Thanks to a post on Reddit, we've learned that Epic Games currently have no plans to put their store on Linux.
In response to a user question about it on Twitter, Sergey Galyonkin, the person behind Steam Spy who now works for Epic Games as the "Director of Publishing Strategy" said this:
It really isn’t on the roadmap right now. Doesn’t mean this won’t change in the future, it’s just we have so many features to implement.
It's interesting, since their original announcement mentioned the store was coming to "other open platforms" besides Windows, Mac and Android which we presumed would mean Linux. It's odd, since there aren't really other open platforms besides those to put a store on. We also had Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games, give a ray of hope on Twitter with "We'll See :D" in reply to a user asking if the other open platforms meant Linux. So, I do still find it very odd that it's not on the roadmap at all. Not surprising though, Linux has always been low priority for Epic Games.
This could create an issue for us in future, since Epic Games are taking on timed-exclusive games which would mean no possibility for a Linux version until that ends. Even then, the developers of those games could decide to remain solely on the Epic Store. Remember, this has already happened with Satisfactory from Coffee Stain having the Steam store page removed to be exclusive to the Epic Store.
Speaking on Reddit, Epic's Sweeney said "These exclusives don’t come to stores for free; they’re a result of some combination of marketing commitments, development funding, or revenue guarantees.". So with that in mind, Epic Games are offering some commitments to developers to get their games, which could sway some future high-profile titles away from the likes of Steam.
For Linux gamers we still have Steam, GOG, Humble Store, itch.io and a few others which support Linux games. Heck, even Discord confirmed their store will come to Linux. For now, the Epic Store isn't a huge deal and doesn't have a lot of games (or features) for users so it won't be a huge problem right away. It will be interesting to follow, especially to see what Valve plan to do to prevent too many games leaving.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
wvstolzing Dec 31, 2018
Quoting: GuestAnd he doesn't seem to have much Unix knowledge judging by the questions he asks so Linux is probably not even on his radar.
Wasn't this the guy who was beflustered by such arcane Linux commands as 'sudo apt-get install'? Or was that someone else? I remember some game dev complaining about 'sudo apt-get'.
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: ecosvaldoEven IF their store supported Linux, it still will not get me to use their platform. Why? One word... Tencent. They ALMOST have controlling interest in Epic Games (around 48 - 49%)!Ehhh, for practical purposes that's controlling unless there are no small shareholders at all. I know, in theory you need 50%+1, but in practice you need more votes than will be cast against you, and there will always be a fair number of shareholders who don't get the memos or aren't interested and don't vote their shares. So 48% is plenty to win any plausible vote. You can often have control with 30% or so!
Epic is however a private company and not a public one so the other 51.6% is most likely owned by the founders or some other investors, but more important for the question at hand is that it's owned by a small circle of people so there will not bee a situation where some shareholders don't get the memo or aren't interested.
For public companies it's quite often (for the big ones) to have several share classes where the one listed on an exchange have either no or very little voting rights. One example is Google where Page and Brin owns 59.16% of the votes due to them owning a lot of the B class shares (their A class gives 1 vote, B class gives 10 votes and C class gives zero votes where only the A and C classes are publicly traded).
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Since some people have brought up the ownership of Epic, I would like to point out the following tidbit from the Wikipedia article on Epic. I am not claiming it is accurate, I want to bring attention to it, in particular the bit I bolded:
"Epic announced in October 2018 that it had acquired US$1.25 billion in investment from seven firms: KKR, ICONIQ Capital, Smash Ventures, aXiomatic, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The firms join Tencent, Disney, and Endevour as minority shareholders in Epic, which is still controlled by Sweeney.With the investment, Epic Games was estimated to have a nearly US$15 billion valuation"
The sources they point to are the following:
https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/epic-games-gets-1-25-billion-investment-from-seven-firms-1202998408/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-26/fortnite-s-epic-games-gets-1-25-billion-from-new-investor-group
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fortnite-creator-epic-games-valued-at-nearly-15-billion-1540577025
If it is true that Tim Sweeney holds a controlling interest and that 9 companies other than Tencent are shareholders, then I doubt Tencent own 48 to 49% or even the original 40% they bought.
"Epic announced in October 2018 that it had acquired US$1.25 billion in investment from seven firms: KKR, ICONIQ Capital, Smash Ventures, aXiomatic, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The firms join Tencent, Disney, and Endevour as minority shareholders in Epic, which is still controlled by Sweeney.With the investment, Epic Games was estimated to have a nearly US$15 billion valuation"
The sources they point to are the following:
https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/epic-games-gets-1-25-billion-investment-from-seven-firms-1202998408/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-26/fortnite-s-epic-games-gets-1-25-billion-from-new-investor-group
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fortnite-creator-epic-games-valued-at-nearly-15-billion-1540577025
If it is true that Tim Sweeney holds a controlling interest and that 9 companies other than Tencent are shareholders, then I doubt Tencent own 48 to 49% or even the original 40% they bought.
