Update: see threadmarks for details on Galyonkin's response or jump to post #507.
I recently found out about a really interesting Russian-spoken podcast that Sergey Galyonkin co-hosts called "Как Делают Игры," or in English: "How Games Are Made." Galyonkin is currently the Director of Publishing Strategy at Epic Games and also the person behind "Steam Spy." On December 8th, an episode came out that was about the new Epic Games Store (EGS). In this episode, Galyonkin answers a bunch of questions about the EGS posed to him by his co-hosts as well as listeners. I originally posted excerpts of their conversations in the general Epic Games Store thread. Until I listened to the podcast, I didn't have a firm idea of what the vision for the EGS was really, but this podcast has helped clarify a lot of things -- though it certainly also raised many new questions. I've condensed the bits that I translated earlier into a more readable format, and I hope you'll find it as interesting as I did. It's a hellishly long write-up but a compelling one I hope, so grab a cup of tea or coffee, and strap in.
Context – Steam isn't as ubiquitous an institution in PC gaming as you might think
Now, according to Galyonkin, only half of Fortnite players have Steam installed, and of those that do have it installed, 60% don't actively use it. For reference, Fortnite's player count across all platforms was said to have exceeded 200 million back in November. I thought it unimaginable that the majority of the PC share wouldn't use Steam regularly, but evidently that's the case. This really crystallized that we're talking about a completely different userbase here than most of the PC players that I know and the people who frequent these forums.
Two of the podcast's co-hosts are from tinyBuild, the publisher of the Hello Neighbor games. Also a UE4 game, Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek was one of the EGS's launch titles. For Tinybuild, Steam made up the smallest share of Hello Neighbor's sales (speaking about the 2017 game). Most of their sales were in fact from direct sales through their website, and when they started giving out Steam keys, they apparently got bombarded with questions on what to do with them. Their audience skews younger, and for that reason they thought the EGS would make a good fit.
I believe these insights are essential in understanding why the EGS operates the way it does and what its strategy is. In addition, it might give us a glimpse into the types of games that will be able to maintain visibility, relevance, and popularity on this store. The EGS is markedly different from Steam in many ways, the most important of which is its in-built audience that plays Fortnite. It seems like Epic is very much aware of this and has tuned their store's design to account for this.
Discovering games
Unlike Steam, Galyonkin says that discovery on the EGS will primarily take place outside of the store. He draws parallels to a book store or movie theater. You usually know what you're going to buy or attend before going there rather than look through what's available to make your decision. New and featured releases will be shown on the storefront. The EGS's front page will not focus on algorithm-based discovery like Valve. This point was made very plainly. Galyonkin says he's skeptical towards discovery algorithms, because to write a good one for (game) discovery you need a lot of information about players' tastes. The average player on Steam owns PUBG, Counter-Strike and Dota 2 -- what game should they buy next then, he wonders. As many people only buy a few games per year, there's not a lot to go on. At that point, Galyonkin says that you might as well recommend any game, because all you really know is that they like multiplayer games. Algorithms, he continues, work better on people with a large number of games but don't really work well for the majority, i.e. those who don't own a significant enough number of games. So instead, Epic will have a curated front page like the App Store, but Galyonkin states that this won't be how most people find new games. The primary way of "discovering" games will be through influencers -- developers giving out copies of their game to influencers through the EGS and, in return, influencers giving visibility to these games in some capacity. This is basically their analog to Steam's curators.
The developer-influencer dynamic on the Epic Games Store
The central idea of this is that developers provide influencers with referral links to their games, which gives content creators and the like the possibility to earn a share of a game's sale if it is bought through them. Galyonkin explains that currently the default cut is set at 5%, and, as part of an ongoing promotion, Epic will cover this for developers. Right now, developers aren't losing any extra share of a sale's revenue above the 12% cut that the EGS takes for their services. Developers can change the cut that influencers get to whatever they want – from 0% all the way to 100%. In any case, Epic will cover the first 5% at the moment.
Here's where an interesting question arises, and I'm a little surprised that this hasn't been elaborated on yet or been questioned more broadly by the press, because it is such an incredibly important detail. On their blog, Epic has stated that "[to] jumpstart the creator economy, Epic will cover the first 5% of creator revenue-sharing for the first 24 months." If this is taken as the first 24 months since the store's launch rather than a game's launch – which was my impression – then in 2021, if developers want their game to gain visibility, they will be losing a share of their cut for a subset of sales.
After a while, Galyonkin expects market standards to develop and the rate will settle for certain types of games. He gives the example of a 20% cut being used by indies, while larger publisher-backed games might go for something like 5%. While this will not likely account for the lion's share of a game's sales, I was nonetheless surprised that Galyonkin expected that comparatively smaller independent developers would allow a larger cut of their per-game revenue. If we're to assume that by 2021 the rate for indies will indeed settle at around 20%, the percentage margin per unit that they get would be 68% -- lower than Steam, even. Again, this won't be for most units sold, but still an interesting thought. More on this later.
