5 was cool but I think I got whiplash from how hard the ludo narrative dissonance hit me. At this point I don’t even think they realize why FC3 was so well received (which a snarky french games journalist was already joking about when it came out)
I fail to see how a Steam’s quasi monopoly should affect game engines sales. Or is that about Fortnite ? Because I have an easy answer right there : its main demographics are kids who are either locked to their console’s ecosystem, or on the off chance that they’re playing on PC, they likely don’t have 587 unplayed games in their steam library, so they couldn’t care less that the game all their friends play is on EGS.
That is basically the strategy with all the free games imo. Trying to reproduce what steam did (through big sales and some very alluring giveaways during the first ones, e.g literally get all current and future Steam games for free, or the top 10 games on your wishlist, etc) on these kids, so they stay on that store.
I think PC gamers’ boner for Steam is extremely unhealthy and has been slowly killing the only good storefront for a while (GOG) and will blow up in our faces when (not if) Gabe ends up being replaced by some suit who only cares about money.
Epic probably bankrolled a significant chunk of development to get that deal. Whether accepting the deal was a bad move or not is really hard to say
That means I have to preorder monster hunter if I want to play it on release though