That, and not being able to compete on pricing with on-line giants (Amazon et al) and the Walmart juggernaut.
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That’s also true.
No Steam. No Deal.
Interesting thought… since Gearbox is a publisher now, what if they created their own launcher?
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Pardon my ignorance but… when was this?!
it really is unfortunate but I think if enough outcry happens there’s possibility of change although very slight the people that made the game will notice, sadly gearbox being a publisher won’t have anything to do with it as 2k already have publishing rights to the borderlands franchise but it really is sad to see the direction in which my favorite game series is going I grew up playing it on console and now I might have to go back to doing the same I don’t want to support a company like epic games so much so that I would rather spend an extra 300$ to get a ps4 pro and buy the game on that.
Its not an issue of storefront loyalty. Its the exclusivity for the most part. We don’t care that its on Epic. We care about it ONLY being on Epic. It’s the practices Epic used to get that Exclusivity on this game and a few other recent titles claiming its to be competitive with steam when reality is they are trying to increase their user base without actually competing with steam. It’s that this decision is literally the opposite of what they claimed to be aiming for awhile back when it was stated they wanted the games to be more widely available.
They could have easily launched this on 9/13 on steam and epic and nearly everyone would be happy. Or launched it on every digital distribution platform and only had to deal with the people that insist on having a physical disk. (These people exist. I remember all the complaints on Fallout76 over PC “physical copy” being a case with a cardboard disc that had the product code on it.)
The only times honestly nowadays that exclusivity on video game titles seems to be acceptable is when it’s essentially a first party title. Examples like Mario, Metroid, Zelda, etc being on Nintendo’s systems. If epic made an entirely new and amazing Unreal Tournament game using their most recent engine and had it as an exclusive on their store, I doubt there would be too much said on that because it was their title to begin with.
Imagine if Microsoft or Sony had struck a similar deal to have it exclusive on their console for the first 6 months and how much that would blow up with the fan base.
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I think since 2016.
http://www.gearboxpublishing.com/
They’re fairly new to the publishing game.
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While I understand and appreciate the gesture I do not think that pulling the guides you guys worked so hard on and are recognized for to help out other players is exactly the kind of boycott to go for when really all you are doing is punishing the players who are interested in BL2.
I think it is a separate issue. BL2 and even BL1 (if anybody pulled guides from there) guides should not have to be affected all because PC gamers are angry that it is an Epic store exclusive or whatever. If people are going to pull their guides over something like that then that reeks of “first world problems” but that is just my two cents.
Regardless thanks to a lot of people’s help with their guides over the years I have visited here I wouldn’t mind restoring some of the info that has been lost if more and more people decide to pull their guides.
If you actually want to boycott BL3 then just don’t buy it for a long time or at least until GOTY edition comes out. The sales they make from console version alone will be more than enough to make up their budget.
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At this point it’s not a trend.
Troubled and 3298 have decided that this was going to be their venue of protest. While I will not follow suit, I honour their decision as it gives them something to bite into - even if it means nothing to other members or GBX/2K. It’s an act that means more than simply grousing on this thread or leaving a “thumbs down” on the trailer on YT. It could have an effect - in a way that would be inappropriate for me to expand on though. If nothing else it has caused conversation - and in my opinion, a constructive one. I have always had respect and continue to have respect for these two.
But again, this is not something that you should anticipate as the beginnings of a snowball effect.
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I agree with you there. I wouldn’t have posted on this thread to begin with if I didn’t notice 3298 pulling his gun prefixes guide originally. So I think you guys have certainly caused a stir and some attention from other board members.
The real key is will Gearbox employees take notice? Only time will tell.
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Only response I would say is that for years things were exclusive on Steam and nobody ever complained about that. This is a contrived way to create some “competition” for Steam so they don’t have a runaway monopoly on the computer gaming market.
While I do think it looks like a little fake and see-through I do like the idea of promoting competition and making Steam think a little that they just can’t do whatever they want. I will personally always be for more competition. Especially after Google bought Youtube and how that has been a disaster since then for free speech mostly because there is a lack of competition.
If it were actual competition to steam sure. However can we even call what Epic is doing competition? Basically they’ve openly stated they don’t care about providing service to consumers then gone out of their way to further inconvenience the consumer by throwing money and promises to developers and publishers for exclusivity to high profile titles in an attempt to force people into installing their launcher and inflate their number of accounts most likely for some sort of bragging later or claiming it as a sign of their success at competing with Steam. In the case of Metro I don’t think they ever came out and provided the actual sales numbers for that title and would only tell people that it was “successful”.
