In the ongoing saga of the Wolfire versus Valve lawsuit, which is continuing, we've been able to see a funny little look behind the curtain and Tim Sweeney was not happy with Valve.
Thanks to the work from Simon Carless of GameDiscoverCo which has a great round-up of what's going on (definitely worth a read for some backstory here), we've managed to see some emails between Epic's Tim Sweeney to Valve's Gabe Newell and Scott Lynch.
Back in 2017 an email from Newell to Sweeney asked "Anything we doing to annoy you? We’re guessing Sean Jenkins public dumbness might be part of it.", which is in reference to a leaked post where a Valve's Jenkins talked about restricting Steam keys. Sweeney replied to mention they've "never heard of Sean Jenkins" and then goes off talking about the 30% platform fee Valve charges and how it's "no longer justifiable" but there was a "good case for them in the early days" but due to scale costs "have been driven down".
Sweeney's point here is that Valve make a lot of money from that 30% cut and goes on to say "If you subtract out the top 25 games on Steam, I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the developer themselves made" and complains that when you add together Valve's cut, marketing and so on that the cut for developers is small.
After that we don't see anything until November 2018 in the documents where Sweeney emailed Newell again and also Valve's Erik Johnson, notifying Valve about the plans to announce the Epic Games Store with their lower cut of sales from developers. Sweeney also mentions here about their issues with Apple, and how Sweeney wants Apple to open up, and hopes that Valve would make a "timely move" to change their rates taken from developers. Sweeney also notes the opposite, hoping Valve don't have any "unannounced revenue-sharing changes that favored big publishers over indies" as it would basically tell the likes of Apple that they "can keep their closed platforms and just pay off big publishers to stay silent".
It was only a few days later (quite cheekily then), that Valve suddenly publicly announced their plan to reduce their take for the top-selling Steam games. Naturally, this annoyed Sweeney rather a lot, as the next email confirmed the Epic Games Store announcement was going live the next day and Sweeney says to Valve "Right now, you assholes are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30% is for the little people. We're all in for a prolonged battle if Apple tries to keep their monopoly and 30% by cutting backroom deals with big publishers to keep them quiet. Why not give ALL developers a better deal? What better way is there to convince Apple quickly that their model is now totally untenable?".
The only reply to this we can see was from Valve COO (Chief Operating Officer) Scott Lynch sent internally at Valve to Johnson and Newell that simply says "You mad bro?".
You can only imagine how truly mad Sweeney would be if they saw that with Valve just basically laughing it off completely. Well, Sweeney can see it now.
As we know from Valve when they released their 2023 yearly report, they're continuing to print money and repeatedly break user records and so the Epic Games Store hasn't seemingly made much of a dent at all. While Epic Games continue to try to pull developers over to their store with various exclusivity deals and constant weekly free games.
Update note: Clarified the "You mad bro?" email was internal at Valve, not to Sweeney directly.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: ElectricPrism...
My God man, people can only handle so much truth. You're scaring the children.
pleasereadthemanual Mar 15
QuoteSweeney's point here is that Valve make a lot of money from that 30% cut and goes on to say "If you subtract out the top 25 games on Steam, I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the developer themselves made" and complains that when you add together Valve's cut, marketing and so on that the cut for developers is small.So his first argument is that Valve is making more money from the games that sell really well than the publisher themselves.
Valve almost immediately reduces their cut of games that sell really well:
QuoteIt was only a few days later (quite cheekily then), that Valve suddenly publicly announced their plan to reduce their take for the top-selling Steam games.And then Tim Sweeney complains about Valve not doing it for everyone and only the big publishers benefit (that isn't necessarily true; small developers occasionally ship hits).
If Valve reduced their cut for everyone, what would his next argument be?
I'm trying to take Tim Sweeney's side here because it's true that Valve has a near-monopoly on PC games (I wish they had a monopoly on Japanese VNs too) and monopoly power should not exist, but these arguments don't seem to be coming from a place where I can assume good faith.
