For sure, but Epic was a very successful company before Fortnite, and Fortnite is one of the most successful games ever made, so it’s not like players were gonna look at giving Epic their credit card and “screw it, I’ll just play Black Ops 5”.
Amazon and Paypal do reduce friction, but nothing’s as easy as just pressing a button. You’re already signed-in to Epic.
Yeah, because Epic does fuck all for costumers, that’s why they don’t need a higher cut. Oh, wait, they pay for games to have less features and have an auto-delete for saves, that’s got be worth at least 12% for the convenience.
Yeah, why waste money suing a monopoly when you can just whine for free publicity about a semi-open platform that doesn’t just eat all their costs. Again, because enough people ate it up the first time.
Google has a lot of issues, this ain’t one.
LOL. 30% is a rate and not a price. Prices can go down and the rate can stay the same. That’s how math works.
Also, living wage adjusted for inflation is pretty stagnant (or worse) for most people in the US within my lifetime.
I look forward to using the Epic Games Store or whatever it’s called to download and play Path of Exile, League of Legends, and Guild Wars 2.
“fix PC gaming” huh? What exactly is “broken” about it?
It shows people games they’re not interested in. It must be hell to go grocery shopping.
I’d say Steam controlling an overwhelming percentage of it certainly qualifies as broken, not that I’m remotely endorsing Epic’s idea of what “fixing” it looks like.
Epic have already declared they have no intent in letting in all games. They want a curated store. This is the thing people are missing. Nobody is willing, or wants, to take over Steam’s job of being the market for every game – not GOG, not Epic. They just want to take the cream and have a curated experience, leaving Steam to deal with the masses of games that don’t sell as well. Steam therefore, by definition, is the PC market. It’s the only truly free market on PC, where anybody can join.
Does. Not. Compute. Steam is still the best PC “game platform” by far. I have guides, reviews, forums, mods, achievements, fucking cards…I didn’t ask for this…and more besides.
Again, how is it broken? HOW!
I dunno, but from my point of view the simple fact that Steam doesn’t REPEATEDLY FUCKING DELETE MY SAVES makes it significantly less broken than whatever the fuck Epic is doing.
It’s also weird to describe it as broken when it was Steam that ushered in the PC gaming renaissance after everyone else abandoned it 10 years ago or so.
I’m not on-board with Epic’s arguments, but they have said that the current (Steam, Google, Apple) model is bad for developers and publishers because the cut they take is too high, and the loose or nonexistent curation has caused a glut of crap games that make it harder to stand out.
I"m intrigued by the idea anyone believes they have this as a real concern. It makes me laugh every time it comes up in Epic discussions.
The higher cut is certainly a negative for devs/studios and particularly harmful to indie devs who may not sell enough licenses to make back their nut after costs. That’s the raison d’être of the Epic store, as far as I can tell-- Sweeney looked at Steam’s cut and said “fuck that”.
I’m just saying I find it laughable suggesting he’s truly concerned about developers and studios.
He may think it’s a business opportunity, certainly throwing a lot of money at it to test that theory, but the idea that he cares more about developers and studios is simply the most ludicrous thing anyone could say about this Epic store venture.
Yeah, unlike iOS, you can easily load apps without going through their store. There are multiple other “stores”, including from big guys like Amazon.
Paying google a slice of your sales, when you’re using their platform and distribution system seems… normal? Why is this bad at all? Just because they’re Google?
I see that I’m a day late getting to this, so maybe nothing I said is relevant to the conversation.
That’s one of the things that rubs me the wrong way - what they’re doing is hilariously transparent and they insist that isn’t the case. Take the recent announcement of new IAP policy on EGS. It’s very obviously meant as a dig to try and make Google look bad for taking a cut of Fortnite sales. Are there any games currently on EGS that this affects? I honestly don’t know, however based on their heavy curation I suspect it’s minimal.
Tell me that you’re doing all this because you think there’s a market inefficiency and that you think you can do it better, and want to make a bunch of money doing it. Fine. Don’t bullshit me with such obviously self-serving motives.
He cares very much about one developer and studio, Epic. The Steam cut pissed him off and he decided in his righteous fury to fix the problem himself and do everybody a solid.
He’s clearly a gamer, very much cares about the ecosystem, and has the resources and power to do something about it. It’s billionaire syndrome, with that kind of money you can actually fix systemic things. I really do think that’s what actually happened.
Including Epic. Epic’s return to the fold/coming in from the cold…feels like a recent phenomenon. I loved Unreal Tournament 1999 as much as the next guy, but they’ve been gone a long time.
All the money isn’t being funneled to Epic.
And when the fortnite gravy train ends we’ll see how that goes won’t we.