deals legal? It's one thing if they pay a developer to exclusively release on their store, but they are paying developers not to release on Steam, even though it's fine for them to put their game on other stores, like the Windows Store, Humble Bundle, etc. That seems super non-competitive, like if Google paid Microsoft to prevent users from installing Firefox, even if though there aren't any technical limitations preventing it.
- da_chicken 7y ago
  The same thing is happening with NetFlix. There are no FRAND rules for this sort of thing, as far as I'm aware. If Congress weren't... well, Congress... they might look at this sort of thing. Exclusivity arrangements certainly seem like potential trust issues, but Steam is a de facto monopoly, as is Amazon, and NetFlix is the clear leader in it's domain.
  - user5994461 7y ago
    There are rules about that. NetFlix funds their own shows so they're typically not forced to make them available. In practice, it's mostly a US only company and they relicense most of the productions to other networks around the world. For example, NetFlix France is a joke, you couldn't watch any netflix shows because they're not available, they sublicensed to canal (the main paid TV service) with exclusively and are left unable to serve their own TV shows. The Epic Store (and Steam) are global. That's more than 200 jurisdictions with different rules on anti competitive behavior. They are preventing competition globally and systematically, this has to be breaking some rules somewhere.
    - dx87 7y ago
      That's what I was thinking, it reminds me of the recent EU case where Google got fined for saying that if a phone manufacturer wanted to sell Android with Google integrations (Play Store, Search, etc.), they couldn't also sell Android phones without Google integrations.
    - h3throw 7y ago
beager 7y ago
I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I've played Rocket League for a long time and I think it's an incredible opportunity for esports. It's exciting, extremely fast-paced, the meta is easy to understand for traditional sports fans, and the skill curve is more forgiving at the lower tier than many games. If Epic can use its reach and resources to promote larger tournaments and higher stakes for Rocket League as an esport, I think that'd be a win for the game. If they overrun it with more loot crate/f2p stuff and make the game all about the meta, and just use it as an exclusive for their own platform, that will suck. Congrats to the Psyonix team though. They seem like genuinely great, passionate devs.
ricardobeat 7y ago
Sad news. They have a 50 million (!) player base, 350k+ online right now. That means over a billion USD in revenue, probably way more with crates/keys taken into account. Unless the cost of their server infrastructure got wildly out of control, why would a company that is raking in cash sell out?
- user5994461 7y ago
  Plot twist: They already sold out. Epic Games was acquired by Tencent in 2012. It's one of the big Chinese companies, like Google in the US.
  - mxd3 7y ago
    Tencent owns less than 50% of Epic, FWIW.
    - drusepth 7y ago
      Just for clarity, Tencent bought a 40% stake in Epic in 2012 [1]. I don't know if this ownership percentage has changed since then. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/news/how-tencent-changed-fortnite-creator-epic-games-fortunes/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/how-tencent-changed-fortni...
- asciimov 7y ago
  Epic has F-You Money. Epic needs users. Epic bought publisher of a highly popular game their users. Psyonix sold out, because at everything is has its price. Expect Epic to forcibly migrate Rocket League Steam users. They will turn RL Steam into an Epic launcher and all current RL Steam users are suddenly Epic users. For Psyonix and Epic there is no real downside. If you care about this decision, you're not in their demographic, and probably didn't help them generate their F-You Money.
  - ricardobeat 7y ago
    > If you care about this decision, you're not in their demographic, and probably didn't help them generate their F-You Money I've bought their game in three different platforms.
AcerbicZero 7y ago
I've had a Steam account long enough to know how terrible and annoying Steam can be. I've also seen how much Steam has done for the PC gaming community over the years, and I originally hoped Epic would push them into accelerating some of their timelines. There is value in Steam having competition, but that value diminishes as soon as someone comes along and competes for games instead of users. It took Steam a long time to become both useful (Workshop, Sales, Forums), and generally good for the customer (Returns, Curation, Support), and Epic isn't even trying to compete in those areas. Epic isn't making a marketplace where I want to spend my money by being better than Steam, they're just trying to make a place where I have to spend money if I want to play certain games. Good luck with that one.
- LanceH 7y ago
  There customer service queue is literally months long before they probably ignore your request.
  - AcerbicZero 7y ago
    Every return I've ever done has been approved and completed in under 2 days. Old Steam Support (Pre-2014ish) was a disaster though, so I can totally understand where you're coming from.
    - libraryatnight 7y ago
      Returns are the only thing they do well. Their support is absolute garbage in every other regard.
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- philipov 7y ago
  Yes, I would love some competition for Steam, but the strategy Epic is using is instead anti-competitive and anti-consumer.
msie 7y ago
Ok, so multiple, competing app stores for a platform are bad? I'm confused now.
- XzAeRosho 7y ago
  Real competition would be able to choose between Epic and Steam. This is not.
- dx87 7y ago
  Epic is paying boat loads of money so they don't have to compete, that's the issue. Their store is objectively worse than Steam in almost every way, they know they can't compete, so instead they're throwing money at the publishers and telling customers to suck it up and use their store, or don't play the game.
  - eridius 7y ago
