Paradox Interactive: "The 70/30 revenue split is outrageous"

[thebishop]

Since we are once again back to "EGS vs Steam" rather than "What cut makes sense": The best possible outcome of this is that Valve change to something closer to 20/80 and they commit to curating their store so that a narrative game about the awkardness of dating doesn't have "Big Tittty Waifus 62: They Are Totally 9000 Years Old" advertised on the store page since both have "nudity" tags.

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No percentage is objectively correct. It's a fight between publishers and their distributors. It's totally arbitrary for random posters (myself included) to say 70/30 is somehow optimal or 80/20 is more fair, or actually it should be 88/12, etc. The percent is based on market value, not fairness, and at any rate we're in no position to say what's fair.

I'm not against Epic giving a higher percent to publishers and I'm not against Valve keeping more of the revenue. I care about having a good experience playing games on PC. Steam gives me the best experience so that's where I buy games.

I don't/won't buy games on EGS because it's a bad service, and I resent being "forced" to play games I'd otherwise buy on Steam on their bad service. Publishers who make exclusive deals with EGS have decided they'd rather take a short term payday than give their customers the best experience. That reflects badly on them as well.

If at some point down the line, EGS evolves into a good service, I'll reevaluate. Doesn't look like it will happen any time soon.

 

[Deleted member 42472]

Who is going to curate the store?

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Presumably the people getting 20-30% of every sale?

 

[StereoVSN]

As long as paradox don't do exclusives with EGS, we are good. I've given hundreds of dollars to paradox imperiative and that would stop immediately if they pull
That BS

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Yeap. I put up with their crap DLC policies and constant bugs and spent a lot of money with them. That will stop immediately if they go EGS exclusive.

Frankly I got tired enough of their schtick already and while I bought that MegaCorp DLC for Stellaris this Steam sale, I might just take a break from their wares. Imperator was terribly disappointing and both Stellaris and Heart of Iron have had bugs and features either broken or shoved into random DLCs. Meh.

 

[svacina]

Presumably the people getting 20-30% of every sale?

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Oh, so the people, who are on record saying they would have rejected Stardew Valley had Steam not been open to everybody by that time, would curate the store.

Wow, that's a great idea. I foresee no trouble arising.

 

[Deleted member 42472]

No percentage is objectively correct. It's a fight between publishers and their distributors. It's totally arbitrary for random posters (myself included) to say 70/30 is somehow optimal or 80/20 is more fair, or actually it should be 88/12, etc. The percent is based on market value, not fairness, and at any rate we're in no position to say what's fair.

I'm not against Epic giving a higher percent to publishers and I'm not against Valve keeping more of the revenue. I care about having a good experience playing games on PC. Steam gives me the best experience so that's where I buy games.

I don't/won't buy games on EGS because it's a bad service, and I resent being "forced" to play games I'd otherwise buy on Steam on their bad service. Publishers who make exclusive deals with EGS have decided they'd rather take a short term payday than give their customers a good experiences. That reflects badly on them as well.

If at some point down the line, EGS evolves into a good service, I'll reevaluate. Doesn't look like it will happen any time soon.

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Except that you, a random poster, ARE saying that 70/30 is good. You do it every time you buy a game available on multiple stores through Steam. Similarly, you are supporting the status quo by saying that we shouldn't discuss this and have opinions on it/

Every action you do is showing support for something. It is just a matter of deciding what you care about and how much that will impact your purchasing decisions.

 

[Deleted member 42472]

Oh, so the people, who are on record saying they would have rejected Stardew Valley had Steam not been open to everybody by that time, would curate the store.

Wow, that's a great idea. I foresee no trouble arising.

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Then maybe Valve aren't the company we should be supporting? Or, more pointedly, the Valve of three or four years ago isn't.


If the option is to either have no Stardew or to have "Rape Simulator" on the front page... I can buy my Stardew elsewhere.

Corporate policy changes. Like I said, the best outcome is that Valve's does and they are more lucrative to smaller studios and more diligent in curating their store. If they do a bad job of the former it makes me more likely to buy games from devs I like on the Humble store. If they do a bad job at the latter it increases the likelihood of me wanting to play my Steam games through GoG and not wanting to browse the store.

 

[BringBackSonics]

Eh. I don't mind the dlc policy. Stellaris is even better since the latest patch.

Holy Fury for CK2 is a top 3 DLC and they just released free content 'Iron Century'.

