interesting, then, that he is solely responsible for introducing marketplace exclusivity deals to PC gaming.
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.
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.
> 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.
The colloquial definition of an "offer you can't refuse" is one that would be a bad deal for you, but that you have to accept anyway because otherwise the counterparty would do something even worse to you.
The Epic Store is free (as in beer) to create an account on, and there's no hardware lock-in -- Steam, the Epic Store, and other platforms like GOG Galaxy/itch.io/whatever Ubisoft has can all be run on the same computer at the same time. The situation is completely different from Apple's app store.
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.
Epic is at least bringing the joy of console exclusives to the desktop. Innovative!
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.
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.
So developer can't sell game on Steam for $60 and at the same time sell it on Epic Games Store for $50 due to lower commission. So Epic don't have any other tools to compete with Steam.
This sounds suspiciously like Amazon's KDP Select[1]:
Q. What does it mean to publish exclusively on Kindle?
A. When you choose to enroll your book in KDP Select, you're committing to make the digital format of that book available exclusively through KDP. During the period of exclusivity, you cannot distribute your book digitally anywhere else, including on your website, blogs, etc.
... I really don't like Amazon when it comes to the demands they make for publishing books through their platform. I am no lawyer, but the whole system reeks of wrongness. I publish a few books on KDP, but none have been enrolled in KDP Select - why should I give up Google Play, iBooks and a whole host of other distribution channels just to please the owners of the biggest distribution platform of them all?
People have to remember perfect is the enemy of the good. Considering Steam's position in the market they don't seem to abuse their position. Anecdotally I know people that have developed indie games and they told me they are generally quite happy with Steam.
We are talking about stores acting as if they are publishers (because with a exclusivity deal that is what is really happening). Steam is a open market place for all intents and purposes.
If Epic is successful we will have every store front acting as a publisher. This won't benefit the consumer (publisher tend to interfere with the creative process) and it won't benefit the developers because those low commission rates will suddenly vanish.
I am all for free markets. But this is not what is happening here. EPIC is flush with cash from Fortnight and dominating the game engine market with UE3, UE4 and probably do the same with UE5 (they have over 25% in a very fragmented market) and they are trying to artificially divide what is an open ecosystem.
In general I think that "they have special rules for their own stuff" weakens the argument.
Anyway this is distraction from the general point I was trying to convey that store specific exclusives doesn't promote competition, it actually retards it.
If Epic had a store and just offered the same games for cheaper. I would be fine with it.
Also everyone keeps pretending that EPIC is this tiny company when nothing could be further from the truth.
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.
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.
Isn't that also a net negative for the consumer? The fact that a game dev cant charge $8.20 on Epic vs $10 on Steam or else Valve will ban their game?
This is why when you go to buy an Apple laptop or a GoPro or whatever on Amazon that they can’t initially show you a price below the price allowed by the manufacturer. You’ll sometimes need to add the item to your cart to see the “discounted” price which is still allowed under Minimum Advertised Price rules. Cars and many, many other products work this way too.
Once again, not saying I’m necessarily in favor of it but it’s hardly a unique Steam policy. Brands seem to believe protecting their advertised prices helps maintain the value of their brand. For Steam, I guess they wouldn’t want to have a store full of games that cost more. Just like no one wants to pay 30% more to buy a game on iOS instead of PC.
I'd say the choice of launchers and stores is fine. Especially with tools like GOG Galaxy which can aggregate them too.
Would consumers prefer paying 30% more for games to stay on the most dominate launcher/store?
Fun fact: Brick and mortar retailers spam the checkout lane with gift cards because they do not pay face value for them.
Steam exclusivity for games like Portal 2 is forever. Of course, Portal 2 was a sequel to a game created by a studio that Valve simply bought outright.
It would be a good thing if Half-Life Alyx came out on other PC game stores, in exactly the same way that it would be a good thing if a game like Control came out on other PC game stores. Our expectations are socially constructed and we should question them more.
With so many different stores to download apps, it gets increasingly unlikely anyone is going to take the time to cross list on all of them.
If we wanted to change how this worked, I feel like we’d need to consolidate on fewer marketplaces. For example, apt-get has access to a huge variety of packages so I don’t find myself using the Ubuntu App Store or random third party marketplaces as much as I do with games.
edit: there's a good analogy in another thread -- only being able to buy a Nintendo game at GameStop and not Best Buy.
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.