• Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca
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    12 hours ago

    Some of us have already been burned by EPIC and we aren’t going back.

    A decade ago, I was playing a game called Paragon that was being “beta” tested via EPIC. (I would say it was an alpha release because there were SOOOO many changes to gameplay and map, no sane person would consider it a BETA test.) Steve Superville was in charge. Early iterations were pretty sweet, match length could go 40-60 minutes because there were lots of mechanics that could dramatically shift the flow of a match. This is because the game was being designed as a MOBA, and it was a true MOBA. As someone who enjoys strategy and MOBAs, the early product was amazing.

    Then the bean counters entered and forced production to reduce map size because they felt a 40-60 minute match was too long, despite no one from the community complaining about it. The bean counters forced more map shrinkage in an attempt to make the game play more like a brawler, when it was clearly not. They were just trying to ride the overwatch hype train because brawlers were successful at the time. Eventually Steve Superville was forced out of the project and they brought in Donald Mustard, because he was willing to turn the project into a pay to win riddled with microtransactions piece of trash.

    These corporate bean counters alienated their entire customer base and acted surprised when the product failed. The best part is that while it was in BETA, they were fucking charging money for skins. When they closed the product you couldn’t get a cash refund for the skins you bought. You got refunded in credits you could spend on their other products. I was alpha testing Fortnite at this time too. It was a plants/zombies type game with building. When they axed paragon, they rolled tons of those assets into fortnite, and redesigned the whole product to mimic PubG, because they wanted to ride the PubG hype train. No way was I willing to accept anything less than a cash refund for what I spent while I was beta testing their product.

    Epic’s corporate overlords don’t have an original thought rattling around in their collective heads. Their entire business model is to flail around, copy anything that seems remotely successful with a reskin, and hope it sticks. Not even free products will convince me to download their laucher, or anything they put their mierdas touch on. /rant

    • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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      7 hours ago

      Some of us have already been burned by EPIC and we aren’t going back.

      First they took Linux support away from my Rocket League and then completely away from Steam. I don’t know how the current state is, but that was a huge burn for me. There are and were other issues too, this is just the one I am most angry about.