Grim Dawn's epic journey to one more store

[eisprinzessin]

These must be quite epic negotiations…

[powbam]

@medierra

Just imagine emailing back and forth 63 times about putting a game up on a store… and this is only one email thread, in total its over 100 emails now.

Just email me when its over and up on there for the free period

[Maska322]

Free GD on Epic hype!

[medea_fleecestealer]

Good grief! That’s sounds almost as bad as trying to get GD on to Xbox. Having to go through your own “certification” process it seems.

[powbam]

Well, you would think they would have the process a bit more stream-lined considering that they’ve been touting themselves as the game developer “friendly” platform. Sounds like something they need to work on more.

[Ouroboros]

I was thinking the same. Considering that it looks to me that Steam just accepts anything, I’m actually really curious as to what exactly with FF is so difficult for them for approval.

[powbam]

@Ouroboros

I was thinking the same. Considering that it looks to me that Steam just accepts anything, I’m actually really curious as to what exactly with FF is so difficult for them for approval.

Oh I dunno if Crate are even talking to them about FF - in this instance regarding the Epic talk, as far as I’m aware, we’ve been speaking of GD.

[medea_fleecestealer]

Indeed. As big M said further up.

@medierra

I’ve never heard of Epic demanding a timed exclusive - that doesn’t seem to make sense given they still have minority of the user base relative to Steam. Pretty sure all exclusive periods are based on Epic making a payment to the developer for exclusivity rights.

Epic is not really in a position to demand anything since they’re still the smaller store and our deal to bring Grim Dawn to the Epic store has no connection to any other project we’re working on. At this point, I’m sort of doing it for experimental purposes. We signed a distribution contract with Epic a while back for GD and it will be added to the store… when I get around to filling out some info and emailing it back to Epic… soon™.

[medierra]

To be clear, this is just for GD and it isn’t about getting accepted - its getting set up in their system and working with their platform SDK.

Steam is more bare-bones self-service with just a rep to answer questions. Sometimes documentation is outdated or hard to find but you can mostly plug away on it by yourself and get it done eventually.

Epic is like dealing with some gov bureaucracy where you have to fill out all these different forms and talk to people in different departments, sign various authorizations, create multiple accounts etc. It seems sort of over-engineered and cumbersome. A lot of back and forth is required and sometimes it takes over a week to get a response (although when you have to talk to someone at Steam, it can also take a long time).

[Res]

GOG fanboy here. How does their process compare?

[medea_fleecestealer]

Here you go big M, courtesy of powbam via the GD discord.

The Epic Games Store's equivalent to Steam Direct is in beta

[medea_fleecestealer]

@medierra

Epic is not really in a position to demand anything since they’re still the smaller store and our deal to bring Grim Dawn to the Epic store has no connection to any other project we’re working on. At this point, I’m sort of doing it for experimental purposes. We signed a distribution contract with Epic a while back for GD and it will be added to the store… when I get around to filling out some info and emailing it back to Epic… soon™.

Looks like big M did send the info back to Epic.

@Zantai

This sort of change makes me rather nervous as that’s a lot of variables thrown into the mix, but I guess that’s what hotfixes are for…

We’ll throw this into the next playtest build.

Of course perhaps we’ll get enough data before this is even fully released at this rate. It depends on the Epic Store a bit in that regard…

[medierra]

In case anyone was wondeering how this is going:

[medea_fleecestealer]

Woohoo! When? Or is it already available on Epic?

[Avyctes]

@medea_fleecestealer

Or is it already available on Epic?

Not showing up in a search yet.

[eisprinzessin]

So, this one email thread required 97 replies until they welcomed you?

[medierra]

Uhh, no, unfortunately the misleading “Welcome to the Epic Game Store, Grim Dawn!” is the original subject-line since email 1.

I’m hoping maybe we just need to get to 100? Not sure if it works that way though

[medea_fleecestealer]

Let’s hope not!

[Ouroboros]

I have no clue about anything programming. But I have read briefly about stuff called integer overflow. When a number reaches a limit something bad happens. So at 101 emails, if I understand it correctly… you might make a power plant in South Korea explode. A vending machine in Kongo turning into a killer robot. And accidentally activate Skynet leading to the doom of mankind.

[medea_fleecestealer]

Hit 100 yet?