Plus everyone talking about 400-500$ for DLC is being disingenuous, because you usually find most of these dlc for sale every
Month or so.

I've put more than 4-5k hours into CK2 and spent around 200$ (I've bought half the DLC on sale, the other half I've paid full
Price). total the last 7 years. I feel that is a fair trade off

 

[svacina]

"Rape Simulator" on the front page

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That never happened.

That will never happen.

Even the case you are probably referencing did not actually happen.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Presumably the people getting 20-30% of every sale?

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Do you think that their tastes align with yours and that they wouldn't block any games that you'd be interested in?

 

[EloKa]

If the option is to either have no Stardew or to have "Rape Simulator" on the front page... I can buy my Stardew elsewhere.

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Please submit a screenshot of "Rape Simulator" beeing on the Steam front page to [email protected]
It's incredible annoying how this lie gets repeated and repeated and repeated ... good job Mr. Galyonkin

Yeah. It didn't happen
You know why? Because Valve said "holy fucking shit" and updated their corporate policy to get that shit off the store.

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This is also wrong.

 

[Deleted member 42472]

That never happened.

That will never happen.

Even the case you are probably referencing did not actually happen.

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Yeah. It didn't happen


You know why? Because Valve said "holy fucking shit" and updated their corporate policy to get that shit off the store.

 

[Antrax]

But they keep paying. This only really works if they vote with their wallets, just like regular consumers.

"Make this product cheaper right now! This price is not worth it! I'll take 30."

They already have the means to sell Steam keys for 100% revenue, but most don't use it, or at least not nearly as well as they could. It's very clear they think the service is worth it, they just wish it was cheaper.

In which case, who doesn't? I wish every game was cheaper too, but I still think brand new releases with a reasonable budget are worth $60.

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Well, yes, but now they have a third option. A storefront that offers some features in exchange for a cheaper price. That store's existence isn't their problem, it's Valve's.

You can sell handmade wood furniture for $200 for 30 years, but if someone else comes in and sells a slightly worse version for a lot less money, you now have to contend with competition. And the appropriate response isn't "but my tables were good value for you last year?!" The existence of a cheaper product changes the value of your product.

 

[BeI]

Would you guys prefer a 80/20% Steam split, but they killed 100% keys and only allowed you to buy games from the Steam store from now on?

Would that a 10% increase like that actually be enough to likely kill their key feature to maintain their own profits (at the cost of other PC stores as well)?

 

[thebishop]

Except that you, a random poster, ARE saying that 70/30 is good. You do it every time you buy a game available on multiple stores through Steam. Similarly, you are supporting the status quo by saying that we shouldn't discuss this and have opinions on it/

Every action you do is showing support for something. It is just a matter of deciding what you care about and how much that will impact your purchasing decisions.

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If that was true, then I'd oppose Valves decision in December to lower their percentage for million-selling games. Or I'd oppose any future reductions in the percentage Valve takes on sales. But I don't/won't. It doesn't affect me. It's a fight between two businesses who both want the biggest share of the pie.

I'm also not saying that people shouldn't discuss it, I just don't think random people have the necessary facts to make an informed opinion. People saying 70/30 isn't fair but 80/20 would be fair are just making up numbers.

 

[svacina]

Yeah. It didn't happen


You know why? Because Valve said "holy fucking shit" and updated their corporate policy to get that shit off the store.

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The only policy Valve changed was regarding public access to temporary pages of games awaiting approval (as all 18+ games do).

That shit was never getting on Steam.

 

[elzeus]

Would you guys prefer a 80/20% Steam split, but they killed 100% keys and only allowed you to buy games from the Steam store from now on?

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85/15.

 

[Deleted member 42472]

Do you think that their tastes align with yours and that they wouldn't block any games that you'd be interested in?

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I actively don't. And I don't want them to. A store that is full of nothing but arena shooters, roguelikes, and grand strategy games would probably not do too well


But what I do want is a better version of what they are doing. I want them to actually show me the games I want based on my purchase history and tastes. I don't want to see anime titties because they are popular. I don't need to see every battle royale ever released because they are popular. And I don't need to see random game #5 because Pewdiepie played it last week.

And that Pewdiepie fan who can't play a game with both hands for Reasons: I want them to get all the anime titties and battle royales and BLANK simulator games they can handle.


There is a large number of gradiations between the wild west and "Only games Gundato wants to play".


Like I said: Best case scenario, Steam gets better for consumers and for publishers/devs.