    You think Epic is the only game store that buys exclusives? Sony and Microsoft have both been doing this for many years for their platforms (whereas Nintendo prefers to simply develop their own exclusives instead of paying third parties for them).
- timdorr 7y ago
  The problem isn't the competition, it's the exclusivity. My choice as a consumer is being taken away by Epic by forcing me to use their platform.
amatecha 7y ago
There's a pretty big difference between just releasing a new game on a new storefront, and pulling a game (or games) from an existing storefront so it can be exclusive to that new storefront. Weak approach to "competition" if you have to buy your way to relevancy with zero other value to the customer. To be fair I have basically zero trust of digital storefronts - for example, Steam will no longer run on my still-very-recent MacBook (OS X 10.10), so I can't play any of the hundreds of games I "own" on there anymore.
- throwawaywhynot 7y ago
  Isn't steam the reason thousands of windows games work out of the box on mac and linux though? Wine wasn't as awesome as it is now without valve's involvement
Creationer 7y ago
Its really time for Steam to respond. Eventually the Epic store will match the features of Steam, and open more broadly to upper-tier Indie games. What will be left on Steam? There has already been a notable lack of launches this year. Steam needs to halve its 30% commission to 15% for all games, and increase the Steam Direct fee to $2,000 to increase average quality. Developers aren't just leaving because of the high commission, they are leaving because of the deluge of junk launching on the store daily.
xtracerx 7y ago
Epic Games seem to be making a gambit that if they can become a marketplace that has significant market share compared to steam all the bad will will be worth it and people will forget. Since they know this Fortnite thing is kind of a limited windfall. So they are going HARD.
Aquillo 7y ago
I can only hope that these kinds of fights lead to a greater analysis of letting major companies have this control over access
pteraspidomorph 7y ago
There are several people in this thread who don't understand a lot about modern PC videogame distribution. Just because "you don't care" or "you don't use" certain of Steam's many features it doesn't mean they aren't important or essential. Thousands of developers rely on Steam, Epic, GOG, etc. for multiplayer networking/matchmaking features (all digital stores offer this type of service, AFAIK, but it's not the same service). In Steam's case this isn't limited to services provided in-game, but also inviting people or joining people directly through the Steam interface, which is invaluable. Achievements are not unimportant. Millions of players play for the achievement; they are an essential part of their entertainment. In addition, they provide important metrics for developers, players and researchers. The Steam Workshop is the best system out there for players to publish and obtain custom content and mods for games integrated with Steam. It's an essential part of several games; they literally couldn't exist in their current form without it. The Steam Inventory can be used for holding a collection of meta-items provided by games to other games or for trading with other players who own the same game. It's not just used for trading cards. It would for example allow a Pokemon game to exist on Steam with tradeable Pokemon. It's used by SteamVR for allowing games to provide assets for SteamVR homes (not very important, but still quite interesting). Steam's categorization, organization and search features are not excessive but insufficient. I want more of those, not fewer. Family sharing is important for me to share some of my games with a small number of people from my family or close friends. GOG also allows me to share my games in this manner, since they are DRM-free. Steam community pages/forums are often nowadays the best place to interact with developers and find important information regarding issues, upcoming patches, difficult bits of gameplay, and generally other people talking about that problem you just had. I'm not saying Epic can't do all of this, and do it well. But saying that "all you need in a game store is to buy games" is incredibly naive. Any digital retailer that requires all of these services to be nonstandard and dispersed is doomed to lose.
- throwawaywhynot 7y ago
  people have gone to ridiculous lengths to get the steam version of their games before.They treat it like a profile page. I don't think this thread realizes that
Serill_Lawler 7y ago
Well, as an avid Rocket League player, and primarily a Linux gamer, this does not really fill me with confidence.
caprese 7y ago
Congratulations Psyonix team!
bliblah 7y ago
I guess I will go against the grain and state that I don't really mind Epic's aggressive foray into the marketplace, it seems like their best bet against incumbents and a prove strategy in the marketplace. People had the same reaction to Uplay (No exclusive games but you still need to have an account) and Origin (Only way to play EA Games) and while the services still don't compare to Steam they were absolutely hated when they came out and now people mostly tolerate them to get access to the big AAA games (Apex Legends came and went but few people complained about Origin Exclusivity). I'm pretty ambivalent when it comes to Steam, the client has become quite bloated with tons of unused / deprecated features and Steam Marketplace feels super scammy full of bots and phishing attempts, and their Chat leaves a lot to be desired but I still use it daily. Only other services I can think of that has exclusive games and people have a positive / non negative reaction to is the Blizzard one but that has like 8 games in total. I have read that Epic has no plans to remove the game from Steam so we shall see about that, but I for one am fine with more competition if it means that: A) Exclusivity deals result in more stability for the devs in terms of receiving large cash inflow B) Forces both parties to improve their services
pier25 7y ago
"Editor’s Note: We wanted to clarify something for you after today’s news: Rocket League is and remains available on Steam. Anyone who owns Rocket League through Steam can still play it and can look forward to continued support. Thanks!"

