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Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
"Please use our chink bloated spyware instead of theirs, we give the developers more cuts"
Too bad no one will buy games on there, so the devs will still earn more by putting their games on Steam
What big devs are still doing that though?

Activision Blizzard has Battle.Net. With Call of Duty: BLOPS4 and Destiny 2 Activision seems to shift away from Steam to there.
Electronic Arts has Origin and hasn't released a game on Steam since 2012.
UbiSoft has uPlay and only Alibi-releases game on Steam that then go on to use their own service.
Bethesda has Bethesda.Net and (so far) hasn't released "Fallout 76" on Steam, which might indicate they're willing to move away.
Microsoft wants to push their own Windows Store and rarely releases some older stuff on Steam.
Epic Games has their own Epic Games Launcher and are starting a Store now too.
RockStar has RockStar Social Club. Only game copies you directly buy on Steam have integration (and still use Social Club).
CDProjekt has GOG (Galaxy) and only game copies that you directly buy on Steam have integration.
SONY and Nintendo aren't much interested in PC.

What's left? Take-Two Interactive (outside of RockStar) and Warner Bros. that barely release stuff? Steam seems to be largely surviving on a few Japanese and European publishers that can't be arsed to set up their own client or want to sell to pre-existing PC audiences like SEGA, CapCom, Bandai Namco, Koei Tecmo, THQ Nordic, Paradox or Square Enix, although even some of them now have their own Stores: https://store.na.square-enix-games.com/en_US/ https://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/ and some AA "Indie" games, since Valve so rarely releases games themselves.

It doesn't exactly seem like ~2007-2012 where they controlled almost everything on PC, which is likely also why they did the revenue sharing move recently and may be one of the reasons they decided to open up their store further.
 
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Terra

Cipher
Joined
Sep 4, 2016
Messages
896
Yay, :bounce: at the prospect of having yet another digital distribution client installed on my system.
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
A couple of things some people are missing. Recently, Steam cut royalty rates for big publishers to 20%. The only people they are taking a 30% cut from are indie devs. I dislike this enough to install the Epic Games store.

Second, this isn't just a digital marketplace play for Epic. Look at the royalty rate for the Unreal Engine. This is also about keeping their engine in the fight against Unity and others. If the marketplace breaks even, but Epic can take a 5% cut from more games on Steam because people are choosing it then this is still a success.

This won't be a piece of beta software. The Epic Games Launcher has been around for a while, which was also a store. This is just about opening it up to other publishers.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
A couple of things some people are missing. Recently, Steam cut royalty rates for big publishers to 20%. The only people they are taking a 30% cut from are indie devs. I dislike this enough to install the Epic Games store.
In any industry anyone who can bring you a disproportionate amount of revenue (in this case hundreds of millions as your cut; CD Projekt alone probably forked over 300 mil) can demand and will get a better rate than someone who brings over 0.1% of that amount, if that. In advertising Honda Service (oil change and such) gets a much better rate than Joe Blow's Garage because even if Honda's rate is a third of what Joe's rate, it will spend x1000 more. In other words, rates are always tied to the size of the business.

Steam single-handedly keeps the entire indie industry afloat and it deserves a credit for it, not scorn that they dare charging 30%, when payment processing and game hosting alone would cost indie developers 15% of sales or more. Credit card processing fees are too based on the size of the business (transaction volume) and if the developers start refunding (which is a good business practice) the rate will quickly go through the roof.
 

Konjad

Patron
Joined
Nov 3, 2007
Messages
3,930
Location
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I would agree that there is simply no point for the consumer to get Epic Store (whatever it's name) instead of Steam although more money for developers is better. People already have Steam for years and often a lot of games on it. Developers already have a huge market on Steam. No one wants 10 gaming clients running, the less the better.

But then I think of all the kids who will do *anything* for one more skin or a dance in Fortnite...
 

Jimmious

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
If Epic would offer to move my Steam library to their client SOMEHOW, then I'd be really happy to do that and support developers even more.
But as I don't really see that happening, I really doubt I'll get another client
 

Ba'al

Scholar
Joined
Jun 26, 2016
Messages
162
Getting people to install their client is something Epic doesn't have to worry about. They already have millions of users - all the kids playing Fortnite. Sure, they don't have nearly as much spending money as adults do, but I guess this is more of a long-term plan.
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
11,003
Location
USSR
I hate the 30% monopoly that Steam, GoG and now Discord share, so if a game is on Epic Launcher, I'll be buying it there absolutely, just to give a fuck you to those cunts who rob the developers so shamelessly.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Interview with the Spy: https://kotaku.com/the-guy-behind-steam-spy-has-been-working-on-epics-stor-1830890162
  • Epic Store will have no forums like Steam community, because "not a single developer I talked to wanted forums" and "the toxicity it brings." Instead users will use a ticketing system that can directly message developers
  • Regarding Steam Spy-like sales data, they're "aiming to provide developers with as much information to make good decisions as legally possible." "Contractually we can’t share other companies’ sales data—Steam Spy shows estimates—but we can share other useful stats, especially in an aggregated format. We use a lot of data ourselves and want the developers to have the same tools. And the partners obviously can share their sales information."
The Guy Behind Steam Spy Has Been Working On Epic's Store For Years

It’s one thing for a gaming company to announce a Steam competitor—andbelieve me, many have—but it’s something else entirely when the developer behind the world’s biggest game does it. Epic’s upcoming game store seems to have already gotten under Steam’s skin, but even before the announcement yesterday, one Epic employee spent countless long hours picking apart the behemoth piece by piece. As a hobby.

If you follow Steam closely, you’ve probably heard of Sergey Galyonkin. Since 2015, he’s been running Steam Spy, a site that scrapes publicly-available data from Steam profiles, analyzes it, and spits out statistics like approximate game sales, average playtime per game, and broader genre and tag trends. A change to Steam’s privacy settings put Steam Spy against the ropes earlier this year, but it’s still bobbing and weaving—albeit more clumsily—for the time being.

Few people outside of Valve are more intimately familiar with Steam’s inner workings than Galyonkin. He has always described the Steam data-gathering mainstay, used by major developers and publishers to take stock of Steam and justify their games’ existence, as a “side project.” His main gig? Director of publishing strategy for Epic’s new store, as it turns out. He announced yesterday that he’s been working on the project for “the past several years.” It didn’t take long for the “Steam Spy was literally a Steam spy” jokes to start rolling in.

“I think it’s funny,” Galyonkin said in an email to Kotaku. “It wasn’t my intention when launching or naming Steam Spy, but in retrospect, it makes for a great four-years-in-the-making joke.”

There is, according to Galyonkin, no great conspiracy here. He’s always been interested in data and game distribution, and that led to him both starting Steam Spy and joining Epic. Steam Spy has, however, taught Galyonkin, and now Epic, some valuable lessons that are being applied to the new store.

“I’ve learned a lot about how games are tracking [week] over week, how effective are sales (not as much as people think, exposure is more important), and more importantly, I got to talk to hundreds of developers to learn what they want from a digital store and what they like and don’t like about existing ones,” he said.

He noted that he could’ve done that last part without Steam Spy, but “for a person as introverted as I am, it’s way easier when other people are talking to me.”

This led to a slew of valuable insights that Galyonkin says directly informed the Epic store’s feature set. For instance, forums and other social media-like tools—a cornerstone of Steam—won’t be part of the package. Galyonkin said that this is because “not a single developer I talked to wanted forums” and “the toxicity it brings,” preferring to interact with communities on their own terms on platforms like Reddit and Discord instead.

“That’s why we won’t have forums on Epic Games store and will start with a ticketing system, so gamers can message devs about their problems instead of review-bombing them,” said Galyonkin.

Then there’s the issue of clutter, which often makes Steam feel less like a svelte 2018 video game store and more like a closet so stuffed full of games that if you tried to pull one out, it’d be like dislodging the wrong block from a Jenga tower. This is even an issue on individual game pages. Their “More Like This,” DLC, and bundle sections impact not just users’ ability to decide whether they want a game, but also developers’ ability to communicate what they’re up to.

“There was a problem with too many things competing for users’ attention on a game page and no way of ever reaching users unless a developer had its own account system set up,” said Galyonkin. “That’s why we’re trying to minimize the store presence on game pages and we’re adding a global Twitter-like newsfeed, so developers can update their players about recent changes to their games and their future titles. And they can have emails of their players if the players agree to it.”

Steam Spy’s greatest strength, though, has been its ability to pull back the curtain on sales data and other trends, paving the way for developers to make games they know people will like (or that nobody else has made before) and, hopefully, succeed. And while Epic’s store won’t have public-facing Steam Spy-like functionality built in, providing developers with as much information as possible is a big priority.

