Arachnarok_Rider: The way I see it, nobody has chosen Epic Store because they wanted to give the consumers a better product or because it's a great place for consumers to get their games. In every case it is because Epic is dangling a lot of money in front of devs as well as a greater revenue ratio. This has not lead to developers reducing prices or anything like that, though. The conclusion is fairly obvious.

Devs are entitled to make that choice. But as a consumer, it pisses me off when developers take me for granted to the extent that they think they can metaphorically take a dump in my face and still expect me to give them my money.

Why such strong language? Because Epic Store is rubbish at the moment. It's a feature-starved mess where finding the game you want is difficult and everything about it is in flux. I suspect that DD signed the deal at a time where the Epic Store refund policy was essentially "piss off". Are Epic GDPR compliant? I suspect DD didn't even ask.

Any developer who insists that their customers must be subjected to that kind of rubbish clearly do not care the slightest about their customers. They clearly take sales for granted.

I don't know about everybody else, but personally I am sick of that mentality. There isn't a game good enough for me to suffer that kind of attitude. Life just isn't long enough.

Det_Bullock: They are also a small indie studio, I doubt they swim in money and probably having some more financial security in exchange for a timed exclusive was extremely difficult to turn down for them.

Arachnarok_Rider: That is certainly very conceivable and I can sympathize with that position. And like I said, devs are entitled to make whatever choices they think will benefit them or their company. I'm not saying that they should not make the best decisions they can.

But their decision also involved pushing customers towards a terrible store, promoting said rubbish store, and promiting whatever practices that store decides on, which we still don't really know for sure what will be. Sure, Epic has made some promises but nothing prevents them from changing their minds.

And they're doing this with zero compensation for their customers. Not even an apology for pushing us towards what was then and is still a complete garbage heap of a store. They're seeing a better revenue split but that does not translate into a better price, does it? Or a "thank you for putting up with fucking Epic" free piece of DLC? Nope.

Epic wins on this, DD wins on this, and the consumers get to pay for it. As usual.

By the way, I know of precisely one store that has been pushing a consumer friendly approach. And it sure isn't the one DD took money from in their exclusivity deal. More competition for Steam also means more competition for GOG. Would you be happy if Epic pushes GOG out of the market? I bet DD wouldn't mind.

Det_Bullock: that small developers forced by big shot corporations and market forces bigger than them to do these choices

ERISS: That's bad for the game, if they had to do this choice. It means they badly managed their project.

Det_Bullock: When you are that small "mismanagement" may mean you couldn't work for a week because you got the flu at 39° and couldn't literally get up from your bed thus falling behind schedule, DD ain't swimming in money like CIG and are incredibly small (they ain't doing VR because they have only that one engineer and VR gives him nausea, for crying out loud!), even if they are on schedule and managed anything to perfection shit may still happen and some safety margin is always welcome.

Arachnarok_Rider: I work for a small (non game) developer myself. And some times you have to bite down in a turd sandwhich, absolutely. But we do our best to be helpful to our customers and when we cannot, we apologise to them.

What we don't do is tell one customer that he's shit out of luck because some vendor paid us a ton of money to use an inferior software as foundation for what we do, and therefore the customer can either piss off or enjoy whatever we decide to let him buy. And that's pretty much exactly what DD said in their press statement.

RafaelRamus: I do have games on Steam - even some that are available on GoG now - but many of those I consider to be GoG's fault because I had no way to know it would eventually be available here DRM-Free.