Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Calls For Unified Digital Games Store

[isvelte]

Worst thing about PC gaming is having 5 different store softwares installed, not being able to actually own the games without them

I dont get why people are bothered by having 5+ different launchers installed, and making that argument on hating EGS, seriously PCs are so much faster now, 32gb ram, high capacity ssds that doubles speed every few years, 16 thread cpus are becoming a norm for gaming PCs, does it really matter if you have 10 launchers running on background? I get DRM, but launchers? Cmon... thats just laziness, make a game shortcut to your desktop ffs, that should auto launch the launcher+game.

 

[iuliug]

I agree that is a vailed monopoly proposal. Epic launcher made Steam change and beyond criticism that is good.
However, while multiple store fronts and launcher can exist customers should make only one purchase and have it available on all platforms.

 

[Tartaros]

Isn't the closest thing to this GOG? What the fuck is this guy talking about?

 

[londiste]

I thought there was one already... something called... Steam?

Is there? When was the last time you bought something from Steam on Xbox, Playstation, Switch, iOS or Android?

 

[Vayra86]

Preferably one that exclusively uses Steamworks, right?

How about just having support for integration of moddb and nexusmods :O

We can dream

 

[londiste]

I agree that is a vailed monopoly proposal. Epic launcher made Steam change and beyond criticism that is good.
However, while multiple store fronts and launcher can exist customers should make only one purchase and have it available on all platforms.

Isn't the closest thing to this GOG? What the fuck is this guy talking about?

Again, since there is some context next to the snippet in the news bit:

“What the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms,” Sweeney said in an interview in Seoul on Tuesday. “Right now software ownership is fragmented between the iOS App Store, the Android Google Play marketplace, different stores on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch, and then Microsoft Store and the Mac App Store.” Epic is working with developers and service providers to create a system that would allow users “to buy software in one place, knowing that they’d have it on all devices and all platforms.”

 

[Vayra86]

he wants "freedom" for players.
pays 150 million dollars to make games at least time exclusive on epic to take away the freedom of choice.

now he wants to fight against the evil monopoly from apple, google and steam.
starts to work on a single platform for every platform on the world.

tim sweeney is a complete joke.

Did you notice that this complete joke is leading the fight against anti competitive practices? And raking in victories? In-App purchasing is already something Apple can't block anymore. And Apple's losing more battles, such as right to repair - it falls in a similar train of thought: product ownership and how far are platform-tentacles and ecosystems allowed to expand.

Tim Sweeney is a logical thinker. The platform economy needs a layer where all the content comes together so the end users have one simple interface to talk to. Or are you happy with a launcher and store for every game you want to play? All updating separately, all with separate logins, their own 2FA's... etc etc.

What matters is how a platform is managed. I can totally see a marketplace that is unified and all participants (publishers, devs) share in its continued development and keeping it up and running. Your % share determines your % visibility on it. Everyone can market their own stuff outside of the platform and direct customers to the same place when they want to buy. The separate vendor specific platforms, including Steam, can still run underneath it. It also insta-solves the distribution war/cost stuff: everyone pays by their % of usage of said platform and can work it out in their product pricing. No new commissions required. So that also means Epic, Steam and other open platforms can still compete there - but they'll do it outside of customer reach, where it should be. And since they're managing a lot in the unified layer now, they can also reduce their commissions, cost goes down.

As for games being exclusive, welcome to the world, stop being so naive. Exclusivity is being used since day one of commerce to generate customer base. The competitive battle here is not with us, consumers, it is a battle between digital distributors. Somehow idiot gamur communities have made it their war, its very much reddit/social media stupidity and circlejerk at work. Are you part of the flock of sheep? Think twice. There isn't anything more to it than that - publishers are still their own companies and they see the same things Sweeney does. They want this. So the crybaby gamers are really on their own island of reasoning here.

