If I purchase this through the Epic store will Stardock supply me with a Steam key when it is available on Steam? I have had several early access games with Epic and it been about evenly split between developers that do supply one (like Griftlands or Phoenix Point) and developers who do not (like Hades or Satisfactory). Thank you.
Epic is 50% owned by a Chinese company, who is wholly owned by the Chinese state. Steam is 100% owned by Americans. Good job on being greedy Stardock.
I doubt very much it is 'greed'. Not saying there isn't a financial component to the decision, but I've been an SD customer since '93-'94 (multiple products) and watched their growth, their development approach, and their responsiveness to consumers. I suspect this is driven more by peoples' proclivity to bash early release/previews because they think "Hey, I paid $49.95 for this and it doesn't have my pet feature and they won't say my pet feature is coming so it sucks."
Then they go post a horrible review about how "this game sucks and the last three updates have gotten worse, and they are nerfing players and buffing the AI, and the interface is like MegaMaid -- it both sucks and blows...."
By release time the negative chatter is 60/40/20: "it sucks," "it's the greatest thing since the wheel," or "it might suck, should we even give it a chance?". And half the "reviews" will be from people who didn't even play through the ER to release, they just regurgitated other people's "reviews".
EPIC doesn't allow reviews. Steam does. So from development and marketing perspectives it makes sense to utilize distribution mechanisms that let you roll rapid updates for testing and feedback but doesn't expose you to unwarranted review brutality.
Oddly, much like how someone who's been on a forum since 2011 might makes their first and only reply of 10 years by bashing on a company without taking any effort to find out the rationale for a decision.
Just to pick a random, non-specific example.
Getting paid to be a store exclusive and going exclusive to one store because they don't allow customer reviews are both terrible reasons.
Things look different when you are on the other side of the fence.
I already purchased because I believe in the series and have high hopes for GC4, but I really would love a Steam key, if for no other reason than because Epic doesn't do achievements and I do love those sweet, sweet internet points.
I'll just wait for the release version to pop up on Steam. There's enough games in my backlog to keep me occupied that I don't need alpha access.
That's fair Fulgrymm. We've said that whilst in alpha we want people who have the time, and patience, with deal with bugs and incomplete features. You are likely to have a better time when we leave alpha and fewer things in flux.
When it comes to committing to giving out keys for other platforms, we can't really do that because we don't know what policy will be in place by that point. What we can commit to is that in the event that Epic (or anyone else) shut down their store you'll be able to get your stuff via download.stardock.com. Even our OS/2 stuff from the 90s is accessible still.
It is very likely that GalCiv IV will be exclusively on Epic for a period of time post-release. My understanding, however, is that once you install it you can run it directly including add it to your Steam launcher if that's what you want.
With regards to mods, we are moving towards a universal mod manager for our games. This is mainly so that we can more closely integrate mods into the games for managing.
Whelp, it looks like it's going to be a while before I get to play this one. Thanks again Epic store.
i can vouch for that. i got elemental: war of magic while it was still in beta. details are blurry, but at some point it moved to the now discontinued "impulse" launcher or something. 10 years later, after loosing the domainname/email i registered with, stardock still got my account fixed & gave me access to the downloads.(i also bought supreme commander but due to licensing stardock couldn't fix that - i don't mind)
i would prefer a steam release too however. valve is swimming in cash, chances that steam will go dark are almost nill. the epic store will most likely remain a decent competitor to steam, at least as long as fortnite remains popular and a cash cow. but i already have steam, battle.net & gog, i really don't need another client/launcher...
to reply to another comment in this thread:once you buy a game on steam it will remain in your inventory forever, even if the game is no longer for sale (puzzle quest 2 is an example of this)
offtopic:i loved elemental: war of magic, even when it was still in beta. yes, it tried to be to many different playstyles at once. yes, balance was an issue. yes, the beta crashed every few turns in late game. and none of that mattered, since it was great fun every time you played. fallen enchantress, sorceror king, even the master of magic remake - all of them are superiour on paper and their codebase is a lot more stable, but none capture whatever it was that made war of magic fun. war of magic was a labor of love & it shows.
Looking forward to playing GalCiv IV once it is released on STEAM. Best of luck in the interim.
I hope in the future, Stardock doesn't go the EPIC exclusive route, but understand that there may be good business reasons for doing so.
It is very likely that GalCiv IV will be exclusively on Epic for a period of time post-release.
Damn. Ok coming back in two years to see if the game is elsewhere... :/
What about GamePass PC ? Have you had a chance to look into what Microsoft could offer you to have it on their platform first ?
not what I/we expect to hear from you ... see you in a few years
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