Epic Games Store - the console war comes to PC

[V_K]

The less money for Epic, the better.

 

[J1M]

This court case is great for indie devs. Now you know how much to sell a game for when a storefront wants to give it away for free. There's no longer a massive information disadvantage.

 

[lefthandblack]

I got an email from lifelock about this. I never bought shit from them so I was like, "Meh."

 

[fantadomat]

I got an email from lifelock about this. I never bought shit from them so I was like, "Meh."

Isn't that like the 5th time they got hacked?

 

[Lutte]

They're too retarded to build a shopping cart to buy multiple items in one go. Most basic feature of e-commerce 101. I didn't even know it was possible in modern days to have an online store that didn't have a shopping cart. EGS was launched two years ago and this is still considered a "pending/todo feature". Shamefur dispray.

That their software is shitty enough to be hacked every once in a while is a given.

 

[flyingjohn]

And a new round of mystery free games begins next week.
Will it be candy crush Hd?
Will it be a China sponsored game?
Will it actually be good,bwahhahah.

Find out by giving your social security number to your closest epic game box machine available everywhere except Taiwan.

 

[Dexter]

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20705652-epic-games-store-presentation

Epics attempt to "eliminate" key reselling to better control pricing and (Online) distribution and get rid of "grey market" selling of keys:

Epic Content Policy:

Content Acquisition Tactics:

Based on their Holiday Sale, only ~4.3% of transactions seem to have been paid ones and they've supposedly converted about the same amount ~4.4% of their Monthly Active Users to paying users, keep that in mind when they brag about user gain (a lot of those could be also those "sophisticated hackers"/bot accounts):

Also, is Perkel merely shilling, or is he really as retarded as the Epic and Star Shitizen threads make it seem?

https://www.gamepressure.com/newsroom/epic-games-paid-streamers-for-aggressive-marketing/z932ac

Epic Games Paid Streamers for Aggressive Marketing
According to another document revealed in the course of the trial between Apple and Epic Games, Tim Sweeney's company was to pay various influencers, mainly to land a marketing hit on its direct competitor, Steam.

The court hearing between Epic Games and Apple continues, and as it progresses, new revelations are being made known to everyone involved. Yesterday, a document was revealed (previously presented in the courtroom), which confirms that Tim Sweeney's company paid various streamers and influencers to advertise its store. However, the main purpose of this marketing campaign was to disrupt the organic traffic of Steam - Epic's direct competitor.

Organic traffic is the term for all Internet users who came to a given website through free search results, i.e. those not marked as advertising. If you type the name of any game into, say, Google search, in virtually every case the link to Steam will be higher than the link leading to Epic Games Store. The involvement of popular developers was supposed to push EGS to the top of search results and thus knock the competition off their pedestal. The estimated budget for this plan oscillated around 10-15 million dollars.

A slide from Epic Games' presentation briefly outlining plans to pay influencers.

This isn't the first interesting information to come out of documents presented in the court battle between the two corporate giants. Previously, we learned that Epic Games paid $115 million for the temporary exclusivity of Borderlands 3, and about a deal with Sony that would see the Japanese company receive a $200 million advance for providing Epic with several exclusive games.

 

[Aruil]

Is this legit? Cause this slide is very strange.

According to this, they are doing what they accused Steam of doing while simultaneously "proving" that Steam in fact does not do it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Reminder that EGS cultists will continue to yell "IT'S GOOD FOR THE CUSTOMERS!"

 

[Aruil]

Am I misunderstanding something? I'm perfectly fine accepting that I'm retarded, but I can't see any other interpretation here. passerby

 

[gerey]

paid $115 million for the temporary exclusivity of Borderlands 3

Jesus Christ, talk about wasting money.

 

[passerby]

If Steam requires price matching only for Steam keys, it's perfectly fine by me. EGS never accused Steam of that, it was Wolfire develeopper.

