World of Goo 2: now available(worldofgoo2.com) |
World of Goo 2: now available(worldofgoo2.com) |
Yes, concerning stores World of Goo 2 will be Epic exclusive for a while most likely because Epic was a major investor while developing the game.
On the other hand 2DBoy gets 100% of all Epic Store profit during a limited period.
If you are not happy about that you can get it DRM free from the website or wait for the inevitable Steam launch.
Hope this helps :)
It's surprising this and GOG is always such an unpopular option. Most of these stores really dig their claws into the game and force you to launch it through their own shells with all kinds of nagging and network traffic.
I've become convinced most consumers really just aren't capable of "shopping" for software.
I pick that one.
[1] https://tomorrowcorporation.com/posts/how-we-make-games-at-t...
Only pity is it's not available for mobile - the first game was perfect on an iPad with touch as the input method.
In exchange, it can add some much-needed competition on the developer side - with multiple stores competing to give a better deal. I don't think it's particuarly healthy to have pretty much just one store, sitting on a large cut and not doing much in the way of funding new games.
I do wish Epic would also improve in areas of Linux support/input binding/etc. though.
* Store 1 offers them 70% of profit and no funding
* Store 2 then offers them 90% of profit and significant developement funding, on the condition of exclusivity
The existence of competition (including a potential counteroffer by store 1) gives the developer a better deal, and possibly results in a better game or ability to produce games that wouldn't otherwise exist.
It's admittedly a little bit of a hassle for consumers to use multiple stores, same as with games that have their own launcher/account system, but there's no buy-in like with streaming services or console platforms. I think it's probably worth it for a form of competition that has been lacking.
I've read some blog posts by indie developers that break down the cost model and effort required to publish to various platforms (Steam, Epic, etc). I can't seem to find them now though... But the general takeaway was that Steam is where the consumers are, so you end up making the most amount of money there. They also have a really nice pipeline that covers every aspect of development, publishing, and payment. I suspect the benefit of publishing on multiple platforms may simply not be worth the effort when Steam has the pipeline, the storefront, and more importantly, the customer base.
I've seen similar things in the mobile app space. The Apple store is where the money is at, and there are many apps that are not on Android. This isn't because of an exclusivity deal with Apple, but rather a business decision made by each developer.
My point was, Epic creates these exclusivity contracts for games they fund. I think it's a net positive for there to be more art in the world, even if you have to wait a few months to buy them from your favorite storefront.
Valve doesn't fund the development of third party games. They do create some games in house (fewer than they used to sadly) but just like in Epic's case these are exclusive to Steam.
https://kkkepic.com.br/en_US/exclusives/
A full list of their exclusives, the website is partially in Portuguese (I think), but the games and their exclusivity terms are all in English.
Ironically, I have actually had far more success with stuff from the Epic Games Store. Lots of major titles such as Beyond Two Souls and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart function as completely standalone, DRM-Free binaries once downloaded, it's great.
I don't know what the Steam api looks like for developers, but--I guess I don't really believe that this is some accidental bug. The default behavior should be that everything sans multiplayer still works without Steam. Obviously this is possible to do--because some games do it--but it's also obviously not the default behavior, because so few games do it. That benefits Valve--how does it benefit players?
As I mentioned, I have already lost the ability to play certain games on legacy operating systems because Steam dropped support, so I don't consider this merely a theoretical concern.