Epic reduce their cut to 0% for the first $1 million in revenue for devs on the Epic Games Store

I think ideally the first xk should have somethong like 10% since there's still payment processing fees and such. After that have 30% then go down on huge amount of sales (to keep the big boys happy and on steam)

Why do you want to keep "the big boys" happy?
I mean, if you're Gabe then I get it. If you have a spare yacht call me, let's talk.
But if you're not, then... what's the reasoning there?
- Not me, but i do want steam to stay the main game platform, if the alternative is epic games. That means you want to keep big studios on the platform.
  On the other hand the vast majority of the money that valve makes comes from indie games, not big studios.
  
  the vast majority of the money that valve makes comes from indie games, not big studios
  This is definitely not the case. Big studios price their games higher and sell more copies. There are only a handful of indie games like Stardew Valley and Terraria that come close to being in the same spot of the bell curve. Most of Valve's money comes from microtransactions in the longest-running live services and the biggest games of the year.
  
  Ah yeah my bad its the number of sales where indie games win. In terms of money its almost 50/50 tho. People are sick and tired of expensive garbage games and that shows in the drastic changes in revenue from 2023-2024.
  Ofcourse if you include in game costs, then it probably changes again.
  
  People are sick and tired of expensive garbage games and that shows in the drastic changes in revenue from 2023-2024.
  Be careful not to make the data fit your conclusion. Anecdotally, I've observed a similar sentiment, but for one thing, AAA releases have slowed down due to long development times, so there just aren't that many of them in a given year. For another, we know that, by a wide margin, most time spent gaming is only on a handful of mainstay games that first debuted years ago, like Counter-Strike 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Fortnite, Minecraft, etc. Plenty of those aren't on Steam, but the same concept applies to the games that top the Steam charts.
  
  My go-to is GoG, but I definitely want Steam to lose some market share in favor of literally anybody else. I will worry about moving that extra share towards GoG when the market isn't a full on monopoly.
  But hey, yeah, stop using Steam and go to Gog whenever you can. You heard it here first. DRM-free software should be your first choice.
  
  Naw, each time I buy on gog over steam I end up regretting it for some reason, usually related to modding or portability.
  Gogs great, but has limitations. With steam everything works better.
  
  Until it doesnt and your entire game library is done...
  
  For generic SteamWorks integration, there already exists a open source DLL called Goldberg Emulator. If publishers opt for real DRM, the games are not available on GOG anyway.
  Also, downloading and backing up the games have to be done by yourself before the storefront goes bust. Distributing GOG games outside of GOG is a copyright violation, unless the copyright holders explicitly allow it.
  So, to sum up: You can backup DRM-free Steam games and make them work with little effort.
  
  Reminder that the world's biggest money makers in PC gaming are not on Steam.
  Minecraft isn't (it's on Microsoft Store and a stand-alone web store), Fortnite isn't (it's EGS exclusive), Roblox isn't (its own store), League of Legends and Valorant aren't (Riot Launcher and EGS),...
  
  Yeah.
  And that's a fantastic showcase of the bar you need to hit to not be effectively toiling in the Steam mines. Assassin's Creed, FIFA, Call of Duty? Not big enough. Still have to deal with Steam.
  It takes being significantly bigger than the entire Epic store to even consider not doing Steam on PC. And none of those is even close to having a viable platform for third party releases outside of Epic, which is perhaps the last one standing on that front and currently not managing to get a foothold. And judging by the rabid fanboy backlash anytime they try to do something nice to attract devs, not even finding a path towards one at any point in the future, either.
  That's a bad look for competition on the PC market. There aren't that many Fortnites or Minecrafts coming in the future. Gaming investment is drying up and gaming is becoming a cash business, rather than an investment business. And the cash flows to Valve.
  
