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[RedVIper]

The article makes it clear that those were sales that occurred on the Epic Games Store:

"Metro Exodus has sold two and a half times more copies on the Epic Games Store than Metro Last Light sold in the same amount of time on Steam."

It sounds like you've both created a narrative and are waving away information that goes against that.

That doesn't actually say the sales were on Epic store, I think you're just interpreting it that way, could just as easily be interpreted "as a Epic games store exclusive"
If you do have any link that proves it let me know, because I did read the article and they don't.

Anyway my main point was that the series is way more popular now than it was when it first released on ps3, I have no doubts it sold more than the previous entree.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Brick and mortar
- Store gets 25% margins on each sale
- Lots of jobs and stores created
- Console games can be traded in, or lent to a friend
- Physical copy, where PC games used to have cool detailed manuals and even maps

Gamers
- BB, Gamestop, and Walmart can suck my dick
- Oh, but some reason it's ok for Amazon though



Digital storefont
- Operator gets 30% margins on each sale
- Way less people needed to run the operation (loss of jobs from above)
- Can't trade or lend digital games (unless you do home sharing like on Xbox or PS), or get a DRM-free PC version
- Purely digital, so no physical copy and good chance you're tied to the service/launcher

Gamers
- Awesome!

 

[Solo Act]

That doesn't actually say the sales were on Epic store, I think you're just interpreting it that way, could just as easily be interpreted "as a Epic games store exclusive"
If you do have any link that proves it let me know.

Anyway my main point was that the series is way more popular now than it was when it first released on ps3, I have no doubts it sold more than the previous entree.

I don't want to get into a war of being pedantic, but the words "on the Epic Games Store" is literally, exactly what the sentence that I quoted says.

 

[Kadayi]

The fact is w/o hard evidence we don't know the main reason why people use Steam. I suspect network effects over the years drove people over there rather than some amazing-balls feature set.

 

[RedVIper]

I don't want to get into a war of being pedantic, but the words "on the Epic Games Store" is literally, exactly what the sentence that I quoted says.

"On the Epic Games Store" can either refere to the sales being on the store or to the game being on the store, the article never specifies and provides not further information.

 

[Dunki]

Playboy and Hustler magazines are popular too, but that doesn't mean they should be sold at Gamestop next to new copies of Spyro the Dragon or Yoshi's Crafted World.

For the record: I'm not arguing against this game's right to exist. I'm just saying that if you give up on curation and just let others decide what is sold on your storefront - it will probably inevitably lead to being nothing but indies, shovelware, and porn.

You curate the store yourself and that is the BIGGEST Plus Steam has. I for exampe never saw this game even though I have nudity active and a lot of Japanese games even Hentai games. My store is adjusted to my tastes

 

[jshackles]

You curate the store yourself and that is the BIGGEST Plus Steam has. I for exampe never saw this game even though I have nudity active and a lot of Japanese games even Hentai games. My store is adjusted to my tastes

This sounds great, in theory. However as you can see from my screenshot, the game in question was being pitched to me simply because it was on sale and was commonly tagged as RPG.

 

[TeamGhobad]

No. Valve's monopoly might have ended but they aren't going anywhere.

 

[lukilladog]

A big part of Steam's road to "only indies, shovelware, and porn" is that they allow those things at all, and big publishers are not happy about that.

If you were Ubisoft, Square Enix, Sega, etc: would you want your big PC releases marketed this way? On any other platform this shit would get the AAA game publishers to pull their content in no time flat. And this isn't even the worst example out there, this was me spending 10 seconds finding the lowest hanging fruit.

Put all the discoverability and cross-promotion issues together with Steam taking a larger cut than other stores, and it's a pretty straight line to see how this all falls apart for Valve.

I don´t get to see those naughty games when visiting steam, maybe you are sharing your browsing data somewhere?, so steam thinks you might be interested on that stuff?.

 

[mrMUR_96]

The fact that they've been evasive with sales numbers makes me thing those games are selling like utter garbage on Epic. I imagine Metro alone is costing them couple dozen millions.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidt...e-epic-announces-new-exclusives/#705c55e81123

https://www.pcgamesn.com/metro-exodus/metro-exodus-sales

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

Valve has been really, really fucking lazy for years, this was bound to happen.

If some competition makes Valve pop it's head of it's ass and improve, then it's a good thing.

