We have thoughts about the Epic Games Store - TalkLinked #4
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NEWS SOURCES:
In December, Epic Games launched EGS, announced 88/12 percent dev/store revenue share
https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/12/...
Shortly after, Valve changed their revenue share to take 25 percent from games that make over 10 million and 20 percent from games that make over 50 million
o https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthe...
Then, EGS started grabbing exclusive games – started with some indie games, but then grabbed Metro Exodus – and made it CHEAPER on EGS
https://www.pcgamer.com/metro-exodus-...
Steam pre-orders honoured https://www.pcgamer.com/metro-exodus-...
Borderlands 3
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/bor...
Control from Remedy Games, Most Ubisoft PC titles, and a bunch of indies
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/...
These are mostly timed exclusives
https://www.pcgamesn.com/metro-exodus...
Adding insult to injury, Epic Games started buying games that had already existed for a while on other platforms, like Rocket League (they actually bought the developer, Psyonix)
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/1/185...
And buying games that had crowdfunding campaigns promising a Steam release, like Outer Wilds
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...
PROS
Now, one COULD argue this is all in service of adding competition to the market.
Tim Sweeney believes exclusives are “the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo” of the game insdustry
https://www.pcgamesn.com/epic-store-t...
https://www.polygon.com/2019/1/29/182...
Major Developers have expressed support for Epic's revenue split
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...
Interestingly, Epic doesn't want EVERY game - Skatebird
/ skatebird_developer_denied_for_launch_on_epic
And some games / devs have publicly declined - Rise of Industry, Factorio, DARQ
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/0...
In some cases, Epic won’t let some developers list on Steam AND EGS – not the case for large multiplatform games like Cyberpunk 2077
CONS
But Gamers take issue with EGS for a number of reasons:
People don’t want to download YET ANOTHER game launcher
There have been some concerns about data collection because Chinese gaming giant Tencent has a stake in the company
EGS has waaaay less features than Steam
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019...
EGS has a roadmap for features
Epic Games Store Roadmap
But they’ve already missed a bunch of deadlines – because roadmaps are not set in stone
/ out_of_the_6_new_featuresimprovements_targ...
And the whole conversation has become pretty toxic, on the part of both gamers and devs
CONCLUSION
What does Epic do well?
Revenue Share
Influencer marketing program
o https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/14/ho...
Supporting Cross-play
o https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/damien...
But they seem to largely be trying to gobble up users without much regard for what those USERS want
They say they have the market’s best interests in mind, but if that’s true, they’d offer some features that gamers can’t find anywhere else
What about Discord? They give 90 percent of revenue to developers on their store
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/1...
They’re an example of a company that offered a solution that the gaming industry needed, they got a ton of users, and THEN they started a store