Some Epic Store Games Are Pushing Back or Scrapping Steam Releases

Megalith

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When Epic Games launched its digital storefront last week, many called it the first real threat to Steam due to the studio’s standing and larger revenue of 88% versus Valve’s 70%. That sentiment has only managed to grow, as a handful of developers have already declared their support for Epic: factory builder Satisfactory will no longer be available on Steam, while Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, Genesis Alpha One, and Super Meat Boy Forever are timed exclusives. Gamers may be fed up with the increasing amount of stores and launchers, but competition is a pretty good thing.

"Before Valve and the 70/30 split it was pretty darn rough to be an indie, both in terms of royalty share and in terms of the ability to sell things without a publisher. We can all thank Valve for using their leverage to make that happen, and usher in the era we have now. We think it’s safe to say that a large percentage of the games made today wouldn’t exist without it. Epic is using their leverage to push that even farther, to 88/12. That’s another whole strata of developers who can survive.”
 
Dev are retarded to do timed release on pc to one store....all that will do is make more people not biy it or pirate it. A much better way would be to charge less for the epic store as people don't want to be forced to ues a store but if they see they can get a game % 20 cheaper a lot of people will ues the new store
 
Gamers may be fed up with the increasing amount of stores and launchers, but competition is a pretty good thing.
I'd wager that someone will just build a wrapper for all of them eventually.

The tough part will be the maintenance as some endpoints will no doubt change things just to cause issues.

They're all very similar. Origins (and I think Ubisoft's?) are QT5Web based applications - essentially a web wrapper with local files. You can usually sniff out the API calls and emulate from there.
 
Steam has two issues, they are too fking greedy and hopefully competition will fix that. Secondly, they need to address the issue of retards leaving negative reviews with less than 30 minutes of playtime (you know who you are).
 
Gamers may be fed up with the increasing amount of stores and launchers, but competition is a pretty good thing.

Generally, yes competition is a good thing. But based on moving from one market place to another, I don't see how this necessarily lowers the prices for gamers. The split pertains to the dev and epic, or the dev and valve. There is no guarantee that will lower prices for gamers. It just means more potential money for devs, which may make other less profitable games succeed, but there is no guarantee for that either.
 
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I'd wager that someone will just build a wrapper for all of them eventually.
I thought Steam was the wrapper, I mean if you buy a Humble Bundle game or what not, Steam doesn't make any money on you activating through them do they? Does Humble Bundle kick pack 30 cents of the $1 I paid for the bundle to steam?
 
I thought Steam was the wrapper, I mean if you buy a Humble Bundle game or what not, Steam doesn't make any money on you activating through them do they? Does Humble Bundle kick pack 30 cents of the $1 I paid for the bundle to steam?

If it is Steamworks, Valve gets a cut regardless of where you buy it, Walmart, Amazon, Green Man ect.
 
Dev are retarded to do timed release on pc to one store....all that will do is make more people not biy it or pirate it. A much better way would be to charge less for the epic store as people don't want to be forced to ues a store but if they see they can get a game % 20 cheaper a lot of people will ues the new store
Bull. Pirates always have a dumb excuse to justify their theft.
 
Gamers may be fed up with the increasing amount of stores and launchers, but competition is a pretty good thing.

If it results in a net-positive for consumers (which generally does happen) then yes, competition is a good thing. However, in this specific case there isn't really a net positive that can be found. Prices aren't any lower and there aren't really any more features or desirable functions in any of these platforms. Exclusivity is the only thing holding this together which is only going to fragment a growing but fragile pc marketplace because gamers are going to have to have 10 different stores/launchers for the games they play which means 10 different pieces of software (which are becoming increasingly bloated) installed and/or running on their systems to play the games they want to play. It's great for a sellers market because it keeps everyone afloat (as long as each platform has one or two anchor games) but it results in a net loss for consumers who are now forced to jump through extra hoops.