 

[Kadayi]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidt...e-epic-announces-new-exclusives/#705c55e81123

https://www.pcgamesn.com/metro-exodus/metro-exodus-sales

The 2.5 times was including the Steam Pre-orders (which went through the roof once people knew the game was getting pulled). The fact that Epic has been rather coy on giving out the hard numbers of unit sales on EGS is notable by its absence.

 

[Stuart360]

So called 'insiders' on Reddit and elsewhere have said that they are comparing sales of Exodus to the REDUX version of Last Light, hense why they are not providing any actual sales figures.
Just like giants like Ubisoft and Bethesda had to crawl back to Steam once their own stores failed, most other devs will do the same, once Epics bribe money runs out.

 

[Graciaus]

So he admits that the epic store is shit but somehow is fixing the economy for gamers. Publishers in theory getting more money doesn't necessarily benifit gamers.

Somehow steam was killing pc gaming when it in fact probably saved it. 30% cut is industry standard. They allow 3rd party selling of keys that they don't get a cut of.

This guy would fit right in with the crazies that post here.

 

[Sentenza]

It's hard to argue with his point. In the last 3 years that is exactly what Steam has been.

A weird point to make in the same month in which both Sekiro and Risk of Rain 2 are selling gangbusters on Steam.

Anyway I feel like I can't take Richard Geldreich seriously at all.
He's been bitter about Valve for years in general at this point, but now? Now he spent the last few weeks sounding like he's not-so-subtly shilling for Epic Games. Which is not even a rare sight these days, looking even at a lot of gaming press. Their pockets seem to know no bounds.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

Is Rape Day gonna be EGS Exclusive?

 

[Kadayi]

Is Rape Day gonna be EGS Exclusive?

They're rolling it into Season 9 of Fortnite.

 

[Solo Act]

"On the Epic Games Store" can either refere to the sales being on the store or to the game being on the store, the article never specifies and provides not further information.

"Metro Exodus has sold two and a half times more copies on the Epic Games Store..."

How would one make the above statement and have it mean something other than sales which occurred on the Epic Games Store? Do you not see how it appears that you are twisting things to aid your own narrative? Do you honestly think that someone would say that "Metro Exodus has sold two and a half times more copies on the Epic Games Store" when they meant to imply "the game is available on the Epic Games store"?

 

[Sentenza]

The 2.5 times was including the Steam Pre-orders (which went through the roof once people knew the game was getting pulled). The fact that Epic has been rather coy on giving out the hard numbers of unit sales on EGS is notable by its absence.

Some people are assuming it, but I actually don't think it does, because the 200K preorders made on Steam are already WAY beyond 2,5X what Last Light sold as preorders in 2013.

Which by contrast somewhat confirms your suspects about the bizarre omission of actual numbers: Last Light was a niche, heavily demanding and poorly performing game that gained some more traction over the years, but not really a smashing hit at first.
Epic here is playing with obfuscated information, because any actual number would be immediately compared to the other actual number we can easily verify: those 200K I mentioned above.
On top of that, Epic was extremely vague not just about the exact number, but also about the exact time window considered.

If people have any more doubts, they should look at the "buzz" surrounding some of the other Epic exclusives: basically non-existent. High-profile indie games went silent in a matter of days and less notable ones (like Operencia) feel like they never even existed. Literally NO ONE is talking about that game anywhere.
You can find something like three Youtube reviews and no discussion whatsoever about it even in hardcore RPG forums.

 

[Kadayi]

Some people are assuming it, but I actually don't think it does, because the 200K preorders made on Steam are already WAY beyond 2,5X what Last Light sold as preorders in 2013.

Which by contrast somewhat confirms your suspects about the bizarre omission of actual numbers: Last Light was a niche, heavily demanding and poorly performing game that gained some more traction over the years, but not really a smashing hit at first.
Epic here is playing with obfuscated information, because any actual number would be immediately compared to the other actual number we can easily verify: those 200K I mentioned above.
On top of that, Epic was extremely vague not just about the exact number, but also about the exact time window considered.

If people have any more doubts, they should look at the "buzz" surrounding some of the other Epic exclusives: basically non-existent. High-profile indie games went silent in a matter of days and less notable ones (like Operencia) feel like they never even existed. Literally NO ONE is talking about that game anywhere.

