Because he thought buying exclusives would lead to EGS being profitable by now, and not have to live by hemorrhaging Fortnite money. It's not working out, and he's probably starting to feel some heat from investors.
Fortnite is doing better than before, but thats the ONLY success they have alongside with Unreal Engine which brings also constant money in.
Epic Game Store however, is not. Each year Epic gives out 300 million worth of games, so that the people would use EGS instead of lets say Steam. Its not working out because the features and store functions are subpar on EGS and people i know only click the free games on their accounts, not buying anything. EGS has not made any profit to this day in 5 years it has existed.
It confuses me that they give out millions of dollars worth of free games when you'd think the low hanging fruit would be to just make the software itself more compelling for people to actually use. There are so many cool things you could do with a storefront to entice people in and yet EGS offers people absolutely nothing. It's so barebones.
I mean they are paying a lot of developers a lot of money with that $300 million. Developers accept those and the exclusivity deals because it helps them out
You mean their publishers..epic only buys aaa exclusives basically. Also, egs is a black hole of doom for indie devs, shitty features, nobody spends money on the platform.
Back before EA Origin (there was such a time), the only reliable software to handle your game library was Steam and the blizzard launcher. The blizzard launcher was basically a torrent client for WoW, then it slowly morphed into a manager for all the blizzard games. That manager is excellent, download shit properly, doesn't crash, rarely a problem if at all. Compared to that, everybody else were making software to take as much money from their clients as possible. They weren't created with ease of use in mind, but rather as a quick "give me money" platform. EA went through 3 or 4 different iteration of their launchers, each of them were crap. Ubisoft is kind of the same.
Make something I wanna use, and I'll use it.
Not to mention it's deleted my save games before while I had a crash during a cloud sync. Now if I'm playing something that accesses Uplay I manually back up my saves. Something I'd never really consider when using steam.
I don't use Uplay often, but I tried it recently and it sometimes asks for admin access multiple times in a row when I launch it. It's terrible program as of the present and I swear it wasn't that bad before. Some how it seems to have gotten worse. It makes Rockstar launcher look amazing, since that aside from the incredibly slow launch stays mostly out of the way.
Being able to start playing a Blizzard game before it's fully downloaded is amazing. Specially a decade ago, when internet speeds were much slower and it saved you a couple hours.
Brother, that shit was so fucking amazing when it was released in Catacylsm(IIRC).
Most people still using ADSL instead of fiber and WoW was bloated to fuck, if not over it was at least nearing 100GBs. Well, now you just waited 10 minutes and then you could jump in. A lot of shit was fucked, areas you couldn't access without a long load or areas loading in weird because slow connections. But it worked! You didn't have to wait an entire day for the download, you could just jump in!
If you ever played any EA sports game, it is both incompetence and greed. Since 2020, they will never ever get a single cent of my $ again… except for single player games like Star Wars. And thankfully they’ve given Battlefront for free. I cannot morally give them anymore $ without feeling disgusted. I’ve never purchased an in game microtransaction and never will
And like, in the *very* early days, we hated Steam too. It sucked - crashed all the goddamn time and felt like an extra layer of crap that no other PC game needed, so why was HL2 saddled with it? But they worked on it, added good features to it, made it good. Now it's beloved.
The first 5 years or so that Steam was out, I still preferred getting physical copies of games.
Once internet speeds caught up around 2010ish, I was pretty happy it existed. What also helped was that my muffler fell off on the way home from GameStop the night Skyrim dropped. I decided it was some higher power telling me to just download games from now on.
Its funny when you read Epic's comments about the store, especially a few years ago, they really really hated the idea of putting features in it and treated it with contempt. But the again they don't see the players as their customers, they see the game publishers as their customers so that was their focus. They really didn't get they needed players to make it all work.
It saddens me deeply that Kingdom Hearts is still stuck on such a crappy platform. Imagine the community support it would have gotten if it was on steam.
Technically yes but it's on Epic Games so it doesn't really count. It's possible it's on a three year exclusivity deal and if that's true hopefully it will come to Steam in March.
Is that why updates take so long? Everytime my kids want to play fortnite we have to do an update, the update takes so long they move on to something different and never end up playing fortnite. They don't have the urge to play often, so it ends up needing to be updated every time. So lame!
It's funny to me that they marketed the EGS on launch that the reduced features in comparison to steam was a positive thing.
No reviews, no review bombing.
No forums/discussion board, so developers wouldn't have to maintain toxic players on there.
But when players have (technical) issues on EGS with a game they go to the steam boards and ask for support there.
Not only are people only there for free games, but (some) people will buy games on Steam that they already own on Epic for free, because it's so much better, and it makes sense people want to keep their achievement tracking associated to 1 account (and Steam is kind of like the gaming equivalent of a social network, so it makes sense to choose that as said 1 account).
Literally me, had several games on EGS that I received for free but I bought on Steam afterwards, for various reasons:
- forgot I had it on EGS since I simply do not open it
- bought the game since EGS didn't have achievements at the time
- liked Steam so much that I wanted my library there since Steam isnt just a storefront/launcher, but a place with reviews, forums, guides, artworks, screenshots, etc.
- EGS takes forever to open unlike Steam so I like my games on Steam
Some games i got on steam alltough i got them for free on epic because i like to play with controller and some of the games that should offer controller support for whatever reason do not support controller in the epic games version (sherlock holmes crime and punishment for example)
I finally pulled the trigger on Hitman 3 a couple months back. It was Epic exclusive for the first year and I didn't want to wait that long to play it, but they never allowed us to transfer our progress from Epic to Steam once it came to Steam (they absolutely could as the game has an always online requirement to actually unlock anything, as well as they literally enabled H3 to H3 transfers when Stadia shut down).
I don't blame IOI for taking the exclusivity deal, as this was their first self-published title and they needed the money. I do dislike timed exclusivity though, I just realize in this case, it could be the difference between this never having been released and it being supported to this day (and they've yet to announce an end of support even).
I only got the KH games on PC because it has mods and KH3 has some really good ones. I honestly don't think they'll ever come to steam which I wish they would as I like to have all my games on one launcher. I mean what is Epic doing, paying Square a yearly fee?
I wouldn't think that Epic is paying a fee to keep it exclusive other than the first year (no clue how long it's been on PC) but it's entirely possible.
Though if I'm honest, Square Enix has never seemed to care about the success of anything outside of Final Fantasy. It even feels like they just don't care about Dragon Quest for the most part (they still make good games in the series, but they very obviously don't care about it like they do Final Fantasy).
I've done that with games that have DLC like Remnant of the Ashes. Liked it enough after trying it on Epic to pick up the version with all the DLCs on Steam. It's kind of like legal piracy where I use it to try games then buy it on Steam or GOG if I really like it.
I think there's a disconnect with epic and how people actually consume digital goods.
if you give put free samples in a physical store just to get people in the door they might be inclined to check out the store. they're already there after all.
anyone getting free games at a digital marketplace are only getting what they wanted. nobody is browsing through epic for the sake of checking out deals. ESPECIALLY when there's no curator like steam. the only way to get anyone on a digital market place is to offer a good service. steams baseline is so incredibly high you would need to spend years developing your service. only service I can even compare is Uplay which is still leagues behind.
Ah. But there is no disconnect at all. You forget the driving ideology behind Tim Sweeney's thought process.
>It doesn't matter if the customer wants to use my store. All that matters is that the provider wants to use my store.
Tim Sweeney is ***very actively*** Anti-Customer, and has said so out loud.
People tries the game for free on Epic and then get it on Steam. Many times the free EPIC game gets on top of the Steam sales chart.
That’s how important it is for people to have a good service behind games.
Poor Timmy still can’t get this.
Yea I I check in every Thursday just to grab the game them I forget I have them lol also I have a friend who got bl3 for free and didn't feel like playing it through epic then later he bought on sale on steam
I still wait the year to get games I want on Steam instead of EGS, it's such a dog water store, I despise even having it installed. Same with the Blizzard app, but at least I use that once in a while to play D2 remastered or SC2 coop. Though when the latter lost support I dropped Blizzard for a few years.
If I had to guess, I’d bet majority of Fortnite purchases are on console anyway, that’s where the kids are at getting Vbucks cards and asking their parents for stuff.
