Epic losing massive amounts of money in the battle vs Steam

Steam 30% fee does not go just into Valve pockets but much of it is obviously invested in the business from VR to a whole community.
They also forget that steam only takes the 30% for their in store sales, not for 3rd party and retail keys. From the hundreds of games I have on steam only a handful were purchased in the actual steam store during some sale. Epic takes their fee even for 3rd party keys, so 3rd party keys are not very common for egs titles. Only happens for exclusives.
 
They also forget that steam only takes the 30% for their in store sales, not for 3rd party and retail keys. From the hundreds of games I have on steam only a handful were purchased in the actual steam store during some sale. Epic takes their fee even for 3rd party keys, so 3rd party keys are not very common for egs titles. Only happens for exclusives.

I asked Tim Sweeney about that on Twitter and he replied that EGS does the same as Valve in that regard and doesn't take a cut from keys sold direct from the publisher, such as to 3rd-party sites.
 
They are trying to compete against the biggest, and arguably best, with an inferior platform. Throwing money at it to grow market share was a given. It will likely work out in the end. Lucky for them they had Fortnite. Otherwise they never would have had the cash to even try.
I only even have an Epic account for free games, and have zero intention of ever buying from them, but if their existence helps keep Valve on their toes, I am all for it.
They got a shit ton of money from Tencent however I think. I remember there being something about them selling a 40% stake to a Chinese company for a shit ton of money. But yeah Fortnite definitely helped.
 
Tim Sweeny doesn't care about money he just spends it buys old shopping malls for HQs and gives away good games like Alien Isolation and
this week it's The first Tree a Indi game based on a harmless Fox looking for her family.
 
Tim Sweeny doesn't care about money he just spends it buys old shopping malls for HQs and gives away good games like Alien Isolation and
this week it's The first Tree a Indi game based on a harmless Fox looking for her family.
Alien Isolation is also native for Linux. Linux isn't important in terms of their business model, but Epic isn't exactly liked by the community and they could use all the PR they can get and supporting Linux would help.

The way I see Valve vs Epic is that Epic spent a lot of time working on their game engine and that's how they made their money. They made games to showcase their Unreal engine. Valve on the other hand made the Source engine for their games and were more focused on making innovative titles. Valve and Steam are owned by people who are actual gamers who want to make fun games. Games like Team Fortress 2, Portal, Counter Strike, and DOTA were all once fan made games that Valve bought and supported. Epic on the other hand bought already made games, or bought temporary exclusivity and prevented Steam from getting the same game.

The whole reason Epic is even trying now is because they finally have a hit game called Fortnite. Now they are leveraging that game to get people onto the Epic Game Store, which was quickly dethroned by Minecraft. You want to get where Steam is then you need to feature match and surpass what they made.

That's nothing Newell.
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As someone else pointed out very wisely: By giving out free games, you don't attract people who want to spend lots of money on games, you attract freeloaders
I think I saw somewhere that the average breakdown of money spent per user on the EGS is around $7.50.

Ooooof!

I don't like Epic. I don't like their business model, I don't like their investors, and I don't like how they don't care to provide a better storefront. So, seeing this news is always a good thing in my book. I don't boycott Devs for taking the Epic money. I get it. I just boycott Epic. Which, is my personal way of thinning out the massive catalog of titles every year. If I see something go exclusive, I just write it off as not released. Thus, I move on to the next game of interest.

Like, I would have likely bought Kingdom Hearts if it weren't limited to EGS for the foreseeable future. But, I see it's exclusivity as saving me money. My wallet thanks Square's decision to not actually sell their game to consumers, but to Epic.
 
I think I saw somewhere that the average breakdown of money spent per user on the EGS is around $7.50.

Ooooof!

I don't like Epic. I don't like their business model, I don't like their investors, and I don't like how they don't care to provide a better storefront. So, seeing this news is always a good thing in my book. I don't boycott Devs for taking the Epic money. I get it. I just boycott Epic. Which, is my personal way of thinning out the massive catalog of titles every year. If I see something go exclusive, I just write it off as not released. Thus, I move on to the next game of interest.

Like, I would have likely bought Kingdom Hearts if it weren't limited to EGS for the foreseeable future. But, I see it's exclusivity as saving me money. My wallet thanks Square's decision to not actually sell their game to consumers, but to Epic.
But I do like the Unreal Engine and its tools.
 
Steam community is pretty bad a look on the Outriders forum which was released April 1st you would think humanity is trying to overthrow Steam. Its not all bad just a boat load of skeptics. I'll start threads like preordering for games which is redundant since its digital.
 
