The Epic Games Store as described by Sergey Galyonkin (SteamSpy Creator, Currently At Epic) (Update: Sergey Clarifying Points on Twitter)

[Sausage Handler]

I dislike Epic store even more after reading this info.

- Focus on influences who will act as paid sales force
- Grabbing customer data and giving it to developers when unrelated to their game
- Keeping negative focus on reviews and opt-in reviews on general. I find Steam reviews quite useful most of the times and Steam has great features to filter them
- No discoverability (influencers suck when objectively reviewing games) features. I go through Steam discovery or find interesting game suggestions all the time.
- Still no guides/forums when moneyhatted developers refer to Steam forums for support.
- There is more on external pricing can't be lower than Epic, extra influencer charges to developers and so on.

This shit is anti-consumer and really will not work for most smaller devs either. Epic is throwing Fortnite money to try and build this terrible (for PC gamers) endeavor and I really dislike it. Meh.

Click to shrink...

This is exactly what I took from it. After reading that article I'm even more against the idea of the Epic store. It sounds like an absolute disaster for consumers while only existing to serve the interests of the select few hand chosen developers, and screw everybody else. This isn't even getting into the features like family sharing and steam-link streaming that will now be unusable for games that were previously set to release on Steam. I just fail to see any positives for the consumer, and it seems like smaller developers may struggle to even get on the store at all, let alone be noticed due to the non-existent store searching system. I've also been receiving nonstop emails about people trying to get into my Epic account all because I played Fortnite once, which is something I've never had to worry about with any other launcher I've used, so I don't even trust them with my credit card details.

 

[spineduke]

Great read - I think the most interesting thing is that their base of users on EGS doesn't largely intersect with the active userbase of Steam - as they most likely are very young kids. It's an unproven market (and potentially disastrous in the short term). I'm wondering if they're hoping to convert the kids into buyers, or if they're hoping that a sizeable portion of Steams users will come over. The kids that play will need at least another 5-10 years to be converted into consistent paying customers.

One other thing I'd like to see them address is how they plan on allowing developers who use Steamworks for multiplayer to play with EGS users. Seems like an obvious oversight that could hurt devs that live or die by a games multiplayer popularity.

And yes, as an active PC user, it makes zero sense to buy into Epics solution right now. Unless you really need to play those few exclusive games. Best to wait until their store is out of early access by 2020. I have serious doubts how the majority of indie devs will make it on this store. I think Epic are seriously underestimating the scale and volume of the market. Shitty discovery is a recipe for disaster for a lot of devs who don't have the financial clout to do market anything.

 

[InquisitorAles]

Thank you for your time and effort for translating this podcast and summing up all the info in this thread. I watched this podcast month ago but was too lazy to translate and put it nicely on my own, I hope this thread would help to educate more people on why epic store is such a huge pile of bullshit that needs to be avoided.

 

[nikasun :D]

I dont even know anyone who randomly goes to a store or place just to look for something random to get lol

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What you describe is the equivalent of browsing through a store, unless I misunderstood you.

Friends and I sometimes go through steam to look for a new game for all of us etc.

 

[.exe]

One other thing I'd like to see them address is how they plan on allowing developers who use Steamworks for multiplayer to play with EGS users. Seems like an obvious oversight that could hurt devs that live or die by a games multiplayer popularity.

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That is a very good point, because time and again we see indie/smaller multiplayer games struggle on Steam because they lose their player base very quickly. Once that's run dry, the game is as good as dead. If Epic's and Steam's servers/instances can communicate, this could do a lot for these niche games to keep them alive. I wonder if we'll see the PS4 crossplay debacle play out in the PC space too.

 

[ASaiyan]

This interview explains why the Epic Store is so bad in its current state: because it has been built from the ground up on a flawed concept. Creating a storefront entirely around the needs of sellers, with the buyers' needs considered an afterthought, is a good way to create a very nice environment to hawk goods to nobody. It's like building the world's nicest indoor flea market, with free booths and digital payment processors for all the vendors, and putting it in the middle of a desert. They really are expecting users to just come along because they're already there for Fortnite, which is arrogant as fuck.

