Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[DalekFlay]

For some reason we keep getting articles about how Epic are helping out indies with their store written as if it’s the store and its features they are benefiting from when they clearly mean it’s the free money Epic gave them for exclusivity. Even the retarded devs seem to think Epic will be handing out paychecks to indies forever.

Good post, but I kind of see indies as the equivalent of retail workers living paycheck to paycheck. If Epic cuts a check that keeps them in business another couple years while they work on a potential breakout hit, maybe that's all they care about at the moment. Release on Steam without any hype or success and boom you're done.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Yes. "Here's 2 million dollars" is objectively quite helpful for indie developers.

 

[JBro]

Indies are mostly shit heads.

 

[passerby]

Then the handouts are going to stop.

These are not handouts, but a very safe loans, Epic are industry veterans, they may not be able to predict a true hit, but advance payments they give are going in 99% of cases pay for themselves.

It's easily sustainable, the only things that could stop it, would be customers bouncing from Epic, or Valve stepping up their game with smaller cut and payout program of their own.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Then the handouts are going to stop.

These are not handouts, but a very safe loans, Epic are industry veterans, they may not be able to predict a true hit, but advance payments they give are going in 99% of cases pay for itself.

Posting complete and utter bs pulled out of one's ass as it were facts, because why not.

 

[V_K]

Posting complete and utter bs pulled out of one's ass as it were facts, because why not.

Well, to be fair, the one sum that got disclosed - the payout to Control worth approximately 200k copies in guaranteed sales - shows that they are very conservative in predicting the sales amount. And given that indies are probably getting far smaller sums, likely by an order of magnitude or so, a game has to flop hard like TToN for them to lose money on such deals.

 

[ultimanecat]

Posting complete and utter bs pulled out of one's ass as it were facts, because why not.

Well, to be fair, the one sum that got disclosed - the payout to Control worth approximately 200k copies in guaranteed sales - shows that they are very conservative in predicting the sales amount. And given that indies are probably getting far smaller sums, likely by an order of magnitude or so, a game has to flop hard like TToN for them to lose money on such deals.

Probably a better example would be whatever they paid for 6 months of Borderlands 3 exclusivity, because Control has bombed pretty hard on consoles and it's doubtful the same crowd that uses EGS to play Fortnight and streamer meme games are buying it either.

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Control. Wow, there's a game that was forgotten about in record time.

 

[Tehdagah]

Speaking of epic,it seems that fortnight hype is dying out. Most of their games are filled with bots. My nephew and his friend are constantly annoyed that it is filled with mindless bots,and think of dropping the game.

I am curious at how much more money they could burn on exclusive flops before they burn out.

The n° of bots in a match is based on the players' skills. The worse the players are, the more bots will be included in the match. So basically your nephew and his friends aren't gud.

And the game actually is experiencing a resurgence. On Twitch, it went from 75k average viewers last season to 130k now.

 

[V_K]

Posting complete and utter bs pulled out of one's ass as it were facts, because why not.

Well, to be fair, the one sum that got disclosed - the payout to Control worth approximately 200k copies in guaranteed sales - shows that they are very conservative in predicting the sales amount. And given that indies are probably getting far smaller sums, likely by an order of magnitude or so, a game has to flop hard like TToN for them to lose money on such deals.

Probably a better example would be whatever they paid for 6 months of Borderlands 3 exclusivity, because Control has bombed pretty hard on consoles and it's doubtful the same crowd that uses EGS to play Fortnight and streamer meme games are buying it either.

Would be, but we don't know that number, unlike Control's one.

 

[passerby]

And the game actually is experiencing a resurgence. On Twitch, it went from 75k average viewers last season to 130k now.

Some yet untapped players installing Epic for freebies and exclusives ends up trying Fortnite.

Control has bombed pretty hard on consoles and it's doubtful the same crowd that uses EGS to play Fortnight and streamer meme games are buying it either.

For the argument at hand what matter is whether it'll sell 200k within a year, so Epic can get their money back. It had good reviews and Remedy has fans, so who knows ?

 

[Belegarsson]

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/red-dead-redemption-2

Humble Bundle is selling EGS code for RDR2, not Rockstar codes

 

[Haba]

And the game actually is experiencing a resurgence. On Twitch, it went from 75k average viewers last season to 130k now.

Yet (if your graph is to be trusted), it is making less money than a ten year old MMO. One that has been dying for years now.

 

[J_C]

Control. Wow, there's a game that was forgotten about in record time.

Which is shameful.

 

[Tehdagah]

Some yet untapped players installing Epic for freebies and exclusives ends up trying Fortnite.

No, it's because the last season was controversial while so far Chapter 2 is being very well received.

Yet (if your graph is to be trusted), it is making less money than a ten year old MMO. One that has been dying for years now.

I posted the graph because of Borderlands 3. Just another confirmation that the people boycotting the EGS are a vocal minority.

The reason Fortnite's profits decreased in September is because a lot of people disliked Season X.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The reason Fortnite's profits decreased in September is because a lot of people disliked Season X.

, it's because the last season was controversial while so far Chapter 2 is being very well received

 

[JarlFrank]

90% of the indie devs who complain about Steam's algorithms and "too high" profit cut getting in the way of their economic survival make shitty, forgettable games nobody really cares about.