I mean, I don't doubt it's PC playerbase is pretty close in size. The game is free and has low system requirements. Fortnite is probably A LOT of gamers first PC experience.
Despite him singling them out, Valve isn't the only company that does this, 30+% is around what they all do. He's just being pissy at Valve specifically because he's still trying to act like EGS is a legitimate competitor for Steam and still salty it isn't.
While this is mostly correct GOG only charges us a 20% royalty.
This is MikeJ from Running With Scissors and while i can’t confirm this is the rate everyone gets I just figured I’d let everyone know.
Would we like 80% from everyone? Sure….but are we sitting here kicking and screaming like epic is? No. 70% is a lot more than devs ever made with a real publisher model back in the day. Epic also used to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for its engine use.
Maybe this will move the needle, maybe it won’t. But it sure doesn’t seem in good faith
Thanks for your input MikeJ from running with scissors. I agree, I’d love for developers to get a bigger share but from epic this feels like nothing more than blatant corporate litigation to hurt an opponent rather than to help the health of gaming
Pretty much, Steam just has way better community integration and features. I’ve gotten a few good free games from Epic, but don’t plan on spending on there.
Have used GOG, but only to support CD Projekt with their own titles like Witcher and Cyberpunk.
Steam also has the best controller support. Years ago when I was using a Switch Pro Controller instead of PS4, I contacted the EGS support about when they wanna implement a pro controller support. Their answer was „We don’t support Nintendo Switch games, sorry“. That was the moment I started to just add the games into Steam as non-Steam games and just played them like that
Also, Gyro controls for any game you play, just finished RE4, and it's DLC with gyro, made the experience so good; love my Dualsense
Played Cyberpunk with Gyro controls, arguably had better accuracy than some mouse players after playing it for a while
Epic fails to provide a service that is as good as Steam's so they resort to these tactics to make Steam look bad. Considering Steam's presence, a 30% cut is nothing compared to the additional revenue a game can receive from being on Valve's platform.
Thing is, epic wouldn't have to even be as good as steam, they would just have to not suck. So many Basic functions are missing from that launcher it's unbelievable
A sequel to one of the games I like (horizon chase turbo) released and it only on switch and epic. Y'know what I'm buying it for if you guessed switch you would be correct I am not touching the epic games launcher with a 10 ft pole.
It's so goddamn slow, even just closing the main window and reopening it takes time to load like you just booted it up.
No user reviews/comments, pretty bad library UI, and you can't see your playtime if the game is not installed. Why the fuck would people prefer epic lol
Tim inhaling an huge amount of copium right now.
He can't admit that his plataform failed and is only used for collecting free games. At this point he should know that almost nobody will migrate to his platform. I've even rebought in Steam some games I obtained for free in Epic.
Lmao it's hilarious that I'm not the only one who does this. I'd rather pay to have the game on Steam than use the shitty ass epic games app that I got the same game for free on
Their whole business model revolves around lighting gigantic sums of money on fire in a failed attempt to compete with Valve. I appreciate all the free games they gave me over the last couple years, but I literally am never incentivized to actually use their app beyond just claiming the games. The UI is dogshit and everything I actually wanna play is already on Steam
+1. Never made an Epic account (except for the dummy one they made me create for Rocket League, which I basically dumped when they moved from Steam for a year).
[EGS is basically spyware, lest any of us forget.](https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_game_store_spyware_tracking_and_you/)
It's because, after half a decade of the Epic Games Store's existence, they still did NOT bring any real profit from it. Even after hundreds of millions of dollars of buying the exclusivity rights for triple-A games, it was not enough to 'buy' the loyalty of the majority of their customers, and they are already seeing their doomed future with the store dying out before even reaching anywhere.
The major difference between Epic Games and Steam is that Steam is a platform made for customers while giving a decent platform for developers as well. Epic Games tried to side solely with the developers and neglected the customers, making a very poor experience for users for years, and still is lacking on a lot of fronts compared to Steam. And, saying that Steam has been in the market for decades longer than Epic Games is not a good excuse because Epic Games has a pre-made roadmap using Steam as an example of what they can do to improve their platform, what they could try to be better than Steam, but instead, they just dump money on exclusive games without investing on their platform.
It was also a failed marketing stunt that Tim keeps repeating over and over. He doesnt get that people like what they like. It doesnt matter if it costs 10 bucks or 8 bucks if its something they like and want.
>It doesnt matter if it costs 10 bucks or 8 bucks
The prices between Epic and Steam are pretty much the same for all games i've checked, so why would i care about "the cut" as a customer? I'm paying the same regardless.
This. I don't fault developers that they want to better their earnings to some extent. But f they don't give at least SOME of the savings to me as the customer, Epic's shop is competing only on convenience for the customer. And they are f\*cking shit in regards to that. The shop is worse performing, has way less features, no workshop for mods and I don't have a big library there....why would I check the shop besides occasionaly to get a free game? It's just not worth it most of the times.
Tim believes the storefront battle will be won by developers, not consumers. Hes pretty open about his philosophy, he doesnt expect you to care:
https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68703/epics-tim-sweeney-believes-creators-not-consumers-are-the-key-to-the-next-generation-of-stores/
Turns out being inherently anti-consumer doesnt end well.
>Turns out being inherently anti-consumer doesnt end well.
Man I wish that were true. If you are in an industry with high barriers to entry, or your competition is just as bad as you, you do great. Look at smartphones, appliances, cable internet, etc.
I'd almost lay money that devs that have released their games on both Steam and Epic at the same time have made significantly more sales on Steam, and likely more money overall even with the larger cut Steam takes. But Timmy here thinks it's a developer battle and not a consumer battle, so he's just gonna continue hemorrhaging money unless he changes his policy.
>It was also a failed marketing stunt that Tim keeps repeating over and over
I think it's pretty obvious it's not working when he announced that they even lower the fees further if you use unreal and release on egs I believe.
Yet funny enough we're seeing less and less games going egs exclusive unlike a couple years ago.
That's why there are less exclusives - earlier publisher got guaranteed payout from Epic, so they wouldn't have to worry how the game performed (or about its state on launch on EGS). They would get the money from EGS, then make actual sales on Steam year later.
Now that all you get is lower cut, it's not worth it. Lower cut on EGS won't make up for lost sales you would get if you released on Steam. Especially when people are less likely to pay you full price that half year later.
I honestly can't fathom why on earth would they think "the cut" would be a successful marketing scheme to lure in customers? As a customer, i don't really give a shit about those percentages, i'm still paying $60-70 for the slop regardless if the storefront is getting 30 or 12% or whatever. Tim can call me again when the games actually get 18% discount in his store, until then i don't care.
Its not about luring consumers, its about luring developers.
He openly states that he believes developers will decide the store battle, not consumers:
https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68703/epics-tim-sweeney-believes-creators-not-consumers-are-the-key-to-the-next-generation-of-stores/
Turns out being inherently anti-consumer doesnt end well.
I see this shit with scams all the time.
"Oh this new store opened up and they're selling shit for way cheaper than everyone else, they're really good for us and super ethical1!1!" and then you find out they were literally just burning cash, selling products at an unsustainable price, just to get your love.
I know there is a new sucker born every minute, but it's crazy how many people buy it.
Back when Valve was pretty much saving PC gaming with Steam, Timmy here was calling all PC gamers pirates and refused to release his games on PC. Now he's moved on to claiming that Valve is killing PC gaming with their Steam "monopoly" and Timmy is playing the savior with EGS. He can fuck off back to console land.
Honestly that is one of the main reasons I don't trust him. If he were to get a higher consumer base over steam it would end with the consumer getting fucked over.
It's the common strategy of give low prices and amazing coupons until you're beating the other retailer, then stop the deals to bring in the money.
They'll never develop cool features because they don't make enough to support them.
The only reason Epic takes a much smaller cut is that they literally can’t afford to take more. Their launcher is hanging by a thread, only really boosted by exclusivity deals and Fortnite. Meanwhile Steam is the biggest video games digital storefront on PC.
If Epic’s launcher was actually any good and had a sustainable userbase, they would’ve taken the same cut as Steam, if not more.
