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Epic Games Store tops $680 million in player spending and over 100 million users (free games promotion will continue through 2020)
- Thread starter Deleted member 8196
- Start date
Case in point:
they only post in EGS threads about free games and the rest in console threads.
You have to look at this in perspective. Let's compare to Riot Games, another company with a "one hit wonder" product that's underwent massive growth and expansion, but is now on the decline (relative to its peak).
For companies in this situation, the number one concern is how to sustain growth, or at least stave off loss. Riot has been trying to figure this out for years, and their solution has been to develop new hit games. We don't know how that's going to pan out, and it's been an extremely expensive process for them. Epic initially took this approach as well, but they instead landed on the storefront business--which is much less risky and much less costly, believe it or not, given a much smaller development cost and much smaller acquisition cost (yes--even with all that exclusive money, they're still spending less than your typical successful F2P developer on ongoing UA).
The whole "taking on Steam" narrative is mostly bunk, I think. It's "Sweeney talk", but we all know that. I think their underlying goal here is simply to diversify the business to accommodate for Fortnite decline, at least to fund a new hit, or (under best case scenario) eventually become their primary business. They potentially don't need a huge market share to make this a reality. I think Era is too obsessed with the idea of "winning" and "losing"--probably an artifact of console warring, but also probably a direct result of Sweeney's Twitter posturing.
For what it's worth, I have some faith that Epic can pull this off. They pulled off Fortnite, which might not seem like a huge deal to folks in a decade of massive F2P games, but they've been putting on a live ops clinic for the past few years. They've made a lot of really smart decisions that other developers can respect, even if they don't respect the company as a whole.
lol
I know we disagree on this, but yeah, I feel this is the exact kind of competition that is necessary to really break things up. I'm not a fan of Steam's developer cut, so I'll take it.
This post policing and gate-keeping is pretty obnoxious. Where's the "PC ERA Beginners" thread that people need to post in before they can offer an opinion? How many posts have to be approved by the secret council of ResetERA PC elders before they're allowed to post sans commentary?
then buy keys you can activate on Steam because they get 0% of that
User warned: platform warring, generalizations
The vast majority of pro-EGS people on Era are console warriors seeing Epic as an opportunity to troll PC gamers. They've been very successful in driving off a lot of said PC gamers off this forum, and will probably now turn these proven-to-work tactics on their actual targets in the ongoing console war (see also: the ongoing threads about E3).
LOL.
As if it was always about Steam's cut.
Timmy's propaganda still working wonders.
Its the normal PC ERA monthly topic which is pretty drama free and even then people just decide not to go to.
Gotta start calling it the Steam and Google tax ;)
What in the world? I'm a developer. I've also posted in (heated) EGS discussion threads in the past. You're kind of barking up the wrong tree here.
i wonder why people don't - what with such warm, welcoming representation in other threads 😂
I wonder why people would be angry when 50% of the community was kicked out.
These are also anti-competitive, and the straight out of the playbook of monopolistic corporations.
I guess I'd say that Epic competing to generate more wealth for their shareholders, by reducing competition in the marketplace, is a net negative for users.
Edit: and we've seen this result in higher prices. Because it is anti-competitive.
There's a long held resetera belief that being pro steam is the only rational/moral choice a human could make, and anybody otherwise must be a Console Warrior, a troll, or a Greedy Sellout. People are either gonna not believe you or label you as #3
This is also valve is doing, they just have the market position to not have to take any steps that would garner bad press.
VS
The whole EGS debate is quite stupid when it isnt discussed at all in the PC Gaming OT (and we even have supporters there). Just people dont wanna post there so who the fuck cares.
Communally revolving the entire culture of pc posting around bimonthly 300 page epic exclusivity hatefests turned people off and/or got people banned? blown away.
Yeah, users have posted in other EGS threads that PC Era threads can be a bit hostile and unwelcoming. Still, that default position that "you must be trolling/not part of my community if you disagree" is just not good.
I'd rather compare it to Uber.
They've disrupted a legacy market, they've gained lots of market share and good will.
They also have no idea how to turn a profit.
Or WeWork. They've came up with this great idea of selling short term office space*. Great idea, not one that has not been done before and the company's turnover is very high.
*At lower than the cost of leasing the buildings long term. And then having a huge fight between your CEO when the company goes to go public. And then revealing that forecasts were often, let's just put it nicely here, over enthusiastic.
Disruption is great!
There are a whole bunch of monopolistic tactics Valve could engage in, but have not. I've not seen them engage in any monopolistic tactics.
One difference is that Valve is privately owned, whereas Epic have shareholders. Valve are able to look at the long term and aim for sustainable growth and foster positive sentiment by taking good care of their users and basically being benevolent (not that they get it perfectly right every time, and I've criticised them for plenty of things that I think they've got wrong). The market position they have, they have achieved by doing right by their users.
Epic are structured such that they have to be seen to generate growth as quickly as possible, and in doing so have engaged in a range of monopolistic tactics. It's hardly like they are a plucky underdog.
Maybe you should read the OTs, as you basically just showed that you have no idea of it. Which I mean, you havent posted on it according to the query, so who knows.
Epic is also privately owned. Having shareholders doesnt mean they are not private (and Sweeney still has 50%+ of the share power so has ultimate control ideally). Still yeah on the monopolistic behaviour. The only one that brought that to PC was somehow Epic.
Most of my time in GAF/Era was spent on that thread until you guys made it superobnoxious because of the whole EGS thing, including calling me out personally for my opinions on the topic even though I wasn't participating in your discussion in that thread at the time. I don't have the energy to spend my little free time lurking in environments that toxic. Things are barely getting better now.
