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Tim Sweeney: “If Valve commits to a permanent 88% revenue share, we’ll stop making new exclusive deals” (Read Staff Post)
- Thread starter Carlius
- Start date
Probably sooner than that depending on how quickly Tim gets bored of it.
He'll blame pc being a den of piracy or something to that effect. The man can bold face play the pro-dev white knight on social media to advance his storefront on a false narrative but then his own company coerces their own developers to 80+ hour workload in perpetuity for their GaaS. We literally have people in this thread somehow making it out the difference between 18% is crucial to developers with no nuance to free keys or scaling profit cuts but they are strangely silent on the crunch culture of the same company. I guess those devs don't count. Neither do the indie devs who don't make the cut for Epic's "heavy curation". Guess what those dev's cut is? 0%
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Can we fly him to the moon with no internet to save us from these hot twitter takes? Maybe he can take his buddy Randy along with him in the rocket.
A little check through his posting history tells the story itself, don't see much posts about PC games.
I don't understand people who don't use the platform then come in and try and tell us what's good for us when we are the consumers who use the platform and know the benefits and disadvantages.
When even sales from your "competitors" are required to use your storefront can you really call it competition? That sounds more like marketing expenditures to me."The PC digital distribution as of today is NOT competitive"
It is competitive as fuck. Find me as much competition on the console market.
Based on review split, here what we get:
Inform yourself:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...ets-less-than-30-percent-of-steam-game-sales/
They're not using their store front. They're using their client, which is a bundle of technologies. Bitching about having to use steam, the client, is like bitching about having to use Xinput, or unreal engine, or any number of hundreds of middleware components you use in every day PC gaming.
You are not using their storefront at all when you buy from their, as you put it, scare-quote competitors scare-quote.
because the argument is stupid. Ask any taxpayer if they are paying too many taxes. Ask any consumer if they are paying to much for product X, ask any moviegoer if they pay too much, etc. etc.
Basically what Tuco Benedicto Pacifico said.
The article linked is actually terrible and the sentence/data they are using for their headline doesn't even show the full picture.
Click through to the actual survey and....
All that tells me really is that they were asking people who were not informed enough to even answer the question.
edit: sorry I was on mobile and the UI tweaked out on me.
When people talk about devs needing to stop "using" steam, they're basically asking them to abandon one of the best package of developer tools and services out there for... what? What benefit? That topic the other day about how a game didn't have leaderboard components because EGS has no online system to hook into? Post after post of "they could have made the system themselves, this isn't epics fault." See yourself: https://www.resetera.com/threads/da...e-on-pc-due-to-epic-store-exclusivity.111105/
So this is what people are asking for? Devs to throw away a robust package of technologies, then recreate the same shit from scratch, for what benefit? Nebulous competition?
Without any additional reasoning why they aren't content with Valve share it's really hard to have any meaningful discussion. What procentage Valve should get acording to them? Are they aware of tools and APIS Valve provides? Are they using them? What Valve isn't doing enough (they mention curation, but I don't think any store has solid curation) Not to mention, 40% of responders aren't even PC developers.
As for sales. Are you suggesting that developers are forced to do them? They do them, because different people will buy games on different price points. You sell much higher volume at lower pricepoint and you can sell the title longer.
Publishers rather than devs, and also, yes. Publishers look out for nobody's benefit other than their own, they want to make money - as much as possible. We as consumers should be obliged to look after our own benefit, because nobody else in the gaming industry does. Steam and GOG have, for the most part, done nothing but good for the actual paying gamers, the source of profit for all those publishers and developers, when publishers have by and large done nothing but find new ways to wring as much money out of them as possible.
So with that in mind, when asked whether I would choose a store that makes money off benefiting me as a customer, and a store that makes money off benefiting the publishers, I would always choose the former - i.e. Steam, with its massive suite of features, or GOG.com with its DRM-free games, as opposed to Epic "Roadmap to Mediocrity" Games Store.
They don't use their storefront though. They use their API. They use their backend. Not their storefront. They don't get a SINGLE CENT from that. And yes, I'll tell you what: It's better that they all use the same backend/launcher. Because it means safety for purchases, better tools and a more stable ecosystem.
Do you imagine the situation if publishers had to make ONE different build for EACH of these stores ?
You'd have 10 SKUs for a PC game and 10 SKUs to be updated accordingly.
