Epic aren't offering 88/12 splits to game devs because they feel that devs should make more money, or gamers should pay less for games, lol
It's all cold, hard, calculated business tactics !
Epic want a slice of the Steam profits. But to get that, they they need to build market share. So they're using their mountain of Fortnite cash to muscle-in on the scene. Epic could probably afford to run their online store at a loss, until they've built a strong enough customer base.
They'd be supremely happy if they could "kill" Steam, because then THEY can get that sweet 70/30 split too ! And make no mistake, that's exactly what will happen if Epic (by some miracle) can replace Steam as the dominant outlet for online game sales.
Most certainly 100% a correct statement there.Gaming way more than ever is all about business,expo's,Blizzcon's,marketing videos,free copies to streamers,paying streamers,You Tuber's to endorse their games,partnering in several ways with websites to again endorse their products,it is all a game of deception and manipulation.
When i see the industry STOP with early access crowd funding CRAP,then i might believe "they care" just a tad bit.Nope expect more "seasons passes,DLC's,early buggy/unfinished releases AND cash shops/loot boxes".
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
You guys don't seem to understand. Steam is a plague on the indie and even triple A market - they demand 30% of all sales from developers product.
That's INSANE!
The game distribution platform genre needs this shake-up for Valve to do absolutely anything to keep in competition with Epic, but they aren't doing much. At all. For all I care, and as a person who has thousands in Steam economy currently, I HOPE that Valve crashes and burns for what they did not only to their storefront with the mass amount of garbage, but also to the developers by charging them so much money to host it.
I don't understand why people keep saying "lol no steam no buy" when it's only a detriment to YOU, as a customer, because eventually that 30% cost will trickle down to you as either microtransactions or DLC.
Think about this a little before you open your mouth. Competition is good in any form. Don't tell me Origin tried because they were doomed from the start, being hosted by EA. Epic is the only one currently that can do it.
Who are you to say "That's INSANE!"?
I think you have no idea how much money a publisher needs to pay to advertise his game in "front" of 90 mil ? monthly active users which Steam has. Sure, you will never reach that 90 mil mark, but still .. you'll pay a lot to advertise your game outside of Steam for a fraction of that 90 mil. So I think you will end up at least with the same % invested in publishing your game at the end of the day, if you wish to go "outside" Steam.
The big difference is , if you go outside Steam, you will need to have cash to start promoting your game, while with Steam, they take 30% from the sales. This is a HUGE plus developers , at least for the smaller ones.
Steam helped many companies , including Indie ones, to be at least decent successful. If you want to bitch Steam for taking 30% , that's fine, but saying you want them to BURN, while you invested thousands in Steam games, is a bit .. to much.
Don't get me wrong, EPIC's new Game Store is very, very good for the industry since they will take 12% instead of 30% which Steam currently takes = Competition, but don't expect things to change fast, since well .. 90 mil active users is a big plus for Steam for years to come.
I care if the prices for customers also gets lower on Epic's store, but as far as I can see, I see the same prices as on Steam. Sure, more money for developers is good, but who can guarantee me that they will actually invest in making better games?!
So in the end, more money for the companies , but what about the gamers? Currently The Division 2 , on Ubisoft website is 59.99 euros. On Epic? Same price! 59.99 euros. So why should I choose Epic?
You guys don't seem to understand. Steam is a plague on the indie and even triple A market - they demand 30% of all sales from developers product.
That's INSANE!
The game distribution platform genre needs this shake-up for Valve to do absolutely anything to keep in competition with Epic, but they aren't doing much. At all. For all I care, and as a person who has thousands in Steam economy currently, I HOPE that Valve crashes and burns for what they did not only to their storefront with the mass amount of garbage, but also to the developers by charging them so much money to host it.
I don't understand why people keep saying "lol no steam no buy" when it's only a detriment to YOU, as a customer, because eventually that 30% cost will trickle down to you as either microtransactions or DLC.
Think about this a little before you open your mouth. Competition is good in any form. Don't tell me Origin tried because they were doomed from the start, being hosted by EA. Epic is the only one currently that can do it.
What you are saying doesn't translate into the customer. The customer doesn't care if the devs/pubs get more money or not. They care about what they have to pay to get X. If Epic isn't lowering that cost then it does nothing to the customer.
The 30% cut is fair for the behemoth that Steam is, think of all the features and marketing Steam already does for any small one person dev that just wants to be noticed.
You get put in the release list that has pure exposure. You have tools to interact with your community or potential customer. You have dev tools to launch your game with workshop support to create a modding community.
It is really not insane in the grand scheme of things. Epic can offer less, and devs/pubs will follow but they have nothing over there but extra money coming in. In the end if Epic doesn't develop tools, Steam will win the war alone.
Most users are loyal to their platform not just because they have some type of connection but because they don't want to login in to 10 different launchers to just play a damn game.
