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.

  • msage@programming.devEnglish
    442·
    4 months ago

    I am always suprised that people expected anything differently.

    Epic was from the start doing things the wrong way, and I will not support any store that has exclusives.

    Making a good gaming platform that could rival Steam would take A LOT of time and money and dare I say - no company is willing to lose that for a chance of one day perhaps being only slightly worse competitor that still can’t convince people to migrate.

    • ivanafterall ☑️@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      4 months ago

      There are only a few companies that could even hope to take on Valve, at this stage. The likes of EA and others. But by definition, their company culture means they’ll never be able to take on Valve.

      Someone else made a comment about what will happen when Gabe steps down and I suddenly realize what a short-term golden age we’re likely living in, even with all the bullshit.

    • Tamo240@programming.dev
      English
      7·
      4 months ago

      Making a platform that was simply a copy of all of Steam’s features would certainly take a lot of time. That’s why to break into the space a new platform would need to actually innovate a killer feature that brings early adopters to it even without having all the bells and whistles Steam has. Then the user base can and will grow as you fill in the gaps so the ‘sacrifice’ of using your platform is lessened.

      All exclusive games do is build resentment in your customers at being forced to use an inferior product.