226 points by yobananaboy 7y ago

soup10 7y ago

Kind of a weird acquisition if they don't want them for Fortnite dev, why not just make a publishing deal.

quakenul 7y ago
Rocket League is mostly about its potential as an esport. Buying everything seems like the straight forward way to handle this.
PaulBGD_ 7y ago
Having two big esport games under their belt is a pretty big deal, as well allows them to consolidate those teams under the same company. Psyonix has a lot of experience with developing an esport and Epic Games might also be looking for help developing Fortnite as an esport.
cuban-frisbee 7y ago
I think it makes good sense. A lot of the things they used to scale Fortnite to the behemoth it is today could also be used for Rocket League. Fortnite's frequent content updates, game events and their business model, could help Rocket League achieve some of the same success (not that is not already big but Fortnite is another level). They already use unreal so another opportunity to leverage existing talent. Lastly the 250 million Fortnite players might also be interested in Rocket League if it was pushed a little.

kgwxd 7y ago

Will it remain on Steam and playable on Linux?

minimaxir 7y ago
It is being removed from Steam (EDIT: rather, staying on Steam for now) for Epic Games Store exclusivity, and EGS does not support Linux: https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1123674492566372352 https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1123674492566372352 EDIT2: "Epic clarified to Variety that continued patches, DLC and all other content that hits the PC version of the game through the Epic Game Store will also appear on Steam for those who already own the game." https://twitter.com/crecenteb/status/1123690436604960771 https://twitter.com/crecenteb/status/1123690436604960771
- montecarl 7y ago
  That feed makes it clear it if you already purchased it on steam that it will be supported there for forever. Not sure if that also applies to linux though.
  - canadaj 7y ago
    What does "supported" usually mean in these cases? Will the Steam version receive the same features as the Epic version, or will the Steam version only receive bugfixes? I'm not a fan of Epic's store feature and usability-wise already, and I don't feel good about Epic's decision to remove RL from the store on Steam.
    - asadlionpk 7y ago
      I think it will have to support same features for multiplayer to work.
    - izacus 7y ago
      They're already talking about using EGS specific features. With their user hostile approach to everything EGS, I doubt you'll keep the same experience on Steam.
      - canadaj 7y ago
        Do you have any sources for EGS specific features? I really don't want to speculate because I really want to root for Psyonix here, but this is what I'm afraid of. New maps and queues only being available on the Epic version, being able to purchase/unlock DLC/items on the Epic version only etc.
kgwxd 7y ago
I'm not sure why I even asked, because no matter what they say, it's not going be accurate, what I want to hear, or within my control. 2 games I've paid for that go against my rule of not buying centralized or DRM'd, Rocket League and 7 Days To Die. 1 now has a very uncertain future. I have 51 games on GOG, all of them work on Linux, multiplayer servers can run on any machine, and I can back up my standalone installers in cold storage. I have no concern any of them will ever be unplayable. I'm sticking to the rule from now on.
pier25 7y ago
Yes. > Editor’s Note: We wanted to clarify something for you after today’s news: Rocket League is and remains available on Steam. Anyone who owns Rocket League through Steam can still play it and can look forward to continued support. Thanks!