You're mixing orange and apples here.
Not true.
I came in asking why 12% is not sustainable, I now accept that it's probably not sustainable. I get why people are hating on the tweet because Epic's CEO is probably just being a smartass.
I came in being somewhat dismissive to Steam's value-add (even though I personally love Steam) but I now concede that they add value.
The only thing I haven't conceded on - because so far there's no data suggesting otherwise - is my argument that the market was not competitive prior to Epic showing up, and thus we have no way of knowing if a 30% cut is the equilibrium market outcome. It's very likely that it's not as Valve is going with 20% to 25% for stronger suppliers.
Also I fully predict Valve to budge on the 30% and remain in business for a long time.
Unsure if it's the type of thing you would know, but is there any way to sort of quantify / make an estimate on how much a dev would save by having access to Steam's featureset for a game?
Oh please.
Valve is already doing more than enough to justify their cut.
They're not going to budge because some irrelevant billionaire, with nothing better to do, is jumping up and down and screaming at them.
On the left, you have the situation before Epic. On the right, you have the situation after Epic.
Who's actively complaining about the split and going to EGS because of it? All I'm seeing are complaints about search algorithms, complaints about lack of curation, Epic offering timed exclusivity deals, and non-devs misinformed about Valve's actual cut.
Until devs are actually going to EGS specifically because of the cut, then Valve has no reason to worry.
Two weeks ago people were telling Valve they need to pay for exclusivity deals as well. Last week people are saying they need to put more money into Steam and make it better even though it's the best platform already, and now people are saying they need to decrease their cut to something unsustainable.
Publishers need to give a better reason why they want a better cut when they post record profits and still cut a good chunk of their work force and also overwork their staff to the burn point
Depends on how hard you lean on certain platforms. It would be literally impossible for a single dev to duplicate what Steam does for linux gaming as a whole, for example. They are literally the best in class in that environment by a very, very longshot.
This too.
Epic throwing money at exclusives instead of making sure their own employees are being taken care of is severely fucked up.
On the left, you have the situation before Epic. On the right, you have the situation after Epic.
Exclusive games on PC are bad news for consumers. No doubt about that.
Sweeny comes across like that rich fucker who doesn't want to pay taxes, but will bitch that our education system, infrastructure, emergency systems and health care system suck.
Have you used the client? Its absolute shit. I had to buy Division 2 from it because Uplay wouldn't take my credit cards and the piece of shit downloaded 55 GB of data before installing uplay anyways along with the game and then not deleting the download. So I ended up with close to 100GB of data on that install when it needed 45.
It felt slow, unresponsive and it did that bullshit. I uninstalled the "game" and client the moment I realized I didnt need it because I could just run it straight from uplay saving me the extra data.
That's the big one, with everyone involved in EGS, including developers of said exclusive games blatantly lying being reason #2. Heck, this thread is based on a blatant lie.
#3 - crap client
#4 - higher prices due to deliberately limited competition
#5 - payment processing fees
#6 - extremely inconsistent regional pricing.
Buying 3rd party exclusives sucks. You create no value, you just pay to remove value elsewhere yes.
But it's not only that. It's all about the entire philosophy based on Trickle Down economics.
Basically, Epic's bet and philosophy is that the service and the customer doesn't matter. If you get the dev, you get the rest. Bring the dev, you'll bring the public. Bring the offer, you'll bring the demand.
This translate in a bunch of anti-consumer practices, like paid exclusives, which leads to price fixing because you no longer have competing counter offers there.
This translate in a bunch of anti-consumer practices like the removal of user reviews, which is a leverage for customers against publishers. A necessary tool. While it can be misused, the benefits vastly outclass the negatives.
No communities either. No important features like Cloud saves, Library sharing, Streaming to other devices, Controller support, TV support, Mod support, Linux support.
This translate into a mindset that because the developper is the only important piece here, what Epic wants is basically runs a store on a razor thin margin that'll move the cost onto the customer. It means less payment options. It means the customer paying the overhead in cost when certain payment options are used.
I'm also against the 12% cut. Yes, as a customer, I can see why it wont benefit me but make the market worse. Such cut means only the biggest stores can exist. It means a raise in price all over the board but it also mean an actual monopoly or oligopoly which will prevent any new actor coming in.
Paying for exclusivity (a practice most vocal people on the PC space abhor), especially when they pay for exclusivity because their service is so bare-bones that it wouldn't attract neither consumers nor developers otherwise.
