The Epic launcher being made available to other developers is relatively new. These games have been in testing for sometime. Pretty sure it wasn't intentional.
Pretty sure it was intentional when they accepted the moneyhat.
The Epic launcher being made available to other developers is relatively new. These games have been in testing for sometime. Pretty sure it wasn't intentional.
I hope that even more devs takes that route. In the end this competition will be a good thing for devs as they will have more options and more money in their pockets. A monopoly - as Steam was pretty much - is never good no matter how people wants to slice it.
I don't necessarily agree with the stance, just explaining it!The Epic launcher being made available to other developers is relatively new. These games have been in testing for sometime. Pretty sure it wasn't intentional.
Spellbreaker was never sold on Steam, Never launched on steam and was never advertised on Steam. It was in a closed beta.Pretty sure it was intentional when they accepted the moneyhat.
the indies rely on steam because most other clients won't take them until they're already super successful... And they can't become successful until... Yadda yadda yadda
but yes im excited for when epic game store somehow saves all the indies while at the same time not filling their store with hundreds of things and having discoverability issues
itll be great
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.
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.
he's talking about companies using steams infrastructure to advertise or test their games and then moving them over to epic game store
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.The Epic launcher being made available to other developers is relatively new. These games have been in testing for sometime. Pretty sure it wasn't intentional.
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.
I don't think it's as malicious nor as complicated as people are making it out to be.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.
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.
Oh yeah I dunno. Probably don't have any, but I'm not a lawyer.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...?
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.
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.I hope that even more devs takes that route. In the end this competition will be a good thing for devs as they will have more options and more money in their pockets. A monopoly - as Steam was pretty much - is never good no matter how people wants to slice it.
Having said that in order to be a viable alternative, Epic will need to step up in game in the features and services front - not just on the monetary aspect - where it lacks Steam greatly as this has been pointed out by many folks here on Era.
Epic isn't going to compete in features and policies, I have no faith they would.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.
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.
Is it?
Because going by this thread, it sure sounds like they still paid the $100 for access to what they used.
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).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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 .
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.
No I get that. But they did it while not even having a steam store page. That was valves issue.
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?
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
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.
But itch.io already existed way before with a bigger cut than EGS too. They're excited for something worse than they already had?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?
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 ... 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
(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)
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.
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. ;)
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.