Trying to get a bigger slice of pie, who can blame them.

Possibly one of the few ways to make an inroad into the Steam behemoth dominance.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 21:12:
Possibly one of the few ways to make an inroad into the Steam behemoth dominance.

They were already paying through the nose for timed exclusives, I don't think a bit extra will make much difference.

jdreyer wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 21:27:

WannaLogAlready wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 21:12:
Possibly one of the few ways to make an inroad into the Steam behemoth dominance.

They were already paying through the nose for timed exclusives, I don't think a bit extra will make much difference.

Where did they post the amount that they were paying for timed to exclusives. They're guaranteeing a certain amount of money, whether that's made up by sales or by epic I don't think we know the answer.

I'm not sure keeping that extra 12% is worth the loss of the sales you'd get from people who only buy on Steam even with Steam taking 30% or whatever.

Desperation. Steam is eating their lunch.

I am not a fan of exclusivity. I hate it really. But it's a good move by Epic even though it won't really move the needle.

no sale

Hardline Mike wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 22:45:
I'm not sure keeping that extra 12% is worth the loss of the sales you'd get from people who only buy on Steam even with Steam taking 30% or whatever.

you guys are missing that this extends to key sites as well. so you can get your title in front of people on humble, GMG, fanatical, and sell discounted keys to gamers, but they activate on epic game store and you get to keep everything.

its a tacit admission that epic games store is a literal fucking black hole. they know they need more eyeballs.

it'll never move the needle on its own, they need more than this, but its certainly a good step to get on equal footing. i haven't bought a game directly through steam in a while - pre-ordered the mondo edition of starfield on GMG for 20% off last week.

RedEye9 wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 22:17:

jdreyer wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 21:27:

WannaLogAlready wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 21:12:
Possibly one of the few ways to make an inroad into the Steam behemoth dominance.

They were already paying through the nose for timed exclusives, I don't think a bit extra will make much difference.

Where did they post the amount that they were paying for timed to exclusives. They're guaranteeing a certain amount of money, whether that's made up by sales or by epic I don't think we know the answer.

rev guarantees for indies, the major titles were getting huge pay offs in addition to that as the apple case revealed.

they paid 10 million dollars for control. they paid an astonishing 100+ million for borderlands 3. the amount they've thrown into the fire for exclusives is incredible.

Nucas wrote on Aug 24, 2023, 00:31:

RedEye9 wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 22:17:

jdreyer wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 21:27:

WannaLogAlready wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 21:12:
Possibly one of the few ways to make an inroad into the Steam behemoth dominance.

They were already paying through the nose for timed exclusives, I don't think a bit extra will make much difference.

Where did they post the amount that they were paying for timed to exclusives. They're guaranteeing a certain amount of money, whether that's made up by sales or by epic I don't think we know the answer.

rev guarantees for indies, the major titles were getting huge pay offs in addition to that as the apple case revealed.

they paid 10 million dollars for control. they paid an astonishing 100+ million for borderlands 3. the amount they've thrown into the fire for exclusives is incredible.

But is it really thrown into the fire if they recoup what they paid? From your link;

Was it worth it for Epic? According to the document, 100 percent of the $80m minimum guarantee was recouped within just two weeks, with $100m generated in a fortnight. In the first two weeks, Epic made $9.2m from Borderlands 3, based on its 12 percent cut. Borderlands 3 achieved just over 1.5 million users on the store within that timeframe. Crucially for Epic, 53 percent of those users were new to the Epic Games Store.

RedEye9 wrote on Aug 24, 2023, 04:43:
But is it really thrown into the fire if they recoup what they paid? From your link;

Was it worth it for Epic? According to the document, 100 percent of the $80m minimum guarantee was recouped within just two weeks, with $100m generated in a fortnight. In the first two weeks, Epic made $9.2m from Borderlands 3, based on its 12 percent cut. Borderlands 3 achieved just over 1.5 million users on the store within that timeframe. Crucially for Epic, 53 percent of those users were new to the Epic Games Store.

