First of all, how much of that 18% savings do you think that the customer will see?
Directly, probably none. But if this becomes the industry standard, then eventually, most or all of it. The real question is whether that extra revenue for developers will manifest in the form of reduced game prices for players, increased game development, or some combination of them. But that's all good for gamers.
Just because you can't immediately and directly see an effect doesn't mean that it isn't there. For example, the rise of television contracts for pro sports leagues only directly meant more money for owners at first, but it would ultimately lead to players being paid vastly more than before.
@MisterZebub The current streaming content industry is a great example. The whole "cut the cord" is a load of Horse shit. I need my netflix for stranger things, i need my HBO go for Game of Thrones, I need my NFL package on the PSN so i can watch the games this , that and thensome before i know it im paying double what i paid for cable because every platform has their own exclusives ? O did i mention netflix has 3 different sub options charging the most if i want to stream that sweet sweet 4k content.
How is this benefiting the consumer again ? With the cost of living today Im supposed to be concerned with a company missing out on a additional 350 K in profit ? LOL
But, that's your fault for wanting to watch 5 specific shows on 5 different networks. "cutting the cord" isn't for everyone and it clearly isn't for you. I pay for Hulu live TV and netflix and I am probably getting rid of netflix. Calling "horse shit" on cutting the cord not a fair assessment.
I encourage everyone to get rid of cable/DTV/Dish. These companies have long been raking us over the coals and not giving consumers good options. It's time for a change.....
having worked in that industry i can say "cutting the cord" is very much horse shit. the reason your cable bill goes up is broadcasters and local governments.... not the providers. when I was working in the industry broadcasting fees providers had to pay went up 3700% over a 10 year period(that averages 370% per year). Local governments also demand that the companies provide for people in unsustainable areas in order to renew franchise deals....most of the companies are giving basic cable at cost and making there money back on internet and phone, while also using dense population areas to subsidize the more rural areas.
cable companies don't make shit off of TV. phone has the highest margin and internet has the highest gross profits. the future is your going to see traditional cable go away and cost of internet go up because you need internet to stream. basically your not punishing the cable companies by "cutting the cord". they make there money regardless of if you have tv or not
If what you say is true, then why does Spectrum keep trying to RAM cable TV down my throat when all I ever ask for is internet?
4 reasons
1) because once infrastructure is in place ….plant maintenance costs are the same regardless of services. internet, phone, and CTV are all transferred via the same medium( carrier signal over coax or fiber in spectrums case). if it is a small up sale its still an up sale and they can push more on you at a later date like premium channels, pay per view, or DVR services(which do generate profit). 2) they use people to subsidize other people to keep prices as low as possible for the TV service(especially in areas where they are forced to service via local governments even if its unprofitable). a broadcasting fee spread over 10000 people is less impactful per person then it would be over 5000. 3)customer retention. Customers will go to the company that provides all services instead of the ones that just provide single services(its just what customers statistically do). that's why in areas where there is coax or fiber... sat tv isn't very popular.....this occurs because sat internet is both more costly and lower quality while tv is essentially the same. why pay DTV and Spectrum when you can just pay spectrum(and probably get a packaged discount). 4) they don't profit from streaming apps but streaming apps use the isp infrastructure. Netflix was accounting for almost 50% of the total bandwidth used at peak hours for the company I worked for. the companies wanna push there own streaming apps(spectrum has a spectrum tv app I believe) as smart tvs become more popular.
It looks like Epic's strategy for attracting players is to offer a free game every two weeks. I'm not sure if that's a two-week free trial or if you get to keep the game after it ends. I suspect the former, but don't see anything that explicitly says so. Right now, it's Subnautica that is free, and in two weeks, it will be Super Meat Boy.
If what you say is true, then why does Spectrum keep trying to RAM cable TV down my throat when all I ever ask for is internet?
In providing you internet they will incur costs: admin on your account, security, bank charges etc. In providing you TV they will incur costs: admin, security, bank charges etc. Providing both will only incur these costs once not twice.
Also, it's important to consider that at this point, from the provider's perspective, there's not a whole lot of difference between streaming internet or TV content to the home.
