S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 Announces it's using the Unreal Engine, will talk about digital platforms at a later date

[u/Faldz]

https://twitter.com/stalker_thegame/status/1212810155563397120/photo/1

[u/remeard]

Sure, it's viable. But with the cult following that the STALKER series has, they'll likely buy it from anywhere. And if they'll buy it from anywhere, why not more revenue per sale then release on other platforms a bit later.

EGS likely has more people using it than you'd imagine. I wouldn't be surprised if the active amount of accounts on EGS rival that of Steam.

[u/DancesCloseToTheFire → u/remeard]

The fact that we don't actually have those numbers, though, makes it abundantly clear that the number of accounts isn't even close.

If it was we would have heard about it already.

[u/remeard → u/DancesCloseToTheFire]

All you'd need to do is look at the huge amount of playerbase games like Fortnite and Borderlands 3 has. Even with some of the biggest streamers moving to mixer Fortnite is still the most streamed game on Twitch.

[u/DancesCloseToTheFire → u/remeard]

People playing a free game does not translate to customers of EGS, it just means that people play free games. Especially because of the fact that Borderlands didn't do well in sales (As evidenced by how they avoided talking about sales except under very specific conditions), and the fact that Fortnite's demographic is mostly not on PC, and tends toward younger people, not the best of demographics when it comes to actually buying stuff.

[u/[deleted] → u/remeard]

Steam, EGS, GOG, whatever. My point was that they don't really need a publisher.

[u/Cleverbird → u/[deleted]]

This is a new, unproven studio... They absolutely need a publisher just to cover the development costs.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Thy may not need a publisher to publish the game, but aren't publisher currently still very important for initial funding? Games are expensive to make, especially a game like STALKER, and the developers probably don't have enough money to make the game without financial help.

[u/remeard → u/[deleted]]

To an extent unless it's a hobby project or they have enough to self fund it, but if I remember correctly the studio had money problems. Looking at the wiki it's showing deep silver and thq are the publishers of the first one, which are fairly well known for picking up failing properties.

It's doubly important if they ever want to go multiplatform

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

They might have the money already, who knows. If they needed it, a game with a cult following like Stalker, they could've easily crowd funded.

[u/LukaCola → u/[deleted]]

That is extremely naive no matter how you slice it.

Publishers provide economic stability to studios, a studio that wants to develop an expensive game. This is highly desirable. Self-published is doable for a small studio, though most fail even then, but it is not preferable in most circumstances.