Following the announcement of Epic Games Store, we saw many reactions on ResetEra. People happy for reasons, a lot of people not happy for other reasons and between them a lot of people who are genuinely puzzled about why some people seems unhappy, since normally, competition should be welcomed.
Sure, there was a lot of discussions going around that in multiple threads which makes it difficult to follow anything and this is why I wanted to make a synthetical post about that announcement, the current landscape around PC, the reactions and the consequences.
Epic Games Store and their policies:
First of all, I think I should explain the reason this discussion happens in the same place. A few days ago, Epic Games, developer of Fortnite, announced that their storefront would be open to 3rd parties and compete with Steam. For now, everything sounds good so far. A new actor is coming and promise to bring some competition on the table, which should make the market better, right ?
On top of that, they also announced something positive for developers: A new revenue cut, that would be 88% of the money for the devs/publishers and 12% for the storefront, as opposed to the usual 30% for the store and 70% for the devs that Steam (but also PSN, GOG, XBL, eShop, Google, Apple) takes.
Epic Games announced not only they'd rely on their own storefront and their own client, but that they would pay developpers to release their games exclusively on their storefront. We're not talking about new projects that Epic decided to take in and throw a bag of money to make possible but high profile releases (Ashen, Maneater, Satisfactory), published by mid tier publishers (Annapurna, THQ, Tripwire), from either renown IPs (Super Meat Boy) or renown developers (Super Giant Games).
But also announced that, at launch, their client wouldn't feature basic features such as cloud saves, achievements and such. While this will improve in the future, they also claimed they don't aim to match Steam in term of features. About their other policies, on top of paid exclusivity, region pricing has yet to be implemented in a lot of regions while their refund policy seems pathetic since they claim to grant only two no-question automatic refunds for the lifetime of your account + an additionnal one every year. Their storefront doesn't even feature a search function and their storepages doesn't even mention basic informations such as the kind of game, the single player or multiplayer fonctions.
Back on features, not only Epic announced their store would be curated, but they also claimed that they would provide no game community features (such as forums and guides) and reviews would be opt-in. Basically, a storefront with a pro-developer approach (or does it ? but I'll tackle that later) but one that seems to be less focused on customers and users. But why is there people against it ? After all, everyone should be for developers getting more money. And competition is supposed to move the market forward, giving more choice to customers ? Well... it's more complicated than that unfortunately, which allows me to tackle the next point about the "No steam no buy" mentality
"No Steam, no buy", the idea behind it:
Following the announcement of the store, The Game Awards were hosted in which the Epic Games Store made its show announcing that multiple high profile indie release would be released exclusively on their store, despite having been announced on Steam before, even having Steam store pages, the first being Ashen which released on the same day, which means there's no way Epic funded the game in any way to make it happen. Shortly, we learned that all these exclusive games would launch for a 12 month exclusive period.
After that, multiple voices raised on ResetEra but also on multiple websites and communities, claiming that they wouldn't buy these games unless they release on Steam. The first logical reaction to have to these complains was to claim "Well, it's just another launcher" "It's literally one click away" "It's the same game" or "There are really launcher fanboys ?". These are legitimate and logical reactions indeed when you don't really know about that market, when you played recently or never on PC.
First of all, I want to discard the idea that it's all about "brand loyalty" or "fanboyism". In the past 5 years, Steam evolved from being a storefront to a feature complete launcher and ecosystem. What does it mean ? Well, after these years, a number of important features were released that made users' experience not only more convenient, but also a lot better.
- First of all, a controller based, TV focused interface was released with Big Picture Mode.
- A no question, automatic refund system.
- A library sharing system.
- A vendor agnostic VR API, which ensures games purchased on Steam aren't locked to the Vive HMD but also working with Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality HMDs.
- A free OS which led to Steam Proton, an automatic tool to play your Windows games on Linux.
- A community based mod sharing system, which allows to share and install content with one click.
- A streaming feature to stream your PC games to your TV, your mobile or your lower end laptop.
- A cloud based save system.
- A system wide, vendor agnostic controller API was made with Steam Input, which not only support Steam Controller, Xbox One controller, Dualshock 4 and Switch Pro Controller but also support all their different inputs such as touchpads and gyrosensor, to remap extensively (and I insist on that, there's no tools like it anywhere else in term of possibilities and fonctionnalities) but also allowing to download community based controller mapping.
Speaking of communities, multiple things were introduced such as the community guides, which allows you to access community made guides for games, screenshot sharing, forums which, even though a big part of the community is toxic, are often helpful when you're looking to resolve an issue, since someone might have already asked and found an answer which means less work for devs in term of ticket support, reviews on the storepage which, even though can be abused by toxic people, are also a mean to pressure bigger publishers such as Warner Bros with their Arkham Knight port, Bethesda with their paid mods attempt, Square-Enix with their Chrono Trigger port. And while toxicity definitely should be adressed, Epic way seems to be definitively worse since it's basically letting devs handle it on Reddit or Discord (which on top of that, in the case of multiplatform games, will cover 3 to 4 platforms).
