1y ago

Epic Games Store is offering developers 100% of revenue for six months of exclusivity

www.videogameschronicle.com Epic Games Store is offering developers 100% of revenue for six months of exclusivity | VGC

The move is designed to make more titles Epic Games Store exclusive…

The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.

After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.

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337 comments

The first few months of a game release are absolutely critical, no matter the size of the studio. I won't buy anything on Epic just out of principle, and I'm sure there are countless other people who share the mindset. A 100% share, vs a 70% one, is definitely appealing at first glance, but it'll butcher your numbers for short-term gain
- As a patient gamer, who hates enticements to get stuck in yet-another-walled garden, I refuse to go with Epic. The benevolent kingdom of steam never forces exclusivity deals, and just out of self interest i wont reward behavior that removes options from me.
  I guess this means I'll have to wait at least 6 months for some games to show up on steam
  I'm ok with other ecosystems, if they treat people right, like GoG, I'm cool with GoG.
  
  Waiting 6 months means you will find out if the game was any good anyways
  
  Found lot of the big titles that go to epic have been terribly unoptimized too at launch requiring fixes anyways, and I don't want to pay more to be a beta tester. I don't want to pay more for early access for a game that will be a better experience for customers who buy it much later.
  
  I’ll have to wait at least 6 months for some games to show up on steam.
  It raises a fun ethical question: Is piracy moral if you fully intend on buying the game at full price when it hits Steam in six months?
  Spare me the “piracy is always moral” arguments; Even as a fellow pirate, the mental gymnastics to justify it get old quickly. Just admit that you won’t/can’t pay for something. So the question is whether or not the morality comes into play when you DO intend on buying the game as soon as it’s available on your preferred platform.
  
  Patient gamer does mean actually be patient. If someone is playing a pirated game I would say that doesn't count as patience with them not depriving themselves of anything.
  
  I mean it when I say im a patient gamer... ill wait and no play it
  
  Some games are already like this. Borderlands stuff has been an Epic exclusive for a year ish in the past. I played on other platforms to avoid it. I don’t know if that’s still the case or if Borderlands 3 was the exception.
  
  So if a game is stuck in Steam's walled garden it's ok, but if it's stuck in Epic's walled garden then it's wrong?
  
  A lot of people seem to view it this way. Borderlands 2 was Steam exclusive for like 5 years and very few people complained, but Borderlands 3 was EGS exclusive for 6 months and tons of people flipped out.
  
  Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think Valve went out of their way to bribe 2k into signing a contract to prevent them from releasing on other platforms. Like Xbox did with Tomb Raider preventing launch release on Sony.
  Or do you not understand the distinction? At least play the "well it's PC so what is the big deal over downloading another launcher" card if you are going to try and argue the exclusive angle.
  
  I've never understand why, as a consumer, I would care why something is exclusive. Is that game exclusive to PS5 because Sony owns the studio? Did Sony bankroll the development? Did Sony bribe them? Why would I care? The problem with exclusivity is that it's anti-competitive and limits consumer choice. It doesn't do that any less whether it's exclusive because the developer was too lazy to offer the game somewhere else or because they were contractually obligated to be exclusive.
  Also, we don't know if Valve paid for it to be exclusive. Everyone assumes they didn't, which is probably correct, but, as far as I know, we have absolutely no way of verifying why it was exclusive. Maybe Gabe called up and asked nicely? Maybe someone at 2K used to work with Gabe when he was at Microsoft and thought they'd do him a favor? Maybe Valve paid? Does it matter why? Exclusives suck. It sucks BL2 was exclusive. It sucks BL3 was exclusive. I don't think any reasonable consumer is ever happier that a game is an exclusive, regardless of why it's exclusive.
  
  I've never understand why, as a consumer, I would care why something is exclusive.
  Difference between knowing a game isn't being prevented from coming to the PC like Yakuza and Persona 5 before they got PC ports versus knowing it will never happen, so not even entertaining the possibility like Zelda. Even with Epic exclusives its the difference between knowing that eventually the game will be available outside Epic versus being locked there forever. And it's why I've decided to wait patiently for a Ghost of Tsushima release on the PC versus getting a PS5 or getting it for my PS4. Maybe you are a day 1 purchaser, but I am willing to wait if there is a chance of a game being released on my preferred platform. So its pretty important. Otherwise, I'd get a PS5 if I knew that no amount of waiting would result in PC ports.
  Like I said before. You are so much better off saying you don't care about exclusives if you are going to be an Epic apologist.
  Maybe Gabe called up and asked nicely? Maybe someone at 2K used to work with Gabe when he was at Microsoft and thought they'd do him a favor? Maybe Valve paid? Does it matter why? Exclusives suck
  You just seem to be falling back to hypotheticals to try to downplay third party exclusives. You say exclusives suck but then don't bother putting in half the effort of actually calling out a verifiable recent actions of paying to remove the game from other platforms. Like the most infamous example being Metro Exodus that was set to release on Steam getting paid to pull it by Epic, and being the most lasting impression Epic left on consumers. It's instead hypothetical 2k exclusives that bother you more than actual concrete current events.
  Why would I care? The problem with exclusivity is that it's anti-competitive and limits consumer choice. It doesn't do that any less whether it's exclusive because the developer was too lazy to offer the game somewhere else or because they were contractually obligated to be exclusive.
  The leaps in logic you take to try and downplay paid third party exclusives as being as egregious as a dev or publisher not bothering to release on multiple platforms is an interesting one... But, I guess you have to do that if you are both claiming you hate exclusives, but then also trying to defend Epic and having to resort to hypotheticals.
  Honestly, if you want to downplay criticisms towards Epic you are much better off saying you aren't bothered by exclusives. I'm not sure why you are going through such a round about approach when you end up coming off as a fanboy with the leaps in logic and reliance on constant hypotheticals while downplaying or ignoring actual events that could hurt Epic.
  Trust me. It's way better to just say I like the Epic launcher being bare bones and I don't care about exclusives. It's just a launcher. This is by far the worst attempt to defend Epic I've seen. Bravo.
  
