Epic Games Store has self-publishing

Epic Games Store has officially launched self-publishing tools!

 

If Epic had announced this back in 2018, then it would have probably been exciting for a lot of developers. But it is 2023 now. Epic made a huge mistake by not welcoming small indie developers from the start.

Is anybody really excited about this news from Epic at this point? The Epic launcher seems to only really be useful for people who play Fortnite (or Genshin Impact) or people who make games with UE4 or UE5. I doubt there is a significant group of game players who buy games from the Epic Game Store but not from Steam.

 

It is still a good thing, though.

There ARE large groups of people who would be more likely to use EGS than steam.

 

That's hundreds of millions of people.

 

if you can sell a $20 game to a few thousand more people that's a years salary.

I only skim watched the video, but if it is as convenient as it looks, seems like a no brainer to throw game on there to.

 

This is the other big thing. Anyone who's had to set up a store page on Steam knows how much of an ordeal that is compared to what Epic's just displayed here. Store management is one of the worst parts of the Steam dev experience.

 

yeah i dread having to do anything in steamworks. makes me feel like im lost in maze every single time. at least the support is usually helpful and responsive.

 

I looked at the Epic Game Store stats page:
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2022-year-in-review

There are 230 million PC users that have installed the Epic launcher. That sounds very impressive at a glance. However, I am guessing the vast majority of those installs are by players who only play Fortnite or Genshin Impact. Many of those users probably never bought any games through the Epic store.

I am very curious to see how the Epic game store does compared to Steam for small indie games. I am guessing nearly all of the Fortnite and Genshin Impact players will probably ignore all of the indie games coming to the Epic store this year.

 

At a glance, it seems that way, but I doubt very many small indie games will get thousands of additional sales through the Epic game store. If users want to buy a game, they will probably buy it through Steam instead of Epic.

 

if there is no drawback to add the game there and its convenient, why wouldn't you test it out and see? Rather than guessing?

like i said, i only skimmed it. Is there any drawback besides a small time investment? Its not either epic or steam, right?

i'll actually look into it myself later, though i'm sure answer could be found quickly right now for anybody interested

 

For my next game, which I plan to ship later this year, I am actually planning to release it on both Steam and Epic. But I am guessing that nearly all of the sales will be on Steam.

Developers can put their games on one or both platforms. Epic has a requirement that all multiplayer games on the Epic store must support crossplay with other PC game platforms that the same game is released on.

I am also curious how many developers will port their entire Steam back catalog to Epic, and what the results are for that.

 

I'm planning on looking into it, but its really a case of how awkward the integration will be at this point.
Im guessing that using photon means the MP integration is already done.

 

This, it is absolutely appalling how bad it is to deal with steam on pretty much any aspect of development.

 

Definetly worth looking into if you already ship to Steam, Itch, etc.

 

You guys forgot about giveaways. That's one of the main reasons why people bothered installing the launcher. As a Genshin Impact player, I never needed the Epic Games launcher for it.

And tbh regular giveaways made me very cautious about buying games there, because there is a real chance to get them for free therefore save some money. So yeah, while I would try to publish games there in addition to steam (because why not), I wouldn't expect much from it.

 

There is also a risk, that if a game lands on both stores at the same time, people will be inclined wait for potential give away eventually.

Personally I would consider publishing on Epic, as extended release, only after Steam salles fades out. Otherwise there is potential to loose many sales.

 

I mostly appreciate Epic Games from the context of competition. It is extremely important that there is competition to keep everyone focusing on the customer's best interest so that they can maintain their grip. Otherwise, a monopoly just won't bother innovating or going out of their way to make the customer happy. I think Epic Games has helped slightly on that front.

I doubt anyone would ONLY buy games from Epic Games Store because Steam is so firmly entrenched in the space, and it just has more games right now. But this is a smart choice to bring parity between the libraries. Still, one of the draws of Epic Games Library was that it wouldn't be inundated by shovelware games. I think Steam's done well in keeping shovelware from drowning out good new indie games. I used to not be able to find little gems in the ocean of shovelware. And I've gradually noticed that I don't have that problem as much anymore.

I think Epic will continue to want to bring all aspects of their product up to snuff with Steam, and once they do, their very favorable fee system is potentially going to begin taking serious chunks from Steam - or will force Steam to lower their fees to match, which will be even better for the developers and gamers.

