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.
Beamer wrote on Jun 28, 2019, 17:48:
Yeah, I know, I said that's one issue.
But you CAN buy EGS keys on Humble Bundle. It's a live feature, but it requires the publisher to work with these stores to provide keys. It isn't Epic holding them back. Borderlands 3 is for preorder on GMG right now. And here it is on the Humble Store. Most of the other games they carry are available on multiple platforms, but not listed on GMG for any (including Steam.)
I assume that, when this is solved for and publishers put EGS keys on these sites, it'll all be gravy and there will be no complaints. But from what I understand, neither publishers nor GMG are rushing for this, because it requires a site overhaul on GMG to let people pick which DRM they want, and the demand is currently so low that they're not interested in building it out. Similarly, publishers provide Steam keys to GMG, but aren't super excited to also create a process for EGS keys, since again, far less demand.