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.
Creston wrote on Jun 27, 2019, 16:02:
Ugh, I'm not going to read 155 posts, but I was just thinking of this earlier:
Everyone who argues that the extra split that EGS gives is going to somehow wind up in the hands of the developers, please think about this: The gaming industry is rife with stories of publishers abusing the LIVING FUCK out devs. Year long crunch times, 100 hour work weeks, no paid overtime, etc.
Yet somehow, you guys think that these publishers, these selfsame pieces of shit that treat human beings as fucking CATTLE, are going to voluntarily give these devs more money?
Most of the comments in this thread are opinions (mine included) that don't offer a comprehensive review of Tim's tweets. However, if you read my comment (#75), you'll see that I eviscerate Tim's fantasy utopia.
To sum up, he appears hell-bent on the idea that third-party PC exclusives will somehow lead to the promised land of consumer benefits. By themselves, exclusives create anti-consumer choice and artificially tiered access (I am separating publisher exclusives on publisher storefront [like EA on Origin] from third-party exclusives on non-publisher stores [like Deep Silver on Steam or EGS]). Further, he continues to use price reduction as one of the main pillars to justify exclusivity, when the facts show that only one or two games have ever had a preorder price reduction. The rest are sold at full-premium as they would be if on Steam and elsewhere. Exclusivity hasn't provided a benefit for consumers.
"Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times." - Those Who Remain by G. Michael Hopf
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