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Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

FeelTheRads

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to benefit the customer (but in reality mostly themselves).

Yes, obviously when Steam does something similar it's only because of the customers, not at all for themselves. Imagine believing anything a company does is not done for profit.

Oh yeah, and the 30% cut is obviously the only possible way to be a middle man, because Steam does it and therefore anyone else not doing it is wrong and won't be able to survive.
 

V_K

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https://www.spieltimes.com/news/borderlands-3-pre-order-pulled-out-from-epic-games-store/

2K Games’ Borderlands 3 isn’t available for pre-order on Epic Games Store anymore. The PC version of the game, exclusive to Epic Games Store, which was available for pre-order on the platform until now has been pulled out from the platform without any official notice.

It’s interesting to note that all of Randy Pitchford’s tweets regarding the sale have now suddenly disappeared. Borderlands 3 was on the store prior to Mega Epic Sale. The prices for the Standard, Deluxe and Super Deluxe editions were $59.99, $79.99 and $99.99 respectively. During the sale, the prices were $49.99, 69.99 and 89.99 respectively. However, at the time of writing this article, you can’t pre-order the game and all the Borderlands 3 page says is “Coming Soon”.

Not just on Epic Games Store, but PC Digital option on Borderlands’ official website has also disappeared. One user on Reddit wrote, ” It literally happened while I was clicking for checkout.”

First, Paradox Interactive pulled out Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from EGS Mega Epic Sale, providing the statement(to Kotaku), “We are in discussion with Epic regarding the temporary removal of Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from the Epic Game Store. The game will return to the store soon! Any purchases made while the game was discounted during the Epic Mega Sale will be honored and no Masquerade violations will be assessed.”


Soon enough, Klei Entertainment, well-known for Don’t Starve, pulled out Oxygen Not Included from the Sale as well. However, the developer hasn’t provided any official statement so far.

Neither 2K nor Epic Games have made any official statements regarding the pulling out of Borderlands 3. We’ve contacted both the companies to comment on the same. We’ll update this article when and if they respond.

Randy tweeted, "Save $10 on Borderlands 3! Also works if you have already pre-ordered, I'm told. Epic sure wants to earn your trust."

aRKiz4u.png
Right now the page for Borderlands 3 has been pulled completely, the link leads to 404 error.
This is hillarious how after all the buttlicking Sweeney provided to the publishers, they just go and fuck him up without a second thought.
 

Silentstorm

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to benefit the customer (but in reality mostly themselves).

Yes, obviously when Steam does something similar it's only because of the customers, not at all for themselves. Imagine believing anything a company does is not done for profit.

Oh yeah, and the 30% cut is obviously the only possible way to be a middle man, because Steam does it and therefore anyone else not doing it is wrong and won't be able to survive.
I don't think anyone said that Valve isn't in it for us though?

They obviously want money, it's just that between the two companies wanting money, Valve so far still seems like the best option.

And there are reasons behind the 30% cut as we have established before, Valve has made Steam in such a way that in order to get profit and sustain themselves, they genuinely need more than 18% of the cut, don't know if it needs to be 30% specifically, but they really can't match Epic's cut and it would be a terrible business decision to do so.

Why do you think Sweeney tried to portray himself as a great guy saying that he would abandon EGS if Steam copied the same cut for developers?

It's because Sweeney knows they can't do that without losing a shit ton of money and eventually fade away or become a much smaller store.
Right now the page for Borderlands 3 has been pulled completely, the link leads to 404 error.
This is hillarious how after all the buttlicking Sweeney provided to the publishers, they just go and fuck him up without a second thought.
Developers are in it for money, they need it to survive and sustain themselves, or to have a better life, and some people are just naturally greedy.

It's why Epic's cut attracted so many developers and how they could just buy exclusives, but the second things go to heck or they have the chance to lose money, they can afford to back out, i mean, let's face it, Epic Game Store's reputation and user base is bad enough that they can afford to do things like this and know people will focus on Epic, you don't see that many brazen developers on Steam, however, because Steam is that much bigger still and does have a bigger user base that is loyal to it, so there is a much bigger chance that if they pull out games or increase prices, that people will focus exclusively on the developer.
 

passerby

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And there are reasons behind the 30% cut as we have established before, Valve has made Steam in such a way that in order to get profit and sustain themselves, they genuinely need more than 18% of the cut, don't know if it needs to be 30% specifically, but they really can't match Epic's cut and it would be a terrible business decision to do so.