  Assassin’s Creed, FIFA, Call of Duty? Not big enough. Still have to deal with Steam.
  They don't have to. OK, maybe Microsoft has to because they are the actual monopolist and making the Activision Blizzard franchises available on storefronts other than Microsoft's own is to keep the watchdogs away.
  Also, none of the franchises are exclusive to Steam, so Steam has no monopoly.
  It takes being significantly bigger than the entire Epic store to even consider not doing Steam on PC.
  That sentence makes no sense. Fortnite is exclusive to EGS, therefore it cannot be "significantly bigger than the entire Epic store".
  Steam has no policies that forbid offering games on other stores, Epic has policies that makes certain games timed exclusives to EGS.
  What makes EGS unattractive compared to Steam is the simple fact that Epic chooses to most prominently display their own games on EGS. Valve does front page banners, fests, that window that opens with every Steam launch, etc. and goes out of their way to make everything from big launches as well as solo dev indie games discoverable.
  Epic has it in their own hands to make EGS more than the Fortnite launcher. They could promote other EGS games inside Fortnite but they don't. They host concerts inside Fortnite but nothing to promote 3rd party EGS games, for examle.
  That’s a bad look for competition on the PC market. There aren’t that many Fortnites or Minecrafts coming in the future. Gaming investment is drying up and gaming is becoming a cash business, rather than an investment business. And the cash flows to Valve.
  USD 45 billion overall PC gaming revenue and all of Steam combined is 8.6bn. "And the cash flows to Valve"? Sure...
  
  Oh, yeah, they have to. All of those examples are from publishers that tried to have their own platforms and then could not sustain that option and had to come back to the Steam platform.
  So they're not big enough.
  As for Fortnite being bigger than EGS... well, yeah, it is. So much so that Epic themselves report on the two separately. And Fortnite makes more money than every other game in there put together.
  10 Bn for Steam revenue this year, by the way. They are the only thing growing in the space. Everything else pulling money is aging games, 5-10 years old, that have a fossilized playerbase mobile-style. The money flows to Valve because Valve doesn't need to make ANY games at all, pay for exclusives or do anything else. Especially since the fanboys paint any attempt at competing against a monopolistic actor as an anticompetitive act, somehow.
  
  10 Bn for Steam revenue this year, by the way.
  So still far off anything resembling >50% market share on PC. Good to know they're still not a monopoly.
  The money flows to Valve because Valve doesn’t need to make ANY games at all, pay for exclusives or do anything else.
  So Valve is not engaging in any anti-competitive behaviour as well as pumping resources into Linux support to break the Windows hegemony? Great!
  Especially since the fanboys paint any attempt at competing against a monopolistic actor as an anticompetitive act, somehow.
  Yeah, these people are very strange. I mean, it's a fact that Microsoft is the convicted monopolist because of the grip Windows has on the industry, the same Microsoft that bought Minecraft, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard King to become the world's single biggest games publisher and their Windows-exclusive PC GamePass is also growing (surely at least partially thanks to Microsoft "continuing to misuse its Windows operating system monopoly" to promote their other services).
  And yet, there are people who put the sole Linux supporter in the same corner, as if that company had anything approaching Microsoft's market power. Not even the EU thought Valve was important enough. Microsoft, Apple, Google, ByteDance, and Meta are Digital Market Gatekeepers, not Valve.
  
  But nobody is complaining about Steam OS having a monopoly on PC OSs, the issue is with Steam having control of the PC gaming market.
  I am exhausted by humanity's ongoing inability to hold more than one idea in their heads at once. The world isn't made of good guys that play for your team and bad guys that play for the other team. Can people be adults for one moment at some point this century? Holy crap.
  Steam can ABSOLUTELY have a dominant position in one market while attempting to erode a competitor's dominant position in another market.
  Microsoft has a dominant position in the OS market that should be eroded by both competitors and regulators.
  That dominant position includes having about 75% of the PC OS market.
  Steam has about 80% of the PC digital distribution market for new releases.
  One of those facts isn't tolerable just because you've decided to make supporting a specific alternative in the OS market your entire personality. That's not how that works. Microsoft should be held back from the areas where it has dominance (and that includes keeping them on a very tight leash when it comes to aggregating more studios under their gaming division) and Steam should be kept on a tight leash when it comes to their dominant position on the gaming digital distribution space. Ideally by having other competitors not only survive but thrive and grow to prevent regulators having to intervene in the first place.
  Those two ideas are, in fact, entirely consistent with each other with no contradiction. I am imploring social media dwellers to stop treating every issue as a football match or get off the Internet.
  
