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With EGS snapping up exclusives left an right, what can/will Valve do about it?
- Thread starter mrglcs
- Start date
Valve needs to react now before it will be to late.
While I really like VR, I think valve should put their VR division on hold. Right now it's is wasting them time, money, and developers they might want.
Lower the share they get from game sales to match epic
Go back to making big games, work on half life 3, portal 3, all your big IP sequels.
Counter bid so games won't be EGS exclusive.
While I really like VR, I think valve should put their VR division on hold. Right now it's is wasting them time, money, and developers they might want.
Lower the share they get from game sales to match epic
Go back to making big games, work on half life 3, portal 3, all your big IP sequels.
Counter bid so games won't be EGS exclusive.
They have to go against a company that have more money and could buy Valve I guess.
Honestly nothing. Steam should keep focus on improving customer experience.
imo, One thing i would like Steam to do is warn or in extreme cases blacklist studios that advertise their games on the store for months and at last moment make it EGS exclusive. Steam shouldn't be a advertising/discussion platform for other stores.
imo, One thing i would like Steam to do is warn or in extreme cases blacklist studios that advertise their games on the store for months and at last moment make it EGS exclusive. Steam shouldn't be a advertising/discussion platform for other stores.
It's hard to say something realistic without knowing anything about their profitability and cash reserves.
The naive answer would have been to lower their margin like EPIC did, but it's apparently impossible (or unnecessary for now).
The naive answer would have been to lower their margin like EPIC did, but it's apparently impossible (or unnecessary for now).
As long as you don't want to play games like Control, Detroit Become Human, Division 2, The Outer Worlds, Metro Exodus, Phoenix Point, After Party, Spellbreak, Ashen, Hades, The Walking Dead Final Season, Satisfactory, Super Meat Boy Forever, and loads more both announced and to come you don't have to worry about having to spend 8 seconds launching the app
A lot of people are more than happy to just wait a year and not give in to bullshit strong-arm practices. You do you though, and keep dismissing it as nothing more clicking another icon.
That's the idea yes, when you're a tribalist concerned troll.
For the people actually impacted by that, yes I'd rather wait a year than reward these practices.
Guess what: When you dont reward something, it stops. If people did that for the online paywalls, online would be free on consoles today.
Just found out both companies are private companies and their earnings are not public.
According to wikipedia, Tim Sweeney owns more than fifty percent of the company and Tencent holds 40%. I don't think any outsider could buyout and gain control.
A hostile take over I guess, but if that was bound to happen Tencent, if Valve would try getting Epic, would act and have way deeper pockets I believe when you look at their portfolio vs Valve.
Valve should get their act together and finally release an improved client and store. Figure out their curation, and make theirs the best place for a developer's game to be.
Buy from where? :P
Why do people just post things without thinking?
Hostile takeover how? Who are they getting the shares from?
What are people even talking about?!
Hell, I already have enough unplayed games in my Steam library to last twenty years. What's one in the face of that?
Keep on trucking. Keep improving the store, and offer more revenue brackets to different sized sales. Buying exclusives is an expensive losers game and Epic will probably stop doing it when they get enough market share.
There are two owners right for Epic? Tencent and Tim? Then sure it isn't possible. If it was many owners then it was a different matter since they could approach them one by one and by their share of the company (unless there is an agreement in place that this isn't allowed).
EDIT: And more a theoretical discussin then actually happening.
I will still be playing games i like. Just different games. Then in a years time i will be playing other games i like.
Me ignoring the EGS store doesn't stop me from playing good games.
Curation? Are you all serious? Curation is not why Metro, The Outer Worlds, The Walking Dead, Control and others yet to be announced are exclusive to the EGS. Those publishers give fuck all about curation. They'll get all the exposure as it stands anyway. As Epic grows, the indie devs swearing by Epic right now will watch their games get swallowed up by the flood...just like Xbox Live Arcade, just like the Switch, and just like the early years of Steam. Once you get beyond a number of titles, curation goes out the window, no matter how much some of you think it won't this time.
Lower the cut they take from developers? Okay. Let's entertain that. It would certainly help with winning favor back from indie devs. But the AAA titles already see a huge return because of Valve's system, which gives larger chunks to publishers as their games sell more. The difference effectively ends up being 8% for the big guys. Combined with the fact that games will inevitably sell more through Steam, and the opportunity cost of going with Epic over Steam seems a bit high without knowing numbers. This is especially telling when Epic used a AAA game that sold just 50k on PC so far to demonstrate their dominance, a figure that is hardly impressive for a franchise that sold over a million roughly six years ago. So no, it's not likely that the revenue split alone is what's sending publishers to Epic. The upfront payments are, and Valve would have to match or exceed them to keep these games on their platform. I'm all for developers seeing more money, but let's not be so naive as to assume those bigger cuts are doing anything but lining pockets at the publishers.