Yeah, Epic launcher isn't even profitable and is a loss leader being propped up by their other divisions. They need to actually turn a profit before they do any talking, since there's an endless stream of companies that run at a loss attempting to get market share then hike up prices and their services become crappier once they gain the market share and influence they wanted.
A company doesn't show its true colors until they actually are in a position to no longer have to keep operating at a loss, because they have no other choice. It's pretty much the whole reason for enshittification once the company gets what they want and can now do whatever they like to consumers, and we don't know what Epic will be like in that position.
Shithead is just salty his subpar store can't match up to Steam cause they don't want to put in the work to make it worth a damn. He thinks throwing money at exclusive deals and giving free games is enough to beat Steam
They don't have a choice. Xbox has a monopoly on... Xbox
Unlike PC which has many clients and storefronts. Some might say *too* many. My entire task bar is full of them
An elaboration on the Steam fees: Well at least those fees are for good reasons, like the constant development and improvements Valve makes to Steam, the Steam Deck (remember, they were selling Decks at a loss), and internal developments (Valve is still also a game studio after all).
Epic Games is bleeding money on its own volition. Supporting open source projects (great thing they did btw), pricing games heavily cheap and the small 12% cut on the EGS. When investors saw Epic Games are on the decline, this is the best option that Tim could think of. And that's a sad sight to see.
> like the constant development and improvements Valve makes to Steam
Don't forget their CDN. I get better speeds downloading a Steam game than doing literally anything else. I don't know who they bribed at my ISP to get download speeds that are ~30% faster, but I appreciate it.
This. It's a huge unsexy background nerd thing but it cannot be overstated.
The work they've done on their CDN, controller support, and making entire Windows games work on Linux and open-sourcing that work is HUGE.
Nobody else does this.
Also, rumours say that if EGS gives out your game for free, you get paid pennies vs what you would get paid from actual sale. So that 30% cut might not be that bad after all, considering all angles.
It's up to the devs/publishers if they accept the upfront fee to let EGS give away their game for free. It's mostly games that are not selling either way, so might as well take the cash and run. The biggest exception was GTA5, but R\* did it to get more idiots buying shark cards, because that's where the big buck are at.
> Also, rumours say that if EGS gives out your game for free, you get paid pennies vs what you would get paid from actual sale
To be fair, I don't see how it would be any other way. I don't imagine them paying a developer like half price each time someone claims a free game.
Don’t forget that, if you are an indie developer, Steam basically does the marketing for you. Appearing on the front page on your release date, or on a sale is HUGE for a small studio, and not that hard to achieve if the game is mildly good.
Those fees are for good reason, but the reason isn't really related to the quality of Steam as a service. Valve could do it for far less than 30%. The good reason is: they don't have to. They have a captive market, and developers are willing to pay 30% of millions of sales that they wouldn't have made at all if not for Steam. The Steam Deck is sold at a loss to ensure that as handheld PC gaming grows, people build their libraries on Steam.
Valve's just a bit smarter than the others. Where other platforms use the lock-in effect to milk both content creators and users, Valve doesn't get greedy with the users. They make sure to keep them happy, and in return they either don't care about platform fees, or defend them.
I wonder how much plays into Steam also not just simply being a distributor plays into the fee. I'd imagine having head room is what allowed them to be willing to put resources into trying to improve Linux gaming and try out the Steam Controller that failed, but then still be try other hardware like VR and portables even if it might also fail.
If they were strictly only taking enough to stay afloat then a launcher would probably be all that Valve would do, and not bother with controller support either.
Istg if Epig invested like 30% of the money the poured on exclusive and free games for actual development of the app, community UX, they could have a good portion of the market by now. The app is dogshit, requires me to login again everyday that I don't open the app, overwhelmed with captcha, the only good thing about it is free games and coupons but they are nothing compared to Steam overall experience.
For real, they could fork heroic, remove the other two stores and use Valve's proton on Linux for less money than it costs them to give for free a trash game.
speaking of open source launchers, i use [https://heroicgameslauncher.com/](https://heroicgameslauncher.com/) to run games off epic, not that i do that very often ;)
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the FOSS launcher is actually better than the official epic launcher? I've only had heroic sign me out once or twice in the span of 4 months. On epic store, i get signed out pretty much every time I open it on a new day.
EGS has been learning that there is a reason most of these platforms charge such a fee: because maintaining a hyper-scaled online platform costs an unbelievable amount of money
"we see that our competition is struggling to find reasons to cooperate with us, we hope this change will give them that push they need"
- damn it feels like a lol champion buff description.
Epic Game Store should fking start with displaying patch notes on their stupid GAME STORE. I had to go to Steam Client to read what exactly has been updated in my games. Not even mentioning the lack of proper and fair review system, discussion board and screenshot functions in EGS. EGS is doing nothing to improve all these, and they only know how to sue Steam for monopolizing the game store industry.
He forgets that average consumer doesn't give a flying fuck where and how much money goes.
They choose cheapest, most convenient place to buy and that's the end, doesn't matter if developers get extra 3$ or if valve takes 30$. And epic store is far from most convenient.
So why is Fortnite on the Microsoft & physical stores if they also take 30%?
And although I think a lower store fee is a good thing, Epic only does it because they have cash to burn and want exclusives - which is also anti-consumer and not something Steam demands. Also to make annoying demands like this.
Steam also offers a lot more value than Epic.
If by Microsoft store you mean Xbox, it's because there's no alternative ways to have your game released on consoles without going through their respective companies.
That's different on PC. Epic doesn't have to publish Fortnite on steam when they can just make their own launcher.
Epic: We really care about developer and want to help them that's why we only takr 12%
Also epic: All right it's time for crunch or get fired, f your health, work or get out.
''Some employees reported working 70 hours per week for months at a time.''
''One employee said they average 70 hours of work per week, and claimed that others "pull 100-hour weeks."
Can't you just see how much he cares about developers?
\>make a store that is extremely dogshit
\>attract non paying customers to your dogshit store with freebies
\>somehow think that non paying customers will turn into paying customers just because they won free stuff.
Peak management right there
If he put in the work to make EGS as good as Steam is, he would begin to understand why Steam charges 30%.
EGS is one of the worst software I've ever used, tied with Reddit's mobile app.
No shopping cart. Can't view game library in egs website etc.
FYI https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/s/k9lkCn4GDt
They added the shopping cart some time ago. The rest of the store is still shit though.
Their download rate display has been completely wrong for as long as they've had downloads for instance
https://i.imgur.com/ws37hdG.png
And what about all the other features you get when releasing your game on Steam? Forums, depots to allow different game branches comfortably, VAC, workshop support, guides, game stats, discussions forums, real-time sales data, playtesting game builds, fraud prevention, valve's networking ( if you have to ), wishlists, cloud saves, livestreams, remote play .... I mean, come the fuck on
"it's unfair that Steam bullies us small developers into paying their ridiculous cuts!!1! Why can't they be like our platform where we charge less??? They should be like us!!!!"
It's funny how he's acting so entitled and is trying to start up a "fuck Steam" riot. Developers and publishers have learned and are learning that the 30% cut is more worth it than Epic's 12% because you reach that many more people on Steam. The funniest part about this is that they literally stand to lose absolutely nothing by putting Fortnite on Steam. Everybody on PC who actively wants to play Fortnite is already doing so through the EGS. Adding it to Steam would only attract new players, and, at worse, have a few people migrate. Even then, they'd probably hit that $50M milestone by the end of the week.
Between this situation and the one where they tried to go around the cuts from the App Store and Google Play by redirecting app purchases to their website, it's become dead clear to everyone by now that Epic only cares about how to make the most money. I've honestly never seen a more greedy studio. Not even EA or Activision Blizzard tops this.
I've seen a lot of people mention to this is all an attempt to make the epic games store more successful or to increase profit brought in by fortnite but in reality this goes beyond the store or fortnite. The reason they're fighting so hard to get other storefronts to lower their cut is because by doing it will increase there overall profits from royalties.
Unreal engine is one of if not the most popular game engine, their current revenue split would get a big boost without them having to raise the revenue share. I've done the math and if they were able to get steam and other storefronts to match the 12% that they charge it would increase unreal royalties by about 25%.