Developers will be able to automatically give out copies of their game to groups of influencers, and there will be different filters for influencers and press. As you might expect, the press won't get a commercial referral link – apart from this, things work the same between those two groups. Apparently, influencers are filtered by whether they are "verified" or not. Unverified influencers are all those who applied to this program and went through a rudimentary check. This involves making sure that the applicant is indeed who they are presenting themselves as and whether they have a channel. Additionally, as NoTime pointed out in the other thread, the pre-requisites for this appear to follow Epic's Support-A-Creator program, meaning that influencers/creators need fulfill the following three conditions: "[having] 1,000+ followers on at least one major social platform," "[completing] the Affiliate Agreement and [abiding] by our Creator Code of Conduct," and "[being] capable of receiving payment in a form that Epic supports." After achieving a certain minimum amount of earnings through referrals, influencers are checked by Epic moderation (again) to ensure that everything is normal in terms of their content or any other relevant factors, and they become verified.
Together with the copy of the game that developers send to influencers, Galyonkin explains that they would also be able to include a brief description of the kind of game it is and provide links to guides or asset packs, for example. However, Epic doesn't want to give developers the ability to contact individual influencers directly (which I take is to mean the EGS interface), because, according to Galyonkin, influencers don't like it when they're constantly bombarded with personal emails -- all they want from developers is that they're given the game, and they'll take a look and play it. If developers wish to contact them personally, they'll have to do that through other channels.
The news feed
The client's news feed will be the place where you can get notifications on the games you follow, developers, influencers, and get updates on price drops. You already follow a game automatically once you buy it. The ability to do so for other games, developers, and so forth is something that will come later. You'll also be able to follow unreleased games.
This sounds like it might be an ancillary second pillar for discovery. The core idea seems to be that it'll become a catch-all aggregate for things going on in the Epic Games Store and whoever you follow. For example, Galyonkin said that you'll get notifications about big updates and other developments on followed games – all things that may help get visibility for a certain game and convince someone to buy a game they follow, according to him. However, to me, this seems to presuppose that someone has heard of a certain game at all. Otherwise they wouldn't have followed it. So, in practice, I would expect the news feed to act more like a midpoint between discovery and purchase, rather than a channel for discovery in and of itself. In addition to this, he says that the news feed is planned to include your friends' activities, but Galyonkin was not yet sure what activities exactly would be shown there.
Epic also plans to implement something like subscriptions to influencers. The way this would be implemented seems to be up in the air as of yet. Some of the complications described include paid subscriptions and how that'd work. I would assume that this, too, would be integrated into the news feed, but who knows.
Customer reviews
This is a big one. We already know that customer reviews on the EGS will be opt-in. A big differentiator from Steam is that Epic seeks to incorporate mechanisms that prevent review bombing entirely. Galyonkin expects that without review bombing, all developers will want to put reviews on their page. I don't think that's entirely true, since many developers' complaints about reviews that I've read are about customers not understanding games and venting in frustration, people using reviews as faster support tickets, that reviews sometimes contain wildly inappropriate content, and so forth. Review bombs are certainly an issue, but I don't get the feeling that this is the case for the majority of games. These other issues seem more commonplace. You can see it on almost every game's Steam page.
In any case, Galyonkin talks about some of the solutions to review bombing that Epic has been looking into. One of these is a pop-up message asking a player to review a game after having closed it -- from what I understood, the idea is that only a certain subset of players will then get to review it, and it isn't something everyone can do at any time. Another option he mentioned was only allowing or displaying the reviews of people who have recently played the game. Or using a numerical system instead of the like/dislike approach (of Steam), an algorithm then monitors review scores, and extremes are removed to normalize the (final) score. They're still figuring out how to best approach it. Galyonkin states that he personally likes the aforementioned review pop-up idea. To be clear, Galyonkin was just airing some of the different approaches they've been considering. Developers will not be able to directly moderate reviews. Similar to Steam, if there's some issue with a review, a developer can flag it for evaluation by Epic.
Exclusivity
There will be (PC) games that have timed exclusivity to the EGS. Galyonkin says that Epic pays for this. They mainly pay developers to finish financing ports or to assuage fears of the game not doing well on this new platform. The latter works like a minimum guarantee of sales. Currently (or at the time of the podcast's release anyway), Epic's focus is on getting games that have not yet been released. If a developer wants to put it exclusively on their store, Epic is currently also offering to do off-site marketing, including ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google. They don't advertise the store but the games. Galyonkin explains that if a game is only available through the EGS, that is of course in Epic's own interests, and it's in a developer's interest to get marketing through them. I don't believe Galyonkin said anything about if or how that would change once the store goes open for self-publishing. One big question that's been on my mind at least is how in the world Epic got Journey. The answer is apparently that Epic cut a deal with Sony, and, to me, it sounded like Epic paid to get it ported over.
This wasn't addressed in this episode of the podcast, but here is some additional insight regarding Journey:
Upcoming consumer-facing features
Responding to complaints about the EGS being focused on developers to the detriment of consumers, Galyonkin says that their initial focus was indeed on developers and that consumer-focused features are being worked on. Evidently, even certain things on the backend for developers aren't fully finalized yet. Epic will be giving out free games every two weeks for the entirety of 2019 -- 28 games in total, including those that was given out late 2018. New (client) features for consumers will be introduced gradually.
Cloud saves will be coming around February. Achievements will be there by the end of 2019. Reviews will also come eventually – I don't recall a date being given at any point. As stated before, there will not be per-game forums, and Galyonkin also added that there wouldn't be guides like on Steam. Developer pages on the store will also be implemented at a later date. Social features will be introduced, but it'll be somewhat different from Steam's, and he couldn't give details yet. Limiting download speeds will also be an option. User profiles are planned for the beginning of "next year," but I'm unsure whether he meant early 2019 or 2020.
