Total War Saga: Troy launches exclusively on Epic, will be given away free on first day of release

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Another game is headed to the Epic Games Store as an exclusive. Total War series spinoff game Total War Saga: Troy will be available only through Epic for a full year, and if you manage to open the Epic Games Launcher on the day of the game's release, you'll be able to claim the game, for free. Total War Saga: Troy will be given away for its first 24 hours of release. Publisher SEGA stated in the announcement blog that this doesn't mean further Total War games will release as Epic exclusives, but that this latest spinoff is their way of testing how successful limited-time exclusives would be SEGA, and to help broadcast the Total War series to more players across the world. According to the announcement, the funding gained from Epic will help the development of the series in the future, and will allow the studio to expand.

Here it is: A Total War Saga: TROY is an Epic Games Store exclusive for 12 months – and will be available for free if you claim it in the first 24 hours.

That’s right – we’re giving away TROY for free, to keep, as long as you claim it in the 24 hour window!

We’re really excited about TROY, and we’re even more excited that this will give more of you the chance to play and enjoy it than might have had it otherwise. While we know that some of you won’t like the Epic Games Store exclusivity, we feel like this is a great opportunity for us in a lot of ways, and we’re hoping that you’ll take some time to hear us out and for us to answer what some of the questions we think you might have.

First of all: this is an opportunity for TROY specifically, and we have no plans for future games to be Epic exclusives. As developers we truly value our existing fans, but at the same time we want to reach new audiences and have as many people as possible experiencing the thrill of Total War for themselves. As a business that means putting Total War onto new platforms so that it can reach more players. This is part of that and in principal we’d like future Total War titles to be simultaneously available, from launch day, on as many store fronts as possible.

Right now, this is a one-time, one-year exclusive deal for TROY. We’ve always said that Saga titles allow us to experiment, and this is an experiment on a grand scale. TROY seemed like a good game to try this out with, especially as pre-orders aren’t live on Steam yet, so no one’s already put money into a store they’ll have to wait 12 extra months for it to appear on.

So now that’s out the way, here’s a little more backstory. Epic approached us and asked if TROY could be an Epic exclusive, as part of a commercial deal. That’s not to say that we immediately signed on the dotted line, or that money was the only reason that we did this (it’s not!). It was a difficult decision, and you can be assured that there were a lot of differing opinions in the studio, and a lot of discussions about it – which largely focussed on what it would mean for you, the players.

However, ultimately we considered two things. First we’re at a time when we’re looking to invest more into the ongoing development of Total War this felt like an opportunity to really move the franchise forward by getting it in front of more people. Secondly, Epic were paying for our players to have our latest release free on day one. For Total War’s 20th birthday, that felt like an opportunity too good to pass up.

As mentioned, and like others in the industry, a key reason for exploring other digital stores is that we don’t want to be limited just to Steam. We also want to diversify our business. In fact, we want to get our games onto as many stores as possible. Long term, we want to expand where players find Total War. This deal gives us a great way to try out other platforms, such as Epic – to see what works for us and what doesn’t. It allows us to get a feel for the development required to expand to other platforms, and it’s relatively risk-free for you, too, as the game’s available for free when claimed in the first 24 hours.

This opportunity allows expansive back-end infrastructure development that will allow us to expand into multiple stores. That means we can have more resources, push ourselves further, be more creative, make more Total War. We’re always looking to evolve and improve on our games and this deal gives us a lot of ways to do that – as we said, fresh perspectives, money that we’ll be putting back into the studio, new ways to expand.

You might not immediately see a big change, but we’re confident you will over time – and we guarantee there are a lot of things behind the scenes being made possible due to this, which we wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to do. Some of this is long-term – but there are short-term benefits to you, as well as us.

Making it available for free, for everyone to keep, during the first 24 hours – wouldn’t have been possible without this deal.