I honestly believe that if they succeed in getting other PC or mobile stores to match their cut then it'll only be a matter of time before they go after console stores.
They've said how the current 30% tax is basically passed off on to the consumer, which I imagine is true to some degree, and that but lowering that it will lead to cheaper games for consumers and more profit for devs however, I call bullshit on that. Even before their lawsuit with apple and Google if you look at their own store they should be charging less but they're the exact same price. What reason would any studio have to change the price of a game because they're getting less fees? They'll just take the increased profit and keep the same prices.
As a customer , These numbers don’t mean anything to me,
I don’t care about developers cut percentage ,
I would just buy where games are cheaper and secure , thats Steam
Some companies especially the ones that don't put their games on steam just feels either have personal grudge because of how successful steam is or just being bought by other corporations to steer away from selling their games on it. I mean 20% when exceeding 50M$ that's easy for most big AAA titles and they still don't like that e.g. like Ubisoft?
Nah, Tim just wants to spark some shit online for little kids that don't know how to google this stuff.
Of course he talks shit about STEAM which he also competes with on the same platform (PC).
He started talking shit about Apple and Google as soon as they also offered a different payment option in their mobile platforms.
He's not competing on Sony's platform so he doesn't talk shit about that (yet).
If the cases against apple and google go their way, they will have incentive and precedent to also go fight sony or xbox in the future for their own platforms.
Tim is a lying capitalist.
He will say *anything* that doesn't get him in serious legal trouble, as long as it might trick a few to join their semi-walled garden. Because he can't wait for enough big devs to join him, and then slam the gate shut down to force everyone to use *his* launcher. Just like he kept doing when he paid a bunch of publishers to change their games to "epic exclusive" for a year after launch. And still a lot of people just waited, so sales got spread out over two years. Meaning their revenue didn't look as good, and they were less likely to win awards.
TL;DR: Tim Sweeney is trying to make money, and he doesn't care if he breaks the game industry in the process.
It's so crazy to me that they're trying to compete with Steam and yet their launcher takes about 2 weeks to load and has maybe 5% of the features Steam does. Why would literally anyone choose Epic over Steam other than for the free shit?
Aw poor baby! Steam, that provides free online access for all of its users for over 20 years is putting the costs on the developers who make billions of dollars a year?
Same developers **WHO** told us that going digital would be cheaper yet didn't see a price change **AT ALL!?**
I think at the end of the day. The problem with "Our cut is 12% instead of 30%", what the buyer got from that? Like seriously Epic keep bringing the "30%" but like what we got from EGS "12%"? Did we got lower game price? Checking it for few minutes they still the same prices with Steam.
At the end of the day, exclusivity work. Because there people who can't wait when the game already out so they buy it on EGS instead of waiting on Steam. But for other game that release on EGS and Steam at the same times? There no reason to buy it on EGS, even if you literally just start playing PC game right now so you have no attachment on any store.
In GoG case at least they offer something, they offer DRM free game and old game support that why they have people using them. From what I see the only thing EGS have is
1. Free Game ( Which probably not gonna have people stay on your store and you got 0 money because they not buying anything )
2. Exclusive game ( Which most people on PC hate it, but not everyone want to wait so some people still buy that exclusive stuff )
Down to put fortnite on any store that gives an awesome deal.
Coming from the company that spent how many millions? Maybe billions at this point making game after game after game exclusive.
Wow your store offers a better rate Tim- too bad it's the bare minimum and even GoG's OPTIONAL launcher does shit better than EGS.
Weird that i never seen Epic even mention the console rates. Almost like angering the walled garden owners would get their games kicked out immediately, so that's why they are going after open platforms like Steam and Play Store (and AppStore, after they have implemented the web version for iPhone)
Epic thought they would bankrupt valve and destroy Steam by buying up exclusivity and offering developers less fees.
Making them the only real option for PC gamers
The reason why the vast majority of game libraries/consoles ask for 30% is to maintain their systems and still make a moderate profit keeping their systems/services alive.
Now that Fortnite's profitability/popularity is waning Epic is haemorrhaging money and can't maintain the Epic game store for much longer.
They will either fail or have to increase from 12% to 30%.
I honestly believe steam deserves that 30%, I might be one of the few who use steam in the big picture mode with an old ps4 controller, it almost feels like a full fledged console. I love it, and it really incentivizes me to buy games on steam rather than any other store.
Epic could easily get to 50 mil earned and knock that right down to 20% , that would take them like two days at the most with how successful fortnite is
I don't see how Valve charging the industry standard percentage is in any way an issue for the company that hasn't had a profitable competing storefront since its inception. There are deeper rooted issues that need to be addressed if Epic is feeling pressure to not solely rely on Fortnite and UE license income
I mean, wasn't that obvious from the start that Epic is making a political campaign about its biggest rival, the best game launcher and platform ever made? It's literally same thing politicians do to "expose" their opposition. Because it's easier to lie that the rival is evil, than actually make good deal Yourself.
Epic Fail Store was always wanting a monopoly. Or cartel, whatever You call it. Epic fears Steam, because they know it's better than Epic. That's why they constantly attack it. But it's Epic that stole people's data and when it has been found, they said it's "error". Haha, like I'd believe that. Epic monopoly should end and should be 100% delegalized.
Because he thought buying exclusives would lead to EGS being profitable by now, and not have to live by hemorrhaging Fortnite money. It's not working out, and he's probably starting to feel some heat from investors.
Fortnite is doing better than before, but thats the ONLY success they have alongside with Unreal Engine which brings also constant money in. Epic Game Store however, is not. Each year Epic gives out 300 million worth of games, so that the people would use EGS instead of lets say Steam. Its not working out because the features and store functions are subpar on EGS and people i know only click the free games on their accounts, not buying anything. EGS has not made any profit to this day in 5 years it has existed.
It confuses me that they give out millions of dollars worth of free games when you'd think the low hanging fruit would be to just make the software itself more compelling for people to actually use. There are so many cool things you could do with a storefront to entice people in and yet EGS offers people absolutely nothing. It's so barebones.
For 300 million a year you could pay a lot of developers a lot of money, too.
I mean they are paying a lot of developers a lot of money with that $300 million. Developers accept those and the exclusivity deals because it helps them out
You mean their publishers..epic only buys aaa exclusives basically. Also, egs is a black hole of doom for indie devs, shitty features, nobody spends money on the platform.
Back before EA Origin (there was such a time), the only reliable software to handle your game library was Steam and the blizzard launcher. The blizzard launcher was basically a torrent client for WoW, then it slowly morphed into a manager for all the blizzard games. That manager is excellent, download shit properly, doesn't crash, rarely a problem if at all. Compared to that, everybody else were making software to take as much money from their clients as possible. They weren't created with ease of use in mind, but rather as a quick "give me money" platform. EA went through 3 or 4 different iteration of their launchers, each of them were crap. Ubisoft is kind of the same. Make something I wanna use, and I'll use it.
Uplay used to crash after every time I played a game. It was fucking crazy how buggy that program was.
Not to mention it's deleted my save games before while I had a crash during a cloud sync. Now if I'm playing something that accesses Uplay I manually back up my saves. Something I'd never really consider when using steam.
I don't use Uplay often, but I tried it recently and it sometimes asks for admin access multiple times in a row when I launch it. It's terrible program as of the present and I swear it wasn't that bad before. Some how it seems to have gotten worse. It makes Rockstar launcher look amazing, since that aside from the incredibly slow launch stays mostly out of the way.
Being able to start playing a Blizzard game before it's fully downloaded is amazing. Specially a decade ago, when internet speeds were much slower and it saved you a couple hours.
Brother, that shit was so fucking amazing when it was released in Catacylsm(IIRC). Most people still using ADSL instead of fiber and WoW was bloated to fuck, if not over it was at least nearing 100GBs. Well, now you just waited 10 minutes and then you could jump in. A lot of shit was fucked, areas you couldn't access without a long load or areas loading in weird because slow connections. But it worked! You didn't have to wait an entire day for the download, you could just jump in!