You actually believe that at the scale Steam operates, it has higher operation costs per user than Epic, wow :lol:
 

Jenkem

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Make the Codex Great Again! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.gamingonpc.com/general-...publisher-removes-bloodlines-2-from-egs-sale/

Consequently, Paradox requested that Bloodlines 2 be removed from the “Epic Mega Sale” (and seemingly from the store as well), which prompted a somewhat strange reaction from Epic Store boss Sergey Galyonkin, who called the publisher “greedy” on the comments section of a DTF.ru article. According to the same article, the game will return to the Epic Games Store once this sale event is over. Interestingly, even though Mr. Galyonkin is now touting the benefits of having deep preorder sales, that wasn’t exactly his idea two years ago, when he said that developers should try to offer more value for customers who preorder, instead of just discounting their titles.

:M
 

Silentstorm

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And there are reasons behind the 30% cut as we have established before, Valve has made Steam in such a way that in order to get profit and sustain themselves, they genuinely need more than 18% of the cut, don't know if it needs to be 30% specifically, but they really can't match Epic's cut and it would be a terrible business decision to do so.

You actually believe that at the scale Steam operates, it has higher operation costs per user than Epic, wow :lol:
Well, i will admit i am not an expert on this stuff, but Steam does have a lot more features and things to worry about than Epic right now, i have also seen many people say that what Epic is doing is unsustainable and that they are relying on the Unreal Engine and Fortnite to provide money for it so far.

But yeah, to whoever said i was a sheeple, you are right, i said that Epic has a much smaller user base, and that is wrong, they have a huge user base, i mean, people need the launcher to play Fortnite after all!

And the smaller people who actually use the store, of course, which, to be fair, increased with the sale.
 

fantadomat

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And there are reasons behind the 30% cut as we have established before, Valve has made Steam in such a way that in order to get profit and sustain themselves, they genuinely need more than 18% of the cut, don't know if it needs to be 30% specifically, but they really can't match Epic's cut and it would be a terrible business decision to do so.

You actually believe that at the scale Steam operates, it has higher operation costs per user than Epic, wow :lol:
Well, i will admit i am not an expert on this stuff, but Steam does have a lot more features and things to worry about than Epic right now, i have also seen many people say that what Epic is doing is unsustainable and that they are relying on the Unreal Engine and Fortnite to provide money for it so far.

But yeah, to whoever said i was a sheeple, you are right, i said that Epic has a much smaller user base, and that is wrong, they have a huge user base, i mean, people need the launcher to play Fortnite after all!

And the smaller people who actually use the store, of course, which, to be fair, increased with the sale.
Mate,don't waste your time on him. He actually have problems up there,just ignore him,hopefully his guardian will find out soon that he is on the internet.
 

passerby

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Well, i will admit i am not an expert on this stuff, but Steam does have a lot more features and things to worry about than Epic right now, i have also seen many people say that what Epic is doing is unsustainable and that they are relying on the Unreal Engine and Fortnite to provide money for it so far.

Voice chat is p2p and social stuff like forums and reviews use like 2 orders of magnitude less server resourcess than delivering game downloads, so it doesn't matter.
Epic has Fortnite userbase, but tiny transaction volume on the store and yet it needs an infrastructure to handle an AAA game release.
Due to sheer Economy of Scale rule and maturity of the service, it's guaranteed Steam could run on a smaller cut then Epic and in some interview, or tweet someone from Epic was estimating, that at 7% they would break even.

The mistake here was applying discount directly to prices displayed on the store pages making it look like it's publishers who are selling games cheaper on Epic Store.
The whole debacle is about Steam drones getting butthurt at publishers, for selling games cheaper on Epic and calling to boycott their games and publishers fearing that people who miss the sale would be later butthurt at them and wait for another one.
If the discount was applied at checkout and listed there as "Epic Store Megasale discount courtuesy of Epic Games", it'd be much harder to mobilize drones and spin it against publishers.
 
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V_K

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Due to sheer Economy of Scale rule and maturity of the service, it's guaranteed Steam could run on a smaller cut then Epic and in some interview, or tweet someone from Epic was estimating, that at 7% they would break even.
Since Epic started taking a 12 percent cut of sales revenue generated on its new Games Store, much has been made of whether Steam's baseline 30 percent revenue cut is justified. But a new analysis shows that Valve sometimes receives much less than that headline revenue percentage for some of the most popular games on Steam.
The reason for the discrepancy is Steam keys, which developers can generate pretty much at willto sell through non-Steam storefronts and brick-and-mortar retailers. While these key-based purchases are still redeemed through Steam and can take advantage of Steam's suite of features, Valve actually takes no commission from sales that don't take place directly through its own storefront.
[...]
The results (for non-free-to-play titles) show that "on average, 72 percent of games are purchased through Steam, while 28 percent are purchased through third parties." And while that range can vary widely for individual games, the vast majority (80 percent) register between 50 and 80 percent of their reviews through direct Steam sales (You can view the raw, per-game numbers in this Google Doc).
When the revenue Valve is missing from these Steam keys is taken out, the company's average cut across these popular games hovers around 20 percent of all sales revenue rather than 30 percent
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...ets-less-than-30-percent-of-steam-game-sales/
 
