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Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

• bearcobra 8y ago
  Obviously there's a non-zero cost for developers to publish thru multiple stores, so it makes sense to try to incentivize them with a greater share of revenue. It would be interesting if they tried to leverage the popularity of Fortnite to also do this on Android.
  • taormina 8y ago
    Ditto, I'd love to see this pushed out to the mobile platforms as well.
  • swarnie_ 8y ago
    Just wait until digital distribution services catch up to console levels of bullshit and start licencing exclusives or "exclusive for X months after launch" for bigger titles.
    • vatueil 8y ago
      Epic is in fact planning to buy third-party exclusives for their new store: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/epic-undercuts-steam-with-new-store-that-gives-devs-more-money/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/epic-undercuts-steam-... > Sweeney told Ars that the company plans to "start small" and will "sometimes fund developers to release games exclusively through the store," Sweeney told Ars.
  • anoncake 8y ago
    There's also a cost for the customer; they have to use multiple launchers.
    • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      Only sort of. All applications use one master launcher: The operating system. Battle.net, Origin, Steam, etc. all can put desktop shortcuts to individual games.
      • chongli 8y ago
        Steam is much more than a launcher, it's a social networking platform for games. Everyone has their friends lists on there, groups, etc. Network effects make it difficult to move your contact list over to a new platform.
        • plopz 8y ago
          I've found that Discord has largely replaced both Steam and Battle.net as the social platform.
          • belltaco 8y ago
            Agree, but a lot of games use the Steam service for adding and playing together with friends in ingame lobbies. Battlenet also has it's own social service that all games on it use, same with Epic.
          • mhh__ 8y ago
            In some circles yes, but discord is more replacing teamspeak/skype than steam directly. They are clearly pushing in valves direction, however (Discord has games too etc.). Also, Discord looks pretty is depressingly badly constructed software.
        • moate 8y ago
          Haven't we proven time and time again that if a product is attractive enough, it will attract people and you won't really be porting everyone over as much as locating them on the platform? Plus having the largest game in the world (at the moment) helps build some inertia towards early adoption if they use that to funnel people into the system. I don't need to "rebuild my contacts" if Fornite suddenly requires me to add myself to the EGS, because that just sort of sorts itself out. The Network effect can be used by Epic as well.
  • Blaaguuu 8y ago
    Tim Sweeney said in an interview that they are planning on launching their store on Android in 2019. https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/12/04/tim-sweeney-answers-questions-about-the-new-epic-games-store https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/12/04/tim-sweeney-answers-...
• wetpaws 8y ago
  No matter how much I like Steam, breaking their monoculture would be objectively good.
  • OberstKrueger 8y ago
    I generally agree with this, although I worry about too many stores having exclusives. Steam doesn't have many exclusives, but Blizzard games are only on their launcher; new EA games are only on Origin; Bethesda looks to be exploring this route by having Fallout 76 only on their launcher. I fear having to keep a separate launcher for every major publisher in the future.
    • leevlad 8y ago
      I don't know if that's really a problem. When a AAA title that I want to play comes out, I will buy it regardless of what launcher it comes through. I'll download the installer straight from their site if that's what they want to do. I think having something like Steam is great primarily for discovery and ratings.
      • jsgo 8y ago
        I'd be game with the multiple storefronts if the library aspect were decoupled. If I bought Sea of Thieves in Microsoft Store and I bought Destiny 2 in Battle.NET, having a launcher that was able to download and install both of them with little configuration beyond linking to the MS Store/Battle.net accounts (not quite Movies Anywhere in that your library moves between services, but the launcher has discoverability and download capability for all of them), I'd be 100% fine with all of this. Instead, I find it to be a chore sometimes where if I have an urge to play a Uplay game and my password needs to be re-entered and I either need to locate it via 1password or if that isn't available, reset password and all that jazz.
        • max76 8y ago
          Discord Library is an attempt to launch all games from a single application. You can also configure steam to be able to launch non-steam exes.
• ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Epic seems to be really trying to kill the 30% cut game. First by bucking the Play Store on Android and now offering their own competitor to Steam on PC. Sort of impressive, glad to see we aren't going to be cemented into these cuts forever. If everyone who has Fortnite has the Epic Games Store by default, there will be a huge initial market penetration as well.
  • gamegod 8y ago
    I love that this is the same play that Valve used to launch Steam - They used the success of Counter-Strike and then Half-Life 2 to create a massive install-base for Steam.
  • tabs_masterrace 8y ago
    Nice to see some resistance to the 30% cuts, with Apple recently having to deal with a lawsuit regarding the AppStore as well. Not to diminish the value of the service, but 30% for what amounts to CDN + Payment Processing, is too much. The deal used to come with some amount of marketing & discover-ability, but that has basically shifted to the developer as well. But even then, in a normal world you should have to bear some risk of the product to get that kind of cut.
• max76 8y ago
  Are game launchers becoming a race to the bottom?
  • the_clarence 8y ago
    No. Ubisoft already tried and even gave out a bunch of games for free. Didn’t work.
    • findthewords 8y ago
      What is Ubisoft's carrot? They don't command a game engine ecosystem. What can they offer that others do not?
      • vkou 8y ago
        Ubisoft's carrot is wasting hours of your time fighting a crippled UPlay launcher that doesn't even work, so that you can access a mediocre Ubisoft exclusive. It's a hard pass for me.
    • flukus 8y ago
      > Didn’t work. When you say didn't work, does that mean they've given up? Is it safe to buy ubisoft games without the uPlay cripple ware required?
• jtokoph 8y ago
  If they pair this with a 10% discount on games to the consumer they can attract both devs and consumers.
  • a13n 8y ago
    Why do they need to attract consumers? Isn't Fortnite already the most popular game in the world? From what I can find, latest report of Steam MAU is 90 million people, and latest report of Fortnite MAU is 75 million. They already have the consumers.
    • nottorp 8y ago
      But Fortnite is free to play crap, so like 0.1% of those 75 million actually paid something?
      • tialaramex 8y ago
        Valve got the initial userbase for Steam via, among other things, giving away "free to play crap" as well as their award-winning Portal. It was several years before my Steam account had a single purchase on it, Valve correctly guessed that users who never buy anything at all help generate those enormous userbase numbers and don't cost that much to service so it's fine.
        • nottorp 8y ago
          Hmm, wasn't it Half Life 2 (paid for) and only then their award-winning Portal (also paid for)? There were no or very few free to play abominations back then.
          • tialaramex 8y ago
            Portal was free on Steam. That was the incentive. Heard about this cool game but not sure you can justify full price for what sounds like a weird tech demo? Install Steam and it's free (for a limited time). Most people I know who play some games but not many installed Steam precisely to try Portal for free. Valve has doubtless made back the investment many times over, even if you ignore the fact that Portal was already wildly successful and so didn't need to earn Valve one single extra penny.
• jsgo 8y ago
  Pulling from what I said in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18600248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18600248 I guess this explains Valve improving the revenue share a bit on Steam recently. Also, at first I wasn't thinking this would be much of anything (yet another storefront), but the kicker per the article is that those developing in Unreal Engine would not pay a percentage for the use of Unreal Engine (~5%) on top of the store cut (~12%). That would probably be huge for developers so I could see this one actually taking off.
• criddell 8y ago
  If Apple loses their anti-trust case in court and is forced to open iOS to alternative app stores, does that mean the consoles would be forced to open up their platform as well? It would be nice to have some of these alternative stores on the PS4 and XBox.
  • bluetidepro 8y ago
    That's an interesting thought, but I wonder if it's a different context. Today, you can go to many physical stores to purchase console games, you don't HAVE to use the PS4/Xbox digital stores only. You can even purchase the digital codes from many stores to redeem. I don't know much about the Apple case, but I assume that's maybe different because you HAVE to use Apple's iOS store. There isn't alternatives like physical stores to buy your apps to load them onto your phone.
    • user5994461 8y ago
      Every console game must be approved by the console maker for sale and pay a fee for every copy sold. That's how manufacturers make money. They also impose stringent requirements like the first menu must be "press start" and the X key for menu actions.
