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Loanshark

Member
Nov 8, 2017
1,637
Then what's your argument ?






Believe it or not, competition is tough between games. This isn't a price issue. This isn't a store issue. This is an offer issue.
Thats not an argument for anything, its just a trivial observation. Of course its a tough landscape, but it obviously profits gamers if there is a wider array of games coming out, and the landscape is healthy for all sort of devs. You think that the death of most AA sized studios is a good thing? Well i disagree. If this new storefront could work towards solving some of that, id say they are more than welcome to try. The service would obviously be a work in progress, and nobody would be forced to used it until it had the feature set they wanted before jumping in. Just becoase they wont launch with steams extensive feature set right at the get go doesnt mean they cant work towards that over time. If it was all or nothing like that, nothing would ever come out.
 

Dest

Has seen more 10s than EA ever will
Coward
Jun 4, 2018
14,038
Work
This is a great thing for developers, but just as with the MOBA craze a few years back, if you're not one of the big ones (in this case Steam) then the likelihood of you really making a dent in the market is close to zero. I guess the benefit here is though is that the Epic Games Launcher already has a huge install base thanks to Fortnite
 

Madjoki

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,230
Great for Developers!

But what about consumers? I don't see consumer support being anywhere Steam level, so that's not very good for us.
unless they get Half-Life 3 exclusivity or something like that, I don't see myself supporting Epic in any near future until they can actually offer something Steam doesn't).

No info about whatever developers can sell games outside, if Epic takes cut of those. This all has huge effect into consumers on how games are discounted.
Call me selfish, but I don't care if developers earn more, if I have to pay more for games.

Seems good use for Fortnite player base though, if they can make players move or are interested doing so (100% vs 12%, so that wouldn't be profitable for them, but necessary if they want piece of cake)

CDPR already has their own storefront where they get a 100% split?
They're probably gonna put their games on there like they do on steam, but i don't see why CDPR should be in any way particulary interested in this.

Considering they put at least Witcher 3 on Origin too, they could be. (Though I believe EA offers even better cut at least for limited time)
 

GhostTrick

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,304
Thats not an argument for anything, its just a trivial observation. Of course its a tough landscape, but it obviously profits gamers if there is a wider array of games coming out, and the landscape is healthy for all sort of devs. You think that the death of most AA sized studios is a good thing? Well i disagree. If this new storefront could work towards solving some of that, id say they are more than welcome to try. The service would obviously be a work in progress, and nobody would be forced to used it until it had the feature set they wanted before jumping in. Just becoase they wont launch with steams extensive feature set right at the get go doesnt mean they cant work towards that over time. If it was all or nothing like that, nothing would ever come out.


It's not a good thing. But that death is related to low sales. Not low margins. You don't go from bomba to success by turning a martgin from 70% to 88%.

And sorry but if you're a competitor, don't expect me to bite in because "you may improve". It's not how it works anywhere except in gaming (because it's one of the industry where competition between main actors leads to nothing but more consumer exploitation).
 

0451

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,190
Canada
Really great news for developers but as a consumer I'm not ditching my library, friends and Steam's feature set for another barebones client I use once every few months.
 

Protein

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,030
-Eats into Steam's market share
-Valve loses massive revenue
-Forced to make Half-Life 3


Bro market analysis.
 

Deleted member 2620

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,491
What, exactly, do they need to "step up" to?
  • Their platform offers by far the most features to both customers and developers. (And it does so for free to gamers, including e.g. unlimited cloud space and of course online gaming)

  • Until just now, it was also the major platform with the best revenue share. Arguably, it still is (it's not like Epic launcher is major outside of a single game).

  • They offer great support to open standardization processes, and also pay several open source developers simply for continuing to contribute to their own open source projects.

  • They never pay for exclusivity. That's actual consumer choice. Which much of the "competition" seems to be hell-bent on eliminating.

