Tim Sweeney to Steam: Don't want timed-exclusives? Match our revenue split

[D13H4RD]

47 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

Still feels like fake outrage to me. It's not like timed exclusives are a new thing, some games have timed exclusives for certain platforms or regions, so I don't see the big deal about this all of a sudden. If you were going to buy the game then you were either gonna buy it at launch or wait til it comes to your preferred platform.

To be honest, whilst I feel that a bit of that outrage might be a bit excessive, I also feel that consumers have the right to show their dissent. Does that means Epic Games will give a shit? I highly doubt so, mainly because despite the seemingly large outrage, it seems that their exclusivity deals are working (or at least not failed spectacularly). So unless Epic Games suffers a significant blowback, they're going to keep doing so, whether we like it or not.

 

It's a shitty situation for the consumer's end, but it doesn't necessarily mean we are totally out of options, even though said options are comparatively utter shite compared to the ideal ones. It basically boils down to buying the game at launch off EGS if you really want it, and potentially support a practice that some consider a cancer to PC gaming, or wait 6-12 months for a release on other platforms, and get it off there. None are ideal, but I would personally pick the latter, mainly because EGS hasn't done enough on the consumer-end for me to warrant a consideration and it also has a hidden benefit of having many of the typical early bugs and such being mostly resolved.

 

Personally, I'm still waiting for the day where someone lights a match under Valve's asses while they're farting so that they can actually go back and do the things that they used to be good at, such as making wonderful games that ended up being absolute legends (though I guess you can consider Artifact to be a legend, albeit in the context of being an utter failure very quickly after launch).

 

Also, @Bouzoo, just a correction. Tim Sweeney wasn't the one who said that they didn't want another situation like Exodus again. Instead, it was mentioned by EGS head Steve Allison.

[Bouzoo]

18 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

Devs can be their own publishers just so you know and in the end, they agreed to shift to another platform for a timed exclusively, not gonna blame Epic for doing what business do and offer incentives, practices like that would stop if devs and publishers alike stopped accepting the deals but as long as they continue with it I'll blame the publisher and devs and not the one who offered them a voluntary incentive.

Devs can be publishers, but the general terms is publishers because even if they are the same or a different company, publishers are always listed separately from developers because they, well device where to publish the game. Just so you know.

But I am not here to argue semantics.

 

18 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

voluntary incentive.

Oh right the good old free "Will you move to our platform if we pay you few million $?". 

 

You can decide who to blame and so did I. I have decided not to apologise the makers of the system as well as those who get in the system. They are doing "what business do and offer incentive" and you are absolutely correct. But I am gonna call them out on a completely rotten business practice if I think it is a completely rotten business practice which it is. I never said Epic doesn't have the right to do that, they have every right, but by doing so they are doing what no one else does on the whole of PC market and are undermining what the PC market stands for.

And before anyone starts "But Bnet, Origin and others do it!", no, they don't. They developed their own platform so they can take the cut, and some still publish some if not all games on other platforms, but some don't, Epic is legitimately paying others to not publish anywhere else for the time being. 

[Bouzoo]

3 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

Also, @Bouzoo, just a correction. Tim Sweeney wasn't the one who said that they didn't want another situation like Exodus again. Instead, it was mentioned by EGS head Steve Allison.

You are completely right, my typo. Not often someone else says something other than him. 

[XenosTech]

6 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

Epic is legitimately paying others to not publish anywhere else for the time being

Don't see how this is any different in the gaming market as a whole.

 

7 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

But I am gonna call them out on a completely rotten business practice if I think it is a completely rotten business practice which it is.

As a customer that is your right but some people I dare say are going over the top.

 

 

 

 

12 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

-snip-

Yeah that's why I said earlier people who really want it that badly will buy it from whoever gets it first and the others will just wait til it gets to their respective platform. The exception being EA's stupid staggered launches for BF5 and other titles

[Bouzoo]

15 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

Don't see how this is any different in the gaming market as a whole.

I don't remember anyone doing that in the whole of PC market. 

 

15 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

As a customer that is your right but some people I dare say are going over the top.