 

[Antrax]

The only policy Valve changed was regarding public access to temporary pages of games awaiting approval (as all 18+ games do).

That shit was never getting on Steam.

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That Valve didn't use some spare change to get a CS intern to write a script that searched titles for words like "rape" for automatic flagging is definitely a bad thing, and Valve should certainly change that. From a business standpoint, I'd have definitely been apprehensive about my game being associated with Steam when that shit was going around (to say nothing of the loli waifu shit already on there).

To my knowledge, that's not on EGS, and so I can see why that might also be a point in its favor with some devs.

 

[StereoVSN]

J

Well, yes, but now they have a third option. A storefront that offers some features in exchange for a cheaper price. That store's existence isn't their problem, it's Valve's.

You can sell handmade wood furniture for $200 for 30 years, but if someone else comes in and sells a slightly worse version for a lot less money, you now have to contend with competition. And the appropriate response isn't "but my tables were good value for you last year?!" The existence of a cheaper product changes the value of your product.

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Except they don't have one thing, customers. At the end, consumers will be buying the games and so far there have been a good deal of resistance to Epic, thankfully.

Also thankfully, there are plenty of games beside the stupid EGS exclusives and even some of those will show up on GamePass thanks MS.

I, as a customer, also can go and not buy games from publishers who go exclusive on EGS. So THQ/Deep Silver are dead to me (after that 8chan BS, Metro and Shenmue), despite the fact that I had a few games on my wishlist and was going to buy them this Steam sale. Not anymore.

So good luck to those pubs who go exlusive on EGS and good riddance.

 

[BringBackSonics]

Steam hosts close to 5 thousand unique mods for EU4 alone.

They also seamlessly auto-update the ones you're subscribed to the moment the creator uploads revised content.

Yeah, Paradox would do just great on EGS. :p

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For awhile, most of the Major mods for CK2 had to be downloaded off their forums and it was a pain in the ass. The workshop is So much easier.

 

[Zips]

That 30 gets tons of consumer focused features.

But then again, the publishers have made it very clear that don't particularly care about the consumers, so sure, 88/12 sounds great to them. It probably also sounds great to the devs, even if they may not see any actual benefit like the publishers do.

Of course that also gets tossed in the can the moment they ignore places like Itch.io that allow consumers to give them 100% of the cut, or even Discord with their 90/10 split. Or they sell on other retailers with keys they can make for free wherein Valve gets no cut. But hey, keep up with the bullshit, who cares anymore.

 

[Antrax]

J

Except they don't have one thing, customers. At the end, consumers will be buying the games and so far there have been a good deal of resistance to Epic, thankfully.

Also thankfully, there are plenty of games beside the stupid EGS exclusives and even some of those will show up on GamePass thanks MS.

I, as a customer, also can go and not buy games from publishers who go exclusive on EGS. So THQ/Deep Silver are dead to me (after that 8chan BS, Metro and Shenmue), despite the fact that I had a few games on my wishlist and was going to buy them this Steam sale. Not anymore.

So good luck to those pubs who go exlusive on EGS and good riddance.

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Literally none of this is a response to what I wrote.

You're free to buy or not buy whatever you want.

 

[Jawmuncher]

It's going to take a lot more than Epic to get Valve, MS, Sony, Google, Apple and Nintendo to change their ways.
I think one of the biggest issues preventing change is consumers themselves. It's easy to go "Devs should get more of a cut on all platforms!".
But on the same hand, the general consumer is going to care most about how much they have to pay above anything else.

We've already been through the numerous threads about how games should cost more today and the overwhelming majority are absolutely disgusted by the idea of even a $10 increase.

 

[Alek]

I think the consumer sentiment towards Epic has been a little ridiculous. I often hear this idea that they're money hatting developers to get games onto their platform, but the reality is that their platform has a huge audience and it gives the developer the largest cut.

I have spoken with friends, working at studios who made the decision to go exclusive to the Epic store, and it was the studio that pushed that decision, not Epic.

 

[Deleted member 679]

Well, yes, but now they have a third option. A storefront that offers some features in exchange for a cheaper price. That store's existence isn't their problem, it's Valve's.

You can sell handmade wood furniture for $200 for 30 years, but if someone else comes in and sells a slightly worse version for a lot less money, you now have to contend with competition. And the appropriate response isn't "but my tables were good value for you last year?!" The existence of a cheaper product changes the value of your product.

