Epic Games Store - 88% split goes to devs

The one concrete claim you made was:

There have been several sales in a row now where
Play/Epic titles were discounted while Steam keys were
either unavailable or full-price.

I honestly don’t understand how that could be true when this is the 2nd Epic sale of Primal, and there have been none between this and the last Steam sale. Maybe you could explain it rather than resort to insults?

It was priced at $14.99. That’s the price that Ubisoft set, that was the price that was shown on the front page, and that’s the price that Ubisoft’s revenue from these sales was based on.

Now, to a customer that breakdown doesn’t matter, they’re just happy they got the game for cheap. To companies it does matter. And your initial post wasn’t phrased from the point of view of a customer. Instead you said that "Ubisoft games now have a Steam Tax” and that “they are aggressively flexing against Valve”. And that’s the part that I disagree with. As far as I can see Ubisoft has been running sales on both stores at a similar frequency, and has not been setting higher prices on Steam.

Just what is the tax? Ubisoft is imposing a Steam tax because Steam isn’t throwing money into a similar sale?

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Have a nice day.

What are the other ones? Without knowing what games you’re talking about it is hard to agree or disagree with your statement. For Far Cry Primal, this is the first time it hit $5 on any platform - so that discount may trickle to other sellers now that is happened on UPlay.

Off the top of my head, I paid $2 more for Rainbow Six Siege Deluxe to have it on Steam, not to mention games that aren’t on steam in the first place!
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Interesting! In Europe that’s right now 11.99€ in the Epic sale, the latest Steam sale had it at 11.99€. Is it different in the US? Or was there a cheaper sale on Epic at some point in between, and they’ve jacked up the price on Epic now?

Good thing that you’re not mentioning them, since exclusives have been discussed so much, and seem unrelated to this “Steam tax” idea :-P

It was cheaper on Greenmangaming, and according to this graph apparently Gamersgate, too. Direct to your uPlay account. Now I’m going to post this handy graph on the first page of Google for you to find, although I’m sure you’ll find a pedantic and tedious argument quicker.
Is the Euro really that low? It was $11.99 on Steam here.

Ah, there it is.
No, you mentioned exclusives.

But that’s what I asked about originally! Whether this was a Steam tax, or a non-Uplay tax. And you were insistent that it was specific to Steam, and Ubisoft were selling the games for cheaper on Epic than on Steam:

The games are on uPlay no matter what, it’s just uPlay or uPlay/Epic (discounted) versus Steam/uPlay (full price).

That sounded interesting, so I’ve been trying to figure out what the facts are. But so far it looks like the Ubisoft pricing is the same in both Steam and Epic, modulo different timing of sales. (GMG selling a cheap Uplay key doesn’t seem relevant to Steam/Epic).

Is the Euro really that low? It was $11.99 on Steam here.

12€ is about $13, so technically it’s more expensive in Europe. But that price includes VAT of about 20%, while I assume that US prices don’t include sales taxes? So it works out to about the same price.

Ok, sorry. I understood “not to mention games that aren’t on steam in the first place!” as referring to the Epic exclusives of Anno and Division 2. Which ones did you mean, and what was the relation to the Steam tax?

FYI, VAT is supposed to vary according to the European country where the costumer is in. But, yeah, the EU loves high regressive taxes these days, so I’m pretty sure it’s around that in most places.

No complaining about Uplay/Ubi in the EPIC thread!

:P

Edit: Think I fixed it!
@jsnell

Can you not buy those on uPlay? I had no idea.

I don’t know how you reached that conclusion. I’ve bought 180 games this year, $2 makes a big difference. Anyway, we seem to have discovered the incredible multi-tiered conspiracy, where Steam gets arse for deals, Epic gets better ones, and uPlay is the cheapest of all. It’s like they’ve set up their whole business to benefit themselves! Madness!

Ubisoft stuff bought on EGS just link to the UPlay launcher. Same for Steam nowadays.

Yes, exactly, why am I paying $5+ more?
I honestly don’t remember if Far Cry Primal being $5 last time was before Ubisoft panicked and pulled all their games from the store or not, which I just remembered about.

edit ALTERNATIVELY:
Yes, exactly, why pay $5+ more?
This is like 66% of a dialectic here folks

First time it has ever been $5.

This. I think everyone other than Steam carries UPlay keys (Or Ubiconnect) for Ubisoft games. It makes sense that they can sell for a bit lower price. Ubi obviously gets more of the money they sell directly and resellers can take less of a cut to reduce their price.

Ok, fair enough! Exclusives was the wrong word. I still don’t understand the relationship with pricing.

I don’t know how you reached that conclusion. I’ve bought 180 games this year, $2 makes a big difference.

That’s great for you. But for a discussion on whether Ubisoft is pricing games cheaper on Epic than on Steam, the price on a third service doesn’t appear interesting.

Anyway, we seem to have discovered the incredible multi-tiered conspiracy, where Steam gets arse for deals, Epic gets better ones,

See, this is the part I was interested in. You gave the example of Far Cry Primal; I’ve made the argument that it didn’t display the pattern you claimed existed. We can reopen that discussion if you want to. Then you gave the example of Rainbow Six Siege, which appears to have the same price in both of those stores.

There are only two other games sold in both stores:

  • The best price for Watch Dogs 2 on Steam appears to be 8.99€, the most recent one was 11.99€. The current Epic price is 17.99€.
  • The best price for Wildlands on Steam was 14.99€, the most recent one was 17.49€. The current Epic sales price is 17.49€.

Those do not look like Steam getting shit deals compared to Epic on Ubisoft games. (But I just checked the current sales price on Epic, not the history, so maybe there’s something more there?).

and uPlay is the cheapest of all.

Yep. Not disputing this at all.

Yes, exactly, why am I paying $5+ more?

Because that game is in the phase of its lifecycle where the discounts are rapidly increasing ($15 in the Epic sale in May-June, $10 on Steam in June-July, and apparently now $5 on Epic in August), and the most recent sale on Steam was over 2 months ago. Let’s see what the price is in the next Steam sale first. If it’s still $10, then maybe there’s something to this. (But it’ll still be just one data point).

I was worried that I was getting Mandela’d, but it’s true! It’s real! It allllll happened! I am not affiliated with Valve!

Technically that was a $10 Epic Store Discount and not a publisher set sale price. :P

I’m sorry this sale did not follow the rules for being $5 in June, but I shall not pay more than $5 for Far Cry Primal (and you can’t make me!)

Anyway no matter the price, the game is great. My favorite Far Cry game evar. Buy it! :)

Disclaimer - I do not condone, nor agree (or disagree) with any of the opinions stated in this web comic. I am merely posting it for the purposes of amusement, and any inference as to the meaning of my posting this comic is entirely projected onto me.