Doesn't that imply they didn't recoup what they paid? $9.2M for Epic in the first two weeks of sale doesn't sound like a strong start to matching $100M+ paid out unless there's reason to expect future sales to be linear instead of front-loaded.

Hardline Mike wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 22:45:
I'm not sure keeping that extra 12% is worth the loss of the sales you'd get from people who only buy on Steam even with Steam taking 30% or whatever.

It's definitely not worth it, the exposure from Steam alone is massive. The only reason people were taking exclusivity deals was the upfront money, it let them put more into marketing. This is a nice press release but they probably won't have many takers. It's a high cost of capital environment and Epic probably doesn't want to dump truck money at quality exclusives anymore so I'm not surprised.

The only way you could get me to ever use that store is if they had lower prices and better features.
They got neither.

eRe4s3r wrote on Aug 24, 2023, 09:43:
The only way you could get me to ever use that store is if they had lower prices and better features.
They got neither.

Stores don't set prices, publishers/developers do. Console games don't have steam features and they sell well, so the features thing isn't really a valid selling point. The epic model does work well in many cases, for example, early releases of games that really need more development time. They then are able to push a better completed steam release. Indie games also that might get completely lost in a steam release. I am reminded of a few years back some developer was bragging that he refused an epic deal and would be going with steam. Some good publicity there but completely disappeared after that. Was it really their best move?

Jim wrote on Aug 24, 2023, 09:56:

eRe4s3r wrote on Aug 24, 2023, 09:43:
The only way you could get me to ever use that store is if they had lower prices and better features.
They got neither.

Stores don't set prices, publishers/developers do. Console games don't have steam features and they sell well, so the features thing isn't really a valid selling point.

From what we've heard, Valve does effectively set prices on other stores. A publisher/developer isn't able to set lower prices on Epic without Valve cutting off their Steam sales.

I don't think that the latter point is necessarily correct. First, since eRe4s3r said he wouldn't buy from Epic without better prices and features, so it's a valid selling point for him. Second, there are other reasons why console sales are usually higher than PC, and mobile is usually higher than both of those put together. You wouldn't necessarily say that since mobile gamers tolerate and reward predatory monetization that it's a non-factor in a game's success or failure on other platforms.

I'm not a fan of exclusives that's what I'm not a fan of the Epic Store. It's a sad state of the market where Steam dominates and only billion dollar companies can compete and they can only do by timed exclusives and free give aways.

lol... They are so desperate its sad. They will never be able to compete with Steam. I honestly wonder how long till they throw in the towel.

Overon wrote on Aug 24, 2023, 11:12:
I'm not a fan of exclusives that's what I'm not a fan of the Epic Store. It's a sad state of the market where Steam dominates and only billion dollar companies can compete and they can only do by timed exclusives and free give aways.

It is a sad state, because a majority of gamers will only ever shop at one store. A store that takes as big of a cut as all development costs put together.

30% marketing
30% development
30% Steam
10% profit

Gabe Newell makes as much from every sale on his store as wages for every developer who actually built the game.

Sad state indeed. A fair amount would be 30% of the PROFIT, not of GROSS.

People like Steam man, great features, constant iteration and it has the most title variety. Competitors have tried to differentiate themselves in various ways (mostly flawed IMO) but ultimately consumers keep choosing Steam. Valve has been a pretty good shepherd to PC gaming overall and sure they've benefited from it significantly but so have we.

Consumers redeem the free titles on other services but ultimately don't stick around for various reasons we can debate about. Epic tried to deny games from being offered on Steam and it didn't work, many people simply don't buy the game until its on Steam regardless of how cheap it is on EGS.

I don't deny the argument that Valve should be more accommodating with revenue shares but people forget that Valve took all of the risk in establishing the platform at a point in time where PC gaming was on the decline. Also they did make some concessions in response to Epic so kudos to Epic for that.