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Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
Yes, J_C I did. I don't need to be "convinced of the advantages of Steam". I want to know how my statement that they have very little overhead listing and selling your game and that it costs almost nothing to do so that you initially took issue with is wrong. Or do you think Valve pays staff, put up additional server and does R&D because of "Exile Squadron" or even "Age of Decadence"?
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
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Developer
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16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Yes, J_C I did. I don't need to be "convinced of the advantages of Steam". I want to know how my statement that they have very little overhead listing and selling your game and that it costs almost nothing to do so that you initially took issue with is wrong. Or do you think Valve pays staff, put up additional server and does R&D because of "Exile Squadron" or even "Age of Decadence"?
I don't really get what you mean here. Of course they are not adding extra servers for 2 games. But servers and store maintenance for 10 thousand games, R&D for new features and staff overhead costs money.
 

Ezeekiel

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 19, 2016
Messages
1,783
Hate to link to games media, but probably a good short little read for people who aren't yet aware of steam's own physical network etc: https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-delivered-15-billion-gigabytes-of-data-in-2018/
They don't just rent a bunch of servers and rely on the existing net to deliver the data.

Wonder what the costs of building your own sort-of separate internet infrastructure are. Something tells me a good chunk of those 30% go into that... Do they go so far as to have their own fiber optic connections across the oceans?
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,326
Location
Flowery Land
Steam does nothing to earn their 30%.

What could this even be used for though? Only Steam games I can think of with local MP only are the SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics, which are literally just an emulator with roms.

edit: If it works with non-Steam games, it could be used for other emulators. Still not much purpose I see.

edit: Tales of Games.
 

Dickie

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 29, 2011
Messages
4,235
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Steam does nothing to earn their 30%.

What could this even be used for though? Only Steam games I can think of with local MP only are the SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics, which are literally just an emulator with roms.

edit: If it works with non-Steam games, it could be used for other emulators. Still not much purpose I see.

edit: Tales of Games.
There are currently almost 7k games on steam with Shared/Split-Screen and about 2,500 with local co-op:

https://store.steampowered.com/search?category3=24
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,326
Location
Flowery Land
Steam does nothing to earn their 30%.

What could this even be used for though? Only Steam games I can think of with local MP only are the SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics, which are literally just an emulator with roms.

edit: If it works with non-Steam games, it could be used for other emulators. Still not much purpose I see.

edit: Tales of Games.
There are currently almost 7k games on steam with Shared/Split-Screen:

https://store.steampowered.com/search?category3=24

How many that don't also have online MP though?
 

MuscleSpark

Augur
Patron
Joined
Apr 12, 2011
Messages
369
Steam does nothing to earn their 30%.

What could this even be used for though? Only Steam games I can think of with local MP only are the SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics, which are literally just an emulator with roms.

edit: If it works with non-Steam games, it could be used for other emulators. Still not much purpose I see.

edit: Tales of Games.
The most-requested one I can think of is TowerFall Ascension.
Thankfully Steam allows one to search by tags so here is the full list of games with Shared/Split Screen https://store.steampowered.com/search/?category2=24
A lot of the benefit comes from only having to buy one copy of a game and being able to play it with any of your friends.

Edit: Damn Ninjas.
 

Dickie

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 29, 2011
Messages
4,235
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
There are currently almost 7k games on steam with Shared/Split-Screen:

https://store.steampowered.com/search?category3=24

How many that don't also have online MP though?
It's hard to say, exactly because of how game features are tagged. Some games will have multiplayer and not specify local nor online. Some will have local co-op but not local multiplayer. For instance, if you check both "Online Multiplayer" and "Local Multiplayer" boxes, you get 2k results, but unchecking "Online Multiplayer" changes the result to 4k. I think this means that 2,000 games have local multiplayer and not online multiplayer, but like I said, it's not exact because of how these things are tagged on games.

I don't want to sit here and make an exhaustive list, but here's a few.