The equivalent of Steam cards isn't planned. Galyonkin says that they have an undesirable effect on purchasing decisions in the sense that people buy games that they don't really want just for the cards. Unlocking (in-game) items like skins and things like that will be possible but not necessarily tradeable.
You'll be able to launch non-Epic games through the launcher, like on Steam. You can already pull in friends lists from Steam, Galyonkin said. However, importing games directly from other platforms – like on GOG -- will not be done. He doesn't see the advantage of it.
As for mod support, Epic wants to apply their Support-A-Creator program to mods as well. They don't know yet how it'll work exactly. What is clear is that they don't want to sell mods but would like mod creators to somehow get some amount of money. A mod manager was discussed briefly, but nothing concrete was said.
More social media integration is being looked at. Currently, it's already possible to connect Facebook, VK, Steam, Twitch, PS, Switch, Xbox, and Google accounts.
Finally, they're happy with the look of the store as it is now with its big tiles. Eventually things like categories will be introduced, but it sounds like this is basically the design they'll be sticking with.
On the developer's end of things
The most important of these is probably that by the end of 2019 the EGS is expected to open to self-publishing. (Meaning you submit your game and Epic may/may not approve it -- not like Steam Direct)
Galyonkin states that the 12% cut that the EGS gets for their services is not planned to be raised over time. It might get lower, however, if they will be able to eventually cut a better deal with payment processing companies -- but this won't happen any time soon.
In about five to six years' time, Galyonkin expects to achieve 50% of Steam's userbase. However, he doesn't know yet roughly how many Fortnite players will convert to buyers of other games, as it's too early to tell.
The launch builds of games are tested for playability.
Users will be able to contact developers directly for tech support issues through a ticket system. This, Galyonkin claims, is expected to solve a lot of issues. Epic, as a platform, is able to read these tickets. They will not do this at their own discretion, but if it turns out that a developer is refusing to help and Epic gets complaints from its users, Epic will be able to look over their exchange history and see whether tech support was attempted through the ticket system.
Developer-created promotional codes for discounts/bonuses will eventually come. It will also be possible to generate keys like on Steam, and Epic will not charge their usual 12% for those keys. However, Galyonkin doesn't recommend it since other marketplaces typically charge a higher cut than the EGS. Games that are sold also on other storefronts will in all likelihood not be allowed to have a lower base price there. Differing sales of course are fine.
Developers are able to see suggested regional prices, but there is only limited support currently – note that Epic seem to have improved support for different currencies since this podcast aired. Regional prices are shown as a percentage discount from the base price rather than the adjusted number in the local currency (like on Steam). This, Galyonkin says, is so that developers have a better gauge on how much cheaper their game is sold for in lower income regions.
There won't be massive sales events that take up the entire store like on Steam. As to why, Galyonkin says such events effectively kill off sales for games that don't participate in them as well as for new games that launch right before that event. Instead, games on sale will be featured alongside non-sale games.
Regarding price errors, if a user buys a game on the cheap through a price error and it's Epic's fault, they won't revoke the purchase. I don't recall Galyonkin saying anything about compensating the developer in such cases, but I would almost assume so. If it's a developer's fault, it's up to them what to do.
The EGS will try to give developers as much info on players as is "legally possible" – more than on Steam. Galyonkin says that you'll be able to see what other games they play and what genres they like. Partners can disclose their own sales data, but Epic isn't allowed to. Though he does make a point of saying there'll be information that will give you an idea of what kind of games are currently popular. There will be an API that can be scraped to facilitate a potential "Epic Spy," but they will not offer that service themselves. Galyonkin would be glad to see it happen. Additionally, in certain instances, developers will be able to see what domains people came from to find their store page and find out whether that converted into a sale or not.
In the podcast, Galyonkin also said that all regions get the same build of the game. If you purchase a game in Russia, for example, it won't be that it only has Russian language in-game, as is apparently the case for some Ubisoft games. If this is requested by developers, it can be changed. Evidently, The Division 2 is already Russian-only for that region, so some changes have been made since then.
Galyonkin stated that the EGS's in-app purchase policy is not yet fully finalized – seeing as they've secured The Division 2, they've probably already figured this out by now. At the time of the podcast, he said that Epic will most likely also take a cut of in-app sales like Steam. Galyonkin was not able to give a final answer on the minutia of that.
Finally, Galyonkin said that you won't be able to append your own launcher that will be launched from the EGS app, but that this may change in the future. Once again, given how Ubisoft handles its games on Steam and that The Division 2 is launching on the EGS, I assume they've already made a change on this stance since this podcast's release. It seems like the release of The Division 2 made them finalize a lot of these decisions.
Discussion
If you got this far without skipping ahead, congratulations. Here, I'd like to outline some of my own thoughts now that I've gotten a better idea of what Epic's vision is for their store and their approach to discovery on a digital marketplace. As I said early on, it's pretty clear that the Epic Games Store has a completely different potential userbase than Steam's -- recall how Galyonkin said that 60% of Fortnite's players who have Steam installed do not actually use it. As someone who has been regularly playing games on PC for over a decade and used Steam for about just as long, that's astounding. Eye-opening, really.
