
Epic Games Is Acquiring Psyonix - yobananaboy
https://www.rocketleague.com/news/psyonix-is-joining-the-epic-family-/
======
AcerbicZero
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.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> There is value in Steam having competition, but that value diminishes as
> soon as someone comes along and competes for games instead of users.

Content platforms _always_ compete on availability of content. Steam did the
exact same thing early on with Half Life. Look at what's happening in the
streaming video space. Look at console gaming.

Ultimately, people aren't making Steam accounts because of the Steam workshop
or Steam forums or Steam chat or what have you—they're making Steam accounts
because there's a game on Steam that they want to play.

If Epic's store had better features but the same games, existing Steam users
would _still_ continue to use Steam, because that's where their existing game
libraries are. The _only_ way Epic could compete on features alone is if it
were possible to migrate Steam purchases to the Epic Store. Since Valve will
never let that happen, Epic _has_ to entice users with exclusive games.

And that _could_ be great for everyone—if it caused games to be made that
would otherwise never get developed. Consider how much great content the video
streaming wars have produced. As annoying as it is to switch between
subscriptions, I'd say TV viewers are winning right now.

The problem, of course, is that Epic _isn 't_ developing original
content—they're paying for existing content to be removed from Steam. My great
hope is that this will change in time. Original games take several years to
develop, so if any _are_ under way, we wouldn't have heard about them yet. In
the meantime, we're getting PC ports of Journey and Detroit, so that's pretty
neat!

~~~
cloakandswagger
>The problem, of course, is that Epic isn't developing original content

And Valve is?

~~~
meruru
Didn't they just release a card game with Richard Garfield?

I'm not into games myself, but Valve has done tremendous work for gaming on
Linux. That alone is enough reason for me to support them.

~~~
thejosh
And this graph should give you an indication of how well this went:
[https://steamcharts.com/app/583950#6m](https://steamcharts.com/app/583950#6m)

~~~
meruru
Why is that? Did it turn out to be a bad game? As a fan of Magic: The
Gathering I was quite interested in it and the concept looked interesting too.

~~~
cloakandswagger
Valve has never been good at building progression systems, and that's exactly
what killed Artifact.

You get no rewards for playing the game. If you want new cards, you have to
spend money on packs or spend money to enter drafts.

This old fashioned "just play the game because it's fun" mentality is dogma to
Valve, but nowadays users want and require the Pavlovian reward systems.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> This old fashioned "just play the game because it's fun" mentality is dogma
> to Valve, but nowadays users want and require the Pavlovian reward systems.

Speaking to the choir I suspect, but god do I hate progression systems.

Haven't played Artifact, but I'm really not convinced by the narrative that
Valve is removed from this stuff. TF2 and Counter Strike all have loot and
inventory systems of their own. They're basically required in any free to play
game.

------
hobs
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.

~~~
sorenjan
Why would you ask for a refund when you've played it for years? Does that time
not count? Was it not enjoyable?

~~~
hobs
Absolutely it counts, and it was enjoyable.

However, if you want to break your game after I purchased it and change the
rules of how that license works and dont expect me to possibly change my mind
about my decision, think again.

All the money I spent buying decryptors and getting wins/losses/placements and
having an account where I could easily tell where all my friends are playing
in one place also counts.

When its likely that EGS will get features that I wont (even though I funded
the original building of all this) it grinds my gears - the vague announcement
from a corporate aquihire is a klaxon shouting about the changes that are in
the pipeline.

If Psy wants to say "hey, we'd be glad to move all your stuff over without a
hassle" I actually wouldn't really be miffed, but that's not what they came to
us with.

~~~
sorenjan
It sounds like you got what you payed for and have used it for a long time.
Did you buy what what was available at the time, or did you pay for what you
thought it would be years into the future?

What other goods or services do you expect to use for years and then get your
money back? If Spotify removes your favorite artist, do you expect to get
money back for the years you already payed for while you listened to that
artist?

~~~
dejaime
Well, they are pulling it from steam. Want to play with your friend that never
played? Yeah, you'll need to buy him a copy... on epic's store. And a new one
for yourself.

Pulling it from steam is reason enough for me.

~~~
WillPostForFood
So far all they've said is they aren't going to sell it on Steam. Any
suggestion you won't be able to play with your friend is just speculation.

