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PC Gaming Era | March 2019 - The Ides of Smarch

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GrrImAFridge

GrrImAFridge

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Veidt said:
There were no fixed revenue tiers prior to that announcement. 30% was the standard and certain publishers had negotiated more amicable terms with Valve along the years. That wasn't some trade secret, just like the 30% split was never publicly stated by Valve and yet ended up being widely known.

The streamlined tiers were not meant to appease big publishers. Valve has always been in touch with major publishers, a lot of changes to Steam were made to keep them onboard, they were fully aware about what sort of moves were being done and they also knew the EGS was coming. There are always rumblings around developer circles and these are ultimately small communities where most people are fairly well connected.

The announcement about the revenue tiers was mainly done in response to public pressure and to make things more transparent for devs worldwide, in the face of growing dissatisfaction with Steam and the bad PR they've been receiving lately. The new revenue tiers are meant to reward successful independent studios and teams; they're not going to make publishers reconsider anything, only failure will do that.
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We live in a world where Call of Duty was once so popular that Acti successfully negotiated a "very modest" cut of XBL sub revenue, so I don't deny the possibility; however, again, in the absence of any sort of evidence, and as there is evidence to the contrary (granted, THQ wasn't a major publisher), I'm just not convinced. I realise Valve has played favourites in select instances (e.g. working with Bethesda to manually grant Skyrim SE to relevant owners of the original release, allowing Ubisoft to run dailies during a big sale, etc.), but the notion that this extends to revenue cuts as well strikes me as spurious.

But, hey, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong!
 
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Shengar

Shengar

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Oct 26, 2017
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NarohDethan said:
Someone on that reddit link that Nappael shared sais that the 30% Valve cut should entitle them to some kind of marketing. I'm not saying they're not, but I wonder how can Valve realistically showcase the majority of the new games on its main page. Nintendo does their Nindies direct what, every 3 months? They last 30 minutes and sometimes there are a LOT of games.
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I wouldn't mind honestly with more platform holder do similar thing like what Nintendo did, but realistically speaking as you said there are just too many fucktons of games out there. Even if Valve put forth a marketing initiative for indies, there would eventually some games being left out and then we are going back to square about accesibility to the store (or to the marketing billboard in this case)
 
bmdubya

bmdubya

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Nov 1, 2017
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Nabs said:
Opus Magnum just won Excellence in Design at the IGF. Well deserved. I played quite a bit via Origin Access... I need to buy it on Steam.
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I keep forgetting about Opus Magnum on Origin Access.

I also saw Paratopic won best audio design. That's been installed on my PC for a while, but haven't gotten to it yet.
Shengar said:
It's not just about being vague, but Epic worded like the game performed that well because it's an EGS exclusives, which is disingenuous as fuck. People don't take account that Metro Last Light when released in 2013 was a niche release back in the day, and the game have long tail sales due to good mouth of words afterward.
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I think that is another thing to take into considering. PC gaming in 2013 is WAY different than in 2019. More and more people are getting into PC gaming for different reasons, so you would hope that they'd see an increase in sales.
 
Parsnip

Parsnip

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Oct 25, 2017
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Opus Magnum is the kind of Zachtronics game I can actually play because of its visual nature. Still need to buy it some day.
To this day SpaceChem is the only one theirs I've actually finished.


Also I should probably go to sleep, I'm making terrible grammar mistakes.
 
Teggy

Teggy

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Oct 25, 2017
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I'm thinking of buying that Humble language bundle. I've been thinking lately how little I remember of the 6 years of Spanish I took.
 
Cecil

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Pixieking said:
God, I'd forgotten about Greenlight. Yeah, I'll do that - it'll be really instructive, I think.

Relatedly, Death Ray Manta dev and all-round good bloke Rob Fearon:


Rob
@retroremakes

I wish Epic had a plan for their store beyond "recreate the circumstances that got us here" but evidently not.
4:01 AM · Mar 21, 2019 ·
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Definitely a better person to listen to in these topics, then Rami Ismail and his weird quotes.
 
