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Epic Store and 12% cut
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
Besides the fact that Epic is probably paying developers more than even their own optimistic projected sales in order to entice them, I don't see any way for sales to consistently be at the level that Epic predicts. All it would take is one moderate flop for all of Epic's earnings from previous titles to be wiped away completely. Constantly gambling on a game's projected sales can't possibly be a long-term plan, it's business suicide.
Putting aside the obvious absurdity that having lots of money or helming a large company means you're intelligent and equipped to enter business in any market space and be successful... Epic's first move to get their store going was to literally hire the Steamspy guy for his insights and data lmao
Doesn't it, though? The law defines a monopoly by two factors, having a dominant position in a specific market, and using that dominance to dictate market conditions. Steam definitely has market dominance, so in order to not run into legal issues they can't use their dominance to change market conditions, because everyone - i.e. every other digital distributor - is fine with the conditions as-is.
Epic Games will only have a shot at lowering the cut across the board if they establish enough market presence with their already-low cut, and without exclusivity deals that are considered exploitative behavior. If they do that, Valve would also be able to lower the cut and strike their own deals, while services like GOG presumably either get bought up or shrivel up and die off because they can't operate in those conditions. Steam exists in an interesting equilibrium where its position simultaneously makes it the most consumer-attractive service by default, and restricts its owners from doing anything to the detriment of the market. Upsetting that equilibrium can have very different consequences depending on how nice a company Valve really is.
People will point to the various indie exclusives on EGS, ignoring that almost all of them come from teams who pulled in reams of cash on previous indie megabits -- not coincidentally, games that probably sold much more than the follow-ups in part because there were fewer games on digital storefronts back then.
This is an underdiscussed phenomenon among the top tier of indie devs and their attitude towards digital distribution. They're constantly looking to be the big fish in a small pond. Every new platform is saving indie gaming, until it fills up with competition, then they leverage their connections and clout to move on to the next empty storefront.
EGS is a win/win for this mindset. It's another empty store, and not only that but the dev is going full payola to get them on there.
There's no 1-2 man team living out of a van getting saved by the EGS.
The fact there's been so little uptake on even the free games shows this.
Doesn't help that every time it's pointed out, either the person arguing in favor of EGS helping devs disappears, like ShapeGSX did, or moves goalposts :)
I remember one poster on another thread that responded back with the excuse that EGS only wants the best performing indies on their storefront but earlier was trumpeting that the cut was better for all small indies. I actually laughed at that logical dissonance of the poster's stance. The moment you look at the real world practice of the EGS the "For the small indie dev" talking point falls flat. It's for big publishers primarily.
Indeed, which is why I don't much understand what purpose moneyhatted exclusives serve. I get the general idea: "We have money, let's spend it on making popular games exclusive to our store to rapidly increase our userbase". Ok, then what? As soon as the moneyhats stop people will go back to Steam.
Or, like another post pointed out, there will be people like me who won't purchase an Epic exclusive when they finally release on Steam. Firstly, just on principle alone (didn't bite on GFWL either) and 6 months to a year later, the hype is gone and I've moved onto other games.
This would all be well and good if it were a legitimate alternative. These would just be pros and cons to weigh when choosing a platform to purchase. However, these have become detriments to anyone interested in playing a certain game within a year of its release. It is "deal with these prices and fees and lack of features or no game for you."
Otherwise I think it'd be interesting to see Epic try to run a bare bones store. Instead they are holding games hostage for a year. It's a bummer.
Otherwise I think it'd be interesting to see Epic try to run a bare bones store. Instead they are holding games hostage for a year. It's a bummer.
I'm really interested to see how well some of the moneyhatted games do once they come to Steam. Obviously games with immense amounts of hype like Blands 3 and Outer Worlds will probably do fine, but what about Metro Exodus and Control? Will people still care about them or will they have other games to play around that time and not bother?
I'm sure Tim Sweeney will spin that as "see, the game sold better on EGS!"
If you think about it EGS is helping smaller devs because the money i was going to spend on Metro and Outer Worlds etc im now going to spend on Indie games instead and so mission accomplished.
Lets just say I'm outside of the 18-34 demographic, so most companies don't give a shit about my opinion anymore, but if just a couple hundred thousand (sounds ridiculous, I know) think the way I do, it'll make an impact.
This is honestly the most succinct way I could have put it, to be honest.
