Realistically, how do you see this whole Epic Games Store thing ending? (Read OP)

[Mr Spasiba]

- That's the kind of storefront they want to make so they'll probably keep doing it
- who knows, they don't really need to because I don't think anyone, Epic included, thinks they're replacing steam.
- yes, I'd imagine they're going to update their software. I don't think it'll matter since all these launchers are garbo anyway, Steam included.
- Probably in the same capacity of every other non-steam launcher that everyone had a collective shit about when it started up.

 

[Madjoki]

EGS having a smaller cut doesn't mean they can do better sales than Steam?
This could be a possible next step for them once they have a larger catalog.
For sure the price is my number 1 reason to buy anything anywhere.

Click to shrink...

It's not that simple.

Steam (or steam key reseller) has up to 30% margin to give additional discount.
Wheres EGS and EGS key resellers have only 12%.

Devs could give bigger discounts, but I'm willing to bet they aren't going to change standard price points and discount points downwards. Otherwise they'd expected to do same on other storefronts too. Well they did exactly once for Metro Exodus, in US only and that was never spoken again of... and it was still more what Steam keys were being sold for thanks to 30% cut allowing.

So it could go both ways.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

Epic's strategy is all about getting their foot in the door for PC sales, becoming a big player in the PC sales business, and enriching their company in a steady fashion.

Eventually, Fortnite's success will begin to fade, and either the Epic store will be making enough money to make up for that or not. Either way, Epic can't sustain a business where they constantly toss money at developers, and their generosity will fade, and give way to greed. I see this being a moderate win for Developers, but only ever being a neutral or more likely negative experience for gamers.

I just hope that by the time the dust settles, Epic Games, along with a huge chunk of the PC games market isn't sucked up into Tencent's pocket. I don't ever see Epic taking over steam or taking them out, steam will continue to adjust and see huge wins through the sheer breadth of their support, and consistent emergence of indie and AA-AAA success stories allowed by the open-ness of their platform.

 

[Rygar 8Bit]

Something else will replace Fortnite as the next big thing, and Epic won't have the crazy money to spend around buying up all these store exclusive deals anymore. Then things will go back to normal.

 

[eathdemon]

thats the question does the games epic didnt pay for make them money? also how well are games selling on the epic store.

 

[Hucast]

It'll end up like Origin and GoG. Just another store that no one uses compared to Steam.

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Yup. Origin, uplay, GoG etc

 

[DevilPuncher]

The way I see it regardless of how good the store becomes as they add new features, people are always going to hate the whole exclusivity factor.

 

[LewieP]

thats the question does the games epic didnt pay for make them money? also how well are games selling on the epic store.

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Their store is almost exclusively stocked with games they paid for some exclusivity on (or at least paid to get pulled from Steam), games where they paid the developer to give the game away, or preorders for games that are not out yet.

Off the top of my head, the only games I can think of to not fall into any of those categories is Darksiders 3 & Oxygen Not Included. There's probably others, but it's a minority of their library.

I've not seen anything to suggest that those games have done well on Epic Store, and I'd be very surprised if they have.

Edit: and even with those two examples, they have they have paid the publisher for exclusivity on other games, so them appearing on the store might not have been because it was economically viable to do so in isolation, but because it was part of a larger agreement.

 

[XuandeXun]

Question 1: Will Epic stop buying exclusives and, if not, to what extent will they keep doing it?

Question 2: Will Steam decide to lower its percentage and, if so, what will happen afterwards?

Question 3: Will Epic improve its service and, if so, what will the reaction be?

Question 4: Will Epic even be around in the long-term?

Click to shrink...

1) No, they'll keep doing it until they solidify their niche in the market.

2) No. 30% is standard and within one year, Epic won't maintain at 12%. Steam adds value, just as most of the market-relevant storefronts do. Epic isn't there yet and is forced to offer literal "value" in the form of a lower cut, but key sellers for Steam can compete with that if they have to.

3) Not by enough to grab a significant chunk of the market. They're forcibly trying to do this via moneyhatting and "free" games.

4) Yes, but not on the level that most will care unless they're married to an Epic F2P game.

Much like Oculus Store, Epic Game Store will always have a decent enough core audience that doesn't care about the preservation of PC gaming to get by, but will never hit mass market appeal.

 

[mephixto]

1. Yep at some point the'll stop buying exclusives once the achive or fail to capture a concurrent user base.
2. Nope, you can't sustain a store that size with lower %, if EGS starts to grow so their expenses and investmentes to keep it running. If EGS succed they gonna start rising their take, EGS 12% is not gonna last long and they know it.
3. If they see its profitable yup.
4. Nope, at some point Tencent gonna take over like it or not. WeGame is gonna merge with it or replace it, it's just matter of when.