  • When they introduce a new client-level feature, they take great care to make it available and useful to as much of your existing library as possible. That's a real development nightmare, but it means that when you bought a game on Steam 10 years ago then you can now use features like in-home streaming or Steam controller rebinding seamlessly with it.
This idea that Valve is somehow worse than other platform holding companies and large-scale publishers who mostly don't do any of that is frankly utter bullshit and pisses me off since it's so self-destructive. If any of these other companies -- especially the public companies -- were in Valve's place, I am quite certain we'd be far worse off.


Now, with that said, we can talk about the impact on developers, which might be positive in some cases because of more competition on revenue share.
The thing is, I don't think console platform holders will bite.
They don't care that everything people are forced to pay monthly fees for on console is free on PC, they didn't care back in the days that PC didn't have a royalty share at all while consoles did, and they'll continue to happily charge their 30% plus recurring customer fees. If I'm wrong then I'll be ecstatic, but I doubt it.

And that's before getting into the issue of whether it is at all a good idea for the industry as a whole to split PC eyeballs and interest across many storefronts.

But I'm sure an actual indie developer will have a perspective on that:

I see.

In general, I agree with this. I hate how the discourse here is framed around Valve somehow being stagnant: they aren't. I also agree with you that console platform holders will not bite. But man, I just really want something like 80-20 or 88-12 to be the standard and I do not buy that Valve couldn't make that happen across the board regardless of industry standards. I want those standards to change, and I think it's reasonable to be excited about potential competition that could cause any kind of shift even if the competition doesn't have the same feature set and even (especially?) if the competition doesn't stick around and "win".
 

Sheepinator

Member
Jul 25, 2018
27,940
So you just said in a round about way, Overall prices would benefit higher because same base prices + less discounts.

AKA higher prices. Which consumers will download the store client for this?
I didn't say there would be fewer discounts. It's the person I replied to and others who are saying that.

Consumers will download the store client for exclusive content or exclusive features. If there aren't either of those, then they won't. Unlike others here, I'm not immediately dead set against Epic, and having seen how many devs struggle these days I think it's good they aren't being over-charged for being in a store. Maybe devs who in the future will have a lower breakeven point in terms of units sold will offer sales more frequently. That's economics and a free market at work.
 

Micael

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,363
What, exactly, do they need to "step up" to?

They need to step up to the same quality of the makers of the unreal marketplace, a store so good that in the past I had to use google search to find assets in the store, despite using a keyword that was literally in the name of those assets, or maybe they need to step up to allow someone to see the same things in say page 2 that they have already seen in page 1 of the search results, or perhaps step up by not bothering with features like sorting by rating which is clear no one wants that because the unreal marketplace doesn't allow that, or step up by taking weeks to allow an update to a product geared towards professional software developers, I remember when valve were super stepped up like that in their customer support, it has gone down hill since then unfortunately and now they don't tend to take weeks to respond.
There is just so much room for valve to step up to the same stands that epic has instilled in their magnificent unreal marketplace store.

Has an example of the high quality that epic has accustomed its development partners to here is an example of an highly advanced feature (the search bar) in the unreal marketplace:

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/assets?lang=&q=kubold searched for kubold, no results, but maybe there is nothing that could possibly match this keyword, oh wait https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/profile/Kubold but ofc I understand how it would be complex to search by profile name, after all it is not like you can just google that and get that as an easy result https://www.google.com/search?sourc...6.6......0....1..gws-wiz.....0..0.Pn7k3SGS7ZQ or well, but maybe steam doesn't allow you to search for such complex things as the developer name, https://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=annapurna well guess not.

Epic doesn't even have the best store in video game engines where the competition is basically just Unity, so can't say I am particularly confident on them providing a viable alternative to developers (which do tend to kind of really dislike the unreal marketplace from my experience).
Which isn't to say this is bad, if it ends up with valve reducing their cut globally, cool, well unless you are say greenmangaming or one of those stores, probably not so great for them if valve does it, but yeah, in the end not particularly confident epic of all companies is the one that will manage it.
 