You can find something like three Youtube reviews and no discussion whatsoever about it even in hardcore RPG forums.

Indeed. I think it will be interesting to see how thing fare over the next year or so, once more titles come out. I mean if Outer Worlds underperforms (and the Obsidian faithful weren't happy one bit about EGS) it could definitely rattle some cages.

 

[Stuart360]

Also going back to Exodus, its worth pointing out that its not even in the Top 10 for game sales for the year so far, while so called bombs like Anthem are no.2, and even Jump Force is in the Top 10.
Exodus bombed, no two ways about it.

 

[Sentenza]

"Metro Exodus has sold two and a half times more copies on the Epic Games Store..."

How would one make the above statement and have it mean something other than sales which occurred on the Epic Games Store?

It's worth stressing that the title is simply "editorialized".
The original statement from Epic at GDC wasn't that explicit at all on where the sales occurred, and it was more carefully worded.

I'm trying to track down the original quote, but it was something like "Since its launch Metro Exodus sold 2,5X copies of what Last Light sold on Steam in its launch window", but at no point was ever clarified the break down between digital and physical copies, nor if Steam preorders were included in the number. And of course no actual number nor specific time window were given at all.

 

[RokkanStoned]

Never understood peoples hate for Steam or inability to browse it. Steam is honestly great in my opinion, though very archaic as well. Tons of games, a refund policy, some games are like a steak at a high-class restaurant, some are like a crazy bang-for-the-buck at a local diner and some are like those weird foods that sounds interesting (but tastes horrible). Just the amount of VNs and everything that has come to the platform has been great. The lack of curation is definitely not a problem, though I could see the lack of customization of content on the storefront being a problem for some. But that's not solved by curation, but by fixing customization.

This push coming from Epic is not something I condone. Buying exclusives, worse features, being backed up by people who hate the freedom that Steam offers and that makes it harder to try to control products available to all. I do think a competition to Steam is good, but it will ultimately be one that has to usurp it on more than just throwing around money to buy exclusives/timed exclusives.

The article makes it clear that those were sales that occurred on the Epic Games Store:

"Metro Exodus has sold two and a half times more copies on the Epic Games Store than Metro Last Light sold in the same amount of time on Steam."

It sounds like you've both created a narrative and are waving away information that goes against that.

What time frame? This doesn't tell anything if that's not available.

 

[TheSadRanger]

A big part of Steam's road to "only indies, shovelware, and porn" is that they allow those things at all, and big publishers are not happy about that.

If you were Ubisoft, Square Enix, Sega, etc: would you want your big PC releases marketed this way? On any other platform this shit would get the AAA game publishers to pull their content in no time flat. And this isn't even the worst example out there, this was me spending 10 seconds finding the lowest hanging fruit.

Put all the discoverability and cross-promotion issues together with Steam taking a larger cut than other stores, and it's a pretty straight line to see how this all falls apart for Valve.

The user reviews for that are freaking hilarious.

 

[synchronicity]

I'm perfectly happy with Steam and have no plans to add another launcher, but in fairness to Epic or any business trying to enter this space, what do you do?

You've got an absolute behemoth to contend with in Steam. You could come out with an amazingly feature-rich store, but is that going to drive consumers away from the familiar in any meaningful numbers?

Really the only meaningful option is exclusive content, probably. Having said that, I still won't give Epic the time of day. Zero interest.

 

[PSYGN]

Duh... look at how everyone jumped in with Netflix initially and now they're all making their own apps to host their own content and Netflix has to make their own content as incentive for viewers to stay (smart move on their part that's paying off). Big companies will cut out middlemen if they have the choice. 30% is crazy, and it's what Apple does with the App Store. Netflix gave Apple the middle finger by not allowing in-app subscriptions as a way of working around that. Big companies with popular games know that eventually most users will have to dip in to play one of their games, and you can bitch and moan about having to install yet another launcher but the company will have the last laugh when they end up earning more by not having to pay middleman fees and having total control of their content.

Upside is that Valve will have to create their own content again.

 

[LittleBusters]

The user reviews for that are freaking hilarious.

I can only imagine. Must be about the fap-worthiness of the MC.

 

[HaveButOneLife]

So, I think it's safe to say the poor guy got fired, he sounds pretty disgruntled.