This audience is very different from Steam's, and I wouldn't be surprised if their purchasing habits as well as methods of discovering new games are also very different than yours and mine. Perhaps for them streaming and influencers are indeed their primarily way of finding out about new games. That appears to be what Epic is reading off of the information they've gathered. What I find somewhat worrying is the idea of influencers getting a cut of sales. I'm absolutely not discounting that they promote games and drive sales – I myself bought Persona 4, Deadly Premonition, and many other games after watching hours upon hours of Giant Bomb's antics in those games. But giving them a direct cut is basically is asking them to always project having fun, however forced or untrue, as it is financially beneficial to them. Questionable. For the end user mainly.
Alternatively, say you're a developer and you give a copy of your game to a streamer, but they proceed to trash your game publicly. Variety streamers are not always great at games. They're human, so they may misunderstand something, get frustrated, or encounter some other roadblock and signal that this game is not fun or not worth playing. You're losing sales potentially. This is of course operating on the assumption that this audience's buying habits is indeed influenced significantly by streamers. However, given that the EGS is focused so heavily on this, we are supposed to expect as much.
This brings into a focus something that looks like a huge differentiator from Steam on the surface of it. Yet, I believe that essentially it may well lead to some of the same issues that developers currently have with Steam. Namely, the influencer-developer dynamic to facilitate discovery on the EGS, and that the developer is still no longer in control of "the message" once that copy is in the hands of an influencer. It's the same reason why many developers take issue with Steam reviews. It's open to extreme subjectivity – to a fault – as well as backfiring. Like Steam's review system, the sword can cut either way. And once the EGS transitions into self-publishing, a host of other roadblocks may come up for developers that run somewhat counter to Epic's message of developer-friendliness and, more specifically, indie-friendliness.
What I'm not yet entirely clear on is if you can choose what influencers to send your game to. More importantly, will they even play your game? Once there are hundreds or thousands of games competing for influencers' attention, it's less and less likely they'll cover it. Like us, the major limiting factor to playing more games often isn't money but time. Another key question to the viability of infuencer-driven discovery is whether your game can draw views. Ultimately, streamers' main revenue sources are – to my knowledge – subscriptions and ad viewership. Despite being a phenomenal game, I don't think that What Remains of Edith Finch is particularly compelling streaming material. Or something like Abzu, Into the Breach, Journey, and other more contemplative experiences. Think of short narrative games or games that expect only a single playthrough like Return of the Obra Dinn and Her Story. What is their place on the EGS once they're not on the front page anymore? And if a streamer's audience just watched a complete playthrough, why buy it? Will smaller developers, in accordance with Galyonkin's expectations, have to raise referral cuts to something as high as 20% to entice them to promote it? Will Epic do anything to prevent a race to the bottom for referral margins as developers vye for influencers' attention?
The main point that I'm getting to is that I think that there will be many (smaller) games that will not get sufficient exposure on the EGS without more extensive discovery tools. Of course, there are a multitude of additional considerations intersecting when making a choice on where to put your game, including whether your game has historically done well on the Steam storefront at all, and especially if it's going to be an exclusive – timed or otherwise. Currently, Epic is providing partial funding for exclusive releases and guaranteeing minimum revenue targets are met. I don't expect that to be the case once it turns over into a self-published storefront.
There are a lot of decisions that Epic is making that are extremely clever. One of these was offering Subnautica as their first free game. It's a pretty darn good "gateway" game since it incorporates the survival and crafting components of popular games like Fortnite, Minecraft, Rust, and so forth. But if the large audience Epic has amassed through Fortnite doesn't convert to regularly buying on their own volition, I wouldn't be surprised to see that many of the games that do well on Steam would not necessarily perform well on the EGS and vice versa. I'm not yet convinced that their news feed will be a stable enough second pillar to funnel people to new games, but we haven't seen much of it as of yet either.
One final impression that I came away with after listening to the podcast and writing this all up is that Epic's store may not even compete that directly with Steam if they won't significantly pull players from Steam's userbase. Funding new ports of formerly console-only games like Journey is one way of doing that. Games like The Division 2 are also huge gets, but who's to say that Ubisoft won't lock their future games to Uplay? Epic's proposition sets itself apart from Steam; the 12% is compelling enough for many developers, surely. But on the consumer side the value proposition is very much a work in progress outside of those key exclusives, and I remain doubtful over the fate of smaller games on the store. Valve's response to shifts in the market will be interesting to watch, too. According to Galyonkin, Valve got word of Epic's plans through its partners and pushed out the change to their cut ahead of Epic's announcement. Perhaps, over time, Epic's efforts will also incentivize Valve to rethink other aspects of Steam -- for the better, hopefully.
Anyway, I've rambled on for long enough. I hope this was an interesting read and that it gave you some more insight on the EGS.
And thanks, NoTime for clueing me in on this podcast and clarifying some points in the other thread. I hope you also join the conversation here, as you've got more familiarity with this podcast and also listened to the newer episodes.
