8 ms·

interesting, then, that he is solely responsible for introducing marketplace exclusivity deals to PC gaming.

by n42 6y ago

rsweeney21 6y ago
PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice.
- n42 6y ago
  sure, there is a difference for the developer. anyone who is deluding themselves into thinking that Epic is fighting for the consumer here will be sorely disappointed. Epic recently raised $1.78 billion dollars in capital. how do you think they intend to deliver a return on such a massive investment? anyone paying attention to their moves sees this as what it is. Epic wants to be the exclusive destination to build, buy and play video games. they're fighting Apple because they beat them to the punch. this is not some idealistic martyrdom. it's multi-billion dollar company fights multi-trillion dollar company for market share.
- user5994461 6y ago
  Indeed, it is paying in order to make sure that 100% of developer revenues go through one platform... the platform may or may not take a 30% cut.
- judge2020 6y ago
  > PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. It definitely is - one store, Epic, offers deals publishers can't refuse to make a game exclusive to their storefront which limits a consumer's ability to use a platform of their choice to purchase a game. The other, steam, puts no limits on where you can distribute your game (unless you use assets from Valve's own games, but I digress) and has done no exclusivity deals that would force a game to only use their store. Publishers are free to use steam if they want to have 30% taken, but otherwise they can completely forego steam in their distribution.
  - gsich 6y ago
    Can't refuse? Is this the Godfather now?
    - Cyph0n 6y ago
      Didn’t you know that Epic holds developers hostage until they agree to their terms? I thought this was common knowledge!
      - DivisionSol 6y ago
        Just like Apple holds a gun to developer’s heads to develop for the iOS. Epic is at least bringing the joy of console exclusives to the desktop. Innovative!
        chc 6y ago
        Apple holds the majority of the US market to developers' heads to develop for iOS.
        damnyou 6y ago
        Buying a new console costs hundreds of dollars, while creating an Epic Store account costs nothing. It's really not the same situation.
    - judge2020 6y ago
      https://screenrant.com/borderlands-3-sales-5-million-unites-epic-store-exclusive/ https://screenrant.com/borderlands-3-sales-5-million-unites-... > a recent financial report suggested that Epic paid over $10 million to get Control as an Epic Game Store exclusive on PC, and it's possible the company has done the same to snag some of the more important releases of the year. A little hard to turn down 10 million.
      - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
        > A little hard to turn down 10 million. What if the game would have made $20m if it was non-exclusive? Exclusivity deals mean both parties - or either party - is making a huge risk or there's information-asymmetry involved.
- cringepirate 6y ago
  >PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. The way you frame it is totally incorrect and completely misrepresents Steam (who is obviously relevant in the PC space) doesn't "charge" developers 30% of the revenue. Steam is acting as an affiliate. Affiliate agreements work on the fact that one party will get a commission for driving sales of a particular product. Steam drives sales of a particular product by providing the market place, they provide the payment mechanism, the hosting and update infrastructure and probably a bunch of things I am not aware of. Also the 30/70% split for an affiliate relationship is standard across many industries. This could be Travel, Gambling, House hold items. > Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice. You are getting wrong way around. If would be fine if the EPIC store offered the same games as Steam at a lower price (by taking a lower commission). Then that would drive competition and that would benefit the consumer. However that isn't happening here. They are artificially dividing an open market by making some PC games exclusive to their store. This stops competition because the two store fronts can't compete because they cannot offer the same games. In the same way that if you wanna play Halo you aren't doing it on a PlayStation. GoG and Steam will have many of the same games sold on them. I end up buying them on the GoG store, why is that? GoG is guaranteed to be DRM free. That choice cannot exist when some games are exclusive to one store. So GoG competes with the Steam store and offers a better refund policy (you can refund for any reason and at any time) and no DRM. Now it may benefit developers to be exclusive to the EPIC store but this will ultimately make the PC ecosystem less open for the consumer.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Are the exclusives permanent?
  - damnyou 6y ago
    Now consider that Valve games like Half Life: Alyx are platform exclusive to Steam -- presumably because Valve gets ~100% of the money spent on Valve games on Steam. Is that "less open for the consumer" as well?
john-shaffer 6y ago
We've had decades of exclusivity deals for one console or another. Those actually prevented people from playing the games without shelling out for an extra console. Total War: Troy is exclusive to Epic Games Store for one year before it comes to Steam. If you got the game on its release date, Epic gave it to you for free. To play it, you need one more launcher to go along with Steam, Battle.net, GOG, and various custom launchers. What is the harm being done here? I like Steam, but I doubt that it will be good in the long term for it to be completely dominant. It needs a solid competitor.
- MikeKusold 6y ago
  That’s a false equivalency. A more apt comparison would be if you could only buy a game at GameStop for one year, while all the Best But shoppers weren’t able to buy the game from their preferred retail store.
  - jasonlotito 6y ago
    This is fairly common in retail. I've never heard a complaint about it before in that regard.
    - Macha 6y ago
      You never heard complaints about physical store exclusive DLC? It was a big topic for a year or two before Gamestop decided they weren't getting their ROI and it became less common again.
- mrgordon 6y ago
  Well not everyone wants to have to have ten game stores with ten custom launchers if they only have ten games installed Also Epic may control the release in some ways. For example, Civ 6 on Epic is PC only but on Steam it’s PC & Mac. So I bought it on Epic and then realized I can’t play with my friends who are on Macs. Why would I want an entire new game store, an app that they’ve chosen to make incompatible with one of the two major computing platforms, and yet another thing to keep updated, minimized, and logged into. I’m all for competition but exclusivity deals are overall negative for the consumer. It’s worth $10 million to get a new game exclusively for Epic to force everyone to use a store they don’t want to install or use because they’ll end up spending $100 million on other games. It’s an effective business tactic but it’s not exactly in my interest.
gsich 6y ago
Which doesn't make the PC a closed platform.
wilshire_nc 6y ago
If something is exclusive to a platform that's free to use, who cares? It's not like xbox vs playstation where you have to shell out a few hundred dollars to play an exclusive title.
mxfh 6y ago
Sure Origin was a failure, but that much of one? Anyone remembers "only on Origin".
- n42 6y ago
  those were all EA titles, so EA had their own publisher exclusive marketplace. Tim Sweeney introduced buying out third-party publishers with exclusivity clauses. edit: there's a good analogy in another thread -- only being able to buy a Nintendo game at GameStop and not Best Buy.
  - slavik81 6y ago
    To be clear, you'd be perfectly happy if Epic bought the developers outright and made the games exclusive to the Epic store? To me, that seems like the same end result for consumers.
    - Macha 6y ago
      This is equally unpopular when it's happening to Rocket League. At the same time, nobody really cared about Nintendo making Bayonetta 2. I think the problem is with taking away something that was already available or announced to be coming, and people have less problems with funding new things with strings attached.
    - n42 6y ago
      no, I would not, but it is also not what we were discussing.
- hnick 6y ago
  Battle.net is a store with de facto exclusivity too under those standards, and is less of a failure.
chc 6y ago
This is a preposterous claim that requires a lot of revision to be even close to true. Marketplace owners have been using their own games' exclusivity to push their platforms since Steam's introduction. Even just talking about third-party exclusives (which IMO is an arbitrary distinction — they're just as exclusive and for the same reasons), Valve paid for third-party exclusives early in Steam's history. Once they got rich enough, they started just buying companies outright when they wanted exclusivity on a game somebody was making, which is a much stronger exclusivity deal than the relatively tepid "the game comes out a few months earlier on our store" deals Epic is best known for.

