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Epic Launches Digital Games Store With 88 Percent Revenue Going To Developers

Serianox

Member
* Does not account for the relative popularity of Steam versus this brand new platform launching into an already-crowded digital storefront market.

Also not accounting for all the features Valve has made available for free for their customers like all the community stuff, universal controller support, vastly increasing linux suported titles with Steam Play among other things. Most of these stores are nowhere on a competitive basis compared to steam in feature set for their end users.

At least we know Epic actually makes games, amirite?

I guess i imagined that Valve just released a new game last week.
 
I don't want another freaking store front.
I already made exceptions for Gog and battle.net plus some games with their own launchers.

Man this is going to be damn entertaining. Didn't see this coming from Epic. But more = more competition which is always a good thing

Yeah - competition sure worked nicely for video streaming services.

Also hands up who believes developers will pass any of their savings onto customers.
 

Barakov

Member
It'll interesting to see how this plays out. There are A LOT of people playing Fortnite so for some games showing up on a less cluttered storefront with more revenue going to them would be a very good thing.
 

LordRaptor

Member
I don't want another freaking store front.
I already made exceptions for Gog and battle.net plus some games with their own launchers.

I have zero problems with storefronts. Everyone and their mum can have their own storefront if they want to. The best storefront will win. Competition as its supposed to be.

Locking up PC games into per-store exclusivity deals / having to create multiple accounts with libraries split across multiple sites / multiple mandatory launchers as extra layers of DRM... those are things that annoy me and don't actually benefit me in the slightest as a consumer.
 

pr0cs

Member
If the savings cost is passed down to the consumer then I'm happy, I'm tired of Valves stranglehold on pc gaming.

I'm a mercenary not a missionary, I'll go where ever I save money. I really don't give one shit about potentially having another client.

If there are no price differences between the stores then epics plan is dead on arrival
 

Helios

Member
Yeah, a card game based on Dota 2.
goalposts.jpg
 

alienator

Member
What a steaming pile of epic..

2019: Online stores everywhere!

2020: each with their own gamepasses and streaming solutions. subscriptions everywhere!

i just want my physical games ;/
 

Fuz

Banned
I have zero problems with storefronts. Everyone and their mum can have their own storefront if they want to. The best storefront will win. Competition as its supposed to be.
I'll agree with this when they'll stop trying to install shit on my PC and keep their fucking storefronts in HTML format.
 
Between this and microsoft stepping up their publishing game they could put some great games on pc. No matter what happens, great news for devs!
 
I have zero problems with storefronts. Everyone and their mum can have their own storefront if they want to. The best storefront will win. Competition as its supposed to be.

Locking up PC games into per-store exclusivity deals / having to create multiple accounts with libraries split across multiple sites / multiple mandatory launchers as extra layers of DRM... those are things that annoy me and don't actually benefit me in the slightest as a consumer.

More store fronts = more clients and launchers - we aren't talking about key resellers like humble/gamergate/GMG here.
 

LordRaptor

Member
More store fronts = more clients and launchers - we aren't talking about key resellers like humble/gamergate/GMG here.

Certain publishers have taken it upon themselves that storefront = account tied specifically to that storefront, a client that does fuck all except sit in your systray and allow you to play your purchases and a launcher to verify your purchase that pops up at every game launch, but that doesn't mean that thats what a storefront should be.

As you say, the way steam was designed that basically anyone can sell a steam key at whatever markup they want above whatever price they can get from the producer is a good thing, because it means multiple storefronts can co-exist, and they can compete on price and features.
Which is the closest analogue possible to how traditional games sales work; you could buy a disk from any shop, and the shop competed with other shops.

If physical games had had the bullshit people are trying to attach to digital games, they wouldn't have taken off.
If your game already has bullshit account sign-ins within the game, and a needless DRM layer on top of that, you don't need to add additional layers like a client or launcher on top of that.
 

Serianox

Member
So you are fine with Valve only making Tetris clones for the time being? But, ah, if a game has got a Valve stamp on it, it certainly must be in the same scope and league as Half-Life, Team Fortress and Portal.

So it's not even a singleplayer vs multiplayer argument. Tell me how is a multiplayer card game less valid as a game than a team based fps?
 
Theres too many stores on PC now its hard to keep track of who offers the best deals, plus fragmented libraries within each platforms app etc its hard to keep a clean concise collection of games when theyre all over the shop (pun intended).

I somewhat envy the consoles for this. One store one location.
One store, one - huge - price.

And it's not hard to keep track. Just use some price tracking site.

It's like buying for anything else.
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
Of course the pricing is better, it is the only place they can realistically compete as a new player in the market. As a developer you'd have to ask yourself if that better rate is worth the loss of exposure. Steam does have ~125 million active accounts and ~18m users gaming during peak hours, after all.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
88% to devs? Sounds good.

Let's face it, these digital distribution platforms taking 30% cuts is outrageous.

