Epic Games Store - 88% split goes to devs

What is typical for a free game on humble bundle or steam? I download just about any free game in case I want to check it out, but I know most of my friends won’t download a game unless they are interested in it even if it’s free.

Yeah,which has nothing to do with excitement for their new store. I’m sure they have some though I mean so does Origin.

I assume the EGS long term strategy is that eventually : 12% of full price exclusives > 30% of discounted titles

They have to rely on no discounting, restricted supply/competition, which helps keeps prices higher for longer.

I heard that Metro Exodus sold 4.5 times Don Bradman’s Cricket 17 in the same release window.

Also User Engagement with Metro Exodus is 6.3 times greater than Conker’s Bad Fur Day in the same period adjusted for inflation.

rotflmao!! :)

If I have I’m not putting any games to the names.

I still want to know if they count retail activation (which require activation on epic store) as sales.

I would guess yes, sale is sale.

That’s my guess too. Of course lot of people (and even stores) assumed they were getting steam keys in retail, as promised for months beforehand.

Interesting…

Update, March 21, 2019:Epic will allow keys for exclusive games to be sold on the Humble Store, the company said at GDC yesterday.

Epic has signaled a change in its policy around keys for exclusive games, which it had previously restricted to sale on the Epic Games Store alone. The Humble Store will now be able to sell those keys, in addition to keys for all games sold on the Epic Store.

“Epic will receive no revenue share from the sale of those games purchased through the Humble Store,” the company said in a statement. “The partnership will launch with keys redeemable on the Epic Games store, and soon Epic will enable players to link their Epic and Humble accounts for direct purchasing.”

Humble was a particular point of debate in the issue around key sales, due to the fact that it directly links sales to charitable donations. As such, Epic allowing exclusive games to be sold on the Humble Store is not necessarily indicative of a more open policy around third-party key sales in general.

Add another exclusive (previously on Steam) to the pile. It’s almost as if Epic grabbed every f*cking game at GDC

Clearly this isn’t sustainable. I’m also curious how and when Valve will respond.

Oh it is. Trust me, it is. Epic is offering incentives left and right; not just the 12% (vs 30%) royalty split.

While some look at the money side - which isn’t easy to ignore - the biggest driving factor is that EGS is small enough that discovery isn’t an issue - AND - you don’t have to deal with the toxicity problems we’ve complained about for YEARS. Steam just recently announced - laughable - changes to that aspect (the review systems).

I see the migration as a sort of retribution against Valve for ignoring problems for so many years. It really isn’t all about money.

As to Valve’s response? Well, you be the judge. Aside from giving financial incentives for exclusives, these are the two key draws which differentiate Steam from EGS. The third draw, discovery, is a non-issue since EGS doesn’t have as many titles as Steam, and isn’t planning to.

Yeah, I think people are generally overestimating the monetary cost to Epic of their exclusivity buying spree. So far, I suspect the numbers are low enough to effectively be a marketing expense and covered by their ongoing company-wide revenue. I can’t imagine they’ve even begun tapping their warchest.

Yup. I mean, they had a $1.2b investment infusion, coupled with the insane amount of money they have made off Fortnite. Not to mention the royalty revenue from UE4 which a vast majority of games use. They have enough money to keep this going for a long time. And Valve, caught napping, simply have no way to respond because it’s not as if they’re going to start throwing money around for exclusives and such. And a bidding war is probably the last thing they want to engage in, because that’s precisely what it’s going to boil down to.

The other standard that EGS seems to be going for is that they’re going to curate their own titles in much the same way that Valve did in the beginning. Which means that, at some point down the road, it’s going to come across as if a game isn’t worthy of note if it’s not on EGS.

While competition is great, my biggest concern about what is going on atm is the tribalism that’s permeating the discussion. Not to mention the vocal derision against Valve by some devs e.g. Mark Kern blocked me on Twitter yesterday because I’ve been taking him to task over his infantile and ludicrous comments against Steam. It’s as if some people (known and anon) had bad feelings against Steam, but couldn’t voice them because it was the dominant player. Now with Epic entering the field, they’ve not only picked sides, but are on going off the reservation with all sorts of nonsense. Amid that, the derision and attacks against Epic is fast approaching a fever pitch.

Maybe they really couldn’t say anything pre-Epic Games Store? Most developers aren’t as outspoken as you because they don’t have your resources to do what they want with their games and their studio. They need to earn a daily living.

Glad to see some improvements being made on the Steam side. Even “evil” competition is competition :) I think at some point they will need to give up on that headline 30% figure though, or at least move the threshold down further.

They’ve already lowered it for the highest-selling games. Also, it’s not clear what Epic even really needs to cover its costs, since right now it’s not bothering to since it’s so flush with money. Perhaps Steam wanted to allocate that money towards a lot of development, like Proton, or Steam controller API? Reallocating it will take a while. What we know is that this has put pressure on GOG, which even with 30% isn’t doing so well, and now has to take back things like fair pricing. So the 30% is not an obvious thing, and it’s not about that anyway. Regardless of the 30%, devs will still take the most money they can get, which is from the current disruptor. I would love for Amazon to get in on this action and teach Epic a thing or two about money.

uhm, that was my point.