  • kabdib 8y ago
    It's very unlikely for the consoles to be opened up in a technical sense. At least on the Xbox, the store is not very pluggable, and allowing third parties to sign code just ain't going to happen. I would expect relief here to be financial. No way is MS going to relinquish platform control.
  • Eridrus 8y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that console hardware is usually sold below cost to get people into the ecosystem and make that back as people buy games. So forcing console makers to allow other stores would probably have a much more dramatic impact on the console market. And while IANAL, it seems a bit of a stretch to apply anti-trust law here.
• preommr 8y ago
  Well this makes me feel awkward as a Unity dev. I saw that they'll allow unity based games on their new store but I wonder if that's just for the short term. Kind of makes me wonder if I should've chosen Unreal.
  • adamrezich 8y ago
    I see absolutely no reason to believe the Epic Store is ever going to be for just Unreal games.
  • jamp897 8y ago
    No I’m sure they wouldn’t do that, at least as long as Tim is in charge.
  • jarsin 8y ago
    Choose the engine that works for you. They just announced their store. There is a very long way to go before it becomes the next steam. Tons of unity devs switched over to Unreal back in the day. Most came back. Unity is still, by very far, the dominate engine.
  • Profan 8y ago
    Considering Tim Sweeney's pretty strong stance against walling in marketplaces too hard, I think it's.. relatively safe at least.
    • throwaway2048 8y ago
      They have indicated that the epic store will have third party exclusives, so I wouldn't be too sure about that.
• vtesucks 8y ago
  One major upside for publishers in steam is DRM which epic won't offer.
  • Flammy 8y ago
    At this point, it is just features... Unless Epic has something against DRM? Sucks that games on Epic don't (yet?) have cloud save/item store/gifting/whatever but Epic can copy if they want to.
  • mtgx 8y ago
    Why? Steam DRM gets cracked all the time.
    • jsmith45 8y ago
      Right. Back in the day when CS:Source was still one of the main games played on steam, whenever they released a new single player game, the limiting factor for how long until it was on the pirate forums was how long it took to write up the forum post. The Steam DRM itself was generally cracked at all times. I've not kept track, but I'd not be shocked if this was pretty much still the case. It would certainly explain why so many games still have another layer of DRM when sold on steam.
      • vtesucks 8y ago
        I was completely unaware. Thank you.
    • beerlord 8y ago
      The cracks are often where the malware is injected, and what is detected by Windows/AntiVirus. Without DRM your product can just be repackaged and resold, like what happened to the GoG version of Frostpunk being sold on Amazon. I would have liked some basic version of DRM as well. This will drive a lot of developers to Denuvo, which might be overkill.
• kgwxd 8y ago
  I'd be more excited for this much needed competition if it weren't a company that survives by taking advantage of children's naivety of money and natural impulses to sell virtual outfits and animations at sickening prices. App store cuts are ridiculously high, but at least they're not taking candy directly from babies.
  • theevilsharpie 8y ago
    Companies have sought to take money from parents via their children for as long as childrens' products have existed. Epic isn't doing anything new here. At least skins and other virtual assets aren't filling our landfills with plastic crap.
    • my_usernam3 8y ago
      Just to add to that, as a fortnite player, I don't see any glaring psychological attempt to make purchases addicting. Buy shit and you unlock cool outfits, thats it.
      • barbecue_sauce 8y ago
        What if you're addicted to style?
        • bduerst 8y ago
          Not all of us are really ridiculously good looking.
      • melkiaur 8y ago
        It's even better than that. They key mentioning that the crap you buy gives you no competitive advantage, it's cosmetic only. In an age of loot-boxes and pay-to-win, this is super refreshing for a 100% free game.
      • simongr3dal 8y ago
        I think if one of your classmates has a lot of different skins and plays the game for a long time most days you would likely be inclined to try and match what they have and do in the game if you want to continue to be part of this social circle. This is probably even more pronounced today than it was 5-10 years ago, because now there are youtubers and twitch streamers who can spend 4-12 hours every day playing the game and they have massive incomes to spend on virtual items.
