Epic Games Store

A new Steam alternative. Developers get 88% instead of 70%. Plus "Support-A-Creator" program designed to reward YouTube and Twitch creators. Sounds interesting.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...-with-88-percent-revenue-share-for-developers

EDIT: Direct access for developers to users. Great! Curated list of games to start (hopefully just to test before scaling up).

 

Brilliant move by Epic.

 

Seems pretty interesting!

 

Tomorrow announcement is .... Unity Store right? developers get 90% ..nah Unity have left this too late and the Hub isn't progressing that well anyway, Epic have a not so great launcher and it's been out for a few years... if it has taken them that long to get to this point how long would it take Unity? Anyway it's a really good move by Epic. What will Valve do now, actually start making good games again, maybe partner with Unity and do a better job of providing Unity c# supported api's instead of being slackers and relying on the developer community to do framework wrappers because they can't bothered? hah jk

 

"but Epic is sweetening the pot a bit for those using its own Unreal Engine in that it will waive all royalties it would otherwise be due for revenue generated through the storefront." Is that the overall 5% royalties or the 12% from the storefront?

 

It is the 5% they would normally charge for the engine. They still take their 12% pound of flesh. The significance here is that their 12% is lower than Steam's normal 30%. (a comparable portion to what digital storefronts like the Apple App store take)

Reducing their share to 12% puts them into a competitive stance, and should be more than enough to start attracting developers. If there's one thing we've learned, it's that there is no advantage to smaller developers in being exclusive to one storefront. An experienced developer attempts to sell their game on as many storefronts as they can reasonably manage. I have no doubt that Epic will be able to attract a substantial number of developers to sell their wares on their new digital store. The only real question is whether or not they can attract enough customers. Cross-promotion with Fortnite should help their Store find its initial legs, but a solid customer base will be essential to maintaining momentum.

 

the 5% royalties, they'll just take 12% from the sales on their store, probably still charge you 5% if you plan to sell on other stores or your own store though.

 

You are most likely correct. And this is actually a very clever move. They don't prevent you from selling your game on other stores. But with the difference in profit-share, developers will have a heavy incentive to promote the Epic Store version of their game over any other. Either they will charge the same, and make a larger profit off the Epic Store version, or they will actively charge less for the Epic Store version. Either scenario is more likely to drive customers to the Epic Store, and make developers positively inclined to support it.

 

It should be interesting if they get games exclusive to their store.

No UE4 royalties when the game is exclusive to their store ?

 

You've got to give it to Epic, they take swift actions when the opportunity presents itself.

 

Dev's like myself who will have games on multiple storefronts will redirect customers from steam and other platforms to the Epic Store. With the better revenue share I can offer a lower price point exclusive to the Epic Store.

 

Hope they open it up to everyone so it stands a chance of attracting enough users, and then forcing Steams hand to price match.

 

If curation was all it took to outdo Steam, everyone would have moved over to GoG in 2013.

 

As a gamer I am not planning to go outside of Steam. I prefer a one shop stop to my library. So will see. They have to offer very cool things for very cheap to make me register. None of Galaxy, Origin or UPlay succeeded so far. If they will sell Steam keys I may buy some stuff there on the other hand.

 

Offering your game at a lower price on another storefront would be a violation of the Steam terms.

 

It may look nice for developers but I doubt that as a developer you'll get more attention for your game.
I mean, if you're a gamer yourself it would be easier to stay at Steam.
Steam has built up too much in all those years, I don't believe it simply can get beaten.

 

Honestly most of the gamers I know don't really care what platform software is used to get their games anymore. A lot of the games they play are delivered through the developer's custom launcher and it's not really a big inconvenience except with Uplay and Origin where it's simply just bad software. At the bottom line the shortcut icon on their desktop is what they use every day.

Steam is really starting to turn into a space where the quality par is low enough that a lot of consumers don't use it to search for new games anymore.