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I'm just sure Valve's response would be different if we had any EGS exclusives at all that are only there due to the higher revenue split. So far all of their exclusives are the results of moneyhats. Everyone else would rather release their games either only on Steam or on both stores, and Steam ends up selling a lot more anyway.

If your handmade wood furniture keeps not only selling as much, but increasing its sales growth, you're less likely to care about those asking you to sell it for cheaper. I don't think the cheaper product changes the value just by existing, it does so when your sales start to suffer for it, which hasn't been the case. It wasn't even the case when EA abandoned Steam, and that's kind of a huge loss.

Would you guys prefer a 80/20% Steam split, but they killed 100% keys and only allowed you to buy games from the Steam store from now on?

Would that a 10% increase like that actually be enough to likely kill their key feature to maintain their own profits (at the cost of other PC stores as well)?

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Publishers would likely be more than ok with that, yeah.

It would suck for me as a customer, though.

 

[Gangrel]

Incoming Bannerlord EGS exclusive!

 

[Deleted member 42472]

Incoming Bannerlord EGS exclusive!

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You know what? After today's news, I am quite happy to play a medieval-ish game on a platform with no meaningful social media integration at all.

 

[elyetis]

This is sloppy
It benefits a pub/dev to have their choice of storefronts and have them in whatever ones they choose, but they don't have to like the terms dictated to them and can try to change them at any time

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There is nothing sloppy about it, I was not the one who said that this is only about "delivering games" and how that cost nothing, only to complain about visibility ( because, oh god no, other games from other devs get to have access to the same "game delivery platform" in increasing number, smaller pie and all that ) inherently contradicting the idea that those platform value is limited to their ability to provide the customer the ability to download their game.

The quality of service offered to the customer is never even a talking point for thoses people, and sure it's their right. I doubt many/any one said their position was somehow illegal or something, I mean most corporation also want to pay less taxes to say, the government, which would trickle down to us like the better revenue split is going to.
After all it's also why most bosses/corporation want less rigorous law preventing firing employee in my country, it's for our/my benefit, you see only the very bad ( so very very few people ) would be fired, but they would hire so so many more people since there wouldn't be any fear of being stuck with a bad employee.

Everything which does not benefit us at first sight, but benefit corporation, is always actually good for us, it will trickle down to us.

Proof : paid online on console really made online much better on console than other free platforms, you can see it trickle down at incredible speed.
And without it both sony/microsoft and Nintendo would close, because those moves are always about their survival ( mostly their devs/employee !) never for the sole sake of making more money.

 

[svacina]

That Valve didn't use some spare change to get a CS intern to write a script that searched titles for words like "rape" for automatic flagging is definitely a bad thing, and Valve should certainly change that. From a business standpoint, I'd have definitely been apprehensive about my game being associated with Steam when that shit was going around (to say nothing of the loli waifu shit already on there).

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I'm not saying the entire episode wasn't embarrassing, I was just arguing with the idea put forward that Valve likes to feature rape games on their front page.

To my knowledge, that's not on EGS, and so I can see why that might also be a point in its favor with some devs.

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To be fair, there's nothing much on EGS at all.

 

[Deleted member 679]

I think the consumer sentiment towards Epic has been a little ridiculous. I often hear this idea that they're money hatting developers to get games onto their platform, but the reality is that their platform has a huge audience and it gives the developer the largest cut.

I have spoken with friends, working at studios who made the decision to go exclusive to the Epic store, and it was the studio that pushed that decision, not Epic.

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Oh yeah, there are a lot of studios that approach Epic themselves, but looking for the moneyhat. They've been very transparent about that, this isn't some shady conspiracy.

I haven't heard of a single exclusive that didn't get any money upfront from Epic, though. If you did, feel free to correct me.

 

[Hella]

Incoming Bannerlord EGS exclusive!

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Paradox has nothing to do with Mount&Blade. TaleWorlds left them and went indie years ago.

 

[Zips]

I think the consumer sentiment towards Epic has been a little ridiculous. I often hear this idea that they're money hatting developers to get games onto their platform, but the reality is that their platform has a huge audience and it gives the developer the largest cut.

I have spoken with friends, working at studios who made the decision to go exclusive to the Epic store, and it was the studio that pushed that decision, not Epic.

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Discord is 90/10
Itch.io can be 100/0
Steam also allows for free keys to be made and sold on 3rd party retailers without taking a cut.

