So now EPIC has gone and bought out the Rocket League devs. BRB, gotta go uninstall Rocket League.
Wait, I’m not following. How are these related? Are you saying buying Psyonix trashes Epic’s reputation? If so, how? I suspect Rocket League may be exclusive to the Epic Game Store in the future. Is that problematic if you ready bought the game elsewhere?
Did Epic do something particularly shitty before this? I’m confused. I haven’t really been following gaming news outside of Nintendo.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: pokepal148 on May 01, 2019, 07:18:34 PM
Epic has a PC store these days that people don't like but my issue is more with this.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: broodwars on May 01, 2019, 07:34:41 PM
So now EPIC has gone and bought out the Rocket League devs. BRB, gotta go uninstall Rocket League.
Wait, I’m not following. How are these related? Are you saying buying Psyonix trashes Epic’s reputation? If so, how? I suspect Rocket League may be exclusive to the Epic Game Store in the future. Is that problematic if you ready bought the game elsewhere?
Did Epic do something particularly shitty before this? I’m confused. I haven’t really been following gaming news outside of Nintendo.
I'll elaborate on this a bit more: Epic bought Psyonix, and so they're removing Rocket League from Steam as soon as it releases on the Epic store. I don't know what that means for people who already bought it on Steam.
Epic in general has been on a buying spree lately, shelling out ridiculous amounts of money to get exclusivity to titles like the latest Metro game, Borderlands 3, the new Obsidian game, etc. There are tons of issues with the Epic store itself, and on top of all that Epic lately has been in hot water over mistreatment of their employees.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: NWR_insanolord on May 01, 2019, 07:57:52 PM
I'm pretty sure they said that people who've already bought it on Steam will still be able to play that version, it's just if you're one of the six people who hasn't already bought the game you'll have to get it on Epic if you want it on PC.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: ShyGuy on May 01, 2019, 08:20:57 PM
Rest in Peace Rocket League Linux support.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: Stratos on May 01, 2019, 09:50:38 PM
What will happen with support for other platforms?
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: broodwars on May 01, 2019, 10:19:28 PM
What will happen with support for other platforms?
So far, the consoles have been unaffected, and I don't see why they ever would be. There's too much money to be made in them, and they don't affect Epic's PC-only store. The worst I could see is temporary PC exclusivity for some titles, but I don't see that even happening.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: pokepal148 on May 01, 2019, 10:26:15 PM
The absolute worst case scenario is that Epic drops Linux support for Rocket League for a bit until they get the store running on Linux.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: ShyGuy on May 02, 2019, 12:22:45 AM
The absolute worst case scenario is that Epic drops Linux support for Rocket League for a bit until they get the store running on Linux.
It's on Mac as well.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: Adrock on May 02, 2019, 11:41:04 AM
Ah, I understand now.
To be fair, extreme crunch is an industry wide problem. I read on ResetEra that pretty much just Nintendo brings in whole other teams to help with development instead of forcing people to work obscene amounts of overtime. I haven’t verified that so I’m not sure if that’s true. If someone wants to put their body and health on the line (e.g. Masahiro Sakaurai), that’s their choice, not mine. Personally, I’m perfectly happy with waiting for a game. I would prefer people not voluntarily do that and I definitely don’t want employers and contractors imposing mandatory overtime (which is bullshit regardless of its paid) on employees who ultimately fear reprisal if they don’t tow the line. I work in IT, and I’m glad I don’t work in the video game industry if only for the horror stories I’ve read.
Additionally, I kind of feel like I’m part of the problem. I don’t stop buying these games, similar to how I don’t stop buying certain electronics even though it’s apparently a fucking nightmare at Foxconn in China. Still, I don’t know if widespread boycotting of a game from a company that treats employees and contractors poorly will ever send the right message. Even if we all plainly say, “Stop being dicks to your developers or we’ll stop buying your games,” will companies take that seriously or will they blame the product which, in a way, is blaming the developers?
