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Supergiant about Epic Store: "Competition is good for everybody. It's good for customers. It's good for people working in the industry"
- Thread starter benzopil
- Start date
Yup. Completely. It's not even about buying games on Steam, it's about being able to buy a game at different stores. When only one store sells the product, that allows the store to control the price of the product completely. Steam having discounts is a completely different matter from any store being able to sell games which use Steamworks because publishers and developers can generate keys and provide them to any retailer.
Thanks for the response guys, this is making a lot more sense now. The key generation system is really confusing but im getting a handle on it.
What needs to change about the EGS to match up with the other store fronts? Because it seems like Epic has to rather aggressive just to exist as joining the status quo along with EA and Ubi looks like just losing to Valve and Steam.
What needs to change about the EGS to match up with the other store fronts? Because it seems like Epic has to rather aggressive just to exist as joining the status quo along with EA and Ubi looks like just losing to Valve and Steam.
It's difficult because the key system is open to abuse and grey market keys can be a frustration for devs where the value of their game gets severely undercut but I don't agree with Epic completely shutting it down. There has to be a better solution
Valve had a decade to build their features because they were in relatively uncharted territory and were often even at the forefront of the inventions of those features. So the argument that anyone needs to be allowed to play catch up rings hollow. Some things make sense, lacking things like a search bar or cloud saves do not.
Like, if Google announces their gaming hardware, they are not going to be judged by Xbox 360 standards, they are going to be correctly judged by PS4/Xbox One / Switch standards.
Like, if Google announces their gaming hardware, they are not going to be judged by Xbox 360 standards, they are going to be correctly judged by PS4/Xbox One / Switch standards.
Of course it is true !
Does Metro Exodus support Cloud Saves ? Does it support Library sharing ? Is it playable on Linux ? No ? Then it got worse.
The price has gone from 45€ to 60€ in Europe. 45 dollars to 50 dollars in USA. I'm not even throwing my student discount here, I'm throwing that on top. Because COMPETITION meant a store was offering me advantage as a student. That's called COMPETITION here.
You're right, in some part of the world, people are paying less. But guess what ? Far more people are paying more than people paying less.
How am I spouting blanket statements ? I gave you concrete facts, concrete exemples. You failed to provide any.
I'm not telling you my student discount is the case for everyone. I gave you that on top. YES MORE OPTIONS. What's hard to understand here ? Without any voucher or special situation: EVERYONE in USA or Europe could buy it for 45dollars/euros. Now it's 50 dollars/60€. This is the truth for most people.
This "competition" only benefits Epic and the developers being moneyhatted, everyone else is getting fucked, now or down the line.
Epic should focus on improving their storefront rather than buying exclusives. Why the hell would i want to go buy a game on a service that offers a fraction of the features steam has. Its 2019 and still nobody has been able to come close to offering what Steam does.
Sure, I think the lack of cloud saves is ridiculous.
Maybe not a great example, since the Switch has launched lacking a huge number of features that its two rival platforms have but it's often defended as offering a core gaming experience without all those other features. I don't agree but I'm willing to give Nintendo time to build its new online service. I think they're stretching people's patience with that, though, and by this point most people seem to have accepted they aren't going to support even basic features like voice chat or usernames and I see that lack of features defended all the time
I'm not sure you understand the "grey market" at all. The developers do not lose any money on sites like GMG or CD Keys. The store that sells it takes a hit on their cut.
It's the reason why Epic can't really do it because their profit margins are so small at 12%. So small that sometimes you are charged transaction fees.
No, through officially licensed resellers such as voidu and GMG that directly work with the publishers. I would suggest you to inform yourself about the economical realities of the pc gaming space as despite your claims of being a pc gamer, you clearly don't know much about it.
Maybe the discount wasn't "just the u.s." but it sure as hell wasn't for Europe, one of the biggest pc gaming markets in the world.
In your other responses you complain about people cherrypicking discounts yet you yourself argue only with a region specific discount that's not available to everyone equally, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
May I ask how exactly Epic's brand of competition is good for customers? It locks the content on an inferior, feature less client and asks the majority of gamers to either pay the same or more than the price on Steam, not to mention all the security breaches that seemingly happen every other week.
I wish more devs cut out on PR BS and just said outright that they value upfront money more than potential sales and don't care about user experience whatsoever.
I wish more devs cut out on PR BS and just said outright that they value upfront money more than potential sales and don't care about user experience whatsoever.
"It's good for customers."
Yeah. Tell that to Chinese customers that cant buy the games.
Tell that to Linux gamers.
Tell that to people that just want achievements.
