Epic Games reduce their cut for Unreal Engine games for same-day Epic Store launches

Tim Sweeney is the best comedian of this century

Do you remember when he said "Installing Linux is sort of the equivalent of moving to Canada when one doesn’t like US political trends. Nope, we’ve got to fight for the freedoms we have today, where we have them today."? True to his words, he created a new store so that editors could move to Canada instead of fighting for their freedoms on Steam :D And now, after all the Epic exclusives, including the ones whose release was already planned on Steam, them dare saying "Launch Everywhere" ??? It's just plain mockery.

QuoteMeanwhile in Steam-Land: Yet another Steam Deck Verified game gets unplayable.
It's funny to see how Epic Games apparently puts it all into their platform while Valve just waits & hopes for the best.
Must be very hard for you guys to see the "enemy" do exactly what you expect from Valve.

I'm by no means a Steam fan person. Actually I tried to avoid Steam as much as I could. I was focusing on Humble Bundle and GOG. When HB was dedicated to porting games on Linux and against DRM. But I had to recognize that Valve did a lot, for Linux, and gaming in general.

1. They did fund DXVK and Wine development.
2. Even If I don't like their DRM, it was much worse before Steam. Do you remember games with 5 activations, no more?
3. They showed that gaming handhelds can be successful with Deck.
4. Even after many years Alyx is still the best game on VR.
5. Their client have been supporting Linux for a decade while competitors often don't support Linux at all or very badly. Note: Itch has a very good Linux support too!.
6. Steam sales were one of the few ways for many to get games at affordable price.

There are many things to say against Valve, starting from their cut being way to high. But saying they do nothing is just not true. Especially if you compare Steam to Epic! Comparing with GOG and Itch could be understandable. GOG has the merit to be against DRM and Itch is the platform for very indie games. There are reasons to love these two stores. But Epic? :D


Last edited by TheBard on 2 October 2024 at 6:07 pm UTC

Quoting: LoudTechieValve doesn't just wait they put millions of dollars into proton to get games playable on the SteamDeck and it seems to work.

Great to hear. Please provide the sources with the actual numbers. And while you're at it: Please provide the number of actually supported games (by the developers, not by Valve).

Quoting: LoudTechieAlso they launched a bunch of other intiatives for it, like souping up the proprietary NVIDIA drivers, Gamescope, KDE and MESA sponsorships, the verified rating system, DXVK sponsorship, Vulkan(they're one of the founders of the Khronos project) and the SteamMachine.

Which of these projects directly help the developers of the games? They mainly benefit Valve & their own operating system. DXVK & Proton are the only projects which would help but it's obvious that it's not enough.

Quoting: LoudTechieI fully understand that Windows gamers and/or developers might see Valve as a dangerous imposing passive and unmoving force, because Valve earned that reputation in the Windows space, but in the Linux gaming space we benefit quite a lot from them.

I'm talking of getting the actual game developers to provide actual support for Steam Deck / Proton / Linux. What are they doing this way?

Quoting: LoudTechieFor Valve this is probably illegal and ineffective.
illegal:
Valve is big enough that anti-trust law applies to them and bundling services for a discount is probably a form of "tying" and thus illegal(ask Microsoft about teams and office).

If it was simply illegal, nobody would be able to do it. Bundling the Index with Half-Life: Alyx would be illegal. Microsoft tying Office & Teams is illegal because they have a monopoly with Office, putting any Teams competitor to a huge disadvantage to sell their alternative. That's not the case with the Steam Deck / Proton / Linux (they could bind it to Proton / Linux in general if we are saying they are market leader for PC based handheld devices).

Besides: They're already lowering their cut if the revenue surpasses a certain amount. This can easily be argued as illegal since they're forcing small studios to exclusively release on Steam to avoid splitting the revenue. So no, I seriously doubt any anti-trust law considerations.

Quoting: LoudTechieIneffective:
they tried bribing developers to support Linux for the Steam machine...

Steam machines were a complete disaster & failure, so that's not comparable.

