I don't think that the opinion of the people who make games or have a stake in the state of games as a medium on Epic's strategy matters much, if at all, for one simple reason: Just a few short years ago, a bit more than a decade ago to be exact, these very same people, including Epic themselves and Tim Sweeney himself, were proclaiming the death of PC gaming. I have yet to hear a convincing argument in favor of 'the health of the PC platform' that also encourages the status quo of PC games existing primarily on Steam. Steam is an absolute miserable, shithole deathtrap for a vast swath of interesting games. And a game market of de facto Steam exclusivity is substantially, unambiguously worse for the health of 'games as a medium' than the stopgap reality of exclusivity deals funding games that would otherwise have to scrabble for purchase. ![]() That said, the de facto alternative to 'exclusivity' in its current form is not 'inclusivity'-effectively, it's Steam exclusivity. I'm not enthusiastic about the prospect of exclusivity in the long term. However, in my opinion and experience, absolutely nobody who makes games, or has a stake in the state of games as a medium, feels that Epic's brief foray into exclusivity has been a net loss in the time that it's been active-myself included. So I think this is at least a more interesting argument than anyone else has levied, because I'm sympathetic to the idea that safeguarding 'the state of publishing games to a PC platform' is something valuable & worthy of consideration beyond that of whether individual games make it through. Now whether you believe that those indie pubs are telling the truth or car-salesman-ing up a new deal with silver-tonguing.well, the industry is both rife with grifters and also pretty good people. Now, whether you believe this or not, it's tough to argue against someone who has literally heard this business proposition from an (or mulitple) indie pub(s). The argument is, while "Triple I" indie game de jour got a $5M Epic deal, that influx of cash (and the promise of the lottery of possibly getting another one in the future) makes publishers more willing to take risks in the market, and that is an overall benefit to consumers (as Epic is levying the risk of risky games by proxy of expanding indie-pub's wallets). While the Epic deals have, for the most part, specifically only targeted indie games (and AAA games, but we're talking about indies here) that would have otherwise likely been successful anyways - that influx of cash into the indie space has made indie publishers more willing to take risks on a wider breadth of indie games and also just generally expand their overall spend on publishing games. ![]() I think the general point they are trying to make is:
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