What else is there? Epic will have to spend years trying to match the features already on Steam. Support for VR and modern controllers, free key generation for devs, account sharing, in-home streaming, etc. They aren't as consumer friendly and you have zero options but to pay the prices Epic wants you to pay for games because third party sellers aren't selling their keys.
Reality is there isn't much for Valve to do. Publishers will take millions of dollars up front every time. The real question is how long Epic can maintain the illusion of games on their store actually selling well before publishers start questioning how much revenue they're missing by skipping Steam. How long can Epic's store be a barebones POS? How many are willing to pay full price for games more than a couple of months after launch, because there won't be any third party sales of keys. How long before they inevitably increase their take of the revenue? They'll have to invest in features and improvement eventually, and that Fortnite money will dry up some day. What are they going to do when they can't justify dropping two million or something to secure the rights to the next AAA title that's only going to sell 50-100k on their platform during the launch period? Epic can't compete on even ground, which is why they'd rather eliminate the competition altogether instead of actually, you know, competing.
Lower the cut they take from developers? Okay. Let's entertain that. It would certainly help with winning favor back from indie devs. But the AAA titles already see a huge return because of Valve's system, which gives larger chunks to publishers as their games sell more. The difference effectively ends up being 8% for the big guys. Combined with the fact that games will inevitably sell more through Steam, and the opportunity cost of going with Epic over Steam seems a bit high without knowing numbers. This is especially telling when Epic used a AAA game that sold just 50k on PC so far to demonstrate their dominance, a figure that is hardly impressive for a franchise that sold over a million roughly six years ago. So no, it's not likely that the revenue split alone is what's sending publishers to Epic. The upfront payments are, and Valve would have to match or exceed them to keep these games on their platform. I'm all for developers seeing more money, but let's not be so naive as to assume those bigger cuts are doing anything but lining pockets at the publishers.
What else is there? Epic will have to spend years trying to match the features already on Steam. Support for VR and modern controllers, free key generation for devs, account sharing, in-home streaming, etc. They aren't as consumer friendly and you have zero options but to pay the prices Epic wants you to pay for games because third party sellers aren't selling their keys.
Reality is there isn't much for Valve to do. Publishers will take millions of dollars up front every time. The real question is how long Epic can maintain the illusion of games on their store actually selling well before publishers start questioning how much revenue they're missing by skipping Steam. How long can Epic's store be a barebones POS? How many are willing to pay full price for games more than a couple of months after launch, because there won't be any third party sales of keys. How long before they inevitably increase their take of the revenue? They'll have to invest in features and improvement eventually, and that Fortnite money will dry up some day. What are they going to do when they can't justify dropping two million or something to secure the rights to the next AAA title that's only going to sell 50-100k on their platform during the launch period? Epic can't compete on even ground, which is why they'd rather eliminate the competition altogether instead of actually, you know, competing.
EDIT: Holy shit tyraniboah, you beat me to it. ^^^^^^^^
It's simple.
They have to outbid Epic's moneyhats, the main draw fordevelopers publishers. It's gonna be Epic.
Just kidding.
It's fucking bullshit.
And people are actually cheering for this. That's the most depressing part.
Even if they were to announce a bunch of new features and a change to the split (one that doesn't put the extra costs on the customers of course, because fuck that), Epic is just gonna pull the same shit for who know how long with that Fortnite money. And people will keep cheering, because gotta support the anti-competitive practices to own Valve/the Steam fanboys.
Instead of using the revenue split as a proper selling point for their store they went all out with exclusivity bids, but gaming press shills can at least keep using that one so it's all good. Also, Valve sitting in their laurels and doing absolutely nothing for years so the barebones Epic store is an incredibly good alternative, but at the same time Steam is too feature complete so the moneyhats are 100% justified at the same time to be able to compete. Amazing.
People forgot about the Rise of the Tomb Raider fiasco too fast it seems, because now the practice is A-OK.
Also, important note to everyone talking about curation: curating a store with so many games being released every week outright means BLOCKING those games from ever releasing on Steam. There are assets flips there, but EGS defenders ignore the fact that the vast majority of releases are NOT asset flips. Indie devs angry about not being as visible nowadays, but that's goddamn competition to you, and still, the devs that are being brought over to EGS with ahead payments are the big ones that can already do great on name alone.
It's simple.
They have to outbid Epic's moneyhats, the main draw for
Just kidding.
It's fucking bullshit.
And people are actually cheering for this. That's the most depressing part.
