Epic Games quickly appeared on gamers’ radars with the rise of Fortnite and has been trying to compete against Steam. due to Valve investing tons of money on dedicated servers so they won’t overload when a new release comes out, having a huge variety of games, and already having big games of their own like Team Fortress 2 and the Half Life series. However, Epic has a plan to slowly rise to that number one spot which involves making deals and luring developers to make their games exclusives on the Epic store.
Metro Exodus was the first game to be an exclusive on the Epic Games Store and fans were not happy. The deal was announced by the publisher just two weeks the release. Those who pre-ordered before the announcement still received the game in their library, but those who were about to after the announcement or planning to get it after the release date got shafted. Epic Games later said that Metro Exodus on the Epic Games Store outsold Metro Last Light, a prior Metro game. However, this isn’t strong evidence for the success of the strategy because the Metro series is kind of niche, and the main reason Metro Exodus sold well on Epic was because of the publicity it was getting from the situation.
Borderlands 3 is the most recent game to be snatched by Epic. Unlike Metro Exodus they announced this a few weeks after Borderlands 3 was revealed, but fans were still upset over this. On Steam, fans decided to review bomb prior Borderlands games, flooding them with negative reviews.
This was a bad move on the community’s part because it was giving Randy Pitchford, the CEO of Gearbox a better reason why Epic was better then Steam, saying that the review system is being abused. I don’t blame them because it is the only other thing they can do besides talk about it on Reddit or other forums, but it doesn’t help them, overall it’s kind of a waste of time.
All the Borderlands games got hit with negative comments and replies for a few days. The reviews are back to normal, but people still believe that spamming bad reviews is going to bring their game to the Steam store. Randy Pitchford went on Twitter and talked about why Borderlands 3 belongs on Epic’s store, and how he is willing to take the risk. Pitchford is confident that the future for Borderlands and other Gearbox releases “will be best served if the Epic Game Store a) exists, and b) is competitive.” Randy also mentioned how in the next decade, Steam “may look like a dying store,” and “has no interest in correcting this misuse” in regards to the review system. He continues with the comment on review bombing by saying that he is happy with Borderlands publisher 2K Games’ decision to switch over to Epic.
Neither game will be trapped in Epic’s grasp forever. Borderlands 3 will be releasing in April 2020 on all platforms, and Metro Exodus will arrive on Steam on February 14. It is possible Steam will lose the race, but that won’t happen anytime soon. Steam is too big to be taken down. Only having two exclusives is not enough to make players switch clients. Not to mention the criticisms from players against Epic in the past about them not complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws. Plus, the cringey reputation Epic has with Fortnite and its community, which primarily is a child-based audience, which can turn away older gamers.
There is a chance that gamers will switch to the Epic Games Store, but what Epic is doing to achieve that is annoying and pissing off gamers.
Image Credit: Gearbox/GameRant
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