In fact, the FCC considered legislation that would force providers to offer a way to get their TV streamed through devices like Chromecast because, well, there's not a whole lot of legitimate reasons to force a customer to keep a dedicated cable TV receiver anymore.
So if they're providing you with internet already, the cost to deliver that TV content is likely relatively small at that point. Different than a consumer merely purchasing a basic cable package and getting internet elsewhere.
As someone else mentioned earlier, it appears that Epic is more dev friendly than steam, but steam is a bit more consumer friendly. As a consumer, I know where I'm going...
Charging 30% rather than 12% is more consumer friendly? Seriously?
<snip>
I think you may not be understanding that there is virtually no benefit to the consumer in the difference in fees. I know someone earlier mentioned that with lower fees the devs could give a better product.
<snip>
Read my previous post. Summary: even if the price we see is the same if devs make more money then that will help devs stay afloat (had some closures this year). More devs = more games = more competition.
The market seems over saturated to me. This could actually just prolong the inevitable crash that follows prolonged over saturation. Or if the fragmentation results in lower sales, hasten it. Either way it doesn't resolve the issues that crippling some kinds of PC games development.
Ten years ago this entire thing might have mattered, but now I don't think so. Even back then it probably would have just hastened to the timeline to over saturation.
In this instance Capitalism is working against creativity. More competition is going to bring better games that make more money, not more creative diversity and quality of product. In other words, I think over saturation will lead to fewer less lucrative games and more competition amongst the high money makers. That will mean fewer narrative driven types with DLC/xpacs and more GaaS. Even then I think longevity will be shorter lived if those games don't meet revenue expectations. My examples are the long string of online titles that have come and gone. Rumor has it HotS may be next on the list.
Just something to consider. Maybe propping up a ton of mediocre indie studios is a bad idea for the health of the better studios, artists, and programmers.
The market is over-saturated, but that's due in no small part to the dominant gaming platform giving up all pretenses of actual, professional curation of their storefront.
If Epic and Discord will actively curate theirs to weed out the bullshit, half-assed titles Steam allows to fester freely because they're, quite frankly, too lazy and cheap to spend money continuing to curate for their customers, then that helps the quality dev studios, too.
However, for it to help, consumers have to actually buy into the idea that not having to deal with bullshit money grab titles is worth downloading another launcher.
As someone else mentioned earlier, it appears that Epic is more dev friendly than steam, but steam is a bit more consumer friendly. As a consumer, I know where I'm going...
Charging 30% rather than 12% is more consumer friendly? Seriously?
<snip>
I think you may not be understanding that there is virtually no benefit to the consumer in the difference in fees. I know someone earlier mentioned that with lower fees the devs could give a better product.
<snip>
Read my previous post. Summary: even if the price we see is the same if devs make more money then that will help devs stay afloat (had some closures this year). More devs = more games = more competition.
The market seems over saturated to me. This could actually just prolong the inevitable crash that follows prolonged over saturation. Or if the fragmentation results in lower sales, hasten it. Either way it doesn't resolve the issues that crippling some kinds of PC games development.
Ten years ago this entire thing might have mattered, but now I don't think so. Even back then it probably would have just hastened to the timeline to over saturation.
In this instance Capitalism is working against creativity. More competition is going to bring better games that make more money, not more creative diversity and quality of product. In other words, I think over saturation will lead to fewer less lucrative games and more competition amongst the high money makers. That will mean fewer narrative driven types with DLC/xpacs and more GaaS. Even then I think longevity will be shorter lived if those games don't meet revenue expectations. My examples are the long string of online titles that have come and gone. Rumor has it HotS may be next on the list.
Just something to consider. Maybe propping up a ton of mediocre indie studios is a bad idea for the health of the better studios, artists, and programmers.
The market is over-saturated, but that's due in no small part to the dominant gaming platform giving up all pretenses of actual, professional curation of their storefront.
If Epic and Discord will actively curate theirs to weed out the bullshit, half-assed titles Steam allows to fester freely because they're, quite frankly, too lazy and cheap to spend money continuing to curate for their customers, then that helps the quality dev studios, too.
However, for it to help, consumers have to actually buy into the idea that not having to deal with bullshit money grab titles is worth downloading another launcher.