Epic knows the only way to shake things up is to do extreme marketing. This is one of those things. I will no longer be purchasing Metro: Exodus despite loving the series because I'm not jumping to another launcher.
[[ DEAD ]] - Funny - I deleted my account on the site using the cancel account button. Forum user is separate and still exists with no way of deleting it. Delete it admins. Do it, this ends now.
So developers aren't allowed to shop around for deals? Only gamers are allowed to? That's some privilege right there.
If a developers can get a 6 figure deal, and a better split of sales... They probably should take it.
It works out for steam users to since in 6 months the exclusivity deal likely ends. So they'll have a game without the launch bugs.
No one says developers aren't allowed to shop. The customer doesn't care except to stay on their platform of choice. If the customer doesn't mind, they will buy it from the Epic store. However with the recent outbursts it looks to me Exodus will not be selling as many copies as it would have.
It is a 1 year exclusive deal, not sure where you get 6 months from. No customer benefits from exclusivity except the developer/publisher and platform.
The difference is Steam wasn't stopping devs/pubs from selling on other websites, generate the steam keys and sell. Epic is doing the gate keeping with zero features.
[[ DEAD ]] - Funny - I deleted my account on the site using the cancel account button. Forum user is separate and still exists with no way of deleting it. Delete it admins. Do it, this ends now.
Surely Epic offering games at lower cost, with some exclusive, having a game engine available for developers and 125M+ people playing Fortnite is a strategy thtt would never work? Oh wait .....
Steam got its start by offering games at lower cost with some exclusives, having a game engine for developers and 10M+ people who played Half-Life, CS, TF1.
You guys don't seem to understand. Steam is a plague on the indie and even triple A market - they demand 30% of all sales from developers product.
That's INSANE!
The game distribution platform genre needs this shake-up for Valve to do absolutely anything to keep in competition with Epic, but they aren't doing much. At all. For all I care, and as a person who has thousands in Steam economy currently, I HOPE that Valve crashes and burns for what they did not only to their storefront with the mass amount of garbage, but also to the developers by charging them so much money to host it.
I don't understand why people keep saying "lol no steam no buy" when it's only a detriment to YOU, as a customer, because eventually that 30% cost will trickle down to you as either microtransactions or DLC.
Think about this a little before you open your mouth. Competition is good in any form. Don't tell me Origin tried because they were doomed from the start, being hosted by EA. Epic is the only one currently that can do it.
Steam was, as far as I know, the first company to offer such a service. They basically said "here, this is what we offer" to developers/game companies. These game companies aren't being strong armed into using their service. It's probably very convenient to have the service.
Now, Steam can charge what it wants and companies have the choice to use it or not. I'm sure there is a benefit to having your game in a place where people are looking for games. Your game added to queues, advertised, etc.
The Epic store comes along and it's a bit more competition. Can only be good in the long run.
People want Steam because they want their games in one place. They can manage lists, add friends if they so desire and see what's new.
While I don't really mind another launcher on the pc I did check the epic launcher and it seems the folder for the launcher is 390 mb. That's a lot of space for just a launcher. Especially if other comparable launchers have similar footprints.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Remember when every MMO had it's own patcher/launcher?
How is this case of "too many storefronts" a whole lot different than that?
I'm not buying this kind of opinion.
It's like.. we all do our weekly food shopping, right? If we had to get bread from one store, fruit from a different store, milk from another, canned goods and cereal from another, frozen food from a different one, meat from another, soda from another, wine from another, etc. etc.
That analogy makes no sense. Its more like, we have one grocery store (PC) and people claim that one aisle (Steam) is better then another aisle (Epic Store) for one reason or another.
That argument works for consoles though!
Digital platforms on PC that sell games are different shops, literally. The analogy is fine.
We aren't buying games from 'PC' are we..?
Until Wal-Mart, Kroger, trader Joe's, and Food Lion share the same building so going from one to another costs, like, no time at all.. it's a poor analogy.
They don't. I can't go to the Epic store on my platform, which is PC, but not Windows. PC doesn't mean Windows. PC means a hardware platform with many different OS.
Valve has put a lot of money, time, and effort into Linux gaming. Even if it's for selfish reasons (to have a Windows free platform), a lot of other people benefit from it. Epic is passive aggressively hostile to Linux gaming. They like the PR of saying their engine supports Linux (even though their dev tool chain does not), but it is in the thinnest possible manner. Epic wants people locked into a DRM platform and Valve breaking that and empowering users through reviews threatens publishers like Epic/Tencent. Epic/Tencent is user hostile just like most DRM focused software developers.
And Valve's monopoly makes them user hostile, too, to devs using the platform, specifically indie devs.
It's really not always all about the consumer, and that's coming from someone you know has always been one to defend consumer interests. This is literally the tip of the competitive spear. Did anyone really think the first sign of competition to Valve was going to be the exact same platform slapped with another name and logo?