Nah, I kid. I don't see where he's coming from, though. Steam has actually been getting a slew of Japanese games, i.e. Yakuza, and the Epic Games Store cannot be defended unless they start giving some actual features to their client.

 

[Sentenza]

Duh... look at how everyone jumped in with Netflix initially and now they're all making their own apps to host their own content and Netflix has to make their own content as incentive for viewers to stay (smart move on their part that's paying off). Big companies will cut out middlemen if they have the choice.

It's an interesting comparison, since even in that case the whole "Fuck Netflix, we are going to launch our own service" resulted in a new surge in piracy rates everywhere.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3q45v/bittorrent-usage-increases-netflix-streaming-sites

 

[ResilientBanana]

Imagine a world where Epic bought or started studios that used UE4 the way it was meant to be used.

 

[BigBooper]

I don't buy it. Yes, Steam's full of shovelware, but I can still find the games I want to buy. I don't really see the problem. Maybe that's because I have little to no interest in "indies" anymore though.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

Steam actually works for me. i signed up for Epic back when i got Fortnite on Switch and for some reason it won't let me log in. i try to reset my password, no email ever shows up. i try signing up with my email account, it says i already have an account.

it's dumb as fuck. i have never even used the storefront, i just used it to play Fortnite like 3 or 4 times. i can't even log into my account and yet i'm being counted in their "user base" lol. i couldn't even use it if i wanted.

indies, shovelware, and porn, sounds good, at least i can LOG IN.

 

[Falcs]

Competition is ALWAYS good for the consumer. I say bring it on.

 

[zeroFiveNine]

To be fair, if you open an incognito window and go to Steam, Wet girl is not the first game to be shown to you and there is very little porn or hentai on the first page.

Cities Skylines and Assassins Creed were on the main banners for me.

 

[demigod]

Brick and mortar
- Store gets 25% margins on each sale
- Lots of jobs and stores created
- Console games can be traded in, or lent to a friend
- Physical copy, where PC games used to have cool detailed manuals and even maps

Gamers
- BB, Gamestop, and Walmart can suck my dick
- Oh, but some reason it's ok for Amazon though



Digital storefont
- Operator gets 30% margins on each sale
- Way less people needed to run the operation (loss of jobs from above)
- Can't trade or lend digital games (unless you do home sharing like on Xbox or PS), or get a DRM-free PC version
- Purely digital, so no physical copy and good chance you're tied to the service/launcher

Gamers
- Awesome!

Spoken like a person who never bought a pc game back then, goodjob console warrior.

 

[Dr.brain64]

Who would have thought the end of steam would be so soon! Meh

 

[zenspider]

Brick and mortar
- Store gets 25% margins on each sale
- Lots of jobs and stores created
- Console games can be traded in, or lent to a friend
- Physical copy, where PC games used to have cool detailed manuals and even maps

Gamers
- BB, Gamestop, and Walmart can suck my dick
- Oh, but some reason it's ok for Amazon though



Digital storefont
- Operator gets 30% margins on each sale
- Way less people needed to run the operation (loss of jobs from above)
- Can't trade or lend digital games (unless you do home sharing like on Xbox or PS), or get a DRM-free PC version
- Purely digital, so no physical copy and good chance you're tied to the service/launcher

Gamers
- Awesome!

Where did you get 25% from? That's closer to wholesale margins.

 

[xGreir]

I find all this (the other thread about this too) just ridiculous.

Just that, I only wanted to do this statement, no explanations

Have a good night, sirs

 

[SlashBringingHasher]

Where did you get 25% from? That's closer to wholesale margins.

I believe retailers get 12% not 25%.

 

[DiscoJer]

Digital publishing of other material is more or less in line with steam, though. Amazon takes 30% of ebooks sold between $2.99 and $9.99, and a whopping 65% of those sold under $2.99 and more than $9.99. Onebookshelf, basically the only place that counts to sell PDFs of tabletop RPGs, takes 30% if you are exclusive with them, 35% if you are not.

 

[KonradLaw]

T
It sounds like you've both created a narrative and are waving away information that goes against that.

Again..Last Light sold 200K on Steam in two years. And Epic said it sold 2,5x as much as in first month. Unless you assume all copies of Last Light were sold on Steam in first month and after that for 23 months nobody bought any then it's obvious Exodus sold far less on Epic Games Store than it did in pre-orders on Steam (where it sold 400K).
I don't believe Epic took into account Steam pre-orders. When they said "2,5 as much" they meant solely sales on Epic Games Store. But the information they gave make it obvious the game sold like crap on Epic game Store.

