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.
Slick wrote on Jun 26, 2019, 18:35:grudgebearer wrote on Jun 26, 2019, 18:23:Slick wrote on Jun 26, 2019, 18:10:
Think of how many games we've all played that have run on the Unreal Engine. Epic has contributed to the ecosystem. That and their engine licencing deals are quite generous to studios, I think it's like 5% only after you've made X amount of profit, and nothing before that. Pretty good to developers.
And then they undercut the ludicrous store tax so that studios can hope to make more money from THEIR FUCKING PRODUCT than the goddamn payment processor does.
There's an easy rubric to remember:
A) Epic has been directly responsible for thousands of games actually being made by indy to AAA studios.
B) Steam has middleman profited from the hard work of thousands of games by indy to AAA studios.
Now tell me which you're mad at again sheep?
BTW, I should have an RSS feed notification for whenever a member in this forum starts getting called a shill, as it probably means they actually have something intelligent to say in light of the ignorant reception this board usually provides.
What does any of that tirade have to do with consumers benefiting from EGS exclusivity?
There's no benefit, there's also no loss to the consumer. You're buying the same game you'd otherwise buy just from a different store.
You saying you care more about the store than the game?
Pretty fucked up. You know, because you're also saying you care more about Walmart making more money than the studio that made the game. Which is doubly fucked up.
If you don't give a shit about the people who make the games you love, then you're a turd.
If you insist on only buying from Walmart, then you're a mafia wife to the biggest monopoly in PC gaming.
I prefer to go to Kroger over Walmart personally.
And if something I was expecting to buy at Kroger recently became exclusive to Walmart, I'd be kind of upset about that.
Seems like a normal reaction.
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