 

If Epic were to do exactly the same as Steam, which boils down to having whatever game is already viral and selling big time in front page, then yeah as a gamer you're better off keeping all your games in the same place.

Epic must offer different games, that are also worth playing

<insert venn diagram with overlap of games worth playing and games not easy to find in current stores' front pages>

 

Majority of the players already have multiple installers/launchers in use and an additional one wont make a much of a difference especially as it's from a well known company, Epic and also the home for Fortnite. With a larger selection of other games the barrier to install will get even lower.

Blizzard already has Diablos, Overwatch etc. on their own, Battlefields, Battlefronts etc. are in Origin, many Ubisoft games require Uplay regardless if you buy from Steam or other places. Bethesda had the new Fallout 76 on their own.

 

Origin and Uplay are limited to their own very small games library, it's not game stores.

I played Tomb Raider reboot on Steam, but last times i tried and re install this was not possible to play it (a message saying it could not contact servers, perhaps specific severs to check game access ).
With GOG, there is no DRM, you can be offline as much as you want and no such problems to launch a game.
Perhaps because i don't play a lot and only very few top games it doesn't matter if i use Steam or GOG.


When you can get the same game for lower price somewhere else, why would you still buy it higher price on Steam ?
Until you don't care about games prices.

 

12% share sounds fantastic. If only they were not located in USA which sets my non-treaty country back 30% in taxes, it would be magical.

 

I can't help but think if Valve's pricing cut was better that wouldn't have happened, none of these other launchers even attempt to bother improving on the social friends list communication aspect.. if they include it, its basic at best. It boggles the mind we had better communication clients like msn messenger over a decade ago, and ever since retards starting into higher positions and allowing fellow retards to pile into MS it all went to S***, with everything they touched or had.

While Steam has just been riding out this gravy train for years and years without really doing crap (this year may have seem them doing a bit more but seriously late). Even there SteamOS couch potato garbage was a fking joke, anyone with half brain cell could have told them that, and competing with console land with pc parts was a bad idea.. they could have improved linux desktop land, and actually been a company to really make a Linux OS distro that was something Windows users could bail out too after Winblows8 and now 10's direction into full blown idiocracy... with Steam being a client for distribution while smoothing all the BS associated with Linux in general from graphics/performance/drivers and the desktop side ux etc etc etc but noo that wasn't in the vision ...some pathetic S***ting couch potato os..idiots really.

So good job Epic, I may think Fortnite sucks as game but at least the money pouring in from all those kids is helping you make moves like this.

 

Which is only relevant if they can enforce those terms. Sure it will be an issue for bigger games. But its going to be virtually impossible for Steam to detect for small indie games.

 

It makes it much simpler to detect when you've posted your intentions in a public forum though

 

What has the Hub got to do with anything?

I know that Epic's launcher is a hybrid of game launcher and engine launcher, but Unity's is not, it's straight up a management tool for those of us running multiple versions of the engine concurrently. Personally I'd prefer it if Epic's was the same, and they had a separate thing for when it's time to play games.

It's not unusual for businesses to set up in multiple countries, so maybe they'll do that to get around this?

 

This. One of the most unpleasant aspects of running unreal was having to negotiate through the game launcher menus before getting to the actual engine itself.

 

I don't know... even if the cut was 5%, if you're an EA or an Ubisoft or a Blizzard releasing a constant stream of multi-million dollar games, that 5% would still swing your way by many millions of dollars in the long-term. Putting financials aside, it also gives them direct control over things that they can't directly control on Steam. Why negotiate sale and feature slots when they don't have to? Why have people shows competitors titles on the way to launching their own when they don't have to? And so on.

I kind of hope that it's a nicely curated collection that's highly competitive to get into. I think there's a clear gap on PC for that now, since Steam wholeheartedly abandoned that approach.

There are other places that are nicely curated, but they seem to have their own niches and to have not really made it mainstream. A new, mainstream storefront where consumers can be confident of a high quality bar would be great, from a personal perspective. I'd use it.