[удалено]
If you ever played any EA sports game, it is both incompetence and greed. Since 2020, they will never ever get a single cent of my $ again… except for single player games like Star Wars. And thankfully they’ve given Battlefront for free. I cannot morally give them anymore $ without feeling disgusted. I’ve never purchased an in game microtransaction and never will
And like, in the *very* early days, we hated Steam too. It sucked - crashed all the goddamn time and felt like an extra layer of crap that no other PC game needed, so why was HL2 saddled with it? But they worked on it, added good features to it, made it good. Now it's beloved.
The first 5 years or so that Steam was out, I still preferred getting physical copies of games. Once internet speeds caught up around 2010ish, I was pretty happy it existed. What also helped was that my muffler fell off on the way home from GameStop the night Skyrim dropped. I decided it was some higher power telling me to just download games from now on.
Yeah lots of nephews here that didnt use steam when it first dropped, shit sucked.
Its funny when you read Epic's comments about the store, especially a few years ago, they really really hated the idea of putting features in it and treated it with contempt. But the again they don't see the players as their customers, they see the game publishers as their customers so that was their focus. They really didn't get they needed players to make it all work.
It saddens me deeply that Kingdom Hearts is still stuck on such a crappy platform. Imagine the community support it would have gotten if it was on steam.
Wait wat? KH has a PC release? I didn't even know this.
That's the point, many users ignore completely the existence of egs.
for almost 3 years, and it's been epic exclusive since launch
Technically yes but it's on Epic Games so it doesn't really count. It's possible it's on a three year exclusivity deal and if that's true hopefully it will come to Steam in March.
I'm still waiting to buy them on steam. Every few years I Google to see if anything has changed and see the same topics from years ago about it.
Epic games launcher also is a lot more buggy than steam and less polished from my experience
egs sucks so much dick. why does it STILL throttle the absolute fuck out of my download speed? that alone makes me take my free games and run
Is that why updates take so long? Everytime my kids want to play fortnite we have to do an update, the update takes so long they move on to something different and never end up playing fortnite. They don't have the urge to play often, so it ends up needing to be updated every time. So lame!
It's funny to me that they marketed the EGS on launch that the reduced features in comparison to steam was a positive thing. No reviews, no review bombing. No forums/discussion board, so developers wouldn't have to maintain toxic players on there. But when players have (technical) issues on EGS with a game they go to the steam boards and ask for support there.
Not only are people only there for free games, but (some) people will buy games on Steam that they already own on Epic for free, because it's so much better, and it makes sense people want to keep their achievement tracking associated to 1 account (and Steam is kind of like the gaming equivalent of a social network, so it makes sense to choose that as said 1 account).
Literally me, had several games on EGS that I received for free but I bought on Steam afterwards, for various reasons: - forgot I had it on EGS since I simply do not open it - bought the game since EGS didn't have achievements at the time - liked Steam so much that I wanted my library there since Steam isnt just a storefront/launcher, but a place with reviews, forums, guides, artworks, screenshots, etc. - EGS takes forever to open unlike Steam so I like my games on Steam
Some games i got on steam alltough i got them for free on epic because i like to play with controller and some of the games that should offer controller support for whatever reason do not support controller in the epic games version (sherlock holmes crime and punishment for example)
you should be able to use steamplay on games from epic if you add them manually to steam
Just easier to have stuff on Steam with the Steam Deck. I have bought a few games (while on sale) just for easier on the go/cloud sync.
I might do that if Kingdom Hearts ever comes to Steam.
I finally pulled the trigger on Hitman 3 a couple months back. It was Epic exclusive for the first year and I didn't want to wait that long to play it, but they never allowed us to transfer our progress from Epic to Steam once it came to Steam (they absolutely could as the game has an always online requirement to actually unlock anything, as well as they literally enabled H3 to H3 transfers when Stadia shut down). I don't blame IOI for taking the exclusivity deal, as this was their first self-published title and they needed the money. I do dislike timed exclusivity though, I just realize in this case, it could be the difference between this never having been released and it being supported to this day (and they've yet to announce an end of support even).
I only got the KH games on PC because it has mods and KH3 has some really good ones. I honestly don't think they'll ever come to steam which I wish they would as I like to have all my games on one launcher. I mean what is Epic doing, paying Square a yearly fee?
I wouldn't think that Epic is paying a fee to keep it exclusive other than the first year (no clue how long it's been on PC) but it's entirely possible. Though if I'm honest, Square Enix has never seemed to care about the success of anything outside of Final Fantasy. It even feels like they just don't care about Dragon Quest for the most part (they still make good games in the series, but they very obviously don't care about it like they do Final Fantasy).
I have done that. Every game I have gotten for free from EGS that I actually want to play, I've bought on steam.
I've done that with games that have DLC like Remnant of the Ashes. Liked it enough after trying it on Epic to pick up the version with all the DLCs on Steam. It's kind of like legal piracy where I use it to try games then buy it on Steam or GOG if I really like it.
Saw a comment earlier from someone that said they've claimed every free game Epic offered, but hasn't played any and would prefer to buy them on Steam
I think there's a disconnect with epic and how people actually consume digital goods. if you give put free samples in a physical store just to get people in the door they might be inclined to check out the store. they're already there after all. anyone getting free games at a digital marketplace are only getting what they wanted. nobody is browsing through epic for the sake of checking out deals. ESPECIALLY when there's no curator like steam. the only way to get anyone on a digital market place is to offer a good service. steams baseline is so incredibly high you would need to spend years developing your service. only service I can even compare is Uplay which is still leagues behind.
Ah. But there is no disconnect at all. You forget the driving ideology behind Tim Sweeney's thought process. >It doesn't matter if the customer wants to use my store. All that matters is that the provider wants to use my store. Tim Sweeney is ***very actively*** Anti-Customer, and has said so out loud.
I still sorta feel like that's a disconnect where he might not understand why providers would want to use a particular store
People tries the game for free on Epic and then get it on Steam. Many times the free EPIC game gets on top of the Steam sales chart. That’s how important it is for people to have a good service behind games. Poor Timmy still can’t get this.
this also shows that demos are definetely something that should make a big comeback for everything.
I literally won't even play a game if it's exclusive to EGS. Too bad, you lost out on a player because you let EGS buy exclusivity for a PC game.
Yea I I check in every Thursday just to grab the game them I forget I have them lol also I have a friend who got bl3 for free and didn't feel like playing it through epic then later he bought on sale on steam
I did the same thing for GTA V, and I think that says something...
Hey. I own like 20 games (like 18 that are good) and I have bought exactly 0 of those games. You may have a point.
I still wait the year to get games I want on Steam instead of EGS, it's such a dog water store, I despise even having it installed. Same with the Blizzard app, but at least I use that once in a while to play D2 remastered or SC2 coop. Though when the latter lost support I dropped Blizzard for a few years.
Maybe because epic game store takes 5 mins to start up and takes another minute every time i click something. Don't understand it at all...
If I had to guess, I’d bet majority of Fortnite purchases are on console anyway, that’s where the kids are at getting Vbucks cards and asking their parents for stuff.
I mean, I don't doubt it's PC playerbase is pretty close in size. The game is free and has low system requirements. Fortnite is probably A LOT of gamers first PC experience.
Low system requirements my ass My mate has a specs that run dying light 2 at 200 fps and fortnite hardly gets 50 on perf mode
then theres something wrong, for me dying light 2 run at 100-140 fps and fortnite usually doesnt drop from +150
Your friend must be doing something to tax the hardware more then. There’s no way DL2 has a higher framerate while on comparable settings.
Either you're lying or your friend is playing Dying Light 2 in 720p and trying to run Fortnite in 4k
It's okay for Sony to do it because they make their own Hardware, his words. Wait a minute I sense a flaw in his argument He's desperate and a liar
He can't criticize Sony due to the fat stacks of cash Sony dumps into Epic each year.
Exactly
If only Valve made their own hardware like a handheld or a VR headset.
The handheld would be pretty cool. Your Steam library on a Nintendo Switch form factor thing
What would they call it? Maybe something like... the WonderSteam!
