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>Epic invests in devs. Is this true? I know they pay up front to have exclusivity for some games, but I don't know if I would consider that "investing in devs"

>Epic invests in devs. Is this true? I know they pay up front to have exclusivity for some games, but I don't know if I would consider that "investing in devs" in the same way that Valve "invests in users." Valve puts money into platforms and tools that users enjoy (things like forums, hosting mods, user reviews, community pages) as their investment. Does Epic do something similar for devs? The only thing I can think of is using funds to polish Unreal Engine, but that would only invest in devs that use Unreal which is not really applicable to most devs.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
>Valve puts money into platforms and tools that users enjoy (things like forums, hosting mods, user reviews, community pages) as their investment. Does Epic do something similar for devs? Sure, - They invest in Unreal Engine and all the adjacent tech available, some of which can be used without Unreal Engine (Epic Online services). Of course, tech like Metahuman and Quixel want to draw people into UE but if you are already using UE it's a strong consideration. - Similar to Unity, they have an asset store which enables some devs to make money selling tools/assets to other devs - Lastly they do directly fund various games and tools. The forced exlusivity didn't put a good taste in consumers mouths but I'm mostly talking about Epic Megagrants. No strings attached, they can just throw money at good devs and most notably they invested into Godot and blender (again, no strings attached. True grants just to make open source tooling better). most of their stuff is skewed towards Unreal Engine, but I don't see it as any different from Valve being skewed towards Steam. The difference is that consumers want to buy games while devs want to make money. So while there's a stronger business angle to every Epic solution, it fits with what a dev would want to do.
- skeaker 3y ago
  All good points, I had totally forgotten about their asset store as well. Thanks!

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>Valve puts money into platforms and tools that users enjoy (things like forums, hosting mods, user reviews, community pages) as their investment. Does Epic do something similar for devs? Sure, - They invest in Unreal Engine and all the adjacent tech available, some of which can be used without Unreal Engine (Epic Online services). Of course, tech like Metahuman and Quixel want to draw people into UE but if you are already using UE it's a strong consideration. - Similar to Unity, they have an asset store which enables some devs to make money selling tools/assets to other devs - Lastly they do directly fund various games and tools. The forced exlusivity didn't put a good taste in consumers mouths but I'm mostly talking about Epic Megagrants. No strings attached, they can just throw money at good devs and most notably they invested into Godot and blender (again, no strings attached. True grants just to make open source tooling better). most of their stuff is skewed towards Unreal Engine, but I don't see it as any different from Valve being skewed towards Steam. The difference is that consumers want to buy games while devs want to make money. So while there's a stronger business angle to every Epic solution, it fits with what a dev would want to do.

skeaker 3y ago
All good points, I had totally forgotten about their asset store as well. Thanks!