The very reason this deal exist is because backer are actually customers and Epic want those customers in their ecosystem.
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Tim Sweeney: Epic Games will cover future refunds and work with other stores to ensure key availability for crowdfunded games that go Epic exclusive
- Thread starter vestan
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The very reason this deal exist is because backer are actually customers and Epic want those customers in their ecosystem.
It's good that customers are being refunded but they only need to be refunded because Epic continues to absolutely refuse to compete with Steam on features and instead simply throws money at every game that people are looking forward to to prevent them from going to Steam.
Extremely well said, all 3 of these posts.
No one is flocking to the Epic store due to the split, specific games are going there for timed exclusivity because they are reimbursed for it.
In fact, Individual indie developers that wanted to sell on the store but without an exclusivity contract have been rejected, even with extremely high quality games.
(Likely because EGS' whole infrastructure sucks balls, and not just for consumers)
As someone in the industry I say fuck that argument. It's asinine to blame crunch (which doesn't even improve productivity!) on anything other than shit management, especially in an industry that is fantastically profitable overall. It's even more asinine to portray Epic, one of the worst examples of crunch while also being excessively profitable, as some sort of savior from it.
Furthermore, EGS, as it exists today, is in no way designed to actually make live better for the vast majority of indie developers (which it rejects).
It does, however, actively worsen the experience for consumers.
The whole idea of framing this as a "poor indie developers versus big bad Steam" thing is marketing genius on the part of Epic, admittedly, but luckily most gamers aren't buying it, and aren't going to be guilt-tripped.
Because the best case is Shovel Knight, or FTL, or Divinity: Original Sin, or...
Backers become customers assuming the tier results in a product. Epic wants what will be from those who don't care enough about their means.
Crowdfunding already has enough risk and controversy attached without the fear that a distribution channel that you were promised won't come arbitrarily late, or not at all. The whole purpose of crowdfunding was to try and sidestep complications that are caused by big publishers and now that's been thrown out of the window.
It's still the best case, because Epic don't have infinite money. I do get, however, how it makes people very nervous about a given project!
(We'll see if it's good or not, but an interesting datapoint in this discussion is Psychonauts 2. Double Fine have been bought out by Microsoft, and there's been no suggestion that they won't be fulfilling their obligations to their backers)
Why would they want to compete solely on features? If you have the disposable capital to make some moves then you make some moves.
Yeah, but when you talk about what's good and bad, this is bad for everyone except Epic and the publishers who get money hatted.
"Tiny Epic Quest, now living up to its name as an Epic Boardgames Store exclusive!"
I've mentioned before that, more than the 'not being on Steam' aspect, I've been surprised to find that I'm most annoyed by the fundamental idea that I, as a backer, have been sold to Epic as a prepackaged audience. That's a really uncomfortable notion.
Well, that's on them then! I don't see a lasting change on this front happening.
Well, it's easy to imagine why devs take those deals. Being on Steam is not what it used to be, you're getting a worse split. On top of that, Epic is paying you for 'exclusivity'. I'm putting that in quotation marks, because in reality it's not the same thing as consoles exclusives. Those bar entry by forcing you to buy a $400 console. PC exclusivity has no such monetary barier of entry. That's why a lot of devs take this deal, they bet on the fact that gamers will come in same/similar numbers, even if the game is not on Steam. We'll see if this is the case in a longer term.
I am specifically talking about indie devs. There are also several types of publisher deals. Some are for game development (publisher pays for creating the game), but others are just for marketing/visibility.
I would argue that the Stream's large audience can mean little if you have no way of grabbing their attention (ie. Steam is crowded, while in the Epic Store you can stand out, at least for the moment).
If you'll read my post, I said I was mostly talking about indies, as I did point out that larger companies are unlikely to pass the benefits to their employees.
I would argue that "f you, what's in it for us?" is an attitude that got us ad a civilization to the brink - and is also the philosophy that drives the largest companies to nickle and dime you, chase trends and disregard any ethics whatsoever.
70/30 -> 88/12 is not about the consumers first, that's clear. But it won't harm the consumers either. What is at issue is the Epic 'exclusiveness'. I have no doubt no one would question the change if it wasn't also for Epic's moneyhatting ;)
BUT! Customers will benefit from more and better quality indie games and games from smaller studios. I have no doubt things like Phoenox Point will benefit from the funds the developer got from Epic. What is regretable here is the broken promise of releasing on Steam - which I do not excuse nor condone.
Steam had a 15 year head start, I hope the Epic store will introduce a lot of these features. If not, it'll eventually die, exlusives will only take you so far and the Fortnite money will eventually dry out. However, I would be hestitant to say what the money goes for, because we really have no solid data on that. Steam was actually quite stagnant as a store and slow to introduce changes. It's only now, with Epic on the horizon, that it expedited changes, which I see as another positive. However, I'm not here to argue for the Epic store, I have no stake in it (and the games I work for have not been or are not going to be Epic exclusives), I was just commenting on the revenue split.