• Reedx 8y ago
  Official announcement - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-epic-games-store https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-epic-... "Developers receive 88% of revenue. There are no tiers or thresholds. Epic takes 12%. And if you’re using Unreal Engine, Epic will cover the 5% engine royalty for sales on the Epic Games store, out of Epic’s 12%." "From Epic’s 12% store fee, we’ll have a profitable business we’ll grow and reinvest in for years to come!" This is great news for indies who Steam seems to be ignoring[1] lately in favor of AAA. Maybe that will eventually put enough pressure on them to at least reduce their cut. There's been increasing concern over whether it's worth it for indies given the lack of visibility. If you have to push an audience there anyway, is it worth the 30%? Jason Rohrer[2] and Positech Games[3] for example have been successful outside of Steam keeping a much larger piece of the pie. 1. http://greyaliengames.com/blog/steams-discovery-algorithm-killed-my-sales/ http://greyaliengames.com/blog/steams-discovery-algorithm-ki... 2. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-03-12-jason-rohrers-off-steam-paid-off https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-03-12-jason-rohr... 3. https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2018/11/23/selling-games-direct-from-your-website-in-2018/ https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2018/11/23/selling-gam...
  • jamp897 8y ago
    This link has some Q&A with Tim too with more details: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-12-04-fortnite-maker-epic-takes-on-steam-with-its-own-pc-games-store https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-12-04-fortnite-maker...
    • corysama 8y ago
      More Q&A https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/12/03/tim-sweeney-answers-questions-about-the-new-epic-games-store https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/12/03/tim-sweeney-answers-...
      • Reedx 8y ago
        Sounds like they took a page from Bezos' playbook. Your margin is my opportunity. "In our analysis, stores are marking up their costs 300 percent to 400 percent. We simply aim to give developers a better deal."
• notafraudster 8y ago
  One of the things Steam's 30% cut subsidizes is the generation of unlimited free license keys for developers to do with what they please. So, for instance, if I am an independent developer, I can sell my game on Steam. Say I sell 5,000 copies. I can then turn around and generate 25,000 keys gratis, and sell those on my website (paying maybe a 5-8% fee to my payment processor, but otherwise taking everything). Those keys activate on Steam, at which point my customers get the benefits of Steam and I pay nothing for the bandwidth or upkeep. This also allows me to give keys to other vendors, like Humble or GreenManGaming, who do take a cut (in some cases close to Steam's 30%, in other cases closer to 10-12%). Those vendors may choose to discount my game beyond the discount I offer by giving up more of their margin to the consumer. It is not uncommon to see games on Steam where the origin of user reviews is 50% Steam purchases, 50% off-site key activations, which implies that Steam's effective margin may be as low as 15%. Now, I think most independent developers are willing to sell on any platform who will have them and for whom the marginal costs of submitting / uploading are lower than gross sales, so certainly I don't think Epic is making a bad move here and I suspect they'l get decent developer uptake, but I also think the sort of "topline sticker comparison" obscures some of what's going on. To some extent there may be value in having this discussion a week from now when Epic has rolled out the store and we have a better idea of how other considerations stack up.
  • belltaco 8y ago
    Didn't they restrict the practice somewhat? https://www.vg247.com/2017/08/18/valves-new-policy-on-large-amounts-of-steam-keys-spells-doom-for-cheap-game-bundles/ https://www.vg247.com/2017/08/18/valves-new-policy-on-large-...
    • vatueil 8y ago
      They've tried to prevent people from publishing shell games that no one actually buys to play, that exist only for the sake of generating keys that e.g. make the discounts on game bundles look more attractive, yes. But in general what notafraudster said is true, and generating keys to sell is in fact explicitly condoned: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys > Steam keys are meant to be a convenient tool for game developers to sell their game on other stores and at retail. Steam keys are free and can be activated by customers on Steam to grant a license to a product. > Valve provides the same free bandwidth and services to customers activating a Steam key that it provides to customers buying a license on Steam. We ask you to treat Steam customers no worse than customers buying Steam keys outside of Steam. While there is no fee to generate keys on Steam, we ask that partners use the service judiciously. In practice, as long as you're selling a real product and your keys are for legitimate sales then you'll face no restrictions. Pretty much common sense.