 

[Daouzin]

The PC gaming community is going to accept exclusives and the EGS store will continue to slowly grow until it has market share similar to GoG.

When big Epic games release they will get significant sales bumps and the internet will forget how much they hated EGS like so many have with Steam.

PC Gamers will have a library of free games they occasionally launch the EGS to play and all is well in the world.

 

[Crayon]

I could get used to some hi profile new games deputing there for 6-12 months before they land on steam. Lame, but whatever. Like how long do they want to be blowing money getting the deals tho? Idk. Not trying to do that forever.

I think it will keep going and sucking for a bit and maybe amazon or google comes in and does the same exclusive buying thing. Or buying whole studios. Hows the dynamic change when there's 2 or 3 epics?

We could be entering a period where the pc landscape is getting shook up in some ways. It's very stable in other ways, tho. There's just too many players, games and ways to play on pc for aggressive entrants to rock the boat too much. It sucks, but we don't know what's on the other side so I don't want to worry too much.

 

[The_R3medy]

Progressively building a foothold in the market and consumers accepting it. From there, Steam will have to actually compete for the first time in many years and consumers will win in the end.

 

[Daouzin]

I think it will keep going and sucking for a bit and maybe amazon or google comes in and does the same exclusive buying thing. Or buying whole studios. Hows the dynamic change when there's 2 or 3 epics?

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I think new marketplaces and technology like Stadia will allow more casual consumers into the PC gaming marketplaces and many of them aren't going to be super interested in the feature set of Steam enough to find value in it. So they will be happy buying games on EGS, Stadia and whatever Amazon has planned.

Steam will own the hardcore gamers because many of us have libraries of 200-500+ games on there but the new generation probably won't see what the big deal is.

EGS, Stadia etc will be the "gateway drug" that makes casuals into hardcore and then they are likely to move over to Steam. However, the majority will be fine without it.

 

[LewieP]

I think new marketplaces and technology like Stadia will allow more casual consumers into the PC gaming marketplaces and many of them aren't going to be super interested in the feature set of Steam enough to find value in it. So they will be happy buying games on EGS, Stadia and whatever Amazon has planned.

Steam will own the hardcore gamers because many of us have libraries of 200-500+ games on there but the new generation probably won't see what the big deal is.

EGS, Stadia etc will be the "gateway drug" that makes casuals into hardcore and then they are likely to move over to Steam. However, the majority will be fine without it.

Click to shrink...

Stadia is streaming service, not a PC gaming service. Nobody is going to buy a gaming pc specifically for Stadia. I suspect it'll see far more use on mobile devices, tablets, smart TV devices, and laptops with no dedicated GPU or a very modest one. I don't think Stadia will create a trend of pushing people towards PC gaming any more than existing console/mobile gaming does.

 

[Daouzin]

Stadia is streaming service, not a PC gaming service. Nobody is going to buy a gaming pc specifically for Stadia. I suspect it'll see far more use on mobile devices, tablets, smart TV devices, and laptops with no dedicated GPU or a very modest one. I don't think Stadia will create a trend of pushing people towards PC gaming any more than existing console/mobile gaming does.

Click to shrink...

I disagree. I think the exact reason that you could access your account from your Smart Tv, Mobile device and PC is exactly why it would.
However, you're correct that no one is going to buy a PC just for Stadia. That's the point of Stadia, low barrier of entry.

 

[Asbsand]

The way it will end is that Epic Games Store keeps doing these buyout exclusives and it'll be good business for now, but then it starts becoming the main platform that people use because hey, people want the latest games for pc and they won't pirate the ones that require online play. It'll seem like Epic is on the rise for a while really becoming the new monopoly but then the exclusivity deals run out and because of their monopoly Epic starts moving from the "generous" business deals to more aggressive and disadvantageous ones (because I don't think they can sustain buying out developer for god knows how much for that long), like, maybe they'll increase pricing or something.

Whatever it is, I think it'll run a Wii kind of course. It'll seem like this unstoppable thing and then suddenly the fad is over.

