Hacker News Reader

"This is great news for indies who Steam seems to be ignoring[1]"

Your citation suggests that in this context, ignoring means "potentially offering them fewer page referrals from advertising slots, relying on them to generate organic traffic".

I mention this, because the interview with Tim Sweeney posted in response to your comment says: "Generally, we want to enable a more direct relationship between developers and gamers, and more efficient economics and discovery. Developers will control their product pages, free of advertising for competing games."

The reduced margin will definitely benefit all developers, but the Grey Alien guy recently tweeted that margin wasn't the problem because 30% of nothing is nothing, and his issue is no one discovering his games.

I would say who the Epic approach benefits is sort of "Big Indie" -- developers large enough to self-generate momentum but small enough not to benefit from the improved revenue split. Thinking of teams like Double Fine and games like Stardew Valley here.

> ... margin wasn't the problem because 30% of nothing is nothing, and his issue is no one discovering his games.

Doesn't that make the 30% all the more problematic? If you have to bring eyes to your Steam page anyway, you might as well just sell direct.

From Grey Alien, "In the past I have felt positive about Steam, but these discovery changes and the recent revenue share changes that are only relevant to hugely successful games don’t make me feel particularly positive about the future of selling games on Steam."

I can say with confidence that I am much more willing to drop $5 on a game via Steam than <random 3rd party site>. Aside from the obvious "is this a scam" aspects, Steam means that I will have the game even when the dev goes under in 5 years, that my save states will be backed up, and that at least some of the reviews might not be faked.

That 30% might be painful, but at the same time Steam provides a LOT of utility to the buyer.

How is the Epic launcher 'a random third party site' ? Especially someone that already has Fortnite or has heard of it enough to know its maker is not going to be a credit card skimmer.

Way more people use Steam than Epic Launcher. The oldest Steam accounts are 15 years old now, people have been using it for a long time when it was largely the only game in town. People may use another company's platform because they have to to play a certain game. But a lot of times it's just that other platform trying to be Steam, but not in the same league.

Are we sure that's true? Fortnite is the most popular game in the world right now.

Steam[1] still has more peak concurrent users than Fortnite at 14 million if you add the games up, while Fortnite is over 8 million[2]. Fortnite does have a huge install base, but I imagine most of them that need a store (i.e. not consoles, so basically PCs) already have Steam, and at least one game in it.

For new users that don't have steam, there might be an inventive to use the Epic games launcher, especially if there's a discount, but having games split across two systems is really annoying (but it's not too bad for one game), so I imagine without an incentive most existing Steam users will opt out, thus preserving Steam's dominance.

1: https://store.steampowered.com/stats/

2: https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2018/11/08/fortnites-concurren...

> I imagine most of them that need a store (i.e. not consoles, so basically PCs) already have Steam, and at least one game in it

125 million fortnite installs - https://www.businessinsider.com/fortnite-size-statistics-pla...

70+ million steam installs - https://galyonk.in/steam-in-2017-129c0e6be260

Not saying what's right and what's wrong but I heard these kind of numbers reported after the announcement. I see a lot of different numbers being thrown around and I'm not sure what to believe anymore.

Steamcharts consistently surprises me at how few people play the popular games I like, so I'm beginning to think Steam isn't as big.

Here's a more recent source[1] (unfortunately poorly sourced, but it does have a timestamp for each item). It shows 200 million installs (11/11), but 74.2 million iOS installs (11/7), 11.5 million downloads on the switch (10/30).

Android usage is complex, because it's still only available officially to Samsung Galaxy devices, but the amount of players looks like it might be similar to iOS (there are usage numbers from the link, but for different times).

So, just from the total installs number and the somewhat recent iOS and Nintendo Switch numbers, we can put the maximum number of PC installs at around 114 million, before we account for Xbox (released mid 2017), PS4 (released mid-2017) and Android (Samsung Galaxy only but I think it may well be in the tens of millions anyway, especially since there are tutorials on how to get it on other devices).

I think that will leave us well within the territory where Steam and Fortnite have a largely overlapping PC user base.

> Steamcharts consistently surprises me at how few people play the popular games I like, so I'm beginning to think Steam isn't as big.

I think most people just don't game on PC as much anymore. Most PC games are available for consoles now too, and it's much cheaper to buy a new console every few years than to keep a gaming PC updated. My brother bought a keyboard and mouse for his PS4, and played Overwatch with that. Probably just as good an experience as the PC version for much cheaper total platform cost over time.

1: https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/fortnite-facts-and-s...

It is a random third-party site to anyone that doesn't play Fortnite, which is a lot of people.

Steam also has the bonus of supporting linux releases and I can go into just about any store and buy a $20 or $50 steam card I can use to add money to my account without using PayPal or linking a bank account or credit card.

Thesemuch the only reasons I use steam. Though I have to admit, their refund policy has been pretty great so far.

I've heard of the horror stories of steam but I don't play a lot of multiplayer games and don't interact on the community or anything so I think it should be ok. I am kind of leery of the idea of not really owning any of the games I buy and the possibility of them being taken away. But i'm guessing epic's store may work like this also.

Why not use alternatives like itch.io? Revenue sharing looks hard to beat [1].

