I stopped buying non-exclusive games on Switch last year for this reason, after Steam added regional prices to my country, so to me it is.
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The Epic Games Store as described by Sergey Galyonkin (SteamSpy Creator, Currently At Epic) (Update: Sergey Clarifying Points on Twitter)
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Buying games on Steam is very much in my interest, and for very mundane (as in, the opposite of extreme) reasons:
I want games to be available on a software platform that provides free cloud saves and cloud screenshot hosting, free mod hosting, supports Linux, gives me easy in-depth per-game controller configuration and of course offers basic stuff like achievements, leaderboards and so on.
And I want that to be the minimum acceptable standard on PC.
I'm guessing when they say influencer, they mean YouTubers. Very few of the popular Twitch streamers play indie games and the ones that do play the already popular ones like Stardew Valley or Don't Starve.
As for the 5% cut that's supposed to incentivize streamers, I don't see that working. Believe it or not, streamers do put thought into what they play. Playing a game that's not fun to watch or doesn't fit their audience will make them lose subs and donations. I doubt a 5% cut is going to cover those losses.
The few streamers I could see selling this idea to prescibe to the "I only play the games I have fun with" motto. If they don't think you're game is fun, well that's it.
As for the 5% cut that's supposed to incentivize streamers, I don't see that working. Believe it or not, streamers do put thought into what they play. Playing a game that's not fun to watch or doesn't fit their audience will make them lose subs and donations. I doubt a 5% cut is going to cover those losses.
The few streamers I could see selling this idea to prescibe to the "I only play the games I have fun with" motto. If they don't think you're game is fun, well that's it.
Neither way is fine actually for PC gaming. We accept console balkanization and exclusives because PS4, XBOX and Switch are distinct hardware from distinct vendors, and even then there are rumblings against console exclusives achieved by moneyhatting or preorder lockdowns that don't make sense.
Publisher owned store fronts were the step on the wrong direction for PC gaming but even with all that money to throw around they did not prevent games they did not invest on development from appearing somewhere else like Epic. Heck, all of them even sell on Humble and GMG with preorder discount, which is something Epic has not implement yet and there is comments from Epic stating they might not do it. So Epic is worse than even the big bad publishers when it comes to locking down their "exclusives" and offering deals on the games they sell. Why am I supposed to give them any money?
Yes, I focused on the price because it seems to me like a very extreme attitude to mention to someone else that someone's going against their own interest by pursuing buying games on another platform. My steam library is the biggest amid every PC games storefront and I usually like using it, even if I find the storefront nowadays to be subpar.
But with data such as the one provided on the OP (that even amid Fortnite owners, one of the most popular games on PC, most won't engage with Steam actively), it would seem a very large pool of users don't actually value or engage with such features, thus not being in their interest to foster a platform that provides such features. Particularly, I don't mind either way, I haven't really needed to use most of these features either, though I do think they are a welcome addition to any game. I think most platforms will end up offering at least some of these features (mainly achievements/cloud saves), but it remains to be seen if this will actually be an advantage in favor of Steam in the face of the rest of the storefronts/platforms.
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How is the data in the one in the OP indicate that ?
Because if anything, the growth of Steam and the drop of piracy rates indicates the opposite.
Consider Fortnite is a free2play game, that supposedly 50% of Fortnite users don't have steam and another 25% have but don't use steam doesn't just indicate that people don't care about client features but also that these people probably don't have any interest in pay2play games at all.
There's also the experience developers behind Hello Neighbor had with their users not really knowing what to do with Steam keys or that most of their sales were completely outside Steam. I'm not saying this is the definitive proof that most players don't value Steam's features, just that it would seem Steam is not as ubiquitous as it once were, especially after losing a lot of high profile titles to publisher-owned platforms.
And while you're saying this, we saw this year more and more record breaking titles.
You're right, most of their sales were completely outside Steam. Because the game bombed on PC.
As Sergey said himself: Free 2 play players aren't big buyers.