Also. If the Epic Store serves "a different kind of customer" and is not meant to directly compete with Steam. Why are you moneyhatting games to only be available on the Epic Store?!? Am I supposed to believe that games like Journey and The Division 2 are only demanded by the "Fortnite-playing, Influencer-watching" crowd? Gtfo Steam Spy man. And here I used to think you were cool.

 

[Deleted member 4494]

Opt-in reviews is shit, and it is, right now, my biggest single issue with EGS moving forward.

 

[Uzzy]

Definitely not a fan of Galyonkin and Sweeney picking winners and losers, especially as one of the first winners were co-hosts on Galyonkin's podcast.

 

[Mórríoghain]

Lmao Sergey, you've analyzed Steam for years and this is the shit you came up with?

 

[Ge0force]

Also. If the Epic Store serves "a different kind of customer" and is not meant to directly compete with Steam. Why are you moneyhatting games to only be available on the Epic Store?!?

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I came here to post this. This is utter nonsense, Epic's moneyhatting is only meant to pull PC gamers away from Steam. More stores are always welcome, because it's a fact that plenty of PC gamers aren't happy with the way Valve is doing business with Steam. But I won't support Epic as long as they are paying devs and publishers to keep their games away from competing storefronts. It's anti-competive and anti-consumer imo.

Besides that, opt-in reviews are anti-consumer as well, and the fact that Epic's exclusives won't lead to cheaper keys in 3rd party stores means I'll have to pay more for them than I would if they were on Steam.

But hey, competition is great, right?

 

[Turin Turambar]

Very interesting, I'm still reading it. Just to comment something, this part

After a while, Galyonkin expects market standards to develop and the rate will settle for certain types of games. He gives the example of a 20% cut being used by indies, while larger publisher-backed games might go for something like 5%. While this will not likely account for the lion's share of a game's sales, I was nonetheless surprised that Galyonkin expected that comparatively smaller independent developers would allow a larger cut of their per-game revenue. If we're to assume that by 2021 the rate for indies will indeed settle at around 20%, the percentage margin per unit that they get would be 68% -- lower than Steam, even. Again, this won't be for most units sold, but still an interesting thought. More on this later.

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makes intuitive sense to me. Of course indie will have to share a higher part of the revenue with influencers, they can't do a $100 million marketing campaign in their own. You can do the best indie game ever, but it doesn't matter if people don't know your game. They NEED influencers to sell, otherwise you are competing with the other 12.000 games released in a single year on PC.

 

[spineduke]

makes intuitive sense to me. Of course indie will have to share a higher part of the revenue with influencers, they can't do a $100 million marketing campaign in their own. You can do the best indie game ever, but it doesn't matter if people don't know your game. They NEED influencers to sell, otherwise you are competing with the other 12.000 games released in a single year on PC.

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this is making yourself completely reliant on youtube/twitch to sell your game. digital noise is digital noise, there's a very good chance your game will drown on those platforms as well, especially if you're going to monetize the whole scheme moving forward. i just don't see youtube offering some sort of better discovery process, it's just as messy, if not worse.

 

[svacina]

Influencers are just the media, only without the scruples. Oh and we have to bribe them.

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So there is no difference, is what you are saying.

 

[Ge0force]

Epic taking on user reviews isn't received very well on social media...

Mod Edit: Banned source removed. Please do not link to this channel.

Edit: didn't know this channel was banned on Era, my apologies.

 

[dude]

Goddamn, I really want this venture to fail is this is the foundations they're building on. Hopefully, Discord will raise as the third pillar in PC gaming, rather than EGS.

 

[Alexandros]

Let's say that the Epic Games Store manages to implement everything that Epic has planned over the next three years or so. The end result will still be vastly inferior to the current version of Steam for customers, assuming that Steam implements no new features and improvements over the same period of time.

So here's my question. Why would I, as a customer, choose it over Steam? Even when detailing the store's roadmap of development and improvements over a significant period of time, Epic has yet to name a single incentive for customers to shop there. Am I missing something?

 

[svacina]

Let's say that the Epic Games Store manages to implement everything that Epic has planned over the next three years or so. The end result will still be vastly inferior to the current version of Steam for customers, assuming that Steam implements no new features and improvements over the same period of time.