Annubis

Annubis

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NarohDethan said:


Angry Joe gets it.
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Yeah, I'm gonna stop listening because they too start saying that the 30% is the problem...

Do people not realize that Steam could go down to 10% and it would not change a single thing?
The goal of Epic is to destroy Steam quickly at a loss and then when they capture the market to fuck it up and everyone for major profit.
That's how big corps work. That's market tackling 101.

If Steam follows them, they are basically self-destructing because they don't have a Fortnite moneypot.
 

Deleted member 42

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It's actually super easy to see why devs are going after the whole 30% cut thing on Steam compared to other platforms:

Because they have no other recompense/options on the others

Devs: We want more money
Sony: Get off of our store
Microsoft: Get off of our store
Nintendo: Get off of our store
Apple: Pay us and then get off of our store
Android: You could start your own store I guess, but lol

PC is the spot where they have the most negotiating power/wiggle room because if Steam doesn't give them the terms they want, they would initially be able to take a flier and go on other stores, but Epic now basically makes it very easy to just cut bait entirely
 
Pixieking

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BronsonLee said:
It's actually super easy to see why devs are going after the whole 30% cut thing on Steam compared to other platforms:

Because they have no other recompense/options on the others

Devs: We want more money
Sony: Get off of our store
Microsoft: Get off of our store
Nintendo: Get off of our store
Apple: Pay us and then get off of our store
Android: You could start your own store I guess, but lol

PC is the spot where they have the most negotiating power/wiggle room because if Steam doesn't give them the terms they want, they would initially be able to take a flier and go on other stores, but Epic now basically makes it very easy to just cut bait entirely
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Hadn't thought of it like this. Quite something that the lack of power that Steam can currently wield - and the ease with which select/high-profile devs/pubs can just go to Epic - shows how ludicrous the "Valve has a monopoly" arguments really are. All it needed was for one company to start throwing cash around.

Which makes me even more upset/annoyed that Epic didn't just put all that cash behind itch.io instead.
 

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Pixieking said:
Hadn't thought of it like this. Quite something that the lack of power that Steam can currently wield - and the ease with which select/high-profile devs/pubs can just go to Epic - shows how ludicrous the "Valve has a monopoly" arguments really are. All it needed was for one company to start throwing cash around.

Which makes me even more upset/annoyed that Epic didn't just put all that cash behind itch.io instead.
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It basically has nothing to do with Steam itself, and more that the market for PC was basically set up for someone to roll in and fuck up a whole bunch of shit if they had the money and knowledge to do so.

We can bounce back and forth about Steam's feature set, their curation issues, and all that jazz until the cows come home, but it really just has to do with:

Devs want more money
They want to pull a power play
Steam can only negotiate so much
Epic rolls in, they want to pull their own power play
Devs will point to whatever issues that come to mind (which are also important, don't throw those out)
 
Tizoc

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Biomutant being published by thqn under its current situation already made me weary of getting it soon to begin with.
 
ramoisdead

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Tizoc said:
Biomutant being published by thqn under its current situation already made me weary of getting it soon to begin with.
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If it ain't bad enough, 505 Games' deal with Epic to have Control on Eggs for a year makes me worry about other 505 Games published titles...like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and Indivisible.
 

Deleted member 50949

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rainking187 said:
I really hope Indivisible doesn't become an Epic exclusive.
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Mike Z continuously calls out the BS to various situations like sending test builds to Sony yet got late responses, 360 patches costed a lot to submit, building a program so you can play PS3 sticks on PS4 (and actually wanted companies like Capcom, Namco and others to try it out and make it mainstream yet they have various shitty implementation about it) . He is very transparent about what he does in general, I don't think anything bad will happen.
 