 _The PC version of Rocket League will come to the Epic Games store in late
2019. In the meantime, it will continue to be available for purchase on Steam;
thereafter it will continue to be supported on Steam for all existing
purchasers. "_

 _Furthermore, Epic clarified that support for Rocket League on Steam will
continue even after the game is released on the Epic Games Store and players
"will still be able to play Rocket League on Steam with all of the content
they've previously purchased, same as always."_

[https://www.usgamer.net/articles/epic-promises-support-
for-r...](https://www.usgamer.net/articles/epic-promises-support-for-rocket-
league-on-all-platforms-no-announced-plans-to-pull-it-from-steam)

~~~
vermilingua
I can’t imagine why Valve would continue to provide services such as
Steamworks matchmaking and Workshop content for a game they can’t possibly
make any more money from.

~~~
eridius
Because they'd get bad PR for yanking that stuff? It's not like it costs them
a noticeable amount of money to maintain the existing services for a single
game for customers who've already purchased it.

------
beager
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.

------
the_trapper
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.

~~~
Havoc
>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
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
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.

------
pteraspidomorph
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
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

------
dx87
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
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
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.

~~~
h3throw
Way OT, but, I'm interested in why you and the parent comment are writing
Netflix with a capital "F" as NetFlix. I've not seen this in any of their
branding or collateral before. Is there a specific reason for it?

~~~
gspetr
Years of writing camelCase code have taken their toll. At least they have for
me.

Either that or there is some (justifiable) brand confusion, as there are
brands/companies spelled like that: "iPhone", "eBay", "FedEx", "DreamWorks",
"HarperCollins", etc.

~~~
user5994461
Not familiar with the service for the aforementioned reason, the catalogue is
a joke here. That spelling seemed more likely to me given all the companies
written like that.

------
amatecha
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
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

------
ricardobeat
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?

~~~
asciimov
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
> 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.

~~~
canadaj
I interpreted parent comment as "you're not in [Epic's] demographic, and
probably didn't help [Epic] generate their F-You Money", as a reference to the
money gathered from Fortnite.

Unless of course you are referring to the paid version of Fortnite, but I
don't think that's clear from your comment.

------
Creationer
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.

------
HelloFellowDevs
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
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.

------
kgwxd
Will it remain on Steam and playable on Linux?

~~~
minimaxir
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
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
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.

~~~
izacus
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
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.

------
Circuits
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
If anything, Rocket League will go F2P.

~~~
skellera
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.

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

~~~
dx87
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
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).

------
bliblah
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

------
soup10
Kind of a weird acquisition if they don't want them for Fortnite dev, why not
just make a publishing deal.

~~~
PaulBGD_
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.

------
xtracerx
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.

------
ocdtrekkie
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.

~~~
anonymousab
>But exclusives is the only way to fight the Stockholm Syndrome people seem to
have with Steam.

Stockholm syndrome?

Epic competed for developers on a more competitive split, but have done little
to entice users; their platform didn't have even the barest of (edit:)
feature* parity with Steam at launch (or even today), and rather than, say,
fund new titles for their platform, they've largely paid for existing or in
production titles to not appear on their competitor.

They're competing based on attacking their competitor (and/or users of their
competitor's platform) rather than by bolstering the merits of their own
platform.

It's a shallow distinction but a fair one for consumers to make. "We have
helped create this thing for our users" is different than "We paid to prevent
their users from having a thing."

~~~
cloakandswagger
What do users really need from a platform beyond basic social features and the
ability to, you know, launch the game?

I've used Steam chat and voice comms all of about 3 times. Discord is better.

Profile pages and achievements? Couldn't care less.

Streaming? There's Twitch for that.

What I really care about from a platform are the games that are available for
it. Valve waved the white flag on that a while ago when they abandoned first
party game development.

~~~
anonymousab
Given that we're talking about a store, a shopping cart is generally a good
feature. Wish lists / favorites are a useful QoL feature as well. There's a
bunch of things like that where it's hard to believe the Epic games store is
being pushed so hard without them.

------
pier25
"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!"

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

------
caprese
Congratulations Psyonix team!

------
Glyptodon
Why did Psyonix want to be acquired?

~~~
Radle
Most likely classical start up cashout.

~~~
gatherhunterer
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.

------
rocky1138
Epic is getting big enough to consider regulatory breakup.

~~~
vertoc
I hope this is sarcasm...?