Finally, we’ve got just one favour to ask – however you feel about this, please keep any criticism to the studio as a whole, and don’t take it out on individual employees that you might find on various social media platforms.). We get it. It’s unexpected. But they’re not going to be able to change anything, and probably weren’t the ones who made the decision regardless.

We really think you’ll love TROY, and hey, it’s free so definitely give it a shot, redeem your 24 hour freebie and enjoy the game. If not, it’ll just be a year until it’s available on Steam. Ultimately, we think that this is good for our players, good for Creative Assembly, and therefore good for Total War.

:arrow: Source
 

Pipistrele

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Epic Games won't succeed, trust me, they don't make a huge amount of sales (proven by Metro Exodus, which was a flop as an epic exclusive, even becoming one of the most pirated games, but then, sales got a lot better when it released on Steam, and that's not an isolated case...).
It was such a flop that it outsold previous two installments on EGS and skyrocketed THQ Nordic's earnings by 500% months before hitting Steam (according to their own data at least).
 

leon315

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Can we appreciate that EPIC buy us free Entertainment? Which nowdays none of greedy companies will do?

Pirating pc games should be considered a very shameful act, it especially discourages our beloved small companies who make good games, if we love that game we all shall pay for it instead steal from them, and who pirate games should really come out from mother's basement and look for a job.
Microtransaction offers boots to those casual players who don't have real life time to grind ingame stuffs, they are good as soon don't create significant impact to avalage game experience, such example we can get from ACTIVISION with WARZONE, all ingame weapons and skins can be earned freely but what if one has no time to grind them? no problem, you can just save time buy them, and those extra don't give advantage over other ''free'' players. And the most important things is: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY MICROTRANSATIONS.
And just to sum up, videogames are just luxury good as they are not as important as foods, if you can afford game at release day, buy it and support ur beloved devs; if you can't afford them then wait for sales. Pirating pc game is just harmful to game company, maybe should you really look for a job?
 
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HRudyPlayZ

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It was such a flop that it outsold previous two installments on EGS and skyrocketed THQ Nordic's earnings by 500% months before hitting Steam (according to their own data at least).
False:
A - It never outsold previous installments on EGS, where the game sold more, most of the sales at the time were on PS4, not PC.
B - THQ Nordic has nothing to do with Metro Exodus, the devs are DeepSilver, and the publisher is 4A, not THQ.
C - The only data we have from the exclusive-era is from EGS themselves... Not a believable source if you ask me.
D - 500%, wrong, way less, at the limit, 50% more. Deep Silver did gain more than Metro: Last Light as it launch, but most of them were from PS4 sales and the game did well, but it did poorly on EGS compared to Steam. Numbers prove it as when the game became available on Steam, 200 000 copies were sold in the first week to first month, which represents a third of Exodus total sales in that period if i remember correctly... This game was also one of the most pirated during it's EGS-Exclusivity, making the total players count a wrong indication of sales. The game did sell more as Last Light became very popular years after it's release, setting the license's fanbase, that means that Exodus had more fans to begin with, compared to Last Light which didn't have that much as the first Metro game wasn't very popular yet...

To more illustrate the fact that Metro Exodus was way more pirated in it's EGS-Era, here's a screenshot of the google trends search for "metro exodus crack download" between the game's announcement and this day, with the release and steam dates added:
KPIT7sj.png


And here are the searches for the different versions of Exodus: PC and PS4, which proves my point:
XkTWvZN.png
 

FAST6191

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People are spoiled by AAA games if anything. AAA games set the standard so high that a completely competent but average game will get bad reviews.
Can I get an invite to your universe if there the big devs don't pump millions into a game only to turn out the most repetitive, inoffensive and bland mush on an annual basis?
 

GenNaz

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The BigBrain:p1ng: move is to just the claim free games with your Epic account and then pirate those games. The developer is still compensated by Epic for your "purchase" and you don't have to download the EGS launcher.
 
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diggeloid

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I wonder what will happen when the CCP stops funding these giveaways. Will any customers remain loyal? Doesn't seem like there's much of a reason to. Epic games launcher could end up like Origin or UPlay: just an annoying third party launcher you keep around to play some games that you own.
 

