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"We should welcome the Epic Game Store and its business model" says Deep Silver exec; "Very happy" with how Metro Exodus performed
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Which seems to be happening as we speak, if all of the recent gameplay changes aimed at keep casuals playing (and spending) to the detriment of the hardcore player base is any indication.
I always enjoy competition. I want things to get better because of it. EGS is not providing this type of competition. So I'll continue to spend my money elsewhere until I feel they're providing an adequate product that makes me want to spend my money there. Locking up games from others just to buy from them isn't the solution in my eyes.
Just imagine if they actually had a platform that offered the same plus more than Steam. Sadly I don't see this happening any time soon.
Just imagine if they actually had a platform that offered the same plus more than Steam. Sadly I don't see this happening any time soon.
And I'm just sitting here laughing at people claiming it's just "a free game launcher". Because you're the kind of person in 2 years that'll be whining that they have to pay their games at full MSRP because 3rd party stores don't exist anymore or comply to a 12% cut which means they have little to no means to discount games on their margin.
I mean, we already see that happening:
Because of "just a free launcher", those two games that weren't exclusives before has seen their average price going at full MSRP when it was possible to get it on competing stores for 15 to even 20% off anytime.
I think the problem in your argument is that I have absolutely no issues with paying full price.
"Extra money" aka millions to market a game that was probably tracking poorly?
Devs would be the only victims if someone didn't manage the production side properly. Nobody implied anyone else would be the victim.
Let Epic spend money and set up some infrastructure. Won't last forever and eventually game distribution would be more natural.
Valve already has a gradual scale down to 20% for the massive publishers. Making everything 20% won't crush them.
Steam made an estimated $4.3b in 2017 from paid game sales, and it's been growing year on year. Throw in the money they take from their cut of DLC and MTX and they're absolutely swimming in cash.
If you're fine with paying full price, good for you. But dont go around saying it has no incidence on people when they actually pay their games more. Actually 20% more on AAA titles.
I mean, if I were a struggling developer being bribed with tons of free money in exchange for making it exclusive to your store I'd probably consider it a good "business model" too.
...I didn't ask why they are doing it.
If anything, I'm asking why you or anyone else would support them.
But to be honest, I'm not entirely convinced this is all about making money. EGS won't be profitable in a long, long time and it's not even a guarantee it will be at any point. I think it's obvious it started out as something personal for Tim wherein he thought he could change Valve's policy and be done with it, but they didn't comply so now they've found themselves in a situation where they deal with things as they come. It's pretty evident that the roadmap and all the features have been an afterthought and wasn't planned in advance. I mean, it's the same client 9 months in with no significant improvements around the corner. There doesn't seem to be a vision for the store at all; it seems like its sole purpose was to function as a downloader for the exclusive games and nothing more. Furthermore, what's the long term plan post-exclusivity; what will they do to make people stay? Not to mention, how will they ever be profitable with a 12% cut considering all these exclusivity deals, free games and the fact that they need to maintain and improve the store?
This behavior is unprecedented and I think that makes it difficult to absorb, for pretty much anyone. There's no history of this and I think at least from my perspective, it's such an odd initiative if your goal is to make money. I mean, if you want to make money, why would you ever enter this market now, especially if you have no ambition or vision for a better service. The only thing they're offering here is money, and only a select few are lucky enough to be part of that.
I think that's more a problem about you than his argument. There is no "competition" in a single price. If they decide to push it to 70, 80 or 100 bucks, there is nothing you can do about it. They will just milk you because you have no issues paying full price.
I'm not a developer or better yet, a publisher, so no, thanks but no, i'm a consumer. (despite many "consumers" being CLEARLY financially invested in EGS, cause you can't possibly be that emotionally invested, right?)
Wouldnt their deal help 4A games NOT go under? Because the publisher made its money back before the game was even released?
No.
I mean that 12% is sustainable in markets where up to 85% of games are sold.
By tweaked slightly, I'm suggesting the cuts could be adjusted (say, 15%) in those markets to cover the processing fees. Given that the vast majority of sales happens in territories where this isn't an issue, this shouldn't be too controversial for developers.