Great post! Would be much easier for unknown/new/small developers to maintain on 12% though. If EGS caught up with Steam in features and functionality it wouldn't be the worst thing. Tired of the "Valve can't cut their percentage" narrative, as if they aren't gold-laden.
There wouldn't be hostility to the suggestion if the mechanism by which it was being litigated wasn't games being pulled from a good client that people want to use (or in most cases every other client it might have launched on) and put on a bad one that people don't want to use. If someone believes that's the only way anything could ever happen, fine, but they also need to be prepared to live with the fact that doing something that makes your customers unhappy... results in unhappy customers. The end user buys and plays games because they want to buy and play games, not as an act of charity, and if you make their experience worse regardless of if your intentions are good or ill, they won't like it.
Exactly. Steam has a ton of developer tools that EGS doesn't have. There's a lot more going on here than "BU BU BUT 30%!"
Yeah he does.
It's not only that they cant cut their percentage. They totally can. Not down to 12% though. The problem is as customers, a lower cut for stores means less competing stores and mean higher prices all over the board.
Case in point: Factorio.
Factorio devs have stated outright that their game will never go on sale. No matter how conditioned I am to expect a sale, the combination of that statement, the existing free demo, and the exceptional quality of the game combined meant that I picked up the game at full price without a hint of regret. People are conditioned to expect sales because they're conditioned to see games rapidly lose relevance and value as time goes on. Factorio is very much a Nintendo game situation - within the genre it occupies, it's good enough to never go on sale.
(the game also sells both on Steam and directly through the developers' website, so no clue how that plays into the situation re: Steam's fair pricing policy)
- Lackluster state of the client
- Security concerns
- Owner company being ideologically opposed to pro-consumer features such as discounts and user reviews.
- Pricing policies adding extra fees on top of displayed in-store price to most buyers outside of the US.
- Very poor treatment of early exclusive titles in other stores.
- The general attitude of the PR people and CEO.
Plus the exclusives on PC in principle.
That's the thing though. EGS will never catch up to Steam, because they're already losing money at 12%.
Also "give your money to me instead, and in a year or so I'll build you the best college in existence and give you the best education money can buy".
And 12 months later they are shutting down the building for violating any sort of safety norm and lacking the most basic services.
Plus half of the professors get arrested for being phony wackos with fake credentials.
Honestly, the way they conduct their store, based on what people here are saying, is worse for consumers than I thought. I still think Valve being too comfortable against their suppliers is not the healthiest thing. I hope to see Epic change their way for the better, or Steam budging on the 30% and keeping the market lead.
Hey Epic, try doing what you did to Quantic Dream's games to Bloodborne or something. If you do that, you have my money.
If your business plan is just to say stupid shit on twitter, though, I'm still not convinced it's a great tactic. At least it's not working on me yet.
I do genuinely appreciate the free games, though, because that does work against them when it comes to getting people spending money. We're building a backlog on EGS already, why would we purchase games? So the fact that they're still doing it is pretty cool, not gonna lie.
If your business plan is just to say stupid shit on twitter, though, I'm still not convinced it's a great tactic. At least it's not working on me yet.
I do genuinely appreciate the free games, though, because that does work against them when it comes to getting people spending money. We're building a backlog on EGS already, why would we purchase games? So the fact that they're still doing it is pretty cool, not gonna lie.
I'm surprised that anyone falls for Tim Sweeney's Trumpist bullshit. In the end, that's seriously all it is.
"I still think Valve being too comfortable against their suppliers is not the healthiest thing."
They are the only actor allowing their suppliers to freely and in an unlimited fashion generate keys to sell elsewhere. It is objectively the most healthy and competitive right now in gaming.
Tell me which publisher can generate codes without Sony/Nintendo/MS/Epic seeing a dime and sell it where they wish ?
You mean, doing nothing ? Because the fact QD games are happening on PC has shit to do with Epic. What Epic did was to come in at the right time and buy a year exclusivity.
There are a lot of elements that shows it was planned long before Epic even announced EGS.
Does Sony have a monopoly on all Playstation software because you're forced to use their hardware for them?
12% is enough to get developers' interest though, and if the percentage increases a bit once they've made a stamp then so be it. The point is it doesn't need to be 30% and until now developers have had few alternatives.