Veidt

Member
Oct 27, 2017
511
What, exactly, do they need to "step up" to?
  • Their platform offers by far the most features to both customers and developers. (And it does so for free to gamers, including e.g. unlimited cloud space and of course online gaming)

  • Until just now, it was also the major platform with the best revenue share. Arguably, it still is (it's not like Epic launcher is major outside of a single game).

  • They offer great support to open standardization processes, and also pay several open source developers simply for continuing to contribute to their own open source projects.

  • They never pay for exclusivity. That's actual consumer choice. Which much of the "competition" seems to be hell-bent on eliminating.

  • When they introduce a new client-level feature, they take great care to make it available and useful to as much of your existing library as possible. That's a real development nightmare, but it means that when you bought a game on Steam 10 years ago then you can now use features like in-home streaming or Steam controller rebinding seamlessly with it.
This idea that Valve is somehow worse than other platform holding companies and large-scale publishers who mostly don't do any of that is frankly utter bullshit and pisses me off since it's so self-destructive. If any of these other companies -- especially the public companies -- were in Valve's place, I am quite certain we'd be far worse off.

You also forgot to mention the amount of companies reliant on Valve's policy of not taking any cuts from Steam keys sold outside their platform. We're talking stores, publishers and developers that are free to operate their businesses outside of Steam, despite using Valve's platform and resources to actually provide the services the customer is paying for.
 

Loanshark

Member
Nov 8, 2017
1,637
It's not a good thing. But that death is related to low sales. Not low margins. You don't go from bomba to success by turning a martgin from 70% to 88%.

And sorry but if you're a competitor, don't expect me to bite in because "you may improve". It's not how it works anywhere except in gaming (because it's one of the industry where competition between main actors leads to nothing but more consumer exploitation).
Nobody is expecting you to "bite" on anything, my first response was to a poster who was whining about them even attempting it in the first place. What im saying is let them try, and if they ever get to that sweet spot, then great, jump in if you want to. Steam wont disappear, not as long as they have a superior feature set.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,289
It's literally +1 storefront, not fewer storefronts, and it isn't higher prices. Even in your worst case scenario it isn't higher prices, it's sale prices that maybe aren't as deep. I don't get the love for one business that's a storefront while having disdain for another business, the developer. Both exist to make money. The developer is the only one that's using the revenue to make more or bigger games for you though.

Uhh if that cut becomes standard it's going to kill off a LOT of retailers who rely on steam keys and offering them at a discount. This isn't just about steam/valve here. Valve allows steam keys to be sold and they don't take anything from those sales. Something a lot of people forget about.

Us paying more after that happens is another consequence, and one that most here don't think about when they celebrate this. But it will for sure kill off lots of retailers if steam is forced to copy this.
 

Tygre

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,100
Chesire, UK
Yeah, really. The argument that devs should make less money on their games in order to support the business of resellers is kind of... ridiculous?

That's not the argument, that's a ridiculous straw-man you just invented.

The argument is: A store taking a smaller cut of the revenue off of each sale doesn't necessarily translate into benefits for anybody, but is particularly unlikely to translate into any benefits for the consumer.


Developers potentially earning more money per sale of their game is not some universal good, it is not unquestionably positive. Could it be a good thing for developers? Short term, probably. Long term? Maybe, maybe not.

Could it be a good thing for consumers? Possibly, but from a historical perspective probably not.
 

Durante

Dark Souls Man
Member
Oct 24, 2017
5,074
I don't like posting my own tweets but it sums up my feelings right now.