Yes I mispoke. I mean that Valve is privately owned by their founders and employees, rather than having external investors.
Could also just be a coincidental corporate culture difference, but certainly Valve have earned their reputation for doing right by their users.
Private companies have shareholders too.
Valve isn't 100% owned by Gabe and the ownership structure has never been publicly revealed.
Edit: It isn't known if Valve have external investors. Doesn't mean they do not.
They're both private companies (although i think I understand the distinction you're making and agree.)
I agree about the investor pressure on epic's growth, and I agree that's harmful.
That said --
Valve has taken tons of steps to abuse their market control -- race to the bottom pricing on massive sales, steam consumer retention/satisfaction features forced onto the production budget every dev who sells there (forums, trading cards, reviews, etc,) rapidly shifting around their algorithms at the expense of developers in order to maximize revenue for steam, opening their storefront to shovelware and de-valuing the "shelf space" afforded to past partners, and so on. These steps all absolutely demonstrate valve's monopoly control -- they're the only place to sell your game on pc and get any real traffic, so developers don't really have a choice but to eat all of the costs.
The difference between them and epic is none of these moves hurt the consumers, which is more reflective of strategy and market position than it is some kind of moral "doing right".
I'm somewhat incredulous that people are searching through post history as a PC Gamer(tm) purity test. And getting it completely wrong even when doing so, but that's obviously besides my central point.
Knock it off, please. We could just have a civil discussion about these issues. I'm sure almost everyone can agree there is nuance to this topic. We might even disagree about aspects, but it would be a shame to not even be able to have discussion because people are starting with the gate keeping and purity tests.
Knock it off, please. We could just have a civil discussion about these issues. I'm sure almost everyone can agree there is nuance to this topic. We might even disagree about aspects, but it would be a shame to not even be able to have discussion because people are starting with the gate keeping and purity tests.
Well you also gotta factor in keys; all that money isn't being used directly on Steam. It's usually just cheaper to buy somewhere else.
LMAO at putting "steam consumer satisfaction" as a ABUSE OF THEIR MARKET CONTROL. Same at de-valuing the "shelf space" AFTER A BIG MAJORITY OF THEIR PARTNERS ASKED THEM TO OPEN THEM.
All you can do is shake your head at the notion of anti-PC console warrior conspiracies to take down Steam. It's too absurd to entertain.
Yeah, I never see the same people praising EGS in the PC Era thread.
I don't have to search post history, I just recognize avatars.
I understand you guys all see "store" and "consumer" as the entire economy, but the relationship between storefronts and suppliers is actually massive. It's absurd to try to argue that steam doesn't use it's muscle in negotiation with devs and publishers, and it's absurd to argue that their immense market control isn't the leverage that lets them do that.
edit: in reply to the "lol at devaluing shelf space" part, I could've also included "not paying for exclusives" but I figured it would be too much for you guys.
the "you are a console gamer, you dont have the right to give your opinion" is really something else here.
As for the numbers, yes these are low numbers, and nothing worth to party, but always when a new player enters the game, has brutal losses. Nobody remembers how much money microsoft lost with the original xbox and Playstation 2 being the supreme overlord of console gaming? Hell, even with Xbox360 Microsoft has big losses. The big question is, how many years epic will sustain those loses.
I am just laughing at believing that features that were there from day 0 (such as forums) are a way of market control. Same with trading cards which are actually an alternate revenue stream that many developers use.
I'm also kind of stunned at a lot of these posts. It's really bordering on legit crazy.
You have just impressively missed my entire point. I'd feel silly to have to spell it out word for word again, but I urge you to just read the post again.
Threads like this make me sad heh
Most of this is nonesense. Steam rarely has the deepest discounts in their sales, Epic is the one taking a loss to have deep discounts / giving games away for free (devalues the game). Part of the reason Steam opened their store to more games was an outcry that it was too hard for Indies to get onto the most important storefront in the PC market. Valve has been remarkably restrained about trying to protect their position in the market, their strategy on that front is almost entirely about improving user experience / value.
I love how you bring up "race to the bottom" pricing when Epic had a mega sale that devalued games to such an absurd degree in regions such as Turkey and Russia that their publishers had to outright yank the games from the store because they were blindsided by Epic and were limited by their utterly shit developer tools.
Gonna echo this.
Knock it off with that, y'all.
To be fair, I can confirm we've had such trolls in the past. (Yes, people are sad, why do you ask?) That said, to claim it's any kind of "majority", or some sort of deliberate conspiracy, is of course absurd.
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That said, please stick to the topic and drop the metacommentary, folks.
Have they been? I could be misremembering, but I don't remember steam forums in 2004 -- my hazy memory is that they added them at some point for their own games, and rolled forums out automatically for everybody else's games that the devs had to moderate in the early 2010s somewhere.
Epic is also bad! if worst comes to worst, two equally bad stores fighting over things is better than one imo. as for now, epic actually paying developers big lump sums is a big + for me.
Valve doesn't set the prices. They have no say in it. The race to the bottom happened because developers and publishers decided to race to the bottom.
Really? So when Valve uses its own standard profit margin to develop features such as a review system, they are abusing their control of the market?
That's not fair. All changes to the algorithm that benefit any developer would necessarily come at the expense of another developer. It's literally impossible to avoid that.
Are you saying Valve is acting like a monopoly by not picking winners and losers?
This is a very weak list.
I am just fucking annoying at half the community being outed because of toxicity (I understand), the OT being calm and still getting the "OT is toxic" BS. And out with the metacomentary.
ok, so there was something in 2k4. These were moderated by valve and (mostly? entirely?) for valve games, right? The automatic one per game "community forums" moderated by the devs came later iirc?