Steam, now Epic Games store, Why not a Unity Games Store?

Great way for unity to influence the market, get a piece of game sales, put more pressure on steam to get better with its practises, and could give exposure to many games that get lost in the forray.

The thing is, more choice is better. I for one would upload any steam project to EG store, and if a unity store existed I would stick it there too.

I would love to hear what you think, and even an official reponse to this idea?

 

A separate market to house the flippers?! Sign me the **** up, fam!

 

I hope not. We have discussed that few times over already.

Unity is not capable to run anything to do with community.

 

Community will run itself.

 

Sure but id argue the community is one of the strongest points of unity... (Tutorials, lot of communities to find help etc.... ) Most other engines have a very small S*** community, unity shines because of this.

 

Voted yes. Steam is a big messy thing where games are just merchandise ; not sure about the Epic store and I trust Unity Technologies. Maybe I'm wrong, future will tell.

 

Unity doesn't make and publish games, so no.

People got Steam for Half Life 2, TF2, CS, and Portal.

Tens of millions are downloading the Epic launcher to play Fortnite.

What is the Trojan horse that Unity is going to use to slip a storefront onto players machines?

 

If apple loses this lawsuit deal about a monopoly, and is forced to open the iOS platform to third party app stores - I'd like to see a unity based mobile app store that is available on Android and iOS. I'll keep dreaming

 

I disagree, look at the fantastic community here. They are doing a fine job, considering they started as like 3-4 indie developers.

I think this is a good point, but they could use any of the headline made with unity games. I am sure any of the indies or even AAAs who have made a successful game with unity would be willing to sign up to this.

I am sure if they managed to get rust and a few others to sign up it would be enough!

 

Totally, they could get a few big dogs of the unity scene (Firewatch? 7DTD? Mobile hits?) and those could really get it off the ground... and the big teams would be very happy to see a smaller cut deal with UT, and potentially get them more bang for their buck on sales.

I'd like to see a "universal game store" kind of situation, where gamers from several platforms can see games (some of which could be available on multiple platforms) all in one store - and where unity gets a sign up fee from the wave of devs (Google does USD 25 bucks or something, Apple 100 a year) and that would make a nice little bump in income...

I don't really see what we as developers have to lose by this sort of thing, as the more markets there are to reach, the more potential customers we have, the more eye balls we can hit. And we can always choose not to use a certain market if we don't like it for whatever reason... seems win/win to me.

 

I agree! More platforms = more choice = more competition = higher quality industry in long run

 

The main reason I would want something like this is I feel like Unity is the only one of the group that knows there is a huge problem with discoverability. Every game and app store is just the main games that everyone already knows on the front page. Of course they do this to maximize profit.

If they could run their store not from a pure profit point of view but more from a discoverability point of view then it could end up being worth a try. Probably too idealistic though given unity has raised a ton of money and has to answer to investors like everyone else.

 

Unity cannot even run their Asset Store well. I cannot imagine buying games through them.

Don't get me wrong, I love Unity. But their Asset Store has been the little redheaded stepchild stuck off in the corner.

 

You said yourself. Developers. We are developers helping each other, and we are not each other's customers (not on the high scale). It's different very much. Naturally less toxicity on the begin with, which isn't true in general.

 

No need look far.
Asset store looks bad in general, for what it supplies.
Answers are much dead.
No functional system for job offers.
Just to name few.

Yes forum works, but only because of people.

 

We already have more choice than I can keep up with. GOG and the Humble Store started as generic stores, Origin and the Ubi store mostly started with each respective publisher’s own games. Then there are quite a few lesser known stores (Twitch got into the game recently, I think).

If somebody were to make a new store now they’d have to come up with a pretty good unique selling point for BUYERS.

 

No. We keep discussing this and the answer is always no. Unity can barely run an asset store, let alone a game store.

 

Seems like a distraction from what Unity should be focusing their resources on. The same for Epic.

These forums would become buried in player issues, even if a separate forum was created for the game store.

 

Unity does game engines really well. They should stick to that.

Unity doesn't do online web services well. This includes their assets store, answers, and

Spoiler: trigger warning

that time they tried to push lithium on us in the forums

. A store is well outside of what Unity knows how to do well.