So no, EGS does not give the devs the largest cut of anything.

The reality is that they are money hatting developers. This has been proven repeatedly and without a doubt from studios that have said as such plus from what I've been told by speaking to developers.

 

[Antrax]

I'm just sure Valve's response would be different if we had any EGS exclusives at all that are only there due to the higher revenue split. So far all of their exclusives are the results of moneyhats. Everyone else would rather release their games either only on Steam or on both stores, and Steam ends up selling a lot more anyway

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Well, not exactly. The moneyhats are only as feasible with the 88/12 split since the extra 18% is effectively a storewide moneyhat. To say it another way, if Epic was also doing 70/30, the cost of each moneyhat so far would have gone up for sure by whatever that projected 18% would've been.

If Valve matched that split, then they essentially force Epic to pay a lot more if they want to do exclusivity.

If your handmade wood furniture keeps not only selling as much, but increasing its sales growth, you're less likely to care about those asking you to sell it for cheaper. I don't think the cheaper product changes the value just by existing, it does so when your sales start to suffer for it, which hasn't been the case. It wasn't even the case when EA abandoned Steam, and that's kind of a huge loss

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Sure. EGS could fold. My main point that I started with though is that the seller does not determine the value of a good or service. The market does.

 

[thebishop]

I think the consumer sentiment towards Epic has been a little ridiculous. I often hear this idea that they're money hatting developers to get games onto their platform, but the reality is that their platform has a huge audience and it gives the developer the largest cut.

I have spoken with friends, working at studios who made the decision to go exclusive to the Epic store, and it was the studio that pushed that decision, not Epic.

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When you say "the studio", are you talking about developers or publishers? And either way, what rational argument could there be not to release on *both* if both have such huge audiences?

... And as has already been pointed out, a few of these exclusive games have been shown to have references to Steam in their code, implying that any distribution exclusivity was a late decision.

 

[BradGrenz]

Actually, Epic has definitively said it is not sustainable. So no, they can't "easily afford it" and it won't last. They're simply willing to burn their cash to get more audience.

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As a reminder for those saying that 12% is enough or even still too much :
At 12% EGS is pushing certain payment processors onto the clients to pay themselves since it's the only way to operate.

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How has Epic shown 12% is sustainable when they can't even pay all their payment processor fees and passes many of them off to consumers?

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Promising to cover predatory payment service fees is not sustainable. That's why they pass that cost along to the customer. If you don't want to cover the extra amount, stop using such a shitty payment service.

Steam hosts close to 5 thousand unique mods for EU4 alone.

They also seamlessly auto-update the ones you're subscribed to the moment the creator uploads revised content.

Yeah, Paradox would do just great on EGS. :p

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Somehow ModDB.com has managed to survive without taking ANY cut from developers. Or maybe you just really support Valve profiting off the free labor of the mod community?

Why is Valve charging 30% is ridiculous yet Sony is fine ? Because they sell hardware at a profit and charge for an online paywall ?
Also, Valve provides dedicate multiplayers servers.

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It's a cost. An unrelated cost to the cost of their digital service.

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Why are you playing dumb? Sony spends billions designing and building a hardware and software platform that is sold to consumers near cost, and then support it with an enormous investment in marketing, customer service, dev relations, moderation, curation, R&D and more. All of that is included in the license devs and publishers pay them for their game sales, digital or otherwise. That's the whole business model.

There's nothing stopping literally anyone from just releasing a PC game on their own website and taking 100% of the cut.

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Except you have to pay a payment processor. And build and maintain an eCommerce platform. And defend against hacks, stay GDPR compliant. And if you want to take multiple currencies or offer regional pricing that adds costs. Oh, and now you need to do customer service, and deal with fraud and chargebacks from people who are laundering stolen card numbers through your site for keys they'll sell on G2A. Sooo simple...

 

[Deleted member 679]

Well, not exactly. The moneyhats are only as feasible with the 88/12 split since the extra 18% is effectively a storewide moneyhat. To say it another way, if Epic was also doing 70/30, the cost of each moneyhat so far would have gone up for sure by whatever that projected 18% would've been.

If Valve matched that split, then they essentially force Epic to pay a lot more if they want to do exclusivity.



Sure. EGS could fold. My main point that I started with though is that the seller does not determine the value of a good or service. The market does.

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I can agree with that, you're right.

 

[Alek]

Oh yeah, there are a lot of studios that approach Epic themselves, but looking for the moneyhat. They've been very transparent about that, this isn't some shady conspiracy.

