Regional pricing is a reaction from the market. It is something devs choose to use with full control of what the regional price is going to be.
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Discord thinks about developers, 90/10 developers split is coming to its game store in 2019
- Thread starter Rodjer
- Start date
No, I'm just expecting them to not reduce our options to try to reach higher profits.
You see, there's a balance between developpers, stores, customers. So far, the 30/70 split meant stores had a leverage to compete toward customers.
On top of that, using Steam meant that balance existed because of the different policies and services in place.
But we're heading toward a competition that isn't about customers but developpers. Developpers wants a bigger cut, which means storefronts wants to compete by making botched services and moneyhatting releases.
You know what we're heading toward to ? Low cuts for devs, online paywalls for customers. Once the 3rd party stores are out of the way (Because let's be real, Discord and Epic dont want devs to sell elsewhere it seems and even if Steam still make these free steam keys for devs, once the 10-12% cut becomes the norm, lot of store will die because they wont be able to compete with price cutting), we'll have less storefronts, they'll all be tied to their own client. And how do you think they'll make profit since the cut will be just enough to cover their services ?
On the customers. Because that's what always happens. And well, since so many people are fine saying "well, exclusives are a thing on consoles duh" we'll have the same people telling us "online paywall is a thing on console duh and they lend you games every month !".
I hear you and right now we have the best of all these worlds right? Steam still has the leverage to have a higher revenue split and Discord and Epic fucking around with 88/12 and 90/10 are simply a way to attract developers to their platform.
This won't be the end of sales. Most sales are agreed upon between the Developer and the Store. If anything, independent developers get more say in their pricing as a result of this.
Devs aren't the only ones who live on a budget. People buying their games do too.
Is this truly good for devs, or are we just assuming it will be good for devs? We still don't have the full consumer market after affects of this percentage move. I don't know either but I think a blanket statement of "a higher percentage will save indie devs" is one I don't buy yet. A higher percentage is great for developers and I'm all for it but I do have a market concern: If less people are buying games, how does this keep more developers in business? Seems like there is an equally plausible scenario where the rich get richer while many indie devs who struggle currently still struggle to make ends meet.
Think again: Who's buying the games ?
The less money a customer has, the less money he spends.
Sure, I even said before that I don't personally mind Epic's moneyhatting, I only took an issue with the "think of the little guys!" narrative.
They're battling for the devs now, but they also need to fight for the consumers, or they'll end up with a bunch of games to sell to no one.
I think you are missing the fact this is what most of the world makes when you convert from home currency to dollars. They are not asking for regional pricing because they are cheap, they are asking for regional pricing because that makes games line up with the local cost of living.
Why would you expect that? What other PC store / launcher has done that?
It's a fantasy.
We already had those threads when the Discord store launched, because it is pretty bad, which is why no-one uses it.
We wont have any more because Discord aren't doing shady Epic style forced exclusives. There's no downside to the Discord store doing this for me, because it's such non-factor.
I mean, lets not dismiss actual concerns by misconstruing them.
Again, you work to make money and you choose to spend it on video games. You are saying that you buy a game and use savings to buy another one. However, you are spending the exact same amount. If you had more money, you would actually be able to increase you spending on games. But again, that's not about Steam being able to offer day one discounts, that's an arrangement between you and the company you work for.
Naw.
The reason I expect things to be different in 2019 is that all these announcements and percentage shake ups are clearly stirring the pot. Even if there isn't exact parity with the Steam store, I expect Epic to try and do their best to match or exceed aspects of Steam for competition's sake.
There's a real reason people are in a panic mode over Steam in this very thread. Epic, in particular, seems pretty serious about this considering the investment they're making. I hope they do their best to make their store a match for Steam.
People who are saying this is proof Epic are doing good and all the "competition" criticism's are wrong clearly weren't paying attention to the many other threads where it was repeated multiple times that quite a lot of us don't have any problems with the 88% cut and think that's one of the only good things about the service, as long as it is sustainable. It's basically the only thing which can be actively competed against (which we see here), while forced exclusivity cannot be and everything else about the service is incompetent at best, and massively anti-consumer at worst.
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Yes, I'm using the same amount. But because that same amount can be used to buy 2 games instead of one, it means 2 devs can get money instead of one.
I am in bed, but remember this.
Tancent owns majority of Epic.
Tancent also has their fingers in discord.
Tancent owns majority of Epic.
Tancent also has their fingers in discord.
I believe he is arguing he will be spreading his money around to less developers if pricing goes up.
Edit: Defeated, Ghost Trick posted above already.
Because Epic has the money to enforce anti consumer shit, you're right.
That's also because people dont want to entrust someone that is already a clusterfuck.
People dont want another GFWL. People dont want to have to buy the game on the same client because the other use different servers. People dont want fragmentation.