interesting, then, that he is solely responsible for introducing marketplace exclusivity deals to PC gaming.

by n42 6y ago

interesting, then, that he is solely responsible for introducing marketplace exclusivity deals to PC gaming.

PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice.

n42 6y ago
sure, there is a difference for the developer. anyone who is deluding themselves into thinking that Epic is fighting for the consumer here will be sorely disappointed. Epic recently raised $1.78 billion dollars in capital. how do you think they intend to deliver a return on such a massive investment? anyone paying attention to their moves sees this as what it is. Epic wants to be the exclusive destination to build, buy and play video games. they're fighting Apple because they beat them to the punch. this is not some idealistic martyrdom. it's multi-billion dollar company fights multi-trillion dollar company for market share.
user5994461 6y ago
Indeed, it is paying in order to make sure that 100% of developer revenues go through one platform... the platform may or may not take a 30% cut.
judge2020 6y ago
> PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. It definitely is - one store, Epic, offers deals publishers can't refuse to make a game exclusive to their storefront which limits a consumer's ability to use a platform of their choice to purchase a game. The other, steam, puts no limits on where you can distribute your game (unless you use assets from Valve's own games, but I digress) and has done no exclusivity deals that would force a game to only use their store. Publishers are free to use steam if they want to have 30% taken, but otherwise they can completely forego steam in their distribution.
- gsich 6y ago
  Can't refuse? Is this the Godfather now?
  - Cyph0n 6y ago
    Didn’t you know that Epic holds developers hostage until they agree to their terms? I thought this was common knowledge!
    - DivisionSol 6y ago
      Just like Apple holds a gun to developer’s heads to develop for the iOS. Epic is at least bringing the joy of console exclusives to the desktop. Innovative!
      - chc 6y ago
        Apple holds the majority of the US market to developers' heads to develop for iOS.
      - damnyou 6y ago
        Buying a new console costs hundreds of dollars, while creating an Epic Store account costs nothing. It's really not the same situation.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    https://screenrant.com/borderlands-3-sales-5-million-unites-epic-store-exclusive/ https://screenrant.com/borderlands-3-sales-5-million-unites-... > a recent financial report suggested that Epic paid over $10 million to get Control as an Epic Game Store exclusive on PC, and it's possible the company has done the same to snag some of the more important releases of the year. A little hard to turn down 10 million.
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      > A little hard to turn down 10 million. What if the game would have made $20m if it was non-exclusive? Exclusivity deals mean both parties - or either party - is making a huge risk or there's information-asymmetry involved.
cringepirate 6y ago
>PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue. The way you frame it is totally incorrect and completely misrepresents Steam (who is obviously relevant in the PC space) doesn't "charge" developers 30% of the revenue. Steam is acting as an affiliate. Affiliate agreements work on the fact that one party will get a commission for driving sales of a particular product. Steam drives sales of a particular product by providing the market place, they provide the payment mechanism, the hosting and update infrastructure and probably a bunch of things I am not aware of. Also the 30/70% split for an affiliate relationship is standard across many industries. This could be Travel, Gambling, House hold items. > Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice. You are getting wrong way around. If would be fine if the EPIC store offered the same games as Steam at a lower price (by taking a lower commission). Then that would drive competition and that would benefit the consumer. However that isn't happening here. They are artificially dividing an open market by making some PC games exclusive to their store. This stops competition because the two store fronts can't compete because they cannot offer the same games. In the same way that if you wanna play Halo you aren't doing it on a PlayStation. GoG and Steam will have many of the same games sold on them. I end up buying them on the GoG store, why is that? GoG is guaranteed to be DRM free. That choice cannot exist when some games are exclusive to one store. So GoG competes with the Steam store and offers a better refund policy (you can refund for any reason and at any time) and no DRM. Now it may benefit developers to be exclusive to the EPIC store but this will ultimately make the PC ecosystem less open for the consumer.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Are the exclusives permanent?
- damnyou 6y ago
  Now consider that Valve games like Half Life: Alyx are platform exclusive to Steam -- presumably because Valve gets ~100% of the money spent on Valve games on Steam. Is that "less open for the consumer" as well?