I never ever retweet anything but I did retweet that ;)

You forgot to mention the amount of companies reliant on Valve's policy of not taking any cuts from Steam keys sold outside their platform. We're talking stores, publishers and developers that are free to operate their businesses outside of Steam, despite using Valve's platform and resources.
Right, another thing no other major platform does that almost no one ever gives Valve credit for.
I spot a trend.
 

mael

Avenger
Nov 3, 2017
16,764
That's actually interesting.
I have unreal launcher installed to access Unreal engine anyway,
I don't know if I'll bother buying anything there but they already a foot in the door compared to all the other competitors.
Also if it can attract buyers, the scramble to get on the store will be something to see.
Fortnite is probably the reason why people have the launcher anyway
 

Sheepinator

Member
Jul 25, 2018
27,940
Uhh if that cut becomes standard it's going to kill off a LOT of retailers who rely on steam keys and offering them at a discount. This isn't just about steam/valve here. Valve allows steam keys to be sold and they don't take anything from those sales. Something a lot of people forget about.

Us paying more after that happens is another consequence, and one that most here don't think about when they celebrate this. But it will for sure kill off lots of retailers if steam is forced to copy this.
Many here are saying there's no reason to even download the client for the Epic store and there's no reason to use it, but it will also simultaneously be so popular and so successful that Valve has to respond by cutting their own throat? Which is it? And if Valve did cut their rate and more devs had more money, some devs would no doubt offer sales more often and others would then follow to compete.
 

Paul

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,603
What, exactly, do they need to "step up" to?
  • Their platform offers by far the most features to both customers and developers. (And it does so for free to gamers, including e.g. unlimited cloud space and of course online gaming)

  • Until just now, it was also the major platform with the best revenue share. Arguably, it still is (it's not like Epic launcher is major outside of a single game).

  • They offer great support to open standardization processes, and also pay several open source developers simply for continuing to contribute to their own open source projects.

  • They never pay for exclusivity. That's actual consumer choice. Which much of the "competition" seems to be hell-bent on eliminating.

  • When they introduce a new client-level feature, they take great care to make it available and useful to as much of your existing library as possible. That's a real development nightmare, but it means that when you bought a game on Steam 10 years ago then you can now use features like in-home streaming or Steam controller rebinding seamlessly with it.
This idea that Valve is somehow worse than other platform holding companies and large-scale publishers who mostly don't do any of that is frankly utter bullshit and pisses me off since it's so self-destructive. If any of these other companies -- especially the public companies -- were in Valve's place, I am quite certain we'd be far worse off.


Now, with that said, we can talk about the impact on developers, which might be positive in some cases because of more competition on revenue share.
The thing is, I don't think console platform holders will bite.
They don't care that everything people are forced to pay monthly fees for on console is free on PC, they didn't care back in the days that PC didn't have a royalty share at all while consoles did, and they'll continue to happily charge their 30% plus recurring customer fees. If I'm wrong then I'll be ecstatic, but I doubt it.

And that's before getting into the issue of whether it is at all a good idea for the industry as a whole to split PC eyeballs and interest across many storefronts.

But I'm sure an actual indie developer will have a perspective on that:

I see.

Deserves to be quoted over and over
 

Sheepinator

Member
Jul 25, 2018
27,940
That's not the argument, that's a ridiculous straw-man you just invented.

The argument is: A store taking a smaller cut of the revenue off of each sale doesn't necessarily translate into benefits for anybody, but is particularly unlikely to translate into any benefits for the consumer.


Developers potentially earning more money per sale of their game is not some universal good, it is not unquestionably positive. Could it be a good thing for developers? Short term, probably. Long term? Maybe, maybe not.

Could it be a good thing for consumers? Possibly, but from a historical perspective probably not.
Fyi, what he posted wasn't a straw-man. Here's one example and there are probably more in this thread.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ep...oing-to-developers.84967/page-5#post-15634379
 
Last edited:

Ebullientprism

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
3,529
88% of 50 sales vs ~60-70% of 1000.

That is a difficult decision. LOL.
 

Kage Maru

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,804
What is a Artifact?
Nothing but a miserable pile of game code.

