Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[PrettyDeadman]

If Epic wins, WE, the Gamers, lose!
Please don't buy games on Epic Store, buy it on any other store, please don't use Unreal Engine, user Luberyard or Cyrsis or write your own engine.
Please don't play Fortnite, play Doom Wads instead.

 

[DalekFlay]

Oh god, please don't encourage people to use fucking Cryengine.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Oh god, please don't encourage people to use fucking Cryengine.

Epic made me do this.

 

[Plaguecrafter]

Oh god, please don't encourage people to use fucking Cryengine.

Epic made me do this.

Safe to say, that was, indeed, not epic from them.

 

[Infinitron]

As I said probably over a hundred pages ago, Sweeney could have competed by not enforcing exclusivity deals but selling games on Epic for a lower price: the developer would still get a higher yield but Sweeney's (and the Chinese government's) end would be less than Valve's. Epic is simply pushing the cost on to consumers. Period.

I think it's possible that other stores would retaliate against any developer that did this.

don't care enough to ignore an exclusive they want.

Even if they buy the one exclusive, they'll keep buying other games on Steam or GOG rather than suddenly becoming loyal Epic customers. Epic's strategy cannot work long term - they need to convince people to actually preffer them over other storefronts, but I don't see how they'd do that when even their damn client is total shit

Epic have said that their long-term plan is for developers to see that they're making more money on the Epic Games Store compared to other stores, and then voluntarily choose to make their games Epic-exclusive (ie, without Epic having to pay them to do it).

 

[Alienman]

Oh god, please don't encourage people to use fucking Cryengine.

I have always liked the Cryengine version in the first Crisis. But in modern games is just seems so unoptimized and everything is kinda floaty.

 

[thesecret1]

don't care enough to ignore an exclusive they want.

Even if they buy the one exclusive, they'll keep buying other games on Steam or GOG rather than suddenly becoming loyal Epic customers. Epic's strategy cannot work long term - they need to convince people to actually preffer them over other storefronts, but I don't see how they'd do that when even their damn client is total shit

Epic have said that their long-term plan is for developers to see that they're making more money on the Epic Games Store compared to other stores, and then voluntarily choose to make their games Epic-exclusive (ie, without Epic having to pay them to do it).

If this ever became a problem, Valve would just match Epic's cut. It's not like Valve is lacking in finances, after all. If this is Epic's only ace in the sleeve, then it's pretty poor one.

 

[Infinitron]

Well I mean, yeah. Valve could kill the EGS at any given moment by biting the bullet and reducing their cut. Of course then you'd have to deal with the spectacle of Tim Sweeney declaring himself the savior of PC gaming for the rest of your life, for having forced greedy Valve to finally change their policy.

 

[Squid]

Can Valve afford it? And I don't mean actually afford it because yes, they could. I'm saying can they even take the profit cut to do this and not lose their hangar full of private jets? I remember some article about why Steam starts with a 70/30 cut and moves up to 80/20 with enough units sold and there were a bunch of reasons listed.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Epic have said that their long-term plan is for developers to see that they're making more money on the Epic Games Store compared to other stores, and then voluntarily choose to make their games Epic-exclusive (ie, without Epic having to pay them to do it).

This makes absolutely no sense because exclusivity without compensation means less sales for developers. No matter how successful Epic Store gets, signing up with 3 stores is better than signing up with 1.

Well I mean, yeah. Valve could kill the EGS at any given moment by biting the bullet and reducing their cut. Of course then you'd have to deal with the spectacle of Tim Sweeney declaring himself the savior of PC gaming for the rest of your life, for having forced greedy Valve to finally change their policy.

It all depends on the market share Epic manages to hold on to once the exclusivity dust settles. If Epic is left with 15-20% or less, Steam has absolutely nothing to worry about (and no reason to change the cut as 70% on Steam will give the developers a lot more money than 88% on Epic; if anything, Epic's failure to gain a competitive market share would strengthen Steam's position).

 

[DalekFlay]

This makes absolutely no sense because exclusivity without compensation means less sales for developers. No matter how successful Epic Store gets, signing up with 3 stores is better than signing up with 1.

If these paid for exclusivity deals show that the vast majority of people don't care and are fine getting games there, then the theory would be that you'd take the extra 18% of revenue from the Epic Store in place of whatever extra sales you'd get on Steam/GOG. However if developers feel like they're losing more than they're gaining, it would never work.

