Pretty sure it was intentional when they accepted the moneyhat.
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Rumour: Magic Battle Royale "Spellbreak" might be releasing on the Epic Games Store (NDA’d closed alpha test on Epic)
- Thread starter Chairmanchuck (另一个我)
- Start date
Pretty sure it was intentional when they accepted the moneyhat.
A monopoly's never good, so it's great that Epic's forcing us to only buy from their store. Hopefully more developers choose to have their games sold on one store so we can have competition.
I don't necessarily agree with the stance, just explaining it!
Personally I think in general steam should probably continue to take the high road and just ignore it. It ends up just making the games own fans on the platform pissed so it's their loss, not valves.
Spellbreaker was never sold on Steam, Never launched on steam and was never advertised on Steam. It was in a closed beta.
Conversely, I'll be glad when aggressive competition from EGS finally forces Steam to go 20% or so for all devs and publishers on Steam.
The devs and publishers that put their games on Steam are a massive part of the successful Steam equation. It'd be great if people here realized that.
We'll see when they announce the details then.
Funnily, you don't want that on Xbox.
Also as discussed before: As a customer, I don't care about devs getting a better share. If anything, that'll kill 3rd party stores.
I responded to this point last page and you conveniently ignored it. You're acting like valve is the only player in the of space and epic are doing something Herculean by slaying the evil beast. In reality there are many stores on PC and they're all competing with steam in their own ways and many are doing well. You don't need to do anything consumer anti competitive bullshit like epic to succeed. Just build good features and make good offerings and have a good base of games (not exclusives) and people will come.
Gained what exactly? The $100 Steam Direct fee? Probably cheaper than the cost of building your own launcher, patcher, distribution service, and paying for hosting. But perhaps I'm not seeing something more obvious.
Valve will be hosting roundtable talks with devs at GDC, and the question of where the ideal cut lies -- one that's a proper fair share for devs but leaves Valve with some wiggle room to comfortably cover things like payment processing fees -- is bound to be a big topic, so it's probably safe to assume the days of 30% are numbered. 20%/15%/10% (base/>$25m revenue/>$50m revenue) would be my guess.
Unless they're contractually obligated to release the game on Steam after doing that, I'm not sure what the grounds for legal action would be, though...?
Making their game also available on EGS would have been fine. It's the "we'll do the preliminary work here and then move entirely elsewhere" part that's the problem.
It's like going into a retail store, pestering the employees for three hours finding out everything about a product you're interested in, then leaving and ordering the product online from another store entirely.
Is it?
Because going by this thread, it sure sounds like they still paid the $100 for access to what they used.
I don't think it's as malicious nor as complicated as people are making it out to be.
I really hope this will happen. Both for the devs and for us, since this would take away Epic's only advantage over Steam. Epic would actually have to compete with features and policies, resulting in competition that benefits us as consumers.
Oh yeah I dunno. Probably don't have any, but I'm not a lawyer.
I just read your post as valve suing epic and was just clarifying what he meant.
Yeah, sorry, I think I muddled it in my second post because I'd forgotten the original context, hah. I actually wasn't sure who the post I was replying to meant but was trying to cover both.
If it's Epic, I'm not sure how that would work because you'd essentially be arguing that exclusivity is what's illegal, right? And if it's the devs that are leaving, without a contract forbidding it I don't see what the grounds would be either. (I also think... a game that does release but never sells a single copy would be in the same situation in terms of resources used, right?)
My point regardless was that it felt like them throwing "they should sue them" out there as a solution, because the situation feels wrong to them, without any idea of if there's actually anything legally wrong happening.
Steam has never had a monopoly, I really think that console players should not be allowed to enter threads about Steam and EGS unless they know what they're talking aobut.
Epic isn't going to compete in features and policies, I have no faith they would.
Yeah it is going to the EGS because they didn't have the right infrastructure on their own launcher. Steam also would have wanted them to release the game if they were going to give out keys.
Their excuse was `we have more control of who we let into our game`. That's why its EGS.
Their excuse was `we have more control of who we let into our game`. That's why its EGS.
