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.

337 comments

They can try all they want, but I’ll just wait until the game comes to steam. No game is worth using that dumpster fire of a launcher.
- Elite Dangerous was their free game for the month awhile back. I made extra accounts and snagged free copies for people that wanted to try it, because I adore that game and love having people to fly with.
  You know, oddly enough, no one wants it, even for free, expressly because they don’t want to deal with the dog’s anus EGS launcher.
  
  Yep, I used to pick up the free games, then realized I’d never play any of them because I expressly do not want to deal with the EGS launcher.
  It sucks, because it really is better for the devs, but steam is just so much better
  
  Same with GTA when it was free. Only got one person to use one of the many and they only used it like twice.
  
  Dude I have purchased Elite 4 times now, 1 for me and 3 for my mates
  I wish they would do SOMETHING with the game to make it more accessible, all my friends gave up after realising how much grinding they had to do
  That game is a ruined orgasm. So much build up and anticipation for fucking nothing.
  
  I claim every epic game through the website, but I actually haven't bothered installing the epic launcher since I did a fresh install of my OS months back. I've got other non steam launchers like GOG installed. So yeah, I'll take the free game, but I don't feel like spending money on the epic store even if it were more heavily discounted.
  
  Which is kind of weird since Elite has its own stand alone launcher, right?
  All my stuff on Epic I just install and either run direct on the PC or add to steam as a non-steam game on my deck.
  
  If you still happen to have one handy I'd love a copy! Missed this one and finally getting a card that will let me play it
- I will never get this sentiment. It's a fucking game launcher, it downloads the games quickly and launches them. I just don't get this hate boner people have for it.
  I played Red Dead 2 and Control through it and had absolutely zero problems. You all just want a steam monopoly for whatever gods forsaken reason.
  
  Their checkout still doesn't have a cart, it takes forever to load, the UI is terribly clunky, the library sorting is terrible (how do you fuck this up), it's resource heavy, and I'd be willing to overlook all that oof they had an in game overlay with web browser.
  Aside from the terrible experience, they have profit seeking investors, one of which is Tencent. We all have seen were it goes when profits are priority over consumers.
  Not a hate boner. Just genuine dislike of the platform as it stands right now.
  
  I personally am not willing to support their exclusivity stuff.
  
  Because it doesn’t work
  The launch is a piece of shit that doesn’t do the 2 thing it’s supposedly good at. Downloads are excessively slow and game launching doesn’t work half the time. It’s so slow that it has a noticeable effect on boot times.
  Yes, I’d rather a steam monopoly than have to use that shit launcher ever again. Steam is a useable piece of software that doesn’t suck donkey cock.
- How much does steam charge for allowing the games on its platform?
  
  Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales iirc, but does not enforce exclusivity agreements to their platform
- They're winning me over steam. I pick up their free games each month and my library is getting good enough that I'm spending more time on it.

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
  
  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.
  
  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?
- 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.
  
  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.

There seems to be a lot of debate in the comments, that are disingenuous arguments.
I think the quality of the software is a factor for some people, but that's not the main issue here.
Steam has always publicly stated their competition is piracy. They have to be more convenient than piracy to survive. And over steams lifetime I think they've demonstrated that's their goal, yes they have DRM, but only to satisfy publishers, they've done everything they can to keep things as convenient as possible.
Epic, the company, has demonstrated their goal is money. And they've demonstrated an anti-consumer trend, the exclusivity deals are in great indicator of that. If epic became as popular as steam, they would make the experience awful, they would become the Disney of the game world.
So all of the arguments about
*launcher quality
*availability of DRM free games
*some publishers choosing to release on one platform
Are missing the mark, many people don't want to financially support a market participant who will make their lives worse in the future.
If you don't like valve, that's fine, support a different distributor who makes the ecosystem better, like GoG.
- Yeah, I think competition is always good and Steam should not have a monopoly, but Epic is certainly not a beneficial alternative.
- I think you hit the nail in the head.
  When I think about the whole missing shop cart thing, it wasn't necessarily the shopping cart that bothered me (even if it DID cause terrible service when they released a paradox game with DLC).
  It was the fact Tim himself and a posse came on Twitter to call me everything short of the R-slur just for wanting the shopping cart.
  Yesterday it was shopping carts. Tomorrow it's games working offline and with no mods. Tim made himself the villain over nothing, and deserves to fail before it's about everything.
- I think you hit the nail in the head.
  When I think about the whole missing shop cart thing, it wasn't necessarily the shopping cart that bothered me (even if it DID cause terrible service when they released a paradox game with DLC).
  It was the fact Tim himself and a posse came on Twitter to call me everything short of the R-slur just for wanting the shopping cart. It was a freaking war of ideology attrition over a motherfucking shopping cart, something the Unreal Engine store had too.
  Yesterday it was shopping carts. Tomorrow it's games working offline and with no mods. Tim made himself the villain over nothing, and deserves to fail before it's about everything.
- I love how when it's epic it's all about "I don't like epic because they want a monopoly" but when it was only steam nobody talked about them having a monopoly lmao
  