Killing this here because you're mad at Epic does nothing to help Indies or yourself, unless you are okay with monopolies in gaming.
So developers aren't allowed to shop around for deals? Only gamers are allowed to? That's some privilege right there.
If a developers can get a 6 figure deal, and a better split of sales... They probably should take it.
It works out for steam users to since in 6 months the exclusivity deal likely ends. So they'll have a game without the launch bugs.
It's disingenuous for a studio or publisher to use Steam as an advertising platform for FREE and then bait and switch at the last moment. Shopping is fine. Saying one thing to your partners and customers and the pulling a switch at the last moment isn't. At least in the US it's generally a frowned upon business tack. If a company wants to shop then they should do so before choosing a partner.
I can see Steam changing how that works in a very short period of time Metro and Ashen (they played Microsoft on this too) got huge exposure on Steam. I'm not sure what, or if they're do anything, but it would be wise to shore that up. Maybe they'll need to adjust their pricing structure, maybe not. The other 30%'ers (stores that also charge 30%) haven't even publicly acknowledged the issue. Also Epic and other studios haven't even tried to break that hold. This is personal with Steam, not because it affects them industry wide. Industry wide 30% and unfriendly terms are still the norm.
TL;DR: This is Epic/Tencent trying to break Valve, not make the industry change for the better.
I agree the timing sucks, but competition has almost always led to innovation within an industry. In that sense, "breaking Valve" is incredibly likely to make the industry change for the better.
You weren't going to get some kind of open source, OS-neutral, non-profit with the resources to compete with Valve. It had to be a juggernaut with it's own interests.
Well, from an alternative gaming shop I would expect competitive prices that would originate from companies competing with each other. Not a console like exclusive bubble inside the PC eco-sphere.
I don't think that anybody would object with Epic's store being an alternative to Steam or GoG or any other store. In the case of exclusives, I will do what I already do with console exclusives, completely ignore them. As far as I am concerned they don't exist.
In a year's time I might even buy the full GOTY edition all DLCs included, assuming Metro Exodus is not avoiding the steam player reviews purely out of preservation purposes. I did that with the latest Deus Ex and ended up not buying it at all, since Square Enix decided to sell half the game and never finish it.
Well, from an alternative gaming shop I would expect competitive prices that would originate from companies competing with each other. Not a console like exclusive bubble inside the PC eco-sphere.
I don't think that anybody would object with Epic's store being an alternative to Steam or GoG or any other store. In the case of exclusives, I will do what I already do with console exclusives, completely ignore them. As far as I am concerned they don't exist.
In a year's time I might even buy the full GOTY edition all DLCs included, assuming Metro Exodus is not avoiding the steam player reviews purely out of preservation purposes. I did that with the latest Deus Ex and ended up not buying it at all, since Square Enix decided to sell half the game and never finish it.
They have to do something to entice players away from Steam.
That's what happens when you allow a monopolistic entity go unchallenged for so long. Merely offering a store with random other games or the same games at the same price wouldn't do shit, because consumers would have no real reason to download it instead of ignoring it.
So developers aren't allowed to shop around for deals? Only gamers are allowed to? That's some privilege right there.
If a developers can get a 6 figure deal, and a better split of sales... They probably should take it.
It works out for steam users to since in 6 months the exclusivity deal likely ends. So they'll have a game without the launch bugs.
It's disingenuous for a studio or publisher to use Steam as an advertising platform for FREE and then bait and switch at the last moment. Shopping is fine. Saying one thing to your partners and customers and the pulling a switch at the last moment isn't. At least in the US it's generally a frowned upon business tack. If a company wants to shop then they should do so before choosing a partner.
I can see Steam changing how that works in a very short period of time Metro and Ashen (they played Microsoft on this too) got huge exposure on Steam. I'm not sure what, or if they're do anything, but it would be wise to shore that up. Maybe they'll need to adjust their pricing structure, maybe not. The other 30%'ers (stores that also charge 30%) haven't even publicly acknowledged the issue. Also Epic and other studios haven't even tried to break that hold. This is personal with Steam, not because it affects them industry wide. Industry wide 30% and unfriendly terms are still the norm.
TL;DR: This is Epic/Tencent trying to break Valve, not make the industry change for the better.
I agree the timing sucks, but competition has almost always led to innovation within an industry. In that sense, "breaking Valve" is incredibly likely to make the industry change for the better.
You weren't going to some kind of open source, OS-neutral, non-profit with the resources to compete with Valve. It had to be a juggernaut with it's own interests.
How is it going to lead to innovation? Valve has been innovating like hell. In the past few years Valve has helped take WINE and SteamPlay from something that sort of works to making over 80% of my games library work on Ubuntu, no Windows needed. It literally gets better by the week and month.
I wasn't expecting any of that. I was happy with studios publishing on Steam, PlayStation, Microsoft Store, GoG, Xbox, Nintendo, Uplay, etc. I don't care if these studios publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they exclusively publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they're openly hostile to my platform mostly because of DRM.
