During E3 2019, it had been quietly revealed that Shenmue III would be headed to the Epic Games Store for PC, as an exclusive. This contrasted with what had been initially promised to Kickstarter backers--a Steam key--which resulted in controversy and confusion as to how things would play out for those who paid for the game and requested a digital PC copy. When it was announced that backers would be unable to request a refund, things became even more contentious. Aiming to calm the masses, a message from the Shenmue III development team noted that the Ys Net and Deep Silver would be looking into how best to work the situation out. Now, after a few weeks, it appears that the team has come up with a solution.

Those who backed the game get one of four options:

• a. PC Physical: Package (Disc) ＋ EGS Key
• b. PC Digital: EGS Key
• c. PS4 Physical: Package (Disc)
• d. PS4 Digital: PSN Voucher Code

For those that choose the PC option, you'll get a copy of the game on the Epic Game Store, but you'll also receive a Steam key as well, which will arrive exactly one year post-launch. Backers can also switch their platform to PS4, if they no longer wish to have the game on PC.

Most importantly, refunds will now be allowed, if none of the above choices suit you.

Source

 

[Ericthegreat]

That's not even remotely similar, prescriptions are not given by the pharmacy.

Well, your pills are....

 

[ChibiMofo]

Those of you who don't understand why people wanted refunds perplex me. Would anyone who actually backed this game want a refund at this point if the Epic thing wasn't a very serious issue for them?

The answer to that rhetorical question is "no." That so many wanted a refund tells you that Shenmue's developers had no realistic choice but to offer what they did, including a refund. It sets a bad precedence for backed games, but then so does the bait and switch to Epic. I think we all know what really happened here. The Shenmue devs wrote their plea in good faith believing it would only ever be a Steam game on PC. Then Epic approached them with bags of $100 bills. Then the Shenmue devs decided to sign on with Epic hoping they could get away with it and insisting there would be no refunds. That was never going to work. Epic probably gave them a loan against future earnings to allow the devs to issue refunds right now. And here we are.

I didn't back the game. But I'd be very pissed off if I did only to have them try to hang Epic's malware on me long AFTER they had my money. It's bad enough having that worthless Steam executable stealing CPU cycles from me all day long. I don't need more Mandatory Malware™.

 

[Edgarska]

Well, your pills are....

The original point was that it's illegal to change your product after you pay for it without notice. That pharmacy example doesn't make any sense.

 

[Ericthegreat]

The original point was that it's illegal to change your product after you pay for it without notice. That pharmacy example doesn't make any sense.

Well, how did they change it? They made you go to a different store, right?

 

[spectral]

Well, how did they change it? They made you go to a different store, right?

They changed what they gave you. They advertised a steam key, people paid for a steam key. An epic store key while similar, is not the exact thing paid for. They're delivering a different product. In this case your product is the key not the game itself. With justification or not people really don't like the Epic store and don't want to use it. Why should they be forced too in order to use a product that was supposed to work without it?

 

[Edgarska]

Well, how did they change it? They made you go to a different store, right?

Yes, and again, a pharmacy doesn't change your prescription, your doctor does.

 

[spectral]

Yes, and again, a pharmecy doesn't change your prescription, your doctor does.

I suppose a still flawed but closer analogy with the pharmacy would be turning up with a script for morphine and them giving you codeine and just saying, they're both comparable pain killers so it doesn't matter.

 

[Edgarska]

I suppose a still flawed but closer analogy with the pharmacy would be turning up with a script for morphine and them giving you codeine and just saying, they're both comparable pain killers so it doesn't matter.

Exactly.

The fact that they changed which store redeems the code is irrelevant, the fact is a customer paid for something with the terms clearly laid out, and they were changed after the fact.
Whether you like steam more than epic store, or barely tolerate steam like I do, the fact is they changed the deal after the payment was made, which voids the original agreement.

It baffles me that people will argue against their own rights as consumer in order to defend a company's practices.

 

[cots]

I don't care for Shenmue and haven't tried Epic's store front yet. Is it lightweight like GOG's launcher or bloated an intrusive like Origin? I'm not one to care much about what launcher I use or what console I have to buy. If it's a game I want to play then that's all I really care about.

 

[Edgarska]

Just to add a detail I had overlooked, this is from their official statement:

Concerning Refunds

Along with Deep Silver and Epic Games, we have agreed that should the above proposal not be acceptable to backers, refund requests will be honored.
Details concerning the refund request process will be announced in a following update. We ask for your patience until that time.

*In the case rewards within your reward tier, such as in-game content, have already been created and implemented, a full refund may not be possible.

That's just fucked up.

 

[spectral]

Just to add a detail I had overlooked, this is from their official statement:



That's just fucked up.