  GOG and Itch are both great services. Epic is run by a psychopath and working hard to create the walled garden they themselves have been railing against. That's why EGS can go to hell but I'll gladly buy from the others.
  
  I do not know or care about the personality or intentions of any of the executives in these corporations. Pick your variety of libertarian tech billionaire, I don't intend to root for any of them.
  This is a Godzilla "let them fight" moment where in my ideal scenario none of these people would have this amount of money or control over other people's work, but since that's the world we live in, them being in competition benefits me down the line, so I don't want any one of them to get away with the whole thing.
  
  I definitely want Steam to lose some market share
  I want them to have some competition...
  
  Yeah. I mean, same thing.
  The point is you ideally want multiple players in the PC market competing with each other on features and approach that are all viable, sustainable and give users and developers a better deal as middlemen.
  I don't want Steam to go away, it's an insanely good client and a great piece of software. But I don't want every game having to be on Steam no matter what and only doing GoG or Epic or Xbox if they are being given a deal or for ideological reasons.
  
  Valve is the only one in PC gaming to push an alternative operating system to Windows.
  EGS, GOG,... all enforce a Windows hegemony. GOG Galaxy isn't even available on Linux, despite the fact that it's built on cross platform frameworks that make porting easy. Proton by Valve is open source and GOG Galaxy would be free to integrate it.
  Heroic Launcher is a community effort that shows that it would be possible without massive investments. Epic and GOG/CD Project just chose not to.
  
  Sure.
  They also chose not to have their own layer of controller translation or their own game recording backend.
  Linux is 2% of the market even on Steam with official support. DRM-free means DRM-free for everybody.
  I would like more official Linux support, but I'll take good unofficial support in the meantime. There's no workaround for monopolistic positions or mandatory DRM-free policies.
  
  I’ll take good unofficial support in the meantime.
  And that unofficial support is brought to you by Valve's contributions to Wine, DXVK, RADV, LibSDL,...
  There’s no workaround for monpolistic positions
  Considering that the only monopolist in PC gaming is Microsoft, the workaround for that Windows monopoly is to spend money on products that make non-Windows PC gaming better and currently that's almost exclusively Valve.
  
  I mean, cool.
  I don't need Valve to be a moustache-twirling cartoon villain to not like them having a monopolistic position. They make a great client, I generally like their hardware and, much as it is a byproduct of them trying to cut Microsoft out of the loop, I think it's great that they are basing their efforts on Linux.
  They still shouldn't become the sole platform for PC gaming, though, and that means they should lose some market share.
  You really, really, really don't need to pick a side between multibillion dollar corporations and support it like it's a sports team.
  
  I like GoG but they don't support Linux, they don't take a smaller cut, and developers are free to submit their games to Steam without DRM.
  
  I mean, they don't need to support Linux, you can get an offline installer right from their web app. Even if Heroic didn't solve that problem entirely (which it kinda does) you could still work around it.
  And I hear this "DRM on Steam is optional" a lot, but it's... kinda not? Even Valve admits their Steamworks integration is a soft form of DRM. Plus the point of GoG is not that you can have games with no DRM in it, it's that you have to. You buy a game, it's yours to keep.
  That's a massive paradigm shift. Steam exists specifically to avoid that.
  
  Even if Heroic didn't solve that problem entirely (which it kinda does)
  It actually doesn't. Half the games I install through Heroic don't work. Meanwhile Steam games work 100% of the time. That's the problem.
  Plus the point of GoG is not that you can have games with no DRM in it, it's that you have to.
  Don't really see the practical difference except that it has like 1% of Steam's library for that reason.
  
  Yeah, well, I've had better luck with Heroic than Steam proper, even if Heroic is using Proton and Gamescope as well.
  I guess that's the nature of Linux gaming (still) despite what people like to say.
  As for the practical difference, it boils down to my GoG library being safely backed up in storage media and preserved safely. If that doesn't matter to you... well, I can't help you, but you're wrong. Either way, if the market broke a different way and GoG had a bigger share (or if Steam matched its policies) that library would not be impacted nearly as much.
- If it free, there is an incentive to release quantity and not quality, it could become a spam problem. I am all for having a lower percentage though, but 0 could be a problem.
  
