Epic Games Store - 88% split goes to devs

Games
421

It doesn’t. They haven’t demonstrated any long-term commitment to their storefront yet. We can probably list a half-dozen storefront/platforms that have been sold/rebranded/closed/etc despite previously running a successful business. Running a store as a going concern is a markedly different business proposition than developing video games. I’m not sure listing Tencent Games as having a 40% stake is necessarily a positive in the “trust us, we’ll be around for a long time” category.

Apparently I didn’t buy a game on Steam until 2009 despite buying HL2 at release (physical box).

422

We can expect a lot more exclusives if the Epic store succeeds. I can’t imagine Amazon or perhaps even Discord looking at this and NOT throwing exclusivity cash at devs to be exclusive to their stores.

423

Third party game exclusivity sucks. Valve games are on steam, EA games are on Origin, Blizzard games are on Battle dot net, Epic games are on the Epic launcher, (now Bethesda as well) I get that. Fine, keep your games exclusive to your platform, why pay royalties to someone else?

But, courting third party exclusives is exactly the same shit we hated on Microsoft on for the Xbox One. Third party exclusives are still fairly rare on the consoles now, and most of those have to do with direct funding from the publisher. You could see Epic’s cut as something similar to that, and these are just timed exclusives. But it isn’t very pro-consumer to lock your title to one storefront, it is pro-company for sure.

I am glad to have the competition, but using exclusivity deals is something I thought we had moved past.

Goat Simulator developerCoffee Stain Studios’ next game, Satisfactory , will also be launching exclusively on Epic’s store. Coffee Stain went so far as to take down Satisfactory ’s Steam page, something that did not sit will with fans.

“I know a lot of people are gonna have strong opinions on that,” said community manager Jace Varley in a video. “Cool. Have those opinions.” Varley said that he understands the decision to use only the Epic store isn’t necessarily going to make everyone happy and said it was “incredibly frustrating” to not be able to tell people sooner.

I mean, that is pretty shitty. Similar to kickstarter games removing promised platforms when the game is set to release. Not to mention a bit tone-deaf of an answer from the community manager. This isn’t shitty on the level of console exclusivity, as you would have to buy a second 300$ console, rather than use a different launcher, but this whole situation reminds me a bit of that, and how the industry moved away from exclusives a bit since then.

Anyway, I hope the games sell well, and I hope that the indie devs understand that just because millions of people play the F2P fortnite from that launcher, doesn’t mean they are interested in paying for your indie game. More eyes for sure, but I feel like getting front page treatment and good reviews on steam would move more copies.

I guess we will see!

424

Is something preventing you from actually playing the game?

425

At the same time, I do understand the fact that Valve has not been keeping developers happy, to say the least. Consumers have been enjoying Valve’s added features, while devs are at Valve’s mercy. I didn’t even know about the October bug mentioned in the article linked above, and the fact that Valve offers 20% to the massive devs but not to the little ones isn’t ok. It seems to me that the Epic store is more of a way to send a message to Valve than anything else, but I don’t know what else could have been done either.

426

There is little doubt that I play non-Steam games - Twitch, GoG, Uplay, Origin, etc. - far less than I play Steam games. Steam is one of the first things I look at when I boot my computer. These other services do not get booted automatically and I have to go want to find them to play them. The old adage is out of sight, out of mind and that definitely holds true for me. I have 3-4 games on Twitch that I probably would play considerably on Steam that I just keep forgetting about because I do not launch Twitch very often. This is pretty typical of games on these other services,

Since I am aware of this issue I am far more reluctant to buy non-Steam games. I also tend to be less aware of non-Steam games. I use my wish list and my explore list to keep tabs of upcoming games. If they do not show up on that list I will have to hear about it elsewhere and considering Computer Gaming World does not exist anymore that means I will have to stumble into a thread on a forum or a video on Youtube to even know about the game.

So unless:

  1. It is a big enough hit to gain my attention through the limited media sources I use
    and
  2. Overcomes my reluctance to purchase non-Steam games due to my previous experience with not playing those types of games

If BATTLETECH came out on Epic I would be all over that service. That was one of my most wished for games in the last 2 decades and that would happily buy that game from Somali pirates. A game like Frostpunk probably would not move me to use the store even though that is an outstanding product. That is not a knock against Epic but one against my own habits; but for Epic to gain my business they are going to have to force a change of those habits for me to want to use that service. That is going to require some killer exclusives, a significantly better user experience or considerably lower prices. Otherwise it is just another service that I will not pay much attention to and that also holds true for any products on that service.

427

I just really hope that indies that push for PC exclusivity off of Steam know that they are going to lose a lot of audience from the steam “trending games” tab that has pushed me to buy a bunch of indie games I had never before heard of.

The visibility will be high on the Epic storefront, but will the audience be there?

Another issue is that I removed my credit card number from my Epic account as I had recieved a few login attempts that made me change my password. My trust level with Epic isn’t as high as with Steam’s right now. But, if they put the right game in, I am there, but I am not going to be opening up Epic’s launcher looking for a new 10-20 dollar indie game to play, it will have to draw me away from Steam, where I already do that.

I wonder how much of Epic’s sales pitch is on the Fortnite install base for their launcher? I am sure it is a big number, but I would be skeptical if they try to make any connections between Fortnite account numbers and the possibility of sales. I don’t want any indie teams to throw their eggs in the Epic basket only to hemorrhage sales and harm the company and employees.

428

Ten years ago I probably would’ve cared about this whole business a lot. In 2018? It’s just another place to buy PC games. I really can’t even muster anything worth debating about it. shrug

429

DRM, man … it’s just wrong. Freedom for the bytes!!! /s

Yeah, I’m kind of in the same boat. Half Life 2 was soooo long ago and the evolution of digital game distribution from then until now has seen massive Internet wars. They’re awfully tiring, and while perhaps they’ve resulted in better services being available, the inevitability of more platforms isn’t worth much more than a raised eyebrow by now.

