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)

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.

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.

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

They do not, and never will.

Here's a different take, as a game dev:

Epic actual employs quite a few people who work with Linux. The Unreal engine (and even, to a certain degree, editor) has native support for Linux.

The reasons they're not including Linux support in their store front are two fold:

1. There aren't enough pure Linux users to matter, and whatever percentage of their userbase would use Linux isn't going to be large enough to make a dent^[1].
2. The only serious Linux user base in gaming relates to the Steam Deck, a product that pushes a rival (and the dominant) store front.

While Valve's move to push Linux gaming is brilliant for us gamers, it also kind of cements us in their camp.

There is absolutely no reason for Epic to support Linux in anyway, and it absolutely supports their bottom line to attack it.

And, no, it isn't because of any David v. Goliath tale of a little guy standing up to a brute: it's because a fellow giant has decided to ally itself with Linux, and all of us have - invariably - been shuffled into their camp.

I think the Epic Games Store has a place in this world as a niche storefront with limited visibility but higher access to sales profits as a result of that.

They'll never grow to the size of Steam, and that's okay. The largest storefront in the world supports Linux not just on its platform, but by developing tools for everyone that makes Linux gaming viable. That is enough, IMO.

_{[1] Edit: I was throwing around a made up 0.1% number earlier to indicate what I thought the number'd be - wasn't meant to be factual, and was poorly worded, so I removed that.}

Do they officially support Linux yet?

Unreal Engine has official Linux support since ages. Unreal Engine running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is what movie CGI creators often use these days. It's a highly lucrative market they're not going to give up.

Epic Online Services supports Linux as well: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/eos-get-started/platform-support (which includes Easy Anti Cheat)

So when Fortnite and Rocket League have no Linux versions, it's just because of lack of will, not anything technological.

Do they even have one? I thought it's rare situation when the product speaks for itself.

Right?! Nobody ever talks about all the kids they got addicted to gambling. Bang up job, there.

It is hilarious.

Epic tried getting users by giving them free games. But that didn't translate to increased sales. And now they are trying to woo developers to abandon Steam, hoping that way customers will be forced to buy from Epic.

They don't understand that developers are on Steam because customers are there. And what does a customer get when they use Epic over Steam?

So true. All they have to do is WAY FUCKING MORE THAN THEY ARE WILLING TO.

Fuck Epic

The no user reviews is a terrible choice. I don't understand why they wouldn't have them. Maybe they're afraid of spam on Fortnite. But I can't imagine reviews on Fortnite would matter all that much.

TBH I haven't seen evidence that layoffs generate capital. It just fudges cost to revenue ratios to emulate quarterly gains in hopes of appeasing shareholders.

What's epics problem? I only log in to get free games but I think competition should work out better for the consumer

They didn't pioneer it, companies like GPD did. Not shitting in the Steam Deck, love that thing. Just wanting to get the facts straight.

I would rather buy a game on steam, or better yet on gog, than giving my money to a company that is trying to make store exclusive games a thing.

Steam takes 30% at first, and there is a discount after tens of millions of dollars in sales.

Steam offers a ton of benefits for game companies through steam, such as the Friends list, reviews, having a way to show live play from the store page, and a bunch of other things. There is a reason that everyone is flocking to steam, and that 30% cut isn't keeping anyone away.

They actually take the time to approve the games coming to their store, unlike Valve...

Fortnite, and it's not. The store loses them hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Here's the details on the financials

https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/exclusive-the-numbers-behind-epics

They'd been paying a fortune for other ways to get more titles which never panned out. Steam said fuck the little guys so they're trying to capitalize on that right now.

Easy. On EGS most games don't sell at all, so 0% of $0 is still $0. They get most of their money from Fortnite.

That would require having a platform worth something. Currently, they sank millions into the community - but in the wrong way. The client still lacks basic features and yet they spend money to buy exclusivity.

Fuck them, they don't deserve shit - praise or money.

Like Steam is doing?

I don't think their cut is them being greedy.

Your plan might not be economically feasibile, because companies need money for growth (new products, R&D, etc), so only charging enough to run is not possible.

Steam is probably doing a kindness by not charging an infrastructure fee every year to developers, that shiz would probably really expensive.

The cost of the cloud features they provide is likely, usually, understated. Just the bandwidth costs alone of allowing your game to be downloaded whenever the user wants and however many times they want is expensive enough. Add on cloud saves and all the other niceties..