  You think the current cut Steam is taking...
  ... is preventing shovelware spam?
  Have you been on Steam this decade?
  But hey, yeah, nobody is advocating a 0% cut for Valve. Epic is doing this because they need to attract developers and most of their money comes from Fortnite anyway, so it's something they can try.
  But Valve has a looot of ground between 0 and 30% and a lot of ways to give back to the developers that built their empire. And I don't think starting by treating smaller devs as well as they treat major corporations would be a bad start at all.
- Cause that would probably get abused for things like money laundering, since Steam is open for everyone who wants to sell a game unlike Epic’s store where you get vetted. You can just set up a shell corp that releases shitty shovelware and buy the game from yourself with steam cards you bought from the store with your dirty cash. And then you’d get all your money back ready to be taxed and laundered.
  
  Couldn't you just like... sell those stolen gift cards on G2A, Kinguin and such instead? You wouldn't have the 100 euro posting game fee + needing to have it checked and such.
  
  I’m not talking about stolen gift cards. The goal of money laundering is to move dirty cash from the criminal underworld into lawful society. Selling stolen gift cards on G2A doesn’t help with that. You want to create proof for the tax man that the money you earn comes from a legitimate source. If you sell stolen gift card you don’t have a paper trail for where you have sourced those cards. It’s suspicious. And selling cards on G2A you buy with your dirty cash from a legit store is still suspicious since you still have to proof if the money you used to buy those cards was earned legitimately.
  If you buy gift cards with your dirty cash at a store and then pretend to be a customer by buying your own game you have created a money paper trail for the tax man since your earnings will come from Valve with receipts and all and you don’t have to proof where and how your “customers” have bought those gift cards. And then once that money is taxed that money is earned legitimately.
  You could buy stolen gift cards from another criminal but good chance stores report to their supplier if a batch of cards is stolen and then it gets reported to Valve. And Valve knows which numbers those are. If they see a game getting bought with cards from the same stolen batches and have almost no other sales there is a chance the game gets flagged automatically by their systems and they probably report it to the authorities.
  
  You have given money laundering via making terrible games a suspicious amount of thought.
  I mean, one could argue that this is on Steam to manage, and that the way to manage it shouldn't be "we'll just keep 30%". It was Steam who spent an inordinate amount of effort and terrible half-assed attempts automating game curation so they could have fewer people looking at approving games the way other first parties do. If Valve wants to Uberify game distribution they have an onus on moderation and on protecting the developers using their platform.
  But that's irrelevant because nobody needs them to lower their cut to 0%. 20% would be great. 10% would be fantastic. Flipping the current order of things to give more money back to smaller games and keep more money from bigger games would be more than good enough. Whatever arbitrary bar you think would stop this entirely imaginary scheme they could meet and it'd still be an improvement.
  Hell, I have never laundered money, but from what I hear out there 30% may not be enough to put a stop to that. That may be a decent return for some squeaky clean money out of Unreal asset flips. Should Valve set their cut to 50%? You know, in the interest of international security?
  That was a serious reach, friend.
  
  It's not that strange a thing to think about. Steam partners have abused the system before creating a fuckton of games just for achievements, trading cards and emoticons. Also Banana
  
  Which is entirely a result of Steam abandoning any human intervention on their curation system, first by trying to crowdsource it and when that didn't work just opening the floodgates and implementing the lightest possible moderation, social media-style.
  So okay, do they want to avoid exploits? Go back to curating the library. That's how it used to work, it didn't need to be an automated, hands-free process.
  But if you're going to let everybody upload to it then you are on the hook for the costs of moderation. It's not a valid excuse to charge more for the privilege of being slotted against shovelware. It's not a viable argument at all.
- From the POV of steam, you want the big releases to happen on your platform and take your cut even if its a bit smaller. In the end people change platforms for the big releases. Its the main reason I haven't fully switched to GOG yet, it doesn't have the major releases I want (or gets them late like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2).
  You can spread idealism, but I rather stay realistic.
  
