The Epic Store won't accept 'crappy games,' says Tim Sweeney

You also won't find 'porn games' on the Epic Store, but that's not really surprising.

[AspiringProGenji]

Says the fornite company...

[IMissJimRyan]

Fortnite is an amazing game. People only attack the game for being popular.

[tontontam0]

Not amazing but not crappy either.

self proclaimed "hardcore gamers" just think they are being cool by hating the game.

[2pacalypsenow]

Because it's a crappy game that somehow is popular.

And popularity and quality don't always go together, there tons of really good games that are not popular.

[tontontam0]

"Because it's a crappy game that somehow is popular.

And popularity and quality don't always go together, there tons of really good games that are not popular."

wow you are so cool for hating the game.
I just asked my nephew about the game and he says it is not crappy.

[Razmiran]

Hating on fortnite makes angsty teenagers think they are more mature

[Gatsu]

What's amazing about it?

[Vegamyster]

It's a free game that can run on a potato that jumped on BR genre right after PUBG, the only real depth the game has is memorizing complicated janky skyscrapers lol.

[Slowbro]

Played it for a bit and yes its crappy and shallow with most other battle royal games

[King_Noctis]

But Fornite has nothing to do with Epic Store. And let’s not pretend that Fornite is crap either.

As of right now, they are keeping their promise. Their store is clean of crappy games from Steam Greenlight.

[GottaBjimmyb]

Weirdly, how do they determine what is "crap?" If it is based on ratings/reception
1. How would they know before release?
2. Fortnite's full release was incredibly poorly received and "crappy." So their battle royale mode would have never existed if they got deplatformed when the game was a zombie building game.

That said, the outrage over the epic store is stupid. They are competing with steam, offering devs lower costs and more features for the price of exclusivity. No different than productree s that are exclusive to any other retailer.

[xRacer74x]

Seems like that is a bad move considering bad games still sell and those that buy them might enjoy them.

[annoyedgamer]

We live in a different era. "Dont like it dont buy it" has evolved into "dont like it, therefore it should be burned".

[IMissJimRyan]

Seem's like you forget about 80s market crash

[Cobra951]

"Curation isn't censorship". That's it exactly. Garbage is garbage, regardless of what it stands for. Private storefronts have the right to dump it, and even to determine what constitutes garbage, even if you don't like it. We're seeing the results of the hands-off approach: Steam filled with filth, where finding the worthwhile stuff is much harder than it used to be. I hope Epic shows them up, and makes them reconsider their cowardly laziness.

[-Gespenst-]

Bad game sales are a drop in the ocean I'd imagine. Not much is lost by refusing to sell them. Not to mention when they flood digital stores they heavily impact discoverability for legitimate developers. I mean just look at the Google Play Store. Most people don't buy crappy games, and the thing is, they won't buy good games either if they don't even know they exist because of how ubiquitous the garbage stuff is. On top of that, a lot of the crap that floods these stores is fake or a scam or just a way to make a quick buck - some half-made RPG maker piece of junk put there to prey on people who don't know what they're doing. Just because bad games sell does not mean that those who buy them actually enjoy them. Most of the time it's gonna be instant buyer's remorse. I think that ultimately, cracking down on garbage games would be better for these stores. I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to just forgo quality control - a lot of digital stores do this, and I think it has been proven to not work.

[jagermaster619]

Options is key!

[Cobra951]

Too many bad options spoils the service.

[rainslacker]

My only problem with it is that the term, "crappy", can be very broadly defined. Quite literally, almost every game can be considered crappy, so who really decides? Epic? As a store front, they shouldn't be the arbiter of what is crap, and what isn't. I mean, the first comment in here is saying how Fortnite is crappy, even though it's technically a solid game. One may not like the game play, and consider it crap, but what is the real metric for crap? It'll change depending on the person, and much of it is subjective.

I know that Sweeny was being more broad in his definition to describe games that are obviously cash grab indie games that really have no worth to anyone. Games that reasonably can be agreed on by everyone that they aren't good.

@gaming

"In the past it was MUCH harder to get your games on a service than it is now."

No, it was not harder...outside the lack of easy development tools for the amateur or hobbyist. Apple and Google pretty much popularized the notion of "crappy mobile games", and that kind of openess went a long way to build the reputation of gaming on mobile to be nothing but crap games, despite that not really being the case. PC itself it was relatively easy to get released on, because it didn't require a store front, and there were several avenues to get it done....but again, standardized development tools weren't ubiquitous. Steam was a bit more work, and obviously physical publishing on consoles can still be difficult as it requires rather high cash expenditures. But, both Sony and MS have had some measure of indie development, while managing quality control through making sure those games still meet compliance standards.