So here's my question. Why would I, as a customer, choose it over Steam? Even when detailing the store's roadmap of development and improvements over a significant period of time, Epic has yet to name a single incentive for customers to shop there. Am I missing something?

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The promise of porting over more console exclusives sounds nice, depending on what titles they will be able to get. Journey leaves me cold, personally.

 

[TheRaidenPT]

Yep, here's hoping we see more deals like that instead of removal of games on other stores.

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Yeah would be nice to see some console exclusives making it to the PC.

 

[Alexandros]

The promise of porting over more console exclusives sounds nice, depending on what titles they will be able to get. Journey leaves me cold, personally.

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I don't agree. Making the market attractive to publishers and developers is much better than handing out moneyhats. Do you want to encourage developers to delay PC versions in the hopes that Epic pays them to port their games?

 

[Hamchan]

- Still no guides/forums when moneyhatted developers refer to Steam forums for support.

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Valve would never do it and it would be a bad move, but I would love to see them shut down the steam forums for any game that has been moneyhatted to the Epic store, for a year, as a spiteful move.

 

[GiantEnemyCrab]

Is there anything about controller support? For me, this is currently one of the biggest features of Steam - the painless support for all kinds of controllers through Steam itself.

 

[Ionic]

Yeah would be nice to see some console exclusives making it to the PC.

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This is nice, but I think it would be better if the platform was just attractive enough on its own to have console exclusives released for it. You only need to look at the quantity of once exclusive Japanese games coming to PC nowadays compared to a decade ago to realize that the most beneficial way to get games to PC is to make PC an obvious viable platform as Steam has done by simply providing a quality service that people buy a ton of games from. I suppose the 12% may help convince some stragglers. But I'd worry that creating the expectation from publishers that a company will pay to get your game on PC will just cause publishers to wait for the moneyhat instead of just doing it. That might be fear mongering though.

 

[svacina]

I don't agree. Making the market attractive to publishers and developers is much better than handing out moneyhats. Do you want to encourage developers to delay PC versions in the hopes that Epic pays them to port their games?

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If they are porting over ancient games like Journey I do not really care, no. I think that the odds of Sony doing it on their own without any monetary incentives were pretty slim.

 

[dex3108]

Very interesting, I'm still reading it. Just to comment something, this part



makes intuitive sense to me. Of course indie will have to share a higher part of the revenue with influencers, they can't do a $100 million marketing campaign in their own. You can do the best indie game ever, but it doesn't matter if people don't know your game. They NEED influencers to sell, otherwise you are competing with the other 12.000 games released in a single year on PC.

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One of the top sellers on Steam, over 2000 reviews in 2 days and 96% are positive, 0 marketing, 0 "influencers" promoting it and it is basically paid demo at current state. If you do something interesting and unique word of mouth is more-less enough.

 

[Alexandros]

If they are porting over ancient games like Journey I do not really care, no. I think that the odds of Sony doing it on their own without any monetary incentives were pretty slim.

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Ancient games are being ported over all the time. Not because someone is paying for them but because the market is strong and demand for these games is big enough to be profitable for developers.

 

[Deleted member 1781]

Thanks for taking your time to write this post op, was really insightful.

 

[timmbp]

Seems the "influencers" are already turning against Epic:

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really dude.

 

[Deleted member 10601]

I browse digital stores till I find something interesting. On PSN and Switch, I tend to look at EVERY new release.

My girlfriend often goes to clothes shops just to look at things, and then, seemingly at random, decides she wants something.

Isn't this a common way to shop?

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I do the same. I browse the New Releases section of Steam every day. I do not like to rely on the automatic stuff.

 

[Deleted member 49574]

Unlike Steam, Galyonkin says that discovery on the EGS will primarily take place outside of the store

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The primary way of "discovering" games will be through influencers

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What the actual flipping duck

 

[Deleted member 1041]

One of the top sellers on Steam, over 2000 reviews in 2 days and 96% are positive, 0 marketing, 0 "influencers" promoting it and it is basically paid demo at current state. If you do something interesting and unique word of mouth is more-less enough.

