Board 8 > Can someone tell me the deal with the Epic Store and Steam Store?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Since wg64Z is contributing nothing of worth to the conversation, I'll turn to what Mac said about MTX.

I'm actually a big fan of the trend we've been seeing lately of more games having old school expansion packs for the price of a season pass with huge additions to the game rather than nickel and diming with smaller additions. Basically every game that's done it has walked away vastly improved, the price feels super fair and it helps the base game feel like a more complete experience out of the box. I hope we continue to see more of that in the next gen.
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Robazoid posted...

And when I have a question about that game I need to go hunting on google instead of hitting shift+tab and doing a quick search in the discussion page or finding an instantly available guide because the Epic store doesn't have discussion pages or guides. Just to use one example. Steam isn't a leech that takes 30% for nothing, they offer a whole bunch of stuff Epic doesn't and it's up to the consumer to decide what matters to them. That isn't whiny.

Oh you have to Google search? You poor muffin.

Man what a life it must be to have this be something that matters to you.
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Well I'm not the one personally attacking people on the other side of the debate so I think this matters a bit more to you than it does to me.
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foolm0r0n posted...

Since you thought that reversal was a killer argument, that means you liked my original argument too, so we're done. You can keep trying to come up with gotchas I guess, but I've said enough here.

This is the exact opposite of what happened. I reversed your bad arguement as a tool to point out that your argument is biased, one-sided and built entirely on your personal unsubstantiated beliefs about devs.
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Robazoid posted...

I'm no expert on the industry but why did we all blindly accept the fact that game devs are barely scraping by and are being crushed by Steam's cut (which is industry standard)? Literally the first thing I found on google says "Video game revenue in 2018 reached a new peak of $43.8 billion, up 18 percent from the previous years, surpassing the projected total global box office for the film industry"

Also, these companies aren't charities who would continue making games for people out of the goodness of their heart if there was no money in it. If they aren't making money in the current system, the price of games would change. Simple as that. Anyone who can't manage it has a bad business or bad product. I refuse to feel sad for them.

I also think a lot of people are being dishonest when they claim Epic is just another free launcher so only whiny people care about this. Epic gives a vastly degraded user experience compared to Steam. It has no reviews, no discussion pages for games, no guides, the store is difficult to use, etc, etc. The list of basic features that Epic is missing is easy to find. And no, it isn't fair to say 'Steam started with less features too so give Epic a chance to catch up' because we're in 2019 now, not 2003. No online store in the modern day should launch without a shopping cart and act like that's okay.

I wouldn't mind if Epic competed with Steam purely on price. Take less of a cut from every sale and suggest the devs pass half of that back to the consumer, that would be great. Then people could decide if saving a few bucks was worth losing out on those features I mentioned. By snatching exclusives, though, Epic is forcing people to put up with their s***ty store. To compare these to real world shops, it's like a store opening up in the bad part of town where all the employees are unhelpful jerks and there's a weird smell. Sure, it's just another store and it's no different driving to that store than any other store, but no one would shop there unless they're literally forced to, which is what Epic does when they spend big money on exclusives instead of spending a little bit of money improving their lousy store.

That's why I support Steam and not Epic. And I'm not some rabid Steam fanboy, I was furious at Valve when it looked like they were going to ban the smutty visual novels I like. Unlike Epic, Steam actually cares about what its users think and they wisely backed down from that.

Post of the topic right here
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UltimaterializerX posted...

Counterpoint: People are voting with their dollars and don't want to support a shitty company.

Bizarre to me that some people would have a moral or ethical issue with Epic yet somehow be okay with Valve
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Mewtwo59 posted...

Robazoid posted...

I'm no expert on the industry but why did we all blindly accept the fact that game devs are barely scraping by and are being crushed by Steam's cut (which is industry standard)? Literally the first thing I found on google says "Video game revenue in 2018 reached a new peak of $43.8 billion, up 18 percent from the previous years, surpassing the projected total global box office for the film industry"

Also, these companies aren't charities who would continue making games for people out of the goodness of their heart if there was no money in it. If they aren't making money in the current system, the price of games would change. Simple as that. Anyone who can't manage it has a bad business or bad product. I refuse to feel sad for them.