 

[Kittens McMittens]

1. I think they will slow down on exclusives when they have grown to a size they are happy with. I reckon they will continue doing it as long as it's good business for them though, and maybe even other storefronts will do it too.
2. I think Valve might lower their cut more broadly. They already take a smaller cut if you do a lot of sales, so they are probably prepared to compete more on that front.
3. Epic will improve their offering; fanboys and the drama alert crowd won't care. I think a good chunk of customers who are annoyed by the lack of storefront and platform features will start shopping there when those features are available though.
4. Yes. They have Fortnite money. For them, the storefront is a way of leveraging their existing infrastructure. They need a global server network and payment infrastructure for Fortnite, so it makes sense to turn that infrastructure into a platform. It's the exact same logic behind what Valve did with Steam and also Amazon. If you need a big chunk of infrastructure for your core business, it makes sense to turn it into a platform for other people to use. That way, you turn a cost centre into a profit centre.

More broadly though, I think we might start seeing fragmentation in the PC space. Big games will have their own infrastructure and be available on different storefronts, but small and medium size developers who can't afford or justify the ongoing costs associated with things like multiplayer will use things like Steam server hosting (which I don't think it out yet, but is coming). If that isn't managed well, it could lead to fragmentation between differing storefront versions of games on PC. I hope that everyone works to stop that happening.

Also, I think we're likely to see an increase generally of storefront fanboys who are indistinguishable from console warriors. Those are my predictions!

 

[Deleted member 2533]

They start becoming more and more like Steam, offering cloud saves, social media, message boards, sdk's etc., then the cost/benefit passes a threshold they can't make work, and they scale back everything, get out of being a storefront, and basically become a client for their 1st party stuff again.

 

[Mesoian]

They eventually have feature parity with steam save for things like streaming.

They run the road of not being able to afford to pay developers the proceeds of a moderately successful first 6 months and become just another store, but retain their userbase through free games and discounts.

Once fortnite goes through it's paces, they'll struggle to push a similar game to recreate the magic, but will be unable to recapture the magic.

EGS becomes yet another digital platform, even with all the others, struggling to stay appetizing in the face of competition, having provided nothing new of its own to the space.

 

[Mehdren]

They'll end up as another launcher that people barely use, if they're lucky it'll be like Origin and people will occasionally buy an exclusive on it.

 

[Sei]

If EGS reaches feature parity with Steam, they'll still keep the same developer cut? How is that sustainable.

 

[robot]

I can only guess, but the main question seems to be when Fortnite loses its popularity. If at that point Epic has garnered enough of a customer base to make the store self-sustaining then it will stick around. If not, it will be dropped quickly as Epic's current way of running the store does not seem to be profitable on its own (I could be wrong).

Thoughts on game exclusivity aside, Epic's main problem is it doesn't seem too interested in innovating from, or even feature matching, other digital stores. Without the cash flow from Fortnite to pay for exclusive deals and free games the store doesn't really offer much to the consumer. The lower cut is great for developers but if that was enough to sway consumers then itch.io would be the #1 gaming platform already.

 

[VariantX]

1.They'll eventually stop buying exclusives when they get enough users. Whenever that is, I don't have the slightest clue.
2.I don't see steam lowering its cut at all. Epic's the only one as far as I know demanding exclusivity. You can put your games on everyone else's storefront and cast a wider net. Because of the exclusivity, Epic kind of has to lower its cut I think.
3. Epic will eventually improve its service to a level that would offer features that would be acceptable for most users. I think the reaction would be muted though if the features are only as good as some of the competition out there. They won't get any praise or excitement until they start offering things others dont or surpassing the competition in other areas.
4. I dont' think they're going away, but they're only able to do half of what they can do now because of Fortnite cash, and they're desperately trying to make the most of it while they can. They can only do this as long as they have a property that is as massive as this. They arent exactly making improvements to the store by leaps and bounds, just buying software exclusivity. I feel thats kind of shortsighted as hell, when they should be demonstrating like crazy how hard they're working on features and ideas they have to improve things.

 

[Jobbs]

They're not going anywhere. They may have made some missteps but you don't go this hard with this much money on a random whim. It's a long term strategy, and I think their service will improve over time as they learn from mistakes and develop the software.

 

[Deleted member 51691]

They won't be a replacement for Steam as long as they maintain their policy of exclusivity or nothing

 

[IamFlying]

Most people will buy their games where they are cheapest. Most people don't care if they buy their games on Steam, Epic or Ubi.

Steam will probably be still the biggest storefront in the next few years, especially for indie/smaller games. Big games will move where they get the best conditions.

 

[unknownspectator]

1. Eventually they will have to stop, it depends on how long that money can hold out but you can bet your ass they will continue to do so. maybe they will stop in 3 years or in ten.

2. steam won't because everyone with a brain realizes that this isn't about cuts. Valve use that cut to improve the store so i really don't see that happening.

3. I believe it will but not for a few years.

4.Yeah, i do think they will still be around.