  Steam isn't a monopoly.
  Steam doesn't force exclusivity. Developers are free to release a game on their own platform, on steam, on GOG all at the same time. Steam doesn't even enforce price equality, developers could have their game on steam for 3X the price if they wanted. Use our website get the game for 66% off. Or use steam pay 3x the price. That's an option
  Steam is the benevolent dictator of the gaming world right now. They are benevolent so there's no real need for a revolution. But they're not forcing anybody to stay on the steam platform

Someday maybe they will try to improve the launcher instead of burning all the money in exclusives that only pisses people off. I uninstalled that shit and don't even bother to take the free games anymore.
- I had to request and confirm the deletion of my account to stop chinese people trying to hack it or something because I kept getting e-mails from Epig that someone in China is trying to access my account EVERY GODDAMN MONTH.
- Just use playnite you plebians
- The launcher launches the games and that's good enough for me 👍
  
  Why should you be happy it has the most bare functionality it could possibly have. It's 2023. On Steam I can stream from a Linux PC to my living room, play on some Nintendo Joycons with full gyro support, have a YouTube video playing picture-in-picture and bringing up an achievement guide with one button press. Epic is just a launcher, Steam is a full-fledged gaming platform.
  
  I could launch my games without a launcher. And I prefer it that way.
  
  The way people talk about the epic store its like the company personally kicked their dog.

Man epic games store is actual industry aids. We don't buy games on steam because we have no other choice. We buy them because it's by far and large the best platform. I don't want 10 different apps for different games. I want my collection in one spot. Epic games sucks. I've never given them a single cent and never will. I've claimed many a free game on there but the irony is I just buy them on sale through steam and never actually play them on epic. I want playtimes, achievements and the games themselves in one fucking spot. If steam becomes wildly anti consumer I would absolutely change my stance. But valve and it's customers have a pretty good relationship imo.
- I wish more companies were like Valve. They are following that old style of making a great product and/or providing a great service to make consumers happy to spend their money there. The only mixed feelings I have about spending money on steam is "do I really need more games when there's a ton in my library that I still haven't even installed let alone played?"
  I hope they stay private and that Gabe has or finds an heir that follows his mindset rather than decides to go for a quick payout.
  Even when those other companies embrace shitty business practices to make more money and it works for them, they are just setting the stage for a better company to come along and replace them.
  
  Dude, we are so fucking boned if Gaben ever retires/dies/does not become GLaDOS. Valve is one of the only companies I can think of that hasn't squandered goodwill completely and generally maintains a tight ship (aside from maybe Costco).
  Can guarantee some random, unkempt, 38 year old asshole from the pharmaceutical industry will make Steam subscription only, throw it on the stock market, and have it tank due to some hedge fund mindset within 5 years if they hire a new CEO.
  
  Not to mention valve making a device that proliferates Linux game support more than anything else… ever.

Say what you will about epic, but this is compelling as hell for Devs. Hopefully this puts more pressure on Steam to reduce their cut. Competition is good.
If you're so against epic, have a little patience and wait until it comes to steam 6 months later. That's what I'll be doing. But don't just mindlessly shit in epic because you (as a consumer) don't like their business model intended to attract devs. You can dislike something while also recognising the good in it.
- My view is that it incentiveses exclusives in the PC space, as opposed to lowering Steam's charge for their services. My biggest concern for gaming is that we end up just like streaming services. A bunch of exclusives and a marketplace that is such a mess you can barely find what service has what you want.
  
  It's a fair concern, but I don't think anything has remained exclusive on epic, they all come to Steam eventually. If that changes and epic starts incentivising permanent exclusivity, then I'll be upset. But as it is right now, I have no issues with epic.
  
  I know so many people call those situations a "mess", but I'm still in favor of it: Each potential service option keeps the other in check through competition. I only get to use so many streaming services for so cheap because they're lowering their prices in a bid to seem more appealing than the others. When it comes to game stores, their unique features (like say, Xbox's game pass) can make them more compelling.
  Granted, 90% of that last argument has just been "Steam has Xfeature, and YStore doesn't...so I prefer Steam"
- I'm not so sure, this seems like a less compelling deal than what Epic was offering before, which didn't seem to be working out so well for devs.
  Before, they were outright paying for exclusivity, offering studios and publishers huge sums of money to make up for the revenue they lose by not being on Steam, and then some. And they often paid for 12+ months of exclusivity. You were guaranteed profitability regardless of whether or not your game actually succeeded.
  In order to break even in the new program, your game needs to retain 70% of the customers that would have bought it day 1 on Steam instead. That seems an impossibly high target to hit, given how much Epic has struggled to make EGS succeed even when they were thowing a lot more money around.
- I never truly understood the hate for epic. They've made some of the best games of all time, give away 1-2 games for free every single week, and they ensure that most annoying kids are in fortnite and not games that adults want to play. Oh noooo. You have to open a separate launcher to play your video game! The horror!
  
