How exactly can they buy a game from Steam if it's EGS exclusive and doesn't support a payment method the populace uses at large?
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Epic Store and 12% cut
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
How exactly can they buy a game from Steam if it's EGS exclusive and doesn't support a payment method the populace uses at large?
Couple options here for that
Eat the cost - that's the standard move and the company generally expects to make it up in volume, but since they'd lose 3% off every card, that's probably a no go
Have the retailer pay - lol this will never happen ever ever ever ever
Have the consumer pay more - this is the AMEX move, really rare, kinda dumb, defeats the purpose, is a poor people tax
Real being real they probably raise that cut to 20 or some such later, then they have at least some wiggle room for this kind of thing
Seems you missed the part where Epic is paying dozens of popular devs and publishers to keep their games away from Steam...
I wouldn't be surprised if Epic puts the cost on the customer, imagine something like 55~60€ for a 50€ card....
Tim Sweeney has been responding in a reddit thread that linked to this thread.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/c...tore_12_cut_explained_buyer_takes_on/ekgp77f/
Sweeney should just make an account here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/c...tore_12_cut_explained_buyer_takes_on/ekgp77f/
Sweeney should just make an account here.
Clearly the exclusive deals to billion dollar publishers is a better use of their money than covering the transaction costs of people in developing countries.
Good guy Epic. The patron saints of devs.
Or maybe they will provide a roadmap when they will stop screwing over people for living in a certain region. Roadmaps solve and defend everything in the gaming industry. "Here you will see when we will stop being assholes and be service complete. So shut up."
According to Valve retail cards cost 10-15%. I'd say with EGS' 12% cut that is a no go for Epic.
It think it's vastly overstated how much the populace at large wants to play these games Epic has money hat-ted.
Does Valve allow developers to take a bigger cut if they don't add Steam Cloud or Workshop support to their games?
Does Valve allow developers to take a bigger cut if they skip out on ad boosting or other perks? Can a developer selling on Steam get the option to skip PayPal as a payment method to keep a higher% cut?
Does Valve offer ala carte stuff like that for developers to pick and choose, so they can keep more than 70%?
Does Valve allow developers to take a bigger cut if they skip out on ad boosting or other perks? Can a developer selling on Steam get the option to skip PayPal as a payment method to keep a higher% cut?
Does Valve offer ala carte stuff like that for developers to pick and choose, so they can keep more than 70%?
No AFAIK
I was ready to preorder Metro (before the 8chan shit anyway) and suddenly I couldnt *shrug*
Valve allows devs to generate keys free of charge and they can sell them for a full share
How would a shopping cart work if one game blocked the payment method you want to use? That would be so irritating to the customer.
"It's not a problem because very few people use payment providers that we charge an extra fee for".
I think he's got that backwards. Lots of people are not using those payment providers specifically because Epic are charging an extra fee.
"Traders in the EU are not allowed to charge you extra for using your credit or debit card. The only exceptions to this rule are American Express/Diners Club cards and business or corporate credit cards, where your employer is billed instead of you. If you use these cards, you may still be charged a fee but the fee can't be more than what it actually costs the trader to process your payment."
Shouldn't this be applied for your situation?
Tim's argument is 80% of their transactions use PayPal and credit cards, which don't have a transaction fee, therefore this isn't a problem. I have seen people complaining about getting charged a transaction fee for using their credit card, so I know he's wrong there.
Not positive on this, but I believe Valve could middle-man the payment method on behalf of the customer, so they would be "virtually" using their preferred payment method, when in fact, Valve would just eat the fee in between and make the actual credit card transaction themselves. Or something like that.
Anyway, the payment method was just one example. I'm talking about letting the developer pick and choose what extra features they include so they have the option to keep a higher %. Not sure if that's an option or not on Steam.
Devs can keep 100% if they want with key generation while using all Steam features
That mostly tells me they are 1000% a US centric store and couldn't be arsed about the rest of it right now
Which, you know, no
This looks self-fulfilling. Of course most people are using paypal, people who uses a credit card and see the extra fee are probably going to take their business elsewhere.
Ding ding ding. Epic doesn't see the value outside their operating country.
It's unfortunate that games media is so UK and US centric that the media doesn't understand or cover any of this.
And the places that probably do cover this, the places that get charged more are all in non-English languages.
It's part of their focus on the
You know what, EGS more and more reminds me of Xbox One at launch.
The metro discount should have been enough of a proof that they don't give a fuck about non-US
No on stripping parts of the Workshop featureset, because the API is free to use even for games that don't sell on Steam (just requires a Steam login).
No on letting developers be dicks and skip some people's preferred or only payment methods.
Generally they allow to skip the Steam store altogether and look for distribution services elsewhere, asking for nothing more than maintaining a fair price across all storefronts, and for not abusing the free key generation system.
Edit sorry Shape, quoted you wrong!!
"Yeah, we love modding but you can use Nexus, we want the extra cash" , same with Cloid Saves and other additions.
