Epic Games announces a slew of more EGS exclusives, including The Outer Worlds and Heavy Rain

[xAcid9]

45 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Not wanting to have Valve take 30 percent is a good reason not to publish on steam.  Isn't Apple getting shit for this too?

Doubt this is really about Valve 70/30 cut. They could increase the price on Steam to make up the profit different between both stores and at the same time could entice player to get it on Epic store because of the lower price but nope, gotta take that easy money.

[TacoSenpai]

On 3/20/2019 at 6:42 PM, PCGuy_5960 said:

Is Epic Games becoming EA 2.0?

There's always two.  A master and an apprentice.  No more no less.

[jagdtigger]

7 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Not wanting to have Valve take 30 percent is a good reason not to publish on steam.

Because EGS's practice of charging the users the extra fees are better(talk about greedy geez)....

[jagdtigger]

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

Are they listing higher?

No they charge it when you proceed to checkout...

https://www.resetera.com/threads/epic-games-store-places-additional-fees-on-customers-using-certain-payment-methods.93026/

[Blademaster91]

7 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Not every company is as greedy as Valve and Apple.  Epic charges what like 18 percent?  The only time the prices get lower on steam is during sales or during price drops over time due to things like the game's age.  This happens on more than just Steam.  Developers work with publishers, and publishers usually try to do what is more financially beneficial for themselves and the developer.  It likely would have more to do with what makes them more off the sale than anything else.  These are businesses, not your friends.  If one platform is only asking for 18 percent plus funding then they likely would rather stick to that platform than one asking for a 30 percent or higher cut.

Epic Games is pretty greedy to be throwing Fortnite money at developers and publishers to hold games exclusive to EGS, instead of adding features to their platform to actually be competitive to Steam. I'd think a 20% cut for Valve would be fair, but  Epic passing the cost onto consumers isn't fair at all.

[WereCatf]

23 hours ago, Jito463 said:

Point of correction, but Steam itself is not DRM.  There is a DRM component that Valve provides for Steam distributed games, but it is optional on the part of the developer/publisher.  The closest you could come to saying Steam is DRM, is that you must use it for the initial download and launch of the game.  Afterwards - unless the game incorporated Steam DRM - you can play the game without Steam running or even installed (and there's a laundry list of games on Steam which are DRM free - not sure how up to date that link is, though).

This is something people never seem to understand and it annoys me to no end. I have plenty of games on Steam without any sort of DRM, like e.g. Atom RPG, which I've played quite a bit, works perfectly well even if I copy it as-is into a VM or another PC which has never even seen Steam.

[WereCatf]

8 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Also, it is funny that people cry over exclusives, but at the same time, they kinda want it exclusive to steam.  XD

You REALLY need to work on your reading-comprehension, if you haven't noticed that people are actually complaining about the games not being available on multiple stores.

[xAcid9]

7 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Not every company is as greedy as Valve and Apple.  Epic charges what like 18 percent?  The only time the prices get lower on steam is during sales or during price drops over time due to things like the game's age.  This happens on more than just Steam.  Developers work with publishers, and publishers usually try to do what is more financially beneficial for themselves and the developer.  It likely would have more to do with what makes them more off the sale than anything else.  These are businesses, not your friends.  If one platform is only asking for 18 percent plus funding then they likely would rather stick to that platform than one asking for a 30 percent or higher cut.

Not gonna lie, 30% is pretty steep. Valve introduced tiered revenue share recently, dev get 70% if their game sold under $10m, 75% if game sold between $10m-$50m and 80% for over $50m. 

 

Yes, EGS is more publisher/dev friendly no doubt about that while Steam is more consumer friendly. I'm a consumer btw.

 

Also Steam/Valve offered much more to the consumer compare to Epic's. Most of us took it for granted. 

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

I'That has more to do with the payment platforms charging epic.

Steam swallow any additional transaction cost when you buy anything from the store.

 

Like i said, if they didn't make it timely exclusive but instead make it more attractive on EGS compare to other store front, people probably won't react this way.

[jagdtigger]

34 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

That has more to do with the payment platforms charging Epic.  The point was more about Epic charging the devs/pubs less.  I should probably edit I'm not saying that's not greedy or not.  I'm just saying that isn't what I'm arguing.

This is true, but currently AFAIK no other game store charge you for it.... Imagine if physical stores would start to do this, yikes .

[jagdtigger]

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

That might have to do with the cut differences as mentioned above.  Apparently, Valve gets it by charging the devs extra.  Epic gets it by charging the consumers when the payment method charges them more.  As the one dev mentioned they wouldn't mind being charged the difference, However, I still wonder if that would equate to what Valve charges more, or if Valve is just being dicks about it.  We probably won't know unless Valve made that public, tbh.

Well 18% vs 30% in case of a 60USD game, the difference is 7,2 USD. So yeah its possible. Top it off Epic(or that guy, already forgot his name) already admitted that 18% isnt enough....

