Viper87227
Fully [H]
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2004
- Messages
- 18,017
I know this is pissing in a hurricane but do you have a source for this?
12% vs 34% (30%+4%) for initial sales, 29% for most initial full priced sales and then 24% for all remaining sales many of which are going to be at reduced prices. Some rough math:
2K/Gearbox will loose $7.20 on each sale on EGS when looking at the US $60 price. They will loose $14.40 on each Steam sale after the 20% kicks in, which will start after the initial large sales window has largely passed by at the higher fee rate. At a price of $60 USD they would need to sell over 800,000 copies to reach the 20% fee threshold at $50 million in sales for the $14.40 fee rate. When you account for lower cost regions the number sold may have to be higher because countries like Russia and Poland charge $30 for new games as examples.
So we're talking about paying more than $14.40 per game sold for the first 800,000 to 1,000,000 copies sold. That means between $20.40 for the initial $10 million in sales and $17.40 between $10 million and $50 million.
First 16,700 games sold = $20.40 in fees which is $340,680 in selling fees.
The next 816,600 games sold = $17.40 in fees which is $14,208,840 in selling fees.
833,300 copies sold at $60 = $49,998,000. Just under $50 million threshold for the 20% +4% fee to kick in.
So what we have is selling fees of $14,549,520 for the first 833,300 copies of Borderlands 3 sold if selling on Steam. Selling on EGS is $7.20x833300 = $5,999,760 in selling fees.
The difference: $8,549,760 more to sell on Steam.
Now these are rough numbers and I assumed every sale was $60 when in reality some might be $60, some $30, some $70-80. And I am sure the regional sales breakdown varies greatly from game to game. A game like Metro likely would sell a lot better in Russia where it would be harder to hit the $50 million threshold but I think BL3 would hit it more easily as it is a western game and probably sells better in countries that charge more. But what we can see is that the difference can end up being pretty big. A potential of $8.5 million dollars saved without Epic having to do anything else.
Will some people not buy the game because it wasn't on Steam? Of course. Will the loss be anywhere close to $8.5 million USD? Not even close.
Now if someone can find a big flaw in my rough numbers feel free to point it out.
I've been saying this (with a lot less math) all along, people either don't get it or don't care. They're too stubborn to realize that 1.) more money going to publishers and developers isn't a bad thing and 2.) there is very good reason to believe that publishers and developers will choose exclusivity on EGS even without any incentives from Epic beyond the reduced selling fees. Even in a a scenario where Epic doesn't do jack shit to make a game exclusive, people will still paint them as the villain.
Also, my understanding is that games that are sold on EGS that utilize the Unreal Engine do not have to pay the 5% licensing fee on those sales. If true, that means you can effectively add an addition 5%, roughly $2.5 million, in fees that would be paid out for Steam sales that wouldn't be paid out for EGS sales. That brings the difference to over $11 million dollars. That is a hefty fucking fee to sell on Steam. It blows my mind that people can't understand why publishers and developers are looking elsewhere.