We agree to disagree, or agree on some fronts and all of that is ok. Mind you I haven't even started on their security issues that I have seen for myself (I have had an Epic account for 6, 7 years now? Can't remember), missing features and all but those are things that can be improved over time, no one started with all features from the start and EGS is apparently developing many of them. Except a forum which is a huge missing feature which they won't have. But current problem is security and Epic do something on that ffs. 

[Jito463]

7 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

every time there is an exclusive in some form on Steam

Sorry, which company did Valve sign a contract^* with which obligates them to publish only on Steam?

 

Go ahead, I'll wait while you look it up.

 

_{^{*hint: there isn't one}}

1 hour ago, XenosTech said:

This feels like a lot of fake outrage. What's so bad about having more than one launcher again?

Then you haven't been following the situation, because it's not about the launcher.  It's about the exclusivity deals.

1 hour ago, XenosTech said:

Still feels like fake outrage to me. It's not like timed exclusives are a new thing, some games have timed exclusives for certain platforms or regions, so I don't see the big deal about this all of a sudden. If you were going to buy the game then you were either gonna buy it at launch or wait til it comes to your preferred platform.

Those timed exclusives are typically done when the company getting the exclusive was involved in the development process somehow (or directly funded all the development).  That's a far cry from coming in at the end and throwing money at a game publisher to get exclusivity.  The only exception I can think of is possibly MS, and they faced their own share of backlash over that if I recall correctly.

34 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

And before anyone starts "But Bnet, Origin and others do it!", no, they don't. They developed their own platform so they can take the cut, and some still publish some if not all games on other platforms, but some don't, Epic is legitimately paying others to not publish anywhere else for the time being. 

Yep, this.

[XenosTech]

22 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

I don't remember anyone doing that in the whole of PC market. 

I wasn't singling out the PC market when I said that but it's rare.

 

23 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

We agree to disagree, or agree on some fronts and all of that is ok. Mind you I haven't even started on their security issues that I have seen for myself (I have had an Epic account for 6, 7 years now? Can't remember), missing features and all but those are things that can be improved over time, no one started with all features from the start and EGS is apparently developing many of them. Except a forum which is a huge missing feature which they won't have. But current problem is security and Epic do something on that ffs.

Yeah, they should fix the security and then add more features, think people tend to forget Steam wasn't nearly as good as it is now when they started with their own launcher and had years to refine it to the point where it is now.

 

12 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Then you haven't been following the situation, because it's not about the launcher.  It's about the exclusivity deals.

I know it's about the exclusivity but some people are complaining about having another launcher on their system.

 

[Taf the Ghost]

8 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

Except Phoenix Point devs said they would still be in the black even if they refunded all backers from Kickstarter. Unless they have >$1.2M in their bank account, which is how much money they got from Kickstarter, they received money from Epic. 

 

 

Yeah you're dead wrong on this one.

And that's a small no name game. Don't even want to imagine how much Borderlands costed. 

It's called Bank Loans. With the EGS contract in hand, they can get loans to cover any issues between contract signing and launch. What EGS did was assure a larger total sales count than they raised. For a project with that big of a kickstarter, this isn't going to cost EGS any money.

 

Also, he didn't say they'd gotten paid. He's saying it'd still be profitable if they had to refund everything.

[Taf the Ghost]

7 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

They did?  https://www.resetera.com/threads/phoenix-point-fig-backers-have-accrued-191-return-to-date-can-we-calculate-the-epic-moneyhat.112525/

The game isn't even out yet.

Financing exists.  With a EGS contract, loans to cover until EGS pays out works just fine.

 

I thought EGS had to put some upfront money into the situation, but I found out fairly recently, from someone in the Game Dev space, that EGS is just giving a sale volume guarantee. So Epic is only on the hook for any shortfall in sales. Epic is getting people on board for really cheap.

[Giganthrax]

21 hours ago, poochyena said:

you should, because that factors into which platform publishers decide to sell on.

Not really. If the game is exclusive to Epic Store, I'll just pirate it. 

