Epic Games has spent the past few months attempting to create a storefront, ensuring exclusives for it, and buying out developers to create games under their label. The latest acquisition Epic has made is the just-announced purchase of Psyonix, the studio behind the massively popular Rocket League. As a result of the buyout, Psyonix will be bringing Rocket League to the Epic Games store in late 2019. Once that has occurred, it will be entirely removed from sale on Steam, though if you already own the game on Valve's platform, nothing will change. According to Psyonix, the core game will not change, and they hope to find a new audience through Epic's launcher. The cost of the sale was not disclosed.

Source

UPDATE:

After the initial fallout of review bombing and anger from the game's fanbase on Steam, Psionix has edited in a statement on their news post. They've clarified that Rocket League "is and remains available on Steam", and that those on both platforms will be able to look forward to continued support and updates. However, the wording remains unclear if the game will definitively be pulled from Steam one day in the future, only that, for the time being, it will remain on the storefront.

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!

 

[nastys]

Maybe it's another bluff of theirs to push Linux and Mac users to buy it now, before it gets "pulled."

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Okay...eight pages, and most of it is nothing but schoolyard banter. I'm saddened, but not really surprised (I know my tempers).

I'm also a bit annoyed by the fact that most just hate the business move because they fear that every developer will quit developing for steam and they will be forced to use an inferior client. At least the linux users have decent ground for this fear (rocket league runs cross-platform. Epic's store is only available in windows. Ergo...if rocket league disappears from steam, it'll become out of reach for them). Especially since valve is shaking up the industry with protondb, literally bringing thousands of (windows only) steam games to linux.


...but while I am among that group, I see some positive on this as well. A bit selfish, perhaps, but let's not pretend that your posts aren't clouded by your ego(1).

What that is? I'll get to that...

Thanks for that post. I knew Psyonix rang a bell with me, and not just for rocket league. I did some digging as well, and it's even better than that: Psyonix basically made UT2004's widely popular Onslaugt mode (link to an interview of that time(2) ). I had totally forgotten that.

And that brings me to the good news I mentioned earlier: UT2004's onslaught mode was WAAAAAAAAY better than UT3's warfare mode. The vehicles were more fun, the balance was better and the game was more elegant. I know that the next UT installment hung kind of 'in limbo' ever since fortnite took over, but this acquisition honestly makes a lot of sense (that new pre-alpha UT is still completely without vehicles). More so: they should have bought them years ago.

So am I sad that I won't be able to play rocket league anymore? Not at all (heck...I have already bought that game long ago). I'm somewhat worried that this'll be a detriment to linux gaming(3), but the potential for what psyonix can add to Epic easily counterweights that.



(1) small hint: if you cared about rocket league, you would've bought it already...years ago. So I'm not impressed by your ability to write "they can suck a dong" on an internet forum
(2): purely coincidental: the interviewer was a close gaming buddy of mine back in the glory of UT2004 days.
(3): in a rather ironical move: one of the first projects after migrating to linux was to get UT2004 to work on it. It does...and I don't mean through proton (that works as well, but unless the later versions improved it, then there's a - albeit more complex - way to get it working more smoothly).

Yeah, Psyonix did sound familiar. But that's like saying that Havok and Valve are intertwined: Half-Life 2, from what I remember, had physics that were based on Havok's physics engine or had an implementation of it or something along those lines. But it's not like Valve owns Havok; if I'm not mistaken, Dead Space also uses the Havok physics engine for Isaac's electric not-Gravity Gun.

At this point, Unreal Tournament is a dead series. Not to say no one is playing those games, but the fact of the matter is, just because you have an IP that used to be the "shit" back in 1999/2000/Dial-Up era of online gaming doesn't mean, even with modern "updates," "features," and "virtual economies" that you'll still have enough strength to be relevant. Exhibit A: Medal of Honor after COD practically killed its relevance and they made those two games that were suddenly all about modern warfare in 2009/2010? Exhibit B: Quake Champions. Tries to be Overwatch, can't say I've heard of the game ever since they talked about the game in articles for promotion while it was in development.

UT2004 being natively supported on Linux really isn't as big of a deal as you make it sound. When was that version of the game finalized? Does that version have parity feature and version-wise with the last update for the Windows version on DVD? (I wouldn't count GOG and Steam releases as those came years after those games were released, usually) And was that support from Epic itself or from the Open Source community? The reason Proton is such a big deal is because a lot of companies are naturally going with the status quo when it comes to making games for Windows: Microsoft has a console with an x86 processor running some variant of Windows 8/10, making it easy to port the instruction set over to PC, Xbox feature support most likely not included. They have a convenient API known as DirectX that almost every game uses primarily, with some support for maybe OGL or Vulkan later on down the road. With a lot of work already done for devs and publishers, all they have to do is develop the game for more than one proprietary set of hardware that is Windows-based and not have to worry about developing for other OSes unless they hire some third class porting company to port the game to Mac, let alone Linux.