Maybe Valve could, but Valve doesn't. Valve proposed better splits for the largest publishers, because if they left, that would make a mark. They don't care about appeasing the indie devs, because they've got a store full of smaller games.
About losing 18% vs. not being accepted. That's a different conversation altogether, however I'd imagine there are reasons for not being accepted. Steam is full of shovelware and asset flips, because it takes them all, but it really doesn't mean you will sell anything.
I did, thank you! Though it'll be hard to move the convo there now :/
Well, I'm also speaking as someone in the industry, though I won't say fuck to your arguments, just debate them ;) Crunch is a product of bad management (or greed), that much we can agree upon, but rallying behind Steam and the 70/30 split against a, in my opinion more fair, 88/12 is just cheering for a megacorp against weaker and smaller business entites.
And to paraphrase your first comment. No one is on Steam because they want to. Either you are big enough to bypass it or you are forced to be on it due to the de facto monopoly.
As for the larger Epic Store debate, I have an opinion (whether it succeeds or fails, it will make for a healthier industry in the long run), but I was only interested in sharing my views on the revenue split, as that's a topic I have first-hand experience with as a developer and writer.
"Had to". You could always just distribute and promote the game yourself. Imagine how much better it would have been for everyone without a centralized distribution, maintenance, netplay, marketing, and community infractrusture that Steam provides. The "terms" on Steam are much better than off Steam.
Here's a scenario I like.
Imagine that Steam never existed. Instead, some governments got together and created a wonderful game distribution paradise.
You get the same things Steam gives you. A store page, a community forum, means of selling and maintaining your game, a search and tagging system so your game can be found, review and giveaway keys, etc.
And you pay nothing for it. Nothing whatsoever, it's completely free.
So in this utopian environment where all the things an indie developer needs handled, are handled for him for free, how does he manage to stand out from the absolute torrent of other indie developers' games from across the entirety of the PC platform?
If you want to say something like "there'd be sites highlighting good games", well that's what Steam already does. Most anything you can think of, from curation to visibility via streams and broadcasts, Steam already does. I can only think of one thing Valve doesn't do, it's Nintendo-style Indie Highlight Reels. Everything else is already being done. Youtube-like suggestion algorithms, tagging and searching, curators and communities, managed "discovery queues" with incentives for browsing them, detailed user reviews that are user-rated on usefulness and can be browsed at length, all kinds of stuff.
So with that in mind, how is Steam unfair to indie developers? How is Steam unfair to any developers, when these problems would exist even in a utopian, free distribution environment?
Let me rephrase that for you. The 88/12 split can be a positive only for developers. Even at that, only for publishers, because unless they're small and independent, developers don't see money that comes directly from sales. The consumer never sees the benefit of that split - and, more likely, only sees drawbacks. You might convince developers, who see this as more money coming their way, of the advantage of having this change. But most customers, at least those that know what it's like to be responsible with their money, will not be swayed when this change means more money coming from them, in exchange for less of what they're already used to.
More money going to developers might mean better games eventually, but less money going to the intermediary storefront means a worse storefront now. As a customer, I have come to be keenly aware of the fact that there are too many good games - and I am thus far more interested in the quality and friendliness of the storefront, than the exact titles of "good games" that it sells.
And, unfortunately, no "exclusive" game on PC is ever truly exclusive. As the founder of Steam rightly observed, any barrier to purchase, however slight, may easily cause a PC game to be pirated. Thus taking the deal carries with it far more repercussions than, I feel, most indie devs in the Steam era are ready to deal with. Anecdotally, most Epic-exclusive games are already the most downloaded among those "on offer" on torrent sites, from recent titles.
They don't care about appeasing the indie devs ?
Sorry but that's BS here. Why do you think they made Steam Direct ? Because the prime complain was that the small indie devs were left out. Are there shovelware and asset flips ? Yes. But guess what, there's also a shiton of legitimate games. And what you're calling shovelware, have you ever took an interest about who made those ? I did. There are a lot of ugly, shitty looking games. But then I took 5 minutes to check who made them. In a lot of cases, they are indie devs. Alone, who made a genuine product pouring their heart into it. Was it enough ? No. Does it mean they should be denied a release ? Well, tell them.
Go tell all those people "Sorry, you worked 1 or 2 years on this. But it looks bad. You're not allowed to release it". And yes I agree, it doesn't mean you'll sell anything. But that's another matter. With Epic's way, you won't sell anything at all. Because you'll be denied to even compete in that market. You'll be denied to even enter this market. In Steam's way ? It'll be harsh. You may sell 0 copies. But at least, you tried. Competition was too harsh, but you were allowed to enter it.
