Epic Games Store - 88% split goes to devs

[meeper]

That gameindustry.biz article has been updated with a clarification on that $500M quote:

“We misspoke at the GamesIndustry.biz PAX East Investment Summit and the number being reported is not accurate,” the representative said. “While we aren’t sharing revenue numbers, the store is off to a strong start, and we’re excited about the opportunities for developers and players in the coming year.”

[Bateau]

I was talking about the Store, not company as a whole. I give Fortnite ~3 years max.

[dsmart]

That sounds an awful lot like a financial incentive to make your game exclusive to Steam. Which has been my point all along.

Jesus H. Christ. No. You’re paying for those services via the 30% royalty cut that Steam takes from your sales. EGS provides a competing but less advanced service for a 12% cut.

Most of what Valve built into SteamWorks used to be built by us. Even those of us who had our own similar systems, eventually migrated to SW because 1) it made sense 2) we were paying for it anyway

[dsmart]

The developer of Assault Android Cactus publicly noted that Epic denied their studio’s application to be on the Epic Game Store.

Tweet deleted. I wonder why. heh.

[dsmart]

It was pretty clear that Epic was only recruiting developers who already “won” and had plenty of mind share and name recognition - they minimize potential payout on a guaranteed sales agreement. Picking up a smaller indie with a passionate core of fans that might be turned off by exclusivity, leading to poor sales? Not a good look for a new store.

It’s more nuanced than that. e.g. take a look at the indie games they give away. Those are paid for by EGS to the devs.

[dsmart]

I was talking about the Store, not company as a whole. I give Fortnite ~3 years max.

Really? You know Warframe just turned 6, right?

[Bateau]

First of all, not even remotely comparable. Second, do you know how many players DayZ had? Where is it today? Do you know the bleed rate of playerbase for PUBG since Fortnite came to the scene, and then Apex?

Fortnite has been out long enough that competitors had time to come up with similar products. Apex is just the first big hit.

[meeper]

At its peak, DayZ had 43k concurrent players while Fortnite has something on the order of 11M. I’m not sure using something that isn’t even remotely comparable as a counter-argument against something not being remotely comparable is productive. Very meta.

[lordkosc]

Another Ubi game to abandon Steam after release.

https://www.anno-union.com/en/ubisoft-is-partnering-with-epic-games-store-for-anno-1800/

[Bateau]

It’s the game PUBG evolved from.

And if you can’t understand why Warframe has no relation whatsoever on this discussion then I don’t know what to tell you.

[Telefrog]

It’s the game PUBG evolved from.

Yes, but they’re about as far apart in style, mechanics, and basic gameplay as can be. It’s like predicting Apex’s future from the performance of Titanfall.

[Bateau]

Believe what you want. DayZ pretty much started the trend of survival games that pulled insane numbers, especially on streaming sites, and that eventually led to the popularity of BR mode.

Anyway, as I said. 3 years.

[KallDrexx]

I still don’t get why Warframe isn’t comparable. Because it’s not PVP focused?

[TurinTur]

I guess because the one is one magnitude bigger than the other.

[KallDrexx]

I guess because the one is one magnitude bigger than the other.

Sure but he’s trying to compare it to DayZ which had an all time peak of 45k players on steam while Warframe has a peak 135k, with a peak just this month of 115k. The last time Warframe had an average concurrent count that was below Dayz’s peak count was September 2017 except for one month. Unlike DayZ, Warframe seems to be gaining concurrent players overall (month to month is noisey but a rolling average looks to be increasing).

[Bateau]

More or less yes. It doesn’t have survival pvp or BR pvp, both of which have mass streaming appeal for whatever reason (I honestly don’t understand it, but the numbers don’t lie).

edit: It also doesn’t have any direct competitor, f2p or not.

edit2: Also, DayZ literally had a BR mod back in the day. Let’s not forget that, yea?

[Rod_Humble]

Another Ubi game to abandon Steam after release.

https://www.anno-union.com/en/ubisoft-is-partnering-with-epic-games-store-for-anno-1800/

This doesnt impact me as I was buying it off uPlay anyway but this seems to have little upside for anyone and will piss off a lot of folks who could do without the hassle.

[Cormac]

With Anno 1800 there seems to be an opportunity to make a statement?

Just checked the steam site:

Sales of Anno 1800 will be discontinued on Steam after April 16th due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store.

The publisher has assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam.

With steam preorders still being honored up until the release date, thats a window of 2 weeks where everyone wary of the Epic store buyouts and wanting to support steam, should buy the game there during the next 2 weeks. In theory if this number represents a significant amount of the total Anno sales, that should send a message to the industry?

(Though I’m probably just being naive here)

[Telefrog]

Also, DayZ literally had a BR mod back in the day. Let’s not forget that, yea?

So did Arma 2. Which is where DayZ came from.

[Bateau]

And? People bought Arma 2 so they could play DayZ, not the other way around.