[poochyena]

1 minute ago, Giganthrax said:

Not really. If the game is exclusive to Epic Store, I'll just pirate it. 

that has nothing to do with what I said.

[Bouzoo]

17 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

It's called Bank Loans. With the EGS contract in hand, they can get loans to cover any issues between contract signing and launch.

Citation needed. 

 

17 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Also, he didn't say they'd gotten paid. He's saying it'd still be profitable if they had to refund everything.

Considering that the game is coming out in 5 months, and everyone can get refunds way before that. If they were to refund all backers, they would still have money in the bank. I really wonder where that money came from. 

[Jito463]

36 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

I know it's about the exclusivity but some people are complaining about having another launcher on their system.

That's been a complaint for a while now.  Origin, UPlay, etc; people have griped for some time now about multiple clients.  The outrage isn't about that, though.  It's about exclusivity deals.

[XenosTech]

4 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

That's been a complaint for a while now.  Origin, UPlay, etc; people have griped for some time now about multiple clients.

I still don't get the complaints about it all now

4 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

The outrage isn't about that, though.  It's about exclusivity deals.

Meh, I can't be bothered about exclusivity deals anymore. As long as the game doesn't end up being shit in terms of gameplay and riddled with microtransactions, I'll either buy it at launch or just wait. Exclusivity shouldn't be a thing but that's the world we live in.

[Bouzoo]

3 minutes ago, Mr Prince said:

Whats really annoying and publishers devs really do not understand that if you have friend that has game other store platform how you gonna be able to group up play against each other friendlist aren't exactly cross store platform at the moment either, this is why most stick to steam it has everything and more, if Epic wants any chance or other store platforms they have to keep this in mind, this is't much of an issue on uplay as any game you own on steam hs intergrated with uplay anyway, but once the epic games go from being exclusive this gonna be an issue most likely as you gonna have friends on either store platform, this is bloody annoying, dividing consumers is the last thing PC needs.

Heads up, that is apparently not devs fault but platforms. Meaning you can't for instance play Dying Light in co op on Steam and GOG. I remember reading that there was a possibility but Steam blocked it. Would need to found that article.

[Jito463]

Just now, valdyrgramr said:

And, how do you know there isn't one?  Were you there during every contract signing for the past 10+ years?

So, you expect me to prove a negative?  You don't understand how to form a proper argument, it seems.  One does not prove a negative, one can only prove an affirmative.  Ergo, you would need to prove anyone has signed a contract with Valve, instead of claiming I need to prove that no one has.

[Taf the Ghost]

33 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

Citation needed. 

 

Considering that the game is coming out in 5 months, and everyone can get refunds way before that. If they were to refund all backers, they would still have money in the bank. I really wonder where that money came from. 

"Game Financing". Or Business Lines of Credit.

[Bouzoo]

16 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

"Game Financing". Or Business Lines of Credit.

So you're saying that Phoenix Point devs/publishers got a credit of $2M+. I can't find any source or indication for that. Not a single hidden or anonymous source from any news outlet anywhere for any EGS exclusive game, and I am pretty sure it would have came from somewhere all things considered. 

 

Meanwhile:

 

[Jito463]

16 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I never even stated that Gaben forced anyone to make it an exclusive, you did.

Epic never forced anyone either, but they did lay the groundwork for publishers to sign exclusivity contracts.  Valve never did, and in fact has gone on record stating the opposite.  However, you did heavily imply Valve ("Gaben", as you put it) was responsible for publishers/developers who only sell on Steam.

9 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Exclusives have been a thing before the EGS, ***** at Gaben every time there is an exclusive in some form on Steam then.

If you weren't implying blame, why even mention complaining to Valve (which, by the way, people have done anyway)?

16 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I said there were exclusives on Steam.

And you said to complain to "Gaben", which implies that he's responsible for those titles being exclusive.

16 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

So, nice argument there aka putting words into my mouth.

Not putting words in your mouth, just reading between the lines.

16 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Secondly, Tim isn't forcing people to have exclusives on his platform.

I already addressed that, and I never made the claim he has.  Nice job putting words in my mouth.

