By Nelson Schneider - 08/18/24 at 04:15 PM CT
It seems like Epic Games, the owner and operator of the Unreal Engine which underpins so many modern “AAA” games, just can’t seem to do anything right when it comes to expanding outside of their wheel house of Middle-Ware Developer. The software house mistakenly thought they were more important than they actually were due to the Early Access PvP mode of their (now canceled) Tower Defense game, “Fortnite” becoming meme fodder and siphoning billions of dollars out of the wallets of Millennials and Zoomers.
As a result, Epic’s executives thought they were in a position to challenge Valve and its digital distribution monopoly in Steam, apparently rationalized by Valve also making a ton of money off a memetic Freemium shooter. Maybe? I dunno. Regardless, Epic transformed its mid-range-annoyance DRM platform from a mere launcher to a full-blown digital storefront for PC games waaay back in the pre-plague year of 2018… a storefront that still sucked in 2021… and, unsurprisingly, still sucks today.
However, Epic CEO, Tim Sweeny, recently opened up in an interview with PC Gamer Magazine about some of the company’s more poorly-received activities. It seems that Epic is not entirely happy with the results of their money-hatting of timed platform exclusives, which often make PC gamers waits a year or more to purchase hotly awaited titles – such as first-party Sony PlayStation ports – from a storefront that isn’t painful to use and unethical to fund. Apparently only a small number of Epic’s paid timed exclusives did anything to drive interest to the platform.
On the other hand, Sweeny does seem to be quite pleased with Epic’s weekly game giveaway, describing it as a far better investment than Facebook ads or Google search manipulation… but that’s honestly a pretty low bar to clear. Facebook is a dying platform, desperately struggling to regain any of its former relevance, while Google’s “promoted” search results are just throwing money onto a bonfire since such a large percentage of Internet users block ads, forcing Google into all manner of crazy schemes in an attempt to maintain its status quo when the consumer audience isn’t having it.
So, yeah, it’s unsurprising that throwing a bag of money at an Indie developer or B-tier Eurojank developer in order to give away free copies of their game for a week will obviously drive more word of mouth traffic amongst the target audience than advertising on Grandma’s social media and an increasingly irrelevant search/ad platform. However, I still don’t think Sweeny is getting as much of a return as he’s insinuating. I’ve tried to claim every free Epic giveaway game since they started doing it. However, I admit that after years of such giveaways, the resultant digital swag pile I’ve accumulated is so bland, uninspiring, and depressing that I’ve recently started forgetting to check what’s free each week (part of that has been due to the MJ Crew’s excessively irregular online sessions that just so happened to fall on Thursdays, when Epic’s giveaway refreshes). I mean, just look at this list of the crap they’ve been shoveling… It’s the embodiment of flavor-of-the-day Indie trash… which I suppose does mesh well with Epic’s own focus on meme fodder.
Sadly, in spite of the fact that the top man at Epic fully admits that timed exclusives weren’t a great investment the company is STILL doing it, with “World of Goo 2,” the sequel to 2D Boy’s breakout 2008 Puzzle game, being the latest casualty in Epic’s one-sided war against Steam. The old Einstein quote about insanity being repeating the same thing over and over, but expecting different results seems applicable here. As does a reference to Don Quixote (or Donkey Trumpy) screaming about windmills.