[EarthWormJM2]

1 hour ago, valdyrgramr said:

Why not bitch at every company who does exclusives?  Nintendo, no more exclusives.  Give me my Pokemon games on PC, now!  Sony, give me every exclusive and stop paying extras to keep Destiny weapons exclusive to your platforms, maps too!  Sure, it sucks for the consumer.  But, these are companies, not your friends.  They're in it for money.

No one is bitching on here about having to use EGS to play Fortnite, their own first-party game. No one is bitching that Nintendo is keeping their own first-party titles on their own consoles, giving consumers incentive to buy a Nintendo console. What everyone is bitching about is if Nintendo was to come out and say "Super Mario Odyssey is now coming to PC, exclusive to only the EGS store!!" Because EGS threw a bunch of money at them to lock those titles down to their platform only. There is a big difference between first party titles being released only on their own first-party store/launcher, so they keep all the profits, and purposely buying out devs/publishers with exclusivity deals to force consumers to use a platform that they don't want, mainly because of the tons of missing features and being forced to support a company they don't want to, just to play the game they want, when there are other options. They are clearly taking the "screw consumers, are the devs happy?" approach. And tons of people already have bitched about console exclusive DLC like weapons and maps in Destiny, and plenty of other games, it's just old news now.

 

4 words to resolve all of this: Vote. With. Your. Wallet.

[Jito463]

2 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Well 18% vs 30% in case of a 60USD game, the difference is 7,2 USD. So yeah its possible. Top it off Epic(or that guy, already forgot his name) already admitted that 18% isnt enough....

Just a correction - as several have made this mistake - but it's 12% on the EGS, not 18%.  That's why I said I believe that 20% for Valve would likely still allow them to make a comfortable profit (since 12% obviously isn't enough without piling additional fees onto the customers).

 

*EDIT*
Here's where Sweeney made the comment on Twitter about the processing fees.

 

Edited March 25, 2019 by Jito463
Addendum

[jagdtigger]

2 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Just a correction - as several have made this mistake - but it's 12% on the EGS, not 18%.  That's why I said I believe that 20% for Valve would likely still allow them to make a comfortable profit (since 12% obviously isn't enough without piling additional fees onto the customers).

Okay then that comes out to ~10 USD, but considering steam has way more service to offer than EGS i wouldnt say its unreasonable. Its kinda the same how i bought my motorbike from a company instead of buying it from ppl directly despite it was more expensive that way. But in return if i have a problem they come and pick-up the bike(you get coupons for several x km[dont remeber the exact number] so the first time is free of charge at the minimum) and if you wish they provide you with a bike temporarily(this is free of charge every time, you only pay the fuel). More often than not the cheaper is actually more expensive.

[Jito463]

3 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

i wouldnt say its unreasonable

I don't believe it's unreasonable, either.  Then again, I remember how the developers practically fell over themselves to get on Steam, because of how much better that 30% cut was than the costs they incurred by selling retail.  Valve just hit the right time with the right incentives to become the king of digital distribution.

 

My statement is more of an acknowledgement of the argument that Valve is charging too much, and attempting to come up with a reasonable compromise.

[Sauron]

On 3/20/2019 at 11:34 PM, Delicieuxz said:

Tim Sweeney is following the worn path of psychopathic CEOs who cause enormous damage to their environments for short-term gain. I think he doesn't have the mind of a well-reasoning adult and that he clearly doesn't understand the ramifications of what he's doing. He's like a toddler with a loaded gun who doesn't understand anything about the danger of playing with it.

Is he?

 

As I've said before, this isn't any more anti-competitive than when Steam, Origin, Uplay, Battle.net or any of the consoles do it. I think the double standard here is utterly ridiculous; if you have a problem with this sort of thing, why is it suddenly outrageous only now and why would you only blast the Epic store for it?

 

DRM and exclusives are bad, yes. If we have to point fingers, can we point them at the people who have been taking advantage of them for decades and not (or at least, not just) at the latest newcomer? If anything, the Epic store is helping the market by providing some much needed competition and behaving in a more developer friendly fashion - which isn't as good as just getting rid of DRM, but it's better than nothing.

[jagdtigger]

3 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

My statement is more of an acknowledgement of the argument that Valve is charging too much, and attempting to come up with a reasonable compromise.

Without actual numbers how much would it cost to setup your own hosting solution(servers, bandwidth, storage, client SW, etc) i dont think its possible find the right balance...

 

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Steam, Origin, Uplay, Battle.net

You are still missing the point, they did it with their own games, and didnt bribed anyone to use their store only.

Edited March 25, 2019 by jagdtigger

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, jagdtigger said:

Without actual numbers how much would it cost to setup your own hosting solution(servers, bandwidth, storage, client SW, etc) i dont think its possible find the right balance...

True, which I already acknowledged in a different thread (which I had until now mistaken for this one).

17 hours ago, Jito463 said:

Personally, I'm of the mind that they could probably cut it to 20% and still turn a profit, but that's just conjecture on my part.  I have no idea what kind of profit margin their data centers run on.  I suspect only Gabe and his finance team know the answer to that one.