Pixieking

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I mean, the thing to remember is that currently, everything except Journey has been confirmed as 1 year timed exclusive. So unless you have to have the game Day 1, it's nothing to really worry about. So, for me, Outer Worlds 1 year exclusive? Okay, gives me time to finish Pillars 1. Start and finish Pillars 2. Start and finish Tyranny. Start and finish Torment. I probably would've pre-ordered it on Steam to support Obsidian, but now? Nah. I can and will wait. I don't need to be manipulated into getting games on a store I don't particularly like because of instant gratification.
 
yuraya

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What a crazy week or so this has been. So many ups and downs. Highs and lows.

MCC and Castlevania collection coming to Steam

Sweeney moneyhats Control, Outer Worlds and David Cage.

Google and Phil Harrison flexin their inner search bar

Plus there is still more tomorrow. The day after too with new a new Borderlands moneyhat.

GDC is like the new E3 for PC gamers.

And we are now less than 24hrs away from a new From Software game. So happy FROM day SteamEra!
 
PC-tan

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How long will I have to wait for Epic to have prepaid cards in physical retail stores? Or do they already exist (sans V-bucks stuff), since I don't want to give my credit card information to Epic especially seeing how in the past credit information has been stolen from them.

I'm Interested in getting the Quantic Dream collection. I think I will wait until after release to see if they improved the games over the PS4 version or If they are "exactly the same" down to the frame rate and all (and yes I have heard about some stuff being tied to game logic)
 
GrrImAFridge

GrrImAFridge

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PC-tan said:
How long will I have to wait for Epic to have prepaid cards in physical retail stores? Or do they already exist (sans V-bucks stuff), since I don't want to give my credit card information to Epic especially seeing how in the past credit information has been stolen from them.

I'm Interested in getting the Quantic Dream collection. I think I will wait until after release to see if they improved the games over the PS4 version or If they are "exactly the same" down to the frame rate and all (and yes I have heard about some stuff being tied to game logic)
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EGS doesn't have a Steam Wallet equivalent and there's no mention of one on the Trello roadmap.
 
Wok

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The winners of the 21st annual IGF Awards are:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($30,000) & Excellence in Narrative ($3,000)



Excellence in Design ($3,000)



Excellence in Visual Art ($3,000)



Excellence in Audio ($3,000)

 
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Wok

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Teggy said:
I'm thinking of buying that Humble language bundle. I've been thinking lately how little I remember of the 6 years of Spanish I took.
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I am tempted as well, but then I remember a few of the (good) books which I bought from them and have yet to read. There is a gap between meaning to do something and doing it. It is the equivalent of our backlog for other things in life.
 
Kremling

Kremling

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Dec 15, 2017
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Was going to buy Sekiro tonight but had to spend my last $80 on buying flea medication for my cats.

pplGguA.png
 
Wok

Wok

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spineduke said:
not all of us have paypal
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So, what do you do when you do not want to share your CC info? Prepaid cards? Is there any other alternative to Paypal?

Edit: It seems like there are a few. I remember using Stripe once on a store. I have seen Revolut a few times in Group Buys.

Edit²: Also, Google Pay and Amazon Payments, not sure which store supports those though.

Here are the methods suggested by Epic when I try to purchase a game from them. I have blurred the ones with fees.

9XKdrc0.png
 
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Kremling

Kremling

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Dec 15, 2017
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Echo said:
If it makes you feel better, this was the right choice. I think you're awesome. I hope your kitties feels the same after they get the medicine. :)
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Thanks! I can't stand seeing them suffering with fleas, especially my oldest who's allergic to them and his fur gets really spotty when flea season springs around. Next paycheck can't come soon enough though :D

Zophop said:
Send me your Steam ID and I'll gift ya Sekiro. Kittys always come first.
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I'm seriously flabbergasted, you seriously just turned around my day. Thank you so much.
 
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Rosenkrantz

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I'm so fucking bloodthirsty if I was Valve's speaker at GDC I would get on stage with the best slasher smile on my face, told our plans about store and at the end be like "oh, by the way, every game that was advertised to our customers and uses our store infrastructure after making a deal with Epic Games will be permanently delisted from Steam. We also plan to change our rules to not let this happen in the future. Enjoy!" Fuck em all.
 
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