Less talk about origin these days. I see a lot of EA games on steam now
Everytime origin asked me for feedback, I typed
"Origin Sucks, sell your games on steam" or;
"Origin is a steaming pile, crashes all the time, causes connection issues, and just doesn't work like steam"

Seems they listened.
 
Zero free games + Control + Crysis Remastered. No forums for help as far as I can tell, news, info. EGS is so unlike Steam. No linux support, no hardware, no VR advancement. The games go for the same price??? So what is the advantage once again? Steam 30% fee does not go just into Valve pockets but much of it is obviously invested in the business from VR to a whole community. Plus many developers are present on Steam where you can give feedback and get further info for any troubles. It will be hard for me to get a game on EPIC over Steam if both have the game and also hard if not. What is with EPIC launcher, on a 3060x it takes 1% CPU power constantly or higher just sitting in the tray. What is EPIC doing with my CPU cycles. Steam 0%. Did Sweeney go full nuts or what?

I don't think you understand the relationship. You aren't the customer, game developers/publishers are. Just like Steam. Players just go where the games are. As great as a platform may be I wouldn't use it if it didn't have the games I wanted.

Only customer that has come back to Valve is EA. I'm assuming EA wanted good PR and to push their subscription (which Valve allows on Steam sadly) and Valve saw the flight of major AAA games and decided to cut EA games a break on fees.
 
And as long as they don't treat me as one, I won't be a customer at their shop. What comes around goes around.

That is great but you may as well stop buying games. Outside of a handful of small time indie developers, they don't care what you think of a client. So if you're okay boycotting something like 95% of all AAA game developers then go for it.

Didn't Microsoft start publishing on Steam as well recently?

That is true but I hardly consider their previous Microsoft store efforts as a release. The whole Windows Store concept was such a flop and no one wanted to use software that wasn't treated like a traditional program. Putting games on Steam is Microsoft admitting they were late to the phone OS race. Add in Playstation doing far better than the Xbox One and the only way to make money off of games was to put them on a real client. Knowing Microsoft, they may try it again in the future depending on how things turn out.
 
That is great but you may as well stop buying games. Outside of a handful of small time indie developers, they don't care what you think of a client. So if you're okay boycotting something like 95% of all AAA game developers then go for it.
Their client is no worse than uplay or origin. I care more about their contempt of customers. If you take the customer for granted you loose business. That's like sales 101.
I have been boycotting it since that crap started. 95%? Where did you pull that number from? AAA developers are the least likely to go for egs only releases. The only thing they achieve is that I buy the games later for cheaper or not at all.
 
Epic announces another round of funding has placed an additional $1 billion (with a "b") in its coffers, including $200M from Sony. Word is: "Today Epic Games announced that it completed a $1 billion round of funding, which will allow the company to support future growth opportunities. Epic's equity valuation is now $28.7 billion."
https://www.bluesnews.com/s/221114/epic-raises-usd-1b
 
I care more about their contempt of customers.

You're still missing the point, you're not the customer. Unless you're funding or developing a game. Epic/Valve don't target gamers, they target game makers.
 
Well Microsoft buying up a number of game Studios will in the end have much influence/power, I would think. Will Microsoft then exert their will on Steam or be smart and make money with an excellent platform that works also on Linux and
You're still missing the point, you're not the customer. Unless you're funding or developing a game. Epic/Valve don't target gamers, they target game makers.
And? Developers are targeting Epic and not the gamers? Customers or those buying the game want more than just a start button for a game especially when the game does not work and their is nothing to guide you what you are suppose to do. I had a problem in Control, one of 2 games on Epic I paid for, ended up going to Steam to figure how to correct the problem. If developers don't care about their customers then yes please go to EPIC so they can be ignored. Steam you can hook up with friends, take images, videos, ask questions, get answers, make stupid or intelligent conversation, get suggestions, motivation, get into the game. EPIC??? Launch and hope the game actually works and you don't need anything else.
 
You're still missing the point, you're not the customer. Unless you're funding or developing a game. Epic/Valve don't target gamers, they target game makers.
You're wrong. If Valve didn't see gamers as customers they wouldn't have invested so much development time on making the client better and pushing extraneous stuff like friends lists(to lock users into the platform full time) and the user engagement promotions during sales, if Epic didn't see gamers as customers then they wouldn't have spent a ton on constantly giving away games for the last year and a half.