[Cobra951]

Yes. Epic's private storefront, Epic's call. That's as it should be. That's how it always was with any publisher, until Valve let the dump backwash into Steam.

[rainslacker]

Not saying it's not their right. It's just an ethical quandary about if it's right that they should be the arbiter on behalf of the customer. I personally think that is a bad thing, but I also understand that the context of what they are referring to as "crap", isn't just games that some people feel are bad. They're talking essentially about what we commonly refer to as shovelware, and even then, it's probably just the one's that are obviously just cheap cash grabs, or really amateurish productions. I think we all here probably know the kinds of games we're talking about, because it's basically the one's we complain about taking up space on the store fronts, and they aren't worth anyone's time.

[Elda]

Except Fortnite.

[isarai]

Well there's a tricky fine line to walk there, while i get a bad game is a bad game, sometimes something comes along that's so bad it's good, or it's bad but does something very unique. Like would you accept Sword with Sauce? or Hand Simulator? cause technically they are come very bare bones and clunky games, but both are crazy fun at the same time

[rainslacker]

I don't think he's talking about bad games that are still technically OK. He's talking about the kinds of things that seem more like cash grabs, usually flawed, lack content, and often aren't complete. It's easy to tell if there is some level of competence from a game designer from their game. It's also easy to tell if they are "crap". People thinking this means games they, or even many feel, are just bad games isn't what he's talking about. We're not going to lose a game that scores in the 4-5's, or even lower, so long as they actually run, and are competent. No game store should be the arbiter for determining that.

[PhantomS42]

So if a game comes out and is unanimously disliked by everyone are you just going to take it off the store? Doubtful.

[Agito1987]

For dev's this is a positive.
Small new releases get buried by the amount of re skins, asset flips and zero effort projects on steam.
Every platform should have some sort of quality control.
But that is just my opinion.

[zombiewombie]

They do? I mean you can see whats been released under new releases. Its pretty hard to miss any new games.

[Agito1987]

The people I worked with and teachers I had that where devs this is a real thing.
The main market share doesn’t check daily or even weekly. And if you don’t have the money to let people know you’re game is coming you lose out on a lot of incom.
Generally the most profit is made in the first few days. And spikes again during sales or if a good mouth to mouth gets rolling.
So a smaller overall pool of content on a storefront is always a plus, cause people wil still see your product faster when browsing.

[Blu3_Berry]

Despite all the things I don't like about what Epic is doing and how I loathe Tim, I can't deny that he is right about this viewpoint here. Over the last few years, there has been way too many "crap" games that does not meet industry standard. They are such low budget titles with little to no effort, and should not be on steam. The steam store is overflowing with these extremely low-budgeted crappy buggy games and it needs to stop. This is a major problem Valve needs to fix because it is getting out of hand.

So yes, I actually agree with Tim on this one and I do think it's the right move to prevent your store from overflowing with games that does not meet quality standards.

[Adexus]

Coincidentally I won't accept crap store fronts.

[doritos]

So, does that mean that epic is the sole authority on what is crap?

[tochi]

But EPIC is filled with crappy employees and Crappier CEO.

[Larrysweet]

Fortnight is trash and crappy period get over it...its hive mind syndrome came out free everyone started playing so like good sheep rest of yall followed...simple dumb crap

[TheColbertinator]

So who decides if a game is crap? Epic Games?

What if gamers discover the game is broken at launch and Epic Games assured everyone it would function properly? Too often in this generation several publishers have released broken games like F76, Driveclub, Assassins Creed Unity, SimCity only for them to get away with it.

[Cobra951]

Yes, absolutely. What goes into Epic's storefront is Epic's call.

[Sophisticated_Chap]

This is the only thing that I feel Steam should be doing better. Get the crap games out of the store. I wont say exactly how many items I have on my ignore list, but it is well into the thousands (5 digits).

[FanboysKiller]

That's a rude way to speak on behalf the company and the community.

[Platformgamer]

yeah, still there are crap games on it ahahah

[Einhander1971]

Exactly what's fortnite doing on there a crap game that's popular for some reason.

[PrinterMan]

Metro exodus is crap IMHO. So lame compared to last light which I played the hell out of.

[Elwenil]

Epic Games Store: No crappy games, just crappy policies.