 

Nobody actually cares about this in numbers large enough for it to matter. Sales on itch.io have been increasing for ages, Steam has had market dominance and continues to see growth despite this being an "issue" for five years now. Shovelware is not a meaningful issue despite some people making very vocal fusses about it because people never actually see it. It's never high up in search results, it's never in the top sellers, it's never on the front page, and the only time people learn about it at all is when people go trawling for it to make youtube videos to dunk on it.

 

I cared about it. I know a lot of people who cared about it, personally. In the end, it's anecdotal either way. But I didn't watch Youtube videos about the problem. I experienced it first hand as I, myself, tried searching for new Indie games in Steam. Though, as I said, it has gotten much better, and is no longer an issue for me.

 

World populace is 7.8 billion. Steam only has 120 million active monthly users. That's assuming the stats are real, of course, and not inflated, as steam charts display a value that is 4 times lower, and at least 2 million people seem to be focused on hamster wheel games, which are CSGO, DOTA, Apex, Destiny, PUBG and Rust. In this scenario, alternative platform is a good thing, as t here are a lot of people which are not on steam, and only a small fraction of populace is participating.

Another thing worth considering is that at least some store fronts decided to play politics and cut off fairly large regions from their user base. Steam is one of those, although it didn't go all the way, like some other services did.

Epic Store has several advantages compared to steam. There's no community nonsense to deal with, no idiotic meme reviews, you can focus on games. Community on steam stinks. It is a cesspool, and the site would've been far better without it. Marketplace also doesn't smell well.

Epic Store discounts also worked, for example, it made better offer for death stranding and RDR2 at the release date.

So, in this scenario, "nobody cared" is your opinion. it is definitely not a truth, as many people did. Steam did not capture entire gaming market and never will - it is too small for that. And from a game developer perspective, it makes sense to register your game on ALL platforms that exist. Because every single one of them may bring you extra revenue. People that are interested in your game, but do not like the platform are missed opportunity to get extra money.

 

You really should bother reading.

To focus on this specifically:

2.9 billion people have never used the internet. If we want to get into some cocktail napkin math, 2 billion people on Earth are under the age of 14 and thus probably won't have their own Steam accounts. So if we cut them off and assume a perfectly even population distribution, we can bonk another 1 billion people off. We're already down to 4.9 billion people who could potentially use Steam at all. 10% of those people will be over the age of 65 and statistically unlikely to have Steam at all. We're at around 4.5 billion. 75% of the global population doesn't speak English at all but only half the games on the platform support languages other than English.

This doesn't even get into the part where, as of 2019, 53% of households don't even have computers.

Treating the entire population as a viable consumer base is ridiculous and also fails to account for statistical significance at all.

 

That's another not very reasonable opinion of a single individual.

Estimated number of epic store users is 230 million. Estimated number of steam users is 130 million.
Epic store also has significantly less noise and more quality content. Epic Games is also valued higher than steam, so in the long term they have every opportunity in the world to take over. Which means that a game should be published on both platforms.

In general, it is not recommended to look down at something, as this tend to backfire and come back. It is also not a good idea to get attached to any specific service. Those come and go.
It doesn't matter that steam exists. What matters is that the new platform may mean new buyers for your game that are not on steam.

 

I wonder why that might be. Surely it isn't because the only way to play Fortnite on PC, one of the biggest games on the planet, is to do it through the Epic Games Store.

If you would actually bother to see what my point is, it's that the idea that shovelware is a problem is not the case. Curation is not the main driver of the EGS player count, it's Fortnite and Genshin Impact. Curation is not what drives people in any real number to platforms, major titles are.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2021-year-in-review

 

The numbers for Epic look good at a glance. But I am concerned the Epic store has trained users for polished free to play games and big budget release day games. Small indie games were banned from Epic's store for the first half decade, so I don't know how quickly the Epic users will decide to buy small indie games.

It will be interesting to see how the Epic store promotes or hides small indie games as well. Steam automatically promotes every new game a set amount for a while and then hides most games. Will Epic do something similar with small indie games?

 

In comparison, Steam currently is being flooded with indie titles, many of them are low quality.

I haven't seen anything good in discovery queue for a very long time, and the number of titles is massive - there are 50 thousand titles listed. They also changed their suggestion mechanics, now when there are "categories" offered during some sale, there's no point in checking them, because they'll be all displaying the same content.