The fact of the matter is, if, to use a hypothetical, Ubuntu/Debian/Mint/whatever good and popular Linux distro out there had access to the same library of games, and they all ran pretty much the same, not to mention the same support for devices (*looks at my mostly wireless HTPC setup, complete with a Corsair Lapdog and a Logitech G906 mouse that I use on the blue moon that I'm playing an FPS*) I'd go with Linux in a heartbeat for so many reasons I could turn this already large wall of text into something that could get more than 10 feet taller! (tl;dr - Windows 10 not respecting my privacy, Windows' BT being bonkers as shit on whatever you use it with, not having to pay $100+ for Office, the ability to control even more aspects of the PC than I could with Windows, and also not having to pay $100+ for a legitimate and not-pirated Windows license and key that could be de-activated at any moment like the situation with sites like Green Man Gaming and its methods of distributing game keys)

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

A perfectly good game with a lot of effort and love behind it getting shitted on by aggressive playerbase for deciding to switch a marketplace for a better paycheck. Yaaaaaaay.....

It's about getting the word out. It can be an effective warning for potential buyers, hence what @nastys said. Thing is, it could either drive people to buy the game, or drive them away from it depending on their opinion of Psyonix being bought by Epic Games, their fears about the game's future support and potential requirements of the Epic Game Store for online play on Steam like UPlay being required to play any Far Cry and/or Assassin's Creed game, and a consumer's desire to get something before it disappears off of a service. Think about it, people are still able to play that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World beat 'em up nowadays because people preserved the game when Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo (?) pulled it from their services because of expiring contracts and other nonsense that is part of the reason why physical copies were so desired for by collectors before the proliferation of PSN and Xbox LIVE the way they did in the 7th generation of consoles.

 

[nastys]

not having to pay $100+ for Office

You can use LibreOffice con Windows, too.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

You can use LibreOffice con Windows, too.

Yeah, but good luck using some of those programs for various classes in college. For example, I took a Business Statistics class at community college a few years ago, and you had to use this plug-in that was only compatible with Excel itself for some calculations. OpenOffice (what I used at the time) didn't have a plug-in for that from what little research I did then.

 

[nastys]

Yeah, but good luck using some of those programs for various classes in college. For example, I took a Business Statistics class at community college a few years ago, and you had to use this plug-in that was only compatible with Excel itself for some calculations. OpenOffice (what I used at the time) didn't have a plug-in for that from what little research I did then.

Never mind, I thought you wanted to run a free office suite on Windows.
In your case you probably didn't have to pay for Microsoft Office anyway, since most colleges and universities provide free licenses to their students.

 

[Pipistrele]

It's about getting the word out. It can be an effective warning for potential buyers, hence what @nastys said. Thing is, it could either drive people to buy the game, or drive them away from it depending on their opinion of Psyonix being bought by Epic Games, their fears about the game's future support and potential requirements of the Epic Game Store for online play on Steam like UPlay being required to play any Far Cry and/or Assassin's Creed game, and a consumer's desire to get something before it disappears off of a service. Think about it, people are still able to play that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World beat 'em up nowadays because people preserved the game when Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo (?) pulled it from their services because of expiring contracts and other nonsense that is part of the reason why physical copies were so desired for by collectors before the proliferation of PSN and Xbox LIVE the way they did in the 7th generation of consoles.

As much as I may agree with good intentions and disappointment that's driving the whole "review bombing" trend, the tactic itself always struck me as a collective temper tantrum at best and actively damaging to the games at worst. Like, in this particular instance, bombing Rocket League mostly comes from desire to voice concerns about Rocket League's future and protect the game from potential marketing/monetization screwery - but all it actually achieves is scaring off potential new players, who will see low score and decide to pass on the game because it "probably declined" or something. Irony of the situation is that in a way it actually benefits Epic Games to have their newly obtained IP having ruined scores on competitor's marketplace, since that kinda opens the window for hindering Steam updates of the game and pushing the narrative of "reviews are bad there because the game just isn't good on Steam, try Epic Store version".
The whole Borderlands 1/2 review-bombing thing is an another good example - both games don't even have anything to do with BL3, Epic Store or Gearbox' modern business practices, so all the bombing is both effectively useless and also ruins reputation of genuinely good games.

Speaking shortly, I just think there are a lot of better and more constructive ways to make noise - from poking all the pundits and reviewers to sharing the word on Reddit threads/AMAs. I can understand review bombing when game in question is objectively bad due to crappy business practices; but when it comes at expense of good titles, it's just not a good thing for me.

 

[reddragon105]

Okay...eight pages, and most of it is nothing but schoolyard banter. I'm saddened, but not really surprised (I know my tempers).

