Epic is throwing buckets of money as an advertisment for their launch.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Discord thinks about developers, 90/10 developers split is coming to its game store in 2019
- Thread starter Rodjer
- Start date
Epic is throwing buckets of money as an advertisment for their launch.
All these store fronts need is their own Fortnite and they can make free games possible.
Frankly, I'd prefer to see them apply a fee to key sales, as I think that tends to lead to abuse. Doing that and moving to AT LEAST an 85/15 cut (preferably better) would make things much more competitive.
I m ok with Steam and any competitive PC games store that does not lock third party games via timed exclusivity.
Last edited:
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.
Last week you could get CoH 2 for fre eon Steam, This week you ca get Full Throttle Remastered on GOG and LEGO Hobbit on Humble Bundle. Free games are everywhere. I was talking about Ashen for example. It costs 40$ on Epic Store and 40$ on Xbox. Epic gets 12%, Microsoft gets 30%, customer gets nothing. Why Ashen is not 35$ on Epic Store for example?
How do keys lend to abuse? It's the devs themselves that generate them and sell where they see fit.
Also the market leader matching a race to the bottom on prices is how you kill competition, not make things more competitive. Could Steam offer a better revenue split than they do now? Sure. Going that low, however, is very dangerous. Making that 20% they offered for big sellers store wide would be nice.
I think as of this posting the Epic Store is 6 days old. Ashen released a week ago.
The customer gets the same game, same price, no cost for online MP due to the PC ecosystem. We could probably go back and forth until we're blue in the face on this subject. None of these stores have some 1:1 parity with sales, they create unique benefits/freebies/discounts as incentives and Epic is starting out with the free games.
I'd expect sales and such to kick in with due time, but maybe I'm crazy. I'm genuinely interested to see what the Epic store's sales look like in the months to come.
I just bought Mutant Year Zero directly from the developers so after CoS they probably get at least 95% and I get to have a game on a store with Cloud saves.
Step it up Discord
Step it up Discord
This is pretty much how I share my steam library with my sister. So this model does effectively work.
I am not talking about sales. I am talking about price. At 35$ developers would still earn more per sold copy than on Xbox. I am just trying to say that no matter how small cut is developers themselves won't lower prices. So lower cut means nothing for customers.
Same price* if your currency is supported by the Epic store. I don't think I can stress this enough.
see, i isee more features in the discord store than the epic client. so if imma go and be ok with competition, let it be discord store. hopefully no fucking moneyhatting like epic.
From the person responsible for the Epic Store:
https://kotaku.com/the-guy-behind-steam-spy-has-been-working-on-epics-stor-1830890162
Discord already did that, though with a shorter exclusivity period than Epic (3 months instead of 1 year, if I'm not mistaken?).
It depends, 2 of those exclusive games went on Steam after like 1 month.
Not for all games either some were out of their exclusivity in a month.
Discord has cloud saves though. At least I'm pretty sure it does for the single game I own on the Discord store haha.
Sales will be a small fraction of what they are now. Prices are going to go up to make up for this tiny Discord/Epic cut. It's always the consumer that has to bear the brunt.
How so? How do you think game pricing works on these networks?
So you change the economics...
Problem is people see the economics in a vacuum. Anything that promotes competition while strengthening content creators results in stronger products over the long term. Sure there is give and take. In a short term view in a vacuum, there are losers including consumers. Where the dust settles will be better for developers and consumers. The entire market is changing drastically.
Those stores lose ability to give greater discounts to consumers however developers/publishers have more margin to play with. The additional margin will result in more developers which will result in more content competition which will encourage more competitive pricing strategies from developers. It'll balance out in favor of consumers long term if this new model sticks.
It's like when people argued 5 years ago that the move to digital on consoles would kill the retail market and kill physical store fronts offering competitive deals which would result in higher prices and worse value to consumers. Digital has actually created more flexibility in pricing strategies resulting in more value to consumers.
So now even the storefronts are getting in on the pricing race-to-the-bottom mentality?
Lovely! I'm sure that's sustainable. What could possibly go wrong!?
Lovely! I'm sure that's sustainable. What could possibly go wrong!?
There is nearly zero incentive for the three console manufacturers to do so. Due to the closed nature of consoles, you are tied to their digital ecosystem the moment you buy a system. Let's say that Xbox and Nintendo agree to take only 10%, would developers/publishers seriously avoid the massive install base that PlayStation has? Some might, but the vast majority will not.
