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With EGS snapping up exclusives left an right, what can/will Valve do about it?
- Thread starter mrglcs
- Start date
The only way to stop exclusives that are bought with a moneyhat is a bigger moneyhat.
That's not really sustainable, and I also don't think what we need are more bought exclusives.
Ultimately, everything is just timed exclusivity so far, and I'm a patient man, so whatever.
That's not really sustainable, and I also don't think what we need are more bought exclusives.
Ultimately, everything is just timed exclusivity so far, and I'm a patient man, so whatever.
IMHO this whole situation exists in the first place because of Steam Direct. And Steam Direct exists because Valve couldn't keep up with Steam Greenlight. And Steam Greenlight existed because Valve got sent some indie games like Minecraft - I'm not sure if they actually saw Minecraft, I think so but I'm not sure - and decided against selling them, and then when they came around a lot of sales were lost - and in case of Minecraft Mojang decided to avoid the cut since the infrastructure was ready.
The Steam Direct setup means that there are lots of indies who try and lose. You will see some people complain about it, but most are probably understanding that their stuff just didn't take off. The developers which complain the most are the ones who would have been on Steam under the semi-manual checkup, because they know people would spend more time with their games wasn't it for all the other stuff, good or bad.
Based on this diagnosis, Valve can do various things. One thing they were planning to do was releasing Source 2 under no cut as long as the games come to Steam. This was a very good idea in theory, the problem is that Source 2 is vaporware. If Valve is willing to do moneyhats, the greatest target would be Unity Technologies, proceeded by the exact same deal involving Unity. Alternatively they could actually go and make that Source 2 work, and be greater than Unity and Unreal, and that would be helpful, but not quite there, I think it would be way easier to buy out something essential.
An alternative is to attack the "problem" itself by essentially desyncing Steam Store into Steam Delicatessen and Steam Warehouse. This cannot be a hidden data recommendation thing or else people are not going to believe it, these must be two separate, visually distinct sections of the store. Steam Warehouse would be where the games go by default, Steam Delicatessen would be were users go by default (with a big button allowing people to go to the Warehouse). Direct would allow the game to enter the Warehouse, Delicatessen would involve more madness, but it would have to be formalized madness, possibly with multiple paths. The thing left to figure out is how the hell do you convince people to check out the Warehouse, but I'm pretty sure Valve could figure it out once it would be a formal thing, instead of just some games appearing on front page but not others.
The Steam Direct setup means that there are lots of indies who try and lose. You will see some people complain about it, but most are probably understanding that their stuff just didn't take off. The developers which complain the most are the ones who would have been on Steam under the semi-manual checkup, because they know people would spend more time with their games wasn't it for all the other stuff, good or bad.
Based on this diagnosis, Valve can do various things. One thing they were planning to do was releasing Source 2 under no cut as long as the games come to Steam. This was a very good idea in theory, the problem is that Source 2 is vaporware. If Valve is willing to do moneyhats, the greatest target would be Unity Technologies, proceeded by the exact same deal involving Unity. Alternatively they could actually go and make that Source 2 work, and be greater than Unity and Unreal, and that would be helpful, but not quite there, I think it would be way easier to buy out something essential.
An alternative is to attack the "problem" itself by essentially desyncing Steam Store into Steam Delicatessen and Steam Warehouse. This cannot be a hidden data recommendation thing or else people are not going to believe it, these must be two separate, visually distinct sections of the store. Steam Warehouse would be where the games go by default, Steam Delicatessen would be were users go by default (with a big button allowing people to go to the Warehouse). Direct would allow the game to enter the Warehouse, Delicatessen would involve more madness, but it would have to be formalized madness, possibly with multiple paths. The thing left to figure out is how the hell do you convince people to check out the Warehouse, but I'm pretty sure Valve could figure it out once it would be a formal thing, instead of just some games appearing on front page but not others.
- Build an actual customer support team
- Make their front store page meaningful again
- Stop half-assing features like big picture mode
- Make games that don't involve gambling or the Steam Marketplace
Valve invited Minecraft to go up on Steam very early on, Notch declined their offer.
Pretty much this.
Valve could improve stuff on Steam but i don't think they need to do that as a response to Epic.
Most games still get released on Steam and most people will use Steam to purchase a game available in multiple stores for obvious reasons, so trying to moneyhat exclusives will not actually help anything.