• k__ 8y ago
  Just yesterday I read a rant by an indie-game dev on Twitter, he complained that Steam would flush out good indie games by catering more to AAA studios and simultaneously watering down everything else with Steam direct. Don't know if this is right and I don't know if the Epic Games Store has a solution to this problem, but more competition in the space is probably a good thing.
• EamonnMR 8y ago
  I wish Valve had pushed harder to compete with Origin, but this looks like the end of its complete dominance. Once EA demonstrated that anybody could hack together a launcher, it's become a free for all. As a consumer it's been a worse and worse experience since increasingly small companies felt the need to replace steam with technically inferior solutions. But this is different-now we get a competitor which is willing to sell more than just its own titles, and this will be a major blow to steam (because indies will go for this-fortnight will be the killer app for this new store just as Half Life 2 was for Steam.) I was really rooting for Valve because they where making a linux gaming future look possible.
  • plopz 8y ago
    I've found as a consumer that its gotten much better. Steam's customer support is absolutely atrocious and hugely anti-consumer whereas both Origin and Battle.net have great customer support. I hope this competition drives Steam to be better.
    • aarong11 8y ago
      I've found Steam support to be great on the occasions i've had to use it (refunds etc - pretty much no questions asked).
  • guitarbill 8y ago
    > this will be a major blow to steam we'll see. i'm in no hurry to rush out and buy anything that isn't on Steam. all these articles talk about the cut Epic will take, but as a customer, I couldn't care less. what i do care about is e.g. Steam's excellent return policy. maybe i'm just getting old and am not that interested in games, but i'm happy to pass up games if they aren't on Steam. i'd venture a guess that Steam and Epic Games Store may not be competing for quite the same market; Steam is likely to remain dominant for PC gaming (maybe rightly so, they have worked hard to get there), and Epic Games Store might focus more on mobile gaming instead. so it's a bigger threat to the App Store/Google Play than Steam IMO.
    • 8y ago
• alphakilo 8y ago
  I think we're going to see a lot of Unreal Engine games on this store. With the UE royalty being absorbed by Epic, it seems like a no brainer.
• billfruit 8y ago
  I keep repeating this: two things Steam does right are effortless no-questions-asked refunds, localized prices in many regions of the world, so that people in poorer countries pay affordable prices. I do think that Steam is only going to grow bigger, because most of the growth in game sales are going to come from China, Russia, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Africa, Mexico, Brazil etc than US and Europe. But most other stores does not seem to understand that expanding to these markets is key, and seems to be operating in US&Europe centric strategy. (Off-topic: Incidentally Indonesia is not far behind the US in population, but current predictions show that they aren't going to overtake the US anytime soon, however Nigeria is on track to overtake both US and Indonesia to become the 3rd most populous country by 2050).
  • benologist 8y ago
    Their refund policy is good but it's worth nothing they only give those refunds because they were taken to court in Australia, where a judge said their previous refund policy was designed to give no refunds and used to deny an estimated 21,000 refunds just within Australia. They changed their policy and escaped punishment everywhere else. https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/video-games-website-steam-fined-3-million-for-refusing-refunds-20161223-gthdux.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/video-games-websit...
  • mywittyname 8y ago
    GoG does both of these, and have done so for much longer than Steam.
    • billfruit 8y ago
      It doesn't not to do either of them as wholeheartedly as steam: GOG refunds are for technical issues not no-questions-asked. Similarly in my region Steam prices are lower than GOG prices. Moreover like GOG, steam also supports DRM free games(if the developer wants a game to be DRM free).
  • Rebelgecko 8y ago
    Valve's refund process is certainly better than nothing, but it's not consistent. I don't think you can get a refund for Artifact (Valve's own game). You can do a credit card chargeback, but then they'll ban your entire account.
• benjaminsuch 8y ago
  Great news, I'm looking forward what Discord is pulling off. As far as I heard, they also want to push into the game distributing market? Epic Games seem to me really as one of the very very few game companies who, beside of marketing, also act very generous.