Now the point where you are retarded is they match price down on their store while still offering better cut.
Which is opposite of what Wolfire dev was accussing Steam of, which was forcing matching up on other stores offering better cut under a threat of delisting from their dominant platform, which according to this doccument is false.

 

[Aruil]

But the slide specifically says that such enforcement is not happening at all on steam's side, except for steam keys which is logical since they take a loss on that.

Sweeny has indeed claimed that steam enforces parity, btw.



Really can't see how that makes me retarded, but you do your thing.

 

[Tacgnol]

Reminder that EGS cultists will continue to yell "IT'S GOOD FOR THE CUSTOMERS!"

Whilst accusing people of being Valve cultists in the same breath.

 

[passerby]

Sweeny has indeed claimed that steam enforces parity, btw.



Really can't see how that makes me retarded, but you do your thing.

I was not aware of this, as I don't really follow it, I'm interested only in generalities and principles of these things, so ok retarded rating was undeserved and I was not well informed on all Tim's claims.
We've established that Steam is not guilty of forcing price matching according to the slide and that price matching for Steam keys is perfectly justified.

As for Tim's claims:
1) Maybe it was the case 2 years ago, or maybe Tim was disingenous, it's not the case currently according to this recent case slide.
2) Not a Steam problem or fault indeed.
I also highly doubt Steam customers would be angry at publisher because of EGS selling 10% cheaper than Steam.
Store credit for purchases, permanent sale discount and deeper discounts on actual sales events, or these promo coupons like Epic did are all ways to execute cheaper prices, without angering the worst simpletons anyway, but again I highly doubt that is even necessary.

You are also right EGS technically does price matching indeed, but the context is a bit different than what Steam was ( unjustly ) accused of.
If a dominant platform with the biggest cut would demand price parity, it'd effectively demand to sell in to their store cheaper, then to competition.
When a platform with the lowest cut forces parity, it demands to not sell in so much higher to their store, that they can't even match the price despite the lower cut.

As I said in the other thread, ideally the only price parity stores should be allowed to demand from sellers as a condition of doing bussiness, is a sold in price parity with an advertised MSRP.
Then it should be up to the stores to compete on price markups and quality of service and up to customers to decide if the service is worth the higher price.

 

[Aruil]

I was not aware of this, as I don't really follow it, I'm interested only in generalities and principles of these things, so ok retarded rating was undeserved and I was not well informed on all Tim's claims.
We've established that Steam is not guilty of forcing price matching according to the slide and that price matching for Steam keys is perfectly justified.

As for Tim's claims:
1) Maybe it was the case 2 years ago, or maybe Tim was disingenous, it's not the case currently according to this recent case slide.
2) Not a Steam problem or fault indeed.
I also highly doubt Steam customers would be angry at publisher because of EGS selling 10% cheaper then Steam.
Store credit for purchases, permanent sale discount and deeper discounts on actual sales events, or these promo coupons like Epic did are all ways to execute cheaper prices, without angering the worst simpletons anyway, but again highly doubt that is even necessary.

You are also right EGS technically does price matching indeed, but the context is a bit different than what Steam was ( unjustly ) accused of.
If a dominant platform with the biggest cut demands price parity, it effectively forces to sold in to their store cheaper, then to competition, when a platform with the lowest cut forces parity it forces to not sell in higher to their store.

As I said in the other thread, ideally the only price parity stores should be allowed to demand from sellers as a condition of doing bussiness is sold in price with an advertised MSRP parity.
And then it should be up to the stores to compete on price markups and quality of service and up to customers to decide if the service is worth the higher price.

Ok, no argument from me. I agree with your points here, so glad we got rid of the misunderstanding. I had a suspicion that we simply talked past each other, but wasn't sure.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

If Steam requires price matching only for Steam keys, it's perfectly fine by me. EGS never accused Steam of that, it was Wolfire develeopper.