Here's an example of how that might look:

Playnite - video game library manager

Video game library manager with one simple goal: To provide a unified interface for all of your games.

playnite.link

Let's face it. For gaming this whole affair is no different than what happened with publisher exclusivity on... say, on-demand video. We now have several hands full of streaming services, so what do they get? People are going to use one or two, pay monthly sub, and kill the others or never get to them. For gaming, cloud services are also moving to sub models, so the same stuff will apply even if they lure you in with nearly free months right now. You can't carry away your entire paycheck to subs, you can only play so much... so again, a unified platform where you pay per usage is an infinitely better way for everyone to get a piece of the pie. Its a win-win-win situation, and its old thinking that is holding us back. Also, we can't dismiss that ALL entertainment through on-demand is actually competing with itself. Its all screen time.

The internet can overcome those stupid boundaries. And if it doesn't... we'll just hack shit and get it anyway. History repeats. Sweeney knows this. He wants to remove the boundaries because it makes the market and innovation better and more accessible. That's his story - ever since Unreal Engine and it echoes in most things 'Epic'.

 

[sepheronx]

How about just having support for integration of moddb and nexusmods :O

We can dream

One can dream.

I too would love this.

 

[TheDeeGee]

EPIC ?

Nope

Are you actively blacklisting games that use the Unreal Engine as well?

Or are you just a faker like everyone else who hates Epic?

 

[Bomby569]

I think it's an amazing idea, but obviously greed will never make it be a thing. And i'm sure it's no one's particular fault, if Epic was in Steam's shoes the roles would just be reversed.

 

[Pumper]

Tim Sweeney is a logical thinker. The platform economy needs a layer where all the content comes together so the end users have one simple interface to talk to. Or are you happy with a launcher and store for every game you want to play?

Separate launchers are annoying, but not a big issue. I bet that most people would be happy by not having to log in to UPlay/Origin/Rockstar/whatever platform, when they launch their games on Steam or any other service.

 

[neatfeatguy]

This new system would allow games purchased from any ecosystem to be fully playable on all supported platforms without requiring multiple purchases. The success of this vision is entirely dependent on game studios signing up to the program which will likely be a hard sell given the expected fall in sales.

I could see a single digital platform for PC gaming and then one for Consoles.

Everything would just be lumped into one platform for PC games or consoles - there would be no loss of sales, only a change in where all the sales came from.

If you wish to get a game on the PC, the sale would be done at one location for everyone. If 1,000,000 copies were sold off one platform vs 250,000/250,000/250,000/250,000 copies were sold across 4 platforms, the developer would still see sales from 1,000,000 copies...there would be no loss of sales.

The only loss would be is that a company, such as Steam, wouldn't be pulling in their 30% cut from the sales or EPIC wouldn't be pulling in their 15% cut (or whatever it is) from sales. This would be the hard sell for these digital platforms....give up their easy money.

How many digital platforms can we buy from today that are required to be logged into the platform so the game runs off their launcher? Steam, Origin, Uplay, EGS (I hear some games require it, but I'm not 100% certain), Blizzard/Activision, Bethesda.....I'm sure I'm missing others.

How many digital platforms can we buy from today that don't require a launcher to run a game? GoG, Itchi.io (???).... are there more? (I don't venture out past GoG for this feature so I'm not sure)

The point is, more and more launchers are coming and some have come and gone, such as Stardock's digital platform (which was changed to Impluse, then purchased by GameStop and eventually the platform was discontinued around 2014) that I did make use of when Galactic Civilization 2 came out. I had purchased a couple of games off of it and had a handful other other games that I could link through it....I don't recall whatever happened to the games I purchased off it. I guess those games are just lost to me because the digital platform is no longer around.

If there was a way to universally lump all games into one digital platform and not require multiple launchers for each individual developer or digital distributor that would be ideal. However, I don't see this ever happening. If you think about, trading in multiple platforms for 1:
Who would house the platform?
How would that company get money to support that 1 platform?
How much money would it need to support that 1 platform?
How would that platform be regulated and who would regulate it?
Who would police and be able to hold companies accountable that try to launch their own platform over joining this one?

