Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[Dexter]

You'd have to factor in the cost of Steam building up their massive user base and infrastructure for 16 years so that he can enjoy his game being accessible to such a massive audience.

You don't, none of that has absolutely any relevance whatsoever on what it effectively costs Steam to list a random game made by J_C and facilitate a few people downloading it. The cost is a fix amount that doesn't really change based on how long the service has been operating or how massive the audience is.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You'd have to factor in the cost of Steam building up their massive user base and infrastructure for 16 years so that he can enjoy his game being accessible to such a massive audience.

You don't, none of that has absolutely any relevance whatsoever on what it effectively costs Steam to list a random game made by J_C and facilitate a few people downloading it. The cost is a fix amount that doesn't really change based on how long the service has been operating or how massive the audience is.

So we should just ignore the massive amount of money invested and risk Valve took in creating Steam?
That's the same retarded communist argument people use for saying employers create nothing of value.

 

[Dexter]

So we should just ignore the massive amount of money invested and risk Valve took in creating Steam?
That's the same retarded communist argument people use for saying employers create nothing of value.

These are factual statements that don't depend on or have anything to do with the popularity of Steam or your emotional appeal to "MUH GOMMUNISM!"

while they have very little overhead on listing and providing services for that specific game.

You don't, none of that has absolutely any relevance whatsoever on what it effectively costs Steam to list a random game made by J_C and facilitate a few people downloading it. The cost is a fix amount that doesn't really change based on how long the service has been operating or how massive the audience is.

None of what you're arguing changes or has anything to do with how much it effectively costs Steam to list J_C's game. It's a few database entries that he himself fills out and someone at Valve might go over once to see if he uploaded something naughty as a Screenshot before pressing the Live button, also the hosting cost of a few screenshots and a Trailer with very low traffic and the download of a few MB each time someone wants to play it. I'd be very surprised if the cost of listing his game was even measurable for Valve, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was somewhere around the price of a coffee or lower over the lifetime of such a game (and I might be overstating that based on it not being entirely automated and there being a person involved wasting a minute or two at one point or another). The fact that they already have a far-reaching worldwide infrastructure in place just makes the actual cost lower than it would be on say itch.io or his own website.

What you're talking about is whether it's worth for J_C to agree to Steam's terms of taking 30% off the Sale price anyway, knowing the costs for them are that low given their wide reach to a large worldwide audience, which is an entirely different question than "what it costs them" to host it or what their overhead is.

 

[passerby]

So we should just ignore the massive amount of money invested and risk Valve took in creating Steam?
That's the same retarded communist argument people use for saying employers create nothing of value.

The initial investment and risk involved in creating Steam was like two orders of magnitude smaller than with Epic.
After it's introduction it always grew organically, financed from current profits, to serve demands as they arised, to receive guaranteed returns.

 

[Dexter]

The initial investment and risk involved in creating Steam was like two orders of magnitude smaller than with Epic.
After it's introduction it always grew organically, financed from current profits, to serve demands as they arised, to receive guaranteed returns.

We were doing so well, and then someone has to go ahead and say something even dumber than "YOUR ARGUMENT IS GOMMUNISM!". The initial investment and risk involved in developing something that doesn't exist is always orders of magnitude larger than coming in after something is a proven concept as a competitor and doing a #MeToo while trying to copy any good features (although to Epic's benefit, they really didn't copy that much yet since they don't really HAVE any noteworthy features and "shopping cart" turned into a running joke).

We've talked about this a lot of pages ago, but Valve didn't even want to develop Steam to begin with, they mainly needed something to facilitate Autoupdates and hassle-free Patching of one of their popular Online franchises (Counter Strike), as well as an Anti-Cheating solution and went around asking Tech companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Real and whatnot asking if they have or could provide a solution, finding out to their detriment that nobody was doing anything like they needed so they decided to do it themselves, probably not knowing if it'll be a success or be adopted at all or if they're wasting their time and (at that time limited) money. They came up with selling games over it afterwards and they didn't even sell any third party software for the first 3 years of the platform's lifespan after its release:

Spoiler

The main reason behind Steam originally (it's 2002 Beta and 2003 release) wasn't to lock away CS behind a Digital Distribution platform or store or even necessarily a DRM system (the controversy around that mainly came later with the release of Half Life 2, which was a SinglePlayer game not working without an Internet connection and made them develop "Offline Mode"). In fact Valve didn't even think of using it as a Digital Distribution platform/storefront until the end of 2005. Before Valve developed Steam, CS already used WON as a platform, and they didn't have an Auto-patching system and competent Anti-cheat tool, and huge problems that resulted from that, with everyone having to check if they had the newest version and then having to manually patch to be able to play on the right servers: https://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3037280

Doug: Well you have to remember that it was built as an auto-updating system for Counter-strike. That was the genesis of Steam was, we had this thing called Counter-strike which had come to us from the mod community and at the time, Quake 2 I think was the leading FPS online game with about eight thousand concurrent users. Counter-strike goes out, it goes to eight, 12, 20, 30 thousand concurrent users and at that time that seemed like just this astronomical number of people.

