I’m not sure I understand how paid exclusives on the Epic store will result in Valve taking a lower cut in the first place. Even if they matched Epic’s revenue split, seems like devs would still take the revenue guarantees from Epic. I guess the adjustment is that exclusives now grow Epic’s marke share enough that it’ll change Valve’s behaviour later?
Sounds like you require a purity test of some sort. Which is bizarre to me. It’s a store that sells games. We are not entering a Monastery or becoming farm hands for Norwegian Bachelor Farmers that sell biscuits.
Let’s face it, being pure as the driven snow doesn’t mean that the store will last. Stardock is a PC focused as you can get, and Impulse didn’t last. And EA is as willing to dabble in everything under the sun and Origin is still around. It seems that there is little to no correlation between a company’s focus and how long something will last.
If Origin can make a store that exists today, why not Epic? And like Origin, Epic can get better, many can attest. It’s not great, but it’s good enough to buy, download and install games, and occasionally send messages. Which is fine, if they are willing to sell Metro for $10.00 less than the going price, and Developers get a bigger slice of the pie.
So, I guess the point is that none of us know for sure what is necessary for long to viability but what I do know is past performance doesn’t always indicate future success or focus.
Bluddy
3426
This is my question as well. How does this send a message to Steam other than ‘we took a bunch of money to be exclusive?’ It seems to me that if you want to send a message to Steam about their cut, you do a Fanatical 5-10% sale right away, making sure that the earliest sales go through them and not through Steam.
Aceris
3427
I’m not falling for your bait any more.
Not really. Just relating my personal experience with Epic. I couldn’t play Gears for a while because it wasn’t on PC and they recently stopped development of two games of theirs I was playing. Also Gears 1 and Bulletsorm were both released on or tied to the GFWL platform so I had to deal with that hell on PC.
I have no need to rush into the company’s next experiment. It’s not a lifetime ban or anything, just a wait and see how things develop. That seems perfectly sensible to me.
Also a note if it seems like I have a personal grudge against Epic; I don’t. I love many of their games. Once I got an Xbox One I quickly purchased all of the Backwards Compatible Gears Games, Gears Ultimate Edition, Bulletstorm Remastered, Gears 4, etc.
Here’s how it ideally works -
Paid exclusives build an audience on the Epic Store. They get people buying things there.
Paid exclusives END, but the audience remains, and devs see it as a viable choice WITHOUT guarantees.
Some exclusives probably persist, but Epic isn’t securing them - they are exclusive because Epic completely waives all Unreal Engine fees when sold through the Epic Store. (This is a big deal, especially if the store is sufficiently large and in combination with the better revenue split)
The number of games and devs leaning toward the Epic Store has sufficient critical mass that Valve alters their own terms to remain competitive and to protect their revenue stream.
Everybody releases everything everywhere.
KevinC
3430
The business strategy is solid and I hope the future works out that way (everybody releases everything everywhere). I just wish the store was more than a MVP before they pulled the trigger, but I get that they probably felt they had to strike now while they still have the Fortnite eyeballs.
I understand this sentiment, but I would have done it the same way. It’s too hard (and you waste a lot of energy on bad assumptions) to build those features in isolation and roll them out all at once - for a service like this I think you have to organically respond and react.
They could have at least implemented the absolute basics like cloud saves, playtime tracking, two factor authentication, bandwith limiter etc before launching, I mean we are not asking for a lot here - in fact it is them asking us (forcing us, kinda) to buy games there (if we want those games) while offering really vastly inferior service.
KevinC
3433
At least we’re getting 2FA now. They have a pretty bad track record with account security, but hopefully this is a (belated) step in the right direction. I’m a little surprised that it’s taken them this long, but better late than never.
Bluddy
3434
Personally, I think a 3 month exclusive window would have been far more reasonable, and would not have caused the same level of user hostility. You get the majority of sales and you get to spread your message of giving devs more money. Appearing less hostile IMO is extremely important, and I think Epic completely underestimated the impact of appearing unfriendly and anti-consumer.
I don’t think a 3 month would have worked. It’s just not enough time to be meaningful.
I also think people are OVER-estimating how wide the sentiment expressed here is spread.
I’ll have a better idea after we release though :)
Nesrie
3436
Three months would get them the day 1 have to have group and pretty much no one else. The year isn’t even that bad if they hadn’t like screwed backers, yanked the games off other stores, and back tracked everything they said. I’ll believe it’s actually a year when I see it. There is zero reason to believe anything Epic Games says at this point.
The 2FA coming out now just shows you how little they care about the customers they’re trying to get. That should have been day 1, but you’d have to think about customers and their data and their experience to care enough to secure their accounts.
stusser
3437
I very much agree. Going back to that famous “boycott modern warfare 2 no dedicated servers” image.
Some people are legitimately pissed, but if a major game comes out that they want to play, most of them will buy it anyway. Borderlands 3 will be that game.
Another note, speaking as a developer. (When am I not, I guess).
The lion’s share of the issues expressed with Epic’s service are things that are on Epic’s roadmap to address. So from a developer perspective, a year from now looks a whole lot different from now as far as user opinion.
I don’t know the precise date, but in the not too distant future, there will be close to feature parity between Epic and Steam, and the period of exclusives to gain audience will have ended.
That’s the future I plan toward and make decisions based on. At that point, what are the issues that remain?
garin
3440
They’ve had 2FA (at least via e-mail) since the Fornite battle royale mode released.
Edit: I might be wrong about this, August 2018 is the earliest mention I can find.
I agree that the MVP (minimally viable product) of the Epic Games Store is not ideal, especially those of us with hundreds+ games on Steam. But I repeat: those of you complaining about the Epic Games Store are not a microcosm of reality. Your sentiments are valid, but they’re not representative of the greater population.
All people need to use the store is a game they want to play. If they need to buy it there, they will. Your sentiments and displeasure at using “an inferior product” are irrelevant from an economic or gaming usage perspective.
stusser
3442
They aren’t completely irrelevant. Epic’s piss-poor public relations and feature gap absolutely will hurt their initial uptake. They just won’t matter when people want to play Borderlands 3.
It doesn’t matter at all whether people “relent” enough to play Borderlands 3 or Rebel Galaxy or Hades or whatever else. It’s irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether those people then stay to buy other games that weren’t “must haves”, particularly those that are not exclusive. It is impossible to say at this time if the feature-poor client and PR foolishness will impact that or not.
