The Astronauts has announced that Witchfire will release exclusively on Epic Games Store at launch, and will be skipping Steam.
Three most asked #Witchfire questions answered:
🔥 Platforms? Early Access starts September 20th, exclusive to Epic Games Store. After that, we will do other platforms, be it PC or consoles.
🔥 Customizable HUD/UI like FoV slider, centered crosshair or option to hide damage… pic.twitter.com/6TZU4Uxk3z
— The Astronauts (@TheAstroCrew) July 5, 2023
Witchfire is a roguelite first-person shooter that promises to offer a challenging but satisfying gameplay experience, and with multiple roads to victory.
The game is using Unreal Engine 4 and will take advantage of photogrammetry. So, in a way, we kind of expected this EGS exclusivity deal. After all, its Summer Game Fest 2023 trailer hinted at that. Still, this is a real gamble as Witchfire is a niche game. Not only that, but I don’t believe The Astronauts has a dedicated fanbase that can sustain this new experimental game. I hope I’m wrong here, but things are not looking particularly well.
The Astronauts claims that it will consider releasing the game on other platforms in the future. My guess is that if the game does not sell well on EGS, the team will do its best to bring it to Valve’s store.
Witchfire was originally announced in 2017. And, to be honest, the game looked more like a traditional single-player game. Moreover, it featured some truly incredible visuals back then. However, six years afterward, Witchfire does not look that mind-blowing.
So there you have it. No Witchfire on Steam for you. Not only that, but the team has not shared yet the game’s PC requirements.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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And we’re off to the races. Shame, shame, shame!
“Witchfire is a Roguelite”. This is a bigger hype killer for me than it being a timed EGS exclusive.
they have been working on this game since 2014, wtf?
The lead developer, Adrian Chmielarz, reportedly got hooked on Destiny. The game was thus heavily influenced by his said addiction.
EPIC is all gamers need.
Why do you copy my style of baiting?
you should sue for stealing trade secrets and impersonation.
Hey true
i agree gamers need to be spit in the face repeatedly for allowing things to get this bad…..and thats exactly what epic is doing.
Correction:
*EPIC is all that gays need.
Sounds like The Astronauts were afraid that their game would flop so they decided to crawl in bed with Sweeney to make sure that they would make at least some money. I suspect the game will turn out to be mediocre and eventually putting it on Steam later after most people have long forgotten about it probably won’t help.
UE4? Prepare for the usual stutter-fest.
Fine. Screw them.
Agreed. Game doesn’t look that great anyway.
This is obviously the standard one-year timed exclusivity deal Epic has made with other developers/publishers. How well the game sells on EGS is irrelevant. The developers took the deal for the upfront payment provided by Epic. After a year, the game will launch on other platforms (including Steam).
That’s a pretty misleading title John. It should read “Witchfire won’t be coming to Steam for EARLY ACCESS.” Early access is much more akin to a beta test done by paying customers. When the game officially launches it’ll be on other PC platforms and consoles as well.
I don’t know if this is an attempt at a joke or something, but I just wanted to let you know that you’re two decades late to these kinds of unfunny jokes.
??
hahaha steam kiddos BTFO.
>nnnooo mommy I can’t collect badges!
I don’t give a sh|t about Steam badges, but if the EGS was actually developed competently with similar social features, player reviews, etc, then those of us who don’t care about the Tencent stake in Epic wouldn’t consider it Timmy Tencent’s turd sandwich.
Obviously Steam and Gaben get a lot of stuff wrong, but they also get a lot right and it’s super convenient without the anti-consumer exclusivity BS.
f*k Steam and f*k Epic as well.
They are both companies.
Come crying when Tim Sweeney shuts down EGS, blocking all of your digital purchases.
I don’t care about EGS either. the steam cultist and their foaming EGS rage annoy me that’s all
That’s because they don’t trust dodgy store fronts like EGS, Uplay, and Origin.
It’s been proven many times how games get pulled from those store fronts without warning, without any means of keeping said purchase.