Thats not unusual for any goods with a bespoke order. Generally the rules for it are different. I'm assuming it means that they paid to have their name in the game ortheir art work in the game,etc. That work is already done and paid for and is in the game. On that score they fulfilled their end. Those are seperate to your purchase of the game itself. O rif its for physical rewards that are made to order have already been manufactured. Again not part of the game.

 

[FAST6191]

Click on the forums and 10 alerts to go through. Hopefully I won't miss anybody, or if it appears I did then I hope the points addressed from those I do cover also cover those.

They aren't getting what they were promised, and that's reason enough to request a refund. Bait and switch is not acceptable in any other sales industry, and we certainly shouldn't be giving the impression that it's acceptable in the gaming industry.


Valve does actually help fund development for a lot of smaller titles, and unlike Epic, it's not with the expectation that those games will be made exclusive to Steam. I'm also not convinced that any game Epic has made exclusive wouldn't have been developed without their funding, given that many of those games were already crowdfunded or had contracts with big-name publishers already in place.


I'm not sure how EGS could possibly be any more bare bones. Epic is trying to take a swing at Steam before they've even managed to gain feature parity with Origin, Uplay, Battle.net, and other small players.


They do nothing to stand out from other budget brands, and the difference is that you have at least some assurance the other budget brands aren't sending all your personal data straight to the Chinese government.

Similarly, EGS' security is so terrible that competitive Fortnite players have had their accounts compromised while streaming. Not to mention Tencent will soon have a majority stake in Epic, and they aren't exactly known for tight data privacy standards.

Does any development ever go exactly to plan? Minor stuff that does not impact gameplay and leaves it still running on an otherwise identical system... that is petty.

And?

Why waste your time becoming the biggest little fish if you can convincingly take a swipe at the king?

Do you have and workups of the "while streaming" thing? I should be interested to read about that. The Chinese thing is potentially a problem, and reason I could see some want to skip out on it.

It's only logicially dissonant because you don't see the features that Valve provide as a good thing. You see it as just a launcher and the other features don't matter, in which case, yeah they are the same.

Others clearly don't, others value the feature set of steam and the convienace it provides. It's not that people are dumb cunts and don't know logic, it's you see them as the same product because XYZ is not important to you. Others don't. There is no logic flaw if you find value in valves feature set, as Epic and Valve aren't the same. Getting people to question it, only works if we are dealing with facts.

We are not, whether you find the feature set important and valuable, is an opinion. Those who do find them important will never see Epic and Valve as "the same" no matter how many times you ask them why.




People have their pitchforks out for epic. Never in question, it is fitting. I specifically said no one said you should have them out. As you seemed to be under the impression people want were annoyed that you specifically are not there with them.





It's not really a discussion though is it?

It's not a discussion on why people like those features or whatever, it's just you asking why people like Valve over and over again, because the answer doesn't satisfy you.



Because that's what was offered. Simple as that. Invest in this, get a steam key. Simple, whether they are different enough makes no difference, you were offered X if you give them money, now they want to give you Y. Doesn't matter the reason why you don't like it. X was offered, you are given Y. Refund should be offered.



I mentioned gog. That's DRM free, and the terms forbid it. There is no option to transfer games to another account.

Being "good enough" for you, doesn't equal allowing the resale of games which is what you were complaining about. It's just with drm free there is no way to stop it.

I can see why some would enjoy the features Valve provides. Consider my words here an open invitation for anybody that cares to sell me on why Valve's, usually pretty easily replicated, efforts are indeed so valuable as to have their absence noted in all this.

You had a false impression of my position then, and I might have contributed to the misunderstanding -- I don't think anybody has been particularly upset at my indifference thus far. That said I am still at something of a loss for why people want to go after Epic.

I already addressed what I see as the utterly minor and almost inconsequential change from Steam key to Epic key a few lines back. Same response really.

So GOG have further restrictions on top of nominally being DRM free. Don't see what that has to do with the abstract concept being contemplated.

The list is pretty large (as was summarized by me and posted more comprehensively in a pic above) and can't be resolved without third party solutions, so if you're just going to ignore that point, I have nothing else to add.

I did look at the picture. Some of it is dubious to me and I realise now it was an earlier post that was bumped last night wherein I had previously addressed it. I can go again if you want.

