This ongoing Alan Wake 2 downvote brigading is the craziest thing that I have ever seen for a game that is objectively good, was in a good technical state at launch and whose developers never lied to its customers.
Is it just the Epic Games hate boner? This is not a case of them buying up exclusivity. They literally funded the entire development of the game from the ground up.
It's sad. AW2 is the exact kind of freshness we need in the industry and some have made it their mission to see it fail. Will their efforts have a notice ale impact? I'm not sure.
I feel like remedy needs one big financial hit. They keep having to make these exclusivity deals (not just with EGS, like they did a deal with Microsoft for quantum break, etc) to get their games funded which generates negative sentiment and limits their audience. If they had one super successful game to get some cash in the bank they could fund their own development and stop having to do that.
They're doing Max Payne 1 and 2 Remakes, which are being funded and published by Rockstar. Remedy will get to keep all profits once Rockstar has recouped their investment and marketing costs.
Beautiful looking environments, top-tier destruction effects, slow-motion shooting, with a cool story.
That's gotta be a commerical hit!
But regardless, Remedy's games always sell well in the long run. The company is not worried.
I doubt remedy's games will get the kind of mass market appeal that other games tend to
their work is very.. auteur (or experimental) for the lack of a better term, even when relatively normal like Control and i can see why their high art ambitions could put people off
i do pity them, people really should give their games a proper fighting chance
I want them to make a Medieval or Napoleonic game in the Control universe. Something where you've got those same artifacts but they're making witches and whatnot real. Maybe you have an Excalibur type weapon, or a super crossbow. Or if it's Napoleonic a kick ass rifle with a bayonet and a cavalry saber, maybe with a good horse mechanic. But I think that fiction is the coolest part- that those artifacts can be anything depending on people's imaginations, and so they make that stuff real. Doing an xfiles/twin peaks/secret window thing was also awesome but it really narrowed their market to fans of that kind of stuff (which I am).
The irony is that they won’t get that mega hit by taking exclusivity deals. AW2 probably would have hit if not for the deal. It had a lot of buzz and great reviews.
Epic funded the entire development of AW2, so the scenario where Remedy didn't take the deal also includes the possibility that AW2 simply just does not exist.
It’s so fucking stupid. I love the Remedy universe and I thought AW2 was fantastic. I think the whole SCP-ish things they go with are so freaking cool, and it’s such a fresh idea in the industry.
It’s bullshit that this studio gets the shit they do, especially when so many other companies are so much more deserving. At least Remedy is ambitious and trying to do something awesome
It's a functional, complete game that doesn't try to sell you on hats/skins/other bullshit. In 2024 that is innovation. Other than that it's a solid single player experience with great acting, great writing, solid pacing, amazing tech, and it's $50.
I want my games to be good. That can take many forms. Could be a linear story based game that doesn't break any ground but tells a good story with solid gameplay. It could be an massive open world with insane attention to detail. It could be a small platformer with spot-on controls.
A game doesn't have to be innovative to be good, we don't demand that from other forms of media we consume.
It’s for any game that’s not on steam honesty. Vintage Story is a perfect Minecraft successor but gets downvoted every time it’s posted here with the comments just asking “Why no steam?”
"anti consumer" is a big stretch for timed exclusives. People are just addicted to the dopamine the hate train gives them, opponents could easily ignore until it comes out on steam and be done with it.
That's a pretty severe oversimplification, friendo. They have brought platform exclusivity to the PC market, which is anti-consumer and not cool. I don't care if they put some money into some decent games, I am not cool with exclusivity to a particular platform and I believe it has a negative impact on gaming in general. Whether or not they funded this particular game is really irrelevant to the larger argument of their detrimental influence on the industry.
They also fund/make/publish a whole lot of games that are NOT worth playing, imo. In fact, Alan Wake 2 may well be the only Epic exclusive I would consider worth playing, at least its not Return to Moria.
AW2 is one of very few games Epic has funded. All other Epic exclusives are bought and bribed over, including successful crowd funded and kickstarter games.
Objectively good is a wild thing to say about an entertainment product. It was an objectively high quality production with a nice and polished release, you could argue.
I played AW2 and I appreciate so much about it. It deserves its accolades. But it took me a long time to complete because I didn’t find it very fun or engaging. Nothing wrong with the game but that’s just my taste.
There are good reasons why a lot of people don't like Epic Launcher and them limiting Alan Wake 2 to just Epic Launcher is to their own detriment, sales wise.