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Actually it probably got marketing in China. If you turn off filtered reviews, there are ALOT of Chinese reviews, meaning that it's probably getting a push in China.

saying there's 0 marketing and 0 influencers when you're viewing it from exclusively a western perspective is a bit misleading?(In fact there's only around 200 english reviews, so we can assume that it's a popular/big title in China compared to the west).

 

[JarrodL]

Now, according to Galyonkin, only half of Fortnite players have Steam installed, and of those that do have it installed, 60% don't actively use it.

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How does he know this, exactly? Is Epic Store collecting telemetry information on software usage other than Epic Store itself on users' computers?

 

[spineduke]

How does he know this, exactly? Is Epic Store collecting telemetry information on software usage other than Epic Store itself on users' computers?

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Most likely, I'd love to hear more about what kind of information the client is scraping.

 

[texhnolyze]

How does he know this, exactly? Is Epic Store collecting telemetry information on software usage other than Epic Store itself on users' computers?

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Coming from the store that is proud of themselves for being anti-consumers, that's hardly surprising.

 

[matimeo]

Do most Fortnite players even play many other games? I always got the impression that a lot of younger kids played Fortnite and my guess is most are spending the money they have on Fortnite not other games.

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Just anctedotal , but my youngest brother plays fortnite with his friends so much he wanted to build his own PC for it since he only has an older laptop.

Him and his friends were the Minecraft/YouTube generation as I call them who bridged right over to Fortnite .

They play lots of games. They move from thing to thing with Fortnite remaining a focus. They are currently really into Dead by Deadlight. Before that they all played Destiny 2 on both consoles and PC.


My younger brother also has a switch. He has a steam account too but ever since Fortnite he's on maybe once a month.

His friends have shifted to discord for chatting. He also gets news on his favorite developers and games by following their twitter accounts (and I thought I was cool following on steam).

He doesn't visit gaming forums at all but knew about subnautica being free on the Epic store and was excited to get it as he had wanted to buy it for awhile.

They really are not tied down to any one ecosystem or platform. They have grown up surrounded by so many accessible options for gaming compared to previous generations it will be tough for anyone to hold on to them for long. It will be fun watching companies try because they will be the target of many companies soon.

 

[GhostTrick]

Nice effort OP for this very informative write up which unfortunately confirms a lot of things I've been saying about the anti-consumer stance of the Epic Store:

-They dont seem to pursue fonctionnalities at all.
-They dont recommend to generate key to sell them elsewhere since the stores charge more, which means the death of 3rd party stores relying on their cut for discounts.
-They moneyhat devs (big ones of course).
-They dont aim to fix any complaints devs could have against Steam, save for the cut. While people complained about Valve's relying on algorithms, it seems that Epic stance is a worse one: We wont handle it, see elsewhere. This is the case for discoverability, services, community stuff.
-They decided to sustain their cut on the back of the customers, which means a subpar service and fees paid by the customer.
-They dont want to make seasonal sales (No winter sales, no fall sales, nothing.)


But what we learned from this podcast is that even for smaller developers, the deal is worse:
-It seems Epic wants to pursue on promoting the big ones.
-They seem to push the interests of influencers over the ones of the devs (which means devs' cut might be lower depending of the influencer one)
-They dont plan anything for discoverability of titles, which means word of mouth will have to take place outside of their store.



No one in their right mind can tell me this is a sane model of competition.

I'll give them one thing though: Journey. Well done. That is if their involvement goes beyond the one of Annapurna.

 

[Thekeats]

couple Of takeaways from this.

So first up, potentially more console exclusives is a great way to use your money and will get me too look at what you have to offer.

Letting developers say what games can and can't be reviewed I am not keen on. Imagine if Warner Brothers had been able turn off reviews for Arkham Knight or MKX. This is a consumer unfriendly practice I am not happy with.

Relying on Influencers as a primary source of promotion is a big turn off for me for a couple of reasons. First is purely selfish, I don't watch influencers. I am not their target audience (I am in the upper half of my 40s).

Secondly that 12% is starting to look a lot closer to 30% now.

Another concern is that the marketing via Epic is an eggs in all one basket. Influencers are big now, but what happens when the next big scandal happens with an influencer and your game is tarnished by association. Or the next disruptive media comes along and oops there goes all the YouTube viewers move on to the next big thing. Or at least the viewers you were targeting at any rate.

