Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[passerby]

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]

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]

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.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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]

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.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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]

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

 

[Tehdagah]

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.

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.

 

[Reinhardt]

New free games every week is a great thing.

No, if they are shit.

 

[Tehdagah]

New free games every week is a great thing.

No, if they are shit.

They released a lot of good free games though.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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.

They could afford to do it with a 0% cut. They're not doing it to make money, they're doing it to strongarm their way into the market and knock out smaller competitors.

 

[Tehdagah]

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.

They could afford to do it with a 0% cut. They're not doing it to make money, they're doing it to strongarm their way into the market and knock out smaller competitors.

Valve should step up then.

 

[passerby]

They could afford to do it with a 0% cut. They're not doing it to make money, they're doing it to strongarm their way into the market and knock out smaller competitors.

No, they couldn't, the moment they cut into Steam bussines in a noticeable way, Valve will reduce their cut and Epic wll be done. If Epic accumulated a huge loss on the way there it wouldn't be able to recover it.
If they are not delusional, they can at best run it nonprofit, and this what they are doing imo, exclusive deals will pay for themselves eventually and operating profit, that amounts to 5% sales revenue, is being spent on platform development and giveaways.

Valve should step up then.

They're not a charity, so they shouldn't, unless they get convinced that they'll loose their market ( publishers and devs ) if they don't, which seems unlikely.

 

[Tehdagah]

I have over 15k games on Steam on ignore now(which is apparently roughly half of the entire Steam catalogue.) I'd imagine I'm probably in the top .1% — if not even higher — of most games viewed by users on Steam.
From going through all those games I've realized one thing: Most games are awful. I'm not skipping over your game from a lack of exposure, I'm skipping it because something about it sucks. There is no algorithm in the world that can fix most games being complete shit.
This especially applies to games that possibly don't actually suck but I'm tired of seeing rehashes of. 2D "souls-like", metroidvanias, etc., There's so god damn many of them and they all look bland as hell.

A reminder you don't own any of these games

What % of the pie would I get if I enable the chinese supercorporation to destroy all competition and therefore no longer have a reason to buy games off of competing stores?

THQ Nordic says “absolute majority” of Metro Exodus copies were sold on console

Makes sense, the average EGS user is a Fortnite player, they rather play something like Borderlands 3.

 

[Tehdagah]

Valve should step up then.

They're not a charity, so they shouldn't, unless they get convinced that they'll loose their market ( publishers and devs ) if they don't, which seems unlikely.

With time more developers will protest against Steam's pre-historic revenue share.

 

[passerby]

It's a very volatile bussiness, so for 99% devs and smaller/medium publishers, the only thing that matters is the profitability of the games they have currently in production, not what a current "protest" could potentially bring them in the future, if they stay in bussiness that is.

Either, they'll get convinced that going Epic exclusive will all things considered probably increase profitability of the project at hand, or not. Either way companies won't be "protesting" anything.
Eventually for smaller devs, there is also a question of risk management and personal financial security, that may sway them in favor of exclusivity deal.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Habla Ingles por favor

 

[the_shadow]

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.

It's one thing to complain, not buy the product, and then get over it (which is what you're doing). It's quite another to pitch a shit-fit like an entitled two year old and start some sort of public movement, review bomb previous games in the franchise, invent conspiracy theories, claim that you are entitled to make demands of the developers because you're a 'fan', and gloat about how you're going to torrent (ie. steal) the game to get one over the developers. Furthermore, if you're going to complain in public, be prepared for people to respond to your complaints, both negatively and positively. It's important for entitled gamers to keep in mind that opinions are a lot like assholes... everyone has one, and usually they aren't worth much.

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

 

[Tehdagah]

 

[MuscleSpark]

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.

Sure, Valve could run their company at break-even, they could even run it at a loss for absolutely no reason if they wanted to. Valve can do a lot of things. That's not what earning means though.
Also you have to be really naïve (or dishonest) if you think Epic is able to offer all those free games and break-even on 12%, and aren't just loss-leading by taking advantage of their massive Fortnite coffers.

 

[Tehdagah]

Sure, Valve could run their company at break-even, they could even run it at a loss for absolutely no reason if they wanted to. Valve can do a lot of things. That's not what earning means though.

Or they simply can reduce the % revenue for all games instead of just games that sell 500k+. Do they really need 30% from games that sell 10k units? It would be barely relevant for Valve, but a huge thing for small developers.

Also you have to be really naïve (or dishonest) if you think Epic is able to offer all those free games and break-even on 12%, and aren't just loss-leading by taking advantage of their massive Fortnite coffers.

Not relevant for consumers. Recently Amazon released their subsidized Prime service in my country and it's a much better deal the Netflix.

 

[MuscleSpark]

Or they simply can reduce the % revenue for all games instead of just games that sell 500k+. Do they really need 30% from games that sell 10k units? It would be barely relevant for Valve, but a huge thing for small developers.

Relevant enough for them to not change it, as it seems. Also, not relevant for consumers. :^)

Not relevant for consumers. Recently Amazon released their subsidized Prime service in my country and it's a much better deal the Netflix.

As long as you realize that it's unsustainable in the long run then that's fine.

 

[Fishy]

With apologies in advance for the stupid question, what does the Steam LGBTQ themed sale has to do with the discussion?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

With apologies in advance for the stupid question, what does the Steam LGBTQ themed sale has to do with the discussion?

He's pointing out that blatant homophobes would rather use Steam with an LGBTQ themed sale than use Epic's featureless tencent store.
Powerful.

 

[The Decline]

With apologies in advance for the stupid question, what does the Steam LGBTQ themed sale has to do with the discussion?

He's pointing out that blatant homophobes would rather use Steam with an LGBTQ themed sale than use Epic's featureless tencent store.
Powerful.

Seems like a plus on Steam's part. They provided a list of homo games for you to put on ignore.