The whole "pay extra to unlock parts of the Steam API" makes me really worried / annoyed. I love games with Workshop support and with that i imagine a future where some devs just dont think about using those features because they would make them less money.
"Yeah, we love modding but you can use Nexus, we want the extra cash" , same with Cloid Saves and other additions.
"But but Steam and Origin have exclusives as well..."
I really hate that guy :8
Edit: also this:
Epic Games store developers and publishers are free to release on Humble. I know more are coming, some soon, and some are waiting for direct purchasing integration due to a desire to avoid keys.
Yeah, the Metro discount is the perfect example for that.
edit: beaten
Completely disingenuous comment, he hasn't presented a single compelling argument in favor of his store/practices yet.
Obviously the way to fix the issue is very simple, just make your store have no shopping cart. EGS is way ahead of the curve there. They have no optional features to charge extra for yet, but I hear they're working on those.
So it did well on PC regardless it would seem - Depending on what the number of steam preorders was that would eat into the ratio number Epic released.
Oh he has.
"We paid off billion dollar publishers to lock exclusive big profile games on PC behind our shit service. Have fun, asshole peasants. Here's a transaction charge as well. "
EGS should run with a cut that allows them to feel comfortable absorbing the cost of transaction fees for customers that have to use other payment methods. Why run with a 12/88 split if it's barely affordable without passing on costs to the consumer? This wouldn't be a problem if EGS wasn't buying exclusives, people who use those methods of payment are forced to pay extra if they want to use those games because there isn't a competing service for them to choose.
Why should customers be eager to make the market as convenient and profitable for publishers as possible if the outcome is making the market worse for themselves. The corporatist apologism is really alarming to me.
Why should customers be eager to make the market as convenient and profitable for publishers as possible if the outcome is making the market worse for themselves. The corporatist apologism is really alarming to me.
They don't have to sell on steam.
Legit question, it might have been answered but 9 pages is hard to parse. Does Steam eat the credit processing fees out of their 30% cut? or does the rev get cut after the processing fee? ie: 100 transaction, 10% processing fee... Valve has $30 minus $10 so rev of 20... or is it $100 minus $10 processing so Valve get's $27 and game get's $63?
This is completely false. Adding those payment options added millions of new customers for Steam. in some countries, customers only have 1 or 2 payment options they can (realistically) use. Saying they should instead use other methods is like saying the should eat cake if they don't have bread.
Even in Germany, Credit Cards (excluding debit cards who can rarely be used in online shopping) are not widely used.
Then Epic's model is shit.. and they are going to discount airline consumers with extra fees, somewhat hidden like processing fees. That kinda sucks.
I'm not sure if 250k is good or bad for a long awaited AAA game like Metro Exodus. Risk of Rain 2 had 650k players in the first week for example.
But my point is that it doesn't say anything about the success of EGS, because it was for sale on Steam, retail and cdkeys as well. I'd love to know how actual EGS exclusives like Ashen, Hades and Satisfactory are doing. I don't hear/see any pc gamers talking about these games, nor online nor irl.
Perhaps MatPiscatella can provide us with some information? :)
Sorta adding to and correcting this, Valve doesn't let developers completely skip Steam's store. As in, if you have the game on Steam, you have to sell it there, you aren't allowed to purely sell on third-party sites. Which is reasonable, just pointing it out.
In the end that's the only option, cash gift cards in store will have a cut around 5 to 10% to the store selling it.. which means by the time it get's to Epic they aren't making money at 12%... and there's a huge market that relies on those methods. If you stop moneyhatting games and charge an extra 5% to the price of the game.. then those consumers will go to other places to get them.
The only option is to raise the cut at some point. They went low to try to steal business.. but no way in hell is 12% sustainable long term.
Yes it should. A few local stores used to charge €0.20 cent for electronic payments, but they aren't allowed to do that anymore. Today we always pay the same price in Belgium, no matter if we pay with card or cash. Of course, stores are still free NOT to offer electronic payments. But most stores do, because their customers are asking for it. Last time I've paid something with cash was an ice cream for my daughter at the beach last summer.
Because the Epic Games store is high economic efficiency breh, they dont know about negative marginal cost economics
to give context to the quote: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pricing-payments/index_en.htm
...Is this real? Some customers live in countries where they don't have the luxury of options.
Yeah, this was mentioned by JaseC here in the past too, but of course got ignored. In the same thread, a Medium post by Galyonkin himself also showed that EGS games having to compete against giants GaaS titles like DotA 2 (or, in Epic's case, Fortnite...) is a losing battle, which is... interesting, considering the current state of EGS, though not relevant to the current topic.
That is a misreading of his post. What he says in there is that users from GAAS / F2P games buy much less games than the average (if at all), so basing your full audience on them is not the best thing.
Basically the audience for those games and the audience that buys artsy Indies is quite separated.
That is the same though? Sorry if I worded it wrongly - it is what I meant to say, though I disagree with the "artsy indies" label, considering the numbers he showed.