Yeah. Tell that to Chinese customers that cant buy the games.
Tell that to Linux gamers.
Tell that to people that just want achievements.
This is what I remember from how dev frustration looked like in the past so I don't quite believe everyone here when they are saying the devs are getting their cut regardless.
This only benefits customers in the sense that, if Valve does take part in this moneyhatting competition, we can eventually play the pointless exclusives war console fanboys have been playing for years. Hey, if anything, the developers can finally look for money hats when launching their games on PC! There's so much win in this, it's like a win win win win win infinity win situation for everyone involved.
Being a PC gamer since the end of the PS360 era, I can say I'm thoroughly excited about finally being able to brag to EA fanboys that my favourite storefront has the game's exclusivity bought. I can't wait to see what this Epic competition can bring!
Being a PC gamer since the end of the PS360 era, I can say I'm thoroughly excited about finally being able to brag to EA fanboys that my favourite storefront has the game's exclusivity bought. I can't wait to see what this Epic competition can bring!
I don't think you understand the grey market at all if you're calling authorized retailers like GMG who are absolutely not grey market part of the grey market
You're right, no one uses CDKeys, G2A or Kinguin. My not realizing that just shows that I'm a fake PC gamer. You really got me good
It isn't. Epic likes it because they can moneyhat their way to 'competing' right now instead of doing the hard work and creating a service that customers will want to use. Developers like it because they get handsomely paid for the exclusivity. Customers get nothing.
Issue is that Valve can't lower their cut that much without sacrificing something. Issue is that developers, especially indie ones are not good with business part and don't understand what it takes to run a store as big as Steam, so when Tim Sweeney comes out and says that 7-8% is enough for running store (and that is blatant lie) they believe him and start to demand for unreasonable things.
I'll summarize it for you:
Let's say a developer sells a game on Steam for 60€.
Valve takes 30% of every sale on Steam (25% or 20% after they sold certain amounts), so the developer gets 40€ and Valve 20€.
The developer can generate keys and sell these keys to others. Valve takes 0% from these keys.
So, if a developer sells a key on their own Homepage they get 100% of the revenue, the full 60€ (disregarding operation costs for simplicity).
If they sell it to 3rd party stores, like Voidu or GMG, those take 30% as well, so the dev gets 40€, Valve 0€ and Voidu/GMG 20€ when they sell a game.
What those other stores then do is give discounts out of their 30% cut.
This is where those 10-25% preorder discounts or discounts for games that were not on an official sale yet are coming from on PC.
Let's say this 60€ game has a -20% preorder discount on Voidu.
I pay 48€, the developer gets 40€, Voidu gets 8€ and Valve gets 0€ in this case.
I get the game cheaper while the developer gets the same amount as they would from a Steam sale.
The competition is thata their sore offers games, that others are not.
This thread devolved like any other Epic store related one. Next people are gonna complain that a Ford dealership doesn't offer Mercedes.
Is there any evidence of that?
This is an incredibly dishonest shitpost.
CDkeys and Kinguin have fucking nothing to do with the discounts i have been talking about and were entirely brought up by you because you don't know about the difference between the official, licensed resellers i'm talking about and the grey market you are thinking about.
If that's your level of having an argument, good fucking riddance, stay ignorant.
It's now one store instead of 30. That's a lot less choice.
I honestly can't take this type of commentary seriously from a developer who took a big fat money hat for exclusivity to one store. No shit you're happy - and you're also supporting business practices that I'm strongly against as a consumer.
What Epic needs to do is to improve their store, so that it's actually better than Steam. They have been criticizing Steam on many occasions, so let's see if they can do certain features better than Steam - instead of not having these features at all. They also should fund the development of their own games, instead of moneyhatting promising games right before release. And they need to support 3rd party keystores of course.
I'm sure you would know better than I, oh revered and enlightened PC gamer. I am but a fake fan
No, of course they do. Yes, discounts are sometimes available through legitimate resellers. But often the discounts people get on PC are through grey market sites like CDKeys and I stand by that. The discounts offered on CDKeys are often posted on this forum and many people take advantage of those offers. Doesn't mean I don't understand the difference between an authorized reseller like GMG and grey market like CDKeys/Kinguin.
If your level of argument are these sort of petty insults and tedious needless aggression, then I don't think I'm missing out on much.
Lol, that's not competition...
That's not related at all. What happens here is that a garage owner pays Ford to prevent them from selling their cars in other garages.
Any citations on that? I have no idea, but you should provide something to back that up.
User warned: Trolling.
I come to these threads just to read through the ridiculous salt.