Most of all I'm pointing out that these stores aren't all in one building, aisles away from each other. They're completely different buildings. Epic/Tencent isn't even a choice because they're openly hostile to a truly DRM free OS. They support Denuvo, DRM, and publishers/studios to the detriment of their users.
Gamers have forgotten how exclusives used to screw us over and how we had to fight that philosophy from consoles. Tim Sweeny whine and whined how Microsoft Store exclusives would break the PC industry. Gamers raged at Microsoft and the Store as a great exlcusives evil. Oh the irony of a gullible user base and a predatory company like Tencent/Epic.
Valve has been innovating alright; their sales have gone to shit, they've completely stopped curating their store to the detriment of gamers, and they fuck indie devs hard unless the indie devs reach breakout hit status of epic proportions.
You're acting like this is all bad, and it's not. Growing pains are inevitable. But maintaining the status quo because Valve happens to be taking one iniative that serves a rather small percentage of total gamers (including yourself) doesn't seem very convincing to me.
So developers aren't allowed to shop around for deals? Only gamers are allowed to? That's some privilege right there.
If a developers can get a 6 figure deal, and a better split of sales... They probably should take it.
It works out for steam users to since in 6 months the exclusivity deal likely ends. So they'll have a game without the launch bugs.
It's disingenuous for a studio or publisher to use Steam as an advertising platform for FREE and then bait and switch at the last moment. Shopping is fine. Saying one thing to your partners and customers and the pulling a switch at the last moment isn't. At least in the US it's generally a frowned upon business tack. If a company wants to shop then they should do so before choosing a partner.
I can see Steam changing how that works in a very short period of time Metro and Ashen (they played Microsoft on this too) got huge exposure on Steam. I'm not sure what, or if they're do anything, but it would be wise to shore that up. Maybe they'll need to adjust their pricing structure, maybe not. The other 30%'ers (stores that also charge 30%) haven't even publicly acknowledged the issue. Also Epic and other studios haven't even tried to break that hold. This is personal with Steam, not because it affects them industry wide. Industry wide 30% and unfriendly terms are still the norm.
TL;DR: This is Epic/Tencent trying to break Valve, not make the industry change for the better.
I agree the timing sucks, but competition has almost always led to innovation within an industry. In that sense, "breaking Valve" is incredibly likely to make the industry change for the better.
You weren't going to some kind of open source, OS-neutral, non-profit with the resources to compete with Valve. It had to be a juggernaut with it's own interests.
How is it going to lead to innovation? Valve has been innovating like hell. In the past few years Valve has helped take WINE and SteamPlay from something that sort of works to making over 80% of my games library work on Ubuntu, no Windows needed. It literally gets better by the week and month.
I wasn't expecting any of that. I was happy with studios publishing on Steam, PlayStation, Microsoft Store, GoG, Xbox, Nintendo, Uplay, etc. I don't care if these studios publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they exclusively publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they're openly hostile to my platform mostly because of DRM.
Most of all I'm pointing out that these stores aren't all in one building, aisles away from each other. They're completely different buildings. Epic/Tencent isn't even a choice because they're openly hostile to a truly DRM free OS. They support Denuvo, DRM, and publishers/studios to the detriment of their users.
Gamers have forgotten how exclusives used to screw us over and how we had to fight that philosophy from consoles. Tim Sweeny whine and whined how Microsoft Store exclusives would break the PC industry. Gamers raged at Microsoft and the Store as a great exlcusives evil. Oh the irony of a gullible user base and a predatory company like Tencent/Epic.
Valve has been innovating alright; their sales have gone to shit, they've completely stopped curating their store to the detriment of gamers, and they fuck indie devs hard unless the indie devs reach breakout hit status of epic proportions.
You're acting like this is all bad, and it's not. Growing pains are inevitable. But maintaining the status quo because Valve happens to be taking one iniative that serves a rather small percentage of total gamers (including yourself) doesn't seem very convincing to me.
Steam Controller, Vive, SteamOS, wtf didn't they innovate?
[[ DEAD ]] - Funny - I deleted my account on the site using the cancel account button. Forum user is separate and still exists with no way of deleting it. Delete it admins. Do it, this ends now.
Well, from an alternative gaming shop I would expect competitive prices that would originate from companies competing with each other. Not a console like exclusive bubble inside the PC eco-sphere.
I don't think that anybody would object with Epic's store being an alternative to Steam or GoG or any other store. In the case of exclusives, I will do what I already do with console exclusives, completely ignore them. As far as I am concerned they don't exist.
In a year's time I might even buy the full GOTY edition all DLCs included, assuming Metro Exodus is not avoiding the steam player reviews purely out of preservation purposes. I did that with the latest Deus Ex and ended up not buying it at all, since Square Enix decided to sell half the game and never finish it.