  No review system for games, no return policy, no community tabs or markets, no appear offline mode, they allow shitcoins and nfts on their platform, forcing their launcher onto games they own (Rocket League that launches through Epic but I bought it on Steam), collecting a metric fuckton of user data and input, and finally very close connections with Tencent. Sure i'm missing a bunch more.
  
  In your comment you admit you don't know, and then end your comment with an out of touch assumption. Good job.
  
  Yeah, if that launcher is not so suck ass at what it does that I have to resort to Heroic Launcher. Not to mention some of the games on Epic just... weird, like Epic Skyrim doesn't work with SKSE

you guys can pay developers all you want but nobody is gonna stick if your launcher is still shit
- Just use playnite or one of the alternatives, it's so much easier launching every game from the one place.
  I only open epic launcher once a week to get the free game I'll never play and that's it.
  
  Playnite is a must for any gamer
  It can open any game
  
  playnite is phenomenal!! I use it as well but have to occasionally still jumpscare myself opening the epic launcher to update stuff
- But why does the launcher matter when all you need it for it to launch a game?
  
  Because it's actually dogshit. Like in every thinkable way a launcher "could be bad" it is.
  Examples:
  -Cannot move games or files, IN ANY CAPACITY. If you move a game folder or file the Epic launcher loses sight of it and the launcher has no way at all to tell it where existing files are. I learned this when I tried to move GTA V and had to reinstall the full game in the exact same location so that epic could see it.
  -The launcher is the slowest loading launcher and service in the world. I have a 7800x3D and an nvme and EGS is the slowest launcher on my computer by a country mile (fucking Uplay is faster). Also on top of that, it has a major hard on for making you log back in on the same fucking computer (what feels like weekly). Meanwhile I don't touch steam for 2 weeks and, guess what? It still logs me in! How the hell did they figure out that crazy tech?!
  -It has absolutely 0 of the function the steam launcher has. Besides letting you spend money on games and launch them. No communities, workshop, friends features, profiles, voice calling, steam share, remote play together, etc.
  I could go on but this all just grinds my gears when they do nothing but tout how they are "for gamers" and "for developers" when they're clearly just here for fucking money. They use anti consumer practices to lock people into an ecosystem that for some reason they refuse to improve (wild fucking concept, maybe people would use their launcher if it wasn't one of the least functional ones available!), and instead try to bait people in and keep them around with a free game a week. I'll never, ever willingly give a cent to epic games. They've proven they don't give a fuck about gaming or the consumer experience
  edit: changed you to they when referring to Epic Games at the end
- Steam was shit for like the first 10 years, though, and people suck around until it got better, so I'm not sure this is true.
  
  I'm not fully sure the steam comparison works only because that was a different time.
  With that said I still think epic has staying power if for no other reason than anyone mildly interested has a massive epic library sitting there. I don't spend a ton of time thinking about epic, but I do want to keep my account because of all those games.
  
  When a new product like a TV from a new manufacturer shows up people judge it by standards from 10 years ago as opposed to current ones? Same from software?
  
  What was the alternative for the first ten years? Nothing better for sure.

So is it just me or does every game that becomes a epic exclusive never do as well as they should. i think most game developers realize this, which is why epic is desperate to get developers on their failing launcher. maybe they should try offering all the things steam does. regardless i cant switch because i own too many games on steam, im locked in.
- It’s because PC gamers overwhelmingly will just ignore the game until it comes to steam, but by the time it comes to steam it’s been 6 months - 1 year and all the hype around the game has died.
  People have been voting with their wallets and not rewarding anti-competitive behavior for once
  
  thats what i was hinting at. and im not totally happy about epic ruining launches over trying to be a replacement for a, in my opinion, much better system which offers much more ever if they developers don't use all the features. i do wish steam would add a lower tier which takes less of the profit from indie developers that hardly use any of these features.
  
  Only buying on Steam is anti-competitive
- What was wild to me is when Kingdom Hearts dropped on Epic and no one cared. Should have been the hot topic for at least a few days but... nothing.
  