For all the greedy claims retail stores get hit with I don't think EB or Amazon selling a disc even gets 30% margin. More like 20-25% on new games. And they have to go through the hassle of brick and mortar stores, buying/storing inventory or shipping games in a cardboard box.

With digital sales, it's a piecemeal sale one by one with zero physical cost of goods.
 
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Larxia

Member
I really don't understand the anti-steam people we can see sometimes here.
All others launchers are far worse than Steam, I really hate Origin and Uplay, Battlenet is okay but extremely basic.
Steam has so many good features, others launchers feel totally empty next to it, but it seems like a lot of people don't see that for some reasons.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Good for developers assuming they go there, I dare say Valve will respond. In truth, I think the time is coming where Steam might get rolled off into its own thing separate from Valve.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Just curious since I don't do Steam, but does Steam do any retaliatory policies?

Like if a small studio wants to release it's game on another digital store or it's own website, Steam will say get lost?

If they don't I see this Epic thing as a good thing, but if Steam counters and says hit the road, that carrot Epic is dangling might not be worth grabbing.
 
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zwiggelbig

Member
This is good. And when microsoft launches a new store as well we can only hope stream adapts and changes their greedy fee wich wil only benefit developerd
 
Who would of thought the main reason I don't buy pc games anymore is I like all my games in one place 😂

That said this is a great thing for devs
 

dirthead

Banned
Good. Bored of Valve. Honestly, these storefronts are ultimately bad for consumers anyway. The only one that doesn't completely blow is GOG because you can actually get completely independent offline copies of games stored on local media. Anything less than that is trash.
 

Viliger

Member
So you are fine with Valve only making Tetris clones for the time being? But, ah, if a game has got a Valve stamp on it, it certainly must be in the same scope and league as Half-Life, Team Fortress and Portal.
As opposed to FOTM game genre that will die in a few years and will be forgotten? What exactly Epic did in last few years besides Fortnite? And even then, it only got popular after they implemented Battle Royale (how many people even know what Fortnite was originally?). Paragon, which died since Overwatch was just plain better. Unreal Tournament, which they sent to die with stupid release model. Your argument can be just as easily applied to Epic as it you apply it to Valve.
 

onken

Member
88% of jack shit is still jack shit. Unless they can deliver the audience I'm skeptical this is going to be a viable competitor.
 
More chance for your credit card data to get lost too ;).

Well yes, if you're not careful and buy from single users. No if you stick to trusted sites. And anyway, credit cards have insurances, and I don't live in the US, so I'm not (yet) a total slave of the system. xD
What price tracking sites do you use?

Regional ones for physical games, for digital sales I use allkeyshop.com; these sites, together with shady offering, also list reputable sellers and main digital stores like Gog, GMG, and so on.

And checking 3 or 4 storefronts isn't that time consuming either.
 

CuNi

Member
Fast forward to 2022 and every tiny Indie dev has his own storefront. Why is this a thing. Like I get it that everyone wants the most out of his product but there is a point we already reached where new storefronts actually diminish sales because I'm just to lazy to be bothered with yet another store that fragments my game library and friends list.
 

Guileless

Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
No, I meant Vista... No one should use that garbage!

I have a PC from 2006 that I still occasionally use to play strategy games and whatnot. Most of my gaming nowadays is on console, and my special lady prefers Apple so all our technology upgrades since then have been non-PC products.
 

onlyoneno1

Member
This is great news for the industry, both devs and customers. And it might finally make Steam stop being lazy and start making games again.
 

Blam

Member
This could be huge if Epic gets a foothold in China before Steam does.
Steam already did.

Just curious since I don't do Steam, but does Steam do any retaliatory policies?

Like if a small studio wants to release it's game on another digital store or it's own website, Steam will say get lost?

If they don't I see this Epic thing as a good thing, but if Steam counters and says hit the road, that carrot Epic is dangling might not be worth grabbing.

Basically if you're gonna sell on steam and on your own site. The game must be released on steam already you can't say coming soon and just leave it in that state and sell it elsewhere. Shit steam will even let you sell those keys as well.

On another note.

Time to install Playnite. Too many launchers now.
https://playnite.link/
 

JimboJones

Member
Even if I do get games elsewhere i always stick them in steam anyway because of the superior controller interface and friend list so meh more the merrier.
 
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dirthead

Banned
Fast forward to 2022 and every tiny Indie dev has his own storefront. Why is this a thing. Like I get it that everyone wants the most out of his product but there is a point we already reached where new storefronts actually diminish sales because I'm just to lazy to be bothered with yet another store that fragments my game library and friends list.

No, it's great, because everyone and their grandma opening up a store is just going to make everyone realize how bad of an idea storefronts were in the first place. It only works when there's a monopoly, and monopolies aren't good.

We need to go back to people actually owning the goods they buy.
 
I appreciate the service won't have its own DRM layer, but as someone who doesn't really use the added features from products like Steam, this to me is yet another storefront/launcher. I'd probably be more interested, if Epic wasn't talking about this being a curated service. While I don't like Steam, I prefer keeping everything in one place, when I'm forced to use a game launcher.
 
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