john-shaffer 6y ago

We've had decades of exclusivity deals for one console or another. Those actually prevented people from playing the games without shelling out for an extra console. Total War: Troy is exclusive to Epic Games Store for one year before it comes to Steam. If you got the game on its release date, Epic gave it to you for free. To play it, you need one more launcher to go along with Steam, Battle.net, GOG, and various custom launchers. What is the harm being done here? I like Steam, but I doubt that it will be good in the long term for it to be completely dominant. It needs a solid competitor.

MikeKusold 6y ago
That’s a false equivalency. A more apt comparison would be if you could only buy a game at GameStop for one year, while all the Best But shoppers weren’t able to buy the game from their preferred retail store.
- jasonlotito 6y ago
  This is fairly common in retail. I've never heard a complaint about it before in that regard.
  - Macha 6y ago
    You never heard complaints about physical store exclusive DLC? It was a big topic for a year or two before Gamestop decided they weren't getting their ROI and it became less common again.
mrgordon 6y ago
Well not everyone wants to have to have ten game stores with ten custom launchers if they only have ten games installed Also Epic may control the release in some ways. For example, Civ 6 on Epic is PC only but on Steam it’s PC & Mac. So I bought it on Epic and then realized I can’t play with my friends who are on Macs. Why would I want an entire new game store, an app that they’ve chosen to make incompatible with one of the two major computing platforms, and yet another thing to keep updated, minimized, and logged into. I’m all for competition but exclusivity deals are overall negative for the consumer. It’s worth $10 million to get a new game exclusively for Epic to force everyone to use a store they don’t want to install or use because they’ll end up spending $100 million on other games. It’s an effective business tactic but it’s not exactly in my interest.

gsich 6y ago

Which doesn't make the PC a closed platform.

wilshire_nc 6y ago

If something is exclusive to a platform that's free to use, who cares? It's not like xbox vs playstation where you have to shell out a few hundred dollars to play an exclusive title.

mxfh 6y ago

Sure Origin was a failure, but that much of one? Anyone remembers "only on Origin".

n42 6y ago
those were all EA titles, so EA had their own publisher exclusive marketplace. Tim Sweeney introduced buying out third-party publishers with exclusivity clauses. edit: there's a good analogy in another thread -- only being able to buy a Nintendo game at GameStop and not Best Buy.
- slavik81 6y ago
  To be clear, you'd be perfectly happy if Epic bought the developers outright and made the games exclusive to the Epic store? To me, that seems like the same end result for consumers.
  - Macha 6y ago
    This is equally unpopular when it's happening to Rocket League. At the same time, nobody really cared about Nintendo making Bayonetta 2. I think the problem is with taking away something that was already available or announced to be coming, and people have less problems with funding new things with strings attached.
  - n42 6y ago
    no, I would not, but it is also not what we were discussing.
hnick 6y ago
Battle.net is a store with de facto exclusivity too under those standards, and is less of a failure.

chc 6y ago

This is a preposterous claim that requires a lot of revision to be even close to true. Marketplace owners have been using their own games' exclusivity to push their platforms since Steam's introduction. Even just talking about third-party exclusives (which IMO is an arbitrary distinction — they're just as exclusive and for the same reasons), Valve paid for third-party exclusives early in Steam's history. Once they got rich enough, they started just buying companies outright when they wanted exclusivity on a game somebody was making, which is a much stronger exclusivity deal than the relatively tepid "the game comes out a few months earlier on our store" deals Epic is best known for.