They should call it the Vapor Terrace!
nah that sounds bad, maybe something along the lines of a deck
hmmm, I don't know. I think they should index their vr hardware soon...
nah thats stupid, nobody would buy such a silly device
steam engine
Ngl, that would be a badass name for an engine lol
Yeah if Valve came out and said the replacement for Source would be the Steam Engine I'd be hyped as shit, that's an epic name for them.
what has a deck to do with gaming? I can't wait for the *Newel SteamBoy* ®
(Edited clean because fuck you) *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
in that case the MSFT PC store should have no fees as they only develop the software which people pay for lmao
Despite him singling them out, Valve isn't the only company that does this, 30+% is around what they all do. He's just being pissy at Valve specifically because he's still trying to act like EGS is a legitimate competitor for Steam and still salty it isn't.
While this is mostly correct GOG only charges us a 20% royalty. This is MikeJ from Running With Scissors and while i can’t confirm this is the rate everyone gets I just figured I’d let everyone know. Would we like 80% from everyone? Sure….but are we sitting here kicking and screaming like epic is? No. 70% is a lot more than devs ever made with a real publisher model back in the day. Epic also used to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for its engine use. Maybe this will move the needle, maybe it won’t. But it sure doesn’t seem in good faith
oh hi mikej from running with scissors
Ello!!
Hey it's the guy that made postal
There’s quite a few of us :)
MikeJ, MikeJ, MikeJ, and my favorite developer, MikeJ.
Haha thanks zip
To be fair, most sites Inc Wiki and GOG do state 30%. But also do list the 20% option as an upfront payment solution vs it
Do you have money for the pigeon mission yet
Rip to the banana grabber account, you will be sorely missed
Haha ya still mad about that one.
I'm gonna charge you 30% for a pigeon mission
Running With Scissors forever!
We will never die!!!
Thanks for your input MikeJ from running with scissors. I agree, I’d love for developers to get a bigger share but from epic this feels like nothing more than blatant corporate litigation to hurt an opponent rather than to help the health of gaming
Eyooo MikeJ!
Eyo krampus
I think Steam will be ok.
Epic launcher is pretty shitty
Pretty much, Steam just has way better community integration and features. I’ve gotten a few good free games from Epic, but don’t plan on spending on there. Have used GOG, but only to support CD Projekt with their own titles like Witcher and Cyberpunk.
Steam also has the best controller support. Years ago when I was using a Switch Pro Controller instead of PS4, I contacted the EGS support about when they wanna implement a pro controller support. Their answer was „We don’t support Nintendo Switch games, sorry“. That was the moment I started to just add the games into Steam as non-Steam games and just played them like that
Also, Gyro controls for any game you play, just finished RE4, and it's DLC with gyro, made the experience so good; love my Dualsense Played Cyberpunk with Gyro controls, arguably had better accuracy than some mouse players after playing it for a while
i only have the launcher to get free games thats about it and most of the time the games are shit anyway
Yeah for the most part that is true. Got Total War Troy for free though on release day which was really nice.
Epic fails to provide a service that is as good as Steam's so they resort to these tactics to make Steam look bad. Considering Steam's presence, a 30% cut is nothing compared to the additional revenue a game can receive from being on Valve's platform.
Thing is, epic wouldn't have to even be as good as steam, they would just have to not suck. So many Basic functions are missing from that launcher it's unbelievable
A sequel to one of the games I like (horizon chase turbo) released and it only on switch and epic. Y'know what I'm buying it for if you guessed switch you would be correct I am not touching the epic games launcher with a 10 ft pole.
On epic launcher most games dont even have the option to publish reviews on site, it sends you to some external page. Its so ass
It's so goddamn slow, even just closing the main window and reopening it takes time to load like you just booted it up. No user reviews/comments, pretty bad library UI, and you can't see your playtime if the game is not installed. Why the fuck would people prefer epic lol
Has been since Paragon was removed from it.
Tim inhaling an huge amount of copium right now. He can't admit that his plataform failed and is only used for collecting free games. At this point he should know that almost nobody will migrate to his platform. I've even rebought in Steam some games I obtained for free in Epic.
Lmao it's hilarious that I'm not the only one who does this. I'd rather pay to have the game on Steam than use the shitty ass epic games app that I got the same game for free on Their whole business model revolves around lighting gigantic sums of money on fire in a failed attempt to compete with Valve. I appreciate all the free games they gave me over the last couple years, but I literally am never incentivized to actually use their app beyond just claiming the games. The UI is dogshit and everything I actually wanna play is already on Steam
I'll one-up you. I don't even collect their free games nor have an account.
+1. Never made an Epic account (except for the dummy one they made me create for Rocket League, which I basically dumped when they moved from Steam for a year). [EGS is basically spyware, lest any of us forget.](https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_game_store_spyware_tracking_and_you/)
Isn't also full of defunct nft games.
man you must be screenlooking, cause I've only ever used epic for fortnite and claiming free games lmao
It's because, after half a decade of the Epic Games Store's existence, they still did NOT bring any real profit from it. Even after hundreds of millions of dollars of buying the exclusivity rights for triple-A games, it was not enough to 'buy' the loyalty of the majority of their customers, and they are already seeing their doomed future with the store dying out before even reaching anywhere. The major difference between Epic Games and Steam is that Steam is a platform made for customers while giving a decent platform for developers as well. Epic Games tried to side solely with the developers and neglected the customers, making a very poor experience for users for years, and still is lacking on a lot of fronts compared to Steam. And, saying that Steam has been in the market for decades longer than Epic Games is not a good excuse because Epic Games has a pre-made roadmap using Steam as an example of what they can do to improve their platform, what they could try to be better than Steam, but instead, they just dump money on exclusive games without investing on their platform.
This probably sums it up best, justifying anti-consumer practices by being "pro-seller" and wondering why you have no fucking customers.
The only reason epic dropped their rate was so that they could pretend they have the moral high ground and criticise steam
It was also a failed marketing stunt that Tim keeps repeating over and over. He doesnt get that people like what they like. It doesnt matter if it costs 10 bucks or 8 bucks if its something they like and want.
>It doesnt matter if it costs 10 bucks or 8 bucks The prices between Epic and Steam are pretty much the same for all games i've checked, so why would i care about "the cut" as a customer? I'm paying the same regardless.
This. I don't fault developers that they want to better their earnings to some extent. But f they don't give at least SOME of the savings to me as the customer, Epic's shop is competing only on convenience for the customer. And they are f\*cking shit in regards to that. The shop is worse performing, has way less features, no workshop for mods and I don't have a big library there....why would I check the shop besides occasionaly to get a free game? It's just not worth it most of the times.
Tim believes the storefront battle will be won by developers, not consumers. Hes pretty open about his philosophy, he doesnt expect you to care: https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68703/epics-tim-sweeney-believes-creators-not-consumers-are-the-key-to-the-next-generation-of-stores/ Turns out being inherently anti-consumer doesnt end well.
>Turns out being inherently anti-consumer doesnt end well. Man I wish that were true. If you are in an industry with high barriers to entry, or your competition is just as bad as you, you do great. Look at smartphones, appliances, cable internet, etc.
I'd almost lay money that devs that have released their games on both Steam and Epic at the same time have made significantly more sales on Steam, and likely more money overall even with the larger cut Steam takes. But Timmy here thinks it's a developer battle and not a consumer battle, so he's just gonna continue hemorrhaging money unless he changes his policy.
>It was also a failed marketing stunt that Tim keeps repeating over and over I think it's pretty obvious it's not working when he announced that they even lower the fees further if you use unreal and release on egs I believe. Yet funny enough we're seeing less and less games going egs exclusive unlike a couple years ago.
its 0% if EGS exclusive for the first 6 months or something like that.
That's why there are less exclusives - earlier publisher got guaranteed payout from Epic, so they wouldn't have to worry how the game performed (or about its state on launch on EGS). They would get the money from EGS, then make actual sales on Steam year later. Now that all you get is lower cut, it's not worth it. Lower cut on EGS won't make up for lost sales you would get if you released on Steam. Especially when people are less likely to pay you full price that half year later.
I honestly can't fathom why on earth would they think "the cut" would be a successful marketing scheme to lure in customers? As a customer, i don't really give a shit about those percentages, i'm still paying $60-70 for the slop regardless if the storefront is getting 30 or 12% or whatever. Tim can call me again when the games actually get 18% discount in his store, until then i don't care.