  That's probably also partially due to how crazy overpriced it is though
  
  Kingdom Hearts was a double whammy of poor decision making on Squeenix's part. Not only did they launch on EGS, where most PC players aren't going to care about it, they launched it at an absurd price. They were selling the HD collection for $50 when you could walk over to GameStop or Target and get the PS4 version for $20.
  
  When you finally make a game like KH available to a new audience, and no one gives a shit... You've done something horribly wrong.
- I 100000% believe your comment on the pre-existing library is why they give free games away weekly. They want you to build a library that you then won't want to move from which is exactly why I too don't like being forced to buy things on another game store. I don't like exclusives no matter where they are, it's anticompetitive bullshit.
- Why choose one over the other when you can use something like Playnite or similar to track all your collections across multiple services?
  
  i work too much to spend time looking into systems like this. also i don't use windows.
- Steam has a really loyal base that for some reason think buying from a different store is akin to buying a whole new platform
  I’ll avoid games on Steam as much as I can to foster competition but breaking into that user base is difficult
  
  the reason for that is because steam isn't just a launcher. if you don't use steam you might think so, because giving you a play button, managing downloads, and maybe tracking achievements is all other platforms do. steam, on the other hand, is an entire toolkit built to simplify everything in gaming -- whether what you seek is community spaces, a workshop to easily install mods and other community content, one-click linux compatibility, in-home streaming, easy game invites and in-game chat with your friends, or a plethora of other features, buying on steam vs non-steam is usually a massive difference.
  i bought gta v on disk back when it released, as opposed to my friends who only joined a few years later and had the bandwidth to just buy the steam version and download it, and whenever we played together they just had so much of an easier experience.
  the reason steam's user base is so loyal is because steam provides things that actually matter to them, and valve spent decades ensuring that they provide the best damn experience possible. epic games, on the other hand, had one surprise success with fortnite, and decided they want the game store market to turn it into a long-term revenue stream, but what they forgot to consider is to give people the same experience steam provides. egs has a fundamentally selfish design, it literally only caters to epic and only does the bare minimum for anyone else.
  so if your proposition is that people should ditch that platform that goes out of its way to provide for them and instead be content with the bare minimum because the company behind that platform is evil because checks notes it's too popular and makes it hard for other corporations to act as middlemen and collect the game store tax themselves instead, i don't think you'll be able to convince too many people.
  
  I’ll avoid games on Steam as much as I can to foster competition
  Cool. I'm going to open my own store that costs twice as much as Steam and has none of the features. I'll let you know when it's ready so you can purchase from me in order to "foster competition".
  
  Its is buying a new platform, rather than have my games in 1 platform, they would be in 2. also steam offers much more (at a greater cost to developers) then epic. i also only use linux, which is a not hard at all with steam.
  
  I had a few games on Impulse but my account vanished when it got sold to Gamestop so I can understand people being worried about buying games on other platforms. One reason I like GoG due to offline installers
  
  The problem is that none of these other launchers offer features like Steam Input, Proton, in-home streaming, a good overlay, and the Workshop. Steam competes by making their platform the most attractive to customers.
  Alternatives to Steam need to find their own niche. GOG is doing well in their niche of fixing up older games and selling them DRM-free. The only "killer feature" EGS has is that they take a smaller cut from publishers. But end users don't care about that, because it doesn't translate to lower prices. I can chose between spending $60 for the same game on Steam or EGS, but the EGS version comes without all the extra features I listed above.

Steam has proton, Epic games does nkt even have a linux launcher, its obvious who I'm sticking with
- I mean, I've been able to get epic games working on my deck through the heroic launcher. I've still not given them one thing dime but I've got a fair sized collection of giveaway games that are nice to have around
- Effectively no percent of the market uses Linux
  
  That percent of the market really changes for some indie titles who have noted a substantial amount of their purchases were from Steam Decks.
  
  100% of me uses Linux so epic can get fucked as far as I'm concerned

God I hate Epic. I hate them with every fiber of my being. The fact that I have to have their crappy, insecure game store bloatware just to try to learn Unreal for personal projects is dumb. Hence why I am learning Unity and Godot.
- As a long time Unity user, Unity sucks ass. All of the good things about unity are the things they bought like cinemachine and textmesh pro.
  Unity technologies can't for the life of them make a damn decision and stick with it. As a result, Unity has a decade plus of technical bloat and debt that can never be fully paid because of the need for backwards compatibility.
  
  Oh, I know. I headed a major project which involved usurping the root level of geometry in the Unity engine and injecting massive amounts of data into it and we actually found some major flaws in their underlying logic which only would come up when you hit the levels of throughput that we were dealing with. Getting them to admit to the fault was pulling teeth, but they did fix it once they were confronted live with the issue. So that's good on them at least. But that aside, the project went well and the tool at the other end is nothing short of incredible. I'd still rather work in Unity than Unreal for most of the types of projects I tend to do.
- Same. They killed unreal tournament as well. Mutual funds and corporate entities need not exist.
  