5. the wookies will be fine, yoda is helping them

 

[Crayon]

Oh yeah lol no on the cut. That whole thing's a farce. Valve may or may not be able to lessen the cut but there is no reason to. Hurts users and destroys re-sellers for that cut. You come to steam because you benefit from all the advantages of the platform, not because the cut is so cheap. You go on epic because you are allowed onto a limited catalog or maybe get an impossible to refuse deal, not because the cut is so cheap. It's weird that epic even did it aside from the optics.

 

[Dekuman]

If all else fails, Valve may go to the government and point out Tencent is behind Epic who is behind EGS and it's a national security issue.

 

[ghibli99]

Question 1: Will Epic stop buying exclusives and, if not, to what extent will they keep doing it?
I think they'll continue to offer monetary incentives, yes. It's honestly only really bothered me in those cases where titles were listed on Steam and then switched.

Question 2: Will Steam decide to lower its percentage and, if so, what will happen afterwards?
I don't even know if this is a talking point anymore. It'd be nice if they did though.

Question 3: Will Epic improve its service and, if so, what will the reaction be?
Strange question. There will be the cynical reaction every time no matter how good the improvement, but I think any/all improvements will generally be met in a positive way.

Question 4: Will Epic even be around in the long-term?
They've been around longer than Valve, and with UE, Fortnite, EGS, and whatever else we don't know about yet, they aren't going anywhere.

 

[Calvarok]

the store will get fully featured eventually and end up a legit competitor to steam even after they stop buying exclusives. steam will come closer to matching the percentage though they may not actually get to the same number,and conversely epic might make the deal slightly worse over time

 

[Pokemaniac]

I think new marketplaces and technology like Stadia will allow more casual consumers into the PC gaming marketplaces and many of them aren't going to be super interested in the feature set of Steam enough to find value in it. So they will be happy buying games on EGS, Stadia and whatever Amazon has planned.

Steam will own the hardcore gamers because many of us have libraries of 200-500+ games on there but the new generation probably won't see what the big deal is.

EGS, Stadia etc will be the "gateway drug" that makes casuals into hardcore and then they are likely to move over to Steam. However, the majority will be fine without it.

Click to shrink...

Stadia is a competitor to PC gaming. It is, for all intents and purposes, a console that you can only rent.

They're not going anywhere. They may have made some missteps but you don't go this hard with this much money on a random whim. It's a long term strategy, and I think their service will improve over time as they learn from mistakes and develop the software.

Click to shrink...

They're throwing quite a lot of money around, but they're so resistant to putting any substantial amount of it into their platform that I have a hard time seeing how they manage to grow past the phase where they basically have to pay both developers and users (in the form of free games) to engage with their platform.

 

[jrDev]

So what made GFW fail?

 

[Daouzin]

Stadia is a competitor to PC gaming. It is, for all intents and purposes, a console that you can only rent.

Click to shrink...

Correct, MS and Google are creating subscription-based programs and these are likely to only get better. Many new consumers may not be interested in owning their library, but would rather just subscribe.

Technology and markets are changing. EGS will be just fine, Steam will be just fine. I think the PC gaming environment will be changing quite a bit in the next 5 years. Young Fortnite players are likely to get their first laptops or PCs for College and download the EGS vs Steam. Many already have.

 

[Middleman]

Everything is going to work out just fine.


Question 1: Will Epic stop buying exclusives and, if not, to what extent will they keep doing it?

Probably not.

Question 2: Will Steam decide to lower its percentage and, if so, what will happen afterwards?

Probably not.

Question 3: Will Epic improve its service and, if so, what will the reaction be?

Yes. People will be happy.

Question 4: Will Epic even be around in the long-term?

Yes.

 

[TaySan]

I think EGS will catch up to Steam feature wise and people will treat it much like Origin/Uplay are today. Just another storefront that was hated initially but eventually accepted. Steam will still be in the league of the market, but less so.

 

[KamenRiderEra]

My only complaint was the lack of regional price in my country.... But this changed. And the prices are very good. Borderlands 3 for example is R$-122,00.... For comparison on PSN-BR the game is R$-249,00!

Also the very old Borderlands Pre-Sequel is R$-99,00 on steam.....

So if Epic continues this kind of prices here they already are very welcomed.

 

[Border]

Epic will stop buying exclusives. Eventually AAA publishers just prefer the platform for the lower royalty rate. Most games from Rockstar/Capcom/Konami/Ubisoft will appear primarily on EGS and a publisher-owned platform.

Steam will offer increasing better cuts to major AAA publishers, but for indies they won't really budge.