But not 20%,it's 12%. The issue is not that they have money now, but how they will make money with 60% less revenue and how they will continue: projects halted, firings and impact on their other projects like VR. Valve won't be able to do what does now with a 12% cut, no matter how many money reserves they have.
And in the first place, if a company has to take money of their vault to keep operating... That's basically the definition of unsustainable.
PR machine in full swing, I will not be surprised If tomorow is take twos turn.
It's so sustainable that you'll create a market where:
- There wont be anymore wallet cards
- The 3rd party store market will die or become irrelevant
- The customer will have to foot the bill for those razor thin margins
It's desirable for no one.
Maybe if by "We" he means corporate executives, otherwise nah. No amount of tonedeaf PR statements is going to change that.
Good for you, but the vast majority of people would prefer to pay less rather than more. Price drops are supposed to be one the main benefits of competition.
I find it weird because it's coming out of nowhere. Ubisoft, Koch, Epic, and Valve has nothing on the news these days and suddenly both Ubi and Koch said Epic good Steam bad.
The only thing that comes to mind with how I envision Tim thinking this will work for them in the end is 'slow and steady wins the race.' I honestly feel they're very set to just throw out a ton of cash right now in the hopes that enough people will slowly decide to make EGS a part of their normal gaming startup when they start their computers like many do with Steam. Give away enough games for free and buy up what they feel people really want, like the upcoming BL3, and people will just give in and eventually buy them and accept the EGS as part of their platforms they'll use on a daily basis. Basically to wear down the buyer and just get them to throw up their hands and say 'well I don't care if it's a bare bones platform, I just wanna play the game.'
So I think they're banking on this principal to just get people slowly to use their service. I for one will continue to claim the free games in the HOPE that the platform improves one day but like you said, it's been a while since they've really come out swinging and there's very little to show for it. They'd rather just lock up exclusives as it seems that's where they feel they'll get the biggest amount of new buyers. I don't like this approach and won't support it. But clearly many others will because they just want to play X.
How nicely privleged of you to claim that since you can and will pay full price, everything is fine.
It seems like an obvious media push by epic and publishers that took their money.
So why did none of the developers/publishers promoted discord store's better split?
If any of these people actually cared about the split, you would think they could have heavily championed discord but no, that store was sent to die after 6 months.
This "business practice" is all about epic's initial bribe.
If any of these people actually cared about the split, you would think they could have heavily championed discord but no, that store was sent to die after 6 months.
This "business practice" is all about epic's initial bribe.
The first real test for EGS is near, if it fails, every thing will probably crumble.
Borderlands 3
I guess the next thing you'll have to ask yourself if you're not okay with being charged 60 or eventually 70, 80, or 100 bucks, that you'll be okay with invasive in-game transactions, and other business models that can become invasive to the game design.
Suggest an alternative.
Anyone on the planet would WANT to pay less.
And I guarantee you, no matter how sales are for the platform, Randy will come out praising it in high regards. I mean, that's obvious to most, but I'm wondering how quickly we'll honestly be able to know really if it did well or not. How soon would we be able to get an accurate glimpse at that, outside of how Tim/Randy want to spin it?
Yes as if paying pull price prevents companies from putting micro-transactions into video games? Are you really going to put out that kind of naive talking point?
This might be prompted (or asked to be done) because some titles are ending their exclusivity period quite soon and more data could be public as soon as said titles hit Steam.
Agreed, no problem here. I bought Metro Exodus on Steam and have skipped everything on EGS. Thanks Tim, my backlog is smaller thanks to your fine store of exclusives.
Even discords 10% is awful thievery. itch.io's 0%+ is only worth while. (you can decide what you give). So you'd only lose payment fees.
It's because the 'guaranteed minimum sales' money has always been more important that the revenue split.
The epic game store model is unsustainable at the current margins and they all know that. However short term let the good times roll for extra cash.
I'd wager that, by and large, full priced games (across all platforms, including mobile) have less invasive and more cosmetic styled microtransatian dlc than the ones who don't. I genuinely think the business model of a game can influence the design.
