Valve have some serious competition, with the Epic Games Store being announced

Quoting: Mountain ManI don't know if I would call a shop exclusively for a single game engine from a single publisher "serious competition" for Steam. Unless Epic tries to muscle developers to only release through the Epic store (unlikely) then I suspect most folks will publish to Steam and GoG as well and collect their profits from whichever distribution system customers happen to use.

Hmm.. Epic's announcement specifically mentions that the store is open for games using any engine. It is not Unreal Engine exclusive.

Edit:

From their announcement: "All Engines Are Welcome
The Epic Games store is open to games built with any engine, and the first releases span Unreal, Unity and internal engines."

And from Liam's article: "Although, to be clear, they state their store will be open to any game engine."


Last edited by Kristian on 5 December 2018 at 5:07 pm UTC

Quoting: Kristian

Quoting: Mountain ManI don't know if I would call a shop exclusively for a single game engine from a single publisher "serious competition" for Steam. Unless Epic tries to muscle developers to only release through the Epic store (unlikely) then I suspect most folks will publish to Steam and GoG as well and collect their profits from whichever distribution system customers happen to use.

Hmm.. Epic's announcement specifically mentions that the store is open for games using any engine. It is not Unreal Engine exclusive.

Edit:

From their announcement: "All Engines Are Welcome
The Epic Games store is open to games built with any engine, and the first releases span Unreal, Unity and internal engines."

And from Liam's article: "Although, to be clear, they state their store will be open to any game engine."

Yeah, I think there's a good few people who didn't read the details.

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: elmapul4- are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam.
yes, ubisoft had an bad time with self publishing, still they are doing it anyway, most triple A companies are doing, epic may have a chance to compete because many companies will give up leaving steam if steam change their cut, the economics of scale will not compensate the cost of self hosting

Games won't become cheaper just because market fees are lower..

i'm not saying they going to be cheaper, i'm saying that big companies such as square enix , capcom etc, may migrate to epic store instead of try to build their own store or keep seling their games on steam.

that will cut valve earnings, wich means they will have less income to side projects like the linux version of steam, proton etc.

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: elmapul4- are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam.
yes, ubisoft had an bad time with self publishing, still they are doing it anyway, most triple A companies are doing, epic may have a chance to compete because many companies will give up leaving steam if steam change their cut, the economics of scale will not compensate the cost of self hosting

Games won't become cheaper just because market fees are lower..

i'm not saying they going to be cheaper, i'm saying that big companies such as square enix , capcom etc, may migrate to epic store instead of try to build their own store or keep seling their games on steam.

that will cut valve earnings, wich means they will have less income to side projects like the linux version of steam, proton etc.

They might. But like with lots of networky stuff, there's a potential chicken-egg problem there. Steam is currently the big network. If big game company X sells on this new thing as well as on Steam, most of their sales will just still be on Steam, the new store will stay very small, and Valve will not care. If big game company X sells on this new thing instead of on Steam, then unless they really spend mucho megabucks on the marketing hype train they will lose a lot of sales because nobody's ever heard of this other store. Seeing the debacle, nobody else will follow, they themselves will think better of it next time, and Valve will not care. If they do spend those mucho megabucks, they may realize that they just spent more on extra marketing than the cut Valve would have gotten.

There's ways to maybe get around that, but time will tell whether Epic have the will, the money, or even the intention to pull them off.

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: elmapul4- are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam.
yes, ubisoft had an bad time with self publishing, still they are doing it anyway, most triple A companies are doing, epic may have a chance to compete because many companies will give up leaving steam if steam change their cut, the economics of scale will not compensate the cost of self hosting

Games won't become cheaper just because market fees are lower..

i'm not saying they going to be cheaper, i'm saying that big companies such as square enix , capcom etc, may migrate to epic store instead of try to build their own store or keep seling their games on steam.

that will cut valve earnings, wich means they will have less income to side projects like the linux version of steam, proton etc.

If they wanted it, they would have done it for a long time with their own stores and not waiting for Epic. So why they should migrate to epic store? Because i get from Epic 88%? But i don`t get the Steam, Origin, U-Play and what ever Gamer. I think no one will make his titles (EA excluded) exclusive for the Epic store, but we will see.

For a good store counts not only the profit margin (12% for Epic), but the whole service around it
I do not think Epic provides the same support as Valve does with Steam.

On the other hand we will see if Epic goes on Linux or if they do not.

Edit: And i don't think that Epic will help Devs to port a game to Linux, but Valve
makes it.