  Yeah, but I'm not in the POV of Steam.
  I'm in my POV.
  You can't simultaneously go "it is what it is" when Valve gives big games a better deal to secure their position and be mad that Epic gives games exclusivity deals. It just doesn't follow. Realistically.

Epic only does it because they know they're the underdog. If that were to one day become untrue they would never do anything like this again.

I mean, yeah.
You sorta figured out competition in marketplaces.
Hey, I'm a social democrat. I'm all for intervening in markets, but for commodity entertainment products competition works pretty well, as you just explained.
1
- Sure, I'm just saying Epic is not any better than Valve in that regard. They're just in a different position.
- One approach is objectively better for the little guys than the other.
  I'm a littler guy than any game company, Epic treats me like shit. So I'm not going to use Epic.
They will continue doing it if they need to compete. Capitalism working as intended. Who would've thought
- Sure, I'm just saying Epic is not any better than Valve in that regard. They're just in a different position. It wouldn't make financial sense for Steam to do something like that.
  
  Of course. They're both just companies

Steam keeps getting slammed from both sides. They keep getting accused of being a monopoly, , while also getting accused of their rates. But if they drop their rates they get accused of being anticompetitive and monopolistic.

So if they do something similar like Epic, they'll go back to using their monopoly over the market to keep competitors down.

Steam keeps getting slammed from both sides. They keep getting accused of being a monopoly, , while also getting accused of their rates.
...those are not different sides? The only reason they can charge such absurd rates is because of their position in the marketplace.
- What they had been charging was about what other stores have been charging. Do you think a company that was by far in the lead over other stores dropping their prices further wouldn't increase their user base even further, making it even harder for competition? They already have active legal cases against them for monopolizing.
  
  What they had been charging was about what other stores have been charging.
  When they have absolute monopoly.
  Nintendo charges that much because only Nintendo provides Switch software.
  Microsoft charges that much because only Microsoft provides Xbox software.
  Sony charges that much because only Sony provides Playstation software.
  Apple charges that much because only Apple provides iOS software... despite the EU's best efforts.
  Steam and Android act like they're the only store that matters, for their platform. And it works. Because they are.
  
  Steams competitors are mostly GOG and Epic Games...
  
  Who?
  
  Which is why there's lawsuits against valve for being a monopoly. They have one, simply because they're the best and most well organized.
  
  What they had been charging was about what other stores have been charging
  It's not what Epic charges.
  Do you think a company that was by far in the lead over other stores dropping their prices further wouldn't increase their user base even further, making it even harder for competition?
  No one would care if they were a monopoly and also charged less than everyone else. Pretty much every monopoly discussion revolves almost entirely around their absurd commission rates.
  
  No it doesn't. Do you think GOG and Epic Games want Steam to undercut their rates because they can annihilate them in volume? Steam may not answer back at epics first million $ rate cut because Steam kind of needs them as competition.
  
  Do you think GOG and Epic Games want Steam
  Nobody gives a shit what they want. Monopoly enforcement is about consumers.
  
  It's about consumers by making sure there's competition.

20% is still way too fucking high for little more than just hosting the games.

I dont think the curve would look like this without valves efforts to push linux, so i am a bit forgiving when it comes to them wanting money to do random research and development. So far they have always been making cool stuff with that money.
- They’re constantly making cool, free shit for gamers because valve at its core is a company of gamers - they happen to make a shit ton of money because their passion for gaming ended up delivering a superior product, but it’s that passion that keeps them at the top.
  Look at remote play together and family sharing - neither of those concepts help valve sell more games… if anything, they reduce the number of games sold (ie, their entire profit model), but they’re great ideas that make sense… so they spent a bunch of the companies time and money developing them.
  Epic will forever be garbage as long as it’s only goal is to dick with steam… and it will always fail because they’re treating steam like a greedy corporation when really, it’s just a bunch of passionate gamers building the toys they wish they had when they were kids.
The hosting part is like the smallest portion of what valve does.
You are joking, right? The customer support alone (at the level at which it stands, which is very high for Steam) is well worth the price, especially for big players.