Developers are free to use Steam for closed pre-release access. They're not required or even actively encouraged to use Early Access. The Spellbreak pre-alpha is hosted on Steam, even, and as another example, Warhorse used Steam to host pre-release builds of Kingdom Come for years. I purchased my key in April 2015, almost three years before release.
I think this is probably the main reason
"Release Override
These keys are used to grant access to a product prior to its release on Steam. Release Override keys are intended for small beta tests and press/influencer access. We will look at each request on a case by case basis, and in general less than 1000 keys work well for this purpose. It is never OK to sell release-override beta keys."
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
They were basically selling keys to the alpha on steam for like $50+ Without even having a store page.
"Release Override
These keys are used to grant access to a product prior to its release on Steam. Release Override keys are intended for small beta tests and press/influencer access. We will look at each request on a case by case basis, and in general less than 1000 keys work well for this purpose. It is never OK to sell release-override beta keys."
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
They were basically selling keys to the alpha on steam for like $50+ Without even having a store page.
They were not really selling keys to the alpha but rather selling packages that contain access to the alpha/beta (like a lot of Kickstarter games do).
Bye. Good luck getting it to take off on the fortnite launcher, where just about everyone who uses it is already balls deep in the world's most popular game. (Currently?)
As much as Valve may not like it, pre-release access is a staple of backer/founder tiers. The developer of Jenny LeClue was selling a beta access tier via his Humble Widget until just some weeks ago, for example. Similarly, while the documentation says that pre-orders are limited to select partners, in practice Valve is happy to oblige anybody who requests a pre-order period. It's all just loose guidelines, really.
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I'm pretty sure I've never told you this before.
That can be construed as a selfish position. essentially, 'fuck you, got mine'?
Developers create the indie games you enjoy. Why shouldn't you care if many of them are struggling to turn a profit?
Nah. People won't come. Steam is too well entrenched for that.
Heck, even with the other stores out there that you claim are 'doing well', lots of 3rd party devs are releasing their games only on Steam. I've seen quite a few reveal trailers use 'Steam' instead of 'PC' in the release platform list.
Tyler from Valve News Network said on another forum that he's heard that stuff like Artifact's failure, the Epic Game Store and the success of Apex is shaking things up at Valve and causing internal discussions about what changes they need to make.
As shitty as Epic buying timed exclusives for PC is if it lights a fire under Valve's ass I think that's a good thing (and I say that as someone who's favorite game of all time is TF2 and is a big Valve fan).
You get this wrong. The monopoly is to have one store - Steam - dominating and proposing conditions the devs cannot challenge as there isn't any real alternative. Now with another store - Epic Store - being in the position to challenge Steam, it gives devs options and that's a great thing.
Let's not act like Steam didn't prerty much own the PC market. The Epic Store getting Exclusivity is a drastic way to be on the map. Otherwise how would they challenged Steam who has all the games and gamers ?
It sucks for the regular Steam users. Not going to deny that. But more competition is better and I think the gamers will see the benefits as well at some point.
EXCELLENT NEWS!
Hope this pans out and delivers a solution that helps the small guys.
I don't think they'd ever drop to 15% or 10% though.
No I get that. But they did it while not even having a steam store page. That was valves issue.
Steam dominates as you say because the market has decided that they're the best. There's plenty of other competitors, but Steam is the most popular because they offer the most for it's users. Epic has nothing to offer but money.
The rich corporation buying their way in as opposed to earning it. They're not promoting competition at all and as long as they continue operating as they are, they're a detriment to PC users.
I'm not sure how that relates to the idea of them somehow abusing the use of Valve's resources before going to Epic.
That's also not uncommon. We Happy Few didn't get a store page until roughly eight months after alpha keys went out, for example. I'm just going to be perfectly blunt: the devs have found a convenient excuse that allows them to abide by Epic's moratorium on publicly commenting on the nature of the exclusivity. Even Deep Silver concocted a meaningless platitude about how how the eleventh-hour exclusivity for Metro was about "investing in the future of the franchise" -- nobody believes that.
To be clear, I'm not fussed about what's happened. In point of fact, I don't blame indies at all for accepting these sort of deals. It can be frustrating, sure (I was rather miffed about Ashen, personally), but it's understandable: the indie market is a crowded one these days and it can be hard to stand out even if you've something special on your hands.