 

[etayorius]

lol can you imagine Activision, Ubisoft, EA, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, Take Two and the rest of publishers even considering this? lol no way, they want you to buy the same game on each platform and preferrably several times over. What a clown Tim. The idea is great but good luck with actually making it real. He is probably just after some sympathy or pro consumer PR.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Tim Sweeney has an interesting idea. It would never work. Those users who expect DRM free gaming options will never play nicely with the kind of controls many publishers would demand. I certainly would not.

 

[Cobain]

I dont get why people are bothered by having 5+ different launchers installed, and making that argument on hating EGS, seriously PCs are so much faster now, 32gb ram, high capacity ssds that doubles speed every few years, 16 thread cpus are becoming a norm for gaming PCs, does it really matter if you have 10 launchers running on background? I get DRM, but launchers? Cmon... thats just laziness, make a game shortcut to your desktop ffs, that should auto launch the launcher+game.

Because I want to have a custom menu on my taskbar with all the games installed, click on one and start playing it immediatly, without it opening a software first saying "logging in", "check our weekend offer!!!" "Are you sure you want to play that game instead or checking out our New cool free to play battle Royal?"

Because I don't want Steam or Origin using 10% of my cpu and making my game performance worse. Yes it happens even on 16t cpus, that has been tested. Quake Champions, for example, has a 15% performance Hit by running with steam compared with self launcher you get from bethesda

Because I dont want to be prompted with daily updates for the software that runs games

Because I want full control over launch options for my .exe without the software trying to impose theirs

Because I want my own overlays if needed

Because I want to configure my controller the way i want and not how steam wants it to behave

Because When I close a game, now I need to close the software that also was opened when I started the game shortcut

Because I want to own my games, move them from disk to disk and computer to computer without software telling me I used too many hardware IDs to play that game

Because I want or have to be completly offline and still access all my games without restrictions

And a lot of other reasons

Launchers are a plague. Consoles have a clear advantage on that front. GOG is way ahead any other company too.

Reason I still use PC for games is the fact I found great and reliable FTPs with all pirated games

 

[Pilgrim]

Thank fuck! Yes, please!!!

I dont get why people are bothered by having 5+ different launchers installed, and making that argument on hating EGS, seriously PCs are so much faster now, 32gb ram, high capacity ssds that doubles speed every few years, 16 thread cpus are becoming a norm for gaming PCs, does it really matter if you have 10 launchers running on background? I get DRM, but launchers? Cmon... thats just laziness, make a game shortcut to your desktop ffs, that should auto launch the launcher+game.

Because it's unintuitive, inefficient (In many ways, including system power consumption) and a general pain in the ass? I don't hate any single platform. I just hate the fact that I have to have half a dozen of them.

 

[MarsM4N]

"What the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms" Tim Sweeney

Sounds more like he wants to destroy the competition from the key shops. If he wants a "ecosystem to be fully playable on all supported platforms without requiring multiple purchases", then we don't need 1 shopping window for everything, we only need a ecosystem that shares the game licenses for every system. Something like that already exists, it's called "Microsoft Account". Buy f.e. Forza Horizon 5 for your Microsoft Account & you can play it on Windows or your xBox (incl. shared archievments).

His idea would only drive up PC game prices. Not my cup of tea. I like capitalist competition. Bet this guy hates GG.Deals, lol. Man love love this site.

 

[sepheronx]

"What the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms" Tim Sweeney

Sounds more like he wants to destroy the competition from the key shops. If he wants a "ecosystem to be fully playable on all supported platforms without requiring multiple purchases", then we don't need 1 shopping window for everything, we only need a ecosystem that shares the game licenses for every system. Something like that already exists, it's called "Microsoft Account". Buy f.e. Forza Horizon 5 for your Microsoft Account & you can play it on Windows or your xBox (incl. shared archievments).