I'm also a bit annoyed by the fact that most just hate the business move because they fear that every developer will quit developing for steam and they will be forced to use an inferior client. At least the linux users have decent ground for this fear (rocket league runs cross-platform. Epic's store is only available in windows. Ergo...if rocket league disappears from steam, it'll become out of reach for them). Especially since valve is shaking up the industry with protondb, literally bringing thousands of (windows only) steam games to linux.


...but while I am among that group, I see some positive on this as well. A bit selfish, perhaps, but let's not pretend that your posts aren't clouded by your ego(1).

What that is? I'll get to that...

Thanks for that post. I knew Psyonix rang a bell with me, and not just for rocket league. I did some digging as well, and it's even better than that: Psyonix basically made UT2004's widely popular Onslaugt mode (link to an interview of that time(2) ). I had totally forgotten that.

And that brings me to the good news I mentioned earlier: UT2004's onslaught mode was WAAAAAAAAY better than UT3's warfare mode. The vehicles were more fun, the balance was better and the game was more elegant. I know that the next UT installment hung kind of 'in limbo' ever since fortnite took over, but this acquisition honestly makes a lot of sense (that new pre-alpha UT is still completely without vehicles). More so: they should have bought them years ago.

So am I sad that I won't be able to play rocket league anymore? Not at all (heck...I have already bought that game long ago). I'm somewhat worried that this'll be a detriment to linux gaming(3), but the potential for what psyonix can add to Epic easily counterweights that.



(1) small hint: if you cared about rocket league, you would've bought it already...years ago. So I'm not impressed by your ability to write "they can suck a dong" on an internet forum
(2): purely coincidental: the interviewer was a close gaming buddy of mine back in the glory of UT2004 days.
(3): in a rather ironical move: one of the first projects after migrating to linux was to get UT2004 to work on it. It does...and I don't mean through proton (that works as well, but unless the later versions improved it, then there's a - albeit more complex - way to get it working more smoothly).

Yeah, I'm honestly surprised that the team wasn't made part of Epic back when they were working on UT2004 - it would have made sense to bring a talented group of people like that in-house instead of effectively outsourcing a large chunk of your game. But, yes, it does go a long way to explaining what made UT2004 so good. Man, I played so much of that game...

But while I'm kind of happy to see Psyonix and Epic finally tie the knot, I'm really not a fan of Epic's aggressive approach to drive people towards their store. Rocket League is already on Steam, so why not just leave it on Steam and also add it to the Epic Store so that people can buy it wherever they want? Removing it from Steam is anti-consumerist because it takes away an option of where to buy the game from.

You're right that anyone who cares about Rocket League will have already bought it - and anyone who wants it on Steam still has until 'late 2019' to buy it on Steam, which gives them plenty of time - and it will probably be on sale at least once before them. The lack of Linux support on the Epic Game Store is an issue, but again anyone who wants the game for Linux has time to buy it on Steam - and who knows, maybe Linux support is something that Epic is planning and will have implemented before they add Rocket League to their store. After all, it's going to be the same version of the game, so the game will already have Linux support, they just need to make a Linux launcher.

 

[leon315]

Anybody else want to defend their shit? This is terrible.

they spent 10 or perhaps hundreds of million dollars to buy the studio, i'm sure they has all the rights to to so...
plus who already own the game on STEAM still the access of download and everything else, it's NOT entirely a bad things since now they can bring more NEW audience and make that game even more popular

 

[linuxares]

they spent 10 or perhaps hundreds of million dollars to buy the studio, i'm sure they has all the rights to to so...
plus who already own the game on STEAM still the access of download and everything else, it's NOT entirely a bad things since now they can bring more NEW audience and make that game even more popular

New audience is a pretty bad example since it's probably going to be shown less. Linux users for example can kiss this game bye bye.

 

[Oschara]

so glad i dont game on pc. sorry to everyone effected by it.

 

[leon315]

New audience is a pretty bad example since it's probably going to be shown less. Linux users for example can kiss this game bye bye.

HOW DID YOU KNOW MATE? the entire users base on fortnuts are NEW and different from the common STEAM ones, i don't think you can predict the future. Linux is just small base, it's entirely not that significant, and even the game is now an EPIC exclusive, doesn't mean Linux version will be cancelled.

Personally i think make it available on more platforms will certainly brings more attentions, it's a good thing if a game can gain more user base, which means more popularity. just look at Minecraft.

 

[eyeliner]

Steam having competition is always good. Or did you enjoy buying a physical game, only to have a steam key on the inside to install Steam and play through the client after instaling the game?

Congrats to Epic.

I hope to see this more often. Them having retracted their position is meh. I want to see more initiatives like these for new games instead.

 

[p0rnstorm21]

Really? do you think so ?