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualQuoteSweeney's point here is that Valve make a lot of money from that 30% cut and goes on to say "If you subtract out the top 25 games on Steam, I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the developer themselves made" and complains that when you add together Valve's cut, marketing and so on that the cut for developers is small.So his first argument is that Valve is making more money from the games that sell really well than the publisher themselves.
Valve almost immediately reduces their cut of games that sell really well:
QuoteIt was only a few days later (quite cheekily then), that Valve suddenly publicly announced their plan to reduce their take for the top-selling Steam games.And then Tim Sweeney complains about Valve not doing it for everyone and only the big publishers benefit (that isn't necessarily true; small developers occasionally ship hits).
If Valve reduced their cut for everyone, what would his next argument be?
I'm trying to take Tim Sweeney's side here because it's true that Valve has a near-monopoly on PC games (I wish they had a monopoly on Japanese VNs too) and monopoly power should not exist, but these arguments don't seem to be coming from a place where I can assume good faith.
What I find even more absurd is that it to me sounds like he actually is quite ok with Valve taking 30% but is having more of a problem with Apple doing it and wants Valve to lower their commission to thus somehow force Apple to lower theirs as well.
Also not sure how Valve who gets 30% could make more money than the devs that gets the remaining 70% as he claims (and even if we include the typical publisher who:s average cut is 10%-20%, the devs should still get > 30%).
TheRiddick Mar 15
There is a lot they can do, but for some reason Epic thinks doing the bare minimal will convince people to switch from Steam... odd
Quoting: EhvisIt also demonstrates that throwing lots of cash at it is not enough.
So You Want To Compete With Steam?
Quoting: F.UltraAlso not sure how Valve who gets 30% could make more money than the devs that gets the remaining 70% as he claims (and even if we include the typical publisher who:s average cut is 10%-20%, the devs should still get > 30%).His claim isn't about revenue, but about profit: specifically, that for "most" of the 26 - 1,025 top selling games, (30% - taxes - cost of doing Steam things) is greater than (70% - publisher cut - taxes - cost of doing game-making things). Which is still a pretty incoherent claim (it makes zero difference to anything whether the claim is true or whether the claim is false), and Valve don't take 30% off the biggest games any more anyway.
Quoting: WORMSweeney is correct. Valve's cut was (and is, to a slightly lesser extent) quite greedy and their immature trolling does make them assholes.
Do you have the numbers? And what immature trolling?
hardpenguin Mar 15
QuoteValve COO on Epic's Tim Sweeney "you mad bro?"This is the quality jouralism I come here for 😂
Quoting: WORMQuoting: MalQuite the opposite actually. Madbro literally proved to the world that 30% is the right cut. He has shown with his own very feats that it is not possible to offer a better service than Steam with a lower cut. At this point any smart developer should rally behind Valve.
I disagree. Steam has shown that it IS possible to offer a better service while taking a smaller cut, since that's absolutely what they did themselves!
Lower margins? Sure. But a world where 2 platforms compete over users with features and quality of service... and remain profitable enough? Madbro didn't even try it. And not just becuase doing so with less than 30% would have been close to impossible (Steam is not a just a mere client, the client is just what unaware gamers see and every open source community can put together one comparable or better) but because even then in a world with Steam and a -non retarded- EGS, with a lot of investments in features and improvements to remain on top of your rival, the actual margins left for Valve and Epic would have made the entire operation pointless for Epic.
He's maybe a cunt, for sure toward PC gamers, but he is not a fool. He tried to change the paradigm and aimed to build a new walled garden monopoly on PC from which to extract levies, with an alliance of convenience with large and greedy publishers. The Apple model. Which he failed to thanks for (and to) us.
But he never tried to do better than, or comparable to, Steam and to compete. He didn't even try to offer a subpar service while slashing game prices to offer an alternative package to gamers. He didn't because he clearly made the math and knows it's not feaseable while keeping good margins. And if even he can't do it (again, he's not a fool, but a competent developer and businessman), nobody else today can. Maybe in 10 years from now with new tech. But not today.
Chapeau to him for having put the money where his mouth is though. And PC gamers for having shown that they are not gullible idiots like consumers in other markets tipically are.
Last edited by Mal on 15 March 2024 at 3:38 pm UTC
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