  It's such a bummer fortnite happened when it did... they pulled everyone with multiple PvP shooter experience off the UT4 team and killed the project.
- I don't know that I'd take a moral stand against epic and for unity https://www.gamedeveloper.com/culture/why-is-unity-s-merger-with-ironsource-angering-developers
  Don't forget https://www.crytek.com/ is still around too and still making CryEngine (there were some bad years where they were struggling to pay people, but they seem to be in a good place again). Lots of work going on behind the scenes to improve this engine for Crysis 4 and Hunt Showdown from what I understand.
  There's also the (heavily modified at this point) cryengine derived https://o3de.org/.
- I played a game for like 2 hours and 30ish minutes, 30 minutes longer than their allowed refund window because I forgot to close it when I went to the bathroom after deciding I didn't want to keep playing, and my buddy who played with me had like 2 hours and 14 minutes.
  They accepted his refund request no problem and denied mine even after I got a supervisor involved.
  I will never ever use their service again, they can keep my $70 but they'll never get another dime. Fuck em and their bribery of game developers.
  
  So, you don't like Epic because they didn't offer a refund beyond the refund window? Idk man, I don't like them for many reasons but this seems a bit off

Hey maybe you should make a launcher that isn't shit?
I mean, good on you for paying the developers well but Steam became very popular because they kept improving it.

They'll get 100% of my zero dollars that way.

Never forget that GOG is also an option!
- Huh? GOG still seems to be online. Did anything get announced?
  
  Oh no, sorry if I scared anyone. I just wanted to remind people to buy games from GOG
  
  I don't think GOG is going anywhere, perhaps the poster above you just used weird phrasing (English might not be their first language)

"Let us offer you 100% of the money from a marketplace 0.0001% as large! Did we mention you get all the money that neither of us are making? We will throw in all the good will with gamers we've earned too."
- If the game is in demand, people will go there if it's the only option. It's not a great option for some obscure indie game, but it is for mid-budget projects that have already gotten interest.
  
  That's fair. I personally just skip those. But maybe few enough people skip to make the lower fees worth it.
  For the majority of game studios this seems like a terrible deal though.

I already block ads and advertisements, so the game will just be completely off my radar for another six months until I see friends start playing it. Eh. It's far too much effort to try a new platform after the dumpsterfires of Origin and Uplay to play 1-3 games.
The only game I'd actually install a new launcher for would be a new Half Life Game.
- I had a friend who really got into satisfactory. And since we were all a factorio group, it seems like our kind of crazy. We are excited for it. When it came out as an epic exclusive, that one friend went for it. And tried to get us all to join him. We're like okay we'll join you soon as it comes out on steam. Some converted some didn't.
  But over time I've had my personal friends tell me, yeah I see why you didn't make that choice, earlier I thought you were just being stubborn but now I totally understand it.
  
  Totally understand what exactly?
- I only installed steam to get the orange box.

I mean that's seems like a decent deal for developers but I'm not buying it until it goes Steam and GoG.

Lol, Epic losing steam? No pun intended.
Also, fuck Epic.

They've done everything to encourage game developers, expecting consumers to follow. But none of this entices me to leave steam. I, like many, will gladly wait.
- Monopolies are the best for the consumers, we all know that 👌

A 100% of $0 is still $0.
- Sorry to reply to a random comment, but I’ve been trying to get the attention of one of the tvplus mods. Could you check your DMs?
  
  Apologies, it seems DMs are somewhat broken. I've found your DM and sent you a reply.

Other posters seem to forget that competition is very important for this kind of thing.
Sure it's annoying when Epic stops games releasing in other platforms, and especially how the epic launcher and it's games do not support Linux.
But without competition, steam can continue with an insanely high cut of indie game sales, and that is NOT ok.
- How is it competition when you only have one place to get it? Isn't that just a monopoly? Sure it's temporary, but there's nothing competitive about "buy here or nowhere."
  
  I don't think that's the same thing as a monopoly. Or at the very least it's not nearly as bad. The presence of Epic on the market has been great for developers, because they can get good deals at epic AND Valve has been forced to reevaluate their prices.
- it's games do not support Linux.
  I just use Heroic and like 90% of my epic library just works. Admittedly, still won't spend anything on epic, but then, I like Heroic more than Steam at the moment...
  