Latest Deus Ex was awesome. I did not even know about any stuff that was cut or unfinished and still put 100 hours into it.
One of the things I like about Steam is the reviews and forums. Its nice to have that under one roof instead of going to metacritic and reddit separately. And then there’s still no way to tell if any of the contributors even played the game longer than 2 hours, unlike Steam.
I don’t like exclusives and have forgone many a game I was unable to play because of this. In my opinion it is the company’s loss as there are mountains of great games to spend time on. If a game is good I will praise it publicly, but if I can’t play it, then..
In the case of launchers, I wouldn’t forgo a game simply because of the launcher (yet), but I do feel I’m missing out when not using Steam. And I have avoided some launchers, like Origin, as much as possible and used that as a deciding factor not to buy a game.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
So developers aren't allowed to shop around for deals? Only gamers are allowed to? That's some privilege right there.
If a developers can get a 6 figure deal, and a better split of sales... They probably should take it.
It works out for steam users to since in 6 months the exclusivity deal likely ends. So they'll have a game without the launch bugs.
It's disingenuous for a studio or publisher to use Steam as an advertising platform for FREE and then bait and switch at the last moment. Shopping is fine. Saying one thing to your partners and customers and the pulling a switch at the last moment isn't. At least in the US it's generally a frowned upon business tack. If a company wants to shop then they should do so before choosing a partner.
I can see Steam changing how that works in a very short period of time Metro and Ashen (they played Microsoft on this too) got huge exposure on Steam. I'm not sure what, or if they're do anything, but it would be wise to shore that up. Maybe they'll need to adjust their pricing structure, maybe not. The other 30%'ers (stores that also charge 30%) haven't even publicly acknowledged the issue. Also Epic and other studios haven't even tried to break that hold. This is personal with Steam, not because it affects them industry wide. Industry wide 30% and unfriendly terms are still the norm.
TL;DR: This is Epic/Tencent trying to break Valve, not make the industry change for the better.
I agree the timing sucks, but competition has almost always led to innovation within an industry. In that sense, "breaking Valve" is incredibly likely to make the industry change for the better.
You weren't going to some kind of open source, OS-neutral, non-profit with the resources to compete with Valve. It had to be a juggernaut with it's own interests.
How is it going to lead to innovation? Valve has been innovating like hell. In the past few years Valve has helped take WINE and SteamPlay from something that sort of works to making over 80% of my games library work on Ubuntu, no Windows needed. It literally gets better by the week and month.
I wasn't expecting any of that. I was happy with studios publishing on Steam, PlayStation, Microsoft Store, GoG, Xbox, Nintendo, Uplay, etc. I don't care if these studios publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they exclusively publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they're openly hostile to my platform mostly because of DRM.
Most of all I'm pointing out that these stores aren't all in one building, aisles away from each other. They're completely different buildings. Epic/Tencent isn't even a choice because they're openly hostile to a truly DRM free OS. They support Denuvo, DRM, and publishers/studios to the detriment of their users.
Gamers have forgotten how exclusives used to screw us over and how we had to fight that philosophy from consoles. Tim Sweeny whine and whined how Microsoft Store exclusives would break the PC industry. Gamers raged at Microsoft and the Store as a great exlcusives evil. Oh the irony of a gullible user base and a predatory company like Tencent/Epic.
Valve has been innovating alright; their sales have gone to shit, they've completely stopped curating their store to the detriment of gamers, and they fuck indie devs hard unless the indie devs reach breakout hit status of epic proportions.
You're acting like this is all bad, and it's not. Growing pains are inevitable. But maintaining the status quo because Valve happens to be taking one iniative that serves a rather small percentage of total gamers (including yourself) doesn't seem very convincing to me.
Steam Controller, Vive, SteamOS, wtf didn't they innovate?
Vive is largely irrelevant. The VR market still blows in terms of total market penetration.
Steam Controller? You act as if PCs can't support any other controller.
You all are acting as if this is all bad and no good. That's, quite frankly, an ignorant way to look at it. Is it all good and no bad? Nope, not that either. But competition in general is good for the parties receiving the products or services, even if there are growing pains along the way.
Well, from an alternative gaming shop I would expect competitive prices that would originate from companies competing with each other. Not a console like exclusive bubble inside the PC eco-sphere.
I don't think that anybody would object with Epic's store being an alternative to Steam or GoG or any other store. In the case of exclusives, I will do what I already do with console exclusives, completely ignore them. As far as I am concerned they don't exist.
In a year's time I might even buy the full GOTY edition all DLCs included, assuming Metro Exodus is not avoiding the steam player reviews purely out of preservation purposes. I did that with the latest Deus Ex and ended up not buying it at all, since Square Enix decided to sell half the game and never finish it.
They have to do something to entice players away from Steam.
That's what happens when you allow a monopolistic entity go unchallenged for so long. Merely offering a store with random other games or the same games at the same price wouldn't do shit, because consumers would have no real reason to download it instead of ignoring it.