I haven't heard of a single exclusive that didn't get any money upfront from Epic, though. If you did, feel free to correct me.

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What I'm saying though, is that they're not looking for the money hat. There is a strong, internal motivation to push onto that lower revenue split. A lot of people working in game dev, feel that the 70/30 split is unfair. I feel that it's unfair. I don't know what 'fair' is, but 70/30 just seems like too much. Cloud saves benefit consumers, but it's hardly difficult to back up your saves. The forums? The most active forums for most games are not on Steam, they're on Reddit. The social features? Discord is doing it better.

 

[StereoVSN]

Literally none of this is a response to what I wrote.

You're free to buy or not buy whatever you want.

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"You can sell handmade wood furniture for $200 for 30 years, but if someone else comes in and sells a slightly worse version for a lot less money, you now have to contend with competition. And the appropriate response isn't "but my tables were good value for you last year?!" The existence of a cheaper product changes the value of your product"

The buyer is not only the developer or publisher here. This is what everyone keeps forgetting. Consumers, ie the final customers, want a good product and that product is not just having a download function but also place to read reviews, guides, get mods, use easily on TV with any controller supported out of the box, and so on.

The extra price that Steam charges entices bigger audience because there is something for everyone. Maybe Bob doesn't like VR but loves BPM, while Paul plays on Linux and Angela is heavy into getting mods.

That's the end product, Steam, what consumers care about, is your real wood furniture. Instead EGS is equivalent of cardboard that you can use to put stuff on but it's probably not the greatest idea. It's super cheap though.

 

[svacina]

Except you have to pay a payment processor. And build and maintain an eCommerce platform. And defend against hacks, stay GDPR compliant. And if you want to take multiple currencies or offer regional pricing that adds costs. Oh, and now you need to do customer service, and deal with fraud and chargebacks from people who are laundering stolen card numbers through your site for keys they'll sell on G2A. Sooo simple...

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Just a heads up - usually when people say "nothing's stopping you" they mean that whatever they are talking about is a bad idea.

 

[Alek]

When you say "the studio", are you talking about developers or publishers? And either way, what rational argument could there be not to release on *both* if both have such huge audiences?

... And as has already been pointed out, a few of these exclusive games have been shown to have references to Steam in their code, implying that any distribution exclusivity was a late decision.

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Developers. People that make the game.

I'm not surprised it was a late decision. Many of these studios have been making games for Steam for over 10 years.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

But what I do want is a better version of what they are doing. I want them to actually show me the games I want based on my purchase history and tastes. I don't want to see anime titties because they are popular. I don't need to see every battle royale ever released because they are popular. And I don't need to see random game #5 because Pewdiepie played it last week.

And that Pewdiepie fan who can't play a game with both hands for Reasons: I want them to get all the anime titties and battle royales and BLANK simulator games they can handle.

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That's...what they're doing right now.

Seriously. I just glanced at the store's front page.

-Since most of my recent Steam play-time has been with RPGs, the store is advertising a bunch of new/recent RPGs.
-One of the games on my wishlist is a Metroidvania, and the store is showing similar titles I might be interested in.
-Practically all of the recommendations I'm getting are because they are related to games that I've played.

 

[EloKa]

I think the consumer sentiment towards Epic has been a little ridiculous. I often hear this idea that they're money hatting developers to get games onto their platform, but the reality is that their platform has a huge audience and it gives the developer the largest cut.

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The issue with your line of thought lies within the forced exclusivity on the EGS. Why does a dev / pub need to sign an exlusivity deal (in exchange for some nice bags with dollar signs on it) if the EGS would already be the prime focus to sell your games? You could easily sell your games on EGS and a lot other stores without taking those exclusivity deals.

One might think that those moneyhats are needed so devs / pubs move over to the EGS which causes the idea that the EGS is probably not the best / most ideal store to sell your game exclusive on. Otherwise there wouldn't be the need to "persuade" the pubs to move the game to the EGS.

I have spoken with friends, working at studios who made the decision to go exclusive to the Epic store, and it was the studio that pushed that decision, not Epic.

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Oddly enough it appears that normal employees (like a dev) had no say in those deals and they were pulled off by the management or publisher alone.
There are several developers that came out and publicity stated that they don't like those exclusivity deals. Even more devs do that in private.

