Author Topic: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor  (Read 51053 times)

dsmart

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Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« on: February 01, 2019, 11:38:29 AM »
Due to the on-going drama, I have created three Twitter threads with my thoughts

02/01/2019 - Steam vs EGS Redux
01/31/2019 - Steam vs EGS - Industry Silence
01/30/2019 - Steam vs EGS
« Last Edit: February 01, 2019, 11:40:45 AM by dsmart »
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

dsmart

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #1 on: February 01, 2019, 01:20:28 PM »
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

tuberchimpy

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2019, 03:43:58 AM »
Hi there. Long time lurker, first time poster.
Not a game dev or in any way connected with the industry apart from being a video gamer.

Derek I read your twitter about Steam, and liked some of the points you raised, for instance the dev steam tools and how easy they make it to integrate them into a game, also steam not minding taking on the heavy lifting from keys sold externally to steam. I've always wondered why steam is happy to supply bandwidth etc... for product sold off steam. It goes against money grabbing best practices, but it sure does make the environment much better for us consumers.

re the EGS. I feel the exclusivity model on PC won't work as well as it does on consoles. For a large portion of the console owners they seem to have a very us versus them mentality. A lot choose a single console, and they become loyal to that console and disparage the other console. Confirmation bias fanboyism. When your "side" gets an exclusive, all those silly emotions kick in and you're either happy your side won, or "pah didn't like the look of that game anyway". It does lead to some pretty crappy behaviour, and encourages the fanboy irrationality. It's interesting to talk to people who can afford to own both Sony and Playstation consoles because all that nonsense just dissappears. I think for the PC storefront exclusivity won't work the same way. People are invested in the platforms, but the barrier to conversion is much smaller than buying another console and keeping it up to date.

I've been a steam user since 2004, and have 261 games, the cliched bunch of games bought in sales that I've not got around to playing. Up until about a year or two ago I've also been a one launcher guy. It was steam or nothing for me, apart for the Blizzard launcher for WoW and D3. The other launchers were a bit shit, and I don't want a dozen launchers running in the background. That's changed over the last year or so. Free games are very tempting, so I've been adding to my packrat collection on other launchers when shouts go out that free games are up for grabs. Now I have Steam, Blizzard, EA Origin, Epic, uPlay, GOG, and humble bundle. I know humble isn't a launcher, just including it for completeness.

The things that have converted me from a Steam only guy to being more open to other launchers?
Free games, many storefronts give away free games.
Buying legacy games I love like Settlers 3 & 4 and Command & Conquer.
Not having all my eggs in one basket concerns. If anything ever happens to my steam account I will be gutted, but at least I will have some games on other platforms to play.
I want competition to Steam. I subscribed to EA Origin basic. £20 per year. I've played only 2 or 3 games from the vault and had a go at Anthem, so I probably haven't got good value for money out of it, but I really want the bean counters at EA to take notice of that business model. To the point my annual subscription is due soon, and I'm going to let it renew, even though I don't use it much. I want to vote in favour of that type of business with my wallet.

I think the way in which Metro Exodus moved to Epic exclusive was poorly managed. I think there would have been a lot less negativity if it had been managed better. My plan was to buy it on Steam once they removed Denuvo. I don't mind them using Denuvo to protect release sales, but I'm patient and don't mind waiting. It's still my plan, wait a year until it releases on steam, hopefully Denuvo will be gone by then, and it should be much cheaper 1 year from release.