[Sauron]

11 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

You are still missing the point, they did it with their own games, and didnt bribed anyone to use their store only.

I don't see any difference. "Bribe" or not, there are thousands of games that are sold on, say, Steam and only on Steam. What practical difference does it make if they were paid to do it or not? They effectively prevented anyone from competing with the Steam store on pricing or distribution on those games.

 

Regardless, you didn't address the other part of what I said:

Quote

any of the consoles

I can't wait to hear your excuse for those - surely you can't deny they pay developers and publisher to only release on their hardware at a higher price for the customer, which by the way is significantly worse than what Epic does - they only want the exclusive on PC and don't prevent you from selling your game on consoles, at least as far as I know.

[jagdtigger]

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

What practical difference does it make if they were paid to do it or not? They effectively prevented anyone from competing with the Steam store on pricing or distribution on those games.

Nope, they arent preventing anyone from anything. If a game releases on steam they arent restricted from releasing the game other store's too...  What you described is only true for EGS. They eliminate competition through bribing studios/dev's into "exclusivity deals".

[Sauron]

5 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Nope, they arent preventing anyone from anything. If a game releases on steam they arent restricted from releasing the game other store's too...  What you described is only true for EGS. They eliminate competition through bribing studios/dev's into "exclusivity deals".

Again, it makes no practical difference whatsoever. If a developer was truly interested in selling on another platform, they wouldn't take Epic's money - it's not like it's being forcefully fed down their throat. All that's happening here is that Epic is getting the exclusives Steam would get through sheer popularity. And you're still ignoring the consoles argument.

[Blademaster91]

20 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Again, it makes no practical difference whatsoever. If a developer was truly interested in selling on another platform, they wouldn't take Epic's money - it's not like it's being forcefully fed down their throat. All that's happening here is that Epic is getting the exclusives Steam would get through sheer popularity. And you're still ignoring the consoles argument.

Wow, the excuses being made to defend the shitty practices of Epic games. It very much makes a difference if a game is available on Steam, if it's on Steam the title can also be on other platforms and on GOG. People are against this not just because of the exclusivity but also because the games aren't available on any other store. Valve doesn't force their games to only be on their store. Theres several games that were supposed to be on Steam and GOG on release and the devs took the Epic Games bribe on making it EGS only, the devs of course care more about taking the easy money rather than selling on a platform that cares about the consumer. There isn't any console argument, with most console games you're locked into their platform anyway.

[Blademaster91]

22 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Sony actually does exactly what Epic does.  It's why Destiny 2 has exclusive content on the PS4.  It's why there are also lots of exclusives on the PS4.  People forget over time and then they stop caring.  These kinds of arguments have never changed anything.  The protesting with your wallets crap hasn't changed anything either.

What Sony does isn't new, but Destiny 2 isn't just locked into selling on the PS4,and people still criticized Sony and EA for the exclusive content. Having some extra DLC isn't as anti-consumer as what Epic is doing to PC gaming, if you're fine with exclusive deals locked into only one platform that lacks features compared to Steam,Origin,or Uplay then just buy a console. People that already have EGS for Fortnite probably don't care but Epic has made a bad enough impression with exclusive and store bait and switch deals on a lot of PC gamers that will care enough to refuse to buy games on their store. The spyware found in EGS is enough for me personally to protest with my wallet.

[it_dont_work]

Considering Outerworlds is probably going to be the only game I buy this year, guess I'll use the egs launcher. I mean I've only origin to play bf1, and uplay to play anno 

 

What's on more bit of bloatware, I mean its not like someones bringing back securom 

[Jito463]

6 hours ago, it_dont_work said:

I mean its not like someones bringing back securom

SecuROM?  Heck, that was mild compared to the virus that was StarForce.  If people think Denuvo is bad, they obviously never had to deal with SF.

[Master Delta Chief]

21 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

And, yet this protesting has never changed a thing.  Exclusives have been a thing for decades, companies doing bribes for them is far from new, and still all the online bitching has not changed a thing.  I get it you're passionate about how much you hate it, but still, it has never changed these decisions.  Please show me one example where exclusiveness was changed due to online bitching and "protest with my wallet!"  It's more like people forget over time and they let it go because something else to bitch about catches their attention.  I'm not really on either side, but I still have yet to see these examples where your form of protesting has done anything on this issue.

From what I can notice from a personal perspective, is that Valve and Epic are listening towards the community, but neither are taking any sort of proper action. Valve's effort in the updated library and so forth ain't going to make much of a difference to attract more users since it's already been planned ages ago, but it's still something nonetheless. Epic on the other hand (Or at least the CEO) said that these exclusives won't be forever, but that is just a bad statement. It's still unlikely on whether if they're going to stop with it or not. Nevertheless, complaining/protesting is one of the few ways to make sure the company listens to their customers and take action to please them. 

 

It's in the company's "best" interest to fulfill the customer's desires, or at least that is how it should be.