Epic Games has long been attempting to attract consumers over to its platform from Steam, but they seem to have issues with meeting the goals set forth in their own roadmap. These goals range from quality of life improvements that some consumers consider essential, such as reliable Cloud Saves, to the implementation of a shopping cart in the store.
Some may not mind, or even notice, that Epic has missed its own goals, but others are keeping a close eye. In the build-up of competition between Steam and Epic Games, which, so far, has mainly included Epic acquiring numerous exclusivity agreements of the most popular incoming games to be released in the near future, the differences in the platforms and their functionality has been at the heart of frustration for many users.
When examining the Trello site roadmap, we can see that Cloud Saves is now marked as “Recently Shipped Features”, which is causing confusion among users, as many would expect the roll-out to be for all games. Instead, Cloud Saves only appear to be present on a handful of games. If this is how Epic marks a piece of its roadmap complete, users of the Epic Games Store may be in for some unfortunate surprises with future features added.
This is further problematic because, when Borderlands 3 was announced as exclusive to Epic Games, many were frustrated at the lack of platform features that would be necessary to fully enjoy that game. In response to these concerns, it was explicitly stated by Randy Pitchford that players "must acknowledge that Borderlands 3 does not exist today but rather it will exist in September. The store will be different when the game launches. It will become a boon to their store if they bring sufficient features to make the customer experience great for us. Epic will suffer (again) if, by the time Borderlands 3 launches, the customer experience is not good enough. This is a tremendous forcing function for Epic.”
With the launch of Borderlands 3 about six weeks away on September 13, 2019, it does not seem that any of the promised features will be ready at the time the game releases. Given that Epic Games is trying hard to pull consumers away from Steam and onto their platform, one of the few things they need to accomplish is stick to their word. An inability to meet promises made to consumers is a recipe for disaster, and the surest way to ensure players never adopt Epic Games.
In line with this, Epic Games has not made any formal announcement regarding the change in its roadmap and the timeline for completion. In today’s saturated market of video games, where there are so many great titles to play and developers who actively communicate with their fans, Epic has no excuse not to be speaking with its community. It is evident they have the funds to hire people for that task since they have the funds to sign exclusivity agreements with what seems to be anyone that will speak with them. There is plenty of Fortnite money floating around, as evidenced by the recent $30 million prize pool at this past weekend tournament.
There is, of course, the chance that some substantive advancements are made in the next six weeks. However, based on the current performance history of their roadmap, there is little reason to believe this to be the case.