Tim Sweeney Responds to Epic Games Store Criticism

DPI said:
The idea of turning a "bigger profit" simply because of an 18% difference between Epic and Steam's store fees is a mushroom hallucination that requires ignoring the basic math found in 2nd graders as long as there's a 10,000% userbase (market size) difference in Steam's favor. These stores are never going to be on equal footing in marketshare, but Epic is trying to focus the narrative on store fee as if all other factors are equal.

Selling exclusively on Epic's store and ignoring Steam = stepping over a ten dollar bill to pick up a penny, because for the 1000x more copies a game could have sold on Steam, instead of getting 70%, the developer gets 0%.

Hell, if Epic's store fee was 0% and they hypothetically had 70% of Steam's userbase, it would still be financial suicide to ignore Steam and sell exclusively on Epic.
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One of several reasons lead that sentence with an "If". :)
I do believe developers should sell on all available platforms, but if they also sell on Steam..where most PC gamers have their games and are most comfortable, why would they purchase at Epic?
There would need to be a sizable price discount at Epic for me to buy personally, and at one I'd be willing to pay for the "hassle" (#FirstWorldProblems!), the developer would not make a profit at all.

Mazzspeed said:
What makes you think Steam is on a decline? We haven't see any concrete user base figures for years.
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capt_cope said:
Got any kind of facts that back that up? I'm seeing a brief peak and stabilization higher than last year, not so much a "decline" looking at the charts: here.
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Common sense tells us they are in decline due to various factors, but "the proof" is that major publishers have stopped using Steam.
We literally need to look no further.

Is the biggest game of the year on Steam?
Is Battlefield or Call of Duty?
WoW, Diablo?

There are of course several factors as to why none of these games are on Steam, but they all stem from publishers thinking they can make more money off Steam.
There's no reason that trend will not continue unless Valve makes changes to keep them on board.
 
Inacurate said:
One of several reasons lead that sentence with an "If". :)
I do believe developers should sell on all available platforms, but if they also sell on Steam..where most PC gamers have their games and are most comfortable, why would they purchase at Epic?
There would need to be a sizable price discount at Epic for me to buy personally, and at one I'd be willing to pay for the "hassle" (#FirstWorldProblems!), the developer would not make a profit at all.





Common sense tells us they are in decline due to various factors, but "the proof" is that major publishers have stopped using Steam.
We literally need to look no further.

Is the biggest game of the year on Steam?
Is Battlefield or Call of Duty?
WoW, Diablo?

There are of course several factors as to why none of these games are on Steam, but they all stem from publishers thinking they can make more money off Steam.
There's no reason that trend will not continue unless Valve makes changes to keep them on board.
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So again... not going to look at facts, just "common sense" that doesn't happen to jive with the numbers?

Since we're talking common sense, publishers using their own platforms is nothing new - Ubiplay, origin, battle.net, etc. have been around for a while, and they've launched plenty of major titles as "exclusives" to boot. Despite that, Steam continues to gain users every year. The publisher's platforms are doa regardless, since EA won't sell their games on Ubiplay or vice-versa. Maybe Epic will gain the foothold it needs to take down Steam, maybe not. It's not an easy task - you've got to have the user base to attract developers, and you've got to have the games to attract the user base. Hate on Gabe all you want, the guy's company made a brilliant move at the right time with Steam, and it's my opinion that it'll take a shift in the industry similar to the death of physical media to un-seat them as the champs.
 
Inacurate said:
Common sense tells us they are in decline due to various factors, but "the proof" is that major publishers have stopped using Steam.
We literally need to look no further.

Is the biggest game of the year on Steam?
Is Battlefield or Call of Duty?
WoW, Diablo?

There are of course several factors as to why none of these games are on Steam, but they all stem from publishers thinking they can make more money off Steam.
There's no reason that trend will not continue unless Valve makes changes to keep them on board.
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I still don't see any evidence that Steam is declining as a platform. One developer leaves, another makes their product available under Steam - Steam have already tweaked their pricing model in relation to developers.

The competition is a good thing, having half a dozen different front end stores on the PC as a platform is no more than a major PITA. It's one of the reasons I dumped EA as Origin sucks.

Epic know their current cash cow won't last forever and are trying to cash in on this fact while the going is good. Fact is, Steam are massive compared to some tiny Epic store.
 
Blizzard games have never been on Steam as far as I can tell. Activision games are now being published through Battle.net anyway.
EA games will never appear on Steam again, because Origin.

I don't see how publishers are pulling away from Steam, if they never were there in the first place.
 
Like it or not, steam is in decline. When steam started they where the only store, now there is Ubi, EA, Blizzard, Epic and GoG. Two of those have pulled out completely from steam and it is only a matter of time till Ubi joins.

There are no charts or data to post, it's evident as the nose on my face that Valve decision to run steam with minimal staffing is starting to fracture the system, no support, no curration, no quality control, from a massively profitable company that should be unacceptable.