I get what Epic is trying to do with exclusives and game giveaways, both of which are costing Epic money, but I think Epic are missing a trick, in fact I think Epic are screwing themselves a bit with the exclusives.
Epic's biggest selling point for me is the price. Their slice is much lower than steam 12% instead of 30%. This is what will sell the games. I did a small excel chart where if I was a game dev how much I would have to charge for a game on steam or epic to get the same return. I'll post it in a seperate post below to deal with table formatting issues. The Epic price to consumers is noticeably cheaper to consumers even when we are talking about a game where the dev only gets £10.
The real trick I think Epic is missing is that by having exclusives the side by side price comparison doesn't take place.
Metro is supposed to be 10 bucks cheaper on epic than it was on steam, but I can't see for myself any more.
That huge advantage epic has is actually being removed from public perception by epic having exclusives. I think this is a HUGE mistake.
If you look at how many people buy dodgy keys off parasitic sites like G2A or Kinguin which I think are a blight upon the industry it gives credibility to the argument that some people are very price concious. They are even prepared to gamble that after handing over real money to one of these shadey snake oil salesmen, that they will get what they paid for. In my opinion Epic's greatest marketing tool would be to have their prices directly compared to steam side by side.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2019, 04:17:03 AM by tuberchimpy »

tuberchimpy

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2019, 03:49:10 AM »
Excuse my multiposting please, I just wanted to continue before the page expired and try and post my chart


Dev Wants      Steam price   Epic price   Cust saving
               
5            7.14       5.68        1.46
10         14.29      11.36      2.92
15         21.43      17.05      4.38
20         28.57      22.73      5.84
25         35.71      28.41      7.31
30         42.86      34.09      8.77
35         50.00      39.77      10.23
40         57.14      45.45      11.69

Sorry the headers don't line up.
First column is how much the game dev gets from a sale on the storefront. Using steam 30% and epic 12% cuts. No other factors built in e.g. better steam cut for larger sales, or the unreal engine cost. Second is how much the game would have to sell for on steam for the dev to get the first column, and the third is how much the game would have to sell for on epic to get the same cut. Last is the difference. Any game the dev gets 35 or 40 bucks ( currency agnostic ) is 10 bucks cheaper on epic than steam.

Derek has made some really good arguments as to why steam is worth 30% on twitter. All sorts of features that we take for granted on steam are missing on epic, some are dev only features like steam integration libraries. It's up to us as consumers to decide which storefront to buy from, and are those extra features worth the extra money?

One last point. What's true today may not be true tomoorow, one month from now, one year from now, or five years from now. Epic are throwing money at us consumers trying to get us onto their platform. Will that 12% cut still be 12% when epic think they are not longer the new kid on the block? Will they still give away free games every two weeks one year from now? Unlikely. Will epic store be more feature complete and closer to steam a year from now? Very probably.
Are epic your friend? No they are a business just like steam, out to make money.

I am in favour of epic competing against steam in the free market. I think that will be good for us consumers. I think they handled the Metro exclusive badly and as you tube commentators have said exclusives doen't bring any benefit to consumers, they are only done to try and benefit a business, in this case epic.

I'd love to know of the game dev gets any say in an exclusivity deal or does the publisher have the power to decide that on their own. When cash is handed out for an exclusive like Metro, do the publisher and dev split the cash or does the publisher get to keep all of that? What recourse does a dev have if they don't like what the publisher is doing?

« Last Edit: February 05, 2019, 04:07:20 AM by tuberchimpy »

Backer42

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #4 on: February 06, 2019, 11:55:15 AM »
From my strictly consumer PoV: With each new DRM (they like to call it "digital storefront" nowadays) I can decide to not hop on board, ignore it and go with what I already have (Steam, GOG and Humble DRM-free).

Obviously exclusivity deals are anti-consumer. So I ignore those games entirely. No loss, there are more than enough. Maybe I get an used copy for my favorite console.  :wink:
« Last Edit: February 06, 2019, 11:58:20 AM by Backer42 »

dsmart

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #5 on: February 08, 2019, 04:52:58 PM »
Excuse my multiposting please, I just wanted to continue before the page expired and try and post my chart

This thread wasn't showing as updated for me; hence the late response.