People were asking for refund because we knew that's the best we could ever hope to achieve, not because we think it's enough. Being used as the source of a 0% loan so devs can prototype/dev their game far enough to then get another investor who will get a proper contract to protect his deal even if that deal is at the detriment of the unprotected backer, is hardly what most people want from kickstarter.
And it brakes the concept of KS, at least for me. KS was my hope to go and try to get the games I wanted made... And now its just a freeride ticket.
Sad. Sad. Sad.
You know why the Epic store is not overcrowded? Because those indie game you are holding the flag up, WON'T get on the store. All those devs who would jump at the chance og 88/12 are NOT ALLOWED on the Epic Store. All those devs who critizice Steam and their cut make 95% of their sales on Steam because the little stores don't have a big enough audience and all the other big Stores, even GoG, are closed to them, don't even ask about a console release.
We ARE still talking about real indies and not "indies" right? And not those A or AA Studios who label themselve indie but have Billion Dollar companies as publishers behind them?
And I mean it doesnt even necessarily end up being this "Logical." Like, in what world does Assault Android Cactus looks like shit? Yet it was still denied from EGS.
Also the "overcrowding" argument is something that wouldnt be used against any other seller than Steam. "Oh fuck, too much cars being sold in this establishment, im gonna go to a store with ten cars baby!"
You're advocating for a company that regularly abuses its employees - i'm assuming that you are one of those who does "bemoan" the state of the industry, you care about the 88 split after all. I don't really need to say more.
This is my take as well, so when they ask for understanding its better to show them the finger.
My eyes are rolling so hard they're rolling right out of my skull.
I'm advocating for a revenue split for developers, I'm not advocating for Epic or their practices towards their employees. In that regard, I'd like for game developers to unionize. Without a strong backing, employees of larger companies will always be treated unfairly, be it Epic, Rockstar, EA or any other company.
It's nice to want more revenue for developpers. Why not advocate for 100% of revenue then ? Maybe things aren't that easy indeed. And that while the current split isn't perfect, 12% is unsustainable. In any case, we have to remember this: When you move the split, someone has to pay for the loss of one the two parties (store/dev). And the one paying is always the customer.
It's nice to want better things for devs, but sorry to say that, they're not the weak party here. The customer is.
Between the preying on whales, what is best for this company and that company, roadmaps that never get completed, crowd funded projects have no obligation to honor promises to backers, I am just done with the lot of them.
You want my money and patronage? Show that me, as the consumer, matters. The promise of getting more games ain't that. Show me in the here and now. Until then, nah... I am done with this shit. I am done with entertaining these snake oil arguments from Tim, the press, and some in the industry.
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Indeed. They'll push for the better split at all costs, one narrow enough to kill off the 3rd party sellers and price competition once they get it. Great for them, but not a single benefit for customers. We're supposed to accept that, otherwise a segment of people and the press paint you as toxic for not putting devs interest above your own. The whole situation is exhausting.
Funnily enough that's also the philosophy of indie devs flocking to EGS.
Not being able to buy keys from third party sellers for around 20-25% off Steam market price does, in fact, harm me.
edit: and I'm talking about approved 3rd party sellers
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I think this is a confusing statement. People are on Steam because they want to be, because it's a large store, and people want to be on large stores to be seen and sell products. It being a "de facto monopoly"? That's words that don't even make sense, because either a company is a monopoly, or it's a dominant company within a market. Try and apply your statement to Amazon - which is for all intents and purposes the nearest equivalent to Steam outside of gaming - and you'll see why it's a confusing statement. People may hate Amazon, but it helps push products and help businesses gain new customers like nothing before.
Yes, it can be argued that Steam is too large, with not enough competition. But a) that isn't Valve's fault, since they literally broke new ground with digital distro
( Steam works wonders for the retail PC market )
and b) the way to provide competition is, I think, to slowly work on a store that competes against Steam, just as book-stores have slowly worked to compete against Amazon.
Hope this doesn't come across as dogpiling, as I absolute agree with your statement about how devs should unionise in order to push their bargaining power and pay up.
De facto means being such in effect though not formally recognized. I'm not sure how Steam isn't a de facto monopoly in the case of PC video game stores.
QFT. God forbid we don't go along with their plans. Then we are "toxic". This shit is getting really, really old from them.
I''ll take your question at face value as a legitimate one and explain how I see it. If you could offer a good to the consumer/customer directly and effectively, you would indeed take 100%. Like EA or Ubisoft or Activision Blizzard do on their own stores. If you are forced to go through a middle-man, like the Apple Store or Steam, you need to pay for that. Now, what's a 'just split'? You can approach it pragmatically or idealistically. The 70/30 split was based on physical goods distribution. Creating and delivering physical goods is a lot more expensive than digital. Effectively, a digital storefront is taking same for less. It's no wonder developers push back against it.