430

Valve’s the reason they have any chance at all. Take Steam out of the picture and where do they go again? I mean I got burned by Impulse too. It’s too easy to rally the troops, claim you’re ready to take on steam, get bored, sell or just fold and middle finger the customer. Epic is fat with cash right now. We all know that doesn’t last forever.

Steam is easy. It’s not perfect in anyway but I can count on one hand the number of games that I care enough about to give that up, and most are those are not indie games. The only reason I know some of these Indies exist outside of pitches here is because of Steam and the communities on them that the devs are so ready to ditch, the whole which games are like these discussions Epic and the rest of them don’t think are worth having because sometimes the communities are unpleasant.

They’re not valuing what Steam actually brings to the table so they’re not really counting them as features worth even listing.

431

You mean to say: “Why not use another store front?” Aside from installing another launcher, creating a new account, handing all your personal data over to yet another American company (with some heavy Chinese investment) that doesn’t seem to care much about privacy, and hoping that they’ll never pull the service whenever they feel like and leave you with your games lost in cyberspace?

432

I do agree with your point. Honestly I think it’s just that the economy has changed – we’re far closer to the ios marketplace economy (which is brutal) than to the economy of 2012, when it wasn’t so hard to get exposure and succeed. As a result, every little thing matters and can determine the fate of a game. Do something wrong in your release or just get screwed by an algorithm and your game, which you spent years on, will flop. The market is just too saturated, and I don’t think there’s any way to improve the situation since the tools to make games are getting ever cheaper and the dream of making games is just as grand as it has always been.

433

See I recognize these problems, and I understand why devs would want to go to greener pastures… but when a game is on sale or shows up as a release either on Steam itself or one of those games you didn’t play or notice this week list and it looks mildly interesting, the first thing I do is go to the Steam forum for that game to see what the chatter is about it, then I usually search here to see if it’s mentioned at all and finally I go check out the games website. If at the point it seems like maybe still worthwhile, it goes on the Wish List.

The fact of the matter is… if no new game was made past today, not a single one, I’d still have years, years of content to play. There’s no shortage. Not only do I not have to buy from Epic, I don’t really need to buy at all. I am like most others with backlogs and tons of existing now games I have yet to play waiting around and my backlog is very minor compared to what I see others have here. What would suck is this is one of my hobbies, it’s a big industry and the livelihoods of a lot of creative and technical individuals are in that industry. I want to support it… but don’t punish me for a being a part of it. Epic’s approach feels like a stick approach from the position of a customer. And yeah there are people who won’t care, it’s just another app, and some of those people 100 games or so they’ve bought and not played too… I know that because they’ve mentioned it here. Maybe that seems ideal but I think it’s part of the problem.

I consider Discord a utility, and one I have a few issues with at that. I have no interest in using their store.

434

I think this is the other main part of the economic problem. Far too many gaming hours are being produced for them to ever be consumed, and they are all present for eternity since it’s a non-perishable product. A dev is competing not only with what’s being made by others, but also with an entire backlog of essentially all games made since the 90s, all of which is available for a pittance. And that’s not even counting free-to-play games.

I think Steam of 2012 was the exception rather than the rule. I can understand why devs would want to go back to those days, but I really don’t think it’s possible. Most indie game developers are building a product for which there is no demand, based on the fact that there was a little bit of additional demand 7 years ago.

435

Well I don’t believe in cutting off history, so the answer isn’t really let’s not make these games available anymore. At the same time, if your a top dog, center stage game at one store but only a footnote on another, I’m not sure let’s just make more stores so we can have more stages is another answer either.

There’s got to be a better way.

436

Just as an FYI Steam does not provide much, if any, free user acquisition any more. First they cut the launch UA now more recently they have cut the long tail.

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/332038/Devs_say_a_problem_with_the_Steam_algorithm_has_severely_hurt_store_page_traffic.php

Which is part of the reason why Epic is such an easy switch for indies if they are invited.

Better business terms and the potential of some free UA. Sure its against a smaller user base but if you are invisible on Steam then its user base is not very useful.

437

This point is seriously undervalued. Steam has third party keys, forums, workshop, actual linux support, stream play, game sharing, friend lists (that are already filled), trivial DRM, reviews, and all sorts of niche games. Any group of these (and likely others) is very important to a very large group of players. And you have to deal with a surprising amount of people who claim any store they don’t know is a scam.
No one is going to compete with Steam on it’s terms in a short period of time and trying to do so is a recipe for failure. It’s not that it’s dominance is written in stone, it’s that everyone already tried every single improvement that is suggested here at one point or another (other than better recommendations, but no one is trying either), but many forgot that what already existed is important too. The ones with the sense to play their own game are strong their niche. Don’t get me wrong, may it split a lot more, as long as it cares for my list of preferences from that group. :)
As the linked analysis says, some (and I’m not guessing if it’s closer to 1% or 99%) developers need a wake up call that they’re not that special.

A gambling company funding another gambling company doesn’t fill you with confidence? Well, I never!

438

You realize how testerical this sounds, right? Do you have some pearls to clutch as well?

439

Seriously? Fine then.

440

Valve paid for Steamworks to make games that use it dependent on Steam. It was explicitly a strategy to create dependence on their storefront. It’s buying exclusivity from the other end. The only question I have is why do you assume Epic will never allow key sales through third party sites?

There’s a lot of dumb arguments being made to complain about the Epic store, many of them founded on the hidden premise that it will never offer anything more than what it has now. Why do we assume they won’t add regional pricing? Or key sales? Do people not realize there are many places to buy V-bucks outside the Epic store itself?