If only there were some disruptive event happening that might indicate some developers have a problem with Steam taking 30% in this market...
I want you to understand here.
Devs have a problem with literally any percentage of cut. They would have a problem with 25%. They would have a problem with 20%. They would have a problem with 5%. They would have a problem with 1%. Because literally any percentage is money that they have to give to someone else. And they don't want to. And I don't blame them, they spent all this time creating something and now they have to give a portion of their reward away to someone else who, in their mind, has done nothing but facilitate the transaction for them. For the devs who may not have leveraged many, or any, of the features Steam provides (both as a storefront and as a development library), they don't see why they should have to pay in to something they have no intention of using or benefiting from, even when they may not realize to what extent they actually have, directly or indirectly. (
insert apt political analogy here)
Making games is hard. Making money from making games is harder. The price of video games have not increased with the price of inflation. 10K sales of a $30 game isn't worth the same now as it would've been 10 years ago. So devs, looking for a way to minimize the risk, or are desperately trying to find a way to salvage the bad financial situation they might have put themselves in with development, are desperate for options. Kickstarter was one of them, for those with excellent project management skills that won't blow their budget out too early. But even that isn't foolproof, so they're going after what they see as the next easiest target, the cut that storefronts take.
The problem with Epic's involvement in all this, is that they know devs aren't stupid. They know there was no guarantee that their massive Fortnite install base would actually translate to higher sales than Steam when launching EGS, or at least enough sales that their 12% cut would've equaled out to the same revenue that Steam's 30% cut would've. They also know that running the store at 12%, without being subsidized by Fortnite and UE4 licensing income, literally is unsustainable.
So they tied this idea of this mythical "12% cut" to a literal truckload of cash. They look out for developers who simply are looking to get paid for the work they've done (and whose game already seems like a surefire success), make an offer that's too good to refuse, and then tie the marketing to the great 12% cut they offer, even though many of these devs may never actually sell enough copies to see that 12% cut, as the truckload of cash is a guaranteed sales agreement, in which Epic is taking 100% of all revenue until that upfront payment is made back. We have no idea how large these deals are, and we have no concrete idea of what sales numbers have been like outside of a few examples (some of which are more vague statements than hard numbers).
I challenge you to find a group of developers who would choose to release "exclusively" on Epic without that upfront deal because they think they would make more money than if they released on Steam (or both) from sales alone. Something they can't even choose to do because Epic right now is the one choosing which games get in and when.
EGS only works as long as Epic keeps the store heavily curated and continues to offer large sums of cash for these games. Those large sums of cash are enabled by Fortnite being a printing press for cash.
It all comes down to how much cash is Tim Sweeney willing to burn to ride this out (i.e how long does Fortnite stay this popular), and how long they want to keep their curation mentality going. They've already stated wanting to open the store up at some point, and Tim didn't get rich by literally throwing money away all his life.
I think there is merit in wanting to discuss why Steam takes 30%. I don't think there's merit in the argument being "it seems unfair" and "Epic only takes 12%" while willfully ignoring everything that 30% contributes to, much of which is for the betterment of the market and developers as a whole.