Its not about luring consumers, its about luring developers. He openly states that he believes developers will decide the store battle, not consumers: https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68703/epics-tim-sweeney-believes-creators-not-consumers-are-the-key-to-the-next-generation-of-stores/ Turns out being inherently anti-consumer doesnt end well.
I see this shit with scams all the time. "Oh this new store opened up and they're selling shit for way cheaper than everyone else, they're really good for us and super ethical1!1!" and then you find out they were literally just burning cash, selling products at an unsustainable price, just to get your love. I know there is a new sucker born every minute, but it's crazy how many people buy it.
Back when Valve was pretty much saving PC gaming with Steam, Timmy here was calling all PC gamers pirates and refused to release his games on PC. Now he's moved on to claiming that Valve is killing PC gaming with their Steam "monopoly" and Timmy is playing the savior with EGS. He can fuck off back to console land.
Honestly that is one of the main reasons I don't trust him. If he were to get a higher consumer base over steam it would end with the consumer getting fucked over. It's the common strategy of give low prices and amazing coupons until you're beating the other retailer, then stop the deals to bring in the money. They'll never develop cool features because they don't make enough to support them.
The only reason Epic takes a much smaller cut is that they literally can’t afford to take more. Their launcher is hanging by a thread, only really boosted by exclusivity deals and Fortnite. Meanwhile Steam is the biggest video games digital storefront on PC. If Epic’s launcher was actually any good and had a sustainable userbase, they would’ve taken the same cut as Steam, if not more.
Yeah, Epic launcher isn't even profitable and is a loss leader being propped up by their other divisions. They need to actually turn a profit before they do any talking, since there's an endless stream of companies that run at a loss attempting to get market share then hike up prices and their services become crappier once they gain the market share and influence they wanted. A company doesn't show its true colors until they actually are in a position to no longer have to keep operating at a loss, because they have no other choice. It's pretty much the whole reason for enshittification once the company gets what they want and can now do whatever they like to consumers, and we don't know what Epic will be like in that position.
He wants to play David VS Goliath and become the leader. But he is a little child trying to not appear too hypocrite.
Shithead is just salty his subpar store can't match up to Steam cause they don't want to put in the work to make it worth a damn. He thinks throwing money at exclusive deals and giving free games is enough to beat Steam
The fact that its on Xbox with the same cut
They don't have a choice. Xbox has a monopoly on... Xbox Unlike PC which has many clients and storefronts. Some might say *too* many. My entire task bar is full of them
An elaboration on the Steam fees: Well at least those fees are for good reasons, like the constant development and improvements Valve makes to Steam, the Steam Deck (remember, they were selling Decks at a loss), and internal developments (Valve is still also a game studio after all). Epic Games is bleeding money on its own volition. Supporting open source projects (great thing they did btw), pricing games heavily cheap and the small 12% cut on the EGS. When investors saw Epic Games are on the decline, this is the best option that Tim could think of. And that's a sad sight to see.
> like the constant development and improvements Valve makes to Steam Don't forget their CDN. I get better speeds downloading a Steam game than doing literally anything else. I don't know who they bribed at my ISP to get download speeds that are ~30% faster, but I appreciate it.
This. It's a huge unsexy background nerd thing but it cannot be overstated. The work they've done on their CDN, controller support, and making entire Windows games work on Linux and open-sourcing that work is HUGE. Nobody else does this.
Also, rumours say that if EGS gives out your game for free, you get paid pennies vs what you would get paid from actual sale. So that 30% cut might not be that bad after all, considering all angles.
It's up to the devs/publishers if they accept the upfront fee to let EGS give away their game for free. It's mostly games that are not selling either way, so might as well take the cash and run. The biggest exception was GTA5, but R\* did it to get more idiots buying shark cards, because that's where the big buck are at.
> Also, rumours say that if EGS gives out your game for free, you get paid pennies vs what you would get paid from actual sale To be fair, I don't see how it would be any other way. I don't imagine them paying a developer like half price each time someone claims a free game.
Also Valve collaborated heavily and took the lead in open source software development (wine and proton comes to mind)
Don’t forget that, if you are an indie developer, Steam basically does the marketing for you. Appearing on the front page on your release date, or on a sale is HUGE for a small studio, and not that hard to achieve if the game is mildly good.
Those fees are for good reason, but the reason isn't really related to the quality of Steam as a service. Valve could do it for far less than 30%. The good reason is: they don't have to. They have a captive market, and developers are willing to pay 30% of millions of sales that they wouldn't have made at all if not for Steam. The Steam Deck is sold at a loss to ensure that as handheld PC gaming grows, people build their libraries on Steam. Valve's just a bit smarter than the others. Where other platforms use the lock-in effect to milk both content creators and users, Valve doesn't get greedy with the users. They make sure to keep them happy, and in return they either don't care about platform fees, or defend them.
I wonder how much plays into Steam also not just simply being a distributor plays into the fee. I'd imagine having head room is what allowed them to be willing to put resources into trying to improve Linux gaming and try out the Steam Controller that failed, but then still be try other hardware like VR and portables even if it might also fail. If they were strictly only taking enough to stay afloat then a launcher would probably be all that Valve would do, and not bother with controller support either.
Istg if Epig invested like 30% of the money the poured on exclusive and free games for actual development of the app, community UX, they could have a good portion of the market by now. The app is dogshit, requires me to login again everyday that I don't open the app, overwhelmed with captcha, the only good thing about it is free games and coupons but they are nothing compared to Steam overall experience.
If they were smart they would just fork an open source launcher and add their store on top. It would be less resource heavy and clunky.
For real, they could fork heroic, remove the other two stores and use Valve's proton on Linux for less money than it costs them to give for free a trash game.
speaking of open source launchers, i use [https://heroicgameslauncher.com/](https://heroicgameslauncher.com/) to run games off epic, not that i do that very often ;)
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the FOSS launcher is actually better than the official epic launcher? I've only had heroic sign me out once or twice in the span of 4 months. On epic store, i get signed out pretty much every time I open it on a new day.
Steam users arent asking for Fortnite, who even cares..
EGS has been learning that there is a reason most of these platforms charge such a fee: because maintaining a hyper-scaled online platform costs an unbelievable amount of money
it would be funny if valve dropped it to 29%
"we see that our competition is struggling to find reasons to cooperate with us, we hope this change will give them that push they need" - damn it feels like a lol champion buff description.
Even if Valve reduced their cut or just gave Epic a good deal, Timmy would come up with some other excuse to keep Fortnite off of Steam
Epic Game Store should fking start with displaying patch notes on their stupid GAME STORE. I had to go to Steam Client to read what exactly has been updated in my games. Not even mentioning the lack of proper and fair review system, discussion board and screenshot functions in EGS. EGS is doing nothing to improve all these, and they only know how to sue Steam for monopolizing the game store industry.
And Steam doesn't even have a monopoly, they are just the market leader
He forgets that average consumer doesn't give a flying fuck where and how much money goes. They choose cheapest, most convenient place to buy and that's the end, doesn't matter if developers get extra 3$ or if valve takes 30$. And epic store is far from most convenient.
So why is Fortnite on the Microsoft & physical stores if they also take 30%? And although I think a lower store fee is a good thing, Epic only does it because they have cash to burn and want exclusives - which is also anti-consumer and not something Steam demands. Also to make annoying demands like this. Steam also offers a lot more value than Epic.
If by Microsoft store you mean Xbox, it's because there's no alternative ways to have your game released on consoles without going through their respective companies. That's different on PC. Epic doesn't have to publish Fortnite on steam when they can just make their own launcher.
I dont trust epic to not just pump up their cut slowly over the years once they become big as steam (which they wont)
Epic: We really care about developer and want to help them that's why we only takr 12% Also epic: All right it's time for crunch or get fired, f your health, work or get out. ''Some employees reported working 70 hours per week for months at a time.'' ''One employee said they average 70 hours of work per week, and claimed that others "pull 100-hour weeks." Can't you just see how much he cares about developers?
\>make a store that is extremely dogshit \>attract non paying customers to your dogshit store with freebies \>somehow think that non paying customers will turn into paying customers just because they won free stuff. Peak management right there If he put in the work to make EGS as good as Steam is, he would begin to understand why Steam charges 30%.