I also think a lot of people are being dishonest when they claim Epic is just another free launcher so only whiny people care about this. Epic gives a vastly degraded user experience compared to Steam. It has no reviews, no discussion pages for games, no guides, the store is difficult to use, etc, etc. The list of basic features that Epic is missing is easy to find. And no, it isn't fair to say 'Steam started with less features too so give Epic a chance to catch up' because we're in 2019 now, not 2003. No online store in the modern day should launch without a shopping cart and act like that's okay.

I wouldn't mind if Epic competed with Steam purely on price. Take less of a cut from every sale and suggest the devs pass half of that back to the consumer, that would be great. Then people could decide if saving a few bucks was worth losing out on those features I mentioned. By snatching exclusives, though, Epic is forcing people to put up with their s***ty store. To compare these to real world shops, it's like a store opening up in the bad part of town where all the employees are unhelpful jerks and there's a weird smell. Sure, it's just another store and it's no different driving to that store than any other store, but no one would shop there unless they're literally forced to, which is what Epic does when they spend big money on exclusives instead of spending a little bit of money improving their lousy store.

That's why I support Steam and not Epic. And I'm not some rabid Steam fanboy, I was furious at Valve when it looked like they were going to ban the smutty visual novels I like. Unlike Epic, Steam actually cares about what its users think and they wisely backed down from that.

Post of the topic right here

I second this
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DeepsPraw posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

Counterpoint: People are voting with their dollars and don't want to support a shitty company.

Bizarre to me that some people would have a moral or ethical issue with Epic yet somehow be okay with Valve

Who said that everyone who is against Epic also supports Valve?
Fuck them getting rid of the Flash Deals. Fuck them for regional currency, making games 10% more expensive for me
But exclusives are another level of being a shitty company. It doesn't help us at all. If Epic made every game 10% cheaper or something, it would actually help us, it would increase the competition and we would benefit from it
But exclusives just hurt us

And even if I ignore every other reason besides "inconvenience" of using two launchers, I am still right
I don't need more reasons to hate on Epic
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I'm not mad about more stores but I definitely see it as inconvenience to keep adding launchers. It's just another launcher i need to keep running since these things are usually also chat clients. Steam, Battle.net, Origin, Epic... how many of these things do I need open?

As for Steam -

Is 25% cut completely unfair to devs? I dunno, maybe it is. What's the right cut that is fair? I have a few questions about this.

What is the cost of maintaining Steam,which holds a billlion games that are being downloaded and deleted and downloaded? Is that cost negligible compared the cut Steam is taking, or is it significant?

Why were devs okay with 25% cut before but now it's suddenly an insane amount? If they weren't okay with it then devs wouldn't have originally started listing their stuff on steam.

How does 25% compare to the cost of retail in a physical store? I can't imagine devs got more than 75% of the selling price in their pockets considering all the costs of manufacturing, shipping, and actually selling. I would guess it's at least a bit less, but maybe it was about the same.

Why were devs okay with large amounts of sales before if it loses them money? Well, the obvious answer is that it gained them money. People that weren't going to buy the game at all, and maybe would have just pirated it, will now give them some money for the game. Boom, new revenue. You sell a game on launch at full price and then later on discount it down for more sales later on as it becomes more aged and obsolete. Just like every other product industry.

Foolmo's argument seems to be that creating these low sales has created a perception in gamers that games must be cheap and that gamers refuse to buy full priced games. But is that really the case? Has this even really changed anything? Games would become discounted, rereleased as "game of the year editions" with a lower price, or just sold as used games in the past, so low cost alternatives have always been a thing. It might be more accessible to PC Gamers than before, but is this really changing the industry?

And if it is, is there really a worry that people won't pay $80-100 for Death Stranding or Diablo 4 at release? Or is the concern not on triple A titles, and more on indie game titles? Are devs mad that indie games can't reasonably expect to charge a full priced title?

It is probably actually true that they can't - I balked at paying full price for the Witness, so I never played it while my friends just pirated it. But I just paid $15 for Darkest Dungeon. I woulda paid probably $30-40 for it, but not higher than that. I'm really loving the game, but I wouldn't have committed that much money for this style of game. It just doesn't feel like it's worth that kind of dollar. Maybe that's just the space where these games have to live - $40 or under.