  Any exclusive clearly is bad for consumers. If you want to tell yourself that Steam exclusives are better than EGS ones, Origin ones, or UPlay ones for some bizarre reason, do it. But that doesn't make it true, sensible, or sane.
  I don't want games to be exclusive to any launcher. In fact, I have never purchased a game that is exclusive to one launcher. I have always either waited until the game was available multiple places (ideally somewhere like GOG that doesn't require a launcher at all), or just never bought it. This includes Steam exclusives. But, sure, I'm just an EGS apologist.
  But, sure, all of you guys who waited until publishers were being paid to use shitty launchers before you cared about consumer options have the moral high ground over those of us who realized it was shitty to require a launcher and started caring 20 years ago (and have been fighting it ever since).
  As far as I'm concerned, consumers lost as soon as launchers were required. I don't care why they're required. To me, feeling better about it just because no one got paid to require the launcher makes no damn sense. It makes about as much sense as getting shot and then saying, "You know what? I feel better knowing that nobody got paid to shoot me. I'd feel a whole lot worse if someone got paid." The problem isn't that someone got paid! The problem is that you got fucking shot! You're missing the point if you make that statement.
  Launcher exclusivity is bad. Full stop. EGS isn't worse. Steam isn't worse. They're all fucking bad.
- It's that upfront money they give that's the big thing for some of these devs I can't blame them for taking that upfront influx of development capital.
  Still not buying it from Epic, I hate console exclusivity, including Nintendo, and I'm not going to support it on PC.
- As a gamer living in eastern Asia, Epic's exclusives that could only be bought in certain countries due to payment processors pissed me off enough to boycott. I generally don't touch any games that started as exclusives there, either. The couple of exceptions I have, I waited until they were a couple of years old and 50% off on Steam or GoG
- Yeah same, but I also won't touch anything that goes Epic Games exclusive even when it comes to Steam.
- A game that sells 10,000 copies on Epic may sell 20,000 or more on Steam since Steam is so popular. If the game sold for $20 they would get $200,000 from Epic or $280,000 from Steam in that scenario.
  
  That’s why Epic has to offer this. They NEED this to remain competitive.
  
  Or they could make a launcher that offers features that Steam lacks.
  
  Or even just has the same features. The EGS launcher is hilariously bad. It’s barebones and intentionally difficult. It’s basically just a shell for their website API, when then raises the question of why they even have a launcher when it’s just a glorified browser.
  And the lack of a shopping cart on their store is just plain aggravating. Maybe I don’t want to do a purchase for each individual game/DLC. But I’m sure they did a focus study somewhere, which found that having a shopping cart encourages people to second-guess their purchasing decisions. Like if you allow people to cart things, they may rethink some/all of those purchases once they get to the final checkout screen and see the grand total. So instead, they’ve opted to make the user experience worse, by forcing you to immediately check out for every single individual item.
  
  Not that I want to defend EGS here, but I would like to point out that they actually have had a shopping cart for a bit now. Hilarious how long it took them to implement, but they do in fact have one now.
  
  What's even more hilarious is they have had one in the Unreal Engine store for much longer.
  
  If you want to criticize the product you should at least stay up to date on what they offer because now we know you don't know what you're talking about :)
  
  On the other side of the same coin, it proves that I don’t use the EGS because the launcher has historically been (and still continues to be, as far as I can tell) hilariously bad.
  
  By that logic fuck steam because it sucked when half life 2 launched
  
  Who judges products by the standards from over a decade ago as opposed to current offerings?
  
  It's got all functionalities required by a launcher, get over it.
  
  That's an awfully generous ratio. I don't recall all the specifics, but a year or so ago an indie game dev posted the sales stats of his game and left out the Epic Store numbers. When asked, he said that EGS accounted for less than 1% of his sales. Now, I'm not saying that's going to be the case for all games, but considering EGS's status as the "black hole of videogame marketing" I would say a 10-1 Steam/EGS ratio wouldn't be surprising.
  
  Tbh EGS discovery of games is shit. I feel that's their largest issue.
  
  It's their largest issue and they literally just won't fix it.. Ostensibly because they don't "track user behavior". Yeah sure Epic, go with that.
  When it introduced Steam Direct, Valve prioritized the development of Steam features that helped users discover games they might be interested in, such as the Discovery Queue. The Epic Games Store will continue to get interface updates, but as a matter of principle, Allison says that Epic will not track user behavior and use it to algorithmically recommend games. Epic has said in the past that it's more interested in supporting the game discovery that already happens outside of stores, such as on Twitch and YouTube.
  
  There's no winning with you guys is there?
  "We don't track you..."
  "I don't believe you, I'll use that paycheck that I know for a fact is tracking me, fuck you!"
  "Eh..."
  
  Why the fuck do you care if I don't like your favorite multibillion dollar corporation? Fuck I wish I could find someone who loves me as much as you love Epic Games Store of all things
  
  It's Tim. Why else would he be personally offended on behalf of epic when people say they don't use it. He got offended I didn't install the launcher and play the games despite having an account and at least claiming them on the browser.
  
  I just like pissing you guys off because you're acting like child

337 comments