Spoiler

https://i.imgur.com/SynNfar.jpg
third party keys. Meh really. So you can buy steam keys from a third party site...
Account sharing. Is that the family sharing thing?
Trophments. I already covered that before. If people really really enjoy them then so be it. Games can happily add their own internal challenges (be it stats, completion, or to try to force all/odd styles of play) though and reward players for them so we are now back at the "see and be seen" set. Apparently it is coming in the next few months if it matters though.
Big picture/TV stuff. 10 foot interfaces are nice but bog standard OS can still usually get it done.
Broadcasting... don't most graphics cards anybody would be using to play games have these options these days?
China spying. OK potentially a problem, though most of what I have seen thus far is minor.
Cloud saves. Because pointing my save folder at a dropbox account is hard? Apparently it is also set to drop before too long along with the trophments.
Both have cross platform account connection whatever that is.
Curation? Because there are not a billion sites with game lists and reviews on?
Both have nice data slurping it seems.
Both have DRM free options.
Both have early access if that is somehow a positive.
Forums? Again because there are not a million forums out there, or multi purpose forum sites?
Friends list and chat. Apparently both have it.
Gifting. I can see this being a missed trick and having to send my friend some money and say grab that as we are going to be playing it, or I think you will like it. A search says it is to come though.
Groups. Is this clans or something that said forums also happily solve?
Inventory support. Is that a technical support thing or https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/inventory which is an API for storing a remote save really.
Linux/Mac. For the 10 people trying this sort of thing I agree Epic seeing several games drop Linux and OSX support to focus on windows for the time being could sting a bit.
Loyalty program. Apparently both lack such a thing.
Marketplace/Item trading. I remember when people were getting upset at the Diablo 3 auction house. How times have changed. Anyway nice little API I guess but nothing I would not expect a half competent dev to be able to whip up in an afternoon for their game.
Mod distribution. Has https://www.moddb.com/ exploded while I was not looking?
Security issues. Everybody seems to have these and Steam has had plenty of howlers over the years.
Offline play. That image is out of date it seems as apparently EGS has had it for nearly half a year at this point.
Overlay. Whatever that is both seem to have it.
Paid for exclusives. Again I object to the term exclusive here as it is nothing like it was on consoles -- I can't play my megadrive games on my SNES, an identical PC (give or take the Linux and OSX types) can play the same game though without any extra hardware, subscriptions or radical software changes. Also because every game available on Steam is available on other platforms?
Player count data. Nice to have, and presumably a good tell of how much actual buzz a game has. Not particularly what I would call essential but I can see it being a downside.
Refunds both have, don't know if one is particularly nicer than the other.
Regional pricing. Apparently Epic have something now, though not quite as robust as Steam which is happy to region lock Russian versions for the poor bastards in the Baltics. I can see why it would be a concern to some (not for the purposes of this Shenmue lark) but at the same time secondary markets and all that -- if you are doing it to maybe get a few pennies and tip a few away from the pirate life so that one day when their economies grow up to be big and shiny that they will use you it is a fine plan, though not one I would say waste too much time on right now.
Screenshots. Was there a mass breakage of print screen buttons and capture software when I was not paying attention?
Streaming. Never particularly found it to be great from Steam but I can see why some would care for it, and while I already mentioned some of the OS level stuff from microsoft (RDP is good stuff) I agree MS keeps it a bit gated off from some versions of their OS (probably not those gamers are using as the memory limits of those are probably too low for them but there is scope for it not to be). I don't know what I am particularly suggesting for people here though as in most cases a large HDMI cable does what I need.
Subscription service. Apparently both lack it.
Trading cards then. Are we defending lootboxes now?
Two factor auth. I recall the magic bullet thinking that led to 2fa becoming popular the other year. I would not say leave it but I am not going to decry its absence here either. That said apparently they do have it, and even offered a nice little $10 voucher to incentivise people to use it.
Universal controller support. So for those that don't use one of the common controllers they have an option. I am not sure what the kids are using these days but is joy2key still going?
User Created Guides. There used to be this little site called gamefaqs...
User Profiles. Is this part of the see and be seen thing?
User Reviews. The initial hubub over the lack of reviews was an interesting one to me. I agree that not housing it inside speaks to a certain approach, and it is not like Steam does not have problems with bad reviews and bad policies on reviews (what was that stuff about deleting reviews mentioning the DRM and activities of the devs outside the games the other week?). However I refer back to the billion games and review sites strewn about the internet and beyond. Apparently it is also to come at some point.
Version rollback support. Most devs have pushed the latest versions for a while now but a lack of this, especially if old versions can be not obtained elsewhere, is something I would note as a negative. I like messing with older versions and playing with glitches, or possibly having it work if support for hardware was dropped or a new update breaks things.
VR support. Is that VR fad still going?
Wish lists. Along with gifting that would be a missed trick.

That would appear to be that picture done. While it did include a few things that both lack I am not sure if it is still cherry picked in some way but I will not assume malice or incompetence here as I lack evidence.

Because you make promises and then back out of it. I'm not sure if you ever had any promises broken to you, specially when you paid for it, but usually that tends to upset people, idk.