What am I talking about again?
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Also I don't think there's anything wrong with exclusives on a launcher. You just download the launcher, who gives a ****. It's way less of a hassle than Xbox vs Playstation exclusives.

I also think it's weird people are inherently like "well if you decrease the cut then that should just decrease the price for me!" which is silly. The price goes to where the consumers are willing to pay it (like super awesome steam sales)
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Metro Exodus discounted their Epic Store price by $10 because of the bigger cut, incidentally. Not saying every dev should do this, but it was a neat move.

CoolCly posted...

Why were devs okay with 25% cut before but now it's suddenly an insane amount? If they weren't okay with it then devs wouldn't have originally started listing their stuff on steam.

First, it's 30%, not 25%. Second, they were more okay with it before because there were fewer games on Steam. If you were an indie dev, just getting your game on Steam would lead to a ton of sales. But now there are a lot more games on Steam, and the market for indie devs is tougher than it used to be.

Additionally, dev costs in general have risen over time, so even if sales numbers stayed the same, the 30% Valve cut would hurt more than it used to.

CoolCly posted...

Why were devs okay with large amounts of sales before if it loses them money? Well, the obvious answer is that it gained them money. People that weren't going to buy the game at all, and maybe would have just pirated it, will now give them some money for the game. Boom, new revenue. You sell a game on launch at full price and then later on discount it down for more sales later on as it becomes more aged and obsolete. Just like every other product industry.

I think the problem is more the speed the sales happen at nowadays. You'll see games on for 66% or 75% off less than a year after they're out. So more people are willing to wait for sales, and the sales result in lower revenues for the devs than they used to.
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Robazoid posted...

I'm no expert on the industry but why did we all blindly accept the fact that game devs are barely scraping by and are being crushed by Steam's cut (which is industry standard)? Literally the first thing I found on google says "Video game revenue in 2018 reached a new peak of $43.8 billion, up 18 percent from the previous years, surpassing the projected total global box office for the film industry"

It's really important to distinguish between game publishers and game developers here. Workers are typically not seeing the benefits of an exploding industry. Small, self-published indie devs have seen revenue drop significantly over the last year+ on Steam. Their games were producing steady, predictable numbers for years, and through an update to discoverability that devs had no input on, their wages went from livable to unsustainable. It should not be acceptable for a billion dollar corporation to be able to run creatives out of an industry due to haphazard changes that, to them, would be a rounding error. I realize these small games are not the ones Epic have been chasing, but they should be accounted for when people start to talk about how devs are well compensated. These arguments typically also ignore the untold thousands of workers whose position at AAA studios are contracted or otherwise tenuous, who work in very difficult conditions before burning out in 5-7 years because that's the way the industry is set-up. Essentially, we should be treating Epic or Valve's cut on game sales and worker's livability as two separate issues.

Robazoid posted...

Also, these companies aren't charities who would continue making games for people out of the goodness of their heart if there was no money in it. If they aren't making money in the current system, the price of games would change. Simple as that. Anyone who can't manage it has a bad business or bad product. I refuse to feel sad for them.

This is a weirdly antagonistic point? I don't know why it hasn't received any pushback. It's also not really responding to actual criticism - devs have argued that certain corporations are creating unfair or harsh market conditions. It's not really a case of "you made a bad game, you deserve to go out of business," it's more like "this company has so much influence that we're effectively powerless in this system."

Robazoid posted...

Unlike Epic, Steam actually cares about what its users think and they wisely backed down from that.

Neither of these companies are benevolent! You gotta move your centre, dude.
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Being exclusive to a PC launcher means it's NOT exclusive. You can have both Steam and Epic on your PC.

JFC, how are people not getting this?
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I don't really consider it whining if people don't want to be forced to go through epic's ****ty layout in order to play a game.
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Do you have to go through the layout every time? You can't just start games with desktop shortcuts?
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Robazoid posted...

"Video game revenue in 2018 reached a new peak of $43.8 billion, up 18 percent from the previous years, surpassing the projected total global box office for the film industry"

Look up the games which are at the top of this $43.8 bil and which stores they are sold on. Then look up median revenue stats for Steam.

At least you made 1 google search. Most people don't even bother to do that. It just takes a few more.
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GildedFool posted...

This is the exact opposite of what happened. I reversed your bad arguement as a tool to point out that your argument is biased, one-sided and built entirely on your personal unsubstantiated beliefs about devs.

