Tim Sweeney: “If Valve commits to a permanent 88% revenue share, we’ll stop making new exclusive deals” (Read Staff Post)
- Thread starter Carlius
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I like the fact that Tim is screaming 'Steam share BAD', 'EGS saviors of publishers and dev on PC, Steam killing them' and Valve hasn't even mentioned EGS themselves. In a couple months Tim will probably tweet 'if Valve answers this, I promise to stop with exclusivity deals'.
Regarding the shares, people have shown over and over that there's a reason for Steam 30%, and while Tim denies it, his store doesn't even have a shopping cart. And fuck me, this tweet along Randy's one regarding Half-Life 3 shows that these guys are desperately trying to blame their shitty decisions into Valve.
Regarding the shares, people have shown over and over that there's a reason for Steam 30%, and while Tim denies it, his store doesn't even have a shopping cart. And fuck me, this tweet along Randy's one regarding Half-Life 3 shows that these guys are desperately trying to blame their shitty decisions into Valve.
Is my memory shaky, or were Spiderweb fairly distrustful of Steam for a fair while before they finally got around to releasing their games on it and had a 180 on the subject? I seem to remember reading Jeff being very sceptical way back in the past.
The punchline to all this is that even the Epic Games Store fails to meet the "12% with no strings attached" standard Tim is setting here, thanks to the very common payment processing fees bumping a significant portion of the transactions up to 17%.
Everything he has done so far with EGS is proof that he is anti-consumer, that's my point.
Personally I would love everything on GOG or at least DRM free on Steam or a store with comparable features, now that is something I would fight for.
People who say this is about people being steam fans are being disingenous imo.
Hells yeah they are being disingenuous. They want to frame this as a binary issue. It's either Steam or Epic. "This is to make steam more dev friendly, Steam needs to answer. Maybe Steam can meet in the middle. Steam's 'monopoly*' is bad."
It doesn't take into account console storefront and their 30% (which Fortnite is on), smaller storefront, key resellers, etc.
By making it binary, then it's tribal. You dislike Steam? Or did Steam rub you the wrong way? Then Tim's bullshit is easier to swallow despite his own company forcing their own devs to insane work conditions to shuck out new fucking skins in their own game. Amongst other issues with the company.
But so long as they have a punching bag in Steam, well "I am not saying Epic is perfect but........."
*Definition of Monopoly changes daily.
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A lot at era are pro developer.
Most of us aren't really pro publisher though, which is what this is.
Most of us aren't really pro publisher though, which is what this is.
I really feel that just reducing storefronts cuts just masks the bigger problem: we are on a overcrowded market. People look at Epic's store cut but don't look how highly curated is. Devs will get a bigger cut but just some of them, many will be left aside.
Sure Valve could and maybe should lower their cut, but that's not the real issue devs faces.
The way I tend to think about it is this:
You can pay a 0% cut by selling your own game on your own website; you will get 100% of the revenue, although some of that will go to the overheads of distribution, advertising and payment processing.
So what do you gain by adding a store into the mix?
For a 30% cut you get distribution and international payment processing, a number of advertising features, systems for customer feedback and response, access to various useful APIs. You're able to get free key generation to allow you to still sell in your own manner or in other locations. You'll be on the biggest store with both the advantages (lots of eyes around) and disadvantages (it's tricky to stand out) that that could entail.
For a 12% cut you get distribution and payment processing covered for you, although the payment processing systems are not particularly international-friendly; your global audience is going to be significantly impacted as a result. You're going to get far fewer eyes on you, but (assuming you get on through the curation) that does mean that it ought to be easier to stand out. You may be offered a moneyhat in return for exclusivity.
(Strictly speaking I really ought to factor how the Unreal Engine discount works into this as well, but I don't know enough about the numbers involved to do so.)
The latter choice isn't inherently incorrect, but you're paying less money for a significantly inferior product. That may still be sufficient for your needs, but is it the most profitable option?
(And as I've said elsewhere, the real answer is to be on both - and several others as well - and I'd love to see how the breakdowns look for titles that do that. But you can't do that for a period of time if you've taken the moneyhat.)
Out of interest: Are there any titles (bar Fortnite, naturally) that have voluntarily released exclusively on the Epic Store without an associated moneyhat?
I am pro-consumer but I appreciate devs and publishers that realise they wouldn't even be in business if it wasn't for their fans and that adopt business models that show gratitude towards their consumers.
Feels like a lot of devs and pubs these days look down on consumers and actively try to find every possible way to milk money from them rather than focusing on providing them with an experience their loyalty deserves.
Do you need to constantly buy new games in order to enjoy gaming as a hobby? If these developers want to put their games exclusively on Epic's store, then they clearly don't want me as a customer, which is fine. I don't really need to play them, anyway. I have 30 years worth of games to get through in my backlog, so I'll just turn to that instead. Or maybe I'll go play an old game again. The point is I don't need to buy new games, I do it because I want to, and if I don't want to buy new games anymore, I won't be the one suffering.
I still wonder, in the age of digital, why aren't games cheaper? No more physical items such as the cases, booklets, discs. No more money going to all of the things needed to actually ship/sell the physical items (such as paying employees, gas, stocking, etc). And yet games are still the exact same price as their physical counterparts.
If we're thinking about redoing profit splits (at least on PC because no one is saying a fucking thing about consoles) we should be rethinking the actual prices themselves. The customer needs to matter more.
If we're thinking about redoing profit splits (at least on PC because no one is saying a fucking thing about consoles) we should be rethinking the actual prices themselves. The customer needs to matter more.
