If he has the kind of money I think he has, Tim Sweeney should jump on this, and promise to match those earnings to a charity - Instant karma and perhaps a teeny bit of goodwill.
True, but one offs can be a hassle to set up.
Making excuses for them before they say no?
No excuses, just pointing out how go intentions can be expansive when dealing with any corporation. It just adds extra pain points.
Even in the small companies I have worked at, having clients ask for one offs, no matter how small can really add up to a lot of extra time, and a extra places that mistakes can happen. Clients asks for extra help with reviews, and you now have to keep track and set up meetings. They have an odd set up with loans, and come testing season, you have remember to make notes and track it through the year, in case they are audited (hopefully by the IRS and not by the DOL. You never want to be audited by the DOL).
It’s just nicer when you can follow a standard procedure because it means fewer notes and fewer exceptions. But you do what you need to do to make the clients happy and successful.
As I was told often when designing and running my experiments in college, Keep it Simple, Stupid.
Yeah, in our company, we usually do our projects as much as possible “The usual way” , because every time we have to do something special, it increases the risks of something going wrong.
This is nothing different. Post game. Pay charity instead of developer.
There isn’t anything special here. They already have to report how much it makes to the dev, just send it to Tim as well. I won’t think badly of him if he doesn’t want to do it, but it’s not an engeneering feat to do it. Unlikely, say, a shopping cart.
I assumed the dev would do it for tax benefits. But, yeah, it’s just a different account and minor manual work for an accountant at the end of the year if they wanted to deduct it (which might not even be worth it).
Or it could be a HUGE TAX BREAK!
All kidding aside, if he expects the sales to be relatively minor on Epic, it seems like a calculated PR move, like the whole buy 1 pair of shoes and give another away deal. Just a cynical ploy to stay in the media’s limelight.
If he expects the sales on Epic to relatively minor, then he hasn’t lost much of any revenue and he gets to publicity of one upping Tim Sweeney (which the Epic haters will just eat up). And Epic gets to eat crow, because, if the games are sold for the same price, then of course the bigger store with more features will capture the majority of the sales.
The only exception would be if the developer decides to level the per game compensation, which would mean reducing the price of the game on Epic.
Definitely feels like he wants a second PR bump for antagonizing the EGS.
Sweeny should say “no thanks” and just make a large lump sum contribution in the devs name to the Red Cross, or whatever.
I rarely pop in here, but that developer is acting like an ass. He’s riding high right now because people want his game and want to stick it to Epic, but if his next one fails to capture an audience and doesn’t have the Epic angle, what then? This smacks of burning bridges to me.
Burning what bridges? They already declined to put his game on the store.
A little, but he’s also calling out the hypocrisy in Tim’s post. I’d agree he’s walking a fine line, but given how hard it is to be noticed I don’t really blame him for wanting to maximize his moment of awareness.
What hypocrisy? He doesn’t want to clutter up the store with indie games unless he can make money on it.
The game he was willing to shell out some money for exclusivity is now “clutter” and not worthy of his store?
…and that means nothing for the next game he makes, which like I said, may turn out to be a total dud. Epic isn’t likely to be offering exclusivity deals on game three to save his bacon so he’s shut out a potential line of funding down the road.
You’re only as good as your last game. Just keep quiet and do things the way you want to instead of being dopey about it. There was no need to put Epic on the spot that way. It’s 100% grandstanding IMO.
Then again, people who hate Epic will eat this up. It’s probably just fine.
That’s the case regardless? If the next one was looking like a dud, Epic wouldn’t want anything to do with it anyway. They’re only picking up clear winners, not gambling on indie titles. I’ve seen no indication that this would have been a potential funding channel for a future dud game.
Oh come on. Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is basically the return of Privateer, a game from 1993 in a long dead genre. Games like that are gambles on indie titles for sure. I hope Travis is majorly successful with that game, but that’s not a sure bet at all.
Yes, if it competes on the steam store, it would be a waste of space in Epics store.
When you are a boutique business, you need to distinguish yourself where ever possible. You sell the things that will make a profit and you sell the things that people can’t get anywhere else.
If profit isn’t a forgone conclusion and it is sold in a bigger more popular store, then it’s just clutter.
You don’t go to the local soap shop (there is one in Gettysburg) to buy Dove Brand Soap, even if they sold Dove Brand Soap.
RGO is (basically) a sequel to a game from respected devs that has looked absolutely amazeballs for quite some time. I agree there’s no sure things in this business, but I wouldn’t call it gamble. The game’s production values alone are lightyears (did you even see what I just did right there?!) ahead of a lot of indie games.
This is correct. Epic does not gamble. They view previous sales and steam stats such as wishlists. They only make offers to games that are going to be big already. They don’t waste their time on people with promise who have not been successful in attracting an audience already. This is one of my gripes with them.
EDIT: Nevertheless, I agree this guy is pushing it. OK, we got the memo, you’ve rejected their deal. He keeps milking it though, repeatedly one-upping his last move.