Valve and Epic do care about the publishers/devs as well but seem to have different methods to get their favor, valve is focused on tools to make it easier to publish on their platform especially in regards to things like integrating cloud saves and publishing updates while Epic seems focused on being cheaper. However even if you assume that they care more about publishers then that just shifts the care to publishers who are still calling the shots in the long run because without people buying games there is no game industry, this should be obvious but you seem to be ignoring it.
 
Well Microsoft buying up a number of game Studios will in the end have much influence/power, I would think. Will Microsoft then exert their will on Steam or be smart and make money with an excellent platform that works also on Linux
Microsoft wants what Epic wants, and that's to make money off selling games. Specifically other peoples games. Which means they want control over their platform. Linux is not Windows and not even Xbox, which pushes further away from a controlled ecosystem. Microsoft using Steam is a temporary set back for them.
Developers are targeting Epic and not the gamers?
Whoever said that is an idiot. Customers make money, not Epic.
Customers or those buying the game want more than just a start button for a game especially when the game does not work and their is nothing to guide you what you are suppose to do. I had a problem in Control, one of 2 games on Epic I paid for, ended up going to Steam to figure how to correct the problem. If developers don't care about their customers then yes please go to EPIC so they can be ignored. Steam you can hook up with friends, take images, videos, ask questions, get answers, make stupid or intelligent conversation, get suggestions, motivation, get into the game. EPIC??? Launch and hope the game actually works and you don't need anything else.
This is something Gabe Newell has expressed a lot, and that's customer relations. He expressed this in his interview back when he really hated the PS3.
 
And? Developers are targeting Epic and not the gamers?

You have that backwards, Epic is targetting the developers/publishers. EGS/Steam/GOG is a service. Whatever offers the best value to the developer/publisher will be selected.

You're wrong. If Valve didn't see gamers as customers they wouldn't have invested so much development time on making the client better and pushing extraneous stuff like friends lists(to lock users into the platform full time) and the user engagement promotions during sales,

Valve got started by approaching developers. You can read an article TWI did on this some years back, they were one of the first 3rd party developers to put a game on Steam. All the rest comes after you successfully get a strong customer base established (developers/publishers) to further enhance the staying power. Valve is all about getting more people to sell on Steam as you mentioned. You don't need to target the gamers; once the games are there the gamers will come.
 
You're still missing the point, you're not the customer. Unless you're funding or developing a game. Epic/Valve don't target gamers, they target game makers.
That's exactly the issue. that they view developers as the customer and gamers as chattel. Talk about missing the point.
 
You don't need to target the gamers; once the games are there the gamers will come.
In your dreams, see: this very topic. They paid for games to be there, yet gamers did not come, at least not paying ones. A few reluctantly bought the exlcusives, the rest said f you. I'd rather not play games than let them dictate the terms and think I'm some mindless drone who will just follow the games.
 
But I do like the Unreal Engine and its tools.
I’d prefer people not use that either...


Ultimately, I don’t even fault Epic for wanting their own storefront. I just don’t like how they buy exclusivity. Do what you want with your own titles, sure. But, this idea you can dictate where I want to spend is not okay with me.
 
I’d prefer people not use that either...


Ultimately, I don’t even fault Epic for wanting their own storefront. I just don’t like how they buy exclusivity. Do what you want with your own titles, sure. But, this idea you can dictate where I want to spend is not okay with me.
I do feel that UE3 ruined an entire generation of games, or at least held them back from being their best. UE4 doesn't seem as bad as UE3 was, but at least it's not as ubiquitous.
 
I’d prefer people not use that either...


Ultimately, I don’t even fault Epic for wanting their own storefront. I just don’t like how they buy exclusivity. Do what you want with your own titles, sure. But, this idea you can dictate where I want to spend is not okay with me.
On the engine front, there isn't a lot that does the full gambit as Unreal does, your options are basically Unreal, Unity, and GoDot. But the support and resources Epic makes available to developers can really make them an attractive option to a lesser extent I suppose you can go with Cryengine or Lumberyard but the support there is somewhat limited and both don't have great reputations on the development side. So I get Epyc's position though, Valve made steam what it is now using the source engine and licensing that to anybody and their dog on the cheap to get titles in fast to see what stuck, Epic somewhat late to the party is trying a go at the same strategy, I mean honestly, I sort of hope it pans out and sort of hate them for doing it. I am far more conflicted on the subject than I should be.
 
That's exactly the issue. that they view developers as the customer and gamers as chattel. Talk about missing the point.