So you think ubisoft is going to not put MTX into their games because they can completely control their prices now that its almost uplay only?
Or how about EA games being only sold on origin so more price control?
Literally admitting that you lack any empathy for those who aren't you isn't a great way to get people on your side.
The Epic store will be a year old soon, won't it? In that time how many basic features have they implemented which were lacking at launch? Is there somewhere to see a log of its substantial updates?
I agree in the sense that i really dont think epic can touch valve and how much it owns their respective arena, especially with the offering EGS is currently showing. My take is that Epic is primarily interested in that userbase, that they want to claim some of valve's hold on players + access to their information in preparation for the incoming streaming wave, rather than existing as an actual steam alternative.
Probably a heavy dose of confirmation bias from my side, but Gamescom made it look that EGS has a huge image problem.
Small devs speaking out against exclusivity. Other devs releasing FAQs that their customer don't need to worry, because they don't have to use EGS.
The 12/88 split seems to be out of the news cycle, especially in context of smaller devs. (Probably thanks to the exclusive deals)
Can't have that, so here we are.
So your single argument for potentially setting up a third party bidding war is that companies need to make up their costs even though most of the annual reports of said companies has systematically revealed them making millions if not billions in profit(Profit meaning they have not only recouped production losses but profited above it) prior to Epic deals without providing evidence that in this scenario the developers not the publishers would see the greater pay(outside the massive cuts that publishers may demand). You didnt say the publishers are the victims but since they are the ones footing the game bill and they are the ones who need to make back their investment, I can only assume your speaking from ignorance when you say only the devs are the victims here.
This isn't even discussing that the triple AAA titles which have been featured on EGS have been massive successes(The Division, Metro and soon Borderlands 3) not due to epic but despite it because Epic is specifically looking for titles which will bring more people to their store.
So in essence your making up an imaginary scenario which hasn't happened and if it does happen seems unlikely because Epic wouldnt even care if its tracking poorly cause the commodity they want is people. Thats why they are usually targeting games on peoples wishlists because they are popular.
Im well aware of that Ubisoft attributes the success of to Epic. But really think of how Uplay has benefited from Epic here. They where always going to have the sales, just not on Uplay.
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This is such a wild post, and to be fair, no one in the world but Tim Sweeney can tell you what Tim Sweeney is thinking. But I don't agree with your assessment.
Epic's in a position where all of their eggs are in the Fortnite basket. Like any successful company, their goal is to grow YoY. A close parallel would be Riot Games with LOL, but the difference here is that while Riot has been trying to put out Game #2 for the better part of 7 years, Epic realized that trying to create a hit has a much smaller ROI than leveraging their existing connections in the game industry to venture into the storefront/publishing business. In a sense, Valve realized this same thing years ago.
Epic doesn't invest as heavily in features because they understand (and it's the truth!) that features don't have the same ROI as simply buying users. It's not that this is unprecedented either—actually, this is the oldest trick in the book—paid user acquisition. Except instead of dumping millions of dollars on TV ads, this money goes to exclusive games that draws in their own organic users. They view their exclusivity deal and free games budget as their user acquisition budget, and based on their escalations of these programs, it would seem that they're working in converting this users to active participants in their ecosystem.
except with the whole "This is actually for all developers' PR marketing.
Please ignore the fine print.
First thing that came to mind.lol, the way the subject is phrased makes me think:
That might've been true five years ago, but definitely not nowadays. To compare two current EA games, Apex is F2P while also only having cosmetic MTX, while FIFA is a full price retail game that makes most of its money off of the pay to win FUT card packs.
Be patient, the argument by Sweeney is that the benefits will eventually trickle down.
While this is true, I don't think you can really claim that their strategy is "working" because the entire ecosystem is being underwritten by Epic themselves. Being an active participant in the ecosystem at this point means nothing financially unless users are buying moneyhatted games in enough volume to offset the initial investment. Which, given that hastily thrown together sale that they did, I doubt.
User Banned (3 Days): Antagonizing other users and trolling
The competition is good, the free games is good. People are just mad cause it's not steam or steam keys. Steam doesn't have to push to be a monopoly when their fan boys do it for them