I'm not exactly a fan of Valve or anyone else but this is resulting in more headache than help. From an anecdotal and personal perspective it's greatly clamped down on the number of game's I've purchased recently and will likely continue to do so.
 
ill be honest, i was pretty much against valve from the outset, infact i didnt start using it untill quakelive went from webgl to steam...and i was upset about that....

ill probably get flammed for this...but i generally havnt given two shits about valve games...ever.....


:D

that said i guess i have a little over 1200 in steam purchases..... (honestly no way.....maybe at full retail value
..but alot was purchased at discount sooooooo...yeah...)
 
Bull. Pirates always have a dumb excuse to justify their theft.
if its not on their platform of choice, then its too expensive, or it has some form of piracy protection they don't like, or they can't "support" that developer because they dont like something they did in the past, or the game isn't worth it and they dont want to wait for a sale or its because it doesn't have a "demo" so yeah I have heard them all over the last 30 years.
 
ill be honest, i was pretty much against valve from the outset, infact i didnt start using it untill quakelive went from webgl to steam...and i was upset about that....

ill probably get flammed for this...but i generally havnt given two shits about valve games...ever.....


:D

that said i guess i have a little over 1200 in steam purchases..... (honestly no way.....maybe at full retail value
..but alot was purchased at discount sooooooo...yeah...)
Jesus that is a large title catalogue, mine is small <30 games, but I play the shit out of them but at this point I think I have more in Origin because of all the free ones, or the retro titles (here's looking at you WC). But I spend most of my time in Beamdog's stuff.... Portal was good but I think that the Half Life series is over rated.
 
Jesus that is a large title catalogue, mine is small <30 games, but I play the shit out of them but at this point I think I have more in Origin because of all the free ones, or the retro titles (here's looking at you WC). But I spend most of my time in Beamdog's stuff.... Portal was good but I think that the Half Life series is over rated.

oh sorry no not 1300 games 1300 dollars....

only like 90 games ....but i cant imagine ive legitimately spent more then maybe 400 or 500 dollars
 
Competition is good and with the potential issues with DRM and the possibility of losing access to a service or account I'd rather not have all my eggs(games) in one basket anyway, on the other hand fragmentation is bad and more competition makes it more likely that at least one will fail and leave users without access to the games they've purchased.

With all of the issues I've had with Origin, Uplay, Galaxy(thankfully this one was optional), and Steam during their first few years I'll be avoiding this for a few years unless they have an exclusive that I really want to play and I doubt I'm alone on that. I certainly don't see anything on that list that would even begin to tempt me.
 
Bull. Pirates always have a dumb excuse to justify their theft.

Not really this is like if only gamestop would sell a game. It makes no sense for a a company to limit it's game to one store insteadof selling on both with a 15-20% droop in price. How many people would even know of this epic store vs how many know of steam?

Also with howany data breeches happen I try to limit the number of places i ues my cc aa.
 
oh sorry no not 1300 games 1300 dollars....

only like 90 games ....but i cant imagine ive legitimately spent more then maybe 400 or 500 dollars
OK that is way more reasonable, or way less unreasonable .... depending on who you talk too <looks both ways to make sure the wife doesnt see me>
 
OK that is way more reasonable, or way less unreasonable .... depending on who you talk too <looks both ways to make sure the wife doesnt see me>
ya im not entirely sure that steam library calculator takes into account sale prices when you purchased...think it just looks at total games and bases the price off what they at currently going for.... but ya i was seriously irked when i had to jump over just to contimue quake addiction....only reason i use epic store/app right now is for the engine


but im with the other guy...id really not like to have my cc info spread out everywhere......then again.

my credit is shit anyways so....dont think anyone could legitimately harm me.....
 
No biggie, plenty of games to play.. I much prefer Steam and don't play Fortnite, so I'll be skipping these games.

I'm already tired of the PC launcher garbage and pretty much ignore stuff that isn't Blizzard or Steam.
 