I’ve read that developers should unionize, and I just don’t have enough information to know how feasible this is.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: Ian Sane on May 02, 2019, 12:29:24 PM
Additionally, I kind of feel like I’m part of the problem. I don’t stop buying these games, similar to how I don’t stop buying certain electronics even though it’s apparently a fucking nightmare at Foxconn in China. Still, I don’t know if widespread boycotting of a game from a company that treats employees and contractors poorly will ever send the right message. Even if we all plainly say, “Stop being dicks to your developers or we’ll stop buying your games,” will companies take that seriously or will they blame the product which, in a way, is blaming the developers?
I think it would have to be an organized movement so a company knows specifically that the "No Crunch" movement has targeted them. If it's just seemingly random people not buying a game then they'll interpret it how they want to.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: pokepal148 on May 02, 2019, 04:18:26 PM
I have no illusions about my decision to avoid giving money to Epic actually making a difference. It's more a matter of principle than anything for me.
Also most corporations nowadays will crack down on you hard if you even mention the word Union.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: Stratos on May 02, 2019, 05:49:04 PM
This is why I am staying in traditional software/engineering work. I only ever had three exceptions in my mind when I started, Nintendo, Valve, and Blizzard, but now it is down to Nintendo themselves. Definitely something I would love to do down the road (probably in later years when I hopefully am just working for fun) but in reality I'll probably just publish my own games if I do get around to it.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: ShyGuy on May 02, 2019, 10:05:07 PM
Good news everyone! Looks like they are keeping it on Steam!
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: Soren on May 03, 2019, 10:49:02 AM
So are we just going to boycott companies that have crunch and mismanage workers? Cause I'm pretty sure that just means "quitting video games altogether".
Boycotts of this scale never work for simple reasons, mainly the number of people are too large. A true solution would be to further encourage unionization efforts and follow up on companies bad practices, like Riot's planned walkout over their recent counter-suit forcing employees into arbitration.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: Ian Sane on May 03, 2019, 11:54:47 AM
This gets a little political so if mods don't like it, let me know and I'll take it down. It is related to dev crunch so that's why I'm bringing it up.
In my home province of BC the "high tech" industry has an exception in the law regarding overtime pay. This is to encourage the tech industry to set up shop in the province and gives them a lot more freedom than other businesses to do things like crunch time. I'm making an assumption here but I'm guessing that other provinces and states probably have similar scenarios. The problem might be solvable with fair labour laws that don't make exceptions for the tech industry.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: Stratos on May 03, 2019, 04:00:02 PM
Yeah, I don't think this is something consumers can fix by "voting with their dollar". Like Ian is suggesting, we vote with our vote and petition local legislatures to make changes. Other than that we encourage developers leave abusive employers and find jobs that make them happy and respect them as individuals. I just don't see unionizing ever happening with how the industry is right now. Unless it is more of a broad sort of trade union that bridges people across the industry, but I have no idea how that would work for devs. Would it be for game devs only? What qualifies? Artists and musicians for games count too?
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: nickmitch on May 09, 2019, 07:11:48 PM
I find this "crunch" thing interesting since I work in an industry where 100 hour weeks aren't exactly unheard of, and I've worked my fair share. We call it "busy season" and it could last from a couple weeks to 2-3 months, depending on the client. PTO is good, and outside of busy season, you can pretty much take it as you need to.
One question I have is: is the crunch temporary or seasonal? I know a lot of people who've had "perpetual busy seasons" or many back-to-back, and people get burned out and quit over it.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: pokepal148 on May 09, 2019, 07:22:59 PM
In Fortnite's case it's apparently permanent crunch. Most other games it's the last month or two before release.
Title: Re: Epic: It's unreal how quickly you've trashed your companies reputation.
Post by: nickmitch on May 09, 2019, 07:33:58 PM
Oh, ok. Yeah, then that's not reasonable.
The easiest fix to that is to just cycle your employees. Let them work on the "bad jobs" for a while then put them on something a little lighter.