Curation to keep out junk is not that easy to do. Obviously, you want to exclude junk like the Steam games whose only reason for existence is to make it easy to rack up a ton of cards and achievements. Even Steam tried to crack down on that to some degree. And you obviously don't want to exclude good quality indie games.
But there's a ton of space between those two things, and people will disagree on where exactly to draw the line. No matter where you draw the line, there will be a number of games that are very close to it, and people will argue as to whether the game should be allowed in the store or not.
Even with their policy of allowing just about everything, Steam has still run into controversies over what exactly constitutes adult content that they should exclude. And even most of the terrible games are pretty obviously not adult content. Try to make a curated library that only allows games that are actually good and your only chance at not constantly dealing with one controversy after the next is if nearly everyone decides to just ignore your store entirely.
As someone else mentioned earlier, it appears that Epic is more dev friendly than steam, but steam is a bit more consumer friendly. As a consumer, I know where I'm going...
Charging 30% rather than 12% is more consumer friendly? Seriously?
<snip>
I think you may not be understanding that there is virtually no benefit to the consumer in the difference in fees. I know someone earlier mentioned that with lower fees the devs could give a better product.
<snip>
Read my previous post. Summary: even if the price we see is the same if devs make more money then that will help devs stay afloat (had some closures this year). More devs = more games = more competition.
The market seems over saturated to me. This could actually just prolong the inevitable crash that follows prolonged over saturation. Or if the fragmentation results in lower sales, hasten it. Either way it doesn't resolve the issues that crippling some kinds of PC games development.
Ten years ago this entire thing might have mattered, but now I don't think so. Even back then it probably would have just hastened to the timeline to over saturation.
In this instance Capitalism is working against creativity. More competition is going to bring better games that make more money, not more creative diversity and quality of product. In other words, I think over saturation will lead to fewer less lucrative games and more competition amongst the high money makers. That will mean fewer narrative driven types with DLC/xpacs and more GaaS. Even then I think longevity will be shorter lived if those games don't meet revenue expectations. My examples are the long string of online titles that have come and gone. Rumor has it HotS may be next on the list.
Just something to consider. Maybe propping up a ton of mediocre indie studios is a bad idea for the health of the better studios, artists, and programmers.
The market is over-saturated, but that's due in no small part to the dominant gaming platform giving up all pretenses of actual, professional curation of their storefront.
If Epic and Discord will actively curate theirs to weed out the bullshit, half-assed titles Steam allows to fester freely because they're, quite frankly, too lazy and cheap to spend money continuing to curate for their customers, then that helps the quality dev studios, too.
However, for it to help, consumers have to actually buy into the idea that not having to deal with bullshit money grab titles is worth downloading another launcher.
Curation to keep out junk is not that easy to do. Obviously, you want to exclude junk like the Steam games whose only reason for existence is to make it easy to rack up a ton of cards and achievements. Even Steam tried to crack down on that to some degree. And you obviously don't want to exclude good quality indie games.
But there's a ton of space between those two things, and people will disagree on where exactly to draw the line. No matter where you draw the line, there will be a number of games that are very close to it, and people will argue as to whether the game should be allowed in the store or not.
Even with their policy of allowing just about everything, Steam has still run into controversies over what exactly constitutes adult content that they should exclude. And even most of the terrible games are pretty obviously not adult content. Try to make a curated library that only allows games that are actually good and your only chance at not constantly dealing with one controversy after the next is if nearly everyone decides to just ignore your store entirely.
I think you may be overplaying the fear of controversy here.
Steam has repeatedly made moves to open the gates wider to just about anyone who can throw together a program that merely manages to execute when called.
And Steam has no responsibility to provide an open marketplace for all games; they can exclude a game for whatever reason they like, really, and when it comes to quality, they can definitely do so. I'm arguing that's one of the least controversial areas to draw a line. You start discussing censorship or removal of games based on the ideas presented within the game, as opposed to whether the game functions well and has at least an adequately entertaining loop, that's when you start inviting consumer ire. Consumers don't mind you weeding out bad products for them, it's when you weed out offensive products that everyone loses their minds, grabs their helmets and spears, and forms up on either side of the battlefield.
