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Epic Boss Believes that Games Store Exclusives Work Despite Dedicated Steam Gamers' Complaints - MM
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Epic Boss Believes that Games Store Exclusives Work Despite Dedicated Steam Gamers' Complaints - MMORPG.com News
Epic's Tim Sweeney has come out in defense of exclusive titles found on the Epic Games Store. In a long series of Twitter posts, Sweeney stated that he believes that "exclusives are the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo at a large enough scale to permanently affect the whole game industry". Further, despite the unpopularity of exclusive titles by "dedicated Steam users," the program is working.
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> 30% "tax" is more than the entire profit of studio building a game.
I'm a software developer and this is completely made-up bullshit: there is a cost of development for a software, before you break even there is no profit at all, after you break even - 100% of the money is profit (besides minuscule expenses for sales and post-sale support).
> The extra 18% developers bring back leads to reinvestment, profit and *price reduction*.
And then there is reality where The Division 2 cost on Epic was 50% higher than on Steam initially. The same happens with games on EA/Origins.
I agree 30% maybe a bit too high but look at Steam's features for players and look at its competitors - especially at barebone Epic store which has the level of services like it's a small indie pestle-and-mortar shop: competitors have nowhere nearly the same level of services for gamers as Steam. No forums, no user content, no user ratings (or they are curated), no user reviews, no workshops for content from third-party devs and mods, etc.
In the end I've purchased multiple games specifically because they had certain user reviews (I know I can ignore most negative reviews about crashes because I have a good hardware) + active Steam forums.
Thank you for your time!
I'd be happy with exclusives if they were in house content made possible by Valve and Epic. If Epic were funding Unreal Tournaments and new IPs or acting as publishers for 3rd party games early in development. If Valve were giving us proper games (Artifact doesn't count).
Instead of creating content, unfortunately, what we're actually seeing is content being moved.
First off There is a trello board and all those features are on the way for epic and they have been delivering on features pretty consistently to what that board says.
Second, i don't care about any of that stuff anyway - I genuinely just want to buy the game and play it i don't care for all the extra garbage they bloat their client with.
Hell i'm genuinely looking forward to GoG 2.0 then i'll have one launcher to run all the other launchers and the cycle will be complete...
All that aside 30 / 70 was once a good deal and the only real deal publishers had to go off, now they have a better option and more and more of them are going to take it. You might not like it, but what you're saying is hardly correct just because you're a developer doesn't mean you have great insight into the business side of things.
now if a game is expected to have a 22% return on investment it's a hell of a long way after development costs have been covered by the sale of the game before it's even considered profitable, you could have had 27% of the total cost of the game in outside expenses like marketing / advertising etc... like i said earlier... you could quite literally have to make 140% of total spending before the game is considered profitable.
Developers are on Steam for a reason: much more sales than anywhere else.
Thank you for your time!
End of story.
This. As much as i disagree with the %s of money Valve etc. take from developers, in any other way Epic games is just as bad if not worse. Only thing epic does better is the developer cut... the only thing.
And yeah, borderlands 3 etc. at least lost 1 customer (as little as that might be XD) .. not gonna buy epic-exclusives even after the loss of exclusivity. Made an oath on that.
https://ashesofcreation.com/r/Y4U3PQCASUPJ5SED
So you mean they don't give me a free game every week? Weird.
Personally i won't be supporting the EPIC store & never will, I'll stand firm on that, but if you are a content creator in the industry or have family who work in what sounds like a very unfair business then i can totally get why you would support Mr Weenie's Corporate/Creator first attitude. Sorry Tim, But I'm a customer , My first concern is whats best for me, First. If someday we can have the best of both worlds that would be great but until then I have taken side and the side remains what is BEST FOR ME.
Aloha Mr Hand !
First you need to accurately quote what TS said, namely: "The 30% store tax usually exceeds the entire profits of the developer who built the game that’s sold." Note the usually.
Second you need to understand what he is saying. Ignoring %s to keep things ultra simple:
- game costs $70M to make, you pay Steam $30M, you make a profit after sales of $100M and your profit exceeds $30M after sales exceed $130M.
TS's statement is that a game's sales "usually" don't pass $130M. In other words
Inference 1: Steam isn't delivering $1 profit for $1 spent.
Inference 2:
- your game cost $70M to make, you pay Epic $12M, you make a profit after $82M and your profit exceeds $12M after sales exceed $94M.
Epic is better value than Steam in terms of what it delivers .... usually.
Which is not to say that a developer might make profit on Steam; that is a projection the developer will have to make. Going with Epic though would need lower sales revenue before making a profit. And the developer will also need to consider that; going with Epic may be the lower risk option.
Now is TS right in his "usually" assertion? No idea.
You would have to have a "PC wide" view with contacts with lots of developers to make that type of statement ........
epic complain they don't take the 30% but the diference of these 30% are no passed to players/consummers, if a game cost 60 on steam they will cost 60 on epic too, we are not paying less so why I should care? they sure don't
Even if they changed their storefront enough to be superior to Steam, you wouldn't buy games from them. Because you don't actually care about "the superior platform," otherwise you'd be buying from GoG, not Steam. You care about your existing games library all being in one place, and you're utilizing any excuse you can to justify that.
It makes sense that there would be as well. Because if you care enough about something to complain about it, you're likely to care enough to buy.
____
You can see that same research and logic applied to everything publishers do these days. There isn't a thing they do that isn't designed to also make heavy users identify themselves on social media with rage a vitriol.
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."
They had time, money, and resources to make something decent. Instead they designed something less than mediocre so they could spend money poaching games.
What kind of online storefront doesn’t have a shopping cart, it’s 2019 ffs.
For me it's all about price and service.
I have as much loyalty towards a retailer as they have towards me.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Software industry != game industry, so please quit your bullshit
Just to give you an idea, remember when epic released the assets for Paragon ? estimated cost was ~= 12 millions, just for the assets..
https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/03/19/epic-releases-12-million-worth-of-paragon-assets-for-free
Steam features ? LOL c'mon, this is the proof you are not a steam user, not even a game developper that releases games on steam for a living
1. You aren't entitled to their game. Buy it on their store or STFU.
2. 30% can be the entire profits of a game at launch. Games are running on strict budgets these days, evidenced by how unfinished many are at release, and the rush to get them out of the door. That's a ton of money. That's 300k or 1M USD in sales. It's not made up.
Being a software developer has nothing to do with it. Different industries are different, and the game development market works on low profit margins, unless you hit a jackpot. Developers, Artists, Designers, Writers, Voice Actors, IP Licensing, Software/Tech Licensing, etc. all cost a lot. And the business still has to run itself, pay the bills, etc.
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No one cares how many customers Steam has, but Steam users. Epic cares about their customers - i.e. the people who buy their games, not theoretical internet moaners who act like they would have bought it if it was on Steam, but probably wouldn't have - but just want to jump on the hate bandwagon... Steam doesn't develop their game for then, and everyone starts at 0.
Right now, Steam has too much power. This is good for the industry.
That's because most people have no problem with it. It's only a few biased publications and some Gamer Fans who probably wouldn't have bought the product, anyways, complaining on the internet about it.
These forums are like the polls before the 2016 Election.
Not sure why people put so much stock in "Gaming Press/Media" or what a few "trustworthy" posters on a forum say.