https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/epic-games-to-update-unreal-engine-pricing-for-devs-outside-game-industry *My own color commentary.

Jeez, Tim; if you want to endear yourself to the buying public and future prospects, that ain't the way, champ.

I 100% agree with Tim's statement that the Steam monopoly is a disease.

I don't agree with the part where he claims that EGS is the cure to the disease.

But I do respect EGS for at least trying to do something to smash the Steam monopoly, even though EGS is far from ideal (i.e. it does not offer offline backup installers).

The problem is, maybe buying Bandcamp then selling it less than two years later is not the sort of level headed direction one expects.

Ah. Right. I see.

I have absolutely no clue what any of this is about.

Of course, the "disease" infecting the video game industry is that Epic does not have all the money, they merely have a lot of it, and that's totally unacceptable.

I will say, at least they have the sense to sell off a bad acquisition, something Unity could learn from. Instead Unity's solution is "We think our customers should pay for our bone-headed mistakes."

He might have offered Unreal games re-release on EGS store at least, and bring back Unreal Tournament 4 even if in the same half-developed state. Also implement some kind of EGS-works in conjuction with NEXUS, Moddb and the rest.

But that would be too cool for gamers to have.

Epic Games just had rather sizable layoffs, is reporting itself in not so great monetary position, and is having fire-sales on some of its recent corporate acquisitions. Tim "PC Gaming is dead!" Sweeny's been trying to do some damage control/spin.

Other parts increasing the: "we're not surprised at all": Epic removed basically all their titles from sale from all storefronts not too long ago, I believe even from their own. And their constant stream of expensive freebies to drag people in to their store.

They had put all of their eggs into one online microtransaction live service basket, Fortnite. Which is now not "the cool thing", so that money evaporated, and quickly. Once again demonstrating that traditional game development should be returned to and pursued, not "live services" and so on. Or at least not blowing through your ill-gotten-gains from those schemes in expectation they'll keep going. Because every online attention system does crash and burn.

... because giving DRM for free to people is both, against ideology and economy... unless they decide to "release" all those games they were giving... that moment I will ask myself why... why I haven't participated in Epic Games... and where is Unreal Tournament? : )

And you know, spending 93m$ on a dead mall, only to demolish it all in an attempt to imitate the Redmond or Cupertino campus. Yes, really.

More to the point, him trying to charge the windmills he mistook for giants of Apple/Google by suing both. Even if I don't like either, you'd have to realize how bad an idea it is instead of just reworking legislation in the favor of what he sued them for in the first place: Sideloading.

The infinite money well turned out to not be infinite...

And now that one cash cow the entire company has been restructured to revolve around and live off of is finally beginning to die, they have nothing to fall back on.

*Surprised pikachu face*

Damn I hate the mockery Epic has become in the last 15 or so years. At least their engine is still good I guess....

Ah, thanks.

Still, I don't see anything much to care about in all this. I'm sure Fortnite is still making a shitload of money, just a slightly smaller shitload, and sadly even if it were to lose all players and disappear I'm sure it wouldn't mean that those players suddenly developed good taste in video games and a healthy dislike for microtransactions, but rather that they moved on to some other lootboxes & skins shop with a crappy online game attached.

100% This that Breja wrote! ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Call me a "grumpy old fart" , if you will, but the older I get the more I feel that gamers - more than developers and publishers - are to blame for the sad state the video-game industry has turned into.

Sure... A company may decide to stupid and questionable things related to games (and CDP is no exception). But consumers always vote with their wallets.
If McDonalds or Burger King suddenly decided to state they'd start selling burgers made of human feces, it was on the consumers whether they'd keep buying there or they'd have to close shop.

But when I look around and see gamers praising the state of "Star Citizen" or people indifferent to the fact that Ubisoft suddenly installed Denuvo on the latest Assassin's Creed game... Well, call me an elitist, but I think there are too many "wrong people" playing videogames and making the industry go the wrong path.

*Here we go again*

Fortnite is not bringing in as much money as before, and all parts of Epic have been very much dependent on that money.

It also mentions other plans beyond making games and game engines and running the store, with which the rest of the gaming industry (publishers and developers) don't necessarily agree with. Didn't just important guy just leave Epic, stating Epic is becoming something like "Epic Platform 5.0" and he doesn't feel he wants to be part of that? Maybe it is that "metaverse" thing they mention in the article?

Everyone wants to rule the world, Facebook tried their metaverse as well.

Is it too late for CDPR to go back using RedEngine? :) The main problem is that EGS doesn't seem to really offer anything making it special over Steam. It is basically another Steam, trying to compete with Steam. Epic sure offers freebies (I already have a sizeable Epic game library without having bought anything from their store), but everyone understands that is a not a good business model in the long run, especially if the Fortnite fountain is drying up.

At least GOG is offering something over Steam (the DRM-free offline installers), even if that may not be important enough for most PC gamers to choose GOG over Steam. But at least it is something.

EDIT: Oh, wasn't Epic supposed to have Chinese backing? Are they receiving less (financial) support from there too?