I recently found out about a really interesting Russian-spoken podcast that Sergey Galyonkin co-hosts called "Как Делают Игры," or in English: "How Games Are Made." Galyonkin is currently the Director of Publishing Strategy at Epic Games and also the person behind "Steam Spy." On December 8th, an episode came out that was about the new Epic Games Store (EGS). In this episode, Galyonkin answers a bunch of questions about the EGS posed to him by his co-hosts as well as listeners. I originally posted excerpts of their conversations in the general Epic Games Store thread. Until I listened to the podcast, I didn't have a firm idea of what the vision for the EGS was really, but this podcast has helped clarify a lot of things -- though it certainly also raised many new questions. I've condensed the bits that I translated earlier into a more readable format, and I hope you'll find it as interesting as I did. It's a hellishly long write-up but a compelling one I hope, so grab a cup of tea or coffee, and strap in.
> Alternatively, check the threadmarks for highlights (see the top right of this post, or go to post #290). Ran out of characters!
First things first, while I understand Russian quite well, I have never before listened to a gaming podcast in Russian, nor do I really read Russian games coverage, so a lot of terminology used in the podcast took some time for me to parse. Hence, the following disclaimer: I might have misunderstood certain parts of the podcast. I don't believe the overall story differs significantly from what's below, but there may have been a few nuances that slipped by. While I've voiced disagreements with some of the EGS's policies in the past, I did not purposefully misconstrue anything in this. If Russian-speaking readers find anything worth correcting, simply @me and I'll look it over.Context – Steam isn't as ubiquitous an institution in PC gaming as you might think
Now, according to Galyonkin, only half of Fortnite players have Steam installed, and of those that do have it installed, 60% don't actively use it. For reference, Fortnite's player count across all platforms was said to have exceeded 200 million back in November. I thought it unimaginable that the majority of the PC share wouldn't use Steam regularly, but evidently that's the case. This really crystallized that we're talking about a completely different userbase here than most of the PC players that I know and the people who frequent these forums.
Two of the podcast's co-hosts are from tinyBuild, the publisher of the Hello Neighbor games. Also a UE4 game, Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek was one of the EGS's launch titles. For Tinybuild, Steam made up the smallest share of Hello Neighbor's sales (speaking about the 2017 game). Most of their sales were in fact from direct sales through their website, and when they started giving out Steam keys, they apparently got bombarded with questions on what to do with them. Their audience skews younger, and for that reason they thought the EGS would make a good fit.
I believe these insights are essential in understanding why the EGS operates the way it does and what its strategy is. In addition, it might give us a glimpse into the types of games that will be able to maintain visibility, relevance, and popularity on this store. The EGS is markedly different from Steam in many ways, the most important of which is its in-built audience that plays Fortnite. It seems like Epic is very much aware of this and has tuned their store's design to account for this.
Discovering games
Unlike Steam, Galyonkin says that discovery on the EGS will primarily take place outside of the store. He draws parallels to a book store or movie theater. You usually know what you're going to buy or attend before going there rather than look through what's available to make your decision. New and featured releases will be shown on the storefront. The EGS's front page will not focus on algorithm-based discovery like Valve. This point was made very plainly. Galyonkin says he's skeptical towards discovery algorithms, because to write a good one for (game) discovery you need a lot of information about players' tastes. The average player on Steam owns PUBG, Counter-Strike and Dota 2 -- what game should they buy next then, he wonders. As many people only buy a few games per year, there's not a lot to go on. At that point, Galyonkin says that you might as well recommend any game, because all you really know is that they like multiplayer games. Algorithms, he continues, work better on people with a large number of games but don't really work well for the majority, i.e. those who don't own a significant enough number of games. So instead, Epic will have a curated front page like the App Store, but Galyonkin states that this won't be how most people find new games. The primary way of "discovering" games will be through influencers -- developers giving out copies of their game to influencers through the EGS and, in return, influencers giving visibility to these games in some capacity. This is basically their analog to Steam's curators.
The developer-influencer dynamic on the Epic Games Store
The central idea of this is that developers provide influencers with referral links to their games, which gives content creators and the like the possibility to earn a share of a game's sale if it is bought through them. Galyonkin explains that currently the default cut is set at 5%, and, as part of an ongoing promotion, Epic will cover this for developers. Right now, developers aren't losing any extra share of a sale's revenue above the 12% cut that the EGS takes for their services. Developers can change the cut that influencers get to whatever they want – from 0% all the way to 100%. In any case, Epic will cover the first 5% at the moment.
Here's where an interesting question arises, and I'm a little surprised that this hasn't been elaborated on yet or been questioned more broadly by the press, because it is such an incredibly important detail. On their blog, Epic has stated that "[to] jumpstart the creator economy, Epic will cover the first 5% of creator revenue-sharing for the first 24 months." If this is taken as the first 24 months since the store's launch rather than a game's launch – which was my impression – then in 2021, if developers want their game to gain visibility, they will be losing a share of their cut for a subset of sales.
After a while, Galyonkin expects market standards to develop and the rate will settle for certain types of games. He gives the example of a 20% cut being used by indies, while larger publisher-backed games might go for something like 5%. While this will not likely account for the lion's share of a game's sales, I was nonetheless surprised that Galyonkin expected that comparatively smaller independent developers would allow a larger cut of their per-game revenue. If we're to assume that by 2021 the rate for indies will indeed settle at around 20%, the percentage margin per unit that they get would be 68% -- lower than Steam, even. Again, this won't be for most units sold, but still an interesting thought. More on this later.