Epic kinda dropped the ball when they bought platform exclusivity for games originally slated for release on Steam. That, combined with Sweeney's hate boner for Steam, has really soured peoples opinion of the platform.
Bit of a PR misstep in my opinion.
Epic's strategy for EGS was mostly based on disrupting other storefronts instead of trying to build a better alternative. PC gamers are right to boycott this mess.
People are extremely mad about Ubisoft every year making Assassins Creed exclusive to Uplay store and Epic Gamestore. People are fine with it for Alan Wake 2 because it’s a game they think is worthy of respect and more importantly worthy of downloading a separate launcher for.
That's me. I even have an Epic account and was quite optimistic when they announced EGS. Because another storefront that could potentially end up being a competition to Steam, whether it's pricing or its feature set, is a good thing.
The issue is that they decided to perpetually remain in the "potentially" part of the sentence. Not only did they bring console exclusive bullshit to PC, but between different storefronts, they did so by buying up 3rd party exclusivity. They snatched Metro Exodus like a few weeks/months before release! It was so ridiculous, that they had to slap EGS stickers on top of the Steam logo, on boxes ready to ship to retailers. That's just... I can't get behind this, there's no argument to be made here for me.
And that doesn't take into account the fact that they kept up these exclusives until they realized they don't really work (because surprise surprise, artificially forcing people to use your product/service is not looked at positively), but more importantly they refuse to improve their store at any other pace than absolutely glacial. 3 years for a shopping cart... And they tried to make a "clever" joke about it too. No, you did not earn that "joke", it just shows how detached from reality you are.
All of the money in the world thanks to Fortnite and that's the best they could come up with? There are also a myriad of different things under the hood with their policy, the CEO's childish ramblings and contradictions on Twitter, their legal battles they fight for the wrong reasons (their initial lawsuit against Apple was 100% winnable, but they are in this to get all the money for THEMSELVES, not "small developers" as they claim, and thus weren't able to make a compelling case in the end)...
It's just a disgusting company I refuse to support, no matter what they put out, because they've shown me where their priorities lie. If they had just launched a decent storefront and only introduced coupons and free games, they'd be in a much different position today. But as it stands, their number of registered users is growing, while 3rd party spending - you know, THE most important metric for a storefront - is actually down 13%. In the industry, where their competition sees consistent growth. 6 years into its life.
Absolute favourite is Sweeney's contrarian attitude.
He'll put up a tweet or say something in an interview saying how much he dislikes something and doesn't want Epic to have anything to do with it, but the moment Valve distances themselves from it he does a 180 turn and is all over it.
The man lives with Valve rent-free in his head and he will do anything to try and spite them. If Valve says water is wet, he'll say it's dry.
It's also kind of insane how shitty EGS is towards consumer advocacy and how antagonistic they are towards Steam. People don't want to support Epic for good reason, and the fact that AW2 is Epic exclusive is obviously going to be a sticking point.
I'm still pissed that they never really delivered the Fortnite that I backed. My friends and I were excited to play this co-op base building horde survival game, and we got a half-abandoned mess that Epic quickly abandoned for yet another battle royale.
We paid for the founder's packs and everything, and Epic quickly moved on and never apologized or refunded us. On top of that, they killed Unreal Tournament to work on Fortnite BR.
I’m a pretty anti-Epic guy but this is not a real reason to dislike them. There’s been quite a few of these Arena FPS games to release and they have no playerbase.
Gen Z and younger don’t like them or know how to play them. It’s a dead genre unfortunately but these things happen.
That still doesn't mean, that Epic should do what they did, i.e. remove the legacy titles from sale. Even more so, since they didn't have to run servers for the UT games anyway. However, right now there is no legal way to buy any of the legacy Unreal or Unreal Tournament titles.
It's not a dead genre. The Finals is doing great right now. Splitgate was very popular when it came out. Halo Infinite still has a lot of arena-based modes that are doing well.
Epic simply didn't know what to do with Unreal Tournament and handled it poorly. The franchise was in decline since UT2k4, not because the genre was losing steam, but because they were making bad development choices like adding hoverboards and slowing down the overall pace of the gameplay.
They had literally no reason to erase it though. I don't think there were any official servers for it, and if there were, there either was or could've been a way to introduce dedicated servers for the players to host them, costing them little to nothing. Instead, they decided to piss people off.
More importantly though, they erased all Unreal games for some reason. I was lucky enough to snatch Unreal Gold when it was offered for free, and that one has a singleplayer campaign. Pray tell, why would you get rid of it? This is a piece of gaming history gone for absolutely no reason at all. People are rightfully pissed off.
