I always appreciate new competition in the gaming market, but a part of me also gets pissed off when I realize that these companies are damaging the gaming industry as a whole by spreading out too many exclusive games on too many platforms. It's getting to the point where you need to download a handful of gaming clients just to play the bulk of your collection. The whole point of PC gaming is to streamline the gaming experience on one simple platform. This feels very much like having to download multiple 'consoles' on to your PC in order to play the games in your collection. Granted these programs don't actually cost you money to download, so it's not a perfect comparison, but it's annoying none the less. I actually can't stand buying games from Steam due to their DRM restrictions, but I'm still glad they exist, because they have done a lot for PC gaming in general. That being said, I really don't want to see any more digital distributors popping up in the near future. The market is fine just the way it is.

I also played it a little and I too did not see the appeal of playing that game at all.

I don't think that they are going to making a sequel to Fortnite, just because of how successful it has been and the amount of money that they are making. The reason for this is that they have a formula that they have gotten down to a science, which is release a new season, that adds new features, skins, and weapons, just when people are leaving the game then rinse and repeat this pattern.

I don't know about a sequel, but I know they've released some kind of cooperative survival thing, so I could see them doing another similar spin off.
To be honest I seem to remember requiring some kind of Epic Account (or at least being encouraged to make one) when I tried Fortnite, so even that might be enough to get some people moving in the right direction.

I can certainly see this being more successful then most of the other stores.

What if, just maybe, Fortnite was just a ploy to get people to create their Epic games accounts?

If so, then, holy shit that is some serious long-term planning on their part (that or I am giving them to much credit here).

Also didn't the Co-Op came out first, when the game was released, and that wasn't really successful at all to begin with. Like as soon Epic saw that people were only playing their battle royale version of the game, they just abandoned the Co-Op version and just focus all of their energy on the other.

Apparently the store won't have any sort of forums attached to it, and may not even have reviews: https://kotaku.com/the-guy-behind-steam-spy-has-been-working-on-epics-stor-1830890162

I find it somewhat telling that companies doing shady shit that pisses off their customers think it's more beneficial to remove feedback platforms than to change their crappy business practices that cause such uproar in the first place.

You're giving them too much credit. Fortnite BR was a last ditch effort to make back some of the cash they wasted on Fortnite proper, it blew up astronomically and now they're trying to capitalize on that popularity while it lasts.

They only did the battle royale mode because the core game failed spectacularly, then somebody went "but we have all these assets already made and BRs are the hot thing right now.." and voila. It was never planned. Similar thing happened to Paragon, that game was like three different games throughout it's life. All MOBAs but still.

It's smart, you gotta give them that. Either their gambit works and they salvage enough to break even (or turn a profit if the cards are good to them) or they're really not out that much considering the millions they just spent to make the game in the first place.

True, true, I am probable giving them too much credit on this. I am pretty sure they were really surpise to see how much they were making off this game mode that was not planned at all.

This is what is going to kill this new store. The reason for this is that a lot of gamers that are looking to buy a new game looks at the reviews games get off of the store's page for that game because they want to see what their fellow gamers feel about a game. And has Galyonkin looked at the other subreddits that is not the Fortnite one, a lot of them get toxic as hell and not all gamers use Reddit or Discord. Also, if the developers are good they look at the reviews that people leave them and try to address them. So, why does he think that user-made reviews are bad in the first place on their platform? Oh right, Fortnite is going to be on there.

Also, did he just admitted to corportate espionage in the article?

No regional pricing too in mine. Steam beats all other stores at this.

ADD: according to https://twitter.com/galyonkin/status/1070023347877101568 it will be added later. Another potential handicap to GOG.

maybe due to reviews being often misused by players with axes to grind, and using them to "get back" at the developer
for some reason? or to push an agenda? Steam reviews are pure cancer. most of them are jokes, or ascii art masterpieces

This is not competition. This is pseudo-console(client) exclusives on PC. For the clients to be competing you'd need for all games to be on all clients. If this happens you'll have GOG that stands out with its optional client and its DRM free games on one side and a bunch of DRM clients on the other side. I mean we already have that. I personally don't plan on installing a brand spanking new DRM client on my PC. For me this EPIC sham is dead in the water.

It might be good in the sense that if they refuse steam games on their shop and devs want to be there more might develop games independently again (i.e. without stuff that requires steam to even run) and have an easier time releasing them here as well down the line. Thats the only good thing I can envision as a customer; otherwise it looks like just another online drm shop like steam/origin/whatever UBI Soft calls their thing.

No forums, no reviews, no buy. :)

The ones on GOG are okay. If enough users who are verified buyers write them and you pay attention to the text instead of only looking at the rating I think they are quite useful. But then I never looked at a Steam review.

I do not agree. Gog is the best platform but the market can not have so many platforms. Unfortunately the weakest platform is gog, and I do not think that in the medium term it can survive being steam and the epic platform.

Recall that gog is not a platform that at this time of great benefits. Also you can not charge 30 percent for each game sold or it will be finished.

Luckily the games are without drm and when gog disappears we will have our games.

This is competition and the great harmed is gog.