  • beerlord 8y ago
    Discord are already distributing, with a 30% commission. By all available accounts their launch has been unremarkable, no Indies getting rich. Their service is now obsolete with this Epic announcement. They are best just offering affiliate banner advertising to the Epic Store and getting the 5% from that.
• nottorp 8y ago
  Are they cross platform, or Windows only?
  • tobyhinloopen 8y ago
    Unreal Engine & Epic Launcher, and most (all?) epic games are at least macOS + Windows. I hope & assume their store will be as well
    • nottorp 8y ago
      I think it's safe to believe it when you see it, not assume.
• LeicaLatte 8y ago
  In this age of free to play games, why not? The amazon way.
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• ashelmire 8y ago
  This is sort of an interesting case study. Markets can be inelastic and see this sort of unspoken price collaboration... until a major player jumps in like this and undercuts all them. I think we’ll start seeing a lot more competition on revenue share thanks to this.
• a13n 8y ago
  At first glance, I thought Steam was in big trouble. Last MAU numbers I could find were 90m for Steam and 75m for Fortnite. A game store is a marketplace, in startup terminology. Epic already has a lot of the consumer side, and 60% lower fees is a huge incentive for the developer side. But UX-wise, so many games are built on top of Steam. In Rocket League, you get logged in with your Steam account. You invite friends to party via Steam. And how would migrating work? Would Epic let me launch the game because I already own it in Steam? Or would I have to re-purchase? (No way people would do that) If I'm playing on Epic, and my friend is on Steam, would we be able to party? This introduces a ton of complexity, and while certainly troubling for Steam in the long run (once new games come out), I think their moat is still very strong. Also 40% of Epic Games is owned by Tencent, so this would mean China's market share of the world's gamer market growing, for better or for worse (depending on your political opinions).
  • lazerwalker 8y ago
    I believe there's a decent amount of prior art for games supporting cross-platform play across Steam and traditional consoles (PS4 / Xbone / Switch). Presumably you'd need to re-buy a game like Rocket League to get it to show up in your Epic library, but the Steam version could likely be patched to allow Epic players to play alongside Steam players?
• ilaksh 8y ago
  I think eventually Steam will be replaced by some system built on open distributed systems such as torrents/webtorrents and cryptocurrency. At least that would make sense.. theoretically the cut that the distribution platform takes could be zero. So developers have a lot to gain from such a system.
  • all2 8y ago
    > theoretically the cut that the distribution platform takes could be zero. Then there is no reason for a distributed system to remain cohesive. Each node in the system takes some responsibilities for hosting, bandwidth, etc. Without giving the distributors a cut, no one will want to distribute. Likewise, not everyone who buys your game on the network will want to use there space and bandwidth for distribution. For a distributed system to actually be functional, all participants need incentives.
    • ilaksh 8y ago
      You're basically arguing that the concept of torrents isn't workable. It's been proven. To me the tricky part is licensing but I think technologies like Ethereum could handle that.
      • mhh__ 8y ago
        Torrents work but the incentive there is the opportunity cost(? not an economics student...) of getting the software/porn/etc for free. Also, why ETH as opposed to regular money?
      • munchbunny 8y ago
        Licensing is the easy part. The hard part is discovery (there is always money for someone who can do a marginally better job matching games to gamers), marketing, financial infrastructure (dealing with returns, credit card fraud, beta keys, review keys, DLC, crowdfunding campaigns, microtransactions), social matchmaking, mod management, etc. Those are mostly not distributed problems. They are services problems. Steam is all of those things. The core licensing component is only the most obvious part. Torrents only cover distribution. Ethereum only covers cash exchange.
• laythea 8y ago
  Once upon a time, valve used to develop games. Then it became big and realised where the money is, and stopped developing games. Epic is currently developing games. Will they get big and stop? If they did, they still have Unreal. Steam has nothing other than the store.
  • ido 8y ago
    Valve has several extremely profitable games, such as DotA2.
    • laythea 8y ago
      Good point. Insert "just a " next to games developer :)
  • belltaco 8y ago
    Epic has been relying a lot on their engine sales to sustain game dev.