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And they also have the "fuck you, got mine" thinking. Sorry to think of me before devs.
And I buy these games they make.
If many of them are struggling to turn a profit, maybe the reason isn't because of a 18% cut difference but somewhere else.
(And as I already said, the money people save allows them to buy more game. Which means more devs gets money.)
You're welcome. If you want to go more in depth: That 30% cut allows 3rd party stores to offer various discounts. I'm talking about authorized 3rd party stores btw. The money me and a lot of people save with these discounts means we can buy more games and support more devs.
with less money, because it's been deeply discounted. the economics genious has logged on
The devs are free to sell it on any reseller for any price, including their own websites or retail, with steam taking no money from the transaction.
Devs lose nothing from gmg et al because the discount is taken out of the 30% cut and they benefit from people who would not have bought it day one without the discount. But if devs want to sell it for full price on their personal website and take 100% of the sale, they can.
The median sales for an indie pc game is approximately zero plus or minus two hundred, and even good games routinely come nowhere close to breaking even, so despite the noise about revenue splits this seems like the a side show to the overwhelming issue of "there are an order of magnitude more Indies coming out for pc than the market can support so the supermajority are going to megaflop". Ergo we didn't see a mass exodus to itch.io and we haven't seen most devs sell their keys on their website and many choose not to bother even with resellers, even high profile Indies who do well.
Which makes no difference for the dev since the discount is on the retailers cut.
And no, 20-25% off isnt a deep discount.
Glad that I could inform you today.
weird how devs seem more excited about getting a bigger direct cut than continuing to take 30% with the chance of getting more sales in a discount down the road. like to be clear, i think that epic locking up exclusives is definitely annoying (although nowhere near as annoying as on consoles; a console timed exclusive means you're SOL, a storefront exclusive means getting over yourself and downloading a different client) but all this napkin math is arguing around the fact that a storefront offering a bigger cut up front will be more appealing for devs, always. there's a reason indies like itch.io so much
But itch.io already existed way before with a bigger cut than EGS too. They're excited for something worse than they already had?
I'm talking specifically about the choice between taking a higher percentage vs a lower percentage + discounts. People will choose the better cut, every time. itch isn't locking up B and AAA tier games, but the principle is similar.
Of course it's exciting, but the itch.io comparison is exactly the point - a lot of devs still don't bother releasing on it despite taking a 10% cut by default and allowing devs to go even lower. I'm not even talking exclusivity, I'm talking even releasing on the platform in any capacity. Nobody is angry that people are releasing games on EGS, or on storefronts other than Steam. Developers could be selling on itch.io for substantially cheaper than Steam and still be taking higher profits per unit. But a lot just don't.
What actually seems to be making developers release on EGS is large cash payments in exchange for exclusivity, because even if a storefront offers a 100% split but nobody buys it then they're still going to be making no money, but a cash injection or "minimum sales guarantee" means it's a sure bet that their personal game will do ok in at least some capacity.
If you take advantage of any of the substantial list of features Steam has that EGS and other launchers don't or are in certain regions where EGS games are not currently being sold it's a bit more than "getting over yourself and downloading a different client". I get that you see people being mad and you're not mad so they seem like irrational babies but there are legit reasons why this sucks for a lot of people.
There's a huge chance that all EGS exclusives so far are moneyhats. So it isn't even about the lower cut (yet). Let's wait and see how many games will go EGS exclusive when Epic stops throwing money around. ;)
like I said, I'm not out to defend epic here; I just also think it's silly to pretend that there's nothing appealing to devs about direct bigger cuts. The client thus far is undeniably less robust than steam, no argument there
well yes, exclusives are always going to be moneyhatted, lmao
You are mixing up Stores with Launchers.
Steam is a launcher and a store.
GMG is a store selling keys for other launchers
Humble Bundle is a store selling keys for other launchers
Voidu, Razer, Gamesplanet, etc. are stores selling keys for other launchers
GoG is a launcher and a store
EGS is a launcher and a store, they are the only ones that pay 3rd party devs to only sell through EGS, fucking over all the other stores.