Apparently. And it's not like In the Valley of Gods isn't coming next year. So guess Valve still makes games. Even if they make really slowly and rarely, but they still do make games. And it's not like Epic Games has made many games lately either. But yeah, competition is good.

I forgot about Valve buying the Valley of the Gods studio, so that is one I'm interested in. Still outside of that one example, the output from both Epic and Valve hasn't interested me much lately. It's not about them not making any games, just ones that got me interested in the companies to begin with.
 

GhostTrick

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,304
Yeah, really. The argument that devs should make less money on their games in order to support the business of resellers is kind of... ridiculous?

Anyway, about time someone stepped up and did this. The 30% cut is crazy for companies who have thriving online marketplaces like Valve, Apple, etc.


Sorry that we don't have unlimited money.
Because people tend to forget this isn't a "Storefront and Developper" story only. We also exist "Consumers". The actual people throwing money in the process.
 

sprinkles

Member
Oct 25, 2017
517
What, exactly, do they need to "step up" to?
  • Their platform offers by far the most features to both customers and developers. (And it does so for free to gamers, including e.g. unlimited cloud space and of course online gaming)

  • Until just now, it was also the major platform with the best revenue share. Arguably, it still is (it's not like Epic launcher is major outside of a single game).

  • They offer great support to open standardization processes, and also pay several open source developers simply for continuing to contribute to their own open source projects.

  • They never pay for exclusivity. That's actual consumer choice. Which much of the "competition" seems to be hell-bent on eliminating.

  • When they introduce a new client-level feature, they take great care to make it available and useful to as much of your existing library as possible. That's a real development nightmare, but it means that when you bought a game on Steam 10 years ago then you can now use features like in-home streaming or Steam controller rebinding seamlessly with it.
This idea that Valve is somehow worse than other platform holding companies and large-scale publishers who mostly don't do any of that is frankly utter bullshit and pisses me off since it's so self-destructive. If any of these other companies -- especially the public companies -- were in Valve's place, I am quite certain we'd be far worse off.
Well said. The Steam Client has so many crucial features for me, that I have to start games from other launchers through Steam because those clients lack the features (BPM, In-Home-Streaming, Controller API). As long as other launchers are just "buy this game exclusively here and maybe even the download works", I will always prefer a purchase on Steam (or one the many resellers with decent prices).
 

Complicated

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,332
Pretty awesome. Definitely will give it a shot. Haven't used Steam in well over a year at this point, and have no problem leaving all those games I never played behind.
 

Principate

Member
Oct 31, 2017
11,186
Ok neat for devs but what do customers get out of this? They have a long way to go before they can compete with steam in features. All this is is another shitty launcher that we have to use.
The horror! Another launcher! I've never understood how something so minor causes consumers to actively not want competition.
 

AvernOffset

Member
May 6, 2018
546
A 12% cut sure sounds nice... But it's curated, so loads of games won't get on and their devs won't get that opportunity. Assuming my primary interest was in supporting devs, which it isn't, I'd still see no reason to use this over itch.io, which can give devs an even better cut and isn't going to exclude games based on Epic's interests.

I'm getting pretty sick of curation (of digital stores) in general. Capitalism isn't anywhere near a meritocracy to begin with, but letting large companies play kingmaker takes things way further. It feels stifling and unhealthy to gaming as a whole.
 

BernardoOne

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,289
Well, Epic at least still makes games, so they have that going for them.
Factually incorrect. They've killed off all their games but Fortnite.

If supporting Fortnite counts as "making games" (which it absolutely should), Valve factually makes a lot more games, still supporting Dota 2, CSGO, TF2, recently launched Artifact.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,289
The horror! Another launcher! I've never understood how something so minor causes consumers to actively not want competition.

Because there is no competition. None of these other launchers have provided any valuable service to customers that Steam wasn't already doing since they were created. The biggest myth in gaming is the bullshit "competition is good" line that gets parroted EVERY TIME one of these pops up. You'd think by now people would realize just how little other clients have offered anyone but I guess not.
 

collige

Member
Oct 31, 2017
12,772
I was down with this until the "paying for exclusives" part. As a consumer, I have no incentive to use their store anyway, but good luck to them.
 

