Tim Sweeney on EGS' Impact [Jun 26, 2019, 11:18 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
A lengthy
series
of tweets from Tim Sweeney looks to address some of the concerns gamers have
expressed over Epic Games Store exclusives and other issues:
This question gets to the core of Epic’s strategy for competing with dominant storefronts. We believe exclusives are the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo at a large enough scale to permanently affect the whole game industry.
For example, after years of great work by independent stores (excluding big publishers like EA-Activision-Ubi), none seem to have reached 5% of Steam’s scale. Nearly all have more features than Epic; and the ability to discount games is limited by various external pressures.
This leads to the strategy of exclusives which, though unpopular with dedicated Steam gamers, do work, as established by the major publisher storefronts and by the key Epic Games store releases compared to their former Steam revenue projections and their actual console sales.
In judging whether a disruptive move like this is reasonable in gaming, I suggest considering two questions: Is the solution proportionate to the problem it addresses, and are gamers likely benefit from the end goal if it’s ultimately achieved?
The 30% store tax usually exceeds the entire profits of the developer who built the game that’s sold. This is a disastrous situation for developers and publishers alike, so I believe the strategy of exclusives is proportionate to the problem.
If the Epic strategy either succeeds in building a second major storefront for PC games with an 88/12 revenue split, or even just leads other stores to significantly improve their terms, the result will be a major wave of reinvestment in game development and a lowering of costs.
Will the resulting 18% increase in developer and publisher revenue benefit gamers? Such gains are generally split among (1) reinvestment, (2) profit, and (3) price reduction. The more games are competing with each other, the more likely the proceeds are to go to (1) and (3).
So I believe this approach passes the test of ultimately benefitting gamers after game storefronts have rebalanced and developers have reinvested more of their fruits of their labor into creation rather than taxation.
Of course, there are LOTS of challenges along the way, and Epic is fully committed to solving all problems that arise for gamers are for our partners as the Epic Games store grows.
grudgebearer wrote on Jun 26, 2019, 16:44:jdreyer wrote on Jun 26, 2019, 16:28:
Today a AAA game is $60. In 1999, it was $50. However, $50 in 1999 is the same as $75 today. So AAA games are in fact cheaper than they were 20 years ago, and get relatively cheaper every year.
How many AAA games that come out now are really $60.00 for the full game? How many of them don't immediately have season passes and/or day 1 DLCs available?
In 2019, for $60.00, you get the base game when it comes to AAA games, and that's it. You can play just the base game, but let's not pretend that you are getting the full experience for $60 and that content hasn't been carved out as DLC that's going to cost you an extra $20-$50.
Tack on some loot boxes or an in-game storefront, and get yourself some "recurrent user spending" which didn't exist in 1999, and you have a completely different gaming sales paradigm.
"Full game" is kind of a weasely term. How many games actually needed the DLC, or in most cases, were even improved by it? Fallout 3, I'd say. Can't think of another.
DLC is almost always coming from a second budget. The game released is the full game, the DLC is budgeted separately and often done by different teams. It's outside the scope, and even in the 90s would not have been included.
Ignoring full expansions, because we've always had those, what else actually completed a game, instead of adding either more of the same or, in some cases, lesser versions of content already in the game (looking at you, pirate-and-jungle themed expansions for Borderlands 2.) Most of this stuff is also completed months after launch.
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Music for the discerning:
http://www.deathwishinc.com
http://www.hydrahead.com
http://www.painkillerrecords.com
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