  Until I see official Linux support, I'm not putting any eggs in the community Linux launchers. Rug could easily be pulled
  
  Heroic Game Launcher ist awesome. Use it for both, my Epic and GOG libraries.
- I can't wait for lemmy to become a viable competitor to Reddit, I hate seeing those smug bastards at the top of my search results.
  
  I think this is pretty viable, at least as a daily driver. Reddit has a lot more as far as help threads go, but the community here is fantastic.

How about you improve your goddamn service instead of holding my games hostage on your shitty launcher?
- It's almost like Valve invests their 30% cut into more than just CDN bandwidth and exclusivity contracts. They use it to build a compelling platform that people actually want to use.

Guess I'll get the game on sale

This is probably a worse deal than the previous offer of guaranteed revenue regardless of performance.

Reeks of desperation, Tim's hate boner for Valve seem to drive a lot of Epic's policies
- i doubt it's a hate boner tbh, it just needs to be communicated that way if he wants the slightest chance of success here. their real game is that they saw the 30% cut steam makes from most games and decided it's free real estate, that it is the way they'll keep themselves rich after fortnite's hype cycle runs out. the problem is, they haven't put in the decade of work to everything gamers want that would justify that cut -- it's actually exceedingly hard to beat steam in their own game, so instead epic tries to breed hatred for steam to take their cut through duplicitous marketing as opposed to genuinely just outcompeting them.
  i'm not defending tim sweeney here (in fact i'm calling him a lying fuck), but i think he's just a lying fuck, not a hater. the hate is just a marketing strategy. but who knows, maybe he got in his own head and started actually hating valve after he couldn't beat them this way
  
  This is a fair point, Valve has earned that 30% cut imo, the amount of stuff they offer to devs is pretty impressive, meanwhile Epic is still playing catch-up. I guess they're still trying to establish a good user base that they can point to as consistent income outside of Fortnite, and this is an option they're going for.

Developers, or their MBA publishers? I HIGHLY doubt developers beyond indie studios benefit from this.

Fuck Epic and any store who tries to remove games from others.
- Fuck giving the devs and artists more money. Fuck them.
  
  Game dev here, please stop licking these dirty boots. 99% of the money goes way up the ladder and into the heads of people with 0 interest in making fun games
  
  You're being downvoted, but i think it's from people that think you're being genuine. Not necessarily from steam fanboys.

I don't have a problem with Epic offering this. The problem is with publishers that take this offer. Bunch of greedy bastards.
- They offer a better cut than steam already. I don't see why anyone would take this. Just put the game up both places. The only games this would actually work out for are the massive ones that people would seek out and download epic games bullshit for. Even then they'd likely lose so many sales it doesn't make sense.
- How dare they want a bigger cut of their own money!

Actually a compelling deal for developers, wonder how many indie / AA developers will go for that instead of steam
- I've heard that a lot of games have been a loss due to releasing on Epic as an early exclusive, as the first few months are critical.
  
  Epic Exclusives do seem to have quieted down of late don't they.
  
  I noticed they seem to have pulled back in exclusives, I guess that's why.
- This is literally just a souped up version of their original market share scheme. It didn't work out for most devs before, why would it now? Epic is just trying to corner the market with these exclusive deals but nobody gives a fuck about epic besides a free game sometimes.
  
  I'd rather pay on Steam than get it for free on Epic tbh
- This seems like a worse deal than what Epic's been offering though. Haven't they been giving lump sum payments to developers to go exclusive with their store for a set time?
  
  That was my understanding. I don't know how Fortnite is doing, but I thought perhaps they are running out of money when they announced this new "thing".

Any game that signs a deal with epic like this goes on my boycott list.

And so the enshitification of epic begins.
- Begins? Wasn't that by original design?
- How?
  
  Lure in devs with an unsustainably good deal -> try to lock them in to semi-exclusivity -> use this to pull customers away from valve and other marketplaces -> monopolize the market -> turn around and sell out to shareholders by milking as much money and data as they can from players and developers -> profit

I don't think I've spent any money on the Epic Launcher yet but I'm happy to see them try their best. Competition is good and needed.
- The problem with Epics approach is theyre doing competition for devs, not compition for consumers.
  Compition for content usually comes at the cost of consumer convenience or benefit (e.g the multitude of streaming platforms for movies and videos)
  
  Exactly. This isn’t encouraging competition; It’s encouraging exclusivity. The two are diametrically opposed. If you’re competing over exclusives, you’re not really competing to make the best platform possible. It’s a race to the bottom, because Epic has consistently proven that they don’t care about the consumer experience. Their launcher is hot garbage, and they seemingly have no plans on improving it. Meanwhile, Steam has a best-in-class launcher and has been making improvements every single week.
  If Epic focused on improving the usability and the feature set, I think they’d find gamers much more willing to give it a try. But when every single experience with a platform is bad, gamers are going to dig their heels in and refuse to use it out of spite.
  