How about better prices? Since they take a 12% cut, they can theoretically sell the game at a 18% discount price, which is huge. Of course that would require from the developers to also forfeit that amount, which, had they done that, what would the point be leaving Steam if the money in their pocket was the same, but they were losing the Steam marketing in the process?
So why should I care if Epic's store grows, if they need to go anti-consumer in the process? If I as a customer don't benefit from that growth, even long term, why should I facilitate it?
If bully tactics are your way of succeeding, then I hope they burn and crash. I could care less if steam was no longer in the top, but at least they never restricted the developers from publishing their games.
Well, from an alternative gaming shop I would expect competitive prices that would originate from companies competing with each other. Not a console like exclusive bubble inside the PC eco-sphere.
I don't think that anybody would object with Epic's store being an alternative to Steam or GoG or any other store. In the case of exclusives, I will do what I already do with console exclusives, completely ignore them. As far as I am concerned they don't exist.
In a year's time I might even buy the full GOTY edition all DLCs included, assuming Metro Exodus is not avoiding the steam player reviews purely out of preservation purposes. I did that with the latest Deus Ex and ended up not buying it at all, since Square Enix decided to sell half the game and never finish it.
They have to do something to entice players away from Steam.
That's what happens when you allow a monopolistic entity go unchallenged for so long. Merely offering a store with random other games or the same games at the same price wouldn't do shit, because consumers would have no real reason to download it instead of ignoring it.
How about better prices? Since they take a 12% cut, they can theoretically sell the game at a 18% discount price, which is huge. Of course that would require from the developers to also forfeit that amount, which, had they done that, what would the point be leaving Steam if the money in their pocket was the same, but they were losing the Steam marketing in the process?
So why should I care if Epic's store grows, if they need to go anti-consumer in the process? If I as a customer don't benefit from that growth, even long term, why should I facilitate it?
And what makes you think you wouldn't benefit long-term because ONE title on ONE platform isn't immediately and exclusively concerned with you?
So developers aren't allowed to shop around for deals? Only gamers are allowed to? That's some privilege right there.
If a developers can get a 6 figure deal, and a better split of sales... They probably should take it.
It works out for steam users to since in 6 months the exclusivity deal likely ends. So they'll have a game without the launch bugs.
It's disingenuous for a studio or publisher to use Steam as an advertising platform for FREE and then bait and switch at the last moment. Shopping is fine. Saying one thing to your partners and customers and the pulling a switch at the last moment isn't. At least in the US it's generally a frowned upon business tack. If a company wants to shop then they should do so before choosing a partner.
I can see Steam changing how that works in a very short period of time Metro and Ashen (they played Microsoft on this too) got huge exposure on Steam. I'm not sure what, or if they're do anything, but it would be wise to shore that up. Maybe they'll need to adjust their pricing structure, maybe not. The other 30%'ers (stores that also charge 30%) haven't even publicly acknowledged the issue. Also Epic and other studios haven't even tried to break that hold. This is personal with Steam, not because it affects them industry wide. Industry wide 30% and unfriendly terms are still the norm.
TL;DR: This is Epic/Tencent trying to break Valve, not make the industry change for the better.
I agree the timing sucks, but competition has almost always led to innovation within an industry. In that sense, "breaking Valve" is incredibly likely to make the industry change for the better.
You weren't going to some kind of open source, OS-neutral, non-profit with the resources to compete with Valve. It had to be a juggernaut with it's own interests.
How is it going to lead to innovation? Valve has been innovating like hell. In the past few years Valve has helped take WINE and SteamPlay from something that sort of works to making over 80% of my games library work on Ubuntu, no Windows needed. It literally gets better by the week and month.
I wasn't expecting any of that. I was happy with studios publishing on Steam, PlayStation, Microsoft Store, GoG, Xbox, Nintendo, Uplay, etc. I don't care if these studios publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they exclusively publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they're openly hostile to my platform mostly because of DRM.
Most of all I'm pointing out that these stores aren't all in one building, aisles away from each other. They're completely different buildings. Epic/Tencent isn't even a choice because they're openly hostile to a truly DRM free OS. They support Denuvo, DRM, and publishers/studios to the detriment of their users.
Gamers have forgotten how exclusives used to screw us over and how we had to fight that philosophy from consoles. Tim Sweeny whine and whined how Microsoft Store exclusives would break the PC industry. Gamers raged at Microsoft and the Store as a great exlcusives evil. Oh the irony of a gullible user base and a predatory company like Tencent/Epic.
Valve has been innovating alright; their sales have gone to shit, they've completely stopped curating their store to the detriment of gamers, and they fuck indie devs hard unless the indie devs reach breakout hit status of epic proportions.
You're acting like this is all bad, and it's not. Growing pains are inevitable. But maintaining the status quo because Valve happens to be taking one iniative that serves a rather small percentage of total gamers (including yourself) doesn't seem very convincing to me.