Which is the point. That is exactly what they target, for the obvious reasons you just confirmed yourself.

A few reluctantly bought the exlcusives, the rest said f you.

People come for the games. The job of Valve/Epic is to get the games on their platform. You might not like it but that is exactly what the relationship is. You're not their customer. Valve has never really targeted gamers, just developers/publishers.

Gamers just go where the games are.
 
Which is the point. That is exactly what they target, for the obvious reasons you just confirmed yourself.



People come for the games. The job of Valve/Epic is to get the games on their platform. You might not like it but that is exactly what the relationship is. You're not their customer. Valve has never really targeted gamers, just developers/publishers.

Gamers just go where the games are.
I don't wanna like this but it's accurate.
 
Steam 30% fee does not go just into Valve pockets but much of it is obviously invested in the business from VR to a whole community.
I wish they'd "invest" in a bunch of the franchises that helped to grow the Steam platform in the first place, but I guess they served their purpose. When I think of game developers now I don't think of Valve unless I'm waxing poetic about the mighty days of the Source engine.
 
I wish they'd "invest" in a bunch of the franchises that helped to grow the Steam platform in the first place, but I guess they served their purpose. When I think of game developers now I don't think of Valve unless I'm waxing poetic about the mighty days of the Source engine.
"Mighty days" of the Source Engine? Outside of Titanfall I don't know of any "AAA" titles from third-party developers that used Source.
 
"Mighty days" of the Source Engine? Outside of Titanfall I don't know of any "AAA" titles from third-party developers that used Source.
Source2 just isn't as robust an engine as many of the others out there, Valve is working on porting it to mobile but it really hasn't had any substantial feature updates or improvements in a long while with its big claim to fame being that it supports Vulkan, Rubikon, and of course VR; but to date pretty sure only a handful of games have ever been released using it, there are just too many better options kicking around out there and Valve has lost interest in putting out first-party titles.
 
"Mighty days" of the Source Engine? Outside of Titanfall I don't know of any "AAA" titles from third-party developers that used Source.
You never played Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, Half-Life, Portal? Noko was talking about Valve reinvesting their 30% into the business, but Valve got extra fat and happy selling hats, skins, and crates/cases/lootboxes just like Epic did with Fortnite. Unreal Tournament might not have a big enough following for Epic to bother, but no one knows why Valve never bothered to develop TF3, L4D3, Portal 3, or Half-Life 3 despite massive demand for their games.

Why develop the Source2 engine and then port only one game (Dota)? Big Dota money. Why develop a new engine and then only release a shitty digital card game? Big pay-to-win money (the grimiest kind of money). Good on them for developing Half-Life: Alyx to sell some VR gear, but to me Valve is now mostly just some company that operates a digital storefront.
 
Source2 just isn't as robust an engine as many of the others out there, Valve is working on porting it to mobile but it really hasn't had any substantial feature updates or improvements in a long while with its big claim to fame being that it supports Vulkan, Rubikon, and of course VR; but to date pretty sure only a handful of games have ever been released using it, there are just too many better options kicking around out there and Valve has lost interest in putting out first-party titles.
They just released Half-Life: Alyx and Dota Underlords last year.
 
They just released Half-Life: Alyx and Dota Underlords last year.
I know I counted those, they released the engine in 2013 and including both those there has been 5 games launched with it.

Dota 2 was ported to it
Steam VR Home
Artifact
Dota Underlords
Half-Life: Alyx

In development
S&Box

But maybe I should clarify they are more interested in releasing small simple games that they hope for minimal investment while hooking a large return on.
 
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Rich companies burning money to buy market share against entrenched companies has been happening forever. Don’t really care as I’m not paying for it. It’s getting a bit silly how many icons I have in my task bar now though.

What does piss me off is one store app launches another store / app ala EA, UPlay etc
 
"Mighty days" of the Source Engine? Outside of Titanfall I don't know of any "AAA" titles from third-party developers that used Source.

There were a few games that used Source but the were AA at best. A few indie games. Insurgency, Back Mesa, some game from 2007 or so, Day of Infamy and some Magic (?) game. But even of those, many including Insurgency, Black Mesa and Nuclear Dawn started as HL2 mods. So the number of non-Valve/Source mod games is pretty slim.
 
If you like Source games, check out G String. I think it's one of those things that started as a HL2 mod, but then turned into a full game.



It's like playing Half-Life 2 again for the first time. Really nice if you are okay with older graphics.
 
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