 

[Vault Dweller]

This makes absolutely no sense because exclusivity without compensation means less sales for developers. No matter how successful Epic Store gets, signing up with 3 stores is better than signing up with 1.

If these paid for exclusivity deals show that the vast majority of people don't care and are fine getting games there, then the theory would be that you'd take the extra 18% of revenue from the Epic Store in place of whatever extra sales you'd get on Steam/GOG. However if developers feel like they're losing more than they're gaining, it would never work.

It's not that simple.

First, Epic's market share would have to be massive for it to work this way. Let's say a game can sell 100k copies on Steam at the avg rate of $20 (to factor in discounts, regional pricing, etc). That's 2 mil and the developer gets 1.4 mil. To get the same amount on Epic the developer only needs to sell only 80k, meaning that 80% of the potential customers would have to move between the stores with ease. That's like a lot and the chances of such an aggressive takeover of the market are low. See THQ Nordic's CEO comment that the "absolute majority" of Metro Exodus copies were sold on consoles whereas it was the other way around in the past.

Second, even if you could sell 80k copies on Epic, why wouldn't you want to sell extra 20k on Steam and another 20k on GOG and another 20k in direct sales? Even if dropping exclusivity means that only 50k people buy it on Epic and 50k people will buy it on Steam and GOG, you'd still earn more: 80*20*0.88 = 1.4 mil vs 50*20*0.88 + 50*20*0.7 = 1.58 mil. No matter how you look it's better to sell on 3 viable stores rather than 1. Before you say 'but it's only for a year", it remains to be seen if the market will still treat a year old game as a new release (meaning media coverage, players' reviews, enthusiasm, price, etc).

 

[Metro]

Well I mean, yeah. Valve could kill the EGS at any given moment by biting the bullet and reducing their cut. Of course then you'd have to deal with the spectacle of Tim Sweeney declaring himself the savior of PC gaming for the rest of your life, for having forced greedy Valve to finally change their policy.

Valve isn't acting because they've been winning the PR war without having to do a thing. Epic generates far more negative press than it does positive press.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Well I mean, yeah. Valve could kill the EGS at any given moment by biting the bullet and reducing their cut. Of course then you'd have to deal with the spectacle of Tim Sweeney declaring himself the savior of PC gaming for the rest of your life, for having forced greedy Valve to finally change their policy.

Valve isn't acting because they've been winning the PR war without having to do a thing. Epic generates far more negative press than it does positive press.

Never interrupt your mistaken opponent and all that.

 

[DalekFlay]

It's not that simple.

First, Epic's market share would have to be massive for it to work this way. Let's say a game can sell 100k copies on Steam at the avg rate of $20 (to factor in discounts, regional pricing, etc). That's 2 mil and the developer gets 1.4 mil. To get the same amount on Epic the developer only needs to sell only 80k, meaning that 80% of the potential customers would have to move between the stores with ease. That's like a lot and the chances of such an aggressive takeover of the market are low. See THQ Nordic's CEO comment that the "absolute majority" of Metro Exodus copies were sold on consoles whereas it was the other way around in the past.

Second, even if you could sell 80k copies on Epic, why wouldn't you want to sell extra 20k on Steam and another 20k on GOG and another 20k in direct sales? Even if dropping exclusivity means that only 50k people buy it on Epic and 50k people will buy it on Steam and GOG, you'd still earn more: 80*20*0.88 = 1.4 mil vs 50*20*0.88 + 50*20*0.7 = 1.58 mil. No matter how you look it's better to sell on 3 viable stores rather than 1. Before you say 'but it's only for a year", it remains to be seen if the market will still treat a year old game as a new release (meaning media coverage, players' reviews, enthusiasm, price, etc).

I'm not saying these points aren't valid, but they're based on the idea that a significant number of people will boycott the game for an extended period to avoid the Epic Store. This whole thread is basically based on that. Market share is about competing stores, it's not really relevant when there's only one place to go as long as the sales are reasonably on par with expectations of the market. The question is would having one place to go limit the sales of the game enough to counter the 18% increased revenue, once Epic has been around for a while and is established as a place to go to buy games? My stance has always been that I doubt it. If that were the case EA wouldn't have stuck with Origin exclusivity, Activision with Battle.net exclusivity, etc. People prefer Steam for a variety of reasons, but they obviously go elsewhere when they have to. Exclusives have always worked in the video game market, it's been a go-to tactic since the industry started.