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• nogbit 8y ago
  At least now Valve can play their Half Life 3 card if this new store gains some "steam", I'm sure Gabe N. has been dying to have a reason to. I'm all for competition, Epic Games rocks!
• mhh__ 8y ago
  What is the proportion of people with Fortnite who are likely to use this - like steam e.g. Consistently pay money for games- relative to Valve's playerbase when steam arrived?
• CivBase 8y ago
  They've made their argument for why developers should publish there. Now, why should I want to use the Epic Games Store as a launcher? Don't get me wrong. There's plenty of room for Steam to improve. I want launchers to compete for its users, but all they ever seem to compete for is publishers. For all of Steam's problems, people love it because it offers a huge feature set out of the box. - Achievements - Friends lists - Voice and text chat - Family sharing - Streaming - Multi-drive support - A decent refund policy - User reviews - An easy-to-use mod workshop - Cloud saves - User-generated tags - Independent curators The list goes on... So-called "competitors" never bring even half that feature set to their new platforms. Instead, they force users to switch by making games exclusive to their platform. A lot of people have talked about publishers having incentives to distribute games on multiple platforms, but history has shown us that they simply don't. I don't know what the solution is. I guess I just wanted to vent.
  • ryandrake 8y ago
    > - Achievements - Friends lists - Voice and text chat - Family sharing - Streaming - Multi-drive support - A decent refund policy - User reviews - An easy-to-use mod workshop - Cloud saves - User-generated tags - Independent curators Do people really care about this stuff? I've started holding my nose and grudgingly using Steam, and really all I want is a way to buy a game and get it on my hard drive. I don't need a middle-man to launch it for me or clutter my system up with achievements and friends and yet-another-chat-app. Every time I run a game, Steam even shows that little pop-up--as if I needed a reminder that it's constantly sitting there in memory, eagerly waiting for me to hit SHIFT-TAB and "engage" with it. Can't I just play the damn game I bought without the distributor trying to insert itself into the experience at every opportunity?
    • tomc1985 8y ago
      So the shift-tab thing feature was copied from a chat program called Xfire, which back in the days of AIM and such was a neat way to be able to talk to your online friends while in a full-screen game. Steam copied that feature and added a web browser, and the rest of those interactions some time after. I agree that it feels like marketing BS but it is cool to be able to chat with out-of-game Steam friends in-game.
• echan00 8y ago
  Awesome idea EPIC. Steam had some bullshit for wayyyy too long!
• tokyodude 8y ago
  This is great news and I hope it shows up in the arguments for the iOS App Store that Apple's 30% harms consumers because no one is allowed to compete with a store that takes less of a cut. Valve (30%) vs Epic (12%) seems extremely relevant to that case.
• needle0 8y ago
  Everyone seems to be talking about Steam but the forthcoming Android store feels to me like a much, MUCH bigger deal. I mean, nobody stops anyone from setting up a new PC game store, and the Epic PC store is just another entry added to the already long list of stores all competing with Steam. But on Android (outside China), the Google Play Store pretty much has a complete monopoly that they made sure was virtually impossible to break while still being able to be technically called "open." Sure, Amazon Appstore and a few other stores exist, but they haven't really been able to make any real impact due to Google erecting so many hoops for both developers and users to jump through in order to stray from the Google Play path. (eg. Google Play Services, "Unknown Sources" checkbox buried in Settings app, etc.) But now Epic is forcibly prying it open by using Fortnite as their lure to induce people to actually jump through Google's hoops that were supposed to be insurmountably high user friction. Of all the past alternative Android app stores, this one sounds like it could actually work. The ensuing Google/Epic all-out war should make last year's Google/Amazon Chromecast/FireTV/YouTube feud look tame. Break out the popcorn.
  • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    Indeed, I feel like people missed the bigger news here. And I was always surprised Steam never tried to take this on: Many Steam library apps are also available for Android, but Steam has never tried to support cross-platform access to it. Another highlight of this: Do bear in mind there's a class action antitrust lawsuit being bandied about by the Supreme Court right now against Apple and the App Store. If that doesn't go Apple's way, Epic is potentially poised to be one of the first players in that as well.