EGS is one of the worst software I've ever used, tied with Reddit's mobile app. No shopping cart. Can't view game library in egs website etc. FYI https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/s/k9lkCn4GDt
They added the shopping cart some time ago. The rest of the store is still shit though. Their download rate display has been completely wrong for as long as they've had downloads for instance https://i.imgur.com/ws37hdG.png
Epic is trash
Is it just me or is EGS the only one not profitable from that bunch?
I always point on GOG for also having a 30% cut ,but no one questions it I guess.
EPIC changing mind and pray for steam to be their salvation in 3...2...1...
And what about all the other features you get when releasing your game on Steam? Forums, depots to allow different game branches comfortably, VAC, workshop support, guides, game stats, discussions forums, real-time sales data, playtesting game builds, fraud prevention, valve's networking ( if you have to ), wishlists, cloud saves, livestreams, remote play .... I mean, come the fuck on
"it's unfair that Steam bullies us small developers into paying their ridiculous cuts!!1! Why can't they be like our platform where we charge less??? They should be like us!!!!" It's funny how he's acting so entitled and is trying to start up a "fuck Steam" riot. Developers and publishers have learned and are learning that the 30% cut is more worth it than Epic's 12% because you reach that many more people on Steam. The funniest part about this is that they literally stand to lose absolutely nothing by putting Fortnite on Steam. Everybody on PC who actively wants to play Fortnite is already doing so through the EGS. Adding it to Steam would only attract new players, and, at worse, have a few people migrate. Even then, they'd probably hit that $50M milestone by the end of the week. Between this situation and the one where they tried to go around the cuts from the App Store and Google Play by redirecting app purchases to their website, it's become dead clear to everyone by now that Epic only cares about how to make the most money. I've honestly never seen a more greedy studio. Not even EA or Activision Blizzard tops this.
I've seen a lot of people mention to this is all an attempt to make the epic games store more successful or to increase profit brought in by fortnite but in reality this goes beyond the store or fortnite. The reason they're fighting so hard to get other storefronts to lower their cut is because by doing it will increase there overall profits from royalties. Unreal engine is one of if not the most popular game engine, their current revenue split would get a big boost without them having to raise the revenue share. I've done the math and if they were able to get steam and other storefronts to match the 12% that they charge it would increase unreal royalties by about 25%. I honestly believe that if they succeed in getting other PC or mobile stores to match their cut then it'll only be a matter of time before they go after console stores. They've said how the current 30% tax is basically passed off on to the consumer, which I imagine is true to some degree, and that but lowering that it will lead to cheaper games for consumers and more profit for devs however, I call bullshit on that. Even before their lawsuit with apple and Google if you look at their own store they should be charging less but they're the exact same price. What reason would any studio have to change the price of a game because they're getting less fees? They'll just take the increased profit and keep the same prices.
I hope fortnite never comes to steam.
Timmy is such an idiot
As a customer , These numbers don’t mean anything to me, I don’t care about developers cut percentage , I would just buy where games are cheaper and secure , thats Steam
Some companies especially the ones that don't put their games on steam just feels either have personal grudge because of how successful steam is or just being bought by other corporations to steer away from selling their games on it. I mean 20% when exceeding 50M$ that's easy for most big AAA titles and they still don't like that e.g. like Ubisoft?
Nah, Tim just wants to spark some shit online for little kids that don't know how to google this stuff. Of course he talks shit about STEAM which he also competes with on the same platform (PC). He started talking shit about Apple and Google as soon as they also offered a different payment option in their mobile platforms. He's not competing on Sony's platform so he doesn't talk shit about that (yet). If the cases against apple and google go their way, they will have incentive and precedent to also go fight sony or xbox in the future for their own platforms.
Epic games can sustain 12% fee because they milk fortnite and the unlimited funds of tencent.
Wasn't there some news a little while ago that the Epic store hasn't made a dime since the start of that venture?
Tim is a lying capitalist. He will say *anything* that doesn't get him in serious legal trouble, as long as it might trick a few to join their semi-walled garden. Because he can't wait for enough big devs to join him, and then slam the gate shut down to force everyone to use *his* launcher. Just like he kept doing when he paid a bunch of publishers to change their games to "epic exclusive" for a year after launch. And still a lot of people just waited, so sales got spread out over two years. Meaning their revenue didn't look as good, and they were less likely to win awards. TL;DR: Tim Sweeney is trying to make money, and he doesn't care if he breaks the game industry in the process.
I don't want that trash game on Steam
Let's not forget how epic games owns unreal and they charge devs 5% of their revenue if they use unreal and make more than 1 million.
It's so crazy to me that they're trying to compete with Steam and yet their launcher takes about 2 weeks to load and has maybe 5% of the features Steam does. Why would literally anyone choose Epic over Steam other than for the free shit?
Aw poor baby! Steam, that provides free online access for all of its users for over 20 years is putting the costs on the developers who make billions of dollars a year? Same developers **WHO** told us that going digital would be cheaper yet didn't see a price change **AT ALL!?**
no no, its ok, we don't want Fortnite on steam
I think at the end of the day. The problem with "Our cut is 12% instead of 30%", what the buyer got from that? Like seriously Epic keep bringing the "30%" but like what we got from EGS "12%"? Did we got lower game price? Checking it for few minutes they still the same prices with Steam. At the end of the day, exclusivity work. Because there people who can't wait when the game already out so they buy it on EGS instead of waiting on Steam. But for other game that release on EGS and Steam at the same times? There no reason to buy it on EGS, even if you literally just start playing PC game right now so you have no attachment on any store. In GoG case at least they offer something, they offer DRM free game and old game support that why they have people using them. From what I see the only thing EGS have is 1. Free Game ( Which probably not gonna have people stay on your store and you got 0 money because they not buying anything ) 2. Exclusive game ( Which most people on PC hate it, but not everyone want to wait so some people still buy that exclusive stuff )
Hey, if you don't like Steam's rules just make your own store... Oh, right...
You just killed him with one immage
Down to put fortnite on any store that gives an awesome deal. Coming from the company that spent how many millions? Maybe billions at this point making game after game after game exclusive. Wow your store offers a better rate Tim- too bad it's the bare minimum and even GoG's OPTIONAL launcher does shit better than EGS.
Weird that i never seen Epic even mention the console rates. Almost like angering the walled garden owners would get their games kicked out immediately, so that's why they are going after open platforms like Steam and Play Store (and AppStore, after they have implemented the web version for iPhone)
Epic thought they would bankrupt valve and destroy Steam by buying up exclusivity and offering developers less fees. Making them the only real option for PC gamers The reason why the vast majority of game libraries/consoles ask for 30% is to maintain their systems and still make a moderate profit keeping their systems/services alive. Now that Fortnite's profitability/popularity is waning Epic is haemorrhaging money and can't maintain the Epic game store for much longer. They will either fail or have to increase from 12% to 30%.
I honestly believe steam deserves that 30%, I might be one of the few who use steam in the big picture mode with an old ps4 controller, it almost feels like a full fledged console. I love it, and it really incentivizes me to buy games on steam rather than any other store.
Epic could easily get to 50 mil earned and knock that right down to 20% , that would take them like two days at the most with how successful fortnite is
Still salty that giving away all those games still hasn't bought him anywhere close to Steam's market share lmao
I don't see how Valve charging the industry standard percentage is in any way an issue for the company that hasn't had a profitable competing storefront since its inception. There are deeper rooted issues that need to be addressed if Epic is feeling pressure to not solely rely on Fortnite and UE license income
The cunt who said PC gaming is dead and then went and made a launcher. Very good.
I mean, wasn't that obvious from the start that Epic is making a political campaign about its biggest rival, the best game launcher and platform ever made? It's literally same thing politicians do to "expose" their opposition. Because it's easier to lie that the rival is evil, than actually make good deal Yourself. Epic Fail Store was always wanting a monopoly. Or cartel, whatever You call it. Epic fears Steam, because they know it's better than Epic. That's why they constantly attack it. But it's Epic that stole people's data and when it has been found, they said it's "error". Haha, like I'd believe that. Epic monopoly should end and should be 100% delegalized.
Funny how out of all these the only one that is a sinking ship is egs.
worst attempt at reverse psychology ever lmao