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False:
A - It never outsold previous installments on EGS, where the game sold more, most of the sales at the time were on PS4, not PC.
B - THQ Nordic has nothing to do with Metro Exodus, the devs are DeepSilver, and the publisher is 4A, not THQ.
C - The only data we have from the exclusive-era is from EGS themselves... Not a believable source if you ask me.
D - 500%, wrong, way less, at the limit, 50% more. Deep Silver did gain more than Metro: Last Light as it launch, but most of them were from PS4 sales and the game did well, but it did poorly on EGS compared to Steam. Numbers prove it as when the game became available on Steam, 200 000 copies were sold in the first week to first month, which represents a third of Exodus total sales in that period if i remember correctly... This game was also one of the most pirated during it's EGS-Exclusivity, making the total players count a wrong indication of sales. The game did sell more as Last Light became very popular years after it's release, setting the license's fanbase, that means that Exodus had more fans to begin with, compared to Last Light which didn't have that much as the first Metro game wasn't very popular yet...

To more illustrate the fact that Metro Exodus was way more pirated in it's EGS-Era, here's a screenshot of the google trends search for "metro exodus crack download" between the game's announcement and this day, with the release and steam dates added:
KPIT7sj.png


And here are the searches for the different versions of Exodus: PC and PS4, which proves my point:
XkTWvZN.png
A) Whether the game sold better on consoles is irrelevant to the topic - the game was still a big success on EGS, which is an opposite of a flop.
B) People in charge of THQ Nordic legally own Koch Media and Deep Silver (by the means of Embracer Group).
C) You don't seem to post any "believable data" yourself, so in that context I'll go with official statistics.
D) See "C".

As for piracy, I wouldn't take it as indication that people "boycotted EGS and flopped their sales" - It's more that a lot of people wanted to play it for free day one, like with pretty much any new release. Heck, I can pick literally any hyped game and get the same results with a large "I wanna pirate it" release spike - here's Animal Crossing one just for fun.

Dunno what the second graph should tell me, since both lines seem to be at similar range.

In any case, the whole argument is kinda off-topic, so with all respect, I won't continue it further.
 
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HRudyPlayZ

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A) Whether the game sold better on consoles is irrelevant to the topic - the game was still a big success on EGS, which is an opposite of flop you said it was.
B) THQ Nordic has nothing to do with Metro Exodus aside of, you know, its bigwigs legally owning Koch Media and Deep Silver (by the means of Embracer Group).
C) You don't seem to post any "believable data" yourself, so in that context I'll go with official statistics.
D) See "C".

As for piracy, I wouldn't take it as indication that people "boycotted EGS and flopped their sales" - It's more that a lot of people wanted to play it for free day one, like with pretty much any new release. Heck, I can pick literally any hyped game and get the same results with a large "I wanna pirate it" release spike - here's Animal Crossing one just for fun.

Dunno what the second graph should tell me, since both lines seem to be at similar range.
A - Where that would be true in most scenarios, that doesn't work here, as the official stats only provide vague infos on the total number of sales (which might not be accurate obviously but let's consider it is), we don't know how much sales EGS made.
But as we know a lot of sales were made on PS4 and XBONE, we can deduce approximately how much was made from Epic in that era, which is not much compared to other platforms. It's not the fact that they game wasn't popular (which it is), it's the fact that the game sold way less on Epic compared to Steam, which can be easily proved and verified by Steam's sales number on Exodus, which was around 200 000 units in the first week, aka. what Epic made in a few month was achieved in a few days by Steam, pretty much. And on a scale that big, it means that Epic didn't sell that well.

B - THQ doesn't own Deep Silver, it was a sister company, and even then, THQ made much more money from Darksiders and Saints Row games (especially the first to The Third, which were published by them) than they did with Metro.