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Not really this is like if only gamestop would sell a game. It makes no sense for a a company to limit it's game to one store insteadof selling on both with a 15-20% droop in price. How many people would even know of this epic store vs how many know of steam?

Also with howany data breeches happen I try to limit the number of places i ues my cc aa.
CC data is not that big a risk as a consumer, it is very easy to get any illegal purchases reversed or refunded, that being said it is a huge problem for the vendor as they are just out the money. It's the rest of the data that holds value, a stolen credit card can be easily reversed, one taken out in your name can fuck you for a lifetime.
 
No biggie, plenty of games to play.. I much prefer Steam and don't play Fortnite, so I'll be slipping these games.

I'm already tired of the PC launcher garbage and pretty much ignore stuff that isn't Blizzard or Steam.
Yeah but now it is really easy to make your own digital store and 30% is a lot for people running on razor thin margins. So yea Indy games will continue on steam but I bet you will see more and more of the big budget places putting together their own platforms. If you build it, they will come!
 
Even with more stores, it's better than every single game having its own launcher and manual patches.
 
Steam has two issues, they are too fking greedy and hopefully competition will fix that. Secondly, they need to address the issue of retards leaving negative reviews with less than 30 minutes of playtime (you know who you are).

Meh. Who has ever based a buy / no-buy decision based on steam reviews anyway? They are pointless. I've never read them.
 
No biggie, plenty of games to play.. I much prefer Steam and don't play Fortnite, so I'll be slipping these games.

I'm already tired of the PC launcher garbage and pretty much ignore stuff that isn't Blizzard or Steam.

Same here.

I have no problem with there being store alternatives. The more the merrier.

If game devs abandon Steam though, they have just lost any chance of me ever buying their game. I won't even touch Blizzard. I buy through Steam and only through Steam, and if they want me to never buy their game, that's cool.

IMHO they should just suck it up and offer their title in as many reputable stores as possible, and let the market decide.

Exclusives do nothing but piss potential customers off.
 
If game devs abandon Steam though, they have just lost any chance of me ever buying their game.

I don't really understand this blind loyalty. If the platform sucks (because all of the good games are not on there) why continue using it? Unless something big happens at Valve, Steam will be nothing more than a platform for crappy free to play games built on a 14 year old + game engine & other worthless low effort cash grabs in 3-5 years. I'll certainly miss Steam but if through neglect Valve lets that platform slip further they only have themselves to blame. And I won't remain loyal to a company increasingly becoming mediocre.

Its been years since Valve put out an interesting product and they've been at the center of some of the most harmful trends to PC/video gaming. I wouldn't feel too sorry if they flush themselves down the drain. Though I'll certainly be nostalgic about HL2/Steam.

Yeah but now it is really easy to make your own digital store and 30% is a lot for people running on razor thin margins. So yea Indy games will continue on steam but I bet you will see more and more of the big budget places putting together their own platforms. If you build it, they will come!

Considering the most popular indie game engine appears to be UE4, I think more will jump ship. 12% vs 34% is a massive difference. At $50 you pay $6 in fees with Epic's platform vs $17 on Valve's. That is almost 1/3rd the cost!

You can sell less copies and may still be able to turn a higher profit.
 
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I don't really understand this blind loyalty. If the platform sucks (because all of the good games are not on there) why continue using it? Unless something big happens at Valve, Steam will be nothing more than a platform for crappy free to play games built on a 14 year old + game engine & other worthless low effort cash grabs in 3-5 years. I'll certainly miss Steam but if through neglect Valve lets that platform slip further they only have themselves to blame. And I won't remain loyal to a company increasingly becoming mediocre.

Its been years since Valve put out an interesting product and they've been at the center of some of the most harmful trends to PC/video gaming. I wouldn't feel too sorry if they flush themselves down the drain. Though I'll certainly be nostalgic about HL2/Steam.


It's not a matter of blind loyalty. I just refuse to buy into store/community fragmentation. I want one and only one, and I already own many titles in Steam.

