ofc. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re selling your game on Steam, you can use their key system. If you don’t want to use it, you can still distribute your game with your own key system, installer etc - and deploy it elsewhere. e.g. ALL the stores allow you to have your own installer, keys etc - they have no requirements for a dev to use Steam keys.
Bottom line, you have a choice. If you choose to remain within the Steam ecosystem, that’s your choice because Steam never forced you to. Which is precisely why EGS just recently announced the Humble Bundle (probably the first of many stores) can distribute EGS keys.
A lot of gamers really think SteamWorks is just a delivery system; though it’s so much more than that. For 30% cut, Steam provides a wealth of things that we otherwise used to build, deploy, manage on our own.
why do you keep ignoring that Steam obviously tries to incentivise devs to use their platform WITHOUT it being a requirement to be the ONLY store a game is sold to?
Why is it so hard for you to understand this MAJOR point. THAT’S what exclusivity means, not getting the choice as consumer to buy the game anywhere else. You ALWAYS have this with Steam, even if a dev uses their platform. I guess you don’t even realise that your whole argument pretty much backfires because Steam COULD have used their market position to ACTUALLY force exclusivity. They didn’t do that AND even went further and made it possible for devs to just generate steam keys so their game could easily be used on steam even if Steam didn’t see a single penny from the sales.
Did Steam do that out of the goodness of their heart? Certainly not, it’s part of an overall business strategy that considers the openness more valuable than getting a few more bucks in the short to med term.
This can however change if new players come in who force a competition through exclusivity because then Steam’s approach of oppenness can be exploited by that competition and become an actual weakness and I feel that people like you fail to see that.
EGS is applying the kind of pressure that won’t lead to a better market for everyone, it will lead to one with more restrictions where one big guys tries to outcompete the other one with moves that will hurt everyone in the end. This is also nothing new, it happens in other industries all the time. We had a good equilibrium with Steam as major player and the various other (smaller) stores as good alternatives. Considering how things could have gone in the digital age we got pretty lucky with Steam and while one might think it can always just get better that’s certainly not true.
We see it atm with services like Netlix too. We will probably never again have a service that offered as much as Netflix could in the past before the other players noticed what is going on.
I fear that all this pressure applied to Steam will just mean that they take the gloves off like if you release on EGS you won’t get a place on Steam anymore in the future.
I mean I would certainly consider to declare “war” on EGS if I was in charge of Steam because let’s be honest, that’s what EGS has done to Steam so far.
I’m sure that might be nice for (some) devs because they can exploit this conflict at least for some time but the consumer will get the short end of the stick in all of this.
I think because it’s clearly temporary, and as many have asserted, viewed as a necessary evil to get the traction to launch a successful store? Steam launched in a different landscape and still used effective ‘exclusivity’ of HL2 to force the change they wanted.
I’m not sure I’d qualify that as a good equilibrium. That’s like saying we have Wal-Mart and a few mom&pops and that’s it.
Alternatively, should Epic start to corner the market on desirable new games Steam would be forced to follow suit and buy exclusives on major titles. If the games market devolves into Epic and Steam bidding for the exclusive right to sell games, the consumer will suffer in the end. They will be the ones to pay the cost and anyone who believes the increased competition is good should be very fearful of that possibility.
They won’t because they know Epic will eventually stop. It’s untenable over the long haul - and unlike on consoles, it’s not that hard for piracy to make an end-run around exclusivity on PCs, especially when DRM-free titles are part of the equation. I mean, you do the math, and eventually a %change to the royalty rate makes better financial sense than dropping stacks of cash on people in perpetuity.
The question for them is whether folks continue to use the Epic store after the exclusives end, and how hard the tide of developer sentiment turns.
Engineers like to set up a system that works and then move on, not constantly firefight it.
I do not think you can make that assumption. If the model turns out to be both sustainable and profitable Epic will continue it. This is not engineering, this is business. There is not enough data yet to make that the model is not sustainable. I make no claim that it is or is not sustainable but should it be it will be the customers who ultimately bear those costs. That is the one thing that we can be sure of.
OK, you’re making an assumption about a possible future, but telling me I can’t make assumptions about same.
Feel free to disagree with me, whatever, but please don’t chide me for making informed assumptions when this thread is at least 70% people’s speculations, including your own.
As far as the data available, I think I fairly clearly have more of the available data than probably anyone in this thread, given my years in the business, and I actually have an agreement with the store in question in this circumstance.
In Epic’s case, it is a business run by engineers. And they act like it.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘the customers who will ultimately bear the costs’. And why you’re sure of it. Games are cheaper per unit of fun than they have ever been in history. More plentiful, of higher quality, and of higher availability. Costs for developers have skyrocketed while games prices have stayed flat or dropped. How are the customers bearing the costs?
Instead of chiding me you should go back and qualify your statement rather than stating it as fact. I certainly qualified mine but you failed to recognize that. That is your failure and not mine.
Do I seriously need to preface every post I make with “Just my opinion, but”.
We are speaking of future events that haven’t happened yet. That’s pretty clearly impossible to make definitive statements about - only informed assumptions.
I mean, isn’t that obvious? Really, man.
You didn’t answer my question about customers bearing the cost.
So, wait - developers getting more of a cut of their sales increases prices? I am not following.
Even if Valve and Epic lay out cash for exclusives - that comes from THEIR end - not the developers who set prices. Moreover, that cash goes TO developers. Which, again, improves their bottom line and doesn’t seem an obvious factor for increasing prices.
Yeah, I don’t see this in any way ending in increased prices unless somehow all competition goes away. I think the exact opposite is true for reasons I tried to illustrate up-thread.
Fundamentally, you don’t increase competition, decrease production cost (via more favorable developer sales split), and increase prices. No market could do that and survive.
I’m still not following. The stores do not set the prices. The developers do. So less revenue from developers to the store does not affect prices. Valve and Epic cannot make up the cost of their exclusivity buys or %revenue split by increasing prices, because they do not set them.
I hesitate to use the word ‘gouge’ but there’s certainly been some advantage taken by the incumbent players in the PC store (or platform, if you prefer) market over the last 10 years. I see the change to a more favorable developer split as an over-due correction rather than as something that presents an existential crisis to the retailer. In other words, they eat it.
That is super generous of you, but I wont hold you too it. Let’s face it, with the backlog that I have, I shouldn’t complain about games that will eventually drop to my price.
Is it the developers, or is it the publishers? I had always assumed your position was different from that of Obsidian or 4A?
This is also why I assume that the extra money coming from Epic may result in better pay for non-management/ ownership at some studios (such as those who self-publish), but not those under the 2k/ Deep Silver/ Private Division banner. I’m happy to see the people actually working on games get some extra in their checks, but I don’t really care about publishers.