Steam and GOG offer the best consumer T&C’s.
steam got to where it is at in a decade long process or even more. isnt EGS like a few years old?
A few years old but without the same trust factor as Steam due to their terms and conditions around licensing.
Steam was breaking new ground in it’s startup. Mistakes were made and corrected. Epic didn’t have the same challenge with EGS. They had the blueprint for success (Steam). All they had to do was copy what Steam had already proven was the road to success.
Epic didn’t though. They are a joke compared to Steam and almost everyone knows it. Do you recall what Sweeney said when EGS went online? He claimed that one day EGS would rival Steam. Well, 4.5 years later they still don’t have a clue. Hell, it took them almost 3 years to add a damned Shopping Cart. Every site connected with gaming came with a Shopping Cart at launch.
If it weren’t for the flood of free games and anti-competitive timed exclusives EGS would be a complete failure by now. The site doesn’t even make much money. They are propped up by the billions in Fortnite microtransactions revenue.
ok. EGS sucks. but I still like that they give a much bigger cut to devs compared to greedy woke steam. 30% tax on devs? how in the f*ck is that even human. I hope EGS gets it sh*t together, steam would deserve getting abandoned
This game could have been a great open ended adventure FPS and instead we get a mediocre looter shooter piece of crap.
because adrian played too much destiny.
Can you link me to the reviews? I’d love to see them
A MOBA could have all 10s and would still be a MOBA piece of sh*t.
“? Early Access starts September 20th,”
This game has been in development since 2014, and now its on early access?
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA.
Who cares when its coming out, its never coming out.
They might be doing what the Hades and Darkest Dungeon 2 devs did. I.e. have the game be EGS timed exclusive during Early Access phase, then launch the finished game on other platforms.
H-O-W-T-O-R-U-I-N-A-L-A-U-N-C-H
dental turizmi
This isn’t anything new. They said this 2 years ago, that’s why I stopped following their progress. See, any game that goes epic exclusive, doesn’t matter if it does well or not because they already got their bag of cash. Every game that goes epic exclusive you hear nothing about but it doesn’t matter, they made their bag of cash. Basically, these people will make a game and as long they make truck loads of money they don’t care if anyone plays it. That’s where we are at these days.
AMD SPONSORED + DENUVO + EPIC GAME STORE combination ruins every 2022-2023 games
Don’t forget Unreal 4 shader stuttering and texture loading 😅
Not obligatory tho
Michael Jackson – Money
Steam has to lower the cut they take from developers.
No one wants to loses 30% of their income. The 12% Epic asks is much more reasonable.
Valve has lowered their cut on Steam. They take 30% for the first 10 million dollars in revenue. 25% for between 10 million and 50 million in revenue. 20% for anything above 50 million in revenue. This went into effect 4.5 years ago. Where have you been?
Steam has much more traffic from potential buyers than EGS because it’s a not a bare-bones flop like EGS so why shouldn’t Steam charge more?
Good! I was hoping Epic would kill another game soon. Easy bait and switch.
remind me , if i buy this game on steam to leave a negative review for 1 year, and i hope they fail, and that is the last game.
I really don’t understand how this company still exists.
They released 1 PC exclusive game in 2014.
Ported the same 1 game to a different engine, for 8th gen consoles some time later.
Did nothing until this game, 9 years later.
If it was coming to GOG (yes i know they’re ESG cucks, but DRM free is good) then I would give them the benefit of the doubt, but considering all they want is Epic’s money, they can get fked. So…hoist the sails! https://media3.giphy.com/media/xhXoCNCpT663e/giphy-downsized-small.mp4
Lmfao what a bunch of liars they said years ago that it wouldn’t be exclusive to EGS.
I don’t have a problem with it. I’m more interesting in it being good and the concept and everything I’ve seen so far looks promising. But then again it looked promising many years ago when it was announced and we’re still waiting.
Ok, so they’ve read the modern market and learned that the ‘totally not a looter shooter’ they started working on like five hundred years ago is no longer a guaranteed success. Better just take epic money. Credit due for keeping with the times.