C - I did, see D and A
D - I already mentioned the steam sales number in my previous post and in A, but here it goes again, 200 000 units in a week, where we don't have any unbiaised sales number on Epic, Steam sales, or atleast steam searches can be easily verified. We just know that the 200 000 units number is the number of real sales made on Steam. Another important data to look at is the game's searches in general, which can be found here , with that, you would notice that the game had a resurgence in popularity around the time when it came to Steam, although not being really accurate as this data also includes all the news articles talking about Metro Exodus, it can give an estimation on how much people cared for the game at a specific time... I would agree that Google Trends is pretty inaccurate, not taking into consideration the searches made directly on the PSStore, Microsoft Store and others, while also including news articles in it but atleast it can give us a direction.
Where it is normal for newer games to have a lot of searches for cracks, it isn't normal for them to stay heavily downloaded on crack sites. I do agree that the unzoomed spikes look similar, but if you zoom closer, you can pretty much see that the ps4 searches are almost always on top and sometimes even double, and that's even without taking into consideration that most of the searches for ps4 games are made on the PSStore.


I can also pretty much say that most of the Epic users won't buy games on the platform, compared to Steam.
I mean how much of "users" would stay if Epic removed Fortnite and the free games (even removing them from your library, just imagine for a second)? Not a lot. Like pretty much none or so low that the store wouldn't be able to continue anyways... EGS doesn't lead to consumers spending their money, it's mostly used for free, unreal engine or the f-game.
 

FAST6191

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I wonder what will happen when the CCP stops funding these giveaways. Will any customers remain loyal? Doesn't seem like there's much of a reason to. Epic games launcher could end up like Origin or UPlay: just an annoying third party launcher you keep around to play some games that you own.
Is the hurdle getting them back or getting them there in the first place? If the giveaways get people to make an account then sign in and go, if they also have to take 5 minutes including a confirmation email to sign up (see any number of studies or reasons why guest checkout is a thing nowadays) then that is a different matter.

If they can continue to offer discounts on games afterwards then... someone was buying those games at gamestop $2 less than full retail.

That said having read their engine contract and seeing what the current one can do in that demo the other week I don't think they will be out of money any time soon.
 

diggeloid

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Is the hurdle getting them back or getting them there in the first place? If the giveaways get people to make an account then sign in and go, if they also have to take 5 minutes including a confirmation email to sign up (see any number of studies or reasons why guest checkout is a thing nowadays) then that is a different matter.

If they can continue to offer discounts on games afterwards then... someone was buying those games at gamestop $2 less than full retail.

That said having read their engine contract and seeing what the current one can do in that demo the other week I don't think they will be out of money any time soon.


Well getting them there doesn't seem like it'd be hard for Epic to do without giveaways. Just like EA and Ubisoft use their AAA games to force people to register, they did the same with Fortnite. Sure, you can't exactly compare EGS with Origin and UPlay since the latter two mainly just exist to sell a single publisher's games, but the reluctance to leave Steam is very real.


And while I doubt they will run out of money any time soon, giveaways are simply unsustainable, especially since their profit margins are so low compared to the competition. Steam's 30% cut gives them a huge advantage even if EGS has more customers than them. Epic's product is less profitable, has less customers, less features, and (probably) little or no customer loyalty. Common sense says they're fucked, and shouldn't have even survived this long. If Winnie the Pooh cuts their ties with them, they're probably going to kill the store.
 

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There are plenty of stores that linger on and still get stuff done, and have done for years. Pare things back and overheads are not the worst.

"giveaways are simply unsustainable"
Yeah if you want to break into a saturated market, much less one that is already under a monopoly, you advertise your way in, whilst making a viable product. It is an expensive hobby but you hope to have enough share to break even before you run out of runway/funding for it.
Equally are we expecting the Chinese will, be it political or capital, to dissipate any time soon? I know they have the lack of building and inverted population pyramid crisis to come but if the prize is major player, possibly even control, of a media format that most of the rest of media is scared of then that sits well within the China long game they seem to be going in for all over the shop.
 