  Competition for dev's is fine, its the exclusivity deals that show them to be evil.
  Offer devs a better cut of the profits, devs can sell the game for less on Epic and make the same money as steam... a real price war to reduce fees. The devs and customers would naturally follow.
  But Epic has demonstrated they want to take advantage of their "customers"... so many reasonable people are like... Steam is the devil we know, a chill devil we can get a beer with, and eat some hot dogs on the weeknds with, The Lowbowski of devils.... were good.
- They've mostly tried their best to make as much money as possible, not actually compete as a service, though, unfortunately.

sniff sniff I know this scent, desperation

You mean the publisher?

I'd expect EGS exclusivity to be the norm then. People who will buy the game eventually will buy the game eventually. Those are fixed sales since they'd get the same revenue from them either way. It's just a breakdown of the sales lost from people refusing to buy the game ever outweighs the 30% you gain. Which at this point it seems like a ridiculous proposal since every game seems to launch to bigger and bigger numbers regardless of what bullshit the game pulls. People who wait for sales would barely matter since a steam sale is like a year after release and they weren't making bank on them anyways.
But at face value, getting 70% of one Steam sale is only 10% more than you'd make off two copies sold at 100%. So one "never buy" looses you 2.3 sales of a game in revenue. Cool but any converted sale from someone who wouldve bought on Steam but can't wait and buys on EGS offset that in favor of EGS. I guarantee more people will buy from EGS compared to never buying the game. 2.3x more? Yeah, for sure, lol. I'm sure someone could do some clown math for a break even point per 1 million sales at that point. But considering a bulk of a games purchase is at launch it's just skewed so heavily toward EGS exclusivity makes more financial sense.
There's also the percentage that just don't buy on PC and buy on console instead, but again that's the same cut you'd get just launching it on Steam
- I'd love to see the actual sales numbers of recent, big titles on EGS vs Steam. I absolutely hate using EGS, and with the awesomely high game game density these days, I just don't mind missing the few exclusives until they get on steam, and even then it is only if I remember them, since usually the hype has died out by then, and other games are out. I have no idea what percentage of users are similar to me.

Is this in lieu of an insentive payout up front or is it supplementary to one? If this is supplementary to an upfront payout I could see how it'd be worth it for a small dev. But if you don't get that payout up front for exclusivity I can't see how this would make any sense. I can't imagine EGS sales amount to much compared to what you'd get from a steam release; even with 100% revenue.

Ouf, crazy how many people are actually pushing for valve to have a complete monopoly. Ya it's a good product but so was chrome. Diversity is important for consumers.
- Funny how most of us are also just fine with GoG, green man gaming, humble bundle, and the like. Just because a lot of people don't like one particular store front and practices doesn't mean we're cheering on monopolization.
- If an actual competitor arises sure, but why support scummy anti-consumer practices?
  
  Fair point, I guess I was ready to disregard it because of the money going to devs and epic already taking less of a cut then valve. Exclusives do suck.
- Just because the competition fucking sucks ass doesn't mean the best one has a monopoly. 🤦‍♂️ There is still competition... It's just weak as shit.
  Maybe if the competition stepped up and offered similar services and functions, they wouldn't need to pull bullshit like Epic is with exclusivity deals, and actually take some market share.
  GOG Galaxy is a decent one. It actually offers a lot of what makes Steam so strong. It's still not as good, but they also deal with a certain niche area of gaming, making even their store more relevant than EGS, Origin, etc.
  
  GOG is wonderful! You don't even need to use a launcher if you don't want to, DRM free is my jam.
  That said, I wish they would improve their launcher, especially when it comes to updating games: I shouldn't need hundreds of gigs of free space to patch a big game.
- "Monopoly", and yet when a game is on Steam I can buy it wherever I want. What stores can I buy Epic exclusives exactly?
  
