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.
Verno wrote on Jun 27, 2019, 07:59:Numinar wrote on Jun 27, 2019, 02:01:
Wow, when did monopolies become a good thing?
All I know is a lot of idiots refuse to play phenomenal stuff like The Outer Wilds because they are sooky sooks who can't enjoy their games unless they have a white supremacist forum to shitpost on directly baked into the UI of their launcher.
And I love Steam. It's made plenty of money over the last decade and a half for making our amazing digital future a reality. But whatever other bullshit Tim is spewing, he is right that nobody else has really made a dent in Steam's market share playing fair. Let him throw money around at Devs. They can take it or not take it, whatever they need to keep a roof over their kid's heads. Making games is hard, I want them to have options. Exclusivity sucks but so do monopolies and all sorts of other industry shenanigans. It's like the Bible, it's full of insane nonsense but everyone gets hung up on the gays instead of the important shit like why can't we sell our children into slavery or quarantine menstruating women. Selective outrage at it's finest.
Also EGS is way better than Steam was for like what, the first 3 years? It was a garbage piece of bloatware that we installed because of a certain beloved exclusive. Fuck off with the moral highground.
The bible, nazis, "the gays", and slavery in the same post about...videogame stores. I hope this is drunkposting or something because uh wow
Trust me dude, no one cares that much
Tomorrow night is drunk posting night! Previous comment was 100% wow. Honestly though, I don't know where you live but Nazis, bible thumpers and cancel culture are all huge IRL at the moment down here and have obviously infested my mind.
People seem to care a whole lot about this though, it's not like my usual tirade in a thread with six posts nobody cares about. Maybe I have trouble expressing incredulity and I suppose I should let these dumb boycotts go uncommented, nobody stupid enough to get in on it is going to change their mind or even think slightly differently because some internet asshole (me) says anything. No matter how good I think Outer Wilds is, it's not for everybody. Maybe it will help the discourse of that game if nobody with trash brain plays it. Hopefully Mobius/Annapurna got more $ out of Epic than they lost in sales.
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