Even if they were to announce a bunch of new features and a change to the split (one that doesn't put the extra costs on the customers of course, because fuck that), Epic is just gonna pull the same shit for who know how long with that Fortnite money. And people will keep cheering, because gotta support the anti-competitive practices to own Valve/the Steam fanboys.
Instead of using the revenue split as a proper selling point for their store they went all out with exclusivity bids, but gaming press shills can at least keep using that one so it's all good. Also, Valve sitting in their laurels and doing absolutely nothing for years so the barebones Epic store is an incredibly good alternative, but at the same time Steam is too feature complete so the moneyhats are 100% justified at the same time to be able to compete. Amazing.
People forgot about the Rise of the Tomb Raider fiasco too fast it seems, because now the practice is A-OK.
Also, important note to everyone talking about curation: curating a store with so many games being released every week outright means BLOCKING those games from ever releasing on Steam. There are assets flips there, but EGS defenders ignore the fact that the vast majority of releases are NOT asset flips. Indie devs angry about not being as visible nowadays, but that's goddamn competition to you, and still, the devs that are being brought over to EGS with ahead payments are the big ones that can already do great on name alone.
How this or "Just make HL3!" suggestions would counter and compete against Epic paying publishers / devs (tens of) millions for them to drop Steam?
Why Valve taking e.g. 15% would incentive developer into not taking 20M from Epic up front?
1. Talk about the problem. Detail the ongoing discussions and their focus on customer first, developers second, money hats never.
2. Block discussions about games bought in different stores because can generate confussion if those can't be bought in steam.
3. Create a new exclusive to Valve tag named CURATED. And create a new store that is exactly steam forcing CURATED tag for people that want a curated experience.
4. Start with the HL3 hype
2. Block discussions about games bought in different stores because can generate confussion if those can't be bought in steam.
3. Create a new exclusive to Valve tag named CURATED. And create a new store that is exactly steam forcing CURATED tag for people that want a curated experience.
4. Start with the HL3 hype
Curation is probably not the thing that will be useful here, but discovery and exposure are real things that can make a difference even without curation on the actual storefront. You mention Switch for example, and while it's true that the eShop itself is flooded with garbage and has a terrible interface to search for anything, Nintendo actually invests marketing funds into highlighting and bringing attention to upcoming indie titles all the time. They just had another Direct yesterday dedicated to that for example. The Nintendo website itself also does a good job of making indie titles on the Switch reach a wider audience, especially exclusive ones. This is the sort of thing Epic is promising. Whether they continue to follow through in the long term is another matter, but it is valuable right now. It's not just cash moneyhats.
Well...
1 - Most of these games can be played on a console.
2 - The Division 2 can be purchased on Uplay and TOW on Windows Store.
3 - People have backlogs, waiting one year is not exactly painful.
If people doesn't want to "click another icon", they won't.
Why would you reward them for the anti consumer practice of releasing on console and not steam? It's objectively inferior, in that resolutions and framerates are actually lower. It's not just the ecosystem that's worse.
This is at best a temporary thing anyway/ They're not going to keep buying exclusives forever, but it may be long enough to really shake up the market.
Dunno about me. I'm probably not playing any of these games anytime soon lol
Not even if they were on Steam, mind you. My current financial situation just doesn't allow to buy lots of games on release. :p
It doesn't just look like money hatting to me. We're seeing Ubisoft and Microsoft being eager to support the EGS, because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Microsoft is happy to buddy up with Nintendo now on cross-platform play and with ports like Cuphead because it helps to hurt Sony. In the same way, Ubisoft and Microsoft are teaming up with EGS to weaken Steam's hold on the industry. Wouldn't be surprised to see EA and Bethesda join in later on, and offer games on EGS and their own storefronts, but continue to exclude Steam.
It's certainly interesting to see where this goes.
No, Epic isn't promising that at all. They've actually stated that it's the responsibility of the developers/publishers to handle all marketing and community support. Epic views their store as nothing more than a place to buy and sell games. Their "curation" consists of whether or a not a game is allowed on the store. If it is, that's the full extent of Epic's involvement. They aren't going to do anything else to promote these games.
When you consider the sheer number of games available on Steam, its discovery tools are far superior to any other platform. It's not even close. For the majority of indie devs, their chances of being discovered on Steam are significantly higher than being discovered on EGS because Epic won't even allow most of them on their store.
I mean what hypothetical example number has to do with point of my post?
Some posters here say that some indie dev let it slip that they got 2M from Epic to remove game from Steam aka 12m exclusivity to EGS.
Also storefronts like GMG would get curb stomped.
Because Microsoft is fighting good fight against Evil Steam and its tight grip on whole video game industry they are releasing their largest IP as collection on Steam?