6259

Figured I would use this sale to give the Epic Store a try. A little bummed that Canadian pricing is not an option right now but the deep discount on Borderlands 3 with the extra $10 USD sweetener was too hard to resist. The account was easy to setup and the game is downloading pretty quickly. So far so good!

6260

“It’s so cheap it would be a crime not to buy it!” - my grandma

(Or something to that effect, rest her soul.)

6261

The coupon is a straight up smart thing that Epic is doing, works like a discount but instead of say buying groceries, all the savings go towards buying more stuff in the Epic store.

6262

Like I said, it’s the best way to spend money to get customer loyalty. Imagine what the Epic store could be like if they’d only done this, and not alienated customers with exclusivity.

6263

They would be markedly less successful, because people wouldn’t want to leave Steam.

6264

I overlooked this button, so you are right, with it it’s quicker than I thought.

It is smart way to attract people, but also Epic straight up loses money on it. They can afford it thanks to Fortnite moneychest.

I dunno. I think if there was no ill-will towards Epic due to their exclusivity business practices, and Epic simply offered free games and much better deeper sales than Steam does, they would attract customers fine.

6265

Can’t lose money on a sale you wouldn’t have made, but for the coupon. That’s certainly the case for me. I bought three things that I really didn’t need, given my backlog. First Epic Store purchases for me, and I wouldn’t have done them without the coupons.

It’s the story with all coupons—elasticity of the supply/demand curve. We can’t know what this really costs them (e.g., in terms of being an actual loss), without knowing their cost side, being paid to the devs.

The free games are, of course, clearly a loss leader. In the case of both, my Epic library is steadily growing now, though still WAY behind my steam library. It’s up to Epic to decide whether my patronage is worth it.

6266

No, it works exactly like a discount. (Let’s say games normally cost $60, and you buy three games. With these $10 coupons you pay $150. With a straight up discount you pay $150).

So why did they add these coupons? It’s because some customers care a lot about what the lowest recorded price for a game is, and will never buy it for more than that. The first time around Epic did this, they basically fucked some developers since their games now showed up as having artificially cheap prices. Epic patched it with a “discount, but it doesn’t actually show up as a discount in the game listing” system. It was particularly hard to understand, since it meant there were two layers of discounts. Coupons are their way of producing the same effect without ever calling it a discount.

6267

We know it fairly precisely, since Epic have been clear about this being paid purely by them rather than coming out of the developer’s cut in any way. (Unlike the normal discounts).

Let’s say you bought Control for $40, but only paid $30 thanks to the coupon. Epic paid 555 $35.20, and thus made a straight up loss of $5.20. In addition to that, if we take Epic at their word, the variable cost of actually selling the game (credit card fees, hosting, etc) is about 6% or about $2.50, for a total loss of about $7.50-$8 per $40 game.

6268

I’m a bit skeptical about those variable costs, but yes, I would imagine Epic takes a small loss on these. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the split is lower than 88% for games bought through the coupon to make the burden on Epic smaller.

6269

Which way around are you skeptical? You think that’s too high? Too low?

And it’s definitely Epic paying that $10 in full, unless you think that both Epic and the devs are lying for some reason. The developer gets paid their 88% based on the game’s listed price, not listed price minus $10. This is how the developer of John Wick Hex described it the last time around they did it:

6270

I’ve seen lots of contracts through my day job and it’s not uncommon for custom terms to be drawn up for promotions and special events. I have no doubt that Epic is eating a good chunk of the promotion from their cut, it’s just a matter of how much and how it’s attributed.

6271

Yes, if nobody said anything, you could imagine some kind of different split. But this isn’t silence. It’s both Epic and devs saying that it’s Epic eating the full cost, unlike normally when games are discounted. Either everyone is telling the same lie, or Epic changed the fee structure from when they last ran a promo like this, and everyone is keeping silent for seemingly no reason. Both seem unlikely.

Why in the world are you so resistant to this? It seems totally normal behavior for Epic to be buying customers.

6272

It also neatly gets around Valve’s requirement of equal treatment in pricing. A $60 game on Steam is a $60 game on Epic, but hey, I have this coupon on the site …

6273

I think you’re reading into something that I’m not saying. I’m agreeing that they’re buying customers - I’m just saying that they’re probably not taking an actual $7.50-$8 loss per sale.

6274

What do you think of using that coupon towards Cyberpunk 2077? You think it’d be cheaper than that pre-launch? That’s a 16% discount.

6275

That’s my inclination too actually - the coupon expires in May so you don’t need to use it now if you want to hold out for a better deal in the store.

6276

You know, that’s a great idea, to just hold on to your last coupon and see if you can beat the discount for Cyberpunk 2077… if not, make the purchase.

6277

So… I gather Control is a decent game and worth the 30€ price tag?

Or rather Outer Worlds for 35?

6278

I guess they’re both great games but it depends if you’re in the mood for twitch shooting and chair throwing or dialogue trees and inventory management?
2019 seems to have been a pretty strong year for singleplayer story games.