Circuits 7y ago

I am not sure how I feel about this. So long as I can continue to play without interruption then its all good. However, if they try to force me to pay more I am going to be very upset.

minimaxir 7y ago
If anything, Rocket League will go F2P.
- skellera 7y ago
  I believe it already is in China. So not too surprising if it does. Sadly RL has been very good about not trying to milk it’s users. Crates suck but whatever. They give free keys with seasonal stuff. Hope it doesn’t change too much.

HelloFellowDevs 7y ago

Great.. another installer to download. I play RL on the lower (very low) pro levels, I just hope it doesn't spark a wild shift. RL has been pretty solid for it's ESports partners and I hope this only brings good things to come. Psyonix deserves it for all their hard work.

canadaj 7y ago
I usually appreciate Steam competition, but the Epic launcher is just bad. I agree with you that RL has been great as an ESport, and I really am rooting for Psyonix here, they do definitely deserve it. If anything, I hope this succeeds in spite of Epic.

Glyptodon 7y ago

Why did Psyonix want to be acquired?

Radle 7y ago
Most likely classical start up cashout.
- gatherhunterer 7y ago
  This seems likely. They began piling on sponsorships when the game became feature-complete and since then the only significant changes have been additional micro-transactions. There is little left to squeeze out of Psyonix in terms of innovation. The acquisition will help drag Steam users kicking and screaming into the Epic Store.
zapnuk 7y ago
Why not? Rocket league is a finished and established product. They also don't seem to have any big plans in the near future. They are totally fine with selling season pass and crats/keys. They don't seem to care about new content in form of gameplay changes, or fixing month old bugs for that matter. I'd argue that it's the perfect time to 'sell out'. They already won, it is now a good point in time to move on and do something else.
asciimov 7y ago
$$$
gisenberg 7y ago
I played a ton of Rocket League and I think there's some non-obvious benefits to Psyonix being acquired by Epic Games that boil down to "Psyonix can be more focused on the core game". Being acquired by Epic could reduce headaches in these areas: - Logistics behind eSports leagues. - Managing server scale, stability and performance. - Managing platform cross-play. - Managing publishing across multiple platforms. I think that the logistical overhead of keeping the lights on is at the expense of Psyonix's ability to provide meaningful content updates and keep the core gameplay fresh.

hobs 7y ago

Played rocket league for years, really miffed here. At some future point all the steam workshop and custom content wont work for players, so anything there is now DOA. Splitting the install base effectively across another platform just spits in the eye of people who've bought RL and want to make it easy to see/join their friends. They've had years of problems getting a unified platform going, and its still not nearly as simple and straightforward as using steam friends. Probably going to ask for a refund on Steam when this game is no longer for sale.

VectorLock 7y ago
Rocket League pretty much pushed cross-platform play to consoles. How would this split the community when they're pushing in precisely the opposite direction? Why wouldn't they do the same now that they're under Epic Games?
- runevault 7y ago
  Epic has been buying games away from Steam for a while now, this time they are simply buying the developer outright. There is 0 chance the game remains on steam beyond for anyone who already paid for it, but 0 guarantees of new content after this.
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sorenjan 7y ago
Why would you ask for a refund when you've played it for years? Does that time not count? Was it not enjoyable?
- Reedx 7y ago
  It's not uncommon to see gamers entitled to a comical degree. $20 for years of play time and server resource consumption. Thumbs down! 2,000 hours played? Thumbs down! (see Steam reviews for many examples of this) Ridiculous.

the_trapper 7y ago

I will stop playing this game if I have to make an Epic account. Their security is a joke. Some Russian made a fake account using my email address without Epic ever actually verifying that the email address they used belonged to the individual that made the account.

