“Of course, there are lots of challenges along the way, and Epic is fully committed to solving all problems that arise for gamers [and] for our partners as the Epic Games store grows.”, Epic Games will cover refunds of Shenmue III to protect developer after backlash, The best Black Friday tech deals at Amazon, Some of the first big discounts on Amazon’s latest devices and much more, Apple’s AirPods Pros are down to $169 at Amazon, You can get Apple’s flagship wireless earbuds for their lowest price yet, You don’t have to spend a lot to give a lot, The best Black Friday deals on Apple devices, You can get the new MacBook Pro for $50 off, The best Black Friday deals on Google devices, Save on Pixel phones, Nest smart displays, and more, Sign up for the Curious, very curious. Thanks to the success of Fortnite and Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, the company has a significant amount of resources to spend on competing with Steam and, in Sweeney’s eyes, shifting the platform arrangement toward a more developer-friendly revenue split. For the unaware, upon Shenmue 3’s Kickstarter reveal, backers were able to choose their platform of choice: PC via Steam or PS4. Sweeney also says that this situation shouldn’t occur again in the future, as Epic plans to communicate refund and Steam key policies upfront to avoid these late-stage predicaments. Shenmue III is finally offering Kickstarter backers their refund for not providing promised Steam keys, but refunds are coming from an odd source. Spoiler: it’s great! Too bad the entire affair was based on a false premise. This week the company launched a steep discount on the $99.99 software, bringing it down to only $59.99. "Epic is funding the cost of all Kickstarter refunds resulting from Shenmue III’s move to the Epic Games store so that refunds won’t reduce Ys Net’s development funding," wrote Sweeney. When Shenmue III made history by becoming the largest video game to ever be Kickstarted, they promised PC backers they’d eventually get a key for the game on Steam. However, the stocks... Samsung UK has kicked off their Black Friday deals with deep discounts on their phones, TVs and other accessories. JBL’s Boombox not only offers great sound sound quality but is also IPX7 certified, and that means you... You can now get the 13.5-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 powered, which is powered by Intel processor, 8GB RAM, and 256 GB SSD, at a discounted price of only $899, a full $400 off. Shenmue III announced that refunds would be provided yesterday with details to follow in a later update. 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The hamsters are so far into their long-con that they've managed to acquire a bachelor's degree from the University of Waterloo and used that to convince the fine editors at TheGamer that they can write "gud werds," when in reality they just have a very sophisticated spellchecker program installed in the robot's central processing unit. A number of pro-Steam contingents of the community also consider Epic’s store an inferior product to Steam, with the Epic Game Store still missing some key features that have existed for years on Steam. The updated earbuds are now available for purchase for $15... Microsoft’s latest Surface Pro, the Surface Pro 7 is not only versatile and light but also comes with full Windows 10 and that means you can do pretty much everything with it. That said, it doesn’t look like Epic’s strategy of securing exclusivity on popular titles is winding down any time soon. Passionate about gaming from a young age, those hamsters would probably have taken over the world by now if they didn't vastly prefer playing and writing about video games instead. Deep discounts include up to £250 off the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, ... Last week Adobe has released its Photoshop Elements 2021 app to the Microsoft Store. In a pair of tweets sent out yesterday afternoon, Epic Games' boss Tim Sweeney revealed that it was his company that would pay for Shenmue III’s refunds so as to not take away from the developer’s budget. While the game has only been slated for PS4 and PC, an Xbox One version was recently made available to pre-order with box art on the official Deep Silver website. Following comments made by Epic Games Store chief Steve Allison during the Game Developers Conference in March that suggested Epic might wind down the approach, Sweeney later clarified that the company took time to think it over and decided it would continue securing deals so long as publishers and developers appreciated the terms. After two years of delays, developer Ys Net then announced that Shenmue III would actually be an Epic Games Store exclusive, which didn’t exactly go over well. That delivery window was ultimately pushed to November 2019 after a series of delays, and last month at E3, Suzuki’s company Ys Net announced that its publishing partner Deep Silver had struck a deal with Epic to bring the PC version of the game exclusively to Epic’s PC storefront. The go-to source for comic book and superhero movie fans. See ya! When future games go Epic-exclusive after offering crowdfunding rewards on other PC stores, we’ll either coordinate with colleagues at the other stores to ensure key availability in advance, or guarantee refunds at announcement time. Deep Silver, which also had a rocky launch controversy earlier this year when it had to honor Steam preorders after Epic secured exclusivity on 4A Games’ Metro Exodus, is clearly interested in such deals. Some backers of action game Shenmue III’s multimillion-dollar Kickstarter campaign are upset that it will launch exclusively on Epic’s Games Store, scuttling plans for … The refunds will be paid for by Epic themselves. Eventually, after finding out that Valve’s policy prevents them from offering Steam keys unless Shenmue III actually released on Steam, they decided that it would be best to provide refunds as requested, lest angry backers start gathering with pitchforks and torches. A long-awaited third game in Yu Suzuki’s venerated classic Dreamcast series, Shenmue III launched its Kickstarter campaign four years ago, promising PC availability on Steam and earning more than $6 million to deliver the game by December 2017. “Epic’s not going to refuse funding worthy exclusivity partners just because a Steam policy change traps crowdfunded projects, In a series of Tweets, Sweeney explained the situation: “As far as we and our partners can determine, Valve policy prohibits providing Steam keys for games that aren’t going to be available at launch on Steam. (Like every other Epic-exclusive title, Borderlands 3 will also come to Steam at a later date.) Shenmue III is finally offering Kickstarter backers their refund for not providing promised Steam keys, but the money is coming from a most unusual source. Due to a Valve policy that prohibits developers from distributing Steam keys for games that aren’t launching on the platform, the Epic Store exclusivity means that anyone who backed the title in exchange for a Steam key won’t be able to get one until the title launches on Steam at a far later date. Starting at 11 AM ET, OnePlus will sell its earbuds at a price point of $1, yes heard that right, and that’s not a typo.