And they were all playing different versions. We’d release an update and we’d break the game for 48 hours and we’d see the concurrent users go from 30,000 down to zero and then we’d sit there anxiously for a week to see if it would come back. And it did and we were like “okay, enough with this inertia”. It was slowing down our releases, because we didn’t want to put out a release and break the game until we had enough that it was worth breaking it for.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/the-last-of-the-independents-

Q:When developing Steam, did you make a conscious decision to look at what Microsoft was developing with Live and try to match that?

Doug Lombardi:You know, we went around to Yahoo, Microsoft...Who else was around at that time? Probably Real Networks and anybody who seemed like a likely candidate to build something like Steam.

We basically had our feature list that we wanted. We wanted auto-updating, we wanted better anti-piracy, better anti-cheat, and selling the games over the wire was something we came up with later. But we had like real world problems because Counter-Strike was getting huge and we would release these updates that would knock the 70 - 80 thousand simultaneous players right down to zero and it would take 48 - 72 hours for it to come back up and that was like this huge anxiety roller coaster that we would take every two or three months.

It also limited our ability to put those updates up because of that. It was like..."Well, if we're going to turn the lights off for 48 hours in the player community, the update needs to be worthy of that." So, you had to bundle up the things you were going to put up in the update or you're going to pull it out because you didn't want to take the roller coaster ride. So that was really the impetus to why we did [Steam].

We went around to everybody and said "Are you guys doing anything like this? We need this for our games, and therefore other people are going to need it someday soon." And everyone was like: "Blah, blah, blah...That's a million miles in the future." So we said "We need it now" and everyone said "Well, we can't help you."

So we just went off and started doing it. Once we pick something we just start going after it and we're not really too concerned with what other people are doing because that's just an easy way to get distracted.

None of this has to do with the cost of hosting/featuring a small RPG Maker game on their platform though, since they would have done all of that without the existence of J_C's or Vault Dweller's games anyway, and let's just say neither of their games have the kind of profile that would influence any change or addition to their feature-set or initiate any kind of large investment or expansion, since Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto V, Assassin's Creed, DOTA 2, PUBG or even Destiny 2 or Warframe they ain't.

 

[passerby]

The initial investment and risk involved in developing something that doesn't exist is always orders of magnitude larger than coming in after something is a proven concept as a competitor.

Pure bullshit, the more developed the industry is, the higher is economic barrier to entry, it's basic economics.

The only situation where copypasta service can easily crush the original, is when someone makes copypasta of new proven idea that is in early stages of growth, with order of magnitue higher budget and literally steal the market from before the nose of the original creators.

 

[Dexter]

The initial investment and risk involved in creating Steam was like two orders of magnitude smaller than with Epic.

The only situation where copypasta service can easily crush the original

These are not, at all, the same statements. The initial investment and risk involved in creating something (and as we've established Steam wasn't even supposed to be an Online Store initially, which is what made it actually big) has nothing to do with whether a "copypasta service" can "crush the original".

 

[J_C]

while Valve made $27.000 profit from selling all those copies and taking their cut (30%) while they have very little overhead on listing and providing services for that specific game.

Where do people get this notion of Valve spending almost nothing on Steam? Staff, servers, R&D is not free. I know it is hard for Epic to grasp that, since they literally only provide a server and a basic storefront, but I think there is much more work on Valve's part.

How much do you realistically think it costs Valve to specifically list J_C 's game on their store and provide people that have purchased it with the ability to download it? Do you think it's more or less than Megaupload hosting it for free or imgur or whatever hosting a bunch of Screenshots from it?

First, did you really feel the need to tag me in every fucking post of yours? And three times in ever post?
Second, if you really think that Valve only offers a server and a storepage for users, than I don't know if I can convince you of the adventages of Steam.

 

[Junmarko]

 

[Dexter]

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]

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.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Timestamped at Sweeney's response.

"I'm looking forward to Tencent hearing about this and then Sweeney's whole statement being redacted".

Lol.

Where's Liberty Prime when we need him?

 

[Ezeekiel]

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]

pic

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.

 

[Jenkem]

there are tons of indie games that are either local MP focused or have local MP side modes but not the time/resources to make it online

 

[Dickie]

pic

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]

pic

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]

pic

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]

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.

 

[catfood]

Timestamped at Sweeney's response.

"I'm looking forward to Tencent hearing about this and then Sweeney's whole statement being redacted".

Lol.

Where's Liberty Prime when we need him?

Spoiler

Liberty Prime is being built in a sweat shop in China.

 

[Reinhardt]

Codexians don't need multiplayer. It's for people with friends,

 

[the_shadow]

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.

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]

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]

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.

 

[Reinhardt]

They don't have Borderlands 3

So one more advantage for Steam?