Anyway, your posts are precisely the gist of my jumping into the fray about this. As a game dev, we who use Steam, know all its benefits. Which is why I was surprised by the results of that poll which I had posted in the thread. If you compare Steam to Lumberyard + AWS + all the crap (e.g. GameLift) that Amazon lumps into that ecosystem, and compare the costs, nothing beats Steam. Amazon makes a ton of money from their AWS services. That's how they're able to give Lumberyard away for free. The same applies to Improbable, which has the same business model.
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

jwh1701

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #6 on: February 19, 2019, 09:46:18 PM »
It was disappointed as I enjoyed the metro series, but I'm totally fine waiting a year for it.

dsmart

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #7 on: February 25, 2019, 11:48:32 AM »
It was disappointed as I enjoyed the metro series, but I'm totally fine waiting a year for it.

In a bit of an hilarious twist, the fans have been giving it glowing reviews.....on Steam :emot-lol:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-02-23-despite-the-epic-games-store-exclusivity-controversy-metro-exodus-players-are-leaving-thousands-of-positive-reviews-on-steam
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

DemonInvestor

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #8 on: March 16, 2019, 12:06:20 PM »
Regarding your latest Twitter series:
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1106650297055748096

I'm not exactly sure what Reasoning you're asking for... ?
Why EPIC might want to distill marketing informations from their competitors data on your machine? Why the might want to share said informations with a major shareholder (who possess blocking minorities rights), who might also own a lot of juicy user data of the chinese market,in which EPIC might be interested?

So while the whole thing isn't the apocalypse, just as you wrote, i don't get what you're asking for in the end there?

dsmart

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #9 on: March 17, 2019, 06:02:24 AM »
Regarding your latest Twitter series:
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1106650297055748096

I'm not exactly sure what Reasoning you're asking for... ?
Why EPIC might want to distill marketing informations from their competitors data on your machine? Why the might want to share said informations with a major shareholder (who possess blocking minorities rights), who might also own a lot of juicy user data of the chinese market,in which EPIC might be interested?

So while the whole thing isn't the apocalypse, just as you wrote, i don't get what you're asking for in the end there?

Not sure what you're going on about. I was having a discussion with another party about the issue. I've written several threads about it. Can you be more specific?

https://twitter.com/OneAngryGamerHD/status/1106442607306178560
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1092044744174247937
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091339359779999750.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091020563991142400.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1090613972607356928.html
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

DemonInvestor

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #10 on: March 17, 2019, 09:32:27 AM »
Not sure what you're going on about. I was having a discussion with another party about the issue. I've written several threads about it. Can you be more specific?

https://twitter.com/OneAngryGamerHD/status/1106442607306178560
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1092044744174247937
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091339359779999750.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1091020563991142400.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1090613972607356928.html

The twitter post in which you challenged ANYONE to give you a SINGLE credible reason (your ending argument of the first thread you linked).
Again there's quite some value for a business to get hold of tons of user/competitor data (e.g. on play times on certain titles to stock up ones own portofolio on similar titles). So that shouldn't be what you're asking for, now is it?

dsmart

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #11 on: March 18, 2019, 04:56:56 AM »
The twitter post in which you challenged ANYONE to give you a SINGLE credible reason (your ending argument of the first thread you linked).
Again there's quite some value for a business to get hold of tons of user/competitor data (e.g. on play times on certain titles to stock up ones own portofolio on similar titles). So that shouldn't be what you're asking for, now is it?

You took the tweet out of context.

"Yeah, I remember that fiasco well. However, that's different in how they tracked down the user. Also, this is Epic we're talking about. I challenge ANYONE to give me a SINGLE credible reason why they have reason to believe that they would do anything with user data."

I was asking anyone to give me a credible reason why they think Epic would take user data and give to a third-party (Tencent). If you read the whole thread, you will understand why, because I go into more detail than just a single tweet.
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

dsmart

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #12 on: March 18, 2019, 01:15:15 PM »
A new Steam vs EGS thread (it's long)
« Last Edit: March 18, 2019, 02:29:05 PM by dsmart »
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

DemonInvestor

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #13 on: March 19, 2019, 02:04:00 AM »
You took the tweet out of context.