Cutting deals is perfectly fine if you're a business (god knows I would take lumps of guaranteed cash if I was a dev without much question), but trying to frame it as "saving PC gaming" or "helping the small time dev" is just a charade.
In that case we have nothing to worry about. That would mean EGS exclusivity is a time limited fad, and once it's too expensive to Epic to keep up people can return to where they were before. Epic's only chance then is that either there are enough consumers and publishers that don't mind EGS' limited feature set, or its capability has caught up once they stop adding new exclusives (yay actual competition).
Agree. Honestly, I would like it if Steam or Epic charged the vendor fee for all payment methods even in the USA to the consumer if the remaining funds went to the developer. For example, if a Steam USA user paid the Discover credit card or Mastercard vendor fee, so 49.99 + 4.99 fee (or whatever it is), and then more of the 49.99 went to the developer.
Buy my point was that it's probably comparatively low in the US, but quite high in a number of other regions. The whole point of this part of the discussion is that that can make things prohibitively expensive in other regions, even if it's easy enough for a US purchaser to absorb the cost.
Amazing. People here saying consumers should pay the fee for use a payment method instead of the store owner.
That is one of the most anti-consumer things I have ever read on a forum. If we're going to go down that road, might as well pass the fee to consumers on every product purchased. I'm sure Wal-Mart, Amazon and all the others would do it in a heartbeat.
im not in favor of passing down the costs to the consumer, they are already paying for consoles, internet service, monthly online fees and games. the EU should strike this movement down and send it back to the pits from which it came.
Should retailers also pass on the costs they charge the manufacturers who want to sell products in a store?
Why wouldn't YOU support the local dairy farm and eat all the costs, so that the Farmer gets $1 instead of $0.1 Dollar for a gallon of milk. Your milk would be 90% more expensive, but the Farmer invested his sweat and blood into making it.
(PS: Farmers should absolutely get a better cut from their products, but that is another story)
Why wouldn't YOU support the local dairy farm and eat all the costs, so that the Farmer gets $1 instead of $0.1 Dollar for a gallon of milk. Your milk would be 90% more expensive, but the Farmer invested his sweat and blood into making it.
(PS: Farmers should absolutely get a better cut from their products, but that is another story)
Indeed, I should be charged extra fees for the privilege of spending my money. In fact, why don't I start paying the employees' salaries myself? After all, we can't expect these poor companies to invest their own funds to provide an acceptable service, that would make me an entitled consumer.
(in case it wasn't obvious, this is purely sarcastic, as was your post!)
That's why I laugh when someone considers this forum left wing. I know not everyone thinks this way, but enough people do to make that claim blatantly false.
Ha! If anyone ever wants to see where the Right is represented on Era, literally just point them to any thread in which Corporations pull unethical shit on consumers be it microtransactions, preorder shennigans, or the moneyhatting of the Epic Game Store.
The defense force is like a libertarian wet dream of lazare faire, ruthless tactics, and trickle down economics. When it comes to the video game industry and the big companies, all bets are off.
(I will say though when the topic of crunch and unionization is brought up, none of that shit is seen nor tolerated which is really encouraging!)
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This is a galaxy brain dumb idea, but stores in general should implement a pay-what-you-want feature so that people can give more than the minimum to devs they really like.
By saying that split isn't beatable no matter how good your features are? Funny how I just said 88/12 is unbeatable and are doing good by devs I get banned but when a game coming to Epic Store is posted you get first posters going, "fuck Epic" and they don't get banned or get labeled as driveby shit posters. Whatever. Hurt feelings reporting a harmless post.
I will. I want EGS to become a historical example of why this tactic will not work and should not be attempted.
This for me as well. And for Christs sake, I hope pc gamers realize that this is what's at stake here. If Epic becomes successful by moneyhatting 3rd party games, no doubt several other big companies will try to do the same without bothering to offer a better experience for us as consumers.
If Microsoft get the complete gamepass library running on pc like that state of decay beta thing seemed to be a test for could end up a cheap way to play these delayed releases a year down the track. Grab a 1 month sub to check them out if they show up on that service. Alot of question marks in that scenario but hey some should be answered before the exclusivity windows start to end.
Totally agree with you there, in fact lets not stop there. I say we go even further I would like the poor down trodden publishers bill me specifically for all the costs they incur in making the game and then add $49.99 on top of that bill /s
Seriously I can't think of another area of consumerism that has so many people rooting for the big businesses to rip them off even more than they are doing now. It is no wonder scummy companies like Epic are successful in this kind of environment.