Meanwhile something genuinely interesting and with a soul like Disco Elysium is released on Steam and manages to sit on the #1 spot in the RPG top selling list for days.

Yeah maybe just, I dunno, make better games?

 

[Viata]

That is not 100% true, though. There are lot of good games that doesn't sell well and there are games like PUBG that sells like water in the desert. What people usually forget is about marketing. If Disco Elysium had been released, but had done 0 marketing, it would not sell well because hardly people would know about it. The thing with EGS is that it hardly has many game, so any new game is going to be known in that store, your game gets free marketing just by existing there. When EGS gets bigger, it will be the same thing as in Steam and people will come up with another excuse as for why their "great top tier" game doesn't sell. At the end of the day, it's all about how well you can sell your game.

 

[ultimanecat]

I’m pretty sure the (not so) secret hope of the devs and journalists is that Epic becomes a primary target for release because it will be curated and, by extension, it can be used to peddle influence.

Valve doesn’t keep anything but the most obvious trash off of Steam. Some devs hate that they’re in constant competition and sharing space with asset flips and games about raising animal girls to have sex with. A new popular store that only lets certain types of games in is a way to avoid that. Make the right friends on Twitter with the right folks and *poof* your game is always on EGS but none of that other stuff is.

Valve also as a matter of policy doesn’t judge games on their content short of it being arguably illegal. Journalists and some devs hate this, because when they deem a game “problematic”, Valve doesn’t care and sometimes the game even goes on to be very successful and (e.g. Kingdom Come) and the Nazis win. With a new popular store that curates content, a handful of bloggers and woke devs can tweet and write articles about how Epic is allowing Kingdom Come 2 on EGS and people are literally (not really) dying because of the hate speech it promotes and why is Epic allowing this? And *poof* some sympathetic manager you’re friends with at Epic delists the game or never allows it in the first place.

 

[DalekFlay]

Yeah maybe just, I dunno, make better games?

I'm sure the reason Transformers made billions of dollars at the box office and stuff like Ex Machina, Dredd and Prospect made a pittance is because Transformers is the "better" sci-fi movie, right? I'm sure all Codexers will agree that top 10 revenue list for PC posted last page are the 10 best games on the platform, right? You make a great point that higher revenue always means higher quality. After all, we all know Fallout 3's higher revenue and mainstream attention was a pivotal example in RPG improvement. Thank you for bringing clarity to the conversation.

 

[Silentstorm]

A lot of it does come to marketing, i mean, even if you aren't rich and can't pay for a big campaign, you could do trailers, talk about it on social media, send free copies to Youtubers and Streamers and spice up your store page.

For example, there is this game on Steam called Heiankyo Alien, someone just recommended it to me at one point, i liked it for the simple arcade game it is and the developer randomly contacted me just to ask if i was liking it, being that apparently so few people bought the game the guy can just talk to whoever buys it, and in the middle of the discussion i find out, oh, this game is doing relatively well in the japanese market, as in, it's become a literal arcade game in Japan:

It's a Pac-Man like game with several twists and it's gotten various versions in Japan due to being so popular there, it's kinda like Skullgirls, an indie fighting game that also became huge enough in Japan to get arcade machines.

Heck, the machines are popular enough there are exclusive modes and content that will never come to PC because not enough people bough it, western gamers ignored it, japanese gamers are playing it on arcades right now, and the Steam page doesn't mean the fact that, you know, it's a maze game that is good enough that without any anime elements or anything like that, just simple graphics, became big enough to get various machines in Japan, you'd think that would be worth a mention or two, but you'd be wrong.

Instead, the PC version is just abandoned(with a promised future mode having been announced in...2017 and still not arriving), there is no console version, not even a Switch port, and it's just lying there, i mean, the developer is still making games, but you know, they have a cool fact about this game that they never used to change the Steam page at the very least, meaning, the fact that it's good enough to become an actual arcade machine, good enough that someone paid money to make actual cabinets out of it, they don't even use "We make games that became good enough to become arcade machines in Japan" in any page of their more recent games.

I mean, i may just be bad at marketing, but i think i would put that in every page, that's actually a pretty cool thing and a great sign when we are talking about arcade-style games, or you can just complain how no one buys the game when it's biggest market is playing on a cabinet and abandon it, why the fuck not?

 

[Viata]

You forgot to mention Heiankyo Alien is an old as fuck Japanese game and that is the reason it has a lot of arcade version there. The steam version is a remake, in fact.

 

[Reinhardt]

Even

asset flips and games about raising animal girls to have sex with

are still better than shit

journalists

trying to shove down your throat.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah maybe just, I dunno, make better games?

I'm sure the reason Transformers made billions of dollars at the box office and stuff like Ex Machina, Dredd and Prospect made a pittance is because Transformers is the "better" sci-fi movie, right? I'm sure all Codexers will agree that top 10 revenue list for PC posted last page are the 10 best games on the platform, right? You make a great point that higher revenue always means higher quality. After all, we all know Fallout 3's higher revenue and mainstream attention was a pivotal example in RPG improvement. Thank you for bringing clarity to the conversation.

Well, "Indie" often refers to those hipsterish cartoony games that are a dime a dozen. No wonder they don't sell.

 

[DalekFlay]

Well, "Indie" often refers to those hipsterish cartoony games that are a dime a dozen. No wonder they don't sell.

All the more reason why you need more than just "quality" to stand out in a sea of endless crap.