sspyder 7y ago
Same. Currently locked out of my own account due to hackers and support has been a bit painful to deal with.
Havoc 7y ago
>I will stop playing this game if I have to make an Epic account Haha Meanwhile I can’t even update my NVIDIA driver without loging into whatever their GeForce platform thing is now called. Can’t remember your password? Stuck on old driver
- FreeKill 7y ago
  You absolutely can. The GeForce Experience is not necessary for anything. You can download drivers and install them without having to login to anything. GeForce Experience is just for the convenience of automation and for the extra tools it brings with it...
  - Havoc 7y ago
    Forcing login for a simple driver update is borderline malicious and you know it. Yes there are work arounds, but that doesn't excuse this kind of behavior in what I'd imagine is their main update delivery mechanism.
- ux-app 7y ago
  you can visit https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us and download the driver any time you want, just like it always was. GeForce Experience is mostly for the convenience of receiving automatic notifications and download when a new driver version is released.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

Awesome to see the Epic Game Store continuing to make waves. Hopefully the beatings will continue until Valve stops taxing game developers so hard. Epic gets a lot of flack for being a fairly simple store at the moment, but Steam's had ten years to get where it is. Competition was sorely needed and we're finally getting it. The CEO of Epic is a big fan of open platforms and cross-platform gaming and a loud and outspoken opponent of walled gardens. If there's anyone who will move us out of this model as much as possible, it's probably him. But exclusives is the only way to fight the Stockholm Syndrome people seem to have with Steam.

mavrc 7y ago
Walled gardens and exclusives are mutually exclusive. Perhaps you're thinking of CD Projekt Red, who have actually been fighting exclusives and walled gardens for quite some time.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  CD Projekt Red and GOG is doing some great stuff, I think you'd find Epic is much closer to that than you might imagine. Epic has stated it will put it's games on Steam if Valve drops their cut down to 12%. Epic probably is a little more pragmatic than GOG on ensuring they operate profitably, with willingness to offer compensation for exclusive launches, allowing DRM (although not offering any of their own), etc. but if you've followed Tim Sweeney or read things he's said going back for years, it's obvious he's one of the good guys. He's a CEO of a large business and has to make moves to actually be successful and profitable, but he is strongly opinionated about what's "right" and pushes Epic in that direction where possible. Bear in mind, even if Epic wasn't offering incentives for exclusives, it would still be silly for game developers to release on both: Sales on Steam would hurt their sales on Epic, and they profit vastly more from Epic sales.
  - shapov 7y ago
    Steam allows you to sell your game and provide players with steam keys from your own website without taking any cut. So that 30% cut that steam takes gets diluted quite a bit. Epic does not allow for that level of distribution. It also doesn’t seem like they will. Your argument about walled gardens also falls apart as soon as you realize that Epic is pushing for exclusivity.

rocky1138 7y ago

Epic is getting big enough to consider regulatory breakup.

vertoc 7y ago
I hope this is sarcasm...?

dx87 7y ago

Is what Epic Games doing with their exclusivity deals legal? It's one thing if they pay a developer to exclusively release on their store, but they are paying developers not to release on Steam, even though it's fine for them to put their game on other stores, like the Windows Store, Humble Bundle, etc. That seems super non-competitive, like if Google paid Microsoft to prevent users from installing Firefox, even if though there aren't any technical limitations preventing it.

da_chicken 7y ago
The same thing is happening with NetFlix. There are no FRAND rules for this sort of thing, as far as I'm aware. If Congress weren't... well, Congress... they might look at this sort of thing. Exclusivity arrangements certainly seem like potential trust issues, but Steam is a de facto monopoly, as is Amazon, and NetFlix is the clear leader in it's domain.
- user5994461 7y ago
  There are rules about that. NetFlix funds their own shows so they're typically not forced to make them available. In practice, it's mostly a US only company and they relicense most of the productions to other networks around the world. For example, NetFlix France is a joke, you couldn't watch any netflix shows because they're not available, they sublicensed to canal (the main paid TV service) with exclusively and are left unable to serve their own TV shows. The Epic Store (and Steam) are global. That's more than 200 jurisdictions with different rules on anti competitive behavior. They are preventing competition globally and systematically, this has to be breaking some rules somewhere.
  - dx87 7y ago
    That's what I was thinking, it reminds me of the recent EU case where Google got fined for saying that if a phone manufacturer wanted to sell Android with Google integrations (Play Store, Search, etc.), they couldn't also sell Android phones without Google integrations.
  - h3throw 7y ago

beager 7y ago

I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I've played Rocket League for a long time and I think it's an incredible opportunity for esports. It's exciting, extremely fast-paced, the meta is easy to understand for traditional sports fans, and the skill curve is more forgiving at the lower tier than many games. If Epic can use its reach and resources to promote larger tournaments and higher stakes for Rocket League as an esport, I think that'd be a win for the game. If they overrun it with more loot crate/f2p stuff and make the game all about the meta, and just use it as an exclusive for their own platform, that will suck. Congrats to the Psyonix team though. They seem like genuinely great, passionate devs.