And I'll tell you something else: Devs dont want to handle 4-5 builds for one PC game.
Everyone is fine and happy with more storefronts. People just dont want more bad launchers that a part of their library will depend of.
Um...Epic's shutting down the whole multiple options thing. They're throwing money around so they can be the only option.
This is a myth. Companies are known for pocketing any extra savings far more often than passing it on to the consumer.
Regardless I'd rather go with what has been proven to work and that's retail taking chunks out of their 30% cut to offer better prices than betting that companies will suddenly start passing savings on to us.
Discord launched with exclusives though? Granted, their exclusivity is "only" 90days, which is apparently a lot shorter than what Epic does, but they did the exact same thing. And if we're going with why Discord sucks, other reasons would be having their own DRMs devs can opt to slap on their games(because obviously we need more DRMs for stuff) or the fact they don't support DLC(which if you're on the side of helping the devs, doesn't really help that much when they can't sell additional content they make to support their games).
Hey, I'm glad we agree that having more storefronts is a better thing.
I'm curious about the bolded part, though: developers would have to make a unique version of their game for a different storefront? I can't imagine that would be a substantial investment of time or resources on par with porting a game.
The way you are framing this discussion is as though you have no other choice but to buy Devil May Cry 5, or some other game, on day 1. You have the choice to wait too.
I buy a game to play the game. Hades etc. are still the same games they would be on any other storefront.
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Storefronts and clients are not the same thing, though clients have storefronts, there are storefronts without clients.
Which is what GhostTrick meant. Many of us are fine with more stores and even want them, we just don't want more clients.
"I'm angry that another company also wants to make money off me!"
Yeah, I still haven't seen any good reasoning behind that statement. If devs want to promote their game, sales are still a great way to do that.
Anyway, it's great that these storefronts are competing. I'm sure it will help out indie devs a bit.
So PC isn't a platform then. If PC were a single platform, it wouldn't need to have multiple builds.
They are but they're not a normal company which is why conventional wisdom on economics doesn't work with them. The single biggest thing that grew PC gaming in the past 10 years was their decision to let retailers sell steam keys for free basically. This is what allows these sites to offer new games for 20-30% off. They can't do that if steam started charging for keys. They also can't do that if the 30% cut is drastically reduced.
Ever heard of Greenmangaming? Voidu? Fanatical? Humble Bundle? Gamesplanet?
These stores rely on the 30% cut to make better discounts for the users, they use a part of that 30% cut (usually from 10 to 25%) as store wide coupons or discounts for specific games.
Lower that 30% cut to something like 10%, and those stores pretty much lose the ability to have discounts based on their cut, discounts will be fully dependent on the publishers/developers.
It wouldn't the end of sales, but future sales wouldn't be as good as what these stores can offer nowadays.
Very curious to see what's meant by "the Discord store will allow all developers to self-publish games." They've responded to a query on Twitter stating that there won't be a place for NSFW games, but considering the backlash Steam got with their hands-off take on curation I'm wondering what Discord's rhetoric will be. This feels like a pivot away from what they indicated earlier this year regarding a curated storefront iirc, no doubt a response to Epic though.
It was before everyone decided they wanted to have their own storefront with their own launchers and their own features(or lack of features) forcing devs to make various versions of their game to accomodate this.
Show me game currently on Epic store that has lower price than it had before became exclusive.
Not for a different storefront. A different launcher. I'll say it again: You need to disinguish Storefronts, which are basically your store selling a game at whatever price or cut they set and Launchers/Client, which are using services and APIs that needs to be integrated in your game.
If Epic Games had a storefront only, they would ever sell DRM free only titles or Steamkeys and they would still have a 12/88 cut in place.
But because they use their own client/launcher on top of that, their features need to be integrated in the game's build.
For exemple, GOG games and Steam games often use TWO different builds. Which means they're not always updated at the same time. Sometimes, GOG games are either not patched (because devs cant afford to handle two builds) or lacking features (because the Steam build relies on the Steamworks API for leaderboards, mod support or multiplayer). Sometimes, they use separate multiplayer servers (Dying Light on GOG cant interact with Dying Light on Steam. If you have Dying Light on GOG, you can only play with Dying Light players on GOG and not on Steam)
The same happened with owners of Call of Duty on Windows Store and Steam, which had different servers.
I think it's absurd to think there will be no sales on Epic's store.
I'll probably wait and see on new games getting sale prices, but even then they're still giving away free games on the platform too.
That's stupid though. I want to support DMCV on day one. And with the money I saved I supported another game. Instead of supporting them on day one, I should support them in 6 months ?
At the same time if a store wants to stay competitive, they already have incentive to have sales. For example, Epic is giving away free games.