Epic can't hide numbers forever, so we still need to see how meaningful EGS sales are before giving a shit tbh.
Valve can revenue share match, but I honestly don't think it will help them much. Epic is getting exclusives through money hats, not because of their revenue split. Steam is too much of the market to ignore without the extra incentive.
Valve should probably just focus on improving Steam for now. Epic isn't going to be throwing big bags of money at publishers forever, at some point they're going to slow down. Once they do they're going to have to actually compete with Steam on features. That's where Valve currently holds a massive advantage, and they should do everything in their power to hold onto it.
Valve should probably just focus on improving Steam for now. Epic isn't going to be throwing big bags of money at publishers forever, at some point they're going to slow down. Once they do they're going to have to actually compete with Steam on features. That's where Valve currently holds a massive advantage, and they should do everything in their power to hold onto it.
I mean, they could do nothing and still have the moral high ground. In addition to 100x the depth of user features and quality of experience.
To Valve, Epic is like the storefront equivalent of an internet troll. Worst thing you can do is acknowledge it exists, lol.
To Valve, Epic is like the storefront equivalent of an internet troll. Worst thing you can do is acknowledge it exists, lol.
I assume no one would have an issue with this, since Half Life is made by Valve themselves.
half life 3 will obliterate epic. cyberpunk 2077 needs to stay on steam. and yes, nothing else needs to be done. valve are not the bad guys as much as egs fanboys want to make them out to be. If anything, upodate the client, make it less of a hog, every day theres a fucking update.
I know Valve doesn't want to be the gatekeeper and determine what games succeed or fail, but it would be really nice if they were better at promoting high quality indie titles. Something like the Nindies presentation earlier today would be amazing.
Instead you occasionally end up with games like Wandersong and Lucah being flagged as possibly fake, and it just makes them seem completely asleep at the wheel. Just hire some people to actually play a bit of every game that comes out
Instead you occasionally end up with games like Wandersong and Lucah being flagged as possibly fake, and it just makes them seem completely asleep at the wheel. Just hire some people to actually play a bit of every game that comes out
Their options aren't good. Weathering the storm is the most straightforward path and the one I think they will go for. I do not believe they will start offering counter-moneyhats to keep games on Steam. They can continue to improve Steam as a general platform (which they would do either way) but so long as Epic is offering straight up millions of dollars to developers, people will take those deals, even at a 0% cut, even if all the porn games go away, even if Jim Sterling's favourite assets flip never make it to the store again. Money is the language Epic is speaking and it's the only thing making developers go exclusive. Once Epic's store either becomes too expensive to subsidize or gains traction so they don't feel like they "have to", they will hopefully cut the fucking bullshit. But it could be a long wait in either case.
Even funnier is "stop porn games and more stringently moderate the forums" as a solution. The latter they should unequivocally do, yet will have no impact on any of this.
Even funnier is "stop porn games and more stringently moderate the forums" as a solution. The latter they should unequivocally do, yet will have no impact on any of this.
Yeah okay, it's obvious that these drive by console users don't know much about the situation and are just rubbing it in PC players faces. Even if Valve lowered their revenue match, EPIC is paying these pubs to keep their games from steam.
do you mean Half-Life 3, specifically? Valve makes games (lol artifact, but seriously, they've got others in the works and have just acquired a studio as well) and Valve maintains a few games with solid support, too.
For the people that are steam or nothing. It's on the same platform, so why not?
I think you should take a chill pill and get some sleep, "this fucking site man." :D
Instead of giving the devs a lower cut give it to the customers. Like the spend £30+ and get another £5 off they did. They could really do a lot of promotion like this and absorb the cost without passing it onto the devs and still not make a loss.
Epic are burning though a lot of money just to try and catch up with Steam, make them burn it even faster by being the cheaper shop. Epic has investors to please and sooner or later the next craze in gaming will come out and that Fortnite money will dry up.
Epic are burning though a lot of money just to try and catch up with Steam, make them burn it even faster by being the cheaper shop. Epic has investors to please and sooner or later the next craze in gaming will come out and that Fortnite money will dry up.
Lower their revenue share as others mentioned. Improve discoverability and bury asset flips. Partnership with legitimate indie devs, imagine if we had the Steam version of the Nindies Direct quarterly from Valve. And finally, stop resting over the pile of money Steam brings in and start developing games again.