Had they actually made a proper effort to compete with steam by at least trying to build a comparable experience for the consumer instead of doing the exact opposite it might not have been as big of an issue. People might have treated it as just having to install another launcher. However they’ve gone the route of doing as little as possible with the service at this point while implementing a rather expensive way to manipulate their platform’s user statistics.
There are other online giants just like there are still retail giants. It takes a good amount of effort for a newcomer to actually compete with them. Damaging your own image while trying to strongarm people into using your service doesn’t sound like a desire to actually compete. It’s just trying to sneak off with the pizza’s until people catch on and stop letting you do so.
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How is this different from any other platform’s exclusives, including Steam and Origin?
How else would you suggest people have a go at breaking Steam’s effective monopoly, other than “have everything better, cheaper, faster and more featured than Steam and hope consumers pick Epic”, which is an actual suggestion I’ve seen people try to make.
“build a comparable experience”, it’s a storefront and a game library. You can buy games, and you can run games. Everything else is just trimming, and expecting a new product - even with a lot of development time - to offer the same investment as a platform some of us have been using for over a decade is just naive.
I don’t use Steam for achievements, for its Market, or even for modding (though that’s a big one, for sure). I use Steam to run the games I’ve bought on it, and in some cases run the games Valve have prevented me from buying anywhere else, in any other way.
Criticise Epic. But stop pretending Valve haven’t done any strong-arming of themselves over the years. All you’re doing is helping them retain a monopoly, which is about as anti-consumer as it gets.
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I would call it forced, contrived competition similar to how a government might step in to control a monopoly although that is being a bit too dramatic. I would have preferred it to be on steam myself I was heavier into PC gaming (getting it on console regardless) so I can understand the anger for people who just have PC gaming and nothing else.
My whole point was I am not one to forget the early days of Steam which had MAJOR hiccups and problems in the early going and they could afford screw ups because they were still in a relatively new space. The problem with Epic is that they now have a standard they have to live up to with Steam which has been established for MANY years now.
Also you can’t compare the two at this point in time really since Epic Store was released in December 2018… literally 3 months ago. The comparison between the two is ridiculous right off the bat. So nobody can ever dare challenge Steam forever and ever?
Final point… didn’t hear anybody ever complain about forced exclusives on Steam for many years for certain games that nobody seemed to bicker about either. It is just another case of people being set in their ways and they don’t like to change their current habits because it requires work and effort. I am guilty of the same thing.
However, I have been a console player for many years and the idea of exclusives is something we are way more used to than PC gamers who probably feel if something is released on PC they should have it on any form of their choice.
Then again knowing know that is a TIMED exclusive I just wouldn’t care anyway and wait it out until it ends and get it on Steam then, that is the perfect time for me to kill my backlog and play other games in the mean time.
I stand by what I said though, people are being overly dramatic and this trend will continue as long as companies shell out the big bucks, since I still have not heard of a good suggestion besides “create a comparable experience to Steam”. The whole idea of competition is to DIFFERENTIATE yourself from you competitors… if you go and try to be like Steam, people are going to see you are copying and just go for the real source instead.
I mean it is like nobody has ever used Origin or GOG.com for games before.
I hope even those who have been disgusted by this Epic Store fiasco end up playing Borderlands 3 somehow if it ends up being a good game because a lot of you guys have invested too much in the community to leave all of a sudden on an anti-climactic note .
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I was there for the early enough days of Steam. The Epic Games Store is in no way a comparable client to what Steam was back then. In that its better, not that it’s worse, hah.
Like I said, the client does a fair enough job. But expecting it to do everything Steam currently does is naive, simply from a software development perspective. I mean, that’s my opinion. I could go into more technical detail (as a software developer) but I’d probably just bore folks 
There are real issues throughout this entire thing. Two companies going to bat with infinite wallets, for example.Valve being so entrenched that this is a valid way to try and shake that up. Epic for being able to throw money at something until it works. Other problems too.
My baseline is simple, though. I like the games. I even like Gearbox. I don’t fault Gearbox for going with the solution that is best for them personally, because financing AAA games is hard. But likewise, I don’t fault consumers for voting with their wallet.
However, when those votes turn into abuse, or harassment, or anything of that kind of thing, that’s when I get on my horse. That’s all.
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Except it’s 2019 and they got the Fortnite money. Also when Steam was released they had no example whatsoever, nowadays there are countless platforms so they know what features to add and how to handle their platform.
No.
Stopped reading there, you sound like EA explaining their scummy business practices.
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Last post, I promise. I’d be ok with Epic/Gbx allowing us to activate our Epic store version on Steam after the 6 months or even a year. Gearbox is that an option?
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Anyone think this will be the first Borderlands that DOES NOT have offline mode?