We recognize Valve has the ability to tell a dev "we don't think your product is a high enough quality to deserve our marketing it to consumers." We generally have no issue with this as a rule. We, as a general population, tend to have an issue when Valve says "based on our moral values as a company, we don't think your product's ideas or themes are worthy of marketing to our consumers."
Curation to keep out junk is not that easy to do. Obviously, you want to exclude junk like the Steam games whose only reason for existence is to make it easy to rack up a ton of cards and achievements. Even Steam tried to crack down on that to some degree. And you obviously don't want to exclude good quality indie games.
But there's a ton of space between those two things, and people will disagree on where exactly to draw the line. No matter where you draw the line, there will be a number of games that are very close to it, and people will argue as to whether the game should be allowed in the store or not.
Even with their policy of allowing just about everything, Steam has still run into controversies over what exactly constitutes adult content that they should exclude. And even most of the terrible games are pretty obviously not adult content. Try to make a curated library that only allows games that are actually good and your only chance at not constantly dealing with one controversy after the next is if nearly everyone decides to just ignore your store entirely.
I think you may be overplaying the fear of controversy here.
Steam has repeatedly made moves to open the gates wider to just about anyone who can throw together a program that merely manages to execute when called.
And Steam has no responsibility to provide an open marketplace for all games; they can exclude a game for whatever reason they like, really, and when it comes to quality, they can definitely do so. I'm arguing that's one of the least controversial areas to draw a line. You start discussing censorship or removal of games based on the ideas presented within the game, as opposed to whether the game functions well and has at least an adequately entertaining loop, that's when you start inviting consumer ire. Consumers don't mind you weeding out bad products for them, it's when you weed out offensive products that everyone loses their minds, grabs their helmets and spears, and forms up on either side of the battlefield.
We recognize Valve has the ability to tell a dev "we don't think your product is a high enough quality to deserve our marketing it to consumers." We generally have no issue with this as a rule. We, as a general population, tend to have an issue when Valve says "based on our moral values as a company, we don't think your product's ideas or themes are worthy of marketing to our consumers."
Certainly, Valve has the right to refuse to publish junk on Steam--legally, morally, and in any other sense you can think of. The problem is that there is so little agreement as to which games are good and which are bad. If they tried to carefully curate their library, we'd have an endless parade of studios behind rejected games making a big fuss about it anywhere and everywhere that they can. That's why Steam hasn't tried to be restrictive about it. Epic or Discord or anyone else will face exactly the same incentives.
I played Hyper Universe for a few months early this year. If you try to look up information on it, trolls whining about censorship will be a significant fraction of what you find. The "censorship" that they're complaining about is that a few characters showed about an inch less of skin in the later betas as compared to the earlier betas, and you'd never guess that the new models were "censored" if someone didn't tell you so. But if you read about a game considering whether to play it and instead of finding people saying that the game is fun because of this or that, you find trolls who don't even like the game whining about censorship, you're less likely to play it.
If Epic tries to carefully curate a library and rejects a lot of relatively low quality indie games, a considerable fraction of what people hear about their game store will be "we made this awesome game and Epic is trying to ruin our company". That's not good marketing for a game store, especially if you think that an occasional rejected title is actually good and you want to play it.
@Quizzical you get to keep the games. Twitch Prime does something similar with free games and perks throughout the year.
@MadFrenchie GoG is well curated and still over saturated. I don't think curation is the answer to saturation although I would appreciate a much better curated Steam. Also, curation is expensive and I don't always like those decisions. Asset flips and cash grabs suck though I agree. Hate that noise on Steam right now.
Yeah I won't attempt to argue poor curation is the sole reason, but it certainly contributes to have such an easy route to your title being placed in front of so many customers with very little in the way of checks.
I've began using GoG more lately even so, because they make at least some effort to curate their library. I've grown quite sick of the amount of garbage I have to sort through on Steam to, say, check out their specials list.
Comments
Just because you can't immediately and directly see an effect doesn't mean that it isn't there. For example, the rise of television contracts for pro sports leagues only directly meant more money for owners at first, but it would ultimately lead to players being paid vastly more than before.