[1]https://itch.io/updates/introducing-open-revenue-sharing

This is actually a genius move. Everyone is so concerned about the 12% and its rivalry between Steam, and not see this from an Unreal Engine perspective. Instead of Getting 5% from the Game sold as EPIC are currently used to now, they are now getting 12% with an additional Gaming App Store. That is an 240% increase in revenue with very little additional offering.

Unfortunately I think Unity May see this as a threat, Now what if Unity decide to make an App Store for 7% revenue, which should effectively be a non profit model after you take away the 3% Credit Card charges and CDN cost.

Anyway both would be good as we continue to push forward the Middleware Gaming Engine.

This link has some Q&A with Tim too with more details:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-12-04-fortnite-maker...

More Q&A https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/12/03/tim-sweeney-answers-...

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."

"...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%."

So there is a bias in the Epic store towards Unreal titles then, contrary to what I just read.

Only in the same sense that there's a bias in the Epic store towards listing your game in the Epic store rather than somewhere else with higher fees.

No bias. If you sell a Unity game, the fee to Epic is 12%. If you sell an Unreal Game, the fee would have been 12% for the store plus 5% for engine royalties for a total of 17%, which would strongly dis-incentivize developers from using Epic's own engine. Epic is simply waiving that 5% engine royalty so that its store is game-engine-agnostic.

You forgot to mention the Unity cut in your sum.

Epic is certainly not making the store engine neutral. It costs less to use unreal than unity.

Unity is royalty-free altogether, you pay a subscription for the development tools (think Adobe CC or MS Office365) and get all upgrades during your subscription. You can alternatively not pay a subscription fee at all, and accept certain restrictions on your engine's capabilities, mostly on the use of enterprise-level features an indie developer wouldn't have the resources to use anyway.

So, by eliminating the 5% engine royalty for its own store, Epic is making Unreal also free and thus engine choice is not a deciding factor in whether to use Epic's store.

IOW/tldr: Unity and Unreal cost the same amount of money to use and license if you sell through the Epic store.

> You can alternatively not pay a subscription fee at all, and accept certain restrictions on your engine's capabilities

Just fyi: that is not how the unity license works. Unity's license is if your company makes >= $100k a year you're required to buy the $400 per seat license. If your company makes >= $200k year you're required to by the $1500 per seat license. Period. So for example if you're employee of Google and in your 20% time you download Unity you are not allowed to use it for free. Google makes X billion a year. That's greater than $200k a year. All employees of Google who download Unity for work related purposes are required to have the $1500 per year seat license.

This has nothing to do with whether or not you publish a game. Unity is sold similar to Photoshop. It's a subscription. The only difference is unlike Photoshop, Unity has a free tier for people and companies that make less than $100k a year.

From the unity site

Free version eligibility: I or my company generate annual revenues or raised funds less than $100k

Plus version eligibility: I or my company generate annual revenue or funds raised of $200k or less

You're not required to buy the $1500 license unless your company has already made $200k. If your first game goes bonkers and sells $1 million on the free version, you do not have to pay $1500 for the Plus version unless you make DLC or a new game after your bonanza. The license is prospective, not retrospective.

Other than that, you've just restated what I already said. Unity provides the tools on subscription, but does not charge a royalty anymore.

It isn't Epic's fault that Unity doesn't have a royalty program.

Unity doesn't get a "cut" of your game profits, anyway. They get $1500/year/developer.

This does not detract from the fact that it is offering an unreal developer better terms than a unity dev.

No, they are not. The Epic store takes 12% whatever engine you use. They are simply waiving the 5% unreal engine royalty to unreal developers so they don't pay more than 12%.

Game budget $200k. Team 3 people

    Unreal Engine: 
    +$200k
    -$24k   12% epic store fee
    -0      5% epic fee (would be $10k)
    ------
    $176k   income

    Unity Engine:  
    +$200k
    -$24k   12% epic store fee
    -$3.6k  3 copies of unity pro for $200k budget game
    ------
    $172.4k income (-4.6k vs unreal)

So yes, they are.

If you publish on Steam then the numbers change

    Unreal Engine: 
    +$200k
    -$60k   30% steam fee
    -$10    5% epic fee
    ------
    $130k   income

    Unity Engine:  
    +$200k
    -$60k   30% steam fee
    -$3.6k  3 copies of unity pro for $200k budget game
    ------
    $136.4k income (+6.4k vs unreal)

The timing of yesterdays hn post and this announcement...hhmmmmm. almost as if it was coordinated.

Hmmmmmmm

Edit - i love the silent dv brigade for making an observation and starti ng dialogue.

Dont go changing onme hn!!!

They let Valve know in advance I’m sure, it’s a small industry and the polite thing to do with friends.

Absolutely, especially since they already work together. I don't think there is anything wrong with this, but it made me think, when does it cross the line into collusion or price fixing?

When the prices are the same :) But I don't think they told them the prices, just that they were going to announce a store.

Other articles on hn mention correctly that right now in technology monopolies are the norm and anti-trust is dead (maybe a little dramatization there).

The 30% cut from distribution platforms is arbitrary, not based on cost, but rather implicit collusion based on what apple can extract from their flock.

I'd say this Epic launcher is a great exception to this and I hope it sticks.

What HN post yesterday?

Greyaliengames posted a blog about the steam marketplace algo killing sales