 

[chaoskagami]

Q: How many EPIC employees does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: All of them, they need to find the lightbulb first. It sure as hell ain't in their office.

they spent 10 or perhaps hundreds of million dollars to buy the studio, i'm sure they has all the rights to to so...
plus who already own the game on STEAM still the access of download and everything else, it's NOT entirely a bad things since now they can bring more NEW audience and make that game even more popular

Competetition is good, but this is more in the "anti-consumer practices" category, methinks.

 

[Kioku]

Steam having competition is always good. Or did you enjoy buying a physical game, only to have a steam key on the inside to install Steam and play through the client after instaling the game?

Congrats to Epic.

I hope to see this more often. Them having retracted their position is meh. I want to see more initiatives like these for new games instead.

You're perfectly content with them essentially shitting on consumers out of spite for steam? First Metro, and now this? This is okay? If they chose to invest (not drop a bag of cash on a dev/publishers desk for exclusivity) on new prospects? Great. Do it the right way. Quit being shady and earn respect.

 

[FAST6191]

Re: "30% is fair/standard"

As was mentioned just because something is out there in the world and is the baseline or tradition does not mean it is fair.

"for all the features"
What would those be? Assuming I even care then I will take cheaper games if all I have to do is point my [insert web file storage/"cloud storage" service of choice] at the game saves directory. Even then if my calculations with Nintendo's save backup things were anything to go by ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/nintend...after-cancellation.519223/page-3#post-8304831 ) then to do it here would be a rounding error compared to some of the sums already seen.
Similarly I bet dropbox or whatever would cream their jeans at a chance to have a potentially up and coming game service tied to them. Obviously they would call it a partnership but eh.
Communities and reviews then.
Fortunately these existed before then. I am sure if it really mattered they could crowbar some kind of blog/forum/shop software into it to do something.
The reviews thing. Some made a big deal of this and pondered its anti consumer nature. From the perspective of a casual buyer of games then sure. Anybody can still quite easily tap the game name and review into a search engine though, and given the state of most user review sections it is probably a good bet to be doing that anyway. To that end meh.

Speaking of calculations I am not falling asleep in my chair any more.

Game distribution services are a CDN with an account lookup (a trivial thing really) and money transaction layer. If you are dealing with millions the percentages for a credit card vendor get very small. Not nothing but less than 5% (5% is about low volume transaction for a local business with a card reader). Transaction volume is mostly going to be slightly lower but with predominantly higher value transactions too (not like people are buying $1 cables with free shipping like I do a lot on Amazon or whatever).
Said CDN is not even that much of a hammered one. Ignoring saves then baseline storage is not that much -- 50 gigs a game maybe (some less, some more) which is nothing when the service is maybe going to host a few thousand games in the first few years. Download count is going to trend towards 1 per transaction (between those that never download it or download it the once and barely play it/keep playing it until they bore or their machine breaks in a few years you are going to get the bulk of things -- performance users will be a notable class in the design but probably nothing to disrupt things too much). Latency and slight drops is nothing drastic either here as it is bulk download rather than time sensitive stuff.

It is a reasonable amount of bandwidth compared to say a picture storage or office file storage setup. It would similarly probably want you to get the unmetered connections in, possibly temporarily unlock some for bigger releases or do the preload thing (why do you think Steam has that?), or have a tiered system so the 5 year old sports game you technically sell is not there taking up the same as the hot new release.

If Epic are then willing to run it at minimal profit, breakeven or even write it off as advertising/service growth then I would say 30% is way more than is necessary for that. 14% might even be higher than they could get away with.

 

[Shadowfied]

Re: "30% is fair/standard"

As was mentioned just because something is out there in the world and is the baseline or tradition does not mean it is fair.

This isn't entirely the point. Epic is however using this as their talking point, while they still allow, for example, Gearbox, selling Borderlands 3 on GMG which has the same split as Steam. They pretend it's all about Steam being unfair with their revenue split, while ignoring, and allowing everything else with the same split. It's all about them, but they are trying to make themselves look like the good guys.

It's an attack on Steam and nothing else.

 

[FAST6191]

It's an attack on Steam and nothing else.

Even assuming it is then is that a bad thing?

 

[Shadowfied]

Even assuming it is then is that a bad thing?

They proved they don't actually give a fuck about their only argument, that being the revenue split. I haven't heard what else they are gonna bring to the table. I can't see anything positive coming out of it though. So yes, absolutely.

 

[leon315]

Competetition is good, but this is more in the "anti-consumer practices" category, methinks.

no dude, it's like this dish is that restaurant's speciality, and you can only find in this specific place from this specific chief, it happens in ur every days life, when u kids became so concern about things from ur daily life?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I dont like BR and i don't play Fortnuts, but when a 3 or 4 year old game(?) receives a huge support from another company, why not? the family will become even larger, now Console user can play against switch, pc steam, now EPIC users.