And it didn't work, so try another gotcha.
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CoolCly posted...

But is that really the case?

Where have you been the past decade that this is even a question? You can see it in right here in this topic too.

It's interesting because other countries have way more expensive base prices for games, and I know Japan has a lot of varied prices too, so there is a notion of a "premium" game there. It's really just the US that cannot let go of this $60 idea. And yeah AAAs are greatly affected by it, hence the lootbox craze. Indies get it worse, with anything over $15 being seen as absolutely wild. Not to mention mobile lol.

All the questions in your post are good though, it would make a really good primer on this subject. Someone should go through and answer them all.
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Nanis23 posted...

Mewtwo59 posted...

Robazoid posted...


Post of the topic right here

I second this

Third. I love nothing more than a big post that validates my wrong opinions.
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Hey, maybe if you stop being intellectualy dishonest you can have the post of the topic.
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People are so obsessed with the idea of the starving artist that they get enraged when there's some that aren't. So they tell the struggling artists that it's their fault and only need to work harder. Definitely nothing wrong with the system, no way. If one person can make money then surely everyone can!
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Wait... isn't Valve the company that everyone was gushing over a few years ago because it had one of those trendy commie flat management structures where there are no bosses and everyone just does whatever they want?

Glad to see that it turned out that everyone agreed that what they want to do is maximize revenue and take home a nice fat check.
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foolm0r0n posted...

And yeah AAAs are greatly affected by it, hence the lootbox craze. Indies get it worse, with anything over $15 being seen as absolutely wild. Not to mention mobile lol.

I recently played The House in Fata Morgana. One of my favorite stories ever, was like 40 hours long. Sales are low and entirely subsist on word-of-mouth. Tried to get a friend to buy it, told him it was $25 and he literally laughed.
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Yeah, I've tried to recommend games to people before and too often I get, "Oh, well, I'll wait until it's $10" and I want to scream. Games that are 40-80 hours long and full of content.
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Incidentally, they're having the same problem in China, but to an even greater extent. The PC market there is flooded with $1 games, and people complain about anything priced over $10.
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xp1337 posted...

Yeah, I've tried to recommend games to people before and too often I get, "Oh, well, I'll wait until it's $10" and I want to scream. Games that are 40-80 hours long and full of content.

yeah but you could be getting 40-80 hours of content for $10!!! what a deal!!!
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I am genuinely suprised people like Steam's layout so much more than epics. This is probably the age old "change is bad" until two weeks go by and you get used to it.

Don't get me wrong steams layout isn't terrible, but their software has way more problems than it should for how long it's been around. It's at least once a week I have to go into task manager and completely kill it and restart it just to get it to load

But for people complaining about epic store. Epic doing this helps you in the long run much more than you think. The more exclusives the epic store gets, the more users it gets. The more users it gets, the more steam has to do to be competitive. Which means steam in return gets better. Yes the epic store is still infantile.

For people asking why epic store is the first to do this, it's not. You got blizzard launcher, windows store not to mention those other indie sites things. The problem is you have to do so much work to build and support a system that only the largest of companies can afford to do it. And if you do it without exclusives people just want all their games in one place so they stick to the mediocre software they already have.

People have willing walked into a monopoly and refuse to get out of it, and anyone with any knowledge of economics (real economics, not the shit i read in this topic) can tell you why a monopoly is bad.
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CoolCly posted...

Foolmo's argument seems to be that creating these low sales has created a perception in gamers that games must be cheap and that gamers refuse to buy full priced games. But is that really the case? Has this even really changed anything? Games would become discounted, rereleased as "game of the year editions" with a lower price, or just sold as used games in the past, so low cost alternatives have always been a thing. It might be more accessible to PC Gamers than before, but is this really changing the industry?

Well, I can only speak for myself, but in my case definitely.

In the past, there was no guarantee that any particular game would go on sale, and I sure wasn't going to buy a newspaper to check the ads every weekend or whatever. I just bought stuff. If things happened to go on sale it was a nice bonus.