Now the point where you are retarded is they match price down on their store while still offering better cut.
Which is opposite of what Wolfire dev was accussing Steam of, which was forcing matching up on other stores offering better cut under a threat of delisting from their dominant platform, which according to this doccument is false.

Not true, he said nothing about matching down on Steam been rejected. He wants to sell his game for more on steam as to make the difference of 18%. So his idea is to offload the steam cut to the customers.

Not to mention he didn't back any of his claims with documents where it says he can't sell at lower price without steam keys/drm.

 

[Venser]

"highly confidential - attorney's eyes only"

 

[Tacgnol]

"highly confidential - attorney's eyes only"

This always happens with high profile court cases. It's the other reasons companies dread getting subpoenaed, aside from the time/resources required to provide the requested information.

 

[fantadomat]

Is this legit? Cause this slide is very strange.

According to this, they are doing what they accused Steam of doing while simultaneously "proving" that Steam in fact does not do it.

nigga why are you surprised? Their predatory,yet incompetent approach to busyness was obvious from the start. It is no wonder that epic were about to go bankrupt before they got lucky with fortnight lol.

 

[NJClaw]

Reminder that EGS cultists will continue to yell "IT'S GOOD FOR THE CUSTOMERS!"

Reminder that EGS cultists do not exist because nobody on planet Earth has ever bought a game on that cursed store.

 

[passerby]

He wants to sell his game for more on steam as to make the difference of 18%. So his idea is to offload the steam cut to the customers.

Yes ?
The base prices are determined by the market, by what people are willing to pay, nothing else, while sellers actively seek a price that will generate the most revenue.
Claiming he wants to rise prices on Steam even higher as a result of price difference is just stupid semantics, since it's actually not possible.
So, this is the idea that he sells for whatever he sells and customers who think Steam is not worth 18% gain opportunity to pay 18% less.

So there are two possible outcomes of the other platform selling 18% cheaper:

1) Most people will think that Steam is worth 18% and market share of cheap platform remains low enough for Steam to keep it's high cut.
Small minority of customers will get the opportunity to D1P 18% cheaper, Steam users loose nothing, devs/publishers gain nothing, Steam loses some small market share.

2) Cheap platform gains market share and pressure Steam into lower cut. Since the cut would be the same everywhere, prices everywhere would remain the same as they were before.
Customers gain nothing, Devs/Publishers gain better cut, Steam gets its cut reduced.

3) No one is selling 18% cheaper. No Steam users buy on the other service.
Customers gain nothing, devs/publishers gain nothing, Steam keeps its high cut.

The only side that has anything to loose in this debacle is Steam, while you have nothing to loose, but passionately defend Steam ability to cut deep into devs profit margin.

Not to mention he didn't back any of his claims with documents where it says he can't sell at lower price without steam keys/drm.

The slide Aruil posted may be fake news, so we will see. In currently publicly available Steamworks ToS there is no point on pricing at all.
I remember few years ago reading Steamworks ToS out of curiosity and price parity was indeed there without differentiating between Steam keys and other services.
Most likely Steam never actively enforced it, or the point was meant only for Steam keys and was unintentionally vague ( it's what they will claim anyway ).

It's all moot anyway, since as explained by VD in the other thread most devs/publishers are unwilling to make 18% price difference happen, since it doesn't provide any immediate benefit to them, while they are afraid that upset steamtards like you would refuse to buy their games.
So in the end they deserve to Steam charge them these 30%.

 

[Perkel]

Mystery Game in 1 day and 7 hours.

Probably something big. They usually do something like this when some bigger game is coming as free. They had string on meh indies previously.

 

[flyingjohn]

And it is a basketball game.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Hmm.. should I get 450,000 VCs to go with my free game. That'd only be 99,99 euros, a real bargain in other words.

There are more ways than ever before to spend your VC. Upgrade your MyPLAYER, buy MyTEAM packs to build your perfect fantasy team, and so much more!