His idea would only drive up PC game prices. Not my cup of tea. I like capitalist competition. Bet this guy hates GG.Deals, lol. Man love love this site.

thanks for that link. Never heard of GG.deals.

 

[kapone32]

Well the first thing is to fix their broken system. Anytime you have to reset Windows or more recently update to Windows 11. We all know that you will have to either re-download or make a new folder on a different drive and start the download before you can move the data to get to play your game. That was not too bad 2 years ago but 2+ years of Free Games every Friday now means literally about 1.5 TB of data (BTW that does not include updates). Steam, Orign, Uplay and GOG do not have this problem or issue. A special mention for GOG. Doom Eternal was a Bethesda platform Game when I bought it and needed that when I updated to Windows 11. If GOG were saying this I would be all for it. Other than the free Games and what they have done for devs Epic actually sucks as a Gaming platform.

 

[MarsM4N]

thanks for that link. Never heard of GG.deals.

But be cautious where you shop. The "Official Stores" on the top are safe, for the key shops you need to look for the "Risk Rating".

I did only buy from offical stores & from "CDKeys.com" (risk rating 1). Super flawless till now.
If you like it cheaper (and riskier) check for bad reviews first on Trustpilot.com. Some are a real gamble.

 

[sepheronx]

But be cautious where you shop. The "Official Stores" on the top are safe, for the key shops you need to look for the "Risk Rating".

I did only buy from offical stores & from "CDKeys.com" (risk rating 1). Super flawless till now.
If you like it cheaper (and riskier) check for bad reviews first on Trustpilot.com. Some are a real gamble.

thanks for the heads-up. I will be careful.

 

[Vayra86]

Separate launchers are annoying, but not a big issue. I bet that most people would be happy by not having to log in to UPlay/Origin/Rockstar/whatever platform, when they launch their games on Steam or any other service.

Exactly. Steam is really something similar wrt the double drm. But... it has no weight in it. If Uplay fails, or Origin, you're left hanging. That wont change, unless you give a unified platform more control. If it handles authentication the biggest hurdle is already gone.

 

[catulitechup]

 

[silentbogo]

I am from the 90s where I created a c:/games folder with 100 games installed, games that were actually MINE with no one forcing me to install launchers.

Oh man... time and time again I realize how misleading can nostalgia really be....

I think these days are the most convenient for gaming, and honestly - f$%^ all this crying about "not owning things". I despise all the times where I had to buy a new game when my CDs got a few scratches cause you need to put it in every time you wanted to launch a game, I start sweating blood every time I think of Starforce and other early DRMs, and I sure don't miss having to call somewhere to "activate" my product. Also, pirating in 2021 is stupid. The only argument I understand is lack of demos which may or may not affect your purchasing decision, but pirating for the sake of pirating is without exaggeration - absolutely objectively stupid. You wanna risk becoming a part of a worldwide botnet for the sake of not paying for "not real ownership"? You want to lose your personal data and financial info to chinese or russian hackers cause you are too lazy to get some free games on Epic, or too cheap to splurge a few bucks on Steam's seasonal sale? Or you feel really generous and want to give some of your compute resources to random crypto-malware?

Hell, the concept of renting games or having game subscriptions is about as old as mainstream gaming. I remember back in elementary school you didn't even have to own a console - you can go to a place at a local mall or a shady booth at the local bazar, rent a Dendi or Sega Megadrive for a weekend along with couple of games(though you had to leave some sort of collateral in most cases), have some fun, and return it on monday before school. Americans even had more convenient options, like Gamestop or short-lived Gamefly (e.g. Netflix for games).
Even my 72y.o. stepdad isn't that stubborn, and plays his favorite RTS games on Steam, Origin and GOG, just like everyone else.

My Steam account has been alive for nearly 15 years, and I do accept the risk that if someday it closes - I lose all games. Just like I accept the risk of losing my physical media after tornado or break-in.

 

[Selaya]

[ ... ]

Agree to disagree.