I would honestly prefer if Unity focused their efforts on cooperating with store owners, rather then produced their own competing store.

 

Cooperating with store owners is an interesting idea. A Unity provided package from the package manager for Steam integration for example, and support in the IAP package for Steam. Or negotiating a revenue share price cut from Apple/Google/Steam/etc for Unity Plus/Pro owners. I think that type of thing would be far more valuable, and something Unity could be really good at doing, and add more value to an upgraded Unity license and help Steam better compete against emerging storefronts.

 

A very big hinderance for a Unity game store is that many gamers have a very negative view of Unity and games made by Unity, so much so, that some (small % maybe?) won't buy anything made with Unity.

 

This "big hinderance" barely exists and would probably be the least of Unity's problems.

 

While i agree with a lot of what people have said in this thread, I dont agree with this. Sure, some time ago, but I really dont see there being a percieved "bad air" around unity games except from maybe jim sterling fans.

 

That would be like going to a engineering warehouse to buy a new car. You don't want to do that. You want to buy it off a flashy salesman in a showroom.

Or it would be like.....

Going to a farm to buy a cow every time you wanted a hamburger for tea.

Or it would be like....

Going to a forest to buy a table.

Or it would be like.... [fill in your own metaphor here.]

 

... going to a slaughterhouse instead of McDonalds for a McDouble?

You guys make good points and perhaps your right. I hadn't considered a lot of things you guys bring up.

 

Most gamers aren't aware of what engine a particular game uses unless it tells them when the game starts, and most don't care as long as the game isn't broken. You're referring to a vocal minority.

 

Yeah, and honestly even Jim Sterling has happily praised some Unity games. For example, he loved "The Sexy Brutale", which I think was made with Unity 5.3.

 

There are some who claim to hate all Unity games, but when you ask those people to list some of their favorite games they usually end up listing several Unity games. The bottom line is nearly nobody cares what engine a game was made in. They only care if the game is enjoyable to play.

 

Good thing about Jim Sterling's reviews is that he is so sarcastic, that if he says something bad about your game in a sarcastic manner you can use that as a quote for your game and it looks like a high praise. Pro tip. Teach him to use sarcasm on the internet!

 

Honestly, I get this is a joke, but there are a couple styles of game where being able to use a Jim Sterling quote of "a festering pile of week old vomit" or whatever might be a not too bad idea.

 

Yes, it's like a business school case study - you're either cooperating or competing. Without a game store, Unity is best friends with everyone who has one and needs content. They're glad to share advance changes to make sure Unity games work on their platform. But with a game store, Unity's a competitor and is suddenly buying a lot of trouble from their new enemies.

 

Just like Epic? Oh wait...

As long as you have a strong engine, I don't think storefronts can afford not to be your friends because of that no matter you otherwise compete with them. I don't think anyone will kick out Unreal or treat it as a "well we have that as well.. somewhere", just because Epic opened a storefront. It's unrealistic (sorry, pun intended).

 

Not really. Most large businesses cooperate and compete at different levels. For example it would be entirely possible for Unity and Unreal to compete like dogs on the engine front, but for them to cooperate when it comes to building plugins for the store. And so on.

Very few businesses gain from a total competition scenario.

 

This is a horrible idea. I'm glad Epic is doing it because they have a giant amount of people using their loader already, and their cut is much more reasonable than Valve's. More people trying to emulate the idea is a bad idea because it takes the pressure off Steam to compete fairly with their profit share. We should all be supporting Epic on this, considering they're even letting Unity developers market their games with no difference in market share than their own games.

 

Unity is a company that produces tools for game creation. Epic is first and foremost a Video Game Studio before a Graphics Engine company. For Unity competing with digital retailers is pointless.

 

No.
With bad reputation put on "Made by Unity" games by flippers there is small chance somebody will even look into that store...

 

Can you even say you've lived?

 

LOL, the media and the "bs-vendors" are "vulturing" above Fortnite. (sorry remove it if it's too off-topic)

 

This reputation only exists in so few people that you may not even bother with them.

 

No, thanks. And now with the Discord Store giving 90% of the revenue to developers that's a bigger no!