Epic's service will slowly improve over time but they will never have everything that Steam does. The feature set of EGS will be just "good enough" to service most of customers' needs.

Epic will be around long term, but the overall market will be increasingly fractured as AAA publishers continue to introduce their own exclusive download services.

Overall, I think it's impossible to imagine Steam winning or regaining the kind of market share that they used to have. It's more a matter of how much business gets absorbed into platforms run by 1st parties.

 

[LewieP]

Epic will stop buying exclusives. Eventually AAA publishers just prefer the platform for the lower royalty rate. Most games from Rockstar/Capcom/Konami/Ubisoft will appear primarily on EGS and a publisher-owned platform.

Steam will offer increasing better cuts to major AAA publishers, but for indies they won't really budge.

Epic's service will slowly improve over time but they will never have everything that Steam does. The feature set of EGS will be just "good enough" to service most of customers' needs.

Epic will be around long term, but the overall market will be increasingly fractured as AAA publishers continue to introduce their own exclusive download services.

Overall, I think it's impossible to imagine Steam winning or regaining the kind of market share that they used to have. It's more a matter of how much business gets absorbed into platforms run by 1st parties.

Click to shrink...

Why hasn't this happened with itch.io?

 

[Border]

Why hasn't this happened with itch.io?

Click to shrink...

They never had the Fortnite user base to build on, or the same kind of marketing/promotion spend that EGS has.

 

[Poimandres]

I think Epic will stop paying for exclusives. They must be bleeding money at this point, and I don't think they will find a great return on their investment.

When that will happen will likely depend on when Fortnite starts to fade.

 

[Dr. Ludwig]

They never had the Fortnite user base to build on, or the same kind of marketing/promotion spend that EGS has.

Click to shrink...

The young Fortnite userbase is not the same userbase that buys these niche middle to low budget games that Epic has so far poached as exclusives.

 

[GhostTrick]

They never had the Fortnite user base to build on, or the same kind of marketing/promotion spend that EGS has.

Click to shrink...

People love to throw the words "Fortnite userbase". But that's irrelevant. What matters is the userbase playing Fortnite on PC, which might be a smaller part compared to the whole userbase number they're touting.

 

[GameAddict411]

I think people will accept it. Just like how they accepted the deletion of headphone jack on smartphones. The epic game store will also improve over time and the features missing from steam will eventually be added.

 

[Majukun]

sooner or later they'll have to stop buying stuff and start competing and this phase will be forgotten much like when microsoft was buying third party exclusives left and right.

at that point it will be up to the developers if they wanna a bigger size of the sales pie, or stay on what will still be most likely the biggest market

and it's their right to be able to choose that.

 

[NippleViking]

As soon as they secured Borderlands 3 timed exclusivity, I felt that they're shored up their future as another storefront.

I think whether they ultimately sit on the tier of UPLAY/Windows Store, or achieve Origin levels of success or higher will depend on if they can start generating their own content. In the same way that Valve's success sprang from their internal efforts like TF, CS, HL, L4D, and Dota, Epic need to be producing their own flagship titles. Fortnite is one (and will continue to be one for the next decade), and they need a few more to complement it.

 

[Daouzin]

People love to throw the words "Fortnite userbase". But that's irrelevant. What matters is the userbase playing Fortnite on PC, which might be a smaller part compared to the whole userbase number they're touting.

Click to shrink...

Even if this is true, it's not an irrelevant number. Let's be honest here, haha.

 

[LewieP]

They never had the Fortnite user base to build on, or the same kind of marketing/promotion spend that EGS has.

Click to shrink...

I think Fortnite players play Fortnite. Sergey Galyonkin agrees.

Certainly I don't think there's a massive overlap between, for example, the audiences of Fortnite and Shenmue 3.

Not sure what marketing spend you're thinking of, Epic have said that their intention for promoting games going forward is just that the developer/publisher pay streamers to promote their game, and that it's not their intention to be responsible for marketing games on their store.

Even if this is true, it's not an irrelevant number. Let's be honest here, haha.

Click to shrink...

The number of Fortnite players on console/mobile is irrelevant to EGS.

Also the number of Fortnite players on PC who didn't even enter payment details is irrelevant to EGS.

The total playerbase is huge, but I image PC is the least popular platform for Fortnite, and I think most players don't spend and have no intention of spending anything on the game.

Were the number of active users spending money on PC a favourable number for Epic, I'm sure we'd have heard some details demonstrating that effect by now.

 

[BoosterDuck]

just another Origin/Uplay/GOG with Steam continuing to lead the market because nobody wants to actually compete against its feature set