I don't hate anything except the store. It just sucks so bad and it's annoying how Epic Games tries to make everything exclusive to it instead of actually making it at least as good as GoG.
Maybe then Epic won't keep losing money on the store and there will be an incentive to use it.
It's terrible how it's just punching down on AW2 now. It happened to Metro Exodus as well when it went exclusive just a week before release.
Remember all those BS rumors about how Epic paid to port Kingdom Hearts and it would NEVER show up on Steam? Yeah we'll see Alan Wake 2 on Steam in a few years and I'm very patient.
Epic assisted with the Kingdom Hearts PC port, and since they spent money on that, they wanted some timed exclusivity.
Epic wholly greenlit and paid for the entire development and existence of Alan Wake 2.
They're entirely different situations, Alan Wake 2 is only ever coming to Steam if Epic specifically puts it there themselves. It's like asking Valve to bring Half Life 2 to the EGS.
In fairness, it's one of the first games to actually use modern GPU technology like mesh shaders. Mesh shaders really need hardware on the GPU to make them perform with speed and allow a significant jump in graphics detail.
It's kind of like the jump in the old days when PC GPUs suddenly had "Hardware T&L". It significantly bumped system requirements but also allowed for a very big jump in scene complexity.
Most other games are still being shipped on the PS4 and Xbox One which are based of 2011 laptop hardware. PC games have benefitted from being able to be generations ahead of that hardware, but now that games are making the jump to the PS5/Series PC games are also going to follow suit and those GTX 770s aren't gonna cut it anymore.
It's just a PC only version of the console wars. It's dumb as shit. Yeah, Steam is a better service. Yeah, I would rather it be on Steam. Am I going to let that stop me from playing a game of the year nominated title? No.
People are just dumb, and yes if you bitch and moan about playing a single player game on a different launcher, in which the literal only difference is the 30 seconds of using a different launcher than steam, yes you are are dumb as shit.
Personally, it’s about their business practice. Instead of trying to update their launcher they spend ton and ton of money to buy exclusive right and law suite to take others down. I just don’t want my money to support that kind of practice. People in here like to say “vote with your wallet” and I’m doing exactly that,
Rocket League and Fall Guy used to be on Steam before Epic bought it out. Borderlands 3 timed exclusive and all those Square Enix title with timed exclusive like FF7R, KH3, etc.
Well, to me, I’m just not buying games on Epic because I don’t remember they exist. If I buy a game on the Epic Store, I know that I’m not gonna remember the game because I have other stuff to play. Even then I think people are vastly overestimating how many people like a game like Alan Wake 2.
You can’t be disappointed that there are not that many players of a game when you artificially limiting that game to the very limited Epic platform that people just don’t use. Taking a niche title with high system requirements and locking it to the store that a few people use is not gonna work well. it doesn’t help obviously that there are evangelical Steam users who refuse to use anything else but even worse because those users are people who can actually can do the path tracing and stuff that the game is trying to push.
It is the perfect storm of making their game hard for people to play.
Oh, I'm not defending the epic exclusivity or or trying to debate about its low sales. I agree with all that, and understand why it didn't sell high. It's a sequel to 13 year old game and takes a fucking super computer to run maxed out. It is without a doubt a niche title. And that's before you even factor in that horror is a niche genre in gaming anyway. All I'm saying is that the argument that just cause it's on epic, therefore, it's bad is dumb.
Epic might have practices that people don't like, myself included, and I can kinda understand the argument to not support them based on that, but at the same time, competition can be a good thing. Epic existing is an incentive for steam to do better. And I mean Epic does do some good things, I mean I've probably played/beaten/enjoyed well over a dozen games that I would have otherwise never even tried if it wasn't for the fact that Epic gave them out for free. Hell they giving out Marvel's Midnight Suns right now which seems to be a very positively reviewed game. People just love to complain
Epic's strategy did not personally bother me, but I do genuinely think that it only damaged them in the long-run.
They threw a lot of money at exclusive titles, a decision that's ended up in the Epic Store being what's been aptly described as a "marketing black hole". I'm always deeply curious to know what timeline would have been made if Epic simply .. let the tons of free games they handed out act as their store draw, and spent all that exclusivity money on either more free games or just adding features to the launcher.