This is an idea I was ruminating this morning. Not as a counter to Epic, just as something that should be done, and not just from Valve. It does create a sort of tiering system whereby they consciously choose to play kingmaker and expose [15 games] out of [2000 games even ignoring asset flips and porn] but better than nothing I suppose.
That doesn't really answer anything. If devs really object to getting a lower cut, really believe that lack of exposure, etc, are the reason they're not selling well on Steam, then why go back there when they have found a better alternative in the Epic store?
I saw this quote from Gabe somewhere else.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem
If he still believes this, Valve won't do anything.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem
If he still believes this, Valve won't do anything.
Likely they will provide some new service or value, along with better revenue sharing options to weaken the exclusivity money-hatting of Epic. Valve as a company seems too libertarian to get into paying for exclusives, when their mantra for years was offer a better service, and even pirates will come to you.
I don't really want to see Steam heavily moderate or curate their platform, when they exist as a unique storefront that lets a wide variety of content in. Just continue to improve the tools for users to avoid games/features/people they don't like on the platform, improve the tools to find content people do tend to like, continue to update the UI, and yeah they can hire more people for customer service.
I don't really want to see Steam heavily moderate or curate their platform, when they exist as a unique storefront that lets a wide variety of content in. Just continue to improve the tools for users to avoid games/features/people they don't like on the platform, improve the tools to find content people do tend to like, continue to update the UI, and yeah they can hire more people for customer service.
The only way to prevent it from happening is for Valve to buy or outbid for their own exclusives and won't that be a treat. \s
All the other things people are mentioning are nice but they are not the reason the games are going exclusive to the EGS. The Outer Worlds isn't exclusive because Steam doesn't do enough curation for example.
All the other things people are mentioning are nice but they are not the reason the games are going exclusive to the EGS. The Outer Worlds isn't exclusive because Steam doesn't do enough curation for example.
At any rate, as for what possible moves Valve might make, well they will be doing this at GDC tomorrow, so watch that space.
https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/steam-business-update-presented-by-valve/865621
https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/steam-business-update-presented-by-valve/865621
I do wonder what would happen if they took the hard line of "if you're planning to release on multiple clients you must launch day and date on Steam, you won't be allowed to release on Steam later down the line" to curb the exclusive for a year situation. I think that's out there and could well be Valve cutting their nose off to spite their face, but it would be interesting to see if publishers/developers would go for the initial lump sum from Epic over the Steam user base and long tail (such as featuring in daily deals or sales).
Change their terms to prevent devs from advertising on Steam to generate interest and then cutting an 11th hour EGS exclusivity deal. Other than that just keep adding features to the store and wait it out, I highly doubt that Epic will continue to moneyhat games well into the future.
If Valve reduces revenue sharing to 10% that wont stop EGS from paying millions of dollars for exclusives and it wont stop the developers from taking that money.
I don't think they can, in all honesty. The only reason Epic is getting exclusives is through moneyhatting, and considering they've announced $100 million in grants to UE4 projects (not requiring said projects to be games), they have probably far more money to burn than Valve currently has. Certainly, I could easily see Epic offering Rockstar a quarter of a billion dollars for the inevitable Red Dead Redemption 2 PC port.
And that's the bottom line, really. Anyone who argues that there's any other factor is lying to your face.
And that's the bottom line, really. Anyone who argues that there's any other factor is lying to your face.
They shouldn't do anything but continue on the same path of introducing/refining features. They have the best ecosystem on PC and given the choice people will naturally want to get their games there. Epic can't possibly moneyhat every single game, eventually the Fortnite well will dry and then if they didn't significantly improve their store and launcher they'll disappear as quickly as they appeared. I don't know if it's really feasible to lower the industry standard 30% cut while still having all the features that make Steam great, but if it's doable, then maybe lower it a bit. Don't do any moneyhatting though, it's a waste of money on PC where there's no box to buy and people aren't locked in your ecosystem.
Complaints about 30% cut was just smoke and mirrors. Real reason for all these sudden exclusivity deals with Epic is because they are paying roughly 2 million USD to publishers for every exclusive game (we don't yet know what moneyhat top dogs like Ubi are getting, it probably is significantly more than 2 mil).
They don't have to match it, but at least reduce close a bit the gap. If there is only a 3-4% difference, I think devs would stay on Steam.
Do you seriously believe that the games come to Epic exclusively due to the revenue sharing?
The same games will be exclusive to Steam if Valve moneyhat them. It's that simple.