My last one with influencers is probably "old man shouting at clouds" territory. But if you have to target influencers then that may end up dictating the game design itself.

Admittedly I do feel that mainstream gaming is moving away from me as a whole.

 

[ChippyTurtle]

Thanks for the write-up OP. Interesting stuff. Actually I'm not surprised about Fornite and their lack of Steam, for me it's been clear that the game has a differing market than traditional gamers.
Since everyone does it, I'll offer my own opinion. Eh. It's a storefront. I'll take their free games but so far I'm not seeing a reason to utlize it beyond that. If a sale makes it the absolute best price to buy, I'll buy it there, but in general, I'll either prefer it on steam or the entrenched game clients like Uplay or Origin over a epic key. And that's the extent of my opinion honestly as a consumer. There was a big sort of joy about a competitor to steam but eh, as a consumer I really don't care about developer problems. Now if a game comes out that I really want, and it's epic exclusive, I will buy it there but so far I'm not optimistic for that happening.

At least Epic is not the level of Bethesda, after the FO76 debacle I've decided to never buy a game using that launcher. Same applies to Rockstar launcher, I'll prefer the steam passthrough and refund system over a rockstar social club key.

 

[Ionic]

My only possible issues with influencers who earn commission is that it might sully the ability to trust that person's opinion. For instance, I don't genuinely believe the used car salesman actually believes every car he shows me is as great as he says they are. There's of course also the possibility of people just trying to cover games that are clearly already popular and getting more popular to maximize referral sales as opposed to digging into tiny, niche unknowns that have a sum total of a few thousand people out there who might care about the game if they see it. Granted, it's up in the air on whether tiny unknowns will be allowed on the store anyway.

 

[ChippyTurtle]

Oh the influencer problem goes way beyond the epic games store. Frankly as a consumer, I refuse to invest myself into this hellhole of dubious ethics and morals. I absolutely despise those YouTubers peddling those child-seeking shady casino sites and the like, and I advocate the arm of the law to nip this garbage in the bud. I'll stick to my journalists and older reviewers with a sense of ethics and morals over the YouTubers who created csgo skin gambling sites and peddled them misleadingly.

 

[Arkanius]

couple Of takeaways from this.

So first up, potentially more console exclusives is a great way to use your money and will get me too look at what you have to offer.

Letting developers say what games can and can't be reviewed I am not keen on. Imagine if Warner Brothers had been able turn off reviews for Arkham Knight or MKX. This is a consumer unfriendly practice I am not happy with.

Relying on Influencers as a primary source of promotion is a big turn off for me for a couple of reasons. First is purely selfish, I don't watch influencers. I am not their target audience (I am in the upper half of my 40s).

Secondly that 12% is starting to look a lot closer to 30% now.

Another concern is that the marketing via Epic is an eggs in all one basket. Influencers are big now, but what happens when the next big scandal happens with an influencer and your game is tarnished by association. Or the next disruptive media comes along and oops there goes all the YouTube viewers move on to the next big thing. Or at least the viewers you were targeting at any rate.

My last one with influencers is probably "old man shouting at clouds" territory. But if you have to target influencers then that may end up dictating the game design itself.

Admittedly I do feel that mainstream gaming is moving away from me as a whole.

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Don't forget that in those 12%, the transaction expenses are not covered. Epic passes the cost of the transaction to the consumer, so if the method you choose costs 6% for the transaction, those 6% will go towards the consumer

 

[Noob Pilot]

Love this company elbowing their way into a market that's not really screaming for competition. People are pretty damn satisfied with Steam, I personally have much more belief in Steam fixing their own problems than Epic or whoever creating a better Steam, and it's because of what I've seen so far. We won't get a better Steam with a company happy to moneyhat their way to PC launcher relevancy, we're more likely to get something worse.

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Saying Epic is just "money hatting" is a disservice to OP's efforts to lay out Epic's game plan.

Did you read the entirety of the OP and why Epic is giving out money in exchange for exclusivity?