Thus far this has been an easy choice as all the non-steam exclusives have pretty much been garbage. With a little luck that isn't about to change. I'll be pissed if I need to install more than one client, and I don't want to abandon the client where I already own tons of titles, and have been buying all of my titles for the last 15 years.

The real enemy here are those who would try to force us to chose one store over another through exclusives. Exclusives are what needs to die ASAP. Let people choose which buying platform they prefer!
 
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Thus far this has been an easy choice as all the non-steam exclusives have pretty much been garbage. With a little luck that isn't about to change.

Hardly. Maybe you don't like them but plenty of highly rated games aren't available on Steam. Some are only available on Steam if bought through Steam or use Steam to merely to launch another client. As it is most of the games I play aren't on Steam, or have gimped over priced versions with slower updates. If you're into PC exclusives like simulators this is very apparent. The next 1-3 years are going to be brutal when it comes to standard AAA games on Steam. Steam is already resembling a flea market and I can't imagine how it will be in the future.
 
It's all good. This is the nature of capitalism - someone looks at the market and says, "Hey, I bet I could offer the same thing at a better price." This is how we get companies like SpaceX.

And if Epic is successful, Valve will have to compete. And maybe Valve will lower their cut of the profits to maintain their market share, and after lowering their cut they realize they aren't making as much money, and to make up the revenue shortfall they decide to diversify their offerings by relaunching an old intellectual property ... like, uh, maybe .. Half Life!


P.S. (sings) "It may be raining ... But there'll be a rainbow above yoooou ... You better bring back that crowbar" .... [choir] "Bring Back That Croooooowbaaaar!" ... "You better bring back that crooowbaaar ... Before it's too laaaate."
 
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Hardly. Maybe you don't like them but plenty of highly rated games aren't available on Steam. Some are only available on Steam if bought through Steam or use Steam to merely to launch another client. As it is most of the games I play aren't on Steam, or have gimped over priced versions with slower updates. If you're into PC exclusives like simulators this is very apparent. The next 1-3 years are going to be brutal when it comes to standard AAA games on Steam. Steam is already resembling a flea market and I can't imagine how it will be in the future.
Basically this, Microsoft, Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA all of them have pulled their content from Steam and the content left is legacy and launches their own client anyways, developers know that the vast majority of sales through Valve are going to be at a discount in addition to that 30% off the top that eats heavily into their margins forcing them to make their money from other avenues, which is why loot boxes are such hot items. Most of the major titles that sell through steam at this point. Developers will probably keep selling through Steam for a while but you will see them offering exclusive content and a slightly cheaper price through their own stores. They can quite literally beat Steam by 20% each step of the way for their titles and still come out ahead.
 
lack of regional pricing makes me sad to see store exclusivity.

But it's all Steam's fault for this move. 30% is huge, and still no new proper games.
 
Basically this, Microsoft, Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA all of them have pulled their content from Steam and the content left is legacy and launches their own client anyways, developers know that the vast majority of sales through Valve are going to be at a discount in addition to that 30% off the top that eats heavily into their margins forcing them to make their money from other avenues, which is why loot boxes are such hot items. Most of the major titles that sell through steam at this point. Developers will probably keep selling through Steam for a while but you will see them offering exclusive content and a slightly cheaper price through their own stores. They can quite literally beat Steam by 20% each step of the way for their titles and still come out ahead.

If I saw this opportunity and found the Epic client to be of good quality, I'd certainly consider doing just that. There are two indie dev games I am following that use UE4; I know one plans to be priced at $50 or so. If I was in charge I'd put it up on the Epic client for $50 and then on Steam for $60 at the least. You'd still be making $7 less on Steam, but at this time I think Steam is too big to ignore if you're a smaller developer. That would be a decent balance. I suppose I can try putting it up for $42 on Epics client & $60 on Steam as that would essentially be the price difference between the two.