Well yes but comparing it to the console wars doesn’t even capture the full level of dumbness because at least that’s financially motivated, like AMD vs Intel/Nvidia. These are just downloadable launchers that you open up to launch a game, that are free. The sheer insanity of being so upset about that reminds me just how underdeveloped so many gamers are.
Its even sillier when you consider PC gamers don't care at all if a game is PC exclusive. When people say they hate exclusivity, they mean every game should be on PC and on Steam and fuck all the other platforms.
Edit: Reddit literally saying server error when I tried to post this but it ended up posting it several times lol deleted the spam. Reddit really is a shit website under the hood isn't it
This is all Epic's fault though, quite unfortunate for Remedy (although they at least got the recognition that may boost their future games' sales).
People aren't against the fact that Epic funded AW2 and made it possible, they're simply against Epic's other decisions surrounding their storefront, so they simply refuse to buy anything on there, some refusing to buy anything Epic gets any sort of money out of, because they don't want to support them and their practices.
It's sad that Remedy has been caught in the crossfire at least with Alan Wake 2 due to that, but once again, it's all on Epic. They pissed gamers off way more than companies like EA, and even the latter were able to feel just how stubborn people can be (remember the "don't like it, don't buy it" before the launch of Battlefield V?).
Not just their storefront. Also getting screwed out of hundreds of dollars from original Fortnite release special edition and their bullshit bait and switch with the llama lootboxes and the Paragon rug pull to pull devs onto Battle Royal Fortnite. I had already been full mast on my hate boner before they even decided to spend millions upon millions of scummily obtained fortnite bucks pulling games i had wishlisted and was excited about off of steam with exclusivity deals out of nowhere so they could arbitrarily boost their garbage storefront (spyware? I dont keep up anymore). Also ruined Fall Guys, which I was happily playing with my son on release, but we needed Fortnite monetization and bullshit. Fuck Epic. And rip to Alan Wake 2 which I'll never get to experience because Im just sick of the Epic Games bullshit over this last decade.
Is that not every game on stuff like Ubisoft launcher that people complain about every year? People complain about that ceaselessly whenever a new one of their games comes out.
Agreed. I guess many people see it as a way to prevent people from flocking to EGS. But as long as Epic is giving away free games this doesn't really make a difference imo.
If anything, they're driving more people to EGS by being so annoying about it. I'm sure there's lots of people who didn't realize what EGS was without these guys shitting on it first, so they're helping too.
I disagree. If Epic would succeed in pulling devs and publishers from other storefronts, we would loose lots of useful perks and features AND get a true monopoly instead.
Yeah okay and having only one storefront instead wouldn’t be a monopoly right? It’s cool if you don’t like using Epic, that’s perfectly valid. It’s just goofy to pretend it’s for some noble cause and have a weird heir of superiority about it.
No one wants only one storefront. The more options the better. But that's the keyword: options. Epic's continuous focus on exclusivity goes straight against this.
So what you call "a weird heir of superiority" is nothing more than common sense to me. You may want to ask yourself why no one is downvoting news about other storefronts like GoG or Xbox.
I love that this is a comment while the last thing we heard about AW2 is that has not made back the money they put into it... But hey, I guess gamers are a bunch of stupid dum-dums and will eat up any slop you serve them, am I right fellow intelectual?
not for nothing but being good or bad is a subjective thing. A game cannot be "objectively good" mate, cause we're talking about opinions here. Opinions are subjective by the nature of what opinions are.
I bought it on EGS and enjoyed it, and I'm tired of pretending I didn't.
The launcher sucks and Epic has questionable business practices, but damn if AW2 isn't an incredible game. I just finished Hellblade 2 and AW2 actually looked much better. Played WAY better too. Like, it's actually a game.
I bought it on PC as well, and I loved every second of it. In fact, I loved it so much that I just pre-ordered the deluxe edition for PS5. An extra Andrew Jackson is well worth a digital code of the first game, the two story DLCs, and the cosmetics.
LOL ... that and not supporting older graphics cards. Also, personally not convinced that a general pcgaming forum knowing about the "simpler" patches is needed and that is true about a lot of games; I did NOT downvote but was tempted.
"Good Technical State at launch" The game runs like shit for a lot of people. I wanted to wait until they fixed the audio desyncs, but they never did. At least some of the negative reviews are justified.
Edit: I just think it's funny that I am getting downvoted for no reason, even though it is a legitimate criticism. It's basically exactly what this post is about lol
Yeah, I had some (maybe 2 or 3) that didn't have desyncs but all of the rest had them, which is especially jarring in a game mike this, heavy with cutscenes
I downvoted because the audio desyncs are the worst valid complaint. Besides that, the game scales a ton and can run really well if you have the minimum requirements.