16 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

At best they're timed exclusives unlike on Steam where there are several games only on that launcher and probably not moving, especially for PC.

Again, that's at the publisher/developer's discretion.  Valve was not involved in that decision, unless you have evidence to the contrary.

[Bouzoo]

16 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Tekken 7 can only be launched through Steam for the PC version.  That makes it exclusive to Steam for PC.

That is a good argument though. If we are brutally honest here, PC as a platform has by far most exclusives and with that Steam as a separate platform out of all platforms has by far the most exclusives. While I do not believe Valve ever paid anyone for exclusivity, they really don't need to. I blame publishers for the current situation. They just love that sweet sweet Steam DRM. If they didn't care they would publish on GOG as well since it's by far the most gamer friendly platform, but you know, no DRM suits very few of them. 

[Bouzoo]

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

Ya, Gabe isn't forcing exclusives either.  That was solely on Namco who published it there only.  I was just asking the guy to blame Gaben since he only wants to blame Tim for timed exclusives on the EGS rather than blaming a publisher for that.  Aka who you should blame.  Nobody is forcing people into a contract for long term exclusive bs outside of maybe Sony.  Tim might be asking them to do a short term thing, but long term exclusives are usually on the publisher.

No I mean I was saying in general with T7 as an example. 

Consoles on the other hand imo are a different story since they literally depend on exclusives to sell consoles, i.e. Sony (afaik) paying for the rights for the game before it even starts developing and not mid development. We will see that with Death Stranding though. Also Nintendo fucking us over with Bayonetta 2 & 3. But that is for a different discussion.

[Bensemus]

1 hour ago, Bouzoo said:

That is a good argument though. If we are brutally honest here, PC as a platform has by far most exclusives and with that Steam as a separate platform out of all platforms has by far the most exclusives. While I do not believe Valve ever paid anyone for exclusivity, they really don't need to. I blame publishers for the current situation. They just love that sweet sweet Steam DRM. If they didn't care they would publish on GOG as well since it's by far the most gamer friendly platform, but you know, no DRM suits very few of them.

I think it’s a terrible argument. Steam’s just a storefront. You can sell your game through them and any other storefront you want to. Steam doesn’t require you to sign exclusive or timed exclusive contracts with them to be sold on their store. The only issue would be if steam blocked cross play between them and say GOG as someone mentioned but didn’t seem sure of. The only actual exclusives on steam are their own first party games which is expected. 

 

Steam has the most games because they are the biggest store. They are also at or near the top with features for people selling and buying on their store. Had Epic competed with a better store they wouldn’t be getting this backlash. Instead they are pushing a shitty store with exclusive games they bought.

[Thaldor]

33 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I'm only aware of Sony and Nintendo forcing perm exclusives, though.  As for Epic they're only doing timed, and from there it's up to the publisher.  If a publisher never ports it after that time point then that's on the publisher.  Just like on Steam if a publisher won't push it to another launcher that's solely on the publisher.  But, Valve didn't really have to force anyone to do that either because they've operated for 10+ years as something similar to monopoly on PC.  So, it's kinda hard for other launchers with stores to compete on their level which is probably the reason for the timed exclusives on the EGS. 

Console exclusivity is kind of different topic where all Sony, MS and Nintendo basicly don't force exclusivity but make the same move as Epic and give offers developers/publishers can't refuse (MS and Sony give out at least free dev kits without wait times (both give out free dev kits but the waiting times differenciate between months to years depending on your project and you can shorten them by buying the dev kits you need) also they offer reduced or even free patch time (at least on X360 publishing a patch would have costed $40k, so a year of free time to patch is quite a good deal) and probably reduced pricing on age rating and localization (check) costs and reduced insurance pays (for the case that the game gets the platform into legal troubles) (IIRC knuckle rule is around $100k/region + insurance costs which depend on your game, GTA-like probably millions, My Little Ponies -like probably tens of thousands)). Funny thing is, all console manufacturers advertise free developing on their console and Unity and Unreal can both build games natively for every console, the catch is you cannot run those builds without dev kit console/account or jailbreaking a console to allow running homebrews (so basicly you cannot test your game).