The Fortnite userbase on PC might be one of the smaller one of all the devices. And inside of that, a lot of it might be younger users which may not even be buyers.
About Hello Neighbor, it really didnt bomb on PC. The main issue was that it was a good streamer game that targeted that f2p audience and actually got into it and sold pretty well. Young buyers do not know about Steam as other more "core" (I hate using this word) pcgamers, so it makes sense they didnt understand how to use those keys. Once the game went to Steam it did worse as the game itself was not that good and had ton of bad reviews.
There is a real audience outside of Steam for those kind of hit games, as we also saw before Steam, with minecraft or Amnesia. It is just hard to hit that "meme" lvl of consciousness in society. As well as transforming F2p users into buyers.
Probably mentioned elsewhere in the thread but there's at least two issues with this:
1) An influencer gets more revenue the more games they recommend. This is not a matter of recommending one game over another, it's a matter of recommending more games that they would recommend otherwise. This is an issue in itself.
2) "An influencer gets paid no matter what games they stream"... as long as they are Epic store games. This gives influencers an incentive to recommend games on that store over games on Steam regardless of relative quality.
The one positive I see with this is that it encourages influencers to stream as many different games as possible, as they get a cut of the revenue from sales of each game, which means that after a certain point they're better off switching to another game to generate more sales. This is a very good thing for discoverability, especially for smaller devs. I'm still not convinced it offsets the loss of impartiality caused by the above, though.[/QUOTE]
This is fantasy-land talk.
First of all: Epic doesn't have the breadth of games to make such a model viable.
Second: Believe it, or not, most Streamers and YT'ers give a shit about their prestige and neutrality. they don't like to come out as shills or advertisers. It could even have the opposite effect. Streamers not playing an EGS game because they want to distance themselves from game advertising.
Third: I don't believe that there is a big enough variety streaming market to support this model.
The percentage of real variety gamers in the streaming space (like Cohhcarnage) is tiny.
The viewership who follow variety gamers is tiny (if the counterargument is, that there will be more variety streamers if they will get paid)
Good luck getting the big streamers to play your game with a percentage cut. They will lose more money in subs and donations then they would ever make through some hundred sales on your game. They could even lose their complete Audience if they overdo it. Some streamers are in a "Streamer-trap" they lose audience for nearly every other game they play if they got big on GameX and the audience is coming to their channel because of GameX.
https://sullygnome.com/channel/ninja/30
Ninja only gets 10 to 20% of his Audience when he is not streaming Fortnite.
Just looking at the biggest streamers: https://sullygnome.com/channels/30/watched 95% are nearly single-game streamers.
1) Yes, we know the handful of big streamers who are making thousands a day would not be interested in risking their image and audience for a few bucks with this model. Thank you, Captain Obvious, for saving the day. You don't address (or are apparently even aware) of the huge ecosystem of a myriad smaller streamers, so 90% of your post debunks a statement nobody made.
2) Yes, Epic store doesn't have the breadth of content to support this model if streamers want to stream only games they actually consider good, which is precisely my point. If they had the tens of thousands of games Steam has, there would be no concern, because they could choose from and recommending good games (or, well, games they consider good) anyway. As it stands, for a streamer to make the most out of this model, they would have to lower their own standards and stream as many games from the Epic store as they could, regardless of quality. This is not "fantasy land", this is literally the only way a streamer can make money out of this.
If you think that every single of the tens of thousands of streamers out there is going to choose maintaining their standards of quality versus the ability to make money, it's not me who's living in fantasy land. People have to eat.
lol I don't think I deserved to be called a troll instead of actually focusing on the conversation about how I personally imagined influencer codes would be actually used. I am curious to hear how other people actually anticipate consumers to use them. (Post #540).
(reiterating) I personally don't imagine that use of a creator code will be directly related to the content that the user is purchasing (My gut says at least more than 50%). Instead I would imagine they advertise it more broadly like a patreon link or a paypal link that they mention as a means of supporting the user instead of directly telling viewers to buy X game specifically with their code. They would mention it in all their social links in video descriptions or every now and then on stream as they do now with their creator codes and other things like twitch prime.