For traditional storefronts without any additional sources of revenue? Yeah, sure.
But Discord has a growing subscription business that's entirely independent of its distribution channel. This is essentially what's supporting their larger store.
I know they won't. I'm just saying that people calling Valve our for being the devil for taking 30% and not saying anything about the big 3 is really strange.
Wow, if you're not a popular or big dev steam should be your least focused storefront. Heck if you're a big and popular developer you should sell your games yourself like Minecraft.
Well, because Steam is on a open platform. If Windows was closed and all games had to come from Microsoft's store, no one could say anything about it and it would be on par with consoles. Valve doesn't have to do anything, but with com... alternatives like this I kind of expect them to go ahead and lower the royalties. A dev that want this type of thing to be the norm could and should consider only putting their games on the stores that give the better cut.
No it's not. Steam offers so much more than either Discord or Epic. Not sure how that's even remotely difficult to understand.
You know what's funny? I bet so many people use Discord that they can't really say they don't want to install another launcher, or need another password for it's games hahaa. Same with Twitch, though I think you need the Twitch App to download the games, not to launch them though.
I use Discord for chatting. Not for playing.
Just like I use Steam for playing. Not internet browsing.
I use Discord for chatting. Not for playing.
Just like I use Steam for playing. Not internet browsing.
I'm sure AAA titles will be 10 to 20% cheaper now that they have a bigger cut. Am I right ? :"""")
We said it 1000 times, 70/30, and on top of that they take cut from physical copies and charge for MP.
People keep disingenuously posting that to back their claim that Epic doesn't do sales. First, the guy has access to far more data than you do. Second, he specifically states exposure is more important. Sales give a dev some exposure. It's even better if they actually have exposure in the first place. Also, Epic just a couple of weeks ago had a Fortnite sale on skins.
You think nothing's going to change? Epic and Discord are just going to accept a smaller cut and that's it?
Someone or something has to bear the brunt of this.
It's been said that Steam has a policy about devs not under-cutting Steam prices for non-Steam clients. Maybe MS has the same. Similarly, I've heard that retailers expect PSN/MS digital stores to not under-cut retail at launch, which the retailers can do because they have the leverage that they're the seller of the low-margin consoles.
Unless I'm missing it, Discord has never released subscriber numbers as they don't have to due to being private.
Bear the brunt of what? That 30% was the source of vast profit for the storefronts with no risk. They can still be very profitable at 10%, just not obscenely profitable.
We are talking about game that is exclusively on Epic Store for PC. So there is no competition or anything. No others stores that they can under cut. And yet price is still the same.
And customers won't get 20% off.
The PC games market sure is in a weird place right now. Tons of new clients and stores popping up from big players in the space. Most of whom are slashing their take to attract devs who in turn will hopefully attract consumers. Will be really interesting to see what these new stores look like next year.
You just said it's the same price on Xbox. I'm sure there are people who own an Xbox and some sort of PC.
Very profitable? We'll see. I fully expect a tiered service to launch where PC users have to pay a subscription to Epic or Discord to enjoy larger discounts, and services Steam gives for free.
And i m sure that Xbox price has nothing to do with PC price. Many games are cheaper on PC by default. But that also is changing and publishers and developers are rising prices on PC too even though they are not conditioned to do it. Point will always be that no matter what cut is publisher/developer won't lower price.
The devs aren't doing those sales. The storefronts like GMG do it on their own cut with a STORE-WIDE discount (a code you apply at checkout).
But I don't think it will affect sales on those sites either. Mostly because I don't think Steam is gonna do shit because they don't have to do anything. That monkey fighting pic is apt.
They haven't specifically released numbers but have said it's doing well.
This deal is getting better all the time! Hopefully this is enough to move Valve from their position as well though I'd be surprised if they don't wait until this blows over just to make it seem less like they're following or responding to competitors.
I totally expect that. That reduction in cut doesnt happen by magic. When itch.io barely breaks even at 10%. The point is to shift us to a subscription based scam.
We'll get "free" games, cloud saves, and online play but also "great sales" thanks to that subscription.
And vbucks on Fortnite. :)
There's never a shift in the balance between devs and customers without affecting one or the other. When you give something to one side, you always take to the other, in a way or another.
I hope nobody ever buys on that terrible epic store where they exploit poor devs, discord doesn't even have Fortnite and they still can offer devs a better deal, proof that epic is a greedy lying company, sad! Don't let devs starve, only buy on discord (until someone else announces a better percentage, then fuck discord!... and so on)