"Yeah, I remember that fiasco well. However, that's different in how they tracked down the user. Also, this is Epic we're talking about. I challenge ANYONE to give me a SINGLE credible reason why they have reason to believe that they would do anything with user data."

I was asking anyone to give me a credible reason why they think Epic would take user data and give to a third-party (Tencent). If you read the whole thread, you will understand why, because I go into more detail than just a single tweet.

Marketing & Money - in the same way Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Co. are doing it.
Not to mention the whole merit in discussing EPICs stupid implementation is that EPIC will actually have to change their stupid implementation. So i cheer everyone discussing any fuck-up of a corporation. As that's the actual part of the invisible hand supposed to keep the free economy working. And that doesn't exclude Valve. And i think you're giving Valve quite some leeway, when you remember back in the days Valves biggest argument to use their service (for developers) was copy protection, which always was the holy cow for our lil' gaming tribe.

Other than that - the whole digital market place with its service providers is nonsensical in terms of effeciency. As there's literally no additional value in yet another market place service provider. But let them battle eitherway - as long as we don't get another Bethesda Launcher -_-

tuberchimpy

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Re: Steam v Epic Games Store Furor
« Reply #14 on: March 19, 2019, 04:44:32 AM »
Epic are throwing money at trying to buy an installed userbase for the Epic store. One of the mains grips that people have with EGS, yet another installer, is the very reason that Epic are buying the exclusives.  A Tim Sweeny tweet from an article in the Derek thread linked above.

"I understand your sentiment and the convenience factor of a single store, but Epic is absolutely committed to this path. Exclusives are by the far the most potent tool for our 88% revenue share making inroads against 70% stores."
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) March 16, 2019

Let's assume Tim Sweeny knows what the fuck he's talking about, and probably has all sorts of expensive paid for data to make decisions from. He is saying that an 18% revenue difference is NOT enough to get gamers to install yet another store application onto their PCs. 18% is huge, for that games devs could split the difference with the buyers, and take 9% better prices for both parties. And yet 10%-18% cheaper prices for the end buyer is not enough to break the not another installer mentality. That's utterly crazy when you think about it.

Epic are paying through the nose to buy customers with the installed EGS on their PC.
A free game every 2 weeks. The value of these games tends to be $15-$20 on the store after the free period. At first I thought EGS would pay the devs maybe $3-$5 for each giveaway, but I'm starting to believe that EGS is probably paying full whack, e.g. $15-$20 ( minues the EGS 12%), whatever the normal price of the game is to the devs. My reasoning?
My understanding is that the Phoenix Point dev said he could afford to refund ALL of the crowdfunding backers out of the EGS exclusivity deal money, however many million that was? That is EGS paying that dev ( a second time ) for every presale already made before the announcement at full price. That is staggering.
Epic are spending an ABSOLUTE FORTUNE trying to buy an EGS installed userbase.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Epic straight up said sign up and we will credit your EGS with $100 which you can spend on anything you want in the EGS.
I've had every free game on offer on the EGS so far and I've paid for Satisfactory. I reckon I am probably about $100 up already.

The state of the EGS. Given how much Epic are giving you to install the EGS, do you think they will allow people to leave?
You don't spend hundreds of dollars per person to try and get people to sign up to something only to let them wander off, because the store is a bit crap in it's early days. I promise you that as crap as EGS is right now, it will evolve and develop at lightning speed. They are spending so much on buying customers they cannot let that invetment go to waste. Epic are probably spending a few million a month on pushing that storefront over the same hump steam went through. From "ewwww steam", to "cool steam". I wouldn't be surprised if the current EGS is a placeholder, like a html placeholder website, and behind the scenes they are building a behemoth.

You only have to make the supposition that Tim Sweeny is not an idiot, link that to the very visible amount of money they are putting into this, and the only logical conclusion is that the EGS is going to be a monster when it hits its full capabilities.


PS I should have asked this at the start sorry. Are we allowed to use the F word if we are not using it to insult someone? Sorry if the answer is no.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2019, 04:47:04 AM by tuberchimpy »

 

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