Joined
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Due to sheer Economy of Scale rule and maturity of the service, it's guaranteed Steam could run on a smaller cut then Epic

Let's see your math here. Because last I checked Epic does not offer anywhere near the same services as Valve, such as Valve's massive network infrastructure or Valve's competent programmers who can make a client that doesn't shit the bed on a simple sale, so it seems strange to claim that Valve could run on less while offering more. Do explain how this works.
 

passerby

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Overwhelming majority of 28% third parties is simply physical retail and Epic games also offers keys for physical retail and resellers like humblebundle.
Also Steam didn't had to cover payment processing fees for third party sales which is like half the cost so cut these 28% in half. How are such small percentages are even relevant here ?
20% is not an average cut on Steam but the lowest there is applied after the game reach 60M$ revenue.

Can't you think for yourself instead of quoting game jurno artice ? Arguing with drones is like playing a boring popamole game.
 
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Cromwell

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The mistake here was applying discount directly to prices displayed on the store pages making it look like it's publishers who are selling games cheaper on Epic Store.

If the discount was applied at checkout and listed there as "Epic Store Megasale discount courtuesy of Epic Games", it'd be much harder to mobilize drones and spin it against publishers.

At the checkout? You mean nobody knows its there until they already buy something? I dont know what to say to that honestly.
 

passerby

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How about a huge banner taking half of the store home page advertising the sale?
 
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Black Angel

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In the eyes of Steam Drone Army everything they'll do won't be right.
You still honestly believe with all your hearts that literally anyone who argues against your (fucking dumb) points are Steam fanboys? Even though many of them has repeatedly pointed out they'd prefer to suck GOG cock which is justified because GOG also suck consumer's cock in a fabulous 69 with their venerable DRM-free?

How about a huge banner taking half of the store home page advertising the sale? God, I regret opening this message, had it ignored for a reason.
So? What does Epic has going for them in comparison? Holy shit dude, I'm contemplating of putting you on ignore to preserve my brain cells which are already decaying from reading all your stupid ass bullshit.

Petition to tag this dumbfuck with a brand-new Epic Cum Dumpster™
 

Infinitron

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Interesting: https://www.pcgamer.com/china-is-th...ic-and-steam-but-why-havent-they-been-banned/

China is the next battleground for Epic and Steam, but why haven't they been banned?
With no announcement, the Epic Games Store is now available in China.

This week Chinese PC gamers discovered an odd surprise: With no announcement, the Epic Games Store is now available in mainland China. Not only can Chinese gamers now play Fortnite or buy any of the Epic Store exclusives that were previously unavailable to them—often at extremely reduced prices—they even have access to popular Chinese payment methods like Alipay and WeChat Pay. But for anyone paying attention to China's turbulent relationship with videogames, the Epic Games Store's stealth launch in China raises some big questions.

How companies skirt China's censorship laws
For decades, the Chinese government has enforced strict censorship regulations on its videogame market. Consoles, for example, were banned outright until 2014, which explains why China's PC gaming industry grew to such an enormous size, with almost as many PC gamers as the population of the United States. But every game that is launched in China has to first receive approval from a government regulator: The newly formed State Administration of Press and Publication (SAPP).

In March of 2018, the State Council froze all videogame approvals after it announced a massive restructuring of the previous regulatory bodies overseeing the videogames market. That freeze was only fully lifted last month, which has an enormously negative effect on China's videogame industry. Tencent, the largest gaming company in China (and the world), reportedly lost $190 billion in market value in part because of the freeze, while the entire industry was down 2.1 percent from 2017 according to Asian games market researchers Niko Partners. Facing disaster, many Chinese indie developers found salvation in an unlikely place: Steam.

For years, Valve's marketplace has operated in a legal grey area in China. Despite community features like Steam's forums and adult games being blocked by Chinese censorship, Chinese gamers can still access Steam and play games that haven't received approval for sale in China. After conducting a dozen interviews with various Chinese developers, market analysts, and publishers, no one I spoke with knows why Steam is able to continue operating in China, though rumors abound.

"It's one of the ongoing mysteries of the modern age," Iain Garner told me. He's the co-founder of Another Indie, a Taiwanese-based indie publisher with extensive experience operating in China. "Everything I know about the Chinese government and how they operate and about how they've treated other similar things suggests that Steam should have been blocked a long time ago. But it hasn't."

But the Epic Games Store entering the territory calls into question why the Chinese government is taking such a strict stance and outright banning some platforms, like Twitch, but allowing Steam, the Epic Games Store, and all their uncensored games to remain accessible to consumers.

