1646

Nevermind.

1647

Sounds like the long-term vision is to be less curated:

1648

This guy is making it hard for me to hold a grudge. Sensible plan.

1649

I wouldn’t say the market has spoken until we see how titles actually sell (which we won’t, because there was a deliberate choice made to not have open community features) and if developers continue to stay exclusive once they aren’t being moneyhatted by Epic.

1650

For me, the important features for Steam are 1) Steam Workshop and 2) Friends list. When/ If Epic gets those rolling, I’ll take a serious look. Until then, though, I’ll give a very heavy preference for Steam. I also have goodwill for Steam, as I think they may have more or less saved PC Gaming from being d00med (haven’t seen that thread for a while).

If Epic gets RDR2 for PC, that, too, would get my attention. That seems unlikely, though.

1651

I’m thinking it might be self-publish with a non-insignificant (in the thousands?) initial fee to pay for a review process and guarantee a minimum involvement on the success of the game from the devs. Redundable upon earnings, of course, so it quickly becomes dissipated. But destroys shovelware and bloat and keeps the visibility problem under control.

Or that’s what I would do. What killed Steam self-publishing was the $100 fee per game. It’s too low, and since it’s refundable, you can ask for a higher fee and as long as people ar expecting to earn, say, $10k from their game it would be a non-issue (a $3k fee would be refunded on $10k revenue. And with a $3k fee you would clean about 80% of Steam games, but not any serious attempt).

A store where games published actually expect to earn a minimum amount of money on average might be a step forward.

1652

That’s exactly what I predicted. Scroll up enough to 3? days ago or so for proof :P

  1. First get people on the store with some temporal exclusives for the first year.
  2. Mature your app meanwhile (offline mode, cloud saves, regional pricing, reviews, etc), in this period have the store follow the ‘boutique’ model, only a few games for proven studios
  3. Once the app is more competitive, start opening the floodgates, drop the exclusive model
1653

Very good … you win a cookie!

1654

If that’s the long term vision… then I think the wise move would be for @tomchick to start his own curated game store (with us forumites being the people furnishing the reviews). Like rogerebert.com but actually fulfilling orders of the goods.

I am not kidding.

1655

Except that’s not a unique (outside of the higher royalties) business model enough to topple or even compete with Steam in the long-term. Why? Well, that’s how GoG, GamersGate, GreenManGaming et all operate. They sell game keys.

You don’t compete with Steam by becoming Steam. Even becoming Steam, but with higher royalties, review bombing protection etc, isn’t a big enough draw without exclusives. Given the choice of buying a game on Steam or EGS, my guess is that winner hands down would be Steam.

So the plan is to become Steam, but with the ability for a producer/tester to play games prior to publishing. Not sure how that solves any problem because that same game would go up on Steam for $100.

1656

GOG doesn’t sell game keys, in fact I would say they do by far the most to differentiate themselves from steam.

1657

Right, GOG is a legitimate competitor, not just another Steam key reseller like GMG, Humble, and the like.

I’ve always wondered why Steam doesn’t have an affiliate program like Amazon. It’s a cheap way to drive people to your platform. Steam is dominant already and doesn’t need it, you say? Amazon thinks otherwise.

1658

I’d buy stuff here.

1659

Depends on what the refund policy is.

1660

Can QT3 pool enough money to yank Metro Exodus as a Quarter To Three store exclusive right before it launches on the EGS?

1661

Qt3 exclusives will be forum games.

1662

Just a note I agree, if you make the assumption the amount of games on Steam is a negative.

I make a different assumption though. I think Steam & PC in general is starved for games there are too few PC games, not too many.

I have babbled about it many times so I wont bore folks again as its entirely a developer problem, its on us. We are so lazy and creatively sterile we just copy a niche game we like rather than try and make something customers are interested in. Then we complain about “too many games” when they don’t buy our incredibly niche title they already have several similar too.

Successful games which address other themes become “surprise” hits and are quickly ignored and we get back to making hitting person game number XXX.

I think Steams opening up was the best move they have made in the past five years. Epic is wise to follow them, I think they are unwise to try and “fix” artists games however but we shall see. I am wrong a lot :)

1663

I think EGS is making one huge mistake right now- they seem to be concentrating on developers entirely. What’s the positive incentive for consumers to start using EGS over Steam?

Right now it seems the only thing Epic has is exclusives, and that’s a negative incentive. PC game consumers have shown in the past that they are willing to just boycott a platform entirely- GFWL being the most notorious example. Consumers don’t care that much if a company gets 12% or 30%, they care how much they’re paying.

The only way I can see EGS taking off is if they offer free crossplay tools (that would get developers on board willingly, and consumers would see EGS as the good guy in that), or really start offering sales that undercut Steam (and EGS can’t win that one for multiple reasons).

I really do want someone to legitimately compete with Valve, but EGS has managed to make me not want it to be them with the decisions they are making. I just don’t see anything they’re doing being things that are pro-consumer, and the exclusives they get- I don’t see any of them being unique enough that folks will see them as must-gets, especially as they’re not hitting specialist genres.

1664

Well, Metro is 10 dollars cheaper. That’s pretty pro consumer.

1665

Steam launched exclusively with Half-Life 2. Seems to have worked out for them and consumers.