 

[GhostTrick]

Promising to cover predatory payment service fees is not sustainable. That's why they pass that cost along to the customer. If you don't want to cover the extra amount, stop using such a shitty payment service.



Somehow ModDB.com has managed to survive without taking ANY cut from developers. Or maybe you just really support Valve profiting off the free labor of the mod community?




Why are you playing dumb? Sony spends billions designing and building a hardware and software platform that is sold to consumers near cost, and then support it with an enormous investment in marketing, customer service, dev relations, moderation, curation, R&D and more. All of that is included in the license devs and publishers pay them for their game sales, digital or otherwise. That's the whole business model.



Except you have to pay a payment processor. And build and maintain an eCommerce platform. And defend against hacks, stay GDPR compliant. And if you want to take multiple currencies or offer regional pricing that adds costs. Oh, and now you need to do customer service, and deal with fraud and chargebacks from people who are laundering stolen card numbers through your site for keys they'll sell on G2A. Sooo simple...

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Because the hardware is sold. It doesn't get into the service provide on their store. You're the one playing dumb here.

The cost you charge on the sale on PSN is related to what you provide with PSN. Sony selling a platform is a service they provide to themselves: Making profit on a hardware. Yes, it involves a big cost. But that's unrelated. And it's absorbed by them selling the hardware.

 

[StereoVSN]

What I'm saying though, is that they're not looking for the money hat. There is a strong, internal motivation to push onto that lower revenue split. A lot of people working in game dev, feel that the 70/30 split is unfair. I feel that it's unfair. I don't know what 'fair' is, but 70/30 just seems like too much. Cloud saves benefit consumers, but it's hardly difficult to back up your saves. The forums? The most active forums for most games are not on Steam, they're on Reddit. The social features? Discord is doing it better.

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Forums are often the first place to check for issues and fixes, especially for more obscure games. How about VR, BPM, controller support, mods, Linux, support for non credit payments, and more. It's not just the cloud saves. Most people don't care about the whole list but a lot of people care for at least parts of it.

But you go ahead and keep pushing the "close parity narrative.

 

[Alek]

Oddly enough it appears that normal employees (like a dev) had no say in those deals and they were pulled off by the management or publisher alone.

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Yeah for sure, they would be. The studios financial/marketing department will probably speak to Epic and likely perform an evaluation of the cost/benefit based on data that isn't publicly available, and then, they make the decision. I wasn't suggesting that game development staff get to make the decision, just that game devs studios aren't as negative as the steam loyalists on forums like these, in my personal experiences.

 

[thebishop]

If you're mainly a console player and you don't understand why there's so much anger toward Epic: the difference between Steam and EGS in terms of the system functionality is close to the difference between PS4 and PS2.

Steam is a modern gaming platform with the kinds of integrated features you take for granted on console, EGS is a store and a download manager. Given the choice I'd rather give the publisher 100% of the revenue and just get a win32 installer.

 

[fspm]

What's better than a 70/30 cut. Oh that's right, a 70/30 when your customer pays for online and you don't even need the servers, one of those fools will be the server.
I also think 1000$ is too much for a tv so I made one at home, better than oled and no burn in.
0.01$ is 0.01$ too much for games with a bunch of jpegs and text files with random scrambled lines but don't tell this one to paradox.

 

[elyetis]

just that game devs studios aren't as negative as the steam loyalists on forums like these, in my ersonal experiences.

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So you are saying that dev studio who get a $$$ hat big enough to compensate any level of sales, aren't as negative about the move to EGS as the people who end up having to spend sometime up to 50% more to get the same game but with a worst service ?
That's surprising.

 

[Delusibeta]

The whole EGS debacle is a very public demonstration of how many indie developers, publisher executives and game press writers are completely disconnected from the end users.

 

[BeI]

%

85/15.

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Funny enough, they probably get ~15% cut in some games thanks to those keys existing, although we get a more free PC market with more consumer pricing options at the same time.

Maybe they could try experimenting with increased cut options for devs though, like Humble. Like maybe something as simple as a % cut slider when buying a game through Steam that goes from 70-90% or something. Or having a subtle option built into the store where you can click the developer's name and it opens a little window where you can buy their game and give them a 100% cut (so kinda like the equivalent of Valve giving every dev their own website page to sell their 100% cut keys).


Or maybe they could even increase the cut based on game ratings (assuming that's not unfair in some way)? So maybe games at 80%+ positive rating get +2.5% and games over 90% positive get +5.0% on top of existing cuts?