Developers will be able to automatically give out copies of their game to groups of influencers, and there will be different filters for influencers and press. As you might expect, the press won't get a commercial referral link – apart from this, things work the same between those two groups. Apparently, influencers are filtered by whether they are "verified" or not. Unverified influencers are all those who applied to this program and went through a rudimentary check. This involves making sure that the applicant is indeed who they are presenting themselves as and whether they have a channel. Additionally, as NoTime pointed out in the other thread, the pre-requisites for this appear to follow Epic's Support-A-Creator program, meaning that influencers/creators need fulfill the following three conditions: "[having] 1,000+ followers on at least one major social platform," "[completing] the Affiliate Agreement and [abiding] by our Creator Code of Conduct," and "[being] capable of receiving payment in a form that Epic supports." After achieving a certain minimum amount of earnings through referrals, influencers are checked by Epic moderation (again) to ensure that everything is normal in terms of their content or any other relevant factors, and they become verified.
Together with the copy of the game that developers send to influencers, Galyonkin explains that they would also be able to include a brief description of the kind of game it is and provide links to guides or asset packs, for example. However, Epic doesn't want to give developers the ability to contact individual influencers directly (which I take is to mean the EGS interface), because, according to Galyonkin, influencers don't like it when they're constantly bombarded with personal emails -- all they want from developers is that they're given the game, and they'll take a look and play it. If developers wish to contact them personally, they'll have to do that through other channels.
The news feed
The client's news feed will be the place where you can get notifications on the games you follow, developers, influencers, and get updates on price drops. You already follow a game automatically once you buy it. The ability to do so for other games, developers, and so forth is something that will come later. You'll also be able to follow unreleased games.
This sounds like it might be an ancillary second pillar for discovery. The core idea seems to be that it'll become a catch-all aggregate for things going on in the Epic Games Store and whoever you follow. For example, Galyonkin said that you'll get notifications about big updates and other developments on followed games – all things that may help get visibility for a certain game and convince someone to buy a game they follow, according to him. However, to me, this seems to presuppose that someone has heard of a certain game at all. Otherwise they wouldn't have followed it. So, in practice, I would expect the news feed to act more like a midpoint between discovery and purchase, rather than a channel for discovery in and of itself. In addition to this, he says that the news feed is planned to include your friends' activities, but Galyonkin was not yet sure what activities exactly would be shown there.
Epic also plans to implement something like subscriptions to influencers. The way this would be implemented seems to be up in the air as of yet. Some of the complications described include paid subscriptions and how that'd work. I would assume that this, too, would be integrated into the news feed, but who knows.
Customer reviews
This is a big one. We already know that customer reviews on the EGS will be opt-in. A big differentiator from Steam is that Epic seeks to incorporate mechanisms that prevent review bombing entirely. Galyonkin expects that without review bombing, all developers will want to put reviews on their page. I don't think that's entirely true, since many developers' complaints about reviews that I've read are about customers not understanding games and venting in frustration, people using reviews as faster support tickets, that reviews sometimes contain wildly inappropriate content, and so forth. Review bombs are certainly an issue, but I don't get the feeling that this is the case for the majority of games. These other issues seem more commonplace. You can see it on almost every game's Steam page.
In any case, Galyonkin talks about some of the solutions to review bombing that Epic has been looking into. One of these is a pop-up message asking a player to review a game after having closed it -- from what I understood, the idea is that only a certain subset of players will then get to review it, and it isn't something everyone can do at any time. Another option he mentioned was only allowing or displaying the reviews of people who have recently played the game. Or using a numerical system instead of the like/dislike approach (of Steam), an algorithm then monitors review scores, and extremes are removed to normalize the (final) score. They're still figuring out how to best approach it. Galyonkin states that he personally likes the aforementioned review pop-up idea. To be clear, Galyonkin was just airing some of the different approaches they've been considering. Developers will not be able to directly moderate reviews. Similar to Steam, if there's some issue with a review, a developer can flag it for evaluation by Epic.
Exclusivity
There will be (PC) games that have timed exclusivity to the EGS. Galyonkin says that Epic pays for this. They mainly pay developers to finish financing ports or to assuage fears of the game not doing well on this new platform. The latter works like a minimum guarantee of sales. Currently (or at the time of the podcast's release anyway), Epic's focus is on getting games that have not yet been released. If a developer wants to put it exclusively on their store, Epic is currently also offering to do off-site marketing, including ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google. They don't advertise the store but the games. Galyonkin explains that if a game is only available through the EGS, that is of course in Epic's own interests, and it's in a developer's interest to get marketing through them. I don't believe Galyonkin said anything about if or how that would change once the store goes open for self-publishing. One big question that's been on my mind at least is how in the world Epic got Journey. The answer is apparently that Epic cut a deal with Sony, and, to me, it sounded like Epic paid to get it ported over.
This wasn't addressed in this episode of the podcast, but here is some additional insight regarding Journey:
Upcoming consumer-facing features
Responding to complaints about the EGS being focused on developers to the detriment of consumers, Galyonkin says that their initial focus was indeed on developers and that consumer-focused features are being worked on. Evidently, even certain things on the backend for developers aren't fully finalized yet. Epic will be giving out free games every two weeks for the entirety of 2019 -- 28 games in total, including those that was given out late 2018. New (client) features for consumers will be introduced gradually.