In Steam's case, many believe it's been willfully ignored up until this point because Valve is actively working with Perfect World to release a Chinese version of Steam that would abide by Chinese regulations. That's not good news for Chinese gamers who fear that Steam China will, like Tencent's own storefront WeGame, be heavily censored and have limited range of international games. But, as of yet, Epic Games hasn't announced any plans to partner with a Chinese company to release a Chinese version of its store—in fact, it seemed outright hostile to the issue a few months ago.

During a Q&A event at the Game Developers Conference earlier this year, head of the Epic Games Store Steve Allison condemned Steam's operations in China. "The way our competitor [Steam] operates offshore is not legal in China, and they don’t have an office in China. We have employees there, so we are very sensitive to what is legal and what is is not—more for the benefit and safety of our staff. We just don’t want to take any risks that can put them in any legal fire."

We reached out to Valve for clarity on its operations in China but it did not respond in time to publish this story.

I asked an Epic Games spokesperson to clarify what, if anything, led to this seeming change of heart where Epic Games was willing to operate in the same capacity as Steam in China. Epic chose not to respond to specific questions, instead giving a statement: "We look at Epic Games store as a global service and want to make it available to players in every region we can," that spokesperson said.

Friendly competition
Making matters even more complicated is that Tencent itself owns 40 percent of Epic Games. Though Epic boss Tim Sweeney has explicitly denied that Tencent has any say in how Epic Games operates, the Epic Games Store is now a direct competitor to Tencent's WeGame storefront.

But assuming the legality and competition with Tencent are non-issues, will Chinese gamers even embrace Epic Games as another platform? Part of what launched Steam's popularity in China was the meteoric rise of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. In 2018, the Asian market accounted for 53 percent of PUBG Corp's $920 million in revenue. And though Fortnite might dominate PUBG globally, its mobile release in China is stuck in regulatory limbo and Tencent is unable to monetize it yet, despite it being available for download. While it's not clear how popular Fortnite is in China, multiple sources I've spoken with have said it's definitely not as popular as PUBG.

But any competition is a good thing, according to Garner. "I hope [Epic Games] are working to support the local market the same way they supported the [Western one]," he said. "They have a long way to go before they can challenge Steam and WeGame in China."

It's unclear whether Epic will pursue the same aggressive exclusivity deals for Chinese games that it's been chasing with western developers. Though, if it did, there's a big chance it could lead to the same backlash that's been surrounding Epic Games and the developers it partners with.

Josh Ye, a reporter for the South China Morning Post tells me that when Metro Exodus first announced it would be an Epic Games Store exclusive, Chinese gamers were just as pissed as western ones—maybe even more so. While western gamers could still play Metro Exodus (just not on their platform of choice), Chinese players had no access to Metro Exodus because the Epic Store wasn't available in China until this week.

My Time at Portia developer Pathea Games is based partly in Chongqing, China, and is one of the rare indie games that is available on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and also has a proper license to be distributed in China. "Chinese gamers overall aren't too impressed with the exclusivity that the Epic Store has for some of their games," Pathea Games' Zifei Wu told me. "There's a loyal following for Steam in China."

"But Chinese gamers are pretty price conscious," Wu added. "If there are price differences, I think that people will consider the Epic Store." Though I couldn't verify myself, Pathea Games marketing director Aaron Deng provided a screenshot of the Chinese Epic Store showing that, oddly, Borderlands 3 cost just $10 USD (a massive discount over the western price) while My Time at Portia cost $14 (which is currently the same in the West thanks to a sale on the Epic Games Store). Others are reporting that regional pricing is in effect, so Chinese users aren't forced to pay exorbitant prices.

If Fortnite doesn't attract Chinese gamers, the Epic Store's absurdly cheap exclusive games might do the trick. But the bigger question is why Epic Games is silently launching a store that appears to violate China's censorship laws months after implying doing so was a risk to its Chinese employees? And how, if at all, does that influence Epic's relationship with Tencent, who is now technically its competition in China? And just as importantly, why is the Chinese government continually allowing select foreign companies to poke holes in its censorship bubbles without consequence?
 

Ismaul

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It's pretty simple.

Epic disrespects customers with their anti-customer philosophy and practices (exclusives, no client features, no reviews, shit support, etc.). They spin it as something good for devs / publishers.

Then they disrespect publishers and devs by putting their games on sale, even unreleased ones and non-exclusives ones, without their consent (who's footing the bill is a secondary matter here). They (and their fanboys) spin it as something good for customers.

Epic are assholes, and they keep proving it at every turn.
 
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Then they disrespect publishers and devs by putting their games on sale, even unreleased ones and non-exclusives ones, without their constent (who's footing the bill is a secondary matter here). They (and their fanboys) spin it as something good for customers.
I still find it peculiar given Steam's last big sale they gave everyone $5 store credit and there wasn't a shitstorm. Then again Steam's got more than 20 games on offer, so maybe the developers/publishers feel less targeted by that store credit offer.
 

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