Idealistically, I would like for the one who created the game to earn more than the one who puts it on their storefront. This is reflective of my liberal (European liberal, so also socialist) views. It's the workers own means of production mnetality ;) It'd be more rewarding to be a creator and you'd get a lot more diverse stuff.
That last sentence evokes a strange sentiment "Screw you, we've got it worse". Changing the split certainly won't be worse for customers and can lead to a more diverse market with a lower barier of entry for indie devs who need to put up development money out of their pockets.
That is obviously a false statement. There are a lot of examples of how that cut DOES already hurt consumers, especially the poorer ones.
Just go with the example of gift cards that you can buy in local shops. There are Steam gift cards worth between $5 and $50 and Valve is paying the costs for their production, transaction fees and general local sales management which usually totals at around ~12%. So you have a gift card, worth $50 - with Valve paying an additional fee of $8 for it out of their own pocket - (poorer) consumers can get Steam credit without the requirement of having a Creditcard.
Epic does explicitly not want gift cards because they refuse to / can't pay any fees out of their own pocked for any customer.
Do I personally care about those gift cards? No. But people in poorer countries like India definitely do care about these cards because more than 70% of all transactions are getting paid with them. Saying "but it won't harm the consumer" is such a stupid and / or arrogant statement because you either don't care about people with a lower income or because you can't be bothered to inform yourself and draw dumb conclusions. And that's just one of many more examples.
Epic is looking at those emerging markets like India and want's to get a piece of the cake without realizing that exactly these markets need to be subsidized.
Because either a monopoly exists, or it doesn't. This isn't something that has shades of grey. Are there other digital distro companies in the PC market? Yes - Origin, UPlay, GOG, Bethesda, itch.io and Epic. Other companies exist, and, therefore, there is not a monopoly - de facto or otherwise - held by a single one.
Dominance is closer to what people mean when they speak of Steam.
But they're already making more money since one middle man is gone (the retail space) and they now have complete control over their pricing model. The barier of entry also as never been as low as it is now which is the exact reason as to why being on Steam isn't as attractive as it was before.
Not just people in poorer countries, but minors without a CC as well.
In this case "de facto monopoly" means "isn't a monopoly, but my argument is stronger if I can call it one."
.....
So they can make their game? The reason Kickstarter exists in the first place.
There's a lot of nuance to the conversation:
- there are devs that are going because of the split and visibility/promotion (I see no problem)
- there are devs that go the 'exclusive' route because of monetary compensation (I'm still ok with that)
- there are devs that promoted and/or sold their games as Steam titles and then went Epic exclusive (I'm not ok with this; I can see the reasoning in some cases, but you should always honor your promises).
Not being able to buy keys from third party sellers for around 20-25% off Steam market price does, in fact, harm me.
edit: and I'm talking about approved 3rd party sellers
Third party sellers like G2A? Third party sellers are a different topic altogether....
Steam is a market leader, not a monopoly. It isnt even have some of the biggest games of PC on its store (LoL, Apex Legends, etc)
Ohhh, that's either well disingenuous, or you're a little ignorant here. Everyone knows that G2A aren't an authorised third-party seller, they're grey-market. To conflate G2A with GMG or Fanatical is really not great.
"88/12 will lead to more games" is such a funny statement when the biggest criticism of Steam for years has been "there are too many games"
you didn't read anything of what I posted, and you even QUOTED it
I even posted LIST of 3rd paty sellers APPROVED by a major video game publisher
edit: and they're not a different topic, they rely on the 30% split to offer me a 20-25% off steam price
What a dilemma, here we are pushing to enable Epic, a company with no incentive to change its own internal cultural as an even bigger billion dollar middleman that somehow looks out for the small guy while being cutthroat with the time and energy of their own staff. And take Tim Sweeney, who has no problem with being loose with his promises and words at face value when he states that 88/12 is the future for the industry. An altruistic stake he has almost no say in when it comes to the major platform providers, such as Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Apple and Google. This is Tim thirsty and ambitious for part of the PC pie, and nothing else. He's derided the customer base in the past, and from what I'm seeing him of today, between his own people and the customers he's serving - this is business as usual. Do you expect Tim would support unions while his Fortnite is still in the spotlight? :) There are so many red flags but people don't care, they smell the money and they're here, teeth and all.
Like, tell me the product that only Steam can sell anywhere close to 100% of the time (not including first party exclusives, because then Battle.net is a de facto monopoly for Diablo 3, say).
I love how you went to the worst and most extreme example. Totally not disingenuous.
I can see and understand all the reasons as to why indie developpers choose to go the EGS route. However, all of those reasons are based around the primary concerns of those indie developpers (which they have every right to) without thinking of the trade off to consumers. That's why I found it funny that you view that position as inherently negative.