While some of you might say "who cares about these features ?" well... that's your opinion and that's fine. But not only some of them are just too convenient to pass on them, others are either great for consumers as a whole or even benefit PC gaming as a whole (VR, Input, Proton). So when someone claims that they won't get a game if it releases somewhere else exclusively, don't think of it as a form of tribalism or brand loyalty but more as of a loss for them of important features and convenience, on top of them having a convenient place to have their entire library and dont want to go through the hassle of using another borked launcher... which allows me to talk about the next point.
Launchers, storefronts and cuts:
The other important point to talk about is to dismiss the idea that people are against Steam competitors. In fact, a lot of the people who raised criticism toward Epic Games' initiative mostly buy from other storefronts. For exemple, in the entire year of 2018, I bought 5 games on Steam. But more than 50 on other storefronts, which activated on Steam. Which is why it's important to make a distinction between the launchers and the storefronts. People are, in fact, excited by new storefronts. What is bad for them though is new launchers.
Because while the former means lower prices around the board, policy competition, the latter always translates into worse experience at best, broken experience at worse (Bethesda !). On top of that, it often leads to a fragmentation of your friendlist, your library and sometimes even the game community (Dying Light on GOG is using different servers than Dying Light on Steam while Windows Store version of Call of Duty also used their own servers compared to the Steam version).
It's also a burden for devs because they often have to handle multiple builds of one PC game for multiple launchers, which often leads to differences between builds (there's a lot of GOG games lacking features from their Steam versions, either updates or features such as multiplayer or leaderboards just because devs don't want to spend the money to handle two builds on PC). So not only it's always a bad thing for users, it's also a bad thing for developers.
Which allows me to come back onto the cut part and the wish for developers to change it to a more fair cut toward them. While I understand that wish, which is natural, you also have to keep in mind that this 30% cut is what allows us today to have multiple storefronts across the board. Indeed, for these stores (GreenManGaming, Humble Bundle, Voidu, Wingamestore, Razergamestore, Gamesplanet) to compete between themselves, their way is to offer discounts on new titles, to make people purchase on their storefronts.
How do they offer these 10 to 20% discounts ? By eating into their own margin. Basically, on a 60 dollars game, the developer will get 42 dollars. But to make the price more competitive, the discount will be taken on the 18 dollars of the storefront, so 8 dollars instead of 10 to make the game 50 dollars. If 12% becomes the norm, you'll never see a discount lower than 5% at launch, unless the devs take it on their cut. Which can allow me to tackle the final point (wheeew).
Monopoly and competition:
The final and last point is about monopoly and competition. Indeed, this is the entire about of launching a competitor. To make the market better. But when you look at it, what's the state of the PC market ? A common misconception is that Steam is holding a monopoly. But when you take a look at it:
They never pay someone for exclusivity. Their initiatives push for more openess and hardware/vendor agnostic features. Heck, they entertain competition by themselves by allowing devs to generate Steam keys for free and in unlimited quantity and sell them elsewhere for a 100% cut (or any other cut between them and another storefront) which is the reason why we have other storefronts that can exist. It's not because you dominate a market that you're in a situation of monopoly or abuse it.
It's not to say Steam is perfect. There are a LOT of valid criticism to be had about that platform. Midnight launches aren't the norm yet, the UI could get (well, it's going to) have a makeover. Big Picture isn't perfect and has some bugs. There are abuses and toxicity in the reviews and communities (which is overweighted by the benefits imo). There's no video sharing system (only a streaming one). They have no curation (Which isn't the reason for games not selling, since these tend to be overshadowed by other good games, but is a problem regarding hateful titles, even though curation leads to the opposite situation where devs cant even release their games and I'll think we'll see a lot of rejection with Epic Store). Competition would be needed to make Valve work on these issues.
But the problem the competition we have right now doesn't adress these valid criticisms. In fact, all the competitors so far, including Epic, are only looking to have THEIR tiny monopolies. Most of them have been around for years, nearly decades and they're still dangerously lagging behind in term of features. Origin still has no controller support. Battle.net still uses REGION LOCKED friendlists. Epic's client, which has been around for more than 3 years already (only their store released a few days ago, with barebones storepages). Windows Store is in a sorry state. Heck, Bethesda launcher is broken.
And in fact, customers should in no way wait for competitors to be decent solely on good will. Apple didn't release a phone in 2007 that had was still using a black and white screen. Tesla didn't release their first car using horses instead of an engine.
The only added value everytime was to take a game and sell it either only on their store, or only throught their launcher. Sometimes both. With next to no improvements in years. And Epic Games declarations so far points to the same result. And well, people also remembers the Games For Windows Live disaster, with the loss of that client leading to the loss of multiple games online play, features or even games.
Competition exists already on that market with storefronts and its good. It also exists between launchers and its downright terrible and anti-consumer, since it aims to lock down a product while not even looking for improvement. People likes competition. This isn't competition.
People don't complain about these competitors because they have some loyalty to a brand. It's because they want to keep their convenience, their features, their lower prices. And in some cases, not losing their games.