Last edited by LinuxGamesTV on 6 December 2018 at 1:27 am UTC

Quoting: elmapul3-for now they only have that.

4- are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam.
yes, ubisoft had an bad time with self publishing, still they are doing it anyway, most triple A companies are doing, epic may have a chance to compete because many companies will give up leaving steam if steam change their cut, the economics of scale will not compensate the cost of self hosting

correct me if im wrong, but did epic have so many good games in the past?
on PC they had UT of course, bulletstorm, and........ i think thats pretty much it
they made a lucky punch with a F2P comic pubg rip off. i dont think they have another hyped game like that in the next few years

i dont think anybody leaves steam. epic takes less money, but who say, that epic has the customers? who says that everybody moves to epic, if the games cost the same? would you go to epic just because ubisoft, etc can make more money
so if the games on epic arent significantly cheaper, than on steam, why would anybody install another client? and epic only would also be a high risk for developers

epic doesnt have their own exclusive games, they wont get 3rd party exclusive games and they wont be cheaper than steam
not really a good selling point to install another client

AND if everything's falling apart.... steam still can lower the cut down to 20 or 15%

Bulletstorm was made by People Can Fly.

Quoting: BdMdesigN

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: elmapul4- are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam.
yes, ubisoft had an bad time with self publishing, still they are doing it anyway, most triple A companies are doing, epic may have a chance to compete because many companies will give up leaving steam if steam change their cut, the economics of scale will not compensate the cost of self hosting

Games won't become cheaper just because market fees are lower..

i'm not saying they going to be cheaper, i'm saying that big companies such as square enix , capcom etc, may migrate to epic store instead of try to build their own store or keep seling their games on steam.

that will cut valve earnings, wich means they will have less income to side projects like the linux version of steam, proton etc.

If they wanted it, they would have done it for a long time with their own stores and not waiting for Epic. So why they should migrate to epic store? Because i get from Epic 88%? But i don`t get the Steam, Origin, U-Play and what ever Gamer. I think no one will make his titles (EA excluded) exclusive for the Epic store, but we will see.

For a good store counts not only the profit margin (12% for Epic), but the whole service around it
I do not think Epic provides the same support as Valve does with Steam.

On the other hand we will see if Epic goes on Linux or if they do not.

Edit: And i don't think that Epic will help Devs to port a game to Linux, but Valve
makes it.

self hosting may be more expensive than 12% of your income for some companies, including big ones.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Mal

Quoting: elmapul4- are games cheaper, because epic just takes 12%? ubisoft games cost the same on uplay and steam.
yes, ubisoft had an bad time with self publishing, still they are doing it anyway, most triple A companies are doing, epic may have a chance to compete because many companies will give up leaving steam if steam change their cut, the economics of scale will not compensate the cost of self hosting

Games won't become cheaper just because market fees are lower..

i'm not saying they going to be cheaper, i'm saying that big companies such as square enix , capcom etc, may migrate to epic store instead of try to build their own store or keep seling their games on steam.

that will cut valve earnings, wich means they will have less income to side projects like the linux version of steam, proton etc.

They might. But like with lots of networky stuff, there's a potential chicken-egg problem there. Steam is currently the big network. If big game company X sells on this new thing as well as on Steam, most of their sales will just still be on Steam, the new store will stay very small, and Valve will not care. If big game company X sells on this new thing instead of on Steam, then unless they really spend mucho megabucks on the marketing hype train they will lose a lot of sales because nobody's ever heard of this other store. Seeing the debacle, nobody else will follow, they themselves will think better of it next time, and Valve will not care. If they do spend those mucho megabucks, they may realize that they just spent more on extra marketing than the cut Valve would have gotten.

There's ways to maybe get around that, but time will tell whether Epic have the will, the money, or even the intention to pull them off.

that is why Fortnite was the game changer here.
valve used half life to promote Steam, Epic is using Fortnite that the hot thing of the moment.

also, if you make an game using Unreal engine, you have to pay 5% to epic+30% to steam, but if you make an game using Unreal Engine and publish it on their store, you only pay 12% instead of 35%, that may be enough for a lot of companies to publish only on their store or at least publish on both.

Quoting: elmapulalso, if you make an game using Unreal engine, you have to pay 5% to epic+30% to steam, but if you make an game using Unreal Engine and publish it on their store, you only pay 12% instead of 35%, that may be enough for a lot of companies to publish only on their store or at least publish on both.

You reach a lot fewer people outside of Steam. It's a naive fallacy. The renunciation of Steam is only worthwhile for very huge publishers. Normal publishers will offer their games on Epic, but of course also on Steam.