Epic Games Store - 88% split goes to devs

This works for me. The more stores the better. Although I do wish Epic & Steam gave me a web only option like Itch & GOG.

The overhead won’t be too bad. There are a surprisingly small number of people at Valve actually working on Steam. I assume Epic would be the same. So it’ll still be gravy. And unlike Valve, I assume Epic will continue to develop and release games.

And since not everyone will be on their store all the time, they’ll still get some engine fees.

That’s true, but it costs money and time to build a store and launcher. Plus you’re exposed to risk of hacking later.

At 30% I imagine the benefits of rolling your own are clear. At 12% it’s probably less obvious that you should take the time and money to build your own store, unless you’re huge.

7%, if you use Unreal!

After Fortnite cashcow? Not so sure.
Paragon was killed.
UT was abandoned.
Everything is Fortnite.

Meanwhile Valve literally just released a new game, albeit one I could not care less about (Artifact).

note the correct usage of “could not care less”

It depends if Fortnite is going to be one of those ‘eternal’ games, like CS or LoL, or after two more years a new game will be the ‘in’, popular thing to play and people will abandon Fortnite in droves.

Pretty much. And the only thing keeping Save the World (or whatever the original Fortnite is called) alive is probably to avoid bad publicity in killing a Fortnite branded game.

And Epic has publicly declared they’ll never release a single player game again, so there’s that too.

Big sellers using UE should be flocking to this store. Could be a game changer - no pun intended.

They will be. Question is, will gamers?

This is such a weird one.

Valve was able to Trojan Horse Steam onto all of us via Half-Life 2. When it turned into a digital marketplace, it was first of its kind, and so it kind of became the “default” for a lot of users.

For a long time, I would’ve said their dominance meant they were untouchable. That still may be the case. But Epic’s landing at a good time. We’ve got several major titles now foisting their own launchers on users, and users not really giving a shit, because they want to play those games. So Epic has their own Trojan Horse via Fortnite and the UE launcher, which is unbelievably successful, meaning it’s already on pretty much everyone’s machines.

Moreover, we’re at a weird point in time where people have given up on the idea of a “default” service of one app to one media. Similar to how people, for a while, were either Netflix or Hulu people, nowadays they’re Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Now, Crunchroll, etc. people. In other words - Epic is swooping in when people are - more than ever - willing to split their libraries and focus across multiple services.

Because of that, if they actually stick the landing and attract some decent gems, they may do very well and provide a viable alternative to Steam. Look - I get that there are “viable alternatives” to gamers - but I’m talking about something that’ll work with the non-gamers, the bulk of actual money spending consumers.

Their outreach to content creators is a good step in a direction that’ll give them success. Influencers and streamers are currently so important to the gaming industry and the success of a title (well, titles that won’t automatically be successful like RDR2) that trying to get them invested in the service is super smart.

I don’t really have a finger in the wind guess on this one; I can only say that I think Epic is obviously serious, they’ve given it some thought, and they may have a shot. It’s not like it’ll be a cakewalk for them, but I’m fairly sure they know that. It’s all going to come down to a combination of their dedication, and how many mid tier developers\publishers (who this is clearly aimed at; they’re not looking for the AAs or the super budget indies) sign on with them.

Gamers loves sales. If I am making $88 vs $65 on Steam, one could discount often. I think new buyers would migrate in that direction.

ya in the age of microtransactions game companies can hardly wait to hand back additional profits to their customers. That’s certainly how it works in the recent years. /s
I’m also sceptical as to whether or not an epic game store is really able to offer the same kind of service as Steam in the long run. It’s certainly attractive for those that could provide a lot of what Steam offers on their own but those have already mostly pulled out of Steam or will simply do so in the future and thus epic’s offer seems like an unnecessary intermediate step.
So it will all come down to the question how good this epic game store will function and what kind of support (for devs) it offers because looking at the numbers here I doubt it will be more than the bare minimum you’d expect (if it’s so easy to undercut Steam by this much you’d really wonder why noone else would have done it sooner).

I certainly don’t expect it to result in lower prices. That’s highly naive.

Most of the other services are company-centric. Origin mostly sells EA games, UPlay UBIsoft, and obviously their cut is 0% there. Origin technically sells games from other studios at a 30% cut, but really nobody cares. Their raison d’être is to sell EA/Ubi games and avoid paying Steam’s cut, not to be a great service for other studios. Epic’s pitch is different.

The beauty of an open ecosystem is that it relentlessly trends towards efficiency. The age of huge profit margins for digital storefronts selling games is coming to an end.

But not on iOS, cause it ain’t open!

They exploited the “in” thing with Fortnite already. Don’t see why they couldn’t do that again.

Eh, they were also pretty lucky to have a product in the pipeline that they could pivot into that mode very well, relatively easily, and fairly fast, plus a handful of people involved in the project with the vision and talent to do so. Not all of whom are there anymore.

I’m price-driven. I’d like to see Epic offer better discounts than Steam.

The other thing I like is DRM-free like GOG does. As long as I’m diligent about downloading and saving the game, I feel like that’s a better arrangement than Steam.

Competition is good. I hope this doesn’t hurt GOG.

While mostly full of trash, the Steam Community discussion forums are filled with the necessary fixes for non-working games that Valve continues to sell.

Workshop is awesome and probably widely used by games that support it.

“It wasn’t my intention when launching or naming Steam Spy, but in retrospect, it makes for a great four-years-in-the-making joke.”

This was pretty interesting, got me hopeful and then I read this…

This led to a slew of valuable insights that Galyonkin says directly informed the Epic store’s feature set. For instance, forums and other social media-like tools—a cornerstone of Steam—won’t be part of the package. Galyonkin said that this is because “not a single developer I talked to wanted forums” and “the toxicity it brings,” preferring to interact with communities on their own terms on platforms like Reddit and Discord instead.

Ugh

and

adding a global Twitter-like newsfeed, so developers can update their players about recent changes to their games and their future titles

oh god having that in a game was bad enough now they want to tweet to their playres… no. If i wanted to follow these companies on Twitter I would be following them on Twitter already. Also, I hate Twitter.

Steam Spy’s greatest strength, though, has been its ability to pull back the curtain on sales data and other trends, paving the way for developers to make games they know people will like

Nice, for the developers

“We’re aiming to provide developers with as much information to make good decisions as legally possible,” Galyonkin said.

Boy that sounds familiar and dicey.

So this boils down to a question someone else already asked… what about this storefront makes me, the player, want to use it? I get all the developer goodies, but I see zero reason why I would switch, and I only care because I prefer competition, real competition in any market I participate in.