 

[Noob Pilot]

So as an indie developer, you're probably still going to be giving up around 30% of your gross revenue, it's just a large chunk of that will be going to youtubers whose views you may or may not agree with. The alternate is that you set streamer revshare to 0% and just treat the Epic Games Store as a way to sort of do direct purchases without having to actually do direct purchases yourself. In any case, it sounds like Epic is going to do basically nothing to direct traffic to your game unless you're so successful that you don't need the extra traffic.

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Or just publish both on Steam and Epic to get the best of both worlds.

 

[Turin Turambar]

One of the top sellers on Steam, over 2000 reviews in 2 days and 96% are positive, 0 marketing, 0 "influencers" promoting it and it is basically paid demo at current state. If you do something interesting and unique word of mouth is more-less enough.

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Yes, from time to time, something good & original starts winning traction by word-of-mouth, until it finally it gets viral, or receives a good review of a big site, or something like that. It happens.
It happens to... 2% of indie games. What are the other 98% of games is going to do? Your business plan can't be 'doing the best game possible and it will be recognized as such', because that's also what other thousands competitors are trying.

Most indie devs WANT exposures of influencers.

 

[Thekeats]

Don't forget that in those 12%, the transaction expenses are not covered. Epic passes the cost of the transaction to the consumer, so if the method you choose costs 6% for the transaction, those 6% will go towards the consumer

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Which i believe is illegal in the UK.

Oh and I had forgotten that they are still breaking GDPR rules.

 

[Ge0force]

Did you read the entirety of the OP and why Epic is giving out money in exchange for exclusivity?

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The "reason why" mentioned in OP is complete bullshit, since Epic plays it incredibly safe and only moneyhats devs/ip's that are already very successful on Steam and/or other stores.

 

[elyetis]

Saying Epic is just "money hatting" is a disservice to OP's efforts to lay out Epic's game plan.

Did you read the entirety of the OP and why Epic is giving out money in exchange for exclusivity?

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I see nothing in the OP about why they are doing exclusivity other than "that is of course in Epic's own interests, and it's in a developer's interest to get marketing through them.". The problem is that we should call it "marketing hatting" ?

 

[Noob Pilot]

The "reason why" mentioned in OP is complete bullshit, since Epic plays it incredibly safe and only moneyhats devs/ip's that are already very successful on Steam and/or other stores.

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Wow....okay.

So you are suggesting that if Epic should secure mediocre games or games by unknown studios to compete withthe behemoth that is Steam?

Do you play chicken against a guy in a truck, on your bicycle too?

 

[Noob Pilot]

I see nothing in the OP about why they are doing exclusivity other than "that is of course in Epic's own interests, and it's in a developer's interest to get marketing through them.". The problem is that we should call it "marketing hatting" ?

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Of course it's in Epic's own interest but the money is also there to ensure that if I, were I a game developer, to put my bets on the new guy and lose, it wouldn't hurt so much cause Epic itself hedged my bets.

It's a good compromise for exclusivity. Cause if Epic messes up, I for sure won't be setting up shop there.

Seriously....then what, in your expert opinion, would have been the better alternative?

 

[Tygre]

All this stuff casts Galyonkin and all the SteamSpy stuff in a much worse light than I'd have ever considered a few years ago.

It basically reframes the way I look at what happened with that tool and what Sergey did with the information coming out of it in a far, far more negative way.

I dislike Epic store even more after reading this info.

- Focus on influences who will act as paid sales force
- Grabbing customer data and giving it to developers when unrelated to their game
- Keeping negative focus on reviews and opt-in reviews on general. I find Steam reviews quite useful most of the times and Steam has great features to filter them
- No discoverability (influencers suck when objectively reviewing games) features. I go through Steam discovery or find interesting game suggestions all the time.
- Still no guides/forums when moneyhatted developers refer to Steam forums for support.
- There is more on external pricing can't be lower than Epic, extra influencer charges to developers and so on.

This shit is anti-consumer and really will not work for most smaller devs either. Epic is throwing Fortnite money to try and build this terrible (for PC gamers) endeavor and I really dislike it. Meh.

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Yup, agreed.

 

[Roukira]

That was a good read. So Epic will give us more consumers features.
I want to see how it will go before starting to buy games there, but I think they have a fair chance of succeeding in what they're trying to do, I really didn't expect more than half of Fortnite players on PC to not have steam at all.