Cloud saves will be coming around February. Achievements will be there by the end of 2019. Reviews will also come eventually – I don't recall a date being given at any point. As stated before, there will not be per-game forums, and Galyonkin also added that there wouldn't be guides like on Steam. Developer pages on the store will also be implemented at a later date. Social features will be introduced, but it'll be somewhat different from Steam's, and he couldn't give details yet. Limiting download speeds will also be an option. User profiles are planned for the beginning of "next year," but I'm unsure whether he meant early 2019 or 2020.
The equivalent of Steam cards isn't planned. Galyonkin says that they have an undesirable effect on purchasing decisions in the sense that people buy games that they don't really want just for the cards. Unlocking (in-game) items like skins and things like that will be possible but not necessarily tradeable.
You'll be able to launch non-Epic games through the launcher, like on Steam. You can already pull in friends lists from Steam, Galyonkin said. However, importing games directly from other platforms – like on GOG -- will not be done. He doesn't see the advantage of it.
As for mod support, Epic wants to apply their Support-A-Creator program to mods as well. They don't know yet how it'll work exactly. What is clear is that they don't want to sell mods but would like mod creators to somehow get some amount of money. A mod manager was discussed briefly, but nothing concrete was said.
More social media integration is being looked at. Currently, it's already possible to connect Facebook, VK, Steam, Twitch, PS, Switch, Xbox, and Google accounts.
Finally, they're happy with the look of the store as it is now with its big tiles. Eventually things like categories will be introduced, but it sounds like this is basically the design they'll be sticking with.
On the developer's end of things
The most important of these is probably that by the end of 2019 the EGS is expected to open to self-publishing. (Meaning you submit your game and Epic may/may not approve it -- not like Steam Direct)
Galyonkin states that the 12% cut that the EGS gets for their services is not planned to be raised over time. It might get lower, however, if they will be able to eventually cut a better deal with payment processing companies -- but this won't happen any time soon.
In about five to six years' time, Galyonkin expects to achieve 50% of Steam's userbase. However, he doesn't know yet roughly how many Fortnite players will convert to buyers of other games, as it's too early to tell.
The launch builds of games are tested for playability.
Users will be able to contact developers directly for tech support issues through a ticket system. This, Galyonkin claims, is expected to solve a lot of issues. Epic, as a platform, is able to read these tickets. They will not do this at their own discretion, but if it turns out that a developer is refusing to help and Epic gets complaints from its users, Epic will be able to look over their exchange history and see whether tech support was attempted through the ticket system.
Developer-created promotional codes for discounts/bonuses will eventually come. It will also be possible to generate keys like on Steam, and Epic will not charge their usual 12% for those keys. However, Galyonkin doesn't recommend it since other marketplaces typically charge a higher cut than the EGS. Games that are sold also on other storefronts will in all likelihood not be allowed to have a lower base price there. Differing sales of course are fine.
Developers are able to see suggested regional prices, but there is only limited support currently – note that Epic seem to have improved support for different currencies since this podcast aired. Regional prices are shown as a percentage discount from the base price rather than the adjusted number in the local currency (like on Steam). This, Galyonkin says, is so that developers have a better gauge on how much cheaper their game is sold for in lower income regions.
There won't be massive sales events that take up the entire store like on Steam. As to why, Galyonkin says such events effectively kill off sales for games that don't participate in them as well as for new games that launch right before that event. Instead, games on sale will be featured alongside non-sale games.
Regarding price errors, if a user buys a game on the cheap through a price error and it's Epic's fault, they won't revoke the purchase. I don't recall Galyonkin saying anything about compensating the developer in such cases, but I would almost assume so. If it's a developer's fault, it's up to them what to do.
The EGS will try to give developers as much info on players as is "legally possible" – more than on Steam. Galyonkin says that you'll be able to see what other games they play and what genres they like. Partners can disclose their own sales data, but Epic isn't allowed to. Though he does make a point of saying there'll be information that will give you an idea of what kind of games are currently popular. There will be an API that can be scraped to facilitate a potential "Epic Spy," but they will not offer that service themselves. Galyonkin would be glad to see it happen. Additionally, in certain instances, developers will be able to see what domains people came from to find their store page and find out whether that converted into a sale or not.
In the podcast, Galyonkin also said that all regions get the same build of the game. If you purchase a game in Russia, for example, it won't be that it only has Russian language in-game, as is apparently the case for some Ubisoft games. If this is requested by developers, it can be changed. Evidently, The Division 2 is already Russian-only for that region, so some changes have been made since then.
Galyonkin stated that the EGS's in-app purchase policy is not yet fully finalized – seeing as they've secured The Division 2, they've probably already figured this out by now. At the time of the podcast, he said that Epic will most likely also take a cut of in-app sales like Steam. Galyonkin was not able to give a final answer on the minutia of that.
Finally, Galyonkin said that you won't be able to append your own launcher that will be launched from the EGS app, but that this may change in the future. Once again, given how Ubisoft handles its games on Steam and that The Division 2 is launching on the EGS, I assume they've already made a change on this stance since this podcast's release. It seems like the release of The Division 2 made them finalize a lot of these decisions.