This wouldn't sounds like bullshit if not for the fact that Epic is having an exclusivity stance.
This is just one example.
Another example is Humble widget where in FAQ there is this
So payment processing fees alone are 5% at best.
Well, clearly i do.
These fucking Grey market resellers have fucking nothing to do with the Discounts i'm talking about.
Literally how hard is this for you to understand?
What does the existence of Cdkeys have to do with my point about getting 25% off on a licensed reseller like Voidu?
The only one who is bringing up the grey market is you and you alone. I have at no point ever talked about discounts received through cd keys, i'm only talking about discounts of officially licensed resellers.
The fact that there are also other ways of getting games even cheaper has no bearing on the point i'm making.
I would suggest you to look up isthereanydeal.com which only lists official, licensed sellers.
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CDKeys might be gray market but should not be said in the same sentence as Kinguin.
CDKeys buys physical copies of games (which Valve takes 0% of) from retailers in cheaper regions and sells the keys. Kinguin however is not as legit and actually features stolen keys and other shit that should not be allowed.
(And that is not to say a lot of shops cut from their own % to drive sales, like Voidu or Humble Monthly overall discount in the store).
CDKeys buys physical copies of games (which Valve takes 0% of) from retailers in cheaper regions and sells the keys. Kinguin however is not as legit and actually features stolen keys and other shit that should not be allowed.
(And that is not to say a lot of shops cut from their own % to drive sales, like Voidu or Humble Monthly overall discount in the store).
No, it's not competition. Real competition would be Epic providing a storefront that actually provides legitimate value that other storefronts don't have. Instead, the Epic Store is basically a bare-bones launcher with a friends list.
I wouldn't normally go into 'lazy devs' territory, but when a whole bunch of useful features that shouldn't be unreasonable for Epic to implement at launch (especially cloud saves) are completely absent and Epic initially implies they aren't interested in adding more features, well, that just makes Epic look like a bunch of lazy assholes.
I wouldn't normally go into 'lazy devs' territory, but when a whole bunch of useful features that shouldn't be unreasonable for Epic to implement at launch (especially cloud saves) are completely absent and Epic initially implies they aren't interested in adding more features, well, that just makes Epic look like a bunch of lazy assholes.
Sorry, what more evidence do you want that many people buy discounted games from CDKeys? The discounts are often posted on this forum and people take advantage of them. I could trawl through dozens of Reddit posts too, if you really want, but that would be pretty tedious
You referred to "20-25€ discounts PCgamers are used to receive for every Major AAA title." I pointed out that level of discounting often comes from sources on the grey market and it's absolutely not available through authorized retailers for "every major AAA title." You didn't specify only discounts available through legitimate retailers.
Okay? And other price comparison sites list gray market deals. What is your point?
It's a fair point and I should point out that I'm not necessarily against the premise of people being able to resell keys. If you have a game key that you don't want, it's probably fair that an eBay style service exists for you to sell it to someone who wants it. The problem is the level of abuse and stolen credit card keys, etc. that is very hard to track down. Still, abusing regional pricing to get cheap games for people in other countries isn't exactly noble
How about putting your fucking game on every store and just being cheaper on EGS. That would be good for paying customers, taking away choice isn't.
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Epic said achievements and cloud systems will come in Q3 2019.
Voidu and GMG usually have 20% sales. Many people got VC4 on Voidu when they had one of those 20% coupons.
That happens everywhere though. Just look at Era and how many people have South African, South American Switch accounts. Or Europeans having US PSN accounts just to get $ prices which are usually cheaper than € prices.
Civ V required Steam period. Not many raised a fuss. It worked out well for Valve- as the Steam Crowd loved it, while the Civ IV crowd really didn't.
Lower cuts won't trickle down to consumers, they'll just be pocketed. This is why I think many of the game consumers are skeptical (and why I am as well).
So Supergiant don't want to compete with games on Steam, don't want Steam to compete with Epic by having the game on both stores, and then say competition is good?
Do they think we're stupid?
Do they think we're stupid?
Publishers (companies in general) take advantage of regional economic realities as well.
Dev frustration doesn't come from the price. It comes from the fact keys were bought with stolen cards then chargebacks were done. Or keys devs were tricked to give to pseudo streamers that sold them afterward.
Yes Competition in general is good for everybody, the devs and the consumers but epic store isn't good for the consumers and nor good for devs(in the long run). If anything thats visible is the huge disconnect between developers and consumers. The developers do not understand why the consumers prefer and use another digital platform instead of epic store, they keep repeating the same 'its another launcher' rhetoric.