As with my example. The content I was consuming had nothing to do with the purchase I was supporting the creator with. (In fact during today's stream the creator in question happened to mention coincidentally he didn't have much faith in the Division 2 lol). I planned on making a purchase and figured "why not support a creator - no cost to me". I chose a creator whose content I have been enjoying recently. That was really all that was involved in my thought process. All of it is entirely optional - if I wanted to support the devs more I could have just not used a code. Was curious what other people imagined the landscape would actually pan out to. A world where everyone is using a code on every purchase? A world where no one is using codes because XXX reason? Etc.
(reiterating) I personally don't imagine that use of a creator code will be directly related to the content that the user is purchasing (My gut says at least more than 50%). Instead I would imagine they advertise it more broadly like a patreon link or a paypal link that they mention as a means of supporting the user instead of directly telling viewers to buy X game specifically with their code. They would mention it in all their social links in video descriptions or every now and then on stream as they do now with their creator codes and other things like twitch prime.
As with my example. The content I was consuming had nothing to do with the purchase I was supporting the creator with. (In fact during today's stream the creator in question happened to mention coincidentally he didn't have much faith in the Division 2 lol). I planned on making a purchase and figured "why not support a creator - no cost to me". I chose a creator whose content I have been enjoying recently. That was really all that was involved in my thought process. All of it is entirely optional - if I wanted to support the devs more I could have just not used a code. Was curious what other people imagined the landscape would actually pan out to. A world where everyone is using a code on every purchase? A world where no one is using codes because XXX reason? Etc.
The only thing I can think of for something like this is like:
Game catches heat, pushed by influencers
Epic's cross-platform tools will possibly make it much easier for devs to port things to other platforms, with Epic hooks in
Epic gets a piece of all of those MTX, Fortnite style, just less
Rinse repeat
But if that's the case why work with Annapurna, who make lovely short single-player games that are right up my alley
Game catches heat, pushed by influencers
Epic's cross-platform tools will possibly make it much easier for devs to port things to other platforms, with Epic hooks in
Epic gets a piece of all of those MTX, Fortnite style, just less
Rinse repeat
But if that's the case why work with Annapurna, who make lovely short single-player games that are right up my alley
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Most likely scenario in my mind: a streamer is like "I think these games are good, here are referral links to them" but doesn't actually show them on the regular unless one of them is The Next Big Thing because they've gotta eat too. People will buy through their favorite streamers as a means to get tips -- I can see this taking off if they then also get an on-screen notification like with subs/donations. As to how this will somehow drive word of mouth beyond those referred purchases, it seems purely theoretical at this point.
Still kind of hard to imagine how other "content creators" will apply referrals without looking like they're shilling for the cut. But I guess that doesn't stop people on Instagram from doing their thing...
Regardless, I feel like the concept of "support your favorite content creators while buying games" seems to fly right in the face of "this is the best place to support your favorite developer."
Still kind of hard to imagine how other "content creators" will apply referrals without looking like they're shilling for the cut. But I guess that doesn't stop people on Instagram from doing their thing...
Regardless, I feel like the concept of "support your favorite content creators while buying games" seems to fly right in the face of "this is the best place to support your favorite developer."
The only question I have is why everyone is only obsessed with disscussing streamers. They actually, as multiple people pointed out, are not that much into variety gaming. It's literally any content creators, like youtubers, podcasters different communities like EZallies. Also, apparently big streamers don't have good ROI on their promotions, people are more willing to listen to smaller channels that they follow. I feel like it will be something like tech youtubers when they all have affiliate Amazon links in there description to buy literally everything.
I think that it is connected to Journey. Epic managed to get Sony to allow them to release it on PC but in exchange Annapurna had to release some games exclusively on Epic Store. Or something like that.