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I know there's an unspoken rule of never comparing Steam to social media or claim that it's one, but I really feel like doing it now. Steam is social media and this really looks like when people started moving to facebook, there was already a nicely-working and popular social media in my country, Orkut. Almost everyone got mad at first. In the end the amount of dollars that is put in a platform decides the outcome. It's hard to compete with money even if it's just about a website's implementation. I kinda hope the Chinese win this one, not because they are better people, but because there's no impression of "purity" surrounding them as there is around Steam in it's users perspective. All the while both are equally evil, using proprietary software to distribute DRM'ed software and spying on their users.
 
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Pretty sure no one would mind at this point thanks to all the free AAA games they've been throwing at us already.
anyone without a brain would mind

epic can keep their free games

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

It was such a flop that it outsold previous two installments on EGS and skyrocketed THQ Nordic's earnings by 500% months before hitting Steam (according to their own data at least).
Yes it was still very much a flop.

Selling better then other games doesn't make you successful.

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

Can we appreciate that EPIC buy us free Entertainment? Which nowdays none of greedy companies will do?


Pirating pc games should be considered a very shameful act, it especially discourages our beloved small companies who make good games, if we love that game we all shall pay for it instead steal from them, and who pirate games should really come out from mother's basement and look for a job.
Microtransaction offers boots to those casual players who don't have real life time to grind ingame stuffs, they are good as soon don't create significant impact to avalage game experience, such example we can get from ACTIVISION with WARZONE, all ingame weapons and skins can be earned freely but what if one has no time to grind them? no problem, you can just save time buy them, and those extra don't give advantage over other ''free'' players. And the most important things is: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY MICROTRANSATIONS.
And just to sum up, videogames are just luxury good as they are not as important as foods, if you can afford game at release day, buy it and support ur beloved devs; if you can't afford them then wait for sales. Pirating pc game is just harmful to game company, maybe should you really look for a job?
Good laugh thanks
 

Pipistrele

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Yes it was still very much a flop.
Selling better then other games doesn't make you successful.
Being the best-sold game in the series kinda does though. The game outdid its predecessors, publishers were satisfied, investors didn't seem to complain, and EGS liked it enough to push forward with more exclusivity deals, so it was definitely not a flop, no matter how much wishful thinking and flimsy Google trends data some may want to apply to it.
 
Last edited by Pipistrele,

FAST6191

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This failure or not debate has me curious.

Would not being on Steam have some depressive effect on sales numbers?
I would not doubt it. The cult of Steam is strong, not to mention general consumer desire to convenience, and enough people seem to consider Epic the absolute worst for some reason they seldom can elaborate well upon.
Some would also likely turn to piracy instead. Numbers here are hard to gauge both in terms of raw download numbers and expected dent (age groups, technical inclinations of playerbase, ease of methods at a given time, market competition, reviews, ease of use of copy, being a single player vs serial tied online... factoring into things for this one)
A game coming to Steam a year later (also around the time we usually get game of the year/gold editions with DLC/expansion packs and bugfixes, maybe also a price drop/sale) seeing a surge in sales is also not unexpected. I don't know what profit models will be in use by the pubs here either.

If companies of that size (and I presume legal capability -- you don't tend to have a corporate structure like the embracer group without a lawyer in house or many thousands of hours per whatever retainer contract at a big law firm, and likewise would hopefully not have gone in for a 3 game deal or anything right off the hop if you have that kind of catalogue and potential) went back for more then that is a strong showing that it, or at least the general ecosystem, works for them and at least something of merit happened.

At the same time Epic are clearly playing the long game. There are many ways to take a shot at the king and slow build to an unstoppable monster by splashing a lot of cash around the place is one of those. If I am allowed to continue mixing expressions then to create an omelette you tend to have to break a few eggs, and if your egg layers are happy enough with the scenario then great. You can hope for the overnight victory but have a reasonable plan and stick to it is the thing most go in for.
 

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