Now, the Epic Store is shit right now. Lack of features, clunky interface, some security concerns and bad PR. So is there a chance it is too toxic to recover and be a "normal" exclusive option like Origin? Sure it's possible. However Steam and Origin had just as bad a vibe in the community when they started and people got over it. How? Exclusive games you couldn't get anywhere else that got people to use them as they improved the client over time. As long as Epic do the improving part, I doubt this will end up much different. You're free to disagree of course.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm not saying these points aren't valid, but they're based on the idea that a significant number of people will boycott the game for an extended period to avoid the Epic Store.

Not talking about boycott or anything silly like that. I'm talking about the impulse sales and exposure. If your game isn't in front of a big chunk of the potential audience, they wouldn't know (or forget) it exists. The core audience, people who simply must play this game NOW! will follow the game to any store, the rest will expect the game to come to the store near them (Steam, GOG, GamersGate when it was selling direct downloads, etc).

However Steam and Origin had just as bad a vibe in the community when they started and people got over it. How? Exclusive games you couldn't get anywhere else that got people to use them as they improved the client over time. As long as Epic do the improving part, I doubt this will end up much different. You're free to disagree of course.

It's kinda like pointing at a new automaker's attempt to enter the market and saying that Henry Ford made some bad decisions too. He did, when he was the first and only automaker in the US. Same here. Back when the digital world was still young and Steam was the first store, it could afford to make mistakes because people who wanted to or had to buy games online had no other choice back then. It could afford to start slow and add features over the years. Epic doesn't have this luxury and the mistakes will cost it. Pandering to developers (our store don't need no stinking toxic forums and reviews) instead of players and building the strategy around it is the biggest mistake.

 

[Dexter]

Well I mean, yeah. Valve could kill the EGS at any given moment by biting the bullet and reducing their cut. Of course then you'd have to deal with the spectacle of Tim Sweeney declaring himself the savior of PC gaming for the rest of your life, for having forced greedy Valve to finally change their policy.

What's the point of keeping to propagate this stupid and frankly ridiculous belief that Valve "could do something by reducing their cut" if you know full well that in 90-95% of cases these games aren't "Exclusive" because of a slightly higher cut, but because they're taking a direct Payoff and Guaranteed Sales deal? Even if the "sales cut" would be identical, most of them would still take the deal of money upfront since it eliminates any risk. If they "could do" anything that would undermine Epic, it would be offering similar/better deals, but that would kind of defeat the purpose, isn't really a reliable long-term profit strategy and only make things even worse.

If that were the case EA wouldn't have stuck with Origin exclusivity, Activision with Battle.net exclusivity, etc. People prefer Steam for a variety of reasons, but they obviously go elsewhere when they have to. Exclusives have always worked in the video game market, it's been a go-to tactic since the industry started.

EA, Activision, UbiSoft etc. want to push their own Storefronts where they get 100% of the Sales, that they control and where they can dictate the Terms, even at the expense of Sales in order to hopefully have a stronger position down the line. What did Bungie for instance do though as one of the first things after being let off from their Exclusivity contract with Activision?

 

[Reinhardt]

Epic generates far more negative press than it does positive press.

But not literal "press".

 

[ultimanecat]

The more I think of it, the less I really understand Epic's goals from even a simple economic perspective. If the goal is to just run a digital marketplace to diversify their revenue that's fine and more power to them, but it's already a well-established and fairly saturated field and the features they specifically say make them different don't actually make any difference at all to the customer. The number of people who'd be willing to travel even 5 or 10 more minutes to go to a different grocery store just because they pay the bagboy more has got to be positively minuscule, and that's before you even factor in the number of missing features and inconveniences weighing it down. Epic is fighting against 15 years of people already having Steam installed on their computers with a host of features designed to keep them buying there, and any store competing with that should in theory be offering them something Steam can't provide. Instead, they're just offering to pay developers more, which is only an actual draw for the kind of consumers who don't identify as consumers at all (i.e. journalists who don't even pay for games in the first place). Epic doesn't need a boycott for most people to ignore their store, they just need the same games to be available on Steam.