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Quoting: F.UltraAll very true. And of course they could also form some sort of alliance with one member of such a small circle of shareholders. So really it's very hard to tell from the outside just who has control. But I think we can suspect that Tencent wouldn't have accumulated that much of an interest in one company if they didn't have some hope of controlling it . . . so I guess we really don't know if they have control or not, but we can be pretty sure they were giving it a try, whether they succeeded or failed.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: ecosvaldoEven IF their store supported Linux, it still will not get me to use their platform. Why? One word... Tencent. They ALMOST have controlling interest in Epic Games (around 48 - 49%)!Ehhh, for practical purposes that's controlling unless there are no small shareholders at all. I know, in theory you need 50%+1, but in practice you need more votes than will be cast against you, and there will always be a fair number of shareholders who don't get the memos or aren't interested and don't vote their shares. So 48% is plenty to win any plausible vote. You can often have control with 30% or so!
Epic is however a private company and not a public one so the other 51.6% is most likely owned by the founders or some other investors, but more important for the question at hand is that it's owned by a small circle of people so there will not bee a situation where some shareholders don't get the memo or aren't interested.
For public companies it's quite often (for the big ones) to have several share classes where the one listed on an exchange have either no or very little voting rights. One example is Google where Page and Brin owns 59.16% of the votes due to them owning a lot of the B class shares (their A class gives 1 vote, B class gives 10 votes and C class gives zero votes where only the A and C classes are publicly traded).
Edited to add: If the info Kristian cites is correct, they don't . . . or didn't at that time, anyhow. Or, Sweeney could be kidding himself. The emphasis on seven firms seems a bit off, makes it sound like oh, Tencent is just one small player among many . . . but they can't all have bought a 40% stake! One way or another, it's interesting information. Nobody's going in big like that without anticipation of payoff. Presumably a big deal like that was put together in anticipation of some major move by Epic which would cost a lot of money but have big profit potential . . . such as, say, creating a game store that could really grab some market share from Steam.
Perhaps a pity we have little choice but to be agin' it.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 31 December 2018 at 8:23 pm UTC
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The $1.25 billion investment might have diluted Tencent's share. Although it should have diluted Tim Sweeney's too...
Gameindustry.biz attributes the statement about Tim Sweeney holding the controlling interest to Epic themselves. Surely they know who their controlling shareholder is:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/amp/2018-10-26-epic-games-raises-usd1-25-billion-from-handful-of-investors
It could be a case of different classes of shares with different voting rights as someone alluded to earlier with regard to Google(to be pendantic they presumably meant Alphabet Inc).
Last edited by Kristian on 31 December 2018 at 8:55 pm UTC
Gameindustry.biz attributes the statement about Tim Sweeney holding the controlling interest to Epic themselves. Surely they know who their controlling shareholder is:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/amp/2018-10-26-epic-games-raises-usd1-25-billion-from-handful-of-investors
It could be a case of different classes of shares with different voting rights as someone alluded to earlier with regard to Google(to be pendantic they presumably meant Alphabet Inc).
Last edited by Kristian on 31 December 2018 at 8:55 pm UTC
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time and time again wine proves to them that their applications can work in linux. the least they can do is what valve did by introducing proton. im sure epic can do something similar to experimentation. the wine community are happy to test and improve it. like i just installed subnautica on epic in wine. its working like gold out of the box.
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Quoting: backplate101time and time again wine proves to them that their applications can work in linux. the least they can do is what valve did by introducing proton.No, I think they can do a lot less than that. And if I had to guess, I'd say we'll all be finding out just how little the least they can do is.
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Quoting: Cestusyeah 3 billion dollar profit in 2018 is just not enough to have a couple people working on it.... sorry....
Yep, and all they need to to is build a launcher that supports Linux and get EAC working on Linux and all of their UE4 engine games like Fortnite would work. But no, there's not enough money in it for them.
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Nevertheless Jan 1, 2019
Quoting: GuestLet's focus here. Software drives hardware (and OS to a 'particular' lesser degree).
- VisiCalc sold Apple II.
- Tomb Raider sold Voodoo and 3dfx cards.
- Halo sold Xbox (and XP and Vista)
- Steam, Valve, and Half-Life (i.e. Source games) sold nearly every enthusiast PC in existence today. (<--Prove this wrong, anyone.)
Discounting the PS4, Xbox, and six other "open" platforms, how much PC hardware is EPIC (Fortnite Battle Royale, Inc.) going to sell? ANSWER: Jack Shit! (and Jack just left town.)
After installing video drivers, EVERY user with an enthusiast-level gaming computer installs Steam — NOT Origin, NOT UPlay, NOT GoG, NOT Itch.io, NOT GeForce NOW, NOT PS NOW, NOT Google Project Stream ... and certainly NOT Epic Games. (Maybe Blizzard. Maybe.). No. It's OS, drivers, and Steam. That's PC gaming today. No exceptions.
Here's a weird thought: If people could buy a new enthusiast-level gaming computer and just install the latest video drivers and Steam, guess what they would probably do?
Sorry, B Group! You already lost. Welcome to the day before yesterday. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Software can sell Hardware, but it's no requirement to be successful. You cannot even begin to list all successful software running on i386 PC, after Wing Commander drove people to buy them.
Millions of people already installed Epic (and Steam for the most part, maybe even Origin and UPlay and Blizzard additionally), because of Fortnite. And once it's there, why shouldn't people buy Epic exclusives there? Why not purchase games cheaper on Epic? It will not defeat Steam, but it can hurt it.
Last edited by Nevertheless on 1 January 2019 at 10:58 am UTC
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