On the note of epic store, i'm not a fan of how mr. Sweeney handles his arguments about competition being healthy, while all he does is force a division by buying up exclusive access on his store (timed or not), he's a massive hypocrite at best.
If his store is so great for developers / publishers, whatever gets the biggest cut, then why don't they go to that store voluntarily, instead of having to be bought?

I believe they call it opportunity cost, something Epic also seems to be willing to pay for (the whole make up the difference thing). Not to mention if it is "exclusive" to them then people don't have the easy option -- have you ever just bought something on Amazon or whatever rather than going to the vendor's own site despite the vendor probably being cheaper? Same deal.

 

[Ericthegreat]

Yes, and again, a pharmacy doesn't change your prescription, your doctor does.

Again, I'm not saying your wrong, but no it is harder for people to go to another pharmacy, then for you to do a 3 minute download. (Again you are correct, this is bs that now you have to have another store installed)

 

[spectral]

Again, I'm not saying your wrong, but no it is harder for people to go to another pharmacy, then for you to do a 3 minute download. (Again you are correct, this is bs that now you have to have another store installed)

But people don't want the launcher on their PC. Rightfully or not they don't trust it. They bought a product with the understanding that it would work with software they do trust(again rightfully or not). Now they can't use the game they paid for without installing something they believe is spyware(their claims not mine).

 

[Bimmel]

Would anyone who actually backed this game want a refund at this point if the Epic thing wasn't a very serious issue for them?

Yes. Since I knew the story needed 2-3 more games to finish I wanted a refund.

 

[FAST6191]

But people don't want the launcher on their PC. Rightfully or not they don't trust it. They bought a product with the understanding that it would work with software they do trust(again rightfully or not). Now they can't use the game they paid for without installing something they believe is spyware(their claims not mine).

Question at this point.

If Steam is a third party in all this, and not one where you are effectively guaranteed/assured a spot (or better yet spot at a decent deal for you) then even if it were not something I could write off as a minor thing (again same game, same PC, no subscription, no dongle, no major software overhaul necessary) would that be something to consider in all this?

Or if you prefer I am writing a new novel. I say once it is done I will submit it to [insert world leading book publisher] for consideration. If they give me unfavourable terms though, or indeed their rival gives me better, and I pull out of that one then are you in a position to be terribly upset? You are still getting my vision of a novel, that you presumably thought enough of to back at the time.

 

[spectral]

Question at this point.

If Steam is a third party in all this, and not one where you are effectively guaranteed/assured a spot (or better yet spot at a decent deal for you) then even if it were not something I could write off as a minor thing (again same game, same PC, no subscription, no dongle, no major software overhaul necessary) would that be something to consider in all this?

Or if you prefer I am writing a new novel. I say once it is done I will submit it to [insert world leading book publisher] for consideration. If they give me unfavourable terms though, or indeed their rival gives me better, and I pull out of that one then are you in a position to be terribly upset? You are still getting my vision of a novel, that you presumably thought enough of to back at the time.

The difference is without installing software they believe is unsafe they can't use the product. Whereas they bought it for software they did think was safe. Just because to you and actually me, it's a minor thing. That doesn't mean it is to everyone. People really believe the epic launcher is spying on them.

 

[FAST6191]

People really believe the epic launcher is spying on them.

Is this the same line of thought that led to that kinect thing the other year?

 

[spectral]

Is this the same line of thought that led to that kinect thing the other year?

And how easily people are ready to believe the Huawei, Kaspersky BS when someone in government has beef with whatever country pisses then off at the time. At the moment people are being told China is bad and spying on us, a chinese company has a large stake in Epic so therefore epic is spying.

 

[Armadillo]

I can see why some would enjoy the features Valve provides. Consider my words here an open invitation for anybody that cares to sell me on why Valve's, usually pretty easily replicated, efforts are indeed so valuable as to have their absence noted in all this.

Why? Why do people need to "sell you" on them? Other people find value enough in them for it to be noted as a problem with the Epic launcher for them. Why can't you just accept you place a different value on them to others? Instead of constantly "tell me why" just so you can say "easily replicated" not a big deal.

That said I am still at something of a loss for why people want to go after Epic.

Really? Still. After people constantly telling you why. You are a still at a loss? Really? Sure disagree with their reasons, claim it's not a big deal, but still at loss, really?

So GOG have further restrictions on top of nominally being DRM free. Don't see what that has to do with the abstract concept being contemplated.

Not just gog. Who sells digital stuff and permits you to resell then?

Not just "they can't stop me" because it's drm free, who actually lets you sell it properly then. So you sell it and lose access to the original, same as selling a physical copy.