Steam Controller, Vive, SteamOS, wtf didn't they innovate?
Vive is largely irrelevant. The VR market still blows in terms of total market penetration.
Steam Controller? You act as if PCs can't support any other controller.
You all are acting as if this is all bad and no good. That's, quite frankly, an ignorant way to look at it. Is it all good and no bad? Nope, not that either. But competition in general is good for the parties receiving the products or services, even if there are growing pains along the way.
Well, from an alternative gaming shop I would expect competitive prices that would originate from companies competing with each other. Not a console like exclusive bubble inside the PC eco-sphere.
I don't think that anybody would object with Epic's store being an alternative to Steam or GoG or any other store. In the case of exclusives, I will do what I already do with console exclusives, completely ignore them. As far as I am concerned they don't exist.
In a year's time I might even buy the full GOTY edition all DLCs included, assuming Metro Exodus is not avoiding the steam player reviews purely out of preservation purposes. I did that with the latest Deus Ex and ended up not buying it at all, since Square Enix decided to sell half the game and never finish it.
They have to do something to entice players away from Steam.
That's what happens when you allow a monopolistic entity go unchallenged for so long. Merely offering a store with random other games or the same games at the same price wouldn't do shit, because consumers would have no real reason to download it instead of ignoring it.
How about better prices? Since they take a 12% cut, they can theoretically sell the game at a 18% discount price, which is huge. Of course that would require from the developers to also forfeit that amount, which, had they done that, what would the point be leaving Steam if the money in their pocket was the same, but they were losing the Steam marketing in the process?
So why should I care if Epic's store grows, if they need to go anti-consumer in the process? If I as a customer don't benefit from that growth, even long term, why should I facilitate it?
And what makes you think you wouldn't benefit long-term because ONE title on ONE platform isn't immediately and exclusively concerned with you?
That's a pretty bold prediction.
As I said above, I treat exclusives, whether they come from the console eco-system or anywhere else as non existent. The moment this particular game became exclusive, it ceased to exist, as far as I'm concerned.
The problem is not the one game. The problem is with DRM, DLCs, loot boxes and other predatory practices. In this case the curse of closed eco-systems. If this gains any traction, then we'll regress back to the gated past. The only saving grace is that it's going to be operating system gated rather than hardware gated.
The problem from my view is not the Epic store. The problem is the exclusive deals inside the PC gaming zone. Everybody cheered when Microsoft completely abandoned exclusives and all games for Xbox are available for PC. Now we see the exact opposite and it baffles me that there are people defending it.
Comments
It's all cold, hard, calculated business tactics !
Epic want a slice of the Steam profits. But to get that, they they need to build market share. So they're using their mountain of Fortnite cash to muscle-in on the scene. Epic could probably afford to run their online store at a loss, until they've built a strong enough customer base.
They'd be supremely happy if they could "kill" Steam, because then THEY can get that sweet 70/30 split too ! And make no mistake, that's exactly what will happen if Epic (by some miracle) can replace Steam as the dominant outlet for online game sales.
Read more at https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/478951/valve-says-its-unfair-that-metro-exodus-is-epic-store-exclusive/p5#yYl2JKj4cJRpAq0Z.99
Most certainly 100% a correct statement there.Gaming way more than ever is all about business,expo's,Blizzcon's,marketing videos,free copies to streamers,paying streamers,You Tuber's to endorse their games,partnering in several ways with websites to again endorse their products,it is all a game of deception and manipulation.
When i see the industry STOP with early access crowd funding CRAP,then i might believe "they care" just a tad bit.Nope expect more "seasons passes,DLC's,early buggy/unfinished releases AND cash shops/loot boxes".
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I think you have no idea how much money a publisher needs to pay to advertise his game in "front" of 90 mil ? monthly active users which Steam has. Sure, you will never reach that 90 mil mark, but still .. you'll pay a lot to advertise your game outside of Steam for a fraction of that 90 mil. So I think you will end up at least with the same % invested in publishing your game at the end of the day, if you wish to go "outside" Steam.
The big difference is , if you go outside Steam, you will need to have cash to start promoting your game, while with Steam, they take 30% from the sales. This is a HUGE plus developers , at least for the smaller ones.
Steam helped many companies , including Indie ones, to be at least decent successful. If you want to bitch Steam for taking 30% , that's fine, but saying you want them to BURN, while you invested thousands in Steam games, is a bit .. to much.
Don't get me wrong, EPIC's new Game Store is very, very good for the industry since they will take 12% instead of 30% which Steam currently takes = Competition, but don't expect things to change fast, since well .. 90 mil active users is a big plus for Steam for years to come.
I care if the prices for customers also gets lower on Epic's store, but as far as I can see, I see the same prices as on Steam. Sure, more money for developers is good, but who can guarantee me that they will actually invest in making better games?!