 

[Gamezone]

I think the most interesting part is that Epic will have most features in place by the end of the year. Valve Time has been a joke for too long. If they continue to work as slow as they do, EGS will caught up soon.

 

[Endless Fluff]

Where did you get 25% from? That's closer to wholesale margins.

That is actually what Ubisoft has said in one of their annual reports.



https://www.neogaf.com/threads/ubis...-price-retail-software-70-on-digital.1183329/

The pdf (and video from the other thread) is sadly not available anymore, but I was able to find a screenshot

 

[Kadayi]

I think the most interesting part is that Epic will have most features in place by the end of the year. Valve Time has been a joke for too long. If they continue to work as slow as they do, EGS will caught up soon.

Compared to who? Uplay?

I mean shit, they don't even have user profiles implemented or plan to it seems.

 

[wzy]

Never understood peoples hate for Steam or inability to browse it. Steam is honestly great in my opinion, though very archaic as well. Tons of games, a refund policy, some games are like a steak at a high-class restaurant, some are like a crazy bang-for-the-buck at a local diner and some are like those weird foods that sounds interesting (but tastes horrible). Just the amount of VNs and everything that has come to the platform has been great. The lack of curation is definitely not a problem, though I could see the lack of customization of content on the storefront being a problem for some. But that's not solved by curation, but by fixing customization.

This push coming from Epic is not something I condone. Buying exclusives, worse features, being backed up by people who hate the freedom that Steam offers and that makes it harder to try to control products available to all. I do think a competition to Steam is good, but it will ultimately be one that has to usurp it on more than just throwing around money to buy exclusives/timed exclusives.



What time frame? This doesn't tell anything if that's not available.

You can't seriously believe Valve critics "hate freedom". Jesus why would anyone think you guys are pushing a narrative?

 

[RokkanStoned]

You can't seriously believe Valve critics "hate freedom". Jesus why would anyone think you guys are pushing a narrative?

Hello there

"[...] being backed up by people who hate the freedom that Steam offers [...]" - my post

I don't know who is pushing or being part of a narrative here, considering your long effort in the various Epic Store threads, as well as you ridiculing a fair criticism and think you've somehow bypassed it:

Wow! Forums, chat, social media, reviews, cloud storage, streaming, image hosting, and guides? Steams' value-add here is really incredible. Can't even imagine what it was like before videogames could benefit from any of these things.

 

[Dontero]

I don't understand why gaming store should curate content where there is WHOLE GAMING NEWS industry that tells you what to buy or not.

Places like Steam/Epic/GOG should be just virtual shelf with different deals. Since digital shelves are infinite then infinite stuff. You can promote various stuff on your own store like everyone does it now but NOT ALLOWING EXTRA OPTION FOR PEOPLE is idiotic.

Imho this content curation problem comes from fanboys who want to keep their store "clean" of things they don't like.

 

[KonradLaw]

I don't understand why gaming store should curate content where there is WHOLE GAMING NEWS industry that tells you what to buy or not.

Places like Steam/Epic/GOG should be just virtual shelf with different deals. Since digital shelves are infinite then infinite stuff. You can promote various stuff on your own store like everyone does it now but NOT ALLOWING EXTRA OPTION FOR PEOPLE is idiotic.

Imho this content curation problem comes from fanboys who want to keep their store "clean" of things they don't like.

Yeah. I can somehow understand small stores currating, as a way of distinguishing themselves from other companies and not letting their low revenues be split to thin between to many games.
But currating Steam? Insanity. For most pc devs Steam is PC gaming. You're not there you can't survive. Curration on Steam would therefore turn PC into de-facto closed ecosystem. It would literally kill indie gaming as idea, because Valve would become publisher, only a crappy one that doesn't finance your development.
People who want heavy curration should just play on consoles, instead of trying to turn PC into one.

 

[kraspkibble]

one man's opinion. he is no different from anybody on here except he worked for valve. he left 5 years ago so i'm sure he has no idea WTF is happening at valve these days.

 

[Dontero]

Compared to who? Uplay?

I mean shit, they don't even have user profiles implemented or plan to it seems.

corrected: