Borderlands CEO says his hopes on Epic Store were 'overly optimistic or misplaced'
www.tweaktown.com
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford discusses his thoughts about the Epic Games Store and the years-old exclusivity deal for Borderlands 3 to skip Steam on PC.

I’m genuinely shocked how much Epic poured into the store and it still lacks so much basic features. Sorting games is still extremely barebones, store is filled with NFT/crypto garbage, the store still looks like a college student’s first front-end project, and last time I used the launcher to pick up free games (last year), it was still slow as hell. What were they doing in the past 5 years aside from dropping millions on exclusivity deals?

Epic is going to have to prioritize the store and try some new initiatives while also doubling down on earning pivotal exclusives if it is going to have a chance. I also hope other viable competitors arrive.

  • ryathal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    431·
    3 months ago

    Advertising better cuts to publishers doesn’t mean much when the price is the same across platforms. If epic was consistently 10% cheaper than steam it would get better traction.

    • IronKrill@lemmy.caEnglish
      31·
      3 months ago

      They do often have better sales, but you have to launch the store to know and personally I would rather pay the extra $1 to buy on Steam…

      • FubarberryEnglish
        22·
        3 months ago

        Steam also has a lot of other stores selling their games though. Unless epic is giving it away for free, I’m probably going to get a better deal through a fanatical bundle or someone else than I would on epic.

        • yamanii@lemmy.worldEnglish
          10·
          3 months ago

          This is true, here in Brazil we have an official key seller called Nuuvem that has prices so good TikTok banned their ads thinking it was a scam, since they often have small discounts even on new games.

          Just have to be careful because sometimes the key is for Uplay instead of steam.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      42·
      3 months ago

      They still have to sell for what the publisher/devs want to sell the game for, a bigger share goes to them if it’s the same price as it is on Steam.

    • whereBeWaldo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      46·
      3 months ago

      They can’t sell the games cheaper than steam as the steam’s conditions doesn’t let devs sell games on steam if the game is available for cheaper somewhere else.