    • needle0 8y ago
      I was half expecting Valve to expand to mobile stores back when they first released their mobile apps. But no, it never went beyond a companion app and 2-factor authenticator. None of their other initiatives (Big Picture Mode, Steam Controller, Steam Machine, Steam Link, SteamVR, etc.) ever steered in the general direction of mobile gaming, either. They've been married to PC gaming since their inception over 20 years ago, I guess mobile gaming is just not in their DNA.
• Animats 8y ago
  And they throw in the Unreal Engine royalty with the 12% cut. In response to this new competition, Valve reduced prices on Steam on Monday. Valve just reduced their cut from 30% to 25%, and down to 20% for the high-revenue titles.[2] Competition is a good thing. [1] https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68183/valve-makes-changes-to-distribution-agreement-lowers-rev-share-for-successful-games/ https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68183/valve-makes-change...
• hardwaresofton 8y ago
  I absolutely welcome the competition, but it's going to take a lot for me to trust the Epic Games Store as much as I trust Valve. Lots has been written about Valve (employee handbook, supposedly-not-there-but-actually-just-hidden political hierarchies), but I don't think of them as a normal for-profit company though they most certainly are. They've taken bets like steam for linux, the steam controller, steam boxes, their crazy no-hierarchy structure (no matter how misguided) and I just don't see other game companies or platform companies doing the same. They have my respect. I've also never seen them do anything blatantly greedy/money grubbing on a large scale (though their excuse is usually that they're a small company) and the gaming community absolutely loves to get out their pitchforks. Maybe I've just been marketed to really well but I think it takes a certain kind of company to be who Valve is -- they're like a mozilla in my eyes.
  • wallace_f 8y ago
    Agreed, but their recent bootlicking of Chinese authorities stemming from a minor Dota2 drama is just sad and embarassing to be honest.
  • Felz 8y ago
    > I've also never seen them do anything blatantly greedy/money grubbing on a large scale Have you ever heard of TF2?
    • hardwaresofton 8y ago
      I feel like they just wandered into a crazy profitable business model and didn't know what to do? Could you be more specific -- I never played TF2 for very long, and I know hats were basically a huge thing, but from what I understand they allowed people to make hats right? Did they like take all the profit from community made hats or something? This must just be a controversy I didn't see because I don't play TF2
      • Felz 8y ago
        They basically turned the game into a testbed for extremely exploitative practices. It's been a while since I walked away in disgust, but one example I remember is the crates system. Essentially, they added "item drops" called crates. These crates do absolutely nothing unless you spend $2.50 to buy a key to open them with. It's basically an extremely insulting lootbox model. Aside from turning the game into a hat simulator, they also introduced loads of game-breaking straight upgrade weapons for you to grind for, and continually piled them on over the years, often just taking community-supplied models and slapping stats on them. At some point they even tried to add full sets of expensive cosmetic items that would give you straight stat bonuses when worn, which even they had to back down from. I've never seen more aggressive monetization while ruining the base product than I saw Valve apply to TF2, hence my surprise at your impression that Valve wasn't capable of money grubbing. In the case of TF2, they were somehow actually worse than Activision-Blizzard.
• wpdev_63 8y ago
  Good! - The steam hasn't changed for the last 10 years. Maybe epic will actually value their user's experience.
• snarfybarfy 8y ago
  In my opinion taking a percentage cut on something that is not strongly correlated with any special effort, borders on scam. And yes the scammers are everywhere: your bank, broker, recruitment agency, financial adviser, real estate agent, etc... Call me bitter, but I paid way to many years 20% of my paycheck (yay, work for free on Fridays!) to some agency because they, for no good reason at all, somehow are into this percentage margin business as well. The country I live in all major stockbrokers will charge you the higher of $90 or 1% (discount brokers take about half that), whereas a lot of other countries have enough competition that you get actual flat prices per trade. You are selling some service, then please put some actual price on it. E.g. $2000 to review your game and put it onto our platform. If the service requires ongoing efforts than put some price on this as well. Without price there can not be any free market.