Principate

Member
Oct 31, 2017
11,186
That's on you for being completely ignorant of the essential features Steam provides no one else does.
That's not the point. Different business have different features that doesn't mean we should go hoping only Amazon exists in the market.

It's a ridiculously weird mindset that will never make sense to me. If you don't like the marketplace don't use it don't go hoping no competition exists.
 
Oct 25, 2017
22,378
What, exactly, do they need to "step up" to?
  • Their platform offers by far the most features to both customers and developers. (And it does so for free to gamers, including e.g. unlimited cloud space and of course online gaming)

  • Until just now, it was also the major platform with the best revenue share. Arguably, it still is (it's not like Epic launcher is major outside of a single game).

  • They offer great support to open standardization processes, and also pay several open source developers simply for continuing to contribute to their own open source projects.

  • They never pay for exclusivity. That's actual consumer choice. Which much of the "competition" seems to be hell-bent on eliminating.

  • When they introduce a new client-level feature, they take great care to make it available and useful to as much of your existing library as possible. That's a real development nightmare, but it means that when you bought a game on Steam 10 years ago then you can now use features like in-home streaming or Steam controller rebinding seamlessly with it.
This idea that Valve is somehow worse than other platform holding companies and large-scale publishers who mostly don't do any of that is frankly utter bullshit and pisses me off since it's so self-destructive. If any of these other companies -- especially the public companies -- were in Valve's place, I am quite certain we'd be far worse off.


Now, with that said, we can talk about the impact on developers, which might be positive in some cases because of more competition on revenue share.
The thing is, I don't think console platform holders will bite.
They don't care that everything people are forced to pay monthly fees for on console is free on PC, they didn't care back in the days that PC didn't have a royalty share at all while consoles did, and they'll continue to happily charge their 30% plus recurring customer fees. If I'm wrong then I'll be ecstatic, but I doubt it.

And that's before getting into the issue of whether it is at all a good idea for the industry as a whole to split PC eyeballs and interest across many storefronts.

But I'm sure an actual indie developer will have a perspective on that:
Can't be quoted enough.
It's insane how people keep repeating the "Steam needs to step it up" thing when Steam offers by far the most features of any platform out there for free.

Steam is not perfect by any means but they are a lot....a loooot better than any competition out there
 

dude

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,634
Tel Aviv
Disappointed it's curated.
But well, I'm glad there's more competition, especially with a better split for devs.
 

GhostTrick

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,304
That's not the point. Different business have different features that doesn't mean we should go hoping only Amazon exists in the market.

It's a ridiculously weird mindset that will never make sense to me. If you don't like the marketplace don't use it don't go hoping no competition exists.


Where's the competition though ?
The ridiculously weird mindset is that "new actor = competition = always good for consumers". When storefronts have subpar features, barely works and only appeal to me with exclusive titles, this isn't competition.
 

yyr

Member
Nov 14, 2017
3,462
White Plains, NY
I'm a one-man indie dev who just released their second title on Steam. Would I like to get more than 70% of the revenue? Sure. But for that 18% difference:
1) My games support integrated leaderboards--a critical feature in score-attack games like mine--and I don't have to run any servers.
2) My games support Xbox One/360, DualShock4, Switch Pro, and Steam Controllers, without me having to do anything.
3) My games have a set of Achievements.
4) My games support cloud saving.
5) My games can't be copied/pirated willy-nilly, because they can detect whether they're running through the Steam client, and they quit if they're not.
6) Steam Support has gotten back to me very quickly when I've encountered any issues, and they've been very thorough when reviewing my builds.

The price difference is justified imo. My customers get more and I get more.

If Epic offers comparable service in the future, that'd be awesome. I hope they do. But if not, then dollars aren't everything.