Large publishers can afford to have their own storefronts, and while I believe they're essentially leaving money on the table if they choose to make their own games exclusive to them (see EA and Blizzard vs Ubisoft usually releasing everywhere) they seem to be doing fine. A smaller developer, however, would be fucking dumb to ignore Steam. Did you know that in the normal, non-retarded world suppliers fight hard to have their product for sale in Walmart or Costco? Having your product in the biggest marketplace is one of the best ways to actually be successful, even if that means considering lowering your per-unit profit. Now, having your product in Wally World also does mean that you should probably be advertising and making sure people know about your product, and that's why a niche product in a niche store can still do alright since the customers already know what the niche means, but for the most part if you produce an item for sale, you ignore big retailers at your own peril. And Valve doesn't even put up a fraction of the hassle to get a game on Steam.

 

[thesecret1]

Not talking about boycott or anything silly like that.

Does that mean Colony Ship will be on Epic?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Not talking about boycott or anything silly like that.

Does that mean Colony Ship will be on Epic?

We'll gladly sign up with Epic but not as an exclusive.

 

[DalekFlay]

It's kinda like pointing at a new automaker's attempt to enter the market and saying that Henry Ford made some bad decisions too. He did, when he was the first and only automaker in the US. Same here. Back when the digital world was still young and Steam was the first store, it could afford to make mistakes because people who wanted to or had to buy games online had no other choice back then. It could afford to start slow and add features over the years. Epic doesn't have this luxury and the mistakes will cost it. Pandering to developers (our store don't need no stinking toxic forums and reviews) instead of players and building the strategy around it is the biggest mistake.

Yes but again you're assuming people care enough to avoid the EGS. Origin launched well after Steam was accepted and popular, and people complained about everything Origin lacked, but slowly but surely it became something everyone accepted as the way to play EA titles. I'm not saying Epic will have the same result, and it's certainly different when you're courting exclusives with payments or someday possible higher revenue, but this idea that people will never accept the EGS no matter what is just incredibly flawed in my opinion, and not based on history.

EA, Activision, UbiSoft etc. want to push their own Storefronts where they get 100% of the Sales, that they control and where they can dictate the Terms, even at the expense of Sales in order to hopefully have a stronger position down the line. What did Bungie for instance do though as one of the first things after being let off from their Exclusivity contract with Activision?

Of course, but this actually goes in support of what I'm saying. When higher revenue is a possibility (i.e. it's your own store and you get 100%) then non-Steam clients are viable, as seen with your example or a bunch of others from EA and Activision. As soon as Bungie were no longer getting that higher revenue there, they went to Steam, which makes perfect sense. The debate here is whether Epic can ever get to a place where the higher revenue they offer counteracts any loss of consumers who refuse to leave Steam. Based on history I'm betting they can, if they improve their client fast enough and fix their PR issues. That doesn't mean they WILL though, and honestly if it ever got to that point and Steam were threatened then Valve would likely just match their revenue share anyway to maintain their market lead.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Yes but again you're assuming people care enough to avoid the EGS.

It's not about caring but the opposite of that - not caring enough to sign up or visit regularly. What reason did Epic offer them? Can't get this game anywhere else for a year? In an oversaturated market where buying a game in the first year (i.e. highest price, lots of problems and balance issues) is a gesture of goodwill and support it's hardly a problem. Who here doesn't think that Obsidian's Outer Worlds won't be twice as good after a year of post-release support?

Origin launched well after Steam was accepted and popular, and people complained about everything Origin lacked, but slowly but surely it became something everyone accepted as the way to play EA titles.

Because the exclusivity is permanent (because EA is a publisher). Had Epic invested into developing their own catalogue, I doubt anyone would have complained. Instead Epic decided to take a shortcut and grab some unreleased games from Steam, which pissed off plenty of people.

... but this idea that people will never accept the EGS no matter what is just incredibly flawed in my opinion, and not based on history.

I've never said that. I expect Epic to expand the market and end up with 15-20% which will be fantastic for indie developers.

 

[thesecret1]

Origin launched well after Steam was accepted and popular, and people complained about everything Origin lacked, but slowly but surely it became something everyone accepted as the way to play EA titles.

Nobody minds a company selling its games on its own client (even though making people intall YET ANOTHER client is annoying as hell). Similarly, nobody is criticizing Fortnite for being on Epic.

 

[Ismaul]

Does that mean Colony Ship will be on Epic?

We'll gladly sign up with Epic but not as an exclusive.

Isn't there a chance they won't allow the game on the platform, that they'll curate it out?

They don't seem that interested in non-cutesy indies, they're in it for the AAA money. But maybe since you use their engine they'll want to showcase it anyways?