1) because once infrastructure is in place ….plant maintenance costs are the same regardless of services. internet, phone, and CTV are all transferred via the same medium( carrier signal over coax or fiber in spectrums case). if it is a small up sale its still an up sale and they can push more on you at a later date like premium channels, pay per view, or DVR services(which do generate profit).
2) they use people to subsidize other people to keep prices as low as possible for the TV service(especially in areas where they are forced to service via local governments even if its unprofitable). a broadcasting fee spread over 10000 people is less impactful per person then it would be over 5000.
3)customer retention. Customers will go to the company that provides all services instead of the ones that just provide single services(its just what customers statistically do). that's why in areas where there is coax or fiber... sat tv isn't very popular.....this occurs because sat internet is both more costly and lower quality while tv is essentially the same. why pay DTV and Spectrum when you can just pay spectrum(and probably get a packaged discount).
4) they don't profit from streaming apps but streaming apps use the isp infrastructure. Netflix was accounting for almost 50% of the total bandwidth used at peak hours for the company I worked for. the companies wanna push there own streaming apps(spectrum has a spectrum tv app I believe) as smart tvs become more popular.
In fact, the FCC considered legislation that would force providers to offer a way to get their TV streamed through devices like Chromecast because, well, there's not a whole lot of legitimate reasons to force a customer to keep a dedicated cable TV receiver anymore.
So if they're providing you with internet already, the cost to deliver that TV content is likely relatively small at that point. Different than a consumer merely purchasing a basic cable package and getting internet elsewhere.
If Epic and Discord will actively curate theirs to weed out the bullshit, half-assed titles Steam allows to fester freely because they're, quite frankly, too lazy and cheap to spend money continuing to curate for their customers, then that helps the quality dev studios, too.
However, for it to help, consumers have to actually buy into the idea that not having to deal with bullshit money grab titles is worth downloading another launcher.
But there's a ton of space between those two things, and people will disagree on where exactly to draw the line. No matter where you draw the line, there will be a number of games that are very close to it, and people will argue as to whether the game should be allowed in the store or not.
Even with their policy of allowing just about everything, Steam has still run into controversies over what exactly constitutes adult content that they should exclude. And even most of the terrible games are pretty obviously not adult content. Try to make a curated library that only allows games that are actually good and your only chance at not constantly dealing with one controversy after the next is if nearly everyone decides to just ignore your store entirely.
Steam has repeatedly made moves to open the gates wider to just about anyone who can throw together a program that merely manages to execute when called.
And Steam has no responsibility to provide an open marketplace for all games; they can exclude a game for whatever reason they like, really, and when it comes to quality, they can definitely do so. I'm arguing that's one of the least controversial areas to draw a line. You start discussing censorship or removal of games based on the ideas presented within the game, as opposed to whether the game functions well and has at least an adequately entertaining loop, that's when you start inviting consumer ire. Consumers don't mind you weeding out bad products for them, it's when you weed out offensive products that everyone loses their minds, grabs their helmets and spears, and forms up on either side of the battlefield.
We recognize Valve has the ability to tell a dev "we don't think your product is a high enough quality to deserve our marketing it to consumers." We generally have no issue with this as a rule. We, as a general population, tend to have an issue when Valve says "based on our moral values as a company, we don't think your product's ideas or themes are worthy of marketing to our consumers."
I played Hyper Universe for a few months early this year. If you try to look up information on it, trolls whining about censorship will be a significant fraction of what you find. The "censorship" that they're complaining about is that a few characters showed about an inch less of skin in the later betas as compared to the earlier betas, and you'd never guess that the new models were "censored" if someone didn't tell you so. But if you read about a game considering whether to play it and instead of finding people saying that the game is fun because of this or that, you find trolls who don't even like the game whining about censorship, you're less likely to play it.
If Epic tries to carefully curate a library and rejects a lot of relatively low quality indie games, a considerable fraction of what people hear about their game store will be "we made this awesome game and Epic is trying to ruin our company". That's not good marketing for a game store, especially if you think that an occasional rejected title is actually good and you want to play it.
I've began using GoG more lately even so, because they make at least some effort to curate their library. I've grown quite sick of the amount of garbage I have to sort through on Steam to, say, check out their specials list.