  They have key resellers now, but hey, you guys don't care if they improve their shit, your opinion was made even before they released
- There is a lot more history to Epic than just a monopoly; that company and ceo dug their grave and they can sit in it.
- Reading the posts... everyone seems pretty cool with GoG... Value and GoG sitting in a tree, not being assholes yippeeee
- They need to make a better product to compete. I'm not rooting for valve but epic can eat a bag of dicks too.
- I don't mind competition but I hate superfluous launchers that launch when you launch a game from another launcher.
  I'd love to see competing game stores that were all genuinely good, but let's be honest: Most of them are mediocre-to-shit.
- Epic have more than enough fortnite money to make a launcher that's not shit
- That's like Walmart showing up to a town that didn't have any and claiming it's diversity because it isn't Costco. Options are good, but there needs to actually be a better reason for customers to use it than just use it even though it sucks for the sake of competition. Especially if this competitor is taking the approach of buying out the competition to remove availability, which doesn't give the impression they are a company with goals of being benevolent should they get bigger.
- Not disagreeing with you, but I'm not responsible for Epic being successful. Steam has always been my only place for games, and a few months ago I even deleted my Epic account with a few free games (CIV 6, GTA V) and purchased them on Steam summer sale.
  I can't be arsed to make new accounts, set up friends, payments, install a bunch of shit again and again for any storefront that pops up. Steam is reliable, has good sales, and hasn't pissed its users off to make them leave.
  I'm not even sure luring devs with 6 months of exclusivity is a bad thing for steam users. Games come out in such bad states nowadays that probably sticking with steam and getting a functional game later is better than being a beta tester on Epic.
  
  Valve has won me over with Steam Deck too. It's more stream lined to install a game and get going on Linux compared to the setup for other launchers. Maybe other competitors should pay attention to Linux more. If they are supposedly for open platforms then why not actually invest in making the experience better on Linux as opposed to being so stubborn in only supporting the windows ecosystem. You'd think Epic would jump on it with how they've constantly complained about Apple's ecosystem and Android even though that at least allows side loading.

Temptation

I think they should double their offer and keep the duration adjustable:
Be one week exclusive, get 100% for two weeks,
Be one month exclusive, get 100% for two months.
Then, it becomes a game for the publisher. Launch on Epic and if there are no transactions, abort after one day. But if there are sales, hold on a bit to pocket the 100%.
Publishers will gamble and stay on Epic a bit longer to get better percentages from the strongest fans but they have to end exclusivity to capture the entire market.
- I think exclusive on X should just not be a thing.
  I think the stores should fight with pricing. If steam takes 30% and epic 12%, the price of the game needs to be cheaper by the difference in cut.
  
  Imo the only thing that "should" be exclusive are first party titles. Besides that I completely agree

There's a lot of weird steam fanboy comments going on in here. A company doesn't need or deserve your loyalty.
- I think people just want to be able to buy the game where they want to without a big corporation forcing exclusivity. All these tactics epic has been using have not done them any favors with public opinion. They should of just focused on a better storefront/product and sold games cheaper. No one likes being forced.
- it's not about loyalty, it's just about going with the better product and being mad when we're forced to go with the inferior one.
  like, for a different example, when people are mad that starfield doesn't feature nvidia technologies, that's not because they're nvidia fanboys. the vast majority of gamers hate nvidia right now, especially those who have nvidia gpus, because they'd like to upgrade and the options suck so hard. but not being able to use the better upscaling tech that your gpu supports just because amd made a deal with bethesda to force their inferior products on everyone, and drag down everyone instead of propping up amd users, is just infuriating. people aren't looking out for nvidia there, they're looking out for themselves, and they just don't want to be punished for going with one corpo vs another.
  steam vs egs is the same thing. no one gives a flying fuck about gaben's wallet, it's about the experience you're getting. people don't want to ditch steam's extremely versatile client for a barebones play button on egs.
  i think it's the epic games side that has fanboys in this comment section, because there is no reason for someone to prefer egs for their own good. every argument for egs takes the form of "well, if we allowed them to earn a bunch of money, " and that's fanboyism. people just wanting the better stuff for themselves without regard to the company making it is not fanboyism.
  and sure, there's still an argument to be made about market conditions and long-term consequences, but i really don't think it makes sense here. steam has a proven track record of providing for gamers for decades at this point and i really don't see why epic games would be more trustworthy. i do actually buy stuff on gog every once in a while, both for selfish reasons (i want the offline installers) and for long-term thinking (i want a drm-free platform to continue existing) but there's no similar calculus for epic games. the main argument for them is that they're not steam, but if that's why we'd be propping up a competitor, it should be gog, not egs.

Fuck steam and apple but you’re a sucker if you think epic will be any better
- Why fuck steam?

Can't wait for all the steam marks to label this anti-consumer.
- It's pro-publisher and pro-developer. What benefit does this give me as a consumer? I get to have fun watching Bobby Kotick and the other game studio execs buy a sixth yacht? Or are you trying to make an argument for trickle-down economics here?
  
  Maybe I should explain my use of the term "mark". Because the Epic store has had these pro-developer policies for a while, and has been my go to for purchasing smaller games.
  But in my experience the store has been constantly called anti-consumer, by people clearly upset Steam has competition. Hence the use of "mark" a pro wrestling term for over enthusiastic fans.
- Hi my name is Mark. I like to buy my games on steam, and GOG.
  I hate to see exclusivity deals. I guess that makes me a sucker.

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