With Steam, there's regular sales at specific times of year, and super easy to check, and I get phone notifications if a game on my wishlist goes on sale. I sorta feel guilty if I spend more than 50% on a game, because I'm wasting money; and even 50% is iffy.
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I'd rather stick with the mediocre software I have than move to garbage software. And if anyone if making a monopoly, it's Epic. If a game is on Steam and Epic, I have a choice of where to buy it. If it's Epic exclusive, they have a monopoly over that game. Epic needs to make their store not suck first. Then they might get people to switch.
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Colegreen_c12 posted...

It's at least once a week I have to go into task manager and completely kill it and restart it just to get it to load

This shit drives me up the damn wall. It's been a thing for so long I can't believe they haven't fixed it. At least it seems like the client is being updated at long last, albeit totally piecemeal. Maybe some of this stuff will be ironed out once that's finally done.
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CoolCly posted...

I also think it's weird people are inherently like "well if you decrease the cut then that should just decrease the price for me!" which is silly.

That was just one idea of what Epic could do to give the consumer something. Another would be having a decent store.

When you don't give the consumer anything other than a measurably worse experience, don't act all surprised when they don't want to go to your store and don't appreciate it when you force them to.
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are we really calling having the exclusive rights to specific games on PC a monopoly now

ugh im so mad that Uncharted is monopolized by Sony the government needs to step in and bust up that monopoly
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Better than calling Steam a monopoly when it hasn't had EA games for like 8 years now.
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MoogleKupo141 posted...

ugh im so mad that Uncharted is monopolized by Sony the government needs to step in and bust up that monopoly

this is what teddy roosevelt tried to prevent
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Mewtwo59 posted...

Better than calling Steam a monopoly when it hasn't had EA games for like 8 years now.

A monopoly doesn't have to be something that has 100% of the market, dude. Just something that overshadows the other options to the point where they barely exist and there's no real source of competition for it. Steam absolutely has a monopoly on digital games content. There's other services but they're drops in the bucket compared to Steam.
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Steam's closest competitor is, what, GOG? Epic hasn't passed them yet, has it?
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It has to be Origin, doesn't it? That EA userbase has to count for something, right?
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origin and battle net and those other things aren't really a factor. there's zero intersection between those and the markets steam, gog, epic, etc are in by design
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Doesn't Origin sell more than EA games? I thought they did at one point and I don't think they flopped so hard that they stopped it.
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Yeah, I just looked it up and they do. You have to scroll down a little bit to get to them on their website, but they've got games from other publishers on there.
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xp1337 posted...

Steam's closest competitor is, what, GOG? Epic hasn't passed them yet, has it?

Fortnite alone is bigger than GOG, if you count that.

Colegreen_c12 posted...

It's at least once a week I have to go into task manager and completely kill it and restart it just to get it to load

Hearing stuff like this sounds weird to me. I generally close Steam when I'm done playing a game. Do people just leave the launchers open all the time or something?
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Steam has been my instant messenger to keep up with friends for at least a decade now so I keep it open.
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SmartMuffin posted...

Wait... isn't Valve the company that everyone was gushing over a few years ago because it had one of those trendy commie flat management structures where there are no bosses and everyone just does whatever they want?

Glad to see that it turned out that everyone agreed that what they want to do is maximize revenue and take home a nice fat check.

Nobody forgot Valve are evil too
Like I said I fucking hate them for the local currency and removing flash deals
There were also game censors and games being removed for dumb reasons and also the paid mods controversery
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It was great when GoG would reimburse you for local currency making the game more expensive. Too bad they ended it.
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Mewtwo59 posted...

Hey, maybe if you stop being intellectualy dishonest you can have the post of the topic.

What if I just edit "first of all Mewtwo69 is really smart and makes good points, but" in front of all my posts
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SmartMuffin posted...

Wait... isn't Valve the company that everyone was gushing over a few years ago because it had one of those trendy commie flat management structures where there are no bosses and everyone just does whatever they want?

They literally had a secret police squad that roamed the halls and "disappeared" people. It's crazy how similar it was to the soviets.
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foolm0r0n posted...

SmartMuffin posted...

Wait... isn't Valve the company that everyone was gushing over a few years ago because it had one of those trendy commie flat management structures where there are no bosses and everyone just does whatever they want?

They literally had a secret police squad that roamed the halls and "disappeared" people. It's crazy how similar it was to the soviets.

Wait what
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https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/

I think this is the guy who described a ton of details. He wrote like a 200 tweet thread about it. So much crazy stuff.
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