ricardobeat 7y ago

Sad news. They have a 50 million (!) player base, 350k+ online right now. That means over a billion USD in revenue, probably way more with crates/keys taken into account. Unless the cost of their server infrastructure got wildly out of control, why would a company that is raking in cash sell out?

user5994461 7y ago
Plot twist: They already sold out. Epic Games was acquired by Tencent in 2012. It's one of the big Chinese companies, like Google in the US.
- mxd3 7y ago
  Tencent owns less than 50% of Epic, FWIW.
  - drusepth 7y ago
    Just for clarity, Tencent bought a 40% stake in Epic in 2012 [1]. I don't know if this ownership percentage has changed since then. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/news/how-tencent-changed-fortnite-creator-epic-games-fortunes/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/how-tencent-changed-fortni...
asciimov 7y ago
Epic has F-You Money. Epic needs users. Epic bought publisher of a highly popular game their users. Psyonix sold out, because at everything is has its price. Expect Epic to forcibly migrate Rocket League Steam users. They will turn RL Steam into an Epic launcher and all current RL Steam users are suddenly Epic users. For Psyonix and Epic there is no real downside. If you care about this decision, you're not in their demographic, and probably didn't help them generate their F-You Money.
- ricardobeat 7y ago
  > If you care about this decision, you're not in their demographic, and probably didn't help them generate their F-You Money I've bought their game in three different platforms.

AcerbicZero 7y ago

I've had a Steam account long enough to know how terrible and annoying Steam can be. I've also seen how much Steam has done for the PC gaming community over the years, and I originally hoped Epic would push them into accelerating some of their timelines. There is value in Steam having competition, but that value diminishes as soon as someone comes along and competes for games instead of users. It took Steam a long time to become both useful (Workshop, Sales, Forums), and generally good for the customer (Returns, Curation, Support), and Epic isn't even trying to compete in those areas. Epic isn't making a marketplace where I want to spend my money by being better than Steam, they're just trying to make a place where I have to spend money if I want to play certain games. Good luck with that one.

LanceH 7y ago
There customer service queue is literally months long before they probably ignore your request.
- AcerbicZero 7y ago
  Every return I've ever done has been approved and completed in under 2 days. Old Steam Support (Pre-2014ish) was a disaster though, so I can totally understand where you're coming from.
  - libraryatnight 7y ago
    Returns are the only thing they do well. Their support is absolute garbage in every other regard.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
philipov 7y ago
Yes, I would love some competition for Steam, but the strategy Epic is using is instead anti-competitive and anti-consumer.

msie 7y ago

Ok, so multiple, competing app stores for a platform are bad? I'm confused now.

XzAeRosho 7y ago
Real competition would be able to choose between Epic and Steam. This is not.
dx87 7y ago
Epic is paying boat loads of money so they don't have to compete, that's the issue. Their store is objectively worse than Steam in almost every way, they know they can't compete, so instead they're throwing money at the publishers and telling customers to suck it up and use their store, or don't play the game.
- eridius 7y ago
  You think Epic is the only game store that buys exclusives? Sony and Microsoft have both been doing this for many years for their platforms (whereas Nintendo prefers to simply develop their own exclusives instead of paying third parties for them).
timdorr 7y ago
The problem isn't the competition, it's the exclusivity. My choice as a consumer is being taken away by Epic by forcing me to use their platform.

amatecha 7y ago

There's a pretty big difference between just releasing a new game on a new storefront, and pulling a game (or games) from an existing storefront so it can be exclusive to that new storefront. Weak approach to "competition" if you have to buy your way to relevancy with zero other value to the customer. To be fair I have basically zero trust of digital storefronts - for example, Steam will no longer run on my still-very-recent MacBook (OS X 10.10), so I can't play any of the hundreds of games I "own" on there anymore.

