Its a fucking joke dude.  Lighten up Francis.

Do you live in a vacuum?

yes officer, this is the post.

And what practice is that, exactly?

Is it any competition to the beloved Steam or is it buying exclusives to make their platform stand out? If it’s the former, tough shit, get over it. If it’s the latter, uh...yeah, tough shit, get over it. They’re building their business and their brand, you don’t have to like it, but…

Hey, remember when Steam was the brand new thing, and everyone was screaming their fool heads off that it was the end of the world, having to register your games online, not getting the game in the box & just getting a code, when you were forced to install Steam to play Half-Life 2, and they were buying exclusives?

This is totally my fault:

Nothing’s going to prove the value of Steam as a store more than abusing its user review system and proving yet again that Valve has no more than a handful of people dedicated to taking care of it and preventing this kind of abuse of its systems.

This is what blows me away. I’ve never seen this much crowd support for a monopoly in my life. You can’t expect Epic to have the same games as Steam and compete with them. And this is a TIMED exclusive. And a short one. Good Christ. 

WAHHHHHH EXCLUSIVITY IS BULLSHIT

It’s a six month deal. Seriously if you’re disdain for loading a different program besides Steam is more intense than your love for the game you for some reason can’t play then I don’t know what to tell you. Like, I get it. We all have our hills we die on. But like, I just don’t get it. At all. You do you though. 

I always liked PvZs parodies of them,

To me, this feels like the definition of increased competition. Publishers are the customers here, and Epic is only getting exclusive deals because they have a more competitive offering: taking a lower cut of revenue (12% vs. 30%). Publishers would not agree to exclusivity if Epic was offering the same old 70/30…

Exclusives are a way of creating competition between storefronts. Epic has drawn a line in the sand labeled 12% and now expects Steam to step up if they want games to be drawn back to their storefront. 30% is an INSANE royalty rate and they only got away with it because there wasn’t an alternative. Now there is.

I feel like it really underlines how lost Bioware has been after Muzyka and Zeschuk left in 2011 I think? There’s been an obvious drop in quality, and every problem you hear about just screams lack of a coherent vision and leadership from the top.

I would love to ask him all about it, but EA/BioWare declined my requests for an interview with him or anyone else on the leadership team.

Jason, I’ve been a developer on more than one of these types of monolithic ambitious-but-aimless projects that eventually lurches over the finish line (late). You’ve gone through months (or years) of very real suffering to get it to that point, and when it arrives, you’re embarrassed at what’s been put out. It’s…

I am a software developer in a non gaming industry. I am glad I didn’t follow my dreams as a game dev when I read articles like these. It seems that management in the gaming industry hasn’t come far enough and is composed of entirely inept leaders who were basically the crunching devs of yore when games weren’t…

I’ve been waiting for the Schreier breakdown of how this fell apart far more than the game itself.

Sorry, couldn’t find a book about Lore. Will a book about Data do?