So in the end, more money for the companies , but what about the gamers? Currently The Division 2 , on Ubisoft website is 59.99 euros. On Epic? Same price! 59.99 euros. So why should I choose Epic?
The 30% cut is fair for the behemoth that Steam is, think of all the features and marketing Steam already does for any small one person dev that just wants to be noticed.
You get put in the release list that has pure exposure. You have tools to interact with your community or potential customer. You have dev tools to launch your game with workshop support to create a modding community.
It is really not insane in the grand scheme of things. Epic can offer less, and devs/pubs will follow but they have nothing over there but extra money coming in. In the end if Epic doesn't develop tools, Steam will win the war alone.
Most users are loyal to their platform not just because they have some type of connection but because they don't want to login in to 10 different launchers to just play a damn game.
Epic knows the only way to shake things up is to do extreme marketing. This is one of those things. I will no longer be purchasing Metro: Exodus despite loving the series because I'm not jumping to another launcher.
If a developers can get a 6 figure deal, and a better split of sales... They probably should take it.
It works out for steam users to since in 6 months the exclusivity deal likely ends. So they'll have a game without the launch bugs.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
It is a 1 year exclusive deal, not sure where you get 6 months from. No customer benefits from exclusivity except the developer/publisher and platform.
The difference is Steam wasn't stopping devs/pubs from selling on other websites, generate the steam keys and sell. Epic is doing the gate keeping with zero features.
Surely Epic offering games at lower cost, with some exclusive, having a game engine available for developers and 125M+ people playing Fortnite is a strategy thtt would never work? Oh wait .....
Steam got its start by offering games at lower cost with some exclusives, having a game engine for developers and 10M+ people who played Half-Life, CS, TF1.
So yes it is possible that Steam are concerned.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It's really not always all about the consumer, and that's coming from someone you know has always been one to defend consumer interests. This is literally the tip of the competitive spear. Did anyone really think the first sign of competition to Valve was going to be the exact same platform slapped with another name and logo?
Killing this here because you're mad at Epic does nothing to help Indies or yourself, unless you are okay with monopolies in gaming.
Exclusives bad!
Epic seems to be hot on bringing Exclusives the PC market in a big way.
I for one will not support that. Too bad. They could have been contenders if they played nice...
You weren't going to get some kind of open source, OS-neutral, non-profit with the resources to compete with Valve. It had to be a juggernaut with it's own interests.
I don't think that anybody would object with Epic's store being an alternative to Steam or GoG or any other store.
In the case of exclusives, I will do what I already do with console exclusives, completely ignore them. As far as I am concerned they don't exist.
In a year's time I might even buy the full GOTY edition all DLCs included, assuming Metro Exodus is not avoiding the steam player reviews purely out of preservation purposes. I did that with the latest Deus Ex and ended up not buying it at all, since Square Enix decided to sell half the game and never finish it.
That's what happens when you allow a monopolistic entity go unchallenged for so long. Merely offering a store with random other games or the same games at the same price wouldn't do shit, because consumers would have no real reason to download it instead of ignoring it.
You're acting like this is all bad, and it's not. Growing pains are inevitable. But maintaining the status quo because Valve happens to be taking one iniative that serves a rather small percentage of total gamers (including yourself) doesn't seem very convincing to me.
One of the things I like about Steam is the reviews and forums. Its nice to have that under one roof instead of going to metacritic and reddit separately. And then there’s still no way to tell if any of the contributors even played the game longer than 2 hours, unlike Steam.
I don’t like exclusives and have forgone many a game I was unable to play because of this. In my opinion it is the company’s loss as there are mountains of great games to spend time on. If a game is good I will praise it publicly, but if I can’t play it, then..
In the case of launchers, I wouldn’t forgo a game simply because of the launcher (yet), but I do feel I’m missing out when not using Steam. And I have avoided some launchers, like Origin, as much as possible and used that as a deciding factor not to buy a game.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Steam Controller? You act as if PCs can't support any other controller.
You all are acting as if this is all bad and no good. That's, quite frankly, an ignorant way to look at it. Is it all good and no bad? Nope, not that either. But competition in general is good for the parties receiving the products or services, even if there are growing pains along the way.
So why should I care if Epic's store grows, if they need to go anti-consumer in the process? If I as a customer don't benefit from that growth, even long term, why should I facilitate it?
Spin it however you want, it's scummy move.
That's a pretty bold prediction.
Who wants a repeat of Origin?
The problem is not the one game. The problem is with DRM, DLCs, loot boxes and other predatory practices. In this case the curse of closed eco-systems. If this gains any traction, then we'll regress back to the gated past. The only saving grace is that it's going to be operating system gated rather than hardware gated.
The problem from my view is not the Epic store. The problem is the exclusive deals inside the PC gaming zone. Everybody cheered when Microsoft completely abandoned exclusives and all games for Xbox are available for PC. Now we see the exact opposite and it baffles me that there are people defending it.