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Yeah, you're right. It's got a wider application. Maybe because when you think of Epic, you think of Fortnite, and when you think of Fortnite, you think of Ninja.
I'll be interested to see how content creators will go about advertising these referrals. The program has already taken off, right? Is there anyone using them yet?
That's really not that surprising. The majority of people who play popular multiplayer games like Fortnite, LoL, DOTA2, CS:GO, WoW, etc, play those games exclusively. That's why the Fortnite install base is kind of irrelevant when considering the Epic Games Store. The majority of Fortnite players have zero interest in playing anything that isn't Fortnite. They have no interest in Hades, Ashen or any of the other exclusives that Epic has secured.
Yep, it's actually the same program that was used to affiliate Fortnite, so It's already working. And according to some tweets from Epic officials, "creators", "influencers" or whatever you want to call them already got their first games.
The question is how long will it take for publishers and developers to catch on to this?
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The notion of, okay, you're clearly into playing games on PC and you have Steam, but you don't actually use it is surprising. I don't know, but -- to me anyway -- using Steam has become been so synonymous with PC gaming. And, like others said, what does that indicate about the Fortnite player base? Perhaps the conversion rate to "premium games" is going to be relatively low.
I think a lot of people install Steam for one game they want to try (usually a F2P multiplayer game), then stop using it when they get bored of the game. There are also a lot of smurf accounts that people use when they get banned for cheating or other TOS violations.
There's actually a pretty huge difference between a gamer and a [insert random game] player. A gamer is someone who plays games (plural) while a [insert random game] player plays one game. Steam isn't really useful for the latter demographic and would only be used for games that require it, like CS:GO or DOTA2. The same applies to Fornite players and the Epic Store. I suspect that the conversion rate will be extremely low.
There are a lot of people out there that only play a single game. Fortnite, League, DOTA, Sims, FIFA. These people may be gamers in that they do play games, but they don't actually buy games often enough to become an important userbase for other developers.
- The myriad of smaller streamers still only play a handful of games
- The myriad of smaller streamers share a significant part of their audience. They can't really sell a game to their audience if the audience already bought the game.
And they will lose their audience completely. No one wants to watch a tiny streamer advertise one game after another.
Sure there will be people who want to make money, doesn't mean that they would have an audience.
This isn't a case of big streamers versus tiny streamers, it is a point about (nearly) single-game streamers against variety Streamers. And the variety market is TINY. It is HARD. You need to be GOOD or ENTERTAINING over a variety of games. Most big single-game streamers would fail hard if they switched to variety.
And overall, Variety streamers stream for people who either already have the game or who would never buy it.
The whole thing is nonsense for non-mp games.
PC Gamer put up a story about the epic games store and referenced your thread here Daxy:
https://www.pcgamer.com/how-the-epic-games-store-compares-to-steam-right-now/
Interestingly they asked Epic for clarification about the "incorrectness" offered by Sergey and didn't get a response from Epic.
https://www.pcgamer.com/how-the-epic-games-store-compares-to-steam-right-now/
Interestingly they asked Epic for clarification about the "incorrectness" offered by Sergey and didn't get a response from Epic.
Hello PC Gamer!
Interesting they marked Outer Wilds release store platform as unclear - its an Annapurna published title, I assumed all of their games were doing the exclusive store treatment?
edit: props to a well detailed article
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Some other Steam games also unlock earlier than consoles, Tales of Vesperia is the latest example. It's not a rule set by Steam.
The release time is set by the publisher, not Steam or Epic Games if I am correct
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Oh, neat. Didn't see this post before. Thanks for the link.
Hah. Well, hopefully there are no hard feelings then. I'll have to give it a listen. Thanks for the update.
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I'll have a listen and take some notes if something new/interesting comes up. Very brief this time :')
appreciated either way! who knows, maybe sergey will call you out again on how factually incorrect you are ;)
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I must admit I was a bit rattled last time, so I would hope not 🙃
Don't worry about that m8. In the end, nothing you said was proven wrong by Sergey.