Edit: Also, I think it'll be nice if devs can just make local multiplayer which seems to be easier than online multiplayer, and let Steam do the hard work of making working netcode.
 

the_shadow

Arcane
Joined
Dec 30, 2011
Messages
1,179

Sweeny does math:

30% is larger than 70%
He talks about profit. Most video games turn a deficit, so yes, Steam makes more profit than the developr in this case, but given that games have a duplication cost of 0, it really depends on how many you sell, and how much it costed to get the game done.

Yeah, even I understood this, and I'm not a game developer or a business manager. Some consumers are just entitled and love having a knee-jerk reaction to anything those evvvilll developers say, instead of actually taking a deep breath and actually thinking about things first. Listen with the intent to understand, rather than the intent to reply.

mediocrepoet said:
I've never been able to figure out why in gaming in particular, people like to whine about entitled gamers expecting x, y, z.

The only people whining are the entitled gamers when they don't get everything their way. The reason I like to point it out is because of the rank hypocrisy when it comes from supposed right-wingers who claim to be big into capitalism. They will ridicule socialists and scoff at the notion of 'Muh Free Health Care', then act like they are entitled to luxury goods. At least socialists are honest about wanting to misappropriate your stuff and spread the wealth around, many right-wingers are faux capitalists who believe 'My property is mine and mine alone, but you have stuff that I want, so, umm, it's a public good that should belong to everybody!'

Like at what point do any of these shitty companies deserve my money?

They don't 'deserve' your money. Consumers don't 'deserve' their products. It's an exchange of money for goods, if you aren't interested in the product, then don't buy it.

Either give me something I want or eat a dick and go broke. That's business.

That's fine. It's also business to reduce overheads and cut costs. If a business can cut costs by choosing a different vendor which offers the same basic functions, why shouldn't they consider it? More importantly, why all the butthurt and outrage? They are delivering the exact same product, just through a different storefront. Do you mean to tell me that people don't swap electricity and internet providers if they offer a deal more appropriate for that individual? If I use electricity during only the off-peak period, I'm not going to care if the on-peak charges are high. Likewise, I'm not going to care if a storefront doesn't have a bunch of features I don't need, as long as I can get cheap games, or games that are exclusive that I want.

So in this case, Steam provides a large catalogue, friends lists, forums, etc.

They don't have Borderlands 3, though. And the offers some games at lower prices. To some customers, those advantages outweight the disadvantages. You care about all the other functions, but I don't. Large catalogue? As even anti-EPIC posters in this thread have already pointed out, a lot of those games are penny dreadfuls. Friends lists? Hah, I don't have friends. Forums? I post on RPGCodex, what do I need STEAM forums for?
 

Reinhardt

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2015
Messages
29,232
They don't 'deserve' your money. Consumers don't 'deserve' their products. It's an exchange of money for goods, if you aren't interested in the product, then don't buy it, literally Hitler alt-right nazi racist shitlord!
fixed
I'm not going to care if a storefront doesn't have a bunch of features I don't need, as long as I can get cheap games
Except they are not cheaper. You pay same price, but one store is just simply worse.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
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Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
Except they are not cheaper. You pay same price, but one store is just simply worse.

It's objectively worse, yes. And Valve do a lot to earn their 30%. However the number of people who actually care when there's an exclusive game they want? I doubt it's that many. That's the point of exclusives, to get you to buy there instead of over there, and it works.

How Epic expect to turn this into a long-running success when the exclusive cash runs out though, I have no idea.
 

passerby

Arcane
Joined
Nov 16, 2016
Messages
2,788
How Epic expect to turn this into a long-running success when the exclusive cash runs out though, I have no idea.

1) They are getting these money back from initial sales. They may not making much profit, but I doubt they they operate at a loss. They'll simply always need exclusives to keep the user base.
2) Fortnite generates 200M$ monthly revenue.
 

mediocrepoet

Philosoraptor in Residence
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11,468
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Combatfag: Gold box / Pathfinder
Codex 2012 Codex+ Now Streaming! MCA Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
They don't 'deserve' your money. Consumers don't 'deserve' their products. It's an exchange of money for goods, if you aren't interested in the product, then don't buy it.

Right, which is why they should stfu when people complain that a product doesn't have the features they hoped it would or otherwise wanted and therefore don't use it. As I said:

Either give me something I want or eat a dick and go broke. That's business.