throwawaywhynot 7y ago
Isn't steam the reason thousands of windows games work out of the box on mac and linux though? Wine wasn't as awesome as it is now without valve's involvement

Creationer 7y ago

Its really time for Steam to respond. Eventually the Epic store will match the features of Steam, and open more broadly to upper-tier Indie games. What will be left on Steam? There has already been a notable lack of launches this year. Steam needs to halve its 30% commission to 15% for all games, and increase the Steam Direct fee to $2,000 to increase average quality. Developers aren't just leaving because of the high commission, they are leaving because of the deluge of junk launching on the store daily.

xtracerx 7y ago

Epic Games seem to be making a gambit that if they can become a marketplace that has significant market share compared to steam all the bad will will be worth it and people will forget. Since they know this Fortnite thing is kind of a limited windfall. So they are going HARD.

Aquillo 7y ago

I can only hope that these kinds of fights lead to a greater analysis of letting major companies have this control over access

pteraspidomorph 7y ago

There are several people in this thread who don't understand a lot about modern PC videogame distribution. Just because "you don't care" or "you don't use" certain of Steam's many features it doesn't mean they aren't important or essential. Thousands of developers rely on Steam, Epic, GOG, etc. for multiplayer networking/matchmaking features (all digital stores offer this type of service, AFAIK, but it's not the same service). In Steam's case this isn't limited to services provided in-game, but also inviting people or joining people directly through the Steam interface, which is invaluable. Achievements are not unimportant. Millions of players play for the achievement; they are an essential part of their entertainment. In addition, they provide important metrics for developers, players and researchers. The Steam Workshop is the best system out there for players to publish and obtain custom content and mods for games integrated with Steam. It's an essential part of several games; they literally couldn't exist in their current form without it. The Steam Inventory can be used for holding a collection of meta-items provided by games to other games or for trading with other players who own the same game. It's not just used for trading cards. It would for example allow a Pokemon game to exist on Steam with tradeable Pokemon. It's used by SteamVR for allowing games to provide assets for SteamVR homes (not very important, but still quite interesting). Steam's categorization, organization and search features are not excessive but insufficient. I want more of those, not fewer. Family sharing is important for me to share some of my games with a small number of people from my family or close friends. GOG also allows me to share my games in this manner, since they are DRM-free. Steam community pages/forums are often nowadays the best place to interact with developers and find important information regarding issues, upcoming patches, difficult bits of gameplay, and generally other people talking about that problem you just had. I'm not saying Epic can't do all of this, and do it well. But saying that "all you need in a game store is to buy games" is incredibly naive. Any digital retailer that requires all of these services to be nonstandard and dispersed is doomed to lose.

throwawaywhynot 7y ago
people have gone to ridiculous lengths to get the steam version of their games before.They treat it like a profile page. I don't think this thread realizes that

Serill_Lawler 7y ago

Well, as an avid Rocket League player, and primarily a Linux gamer, this does not really fill me with confidence.

caprese 7y ago

Congratulations Psyonix team!

bliblah 7y ago

I guess I will go against the grain and state that I don't really mind Epic's aggressive foray into the marketplace, it seems like their best bet against incumbents and a prove strategy in the marketplace. People had the same reaction to Uplay (No exclusive games but you still need to have an account) and Origin (Only way to play EA Games) and while the services still don't compare to Steam they were absolutely hated when they came out and now people mostly tolerate them to get access to the big AAA games (Apex Legends came and went but few people complained about Origin Exclusivity). I'm pretty ambivalent when it comes to Steam, the client has become quite bloated with tons of unused / deprecated features and Steam Marketplace feels super scammy full of bots and phishing attempts, and their Chat leaves a lot to be desired but I still use it daily. Only other services I can think of that has exclusive games and people have a positive / non negative reaction to is the Blizzard one but that has like 8 games in total. I have read that Epic has no plans to remove the game from Steam so we shall see about that, but I for one am fine with more competition if it means that: A) Exclusivity deals result in more stability for the devs in terms of receiving large cash inflow B) Forces both parties to improve their services

pier25 7y ago

"Editor’s Note: We wanted to clarify something for you after today’s news: Rocket League is and remains available on Steam. Anyone who owns Rocket League through Steam can still play it and can look forward to continued support. Thanks!"