 

Yeah, and now we finally understand why Epic did that. They just want to get the game launcher onto everybody's computers, so they could take a run at Steam's market.

 

I'm not seeing the connection.

Getting developers to install the launcher is unlikely to have made a huge impact on this as a sales platform. On the flip side, forcing lots of their core gamer audience to install it to access Fortnight... that probably made a huge difference!

(Also note that this is exactly how Steam got its start as a sales platform. Want to play Half Life 2? Install our client...)

 

On top of this, note that the landscape was wildly different 14 years ago.

 

A Unity Store would never work because Unity has no gaming audience. It's audience is developers.

Just to be the devil's advocate for a moment. I predict that the Epic Store is going to bomb. The reason being that it is not going to have it's own DRM. Sounds good? But then that means each big developer will implement their own custom DRM some of which will be very bad and annoying. So you will end up with a store with no central DRM just a load of hacky DRM's and lots of complaints. It sounds like Epic is going into this half heatedly and I predict a big lawsuit when it all implodes!

 

The Hub.. as in just a reflection of the type of launcher being made by Unity and progress of it into areas of it being useful for the most part it's not and neither was the launcher it was replacing.To be fair they've got so many things up in the air like packages, render pipelines etc to actually provide a laucher that can help users manage that stuff before opening a project in editor. . Anyway I'd like to see a launcher that deals with the asset store and caches S***, so I don't have to waste time waiting for some garbage web app built store that doesn't actually fully work (ie lets me update/download/import packages myself) where it's meant to ie a damn WEB BROWSER, that has built TABS n'S*** to work with websites unlike the Unity editor assetview.. with it's built in single tab asset store view to manage assets.. just ridiculous, that's why I brought it up.

yeah I would also agree it's better separated.. it's not like it didn't take Valve over a decade to do an invisible mode properly for the friends list, and they only managed it this year. Plenty of other rubbish areas that could be improved I can't be bothered write on ..but when every other company jumps on doing the same thing and only copies the basics ..aah..

 

Every person who installs their launcher is a win for them. Fortnight has likely had a much larger install result then UE4, but it all adds up.

 

Interesting video:

 

Steam has eyeballs and is installed on most gamers' PCs. I haven't bought a Blizzard game in years because I don't want to install whatever launcher they are using, or even bother figuring it out. I'd be surprised if the number of people like me are less than 5% of their potential customers. I'd actually like to play StarCraft 2 again, but every time I think about it it sounds like too much of a hassle to reinstall.

 

What I'm most excited about is the "affiliate program". It does kind of annoy me when YouTubers play games for content on their channels and don't even put a link to the game in the description. (Pewdiepie is a prime example). But maybe now they'll encourage their viewers to buy the games and leave links. And it also helps pay YouTube game reviewers which means more advertising. And it helps the fans of the YouTubers to give something back. So it's a win-win. Except for Steam. Although, the downside is there will be more YouTubers who just make videos to try and get the affiliate money, so YouTube will turn into spam. And they might just focus on popular games to get more affiliate revenue. We shall see...

 

I'm sure they'll progress with it, they also don't have steam's overlay or api's to offer either not that that's any great offering but still.. I find it incredibly annoying to play other games on other inferior launchers, and not have the steam overlay, if only for it being useful to chat to friends outside of the game on platform that has gained popularity etc.. Valve have done somethings that would almost put them in a position to really make a good OS.. things like that belong on the OS level. But MS has been infected by morons to do a better job at anything without some other agenda to making it complete garbage they tried doing similar and failed.

As for DRM? Who cares about that crap, think you'll find piracy is dropping in countries where most the money is made, people just don't have the time sift through all the entertainment/games content that are free now, let alone waste time downloading some 60gb version of a game that is barely finished for release and will need another update and crack in the first day.