They don't have Borderlands 3, though.

I wouldn't buy half the crap on there in the first place.

I was being generous though. I haven't seen anything on there that I actually want.

Friends lists? Hah, I don't have friends.

I can't understand why, with your winning personality.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
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New Vegas
1) They are getting these money back from initial sales. They may not making much profit, but I doubt they they operate at a loss. They'll simply always need exclusives to keep the user base.

Surely that can't be the goal though. If you believe Sweeney then he wants to take down Steam for altruistic reasons, and if you don't believe him then he wants that fat check, but either way making scraps off a handful of games a month they buy exclusivity for won't get it done.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
1) They are getting these money back from initial sales. They may not making much profit, but I doubt they they operate at a loss. They'll simply always need exclusives to keep the user base.

Surely that can't be the goal though. If you believe Sweeney then he wants to take down Steam for altruistic reasons, and if you don't believe him then he wants that fat check, but either way making scraps off a handful of games a month they buy exclusivity for won't get it done.
Every loss Epic has from the EGS can be written off in taxes.
How do you think Amazon got as big as they are while operating at a loss and barely paying any taxes?
 

passerby

Arcane
Joined
Nov 16, 2016
Messages
2,788
Surely that can't be the goal though.

Why not exactly ? He is way too smart to believe he can actually take down Steam. If Epic would strangle any significant part of the market from Steam, Valve would reduce their revenue cut and all publishers would stop to give a shit about Epic.
If Epic achieved it by accumulating a huge loss, they'd never recover it.

1) If they can have almsost all gamers get used to buying exclusives there, they will be able to sell all games published by them without sharing revenue with anyone.
2) Supposedly operating costs are 7% of the revenue, so with their 12% cut, they generate 5% of revenue from all exclusives sold there as profit. It's not exactly the kind of money pool Gaben is swimming in, but it's still a nice profit with no risk, or investment.

The two above points are easily worth the hassle of perpetually giving out some very low risk, shortterm loans, to secure exclusives.

Every loss Epic has from the EGS can be written off in taxes.

You don't write losses from taxes, you write them off the future profits, which is the base to calculate taxes from. You know what else, other than purposefully lost money, can be written off from future profits ?

Any sensible investment that potentially will turn a profit in the future. This is why corporations reinvest all profits and don't pay any profit taxes, is your mind blown already ?

"Rich people loose money to not pay taxes" is a clickbait headline aimed at grabbing attention of a doubledigit IQ reader, by generating a righteous anger in his confused mind.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
ou don't write losses from taxes, you write them off the future profits, which is the base to calculate taxes from. You know what else, other than purposefully lost money, can be written off from future profits ?
You didn't disprove anything I stated in my post. Did you want me to explain the intricacies of tax loss carryforwards?
"Rich people loose money to not pay taxes" is a clickbait headline aimed at grabbing attention of a doubledigit IQ reader,
enjoying the irony here tbh
 

passerby

Arcane
Joined
Nov 16, 2016
Messages
2,788
Ok, I've got confused, you qutoed my post with DalekFly quote and I've red it is a negation of the point I've made, I'll undo "participation award" rating. You were inaccurate with writing off taxes, instead off profits though, which triggered my autism ;)
 
Last edited:

Tehdagah

Arcane
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
Messages
9,235
Looks like people are still upset about some companies doing what is better for them.

Steam definitely doesn’t let you list games that are exclusive to the EGS, but somehow those games still seem to cost $60.
There's no such a thing as Epic exclusive, they all be released on Steam.

It’s ultimately a silly question, because at no point has anybody argued that the EGS is good for customers. Tim Sweeney, a handful of devs, and journalists have all argued it’s good for devs and publishers, but nobody’s going to tell you that you’re going to get anything positive out of the deal as a consumer. Remember:

New free games every week is a great thing.

EGeOHseXoAQGYFF
Steam does nothing to earn their 30%.
They don't, Valve can drop the % while still offering these services. Epic charges 12% and is still able to offer 8+ free games every month.

Except they are not cheaper. You pay same price, but one store is just simply worse.
And yet the games are still the same thing.
 

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