With luck Valve will evaluate their pricing model, maybe bring some good high quality games to the market, and start policing their store better. They're been a bit lazy as of late and have been following too many dead end passion projects. Hell, maybe they can bring out a new engine to compete with UE4 and copy Epic's model. If you use their new engine and sell on Steam you pay no engine licensing fees. I don't want to see Steam fall to the wayside but from a developer standpoint I entirely understand.
 
The other problem with a huge bottom line price war is that we could start to lose these content providers and wipe out huge value in end-user libraries.

I like the security Valve has provided up to now that I can download a game whenever even DECADES later, as many times as I want.

How can we assume these distribution platforms can remain profitable with a model like that once they become mature and have 15 year old games people might have re-installed 50 times that they have not made a dime off of since the original sale?

That doesn't lend itself to bargain-basement distribution. And I'm willing to pay a few extra dollars for that kind of long term convenience.

One time or limited time DRM free downloads that you are responsible to keep... now that could be discounted.

But I'm worried we could start losing some of these content providers if a massive race to minimum margin begins. It will be in favor of the platforms opening up, selling as much as they can for a few years then shutting down before the real long term leeching of data eats them alive. That would suck for everyone.
 
If I saw this opportunity and found the Epic client to be of good quality, I'd certainly consider doing just that. There are two indie dev games I am following that use UE4; I know one plans to be priced at $50 or so. If I was in charge I'd put it up on the Epic client for $50 and then on Steam for $60 at the least. You'd still be making $7 less on Steam, but at this time I think Steam is too big to ignore if you're a smaller developer. That would be a decent balance. I suppose I can try putting it up for $42 on Epics client & $60 on Steam as that would essentially be the price difference between the two.

With luck Valve will evaluate their pricing model, maybe bring some good high quality games to the market, and start policing their store better. They're been a bit lazy as of late and have been following too many dead end passion projects. Hell, maybe they can bring out a new engine to compete with UE4 and copy Epic's model. If you use their new engine and sell on Steam you pay no engine licensing fees. I don't want to see Steam fall to the wayside but from a developer standpoint I entirely understand.
It's not just EPIC's model they will have to contend with, Microsoft is launcing a lot of new stuff that should be tieing in the XBox and PC platforms very nicely for Q4 2019. A lot of people laugh at MS and their games platform but they still made 3x more than Valve this year granted that was mostly with Xbox but they are working hard on tieing that back to PC.
 
It won't happen on PC. The MS store is still a flaming joke. For now anyway.
 
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I don't really understand this blind loyalty. If the platform sucks (because all of the good games are not on there) why continue using it? Unless something big happens at Valve, Steam will be nothing more than a platform for crappy free to play games built on a 14 year old + game engine & other worthless low effort cash grabs in 3-5 years. I'll certainly miss Steam but if through neglect Valve lets that platform slip further they only have themselves to blame. And I won't remain loyal to a company increasingly becoming mediocre.

Its been years since Valve put out an interesting product and they've been at the center of some of the most harmful trends to PC/video gaming. I wouldn't feel too sorry if they flush themselves down the drain. Though I'll certainly be nostalgic about HL2/Steam.



Considering the most popular indie game engine appears to be UE4, I think more will jump ship. 12% vs 34% is a massive difference. At $50 you pay $6 in fees with Epic's platform vs $17 on Valve's. That is almost 1/3rd the cost!

You can sell less copies and may still be able to turn a higher profit.

And no royalties costs if you're using UE, the epic store has you covered.
So you have the 34% and no royalty costs

And then there is the problem with any game that isn't AAA having even a remote chance to stick out in Steam.

If a dev switches now, they will stick out of the selection of games, as the number of games is obviously not big yet.

Also I like the idea of the relic store that i as a customer can get a free game periodically, subnautica in a week for instance.
If the quality of the games is good of course.
 
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What's another store front? I dont mind, I'm glad for the added competition.

Besides, I only play one game at a time, so for me, the "worry" over having multiple programs for games open at once in the background is a strawman.
 
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