All that is just to say that Epic is likely losing a lot of money here just to try enticing more developers to move over, and maybe bring some customers too, but it's not gonna work. They are lucky the fortnite piggybank lets them do this, but it's not smart by any means.

As long as Fortnite prints money, Tim gets to cosplay as a consumer crusader.

I think both Steam and Epic will let you generate codes to sell your game yourself, but this will attract a shit load of fraudulent credit card sales, and it's pretty much not worth doing.

I don't have an issue with a platform taking a small cut, but the 30% steam takes is ridiculous.

I hate epic too but game devs do

Neat facts, but they don't justify the awful game store they have created. They can't even handle a downloads queue that you can change around, which is embarrassing. They have 1% of the features that Steam provides, so rightly they can't charge the same.

Would be nice if Source 2 was available to anyone, but it isn't a product they want to sell/support. It's mostly meant to power their own games (like most game studios, they can have their own inhouse engines). Maybe as it gets more mature they could explore this possibility idk.

Steam has been quietly collecting cheques while their Source Engine has collected dust.

Very innacurate.

Valve create so much great software around gaming. Steam gets updated very frequently with bug fixes and new features (just recently we got game recording).

Source 2 is likely constantly being worked on (featured in 2 of the most popular pc games: CS2 and Dota2). Maybe randoms like us could never use it, but they still work on it unlike your statement would suggest.

Not to mention Proton, which helps every linux gamer run Windows games.

30% may sound steep, but it's not really when you consider what Steam provides: Game distribution (downloads, forever), community features, steam workshop/marketplace (if implemented), inventory system, game networking, in-game purchasing, achievements, etc, etc. I'm not a game developer, but theres probably a million more things they do. I'm not even mentioning the features they provide just for us, the gamers (mainly family share, thats simply amazing).

I've been getting through GoG.

Very awesome, GOG and their goal of preserving video games is great.

My p.s. wrapup is that Epic is barely a launcher when compared with Steam. Yes Epic can launch a game, but it does nothing else (well) at all.

Even with all the years they have had for development, they'd rather try to shove money into game devs faces (or customers with free games) than fix their app. I hope they realise this is a mistake, because you can get game devs to move over with lots of money, but customers who are spending money won't if they arent treated well. This isn't a long term strategy they have been using and this 0% fee seems like desparation to me (not to say they are poor, cuz fortnite pays the bills, but they likely aren't seeing much growth).

I hate defending corporations, but Valve is the one that I hope every other company looks at and tries to mimic because they have only done good for their customers.

None of these are why people hate epic games or like gog/steam.

EG is toxicily anticonsumer. Their platform is assbackwards with no good functional community features. They bombard users with ads for games they already own. They spyware they call a store front has repeatedly been caught snooping through user files without consent and sending unknown amounts of data back to their server without permission to gather that data in the first place.

And the cherry on top is their close relationship with tencent, aka one facet of the propaganda arm of the CCP.

I would argue UE5 enables and encourages bad development practices that lead to the unoptimized mess that "modern graphics" games are right now. Their work is cool, but so many games rely on temporal aliasing for in-game effects now, and UE5 is the common denominator.

Steam and GOG have a strong history and userbase. 0% commission is nice, but Steam in particular offers a world of more value than Epic Games Store, including but not limited to a usable fucking user interface (I use Rare to play my EGS library because it's so bad).

Steam games are DRM free unless you consider Steam itself a form of DRM. DRM is implemented by the developers of the game, not by the marketplace it's sold on.

And I find it strange that you think GOG has a better business model than Steam and will be more competitive long-term. Why do you think so?

Yet Steam has a history that proves they will not fuck customers over, and if they try new features people hate they'll not pushing it through no matter what for the purpose of maximizing profits (also not through dark patterns). This is something phenomenally rare and which you can't buy with any amount of money.

So yeah, not sure what will happen in the future. But competing with Steam always will be just painful unless you got your own niche (like GOG) by the mere fact that Valve isn't "just another company that will screw you over" <-- the default expectation these days.

Source 2 is closed source, however it's absolutely available to third parties. There are a couple non-Valve Source 2 games in development right now.

Not one of those data points justifies their shitty client, which, as a consumer, is all I really care about.

Tim, what are you doing here?

This is for the store, not the engine.