“We’re aiming to provide developers with as much information to make good decisions as legally possible,” Galyonkin said. “Contractually we can’t share other companies’ sales data—Steam Spy shows estimates—but we can share other useful stats, especially in an aggregated format. We use a lot of data ourselves and want the developers to have the same tools. And the partners obviously can share their sales information.”

The Epic store will launch with a “very barebone backend dashboard,” he said, but his hope is that “eventually it will give developers way more information about their games that Steam Spy ever could.”

As for Steam Spy, it’s not dead, but Steam privacy changes did a heck of a job of hamstringing it. Galyonkin’s not entirely sure what he’s gonna do with it yet, but for now, the project continues to move forward, though at a speed closer to a crawl than a sprint.

“The current algorithm is based on machine learning and is doing OK for tags and general trends, plus an actual PhD in machine learning is helping me with the next version,” he said. But, he said, Steam Spy has taken a back seat recently: “I’ve been so occupied with Epic Games store, I didn’t spend enough time working on Steam Spy in recent months.”
 

Heretic

Cipher
Joined
Dec 1, 2015
Messages
844
For instance, forums and other social media-like tools—a cornerstone of Steam—won’t be part of the package. Galyonkin said that this is because “not a single developer I talked to wanted forums” and “the toxicity it brings,” preferring to interact with communities on their own terms on platforms like Reddit and Discord instead.

“That’s why we won’t have forums on Epic Games store and will start with a ticketing system, so gamers can message devs about their problems instead of review-bombing them,” said Galyonkin.
It sounds like not only they won't have forums because of "toxicity it brings", they won't even have reviews.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
It sounds like not only they won't have forums because of "toxicity it brings", they won't even have reviews.

They have plans for that, from the Eurogamer interview, but...:

How will you handle user reviews / vote brigading?

Tim Sweeney: User reviews are still in development and the store will launch without this feature. When launched, it will be opt-in by developers. We're experimenting with other mechanisms to improve this further.
 

bylam

Funcom
Developer
Joined
Oct 30, 2006
Messages
707
The proletariat demand that all those stores should be accessible from a single, standardized and open API so the consumer can shop around in them from an universal client.

Could you do that without being mega-sued, tho?

Because that's a pretty interesting programming concept for me...

I remember searching for this a few years back and... Razer of all fucking places seems to have this (except the open part). It searches for the best deal in any digital store it supports and lets you know.
https://www.razer.com/cortex/deals
 
Joined
Jul 21, 2009
Messages
2,573
Location
Once and Future Wasteland
Serpent in the Staglands Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
That steamspy interview makes it sound like they are catering their store to fix developers' concerns with Steam. Seems like a bad idea. Devs will sell on whatever platform makes them money, so Epic needs to focus on what the customers want. I didn't read anything in that interview that makes me want to purchase games on their platform.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
I hate the 30% monopoly that Steam, GoG and now Discord share, so if a game is on Epic Launcher, I'll be buying it there absolutely, just to give a fuck you to those cunts who rob the developers so shamelessly.
We sold more in the first month on Steam than we sold in over a year on our own. The developers who don't wish to be "robbed" by Steam and GOG are free to sell directly and keep all of it. Jeff Vogel has been selling directly for over a decade, yet he seems to be happy as a pig letting Steam rob him blind, eh?

That steamspy interview makes it sound like they are catering their store to fix developers' concerns with Steam.
Exactly. They seem to think that the way to compete with Steam is by making developers happy when it's the players they should be worry about.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394

moraes

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Messages
701
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Could you do that without being mega-sued, tho?

Because that's a pretty interesting programming concept for me...

I don't think so, and it won't ever happen. Just imagine Valve agreeing to make Steam just another shopping site, without tying your shopping account to their community "services" that bring them lots of money and interest (trading cards and items, streaming, curators, etc.).
 

Heretic

Cipher
Joined
Dec 1, 2015
Messages
844
It sounds like not only they won't have forums because of "toxicity it brings", they won't even have reviews.

They have plans for that, from the Eurogamer interview, but...:

How will you handle user reviews / vote brigading?

Tim Sweeney: User reviews are still in development and the store will launch without this feature. When launched, it will be opt-in by developers. We're experimenting with other mechanisms to improve this further.
Thanks for that info. Opt-in reviews sounds like a really, really bad idea. Either a store has product reviews, or it doesn't. But to have reviews only for some products?
This whole Ipic store sounds like something thought out in a bubble.
 

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