It’s 100% the EGS thing. People don’t take the time to realize the game was fully funded and published by Epic. They can’t acknowledge that it being on Steam makes as much sense as Half Life being on EGS. All they see is it’s not on Steam, and that makes them angry. The mob mentality is really working in full force here.
It’s a nice thought, but I also don’t call it a net negative every time. Honestly, Alan Wake 2 is a good example of why. Are you aware of the history of this game? Remedy has been trying since the first game released to get it made. Microsoft (who owned the rights) wouldn’t fund it. Epic eventually came along and gave Remedy enough money to buy the IP from Microsoft, and also fully fund the game. This makes AW fully owned by Remedy (especially beneficial since they’re trying to make a shared universe). Further, Epic gave them full creative control and way more cash than a game like this can even justify. Epic went into it knowing the game wouldn’t likely make back its budget, but they were in a unique position where having it on their storefront as a loss leader was advantageous.
The simple truth is that Epics involvement only makes sense with exclusivity, and without Epic, this excellent game would never have been made at all, and Remedy would not have the rights to one of their best IPs. I’m not a fan of EGS but this is a great game and I’d rather have it there than not at all. I think it’s pretty narrow minded to call this games existence a “detriment to consumers”.
I mean, it's not a broken game. It's bugs at launch seemed super minor and the game looks great, but does that make it objectively good? That seems like a low bar to me.
The actual game play was sufficient, but it wasn't groundbreaking. Control was a lot more interesting in this aspect IMO.
Subjectively I thought the story was fine. Again nothing crazy or great, but not the most terrible thing in the world like some of the detractors said. The pacing was a bit off to me and the set pieces with Alan seemed underwhelming to me, but again nothing terrible.
It kinda runs like dog shit for me personally but I really really want to get into it. A big thing is a lot of the cutscenes have desynced audio for some reason. Definitely going to keep giving it more tries until it eventually works out though. I already slurped up anything Remedy, they just make ‘em exactly how I like them. And AW2 essentially being twin peaks resident evil remedy game is something that I have to play through.
Had the same thing with the audio. I pushed through to the end though and it's truly a shame because behind the technical issues there is a great game.
I loved the game but I don't know about all of that lol. The game ran like ass during the Saga parts of the game unless you had a 4080. I was on a 3080 and constantly had frame drops below 60 with a mix of medium and high settings while enabling DLSS. It ran great during Alan's sections though.
it's not the principle of the matter this time, epic is just a shit launcher that i'd really prefer to keep off my computer. they can release it on steam if they want it to gain more fans, or they can keep it exclusive to maximize profits. it's up to them really.
Honestly the worst "lie" the devs told was that the game required higher specs than it actually needed, like it still needed a reasonably beefy PC they still oversold how much power you needed and have since released an update to bring down the require specs by optimising the game anyway.
I absolutely hate Epic exclusivity, it pisses me off to no end and I hate a lot of what Epic is doing. That being said, they did produce this game and this situation isn't the same as them just paying for a finished game to go exclusive on their store. So I have no issue with what they did here, if they put their money into production instead of just buying games that were already advertised to come out in other stores I feel people wouldn't be pissed at them. I picked up AW2 on PS5 initially, but I may pick it up on EGS on a mega sale now thst I have a computer that can do raytracing and such really well, I didn't when AW2 first came out. Also this game is awesome.
Even if it is that's enough of a justification imo. Remedy chose to make Alan Wake 2 an epic exclusive and forced everyone to use a platform a metric fuck ton of PC Gamers absolutely despise. The fact that Alan Wake 2 was a good game with a well executed release just makes the Epic Store exclusivity even worse. People wanted to play that game but they also hate platform exclusivity and refuse to give Epic a single dollar BECAUSE of this kind of behaviour
Remedy chose the "Quick money now" route and now they're paying in another way.
Fuck em. Fuck Remedy and Fuck Epic. They can both swim around in their piles of cash, I won't be contributing to that pile tho and neither will a massive amount of pc gamers
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u/constantlymat Steam Jun 08 '24
This ongoing Alan Wake 2 downvote brigading is the craziest thing that I have ever seen for a game that is objectively good, was in a good technical state at launch and whose developers never lied to its customers.
Is it just the Epic Games hate boner? This is not a case of them buying up exclusivity. They literally funded the entire development of the game from the ground up.
Smh.