No that is silly talk about DRM, the bigger problem is ANTI CHEAT, people will buy a game that looks like it hasn't already been gone to shi't from hacking noobs within the first week. Areas that Game engines should be helping developers in. Ones like Unity.. but they fail to even provide networking api that isn't full of bugs and already abandoned while progress on something new might aswel have only just started now, while everyone has to find some other solution.

And some developers will always use there own protection schemes, so I see no issue. Epic providing api's to help in these areas would be good. I've given up on Unity doing networking well did I say that already? ...or ever getting around to providing game developers with a good framework that just makes making multiplayer games easier and hack proof as much as possible... yknow maybe they'll have that in like 3years right?

Anyway I think Tim Sweeney will rather like to see things done a certain way that will make there version work ... Though looking at the stated goals and how they won't have certain things Steam does, well they have some way to go to catch upto Steam in features, but they only take 12% right.

 

This is great news, valve have been increasingly apathetic to small developers for quite a few years. Perfect timing too, considering the new steam revenue info. I feel like 30% is an absolute piss-take, whatever the platform. Have to give Epic credit for allowing non UE games and at the same split too. I hope they keep it curated indefinitely.

 

Have they? I think they've been genuinely trying to solve a tremendously difficult problem.

They literally don't have time to curate all the stuff sent their way, so they tried to automate that. Similarly, they don't have time to express care on a case by case basis.

All they can do is try to build the best tool possible for connecting developers with their audience. And that's hard. I've never hidden the fact that I'm not keen on some of their approaches, but I very much respect that they're giving it a solid shot, and that they're willing to change and try new things.

 

I think Epic's heart is in the right place. (Well it's probably more to do with their wallet). I'm just not sure they will do it well. In terms of Unreal engine, etc. even their developer forum is not that well designed. But that's my opinion. Some people love Unreal. Another thing is they concentrate mostly on high end computers.

 

DRM has never really worked. It annoys legitimate users, and doesn't really slow down piracy. The nature of the internet means that DRM only needs to be cracked once to be broken everywhere.

 

Piracy is not that really bad as many picture it.

If some one can not afford product, perhaps can not buy. Hence is not a really a marketing target at that stage. But maybe in future. Many people did buy games, even years after they played it pirated version.
Sure, person is more likely pirate it.
But in the end, news about pirated program / game gets spread vastly, which makes community more familiar with. This way you have free spread of word into media. And in the end dev generate additional revenue.

Look for example Windows. Pirating it never did cause person any trouble, as long you are not using it in a business.
Means specially young audience can reach it for free. Now you train your target audience from early age. Hence, not only they are more familiar with your product, but are more likely purchase future products.

Simple long term strategy.

 

I always find it funny when people try to explain how piracy is a good thing and even benefits the developer/business. Its stealing, immoral, and against the law. That is it.It is just too costly and difficult to find and arrest everyone pirating.

 

Likewise it's amusing when people make it out to be something that can only be a bad thing. Word of mouth is a powerful way of spreading word about a game and some developers, like Jeff Vogel, rely on it exclusively. If someone plays a game they pirated and then tells their friends about it they've just advertised your game.

 

Not to mention, many clever devs, put pirated game by them self on web, so they can monitor and promote interest in their product.
Also, this way, you can even limit certain features, if really need to.

 

I just leave this here.

 

Sure, and that's a pragmatic way to look at things. You can't stop it, so you may as well get whatever advantage from it you can. That doesn't mean the people who are doing it are in the right.

 

True. But no one admitted it, that is right

 

I disagree with the idea that they don't have time, I think its more likely that they don't have anyone who wants to do that job. Greenlight was a lazy effort which tried to shift the work onto the community which was always gonna end up with a store full of trash, like what happened with that old xbox indie program. Ever since its seems every decision they've made regarding steam hasn't considered small devs. Some developers have messages from steam reps regarding the revenue split along the line of "you are not valuable to us, so why would we help you"? Compared to itch its night and day.