Discussion
If you got this far without skipping ahead, congratulations. Here, I'd like to outline some of my own thoughts now that I've gotten a better idea of what Epic's vision is for their store and their approach to discovery on a digital marketplace. As I said early on, it's pretty clear that the Epic Games Store has a completely different potential userbase than Steam's -- recall how Galyonkin said that 60% of Fortnite's players who have Steam installed do not actually use it. As someone who has been regularly playing games on PC for over a decade and used Steam for about just as long, that's astounding. Eye-opening, really.
This audience is very different from Steam's, and I wouldn't be surprised if their purchasing habits as well as methods of discovering new games are also very different than yours and mine. Perhaps for them streaming and influencers are indeed their primarily way of finding out about new games. That appears to be what Epic is reading off of the information they've gathered. What I find somewhat worrying is the idea of influencers getting a cut of sales. I'm absolutely not discounting that they promote games and drive sales – I myself bought Persona 4, Deadly Premonition, and many other games after watching hours upon hours of Giant Bomb's antics in those games. But giving them a direct cut is basically is asking them to always project having fun, however forced or untrue, as it is financially beneficial to them. Questionable. For the end user mainly.
Alternatively, say you're a developer and you give a copy of your game to a streamer, but they proceed to trash your game publicly. Variety streamers are not always great at games. They're human, so they may misunderstand something, get frustrated, or encounter some other roadblock and signal that this game is not fun or not worth playing. You're losing sales potentially. This is of course operating on the assumption that this audience's buying habits is indeed influenced significantly by streamers. However, given that the EGS is focused so heavily on this, we are supposed to expect as much.
This brings into a focus something that looks like a huge differentiator from Steam on the surface of it. Yet, I believe that essentially it may well lead to some of the same issues that developers currently have with Steam. Namely, the influencer-developer dynamic to facilitate discovery on the EGS, and that the developer is still no longer in control of "the message" once that copy is in the hands of an influencer. It's the same reason why many developers take issue with Steam reviews. It's open to extreme subjectivity – to a fault – as well as backfiring. Like Steam's review system, the sword can cut either way. And once the EGS transitions into self-publishing, a host of other roadblocks may come up for developers that run somewhat counter to Epic's message of developer-friendliness and, more specifically, indie-friendliness.
What I'm not yet entirely clear on is if you can choose what influencers to send your game to. More importantly, will they even play your game? Once there are hundreds or thousands of games competing for influencers' attention, it's less and less likely they'll cover it. Like us, the major limiting factor to playing more games often isn't money but time. Another key question to the viability of infuencer-driven discovery is whether your game can draw views. Ultimately, streamers' main revenue sources are – to my knowledge – subscriptions and ad viewership. Despite being a phenomenal game, I don't think that What Remains of Edith Finch is particularly compelling streaming material. Or something like Abzu, Into the Breach, Journey, and other more contemplative experiences. Think of short narrative games or games that expect only a single playthrough like Return of the Obra Dinn and Her Story. What is their place on the EGS once they're not on the front page anymore? And if a streamer's audience just watched a complete playthrough, why buy it? Will smaller developers, in accordance with Galyonkin's expectations, have to raise referral cuts to something as high as 20% to entice them to promote it? Will Epic do anything to prevent a race to the bottom for referral margins as developers vye for influencers' attention?
The main point that I'm getting to is that I think that there will be many (smaller) games that will not get sufficient exposure on the EGS without more extensive discovery tools. Of course, there are a multitude of additional considerations intersecting when making a choice on where to put your game, including whether your game has historically done well on the Steam storefront at all, and especially if it's going to be an exclusive – timed or otherwise. Currently, Epic is providing partial funding for exclusive releases and guaranteeing minimum revenue targets are met. I don't expect that to be the case once it turns over into a self-published storefront.
There are a lot of decisions that Epic is making that are extremely clever. One of these was offering Subnautica as their first free game. It's a pretty darn good "gateway" game since it incorporates the survival and crafting components of popular games like Fortnite, Minecraft, Rust, and so forth. But if the large audience Epic has amassed through Fortnite doesn't convert to regularly buying on their own volition, I wouldn't be surprised to see that many of the games that do well on Steam would not necessarily perform well on the EGS and vice versa. I'm not yet convinced that their news feed will be a stable enough second pillar to funnel people to new games, but we haven't seen much of it as of yet either.
One final impression that I came away with after listening to the podcast and writing this all up is that Epic's store may not even compete that directly with Steam if they won't significantly pull players from Steam's userbase. Funding new ports of formerly console-only games like Journey is one way of doing that. Games like The Division 2 are also huge gets, but who's to say that Ubisoft won't lock their future games to Uplay? Epic's proposition sets itself apart from Steam; the 12% is compelling enough for many developers, surely. But on the consumer side the value proposition is very much a work in progress outside of those key exclusives, and I remain doubtful over the fate of smaller games on the store. Valve's response to shifts in the market will be interesting to watch, too. According to Galyonkin, Valve got word of Epic's plans through its partners and pushed out the change to their cut ahead of Epic's announcement. Perhaps, over time, Epic's efforts will also incentivize Valve to rethink other aspects of Steam -- for the better, hopefully.
Anyway, I've rambled on for long enough. I hope this was an interesting read and that it gave you some more insight on the EGS.
And thanks, NoTime for clueing me in on this podcast and clarifying some points in the other thread. I hope you also join the conversation here, as you've got more familiarity with this podcast and also listened to the newer episodes.
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