If you're talking about AAA 60$ games, that's because the 60$ price point is well below the increases it would have had if it kept pace with inflation. If games rose with inflation they'd be at 110-120$ US now.
For lower priced games, if you want lower prices, you have to give the developer a bigger cut, because they have to build in their expenses to the price point. You can sell at a lower price with 12% of your price being skimmed versus 30%.
Only if you've already made them lots of money.
Well lets agree to disagree then.
Skins/maps and other things for their multiplayer games such as CS/TF2. I remember there being a lot of controversy about the hats in TF2.
I do not see why I should give Steam any trust, and don't worry I won't feel offended.
But you know, before Steam, PC games came in disks you could resell.
I don't buy the idea that a 30% cut is the biggest problem facing the PC side of this industry. But I would love to see Valve drop their cut to match Epic's.
i think the idea is it's easier to have one set msrp valuation and wherever it goes from there, it goes
in theory yeah digital should be cheaper, but even when you work through distribution an manufacturing costs dunno if you'd be looking at that big of a reduction, like maybe $10 at the very most (in 2019 at least where discs hardly 'contain' a game to begin with)
You might want to read up on wage Inflation.
I always LOL at this bullshit cost inflation argumemt
Fortnite devs create them, for TF2/CS it's the community. My beef with it is that these things used to be free when I was younger and played the games, I think it was before Steam Workshops.
You will also get 100% (minus transaction fees of coruse) of revenue if you generate key and sell it yourself. Which as are aware isn't posiible with EGS.
As a consumer I also was fairly distrustfull of Steam when it started, I needed 7 years before I trusted them with my purchases. I now have hundreds of games on it.
So for many of us, it is not just a launcher, it is also a trust issue. If we should give Epic some years to get their store on par with Steam, they can give us consumers some years before we trust them.
There are free skins though, and nothing is forcing people to charge for them. And the integration with workshop is a net benefit.
Still it is quite amusing that in stanning for the man you're painting him as as an even more petty dirtbag than he already seems to be.
You could argue that the revenue share for skin creators isn't good, and you'd have a point there, if that was the argument you were making. Unfortunately it isn't.
I know what you mean, but what I'm trying to say is the problems that's wrecking game development studios is nowhere close to being about The 70/30% marketshare.
Might want to read your own article that you posted. Nowhere in it do they mention EGS. Only the publisher's decision to remove Exodus in the short time from Steam being unfair to Steam customers.
Sure, why not, let's get a $10 decrease then. Hell even $5. Just because they have their set MSRP doesn't mean we have to accept it. But sadly, we do. We tend to accept a lot of things while getting less and less service as they earn record profits.
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IIIIII AM THE GREAT MIGHTY TIM
AND I WILL OFFER LESS THAN HIM
A PILE OF LYIN' TWEETS
ARE HOW I HOPE TO BEAT
GIVE A MONEYHAT TO SELL BAD RATS
DO YOU REALLY THINK PC GAMING'S CURSED
YOU DON'T SEEM TO KNOW HOW MUCH THINGS COST
INDIE GAMES JUST MIGHT GET IN, BUT PLEASE GET FAMOUS FIRST
IF WE DON'T LIKE YOU THEN JUST GET LOST
TRIPLE A'S A BIT OF A MESS RIGHT NOW
WITH CRUNCH AND RISK AND LAYOFFS MAKING THINGS FRAUGHT
SO WE'LL JUST BLAME THE STORE FROM VALVE
THEN WE DON'T HAVE TO REAP THE PAIN WE'VE WROUGHT
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Indeed, at least in the US. This is from last August.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...rs-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
People only count stuffs they can easily understand the benefit of.
It's immediately obvious that 12% is smaller than 30%, but all the API and features that Valve offers are more abstract, you won't immediately see the benefits of them, you would actually have to think a tiny little bit to realise how valuable those features are, and that's hard.
They didn't.
Later today, sales of Metro Exodus will be discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store.
The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam.
We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know.
The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam.
We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know.
Where did you see them calling EGS bad or adressing their strategy or anything ? They said the publisher decision is unfair to Steam customer. Which it is.
It's kinda like when you get hired full-time at a company, and you look at the salary and think that's all you're getting because that's what you're immediately going to notice. But if you were to take benefits into account, you'd realize you're getting a lot more, it's just not as apparent. At least not until you need it.
'Another store', though. I meant more like a specific mention of Tim and EGS' strategy, like some people wanted to see at GDC for some reason.
Are you prepared to sacrifice improvements to Steam, ability to generate free keys by developers (knee caping almost all pc games sellers), holding some functionality for developers behind paywall? Because that's what you are asking for.
And a lot of the stuff Valve is offering is completely free to use, whether you use the Steam store or not. And AFAIK, with the dedicated server stuff Valve is going to roll out, you don't even need to use Steam at all. It's free for anyone to use.
I mean. Case in point. I just went and checked our local tracker to see how Exodus is doing there. Over the let's be generous and say four-and-a-half years, Last Light has been downloaded some ~93k times. It's been two months, and Exodus is already at 120k. For curiosity's sake, Metro 2033 - launched before Steam added pricing in Rubles and local price adjustments for Russia - sits at around 180k downloads total. So just from this cursory look-see, it seems it's already having a regressive effect on piracy here.
Epic store a has competitive advantage for Unreal Engine games by waiving the 5% engine licensing fee if it's published there.
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He only said this to give the impression that he's just doing all this for the good of his fellow developers. In reality, he knows Valve won't budge, so despite knowing what he's saying is complete bullshit, there's no risk in saying it.