So it is a "pick your poison" situation. In epic store people "might" expect a polished title, while steam might start approaching level of itch io, where you open the site, see a wall of titles, and after browsing for a while, decide that there's nothing interesting and definitely nothing you'd pay for.

Which is one more reason to register on all platforms.

 

In the same way you could argue that the main driver of steam is DOTA, CSGO, Rust and other hamster wheel titles I listed. Or marketplace trading. After all, past the first top title concurrent and peak player count drops rapidly, meaning that your game will probably have a tiny chance of even being seen.

My point is that none of that matters. Your article is from 2021, by the way. Currently it is 2023.

There's a platform, there are people on it, they might buy your stuff. Arguing is pointless, feeling strongly or providing heated arguments, while looking down at the platform is also a complete waste of time, because it achieves nothing, doesn't bring you sales, and you can just give it a try and publish. Because giving it a try also costs you nothing, as mentioned by previous posters. So why not just do it?

And if you don't want to deal with it, you can always switch to another craft and learn carpentry, for example.

 

Wow, thanks! I didn't know what year it was! Yet it still proves my point about how the things that are driving adoption of EGS as a platform are first party.

Maybe you should try switching hobbies since reading comprehension clearly isn't one of yours. I was literally replying to a post that was operating under the assumption that EGS's appeal was rooted in its curation. All the evidence at hand, from how sales were dominated by first-party titles, to other things like how they routinely give away free games, shows that the draw to the platform is not curation.

Curation is not the meaningful factor. That is what I was talking about. Sales on itch.io have been steadily increasing despite being near completely uncurated, Steam's userbase has been increasing despite being only modestly curated. Curation isn't what's driving people to platforms, it's titles.

 

There's more than one appeal of EGS and curated titles was certainly one of them. It also was one of the appeals of steam as well. Originally. Before Early Access, before the greenlight. Being published on steam used to mean something, like quality assurance stamp and being recognized. Now it means nothing.

That's non-sequitur. For this reasoning to be correct curation has to be the only reason in existence for sales to increase, which is not the case.

Sales can increase alongside with the number of titles. If you had 1000 different kind of stuff, and now have 2000 different kind of stuff, you'll get more buyers. Even if you're selling junk most people dislike.

Number of accounts can increase because new people are born and service existed for a long time. For example, Bob Smith is born in 1980, registers on steam. Then in 2001, 2002 and 2003 he has 3 children. By the 2014, 2015, 2016 they'll reach minimum age for steam and that could be 3 more accounts. Obviously it might not even mean anything, because entire family can be playing Dota and nothing else, never paying a dime.

So there are multiple factors at play, and "curated content" certainly IS one of the factors that matters. Your argument of it not being important is a simple dismissal based on personal belief. And like I said, the belief is does not make a sound argument...

 

I literally said "in numbers large enough for it to matter" but if you're not going to bother paying attention to the context of the statement or even the words in it I'm not going to pay attention to you.

 

I literally said that it is your opinion that does not seem to be based on reality.
And when presented with user numbers, you said "it does not matter, because those are not true scottsmen"

When you have a HUGE store in your town, you do not make an identical store across the road. Because there's already a store people use, and the niche is taken. You need to build something unique that offers something the old store does not have.

That's what EGS was doing. There's no point in cloning steam. There is a lot of point in making a store where you can quickly find an interesting title without dealing with troll reviews, junk games and community bullshit. They've been filling this niche for a while. They can change their focus later again. But for now they appear to be successful. Plus their conditions for publishing are quite competitive.

 

There are draw backs if you support Steamworks especially for multiplayer.

Maybe Tim Sweeney is doing us a favor by not letting a Steamworks game be published.

https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-games-store-self-publishing/

EOS SDK seems like it could be a Steamworks replacement. Unity services also looks like it could be affected.

https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/eos-get-started/services-overview

The big issue is Steam keys are not going to work so you almost cannot sell on both platforms.

https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-games-store/publishing-tools/publishing-process/access-keys

Edit: meh EOS SDK has worse lockin then Steamworks.

 

Are Early Access games allowed on EGS? Or they accept only 100% finished games?

Also, is it possible to publish a live "coming soon" page for your future game, like on Steam?

 

Yes. Here's an example of one of them.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/satisfactory