Yes, the competition has an uphill battle, but now is the time to fight it, steam isn't as dominant as it was.
 
Origin is awesome

just checked the games list for PC and i see sequels to sequels soccer and expansion packs.
 
I understand the appeal of having a single launcher for an all-in-one place to game but at the same time if Steam decided to ban my account, for whatever reason, would it not be better to have a bit of diversity? I don't expect to be banned but then again, no one ever does.
 
I'll say this now and I will say this when the next launcher comes. Most these complaints are from people who are butt hurt they have to install another launcher. This is the "why can't everything be on Steam" crowd. I say, it you do not like installing things and enjoy competition, then go consoles. If not, STFU.

This happened when Origin came out. This happened when Origin came out. This happened when Ubisoft came out. This will happen again when another launcher comes out because these whiners have not gone console like I suggested.
 
Staples said:
I'll say this now and I will say this when the next launcher comes. Most these complaints are from people who are butt hurt they have to install another launcher. This is the "why can't everything be on Steam" crowd. I say, it you do not like installing things and enjoy competition, then go consoles. If not, STFU.

This happened when Origin came out. This happened when Origin came out. This happened when Ubisoft came out. This will happen again when another launcher comes out because these whiners have not gone console like I suggested.
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Problem is, competition is driving down prices for developers, but like the fabled trickle down effect that saving doesn't get passed onto the consumer.

Personally, I'd prefer one launcher.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Problem is, competition is driving down prices for developers, but like the fabled trickle down effect that saving doesn't get passed onto the consumer.

Personally, I'd prefer one launcher.
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Of course we would all like one launcher, but face reality, that's not how competition or capitalism functions.
 
Aireoth said:
Of course we would all like one launcher, but face reality, that's not how capitalism functions.
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We are nothing but the products of that capitalism, more launchers do not benefit the consumer at all therefore any resulting competition is irrelevant.

Therefore, there's no point defending the practice of developers making their own launchers based solely around capitalist greed.
 
Aireoth said:
Of course we would all like one launcher, but face reality, that's not how competition or capitalism functions.
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The vast majority of launchers/"platform" stores etc... provide little to no benefit to developers/publishers (who are not owners of the platform of course) and even less to players. The idea of them being "competition" is an insulting, bald faced lie (often spoken by platform holders, as expected) because they actually reduce the already minimal options for competition thanks to their incompatibility! Conversely, consider legit key-selling sites actually fill this role to an extent and do it better without a bunch of incompatible platforms.

Most of these launchers/platforms are borne from simple greed "What if we kept ALL the money" kind of nonsense, damn everything else. The previous generations owned by major AAA's for their own products (ie EA's Origin) were bad enough, but this latest generation is even worse with the likes of Twitch, Discord, and Epic most of all leading the charge. In almost all cases both "old" and "new" platforms offer nothing to the players and developers, especially compared to Steam. Steam is the platform I choose because they have consistently offered valuable features (Steamworks Online Play, SteamAPI, Achievements, Steam Workshop etc..) in ethical ways (ie Steam for Linux, SteamOS, SteamVR, Proton etc...huge contribution to open source), plus lots of community features; hell, they were one of the main reasons that PC games sold for significant sale prices ever took off! The standard 30% cut for Steam from sales has been maintained for years, not even increased as time went on or added with hidden fees. This was much lower than physical distribution overall, lower than consoles by far (with a lot less meddling) , and just about every other store/platform used the same amount, even when they offered a lot less in return than Steam!

Now here comes Epic, knowing their launcher offers nothing for players, tries to entice developers instead by lowering the cut. There is nothing to say that Steam can't update their policies on this as well, but pretending as though its an unfair amount or Steam offers nothing to justify it is ridiculous. After Epic fell onto a pile of money with Fortnite's Battle Royale mode, did they use any of that to enhance their platform/store? No! They don't offer Mac/Linux support or a ton of the other features of Steam. I've noticed that Twitch and Discord for instance have sometimes included games that have a Mac or Linux version , but their platform only supports Windows so for the same price buyers are actually getting less! So Epic does nothing for players and tries to pull the wool over the eyes of developers by giving them a larger cut, but many devs must have come to the conclusion that a larger cut of a smaller platform with less both tangible and intangible benefits, isn't worth it. Thus, they started trying to procure exclusives and third-party ones at that! Many of us enjoyed that PC gaming doesn't rely on the same kind of exclusives that consoles push, but here come Epic and Discord both paying developers to release first/solely on their little platform; third-party store/platform exclusives on PC should be outrageous!

Overall these platforms are nothing more than little fiefdoms, ceding control and power to their owners. There is no benefit and in fact detriment to players and developers alike (save for the few devs who are used to prop up these platform and give them credibility) from this entire generation. This is not to say that all platforms are bad by nature, but to date I've not seen a single one of these recent developments that offers a portion of the benefits of Steam, much less something to eclipse it!
 
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