[In the case of publishing costs Steam has been the wild west of gaming platforms, you don't need to pay them a cent for all those regional costs and insurances, you don't even need to officially age rate your game, just slap R18 sticker to it and press publish and Valve doesn't care.]

 

Phoenix Point is probably quite a good example for what kind of offers Epic is giving out. Being able to be profitable and release teh game even if they need to refund the whole Kickstarter could mean that Epic is at least paying them the amount that they gained from the Kickstarter. That is one hell of a deal when you count in that probably majority of backers don't demand refund. IIRC Satisfactory has some same spices in it's story, it was orginally thought to be Steam game with pre-orders and stuff, but Epic jumped in and gave Coffee Stain some offer and it was good enough for them to make the game exclusive for EGS.

 

I see the exclusive deals as a very bad thing because if they are successfull with them, they may spread and we can welcome the whole shitload of console-like crap to PC (how "This game works only with Nvidia GPUs"-sticker sounds? or "you need Intel CPU for this game"? or even "you cannot run this game while [launcher X] is running/installed"?). I'm more conserned about how anti-consumer and pro-publisher/developer EGS is. Regional pricing is coming, but it's completely optional. Developer/publisher is 100% in control of reviews and other user generated feedback/content (I bet there's a lot of devs/publishers who will misuse that to the hell and back and remove every single negative comment/review to get "100% positive" rating). The whole partnership bullshit where devs/publishers can actually give content creators percentage from the sales generated by them (makes IGN look like a baby in matter of paid reviews). They are also not really rushing with their return policies. Sugar on the top is that the EGS adds payment method costs to the game prices while Valve takes the hit (like if I wouldn't have PayPal I would use Paysafecard in the net, with Steam I wouldn't pay anymore than what the game costs but EGS adds some percentage payment method cost to the game price). And I can only hope those things don't spread...

 

Also it's kind of funny how other PC "platforms" have succeeded without any paid timed exclusive (appart from their own games). Like if Steam was that huge you need to have paid exclusives to compete, how the fuck GOG is still a thing? Shouldn't that be one huge smoldering pile of ash with it's complete anti-publisher standing with no-DRM, taking 30% cut from the sales and apparently even taxing developers for hosting the files and money handling (for that they do give free technical support with their APIs and can even help with making the old games run on modern OSes)... Hell, they should really be a very cold corpse by now when quite many publishers even bundle their games with free goodies (manual, wallpapers, soundtrack etc) on GOG even if they get paid less than on Steam. Like wasn't the sales cut the main point of EGS being better and Steam being bad and then we have GOG still in the books of living

[Bensemus]

9 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

I'm only aware of Sony and Nintendo forcing perm exclusives, though.  As for Epic they're only doing timed, and from there it's up to the publisher.  If a publisher never ports it after that time point then that's on the publisher.  Just like on Steam if a publisher won't push it to another launcher that's solely on the publisher.  But, Valve didn't really have to force anyone to do that either because they've operated for 10+ years as something similar to monopoly on PC.  So, it's kinda hard for other launchers with stores to compete on their level which is probably the reason for the timed exclusives on the EGS.

Epic could have competed on store features. Instead they offer almost nothing. Besides the big games were advertised to be on Steam, Metro was even up for preorder, and then suddenly went to Epic. Currently they are all slated for release back onto Steam when the exclusive period ends. No one would care if these games were just sold on Epic. It’s that Epic paid to take them away from Steam and force users to use a worse store. Hell people who managed to pre-order Metro were able to pre-download it on Steam. Those that bought it on Epic couldn’t as Epic doesn’t have that feature. Epic isn’t bringing anything good to the PC for consumers. If they were they wouldn’t be getting this kind of backlash. 

[mr moose]

Any game dev who is going to choose epic and refuse to launch on steam (even for a time period) is only doing so because EPIC dangled a big arse carrot.  It's not hard to see that Epic have to resort to such things because they don't have the market reach or services that steam have.  

 

A Dev has to choose between a juicy carrot from Epic and market share after launch.  To be honest I can't blame them for that when access to steams market share is no guarantee of success.