Quoting: TheBardTim Sweeney is the best comedian of this century […]
3. They showed that gaming handhelds can be successful with Deck.

Funny. You have really never heard of Nintendo?

Quoting: TheBard[…] There are many things to say against Valve, starting from their cut being way to high. But saying they do nothing is just not true. Especially if you compare Steam to Epic! Comparing with GOG and Itch could be understandable. GOG has the merit to be against DRM and Itch is the platform for very indie games. There are reasons to love these two stores. But Epic? :D

You fail to provide a single point which shows what Valve is directly doing to entice developers to officially support the Steam Deck / Proton / Linux.

Quoting: poiuzPlease provide the sources with the actual numbers.

Valve is a private company and they're very secretive about their financials. I doubt you're going to get any of the answers you want, but even if Valve only spent $100,000 on Linux development (which can't be true if you account for employing Joshua Ashton, Pierre, the primary DXVK developer, years of contracting CodeWeavers, recently sponsoring Arch Linux freelancers, just to start with), that's more than any other gaming company has done.

I think what's more important than the amount of money Valve has spent on Linux is the fact that all of us can clearly see and feel the impact it's making.

Quoting: poiuzPlease provide the number of actually supported games (by the developers, not by Valve).

Almost zero. But I'm not sure I understand the point of the question.

Quoting: poiuzI'm talking of getting the actual game developers to provide actual support for Steam Deck / Proton / Linux. What are they doing this way?

That's never going to happen no matter what Valve does. Some developers might change their minds if the Steam Deck had 10 times as many sales, but there aren't hat many people interested in it (including me). Get millions of people to care, and game developers will care. There need to be more Linux users on Steam.

Fact is, Valve has doubled the number of users on Steam in 4 years. That's more than any other company has done in the last 20 years. I don't think they're doing a bad job.

Signed,
Someone who doesn't think Valve is going to come out of these anti-trust cases looking good.

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualValve is a private company and they're very secretive about their financials. I doubt you're going to get any of the answers you want, but even if Valve only spent $100,000 on Linux development (which can't be true if you account for employing Joshua Ashton, Pierre, the primary DXVK developer, years of contracting CodeWeavers, recently sponsoring Arch Linux freelancers, just to start with), that's more than any other gaming company has done.

I'm aware. But this automatically means anyone claiming "they put millions" into something can't really substantiate that claim.

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualAlmost zero. But I'm not sure I understand the point of the question.

Yeah, I got that since you're not really answering to my comment. People talk shit about Epic who are actually trying to get developers onto their platform (by means that already were suggested Valve should do for the Steam Deck). Meanwhile Valve does nothing to promote the Steam Deck to developers & is actually losing games (which turns into losing customer since this uncertainty really drives people to Windows alternatives).

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualThat's never going to happen no matter what Valve does. Some developers might change their minds if the Steam Deck had 10 times as many sales, but there aren't hat many people interested in it (including me). Get millions of people to care, and game developers will care. There need to be more Linux users on Steam.

So you do agree with me that "Valve just waits & hopes for the best".

How can anyone care about Steam Deck / Proton / Linux if nobody knows how many customers there are? If the Steam Deck was such a big hit everyone here is believing, then Valve would just release the numbers.

Sweeney: "I wish they would get to tens of millions users"
Valve: "Hey, we are already at ten million Steam Deck users / 20 million Linux users"

Quoting: poiuz

Quoting: LoudTechieValve doesn't just wait they put millions of dollars into proton to get games playable on the SteamDeck and it seems to work.

Great to hear. Please provide the sources with the actual numbers. And while you're at it: Please provide the number of actually supported games (by the developers, not by Valve).

Quoting: LoudTechieAlso they launched a bunch of other intiatives for it, like souping up the proprietary NVIDIA drivers, Gamescope, KDE and MESA sponsorships, the verified rating system, DXVK sponsorship, Vulkan(they're one of the founders of the Khronos project) and the SteamMachine.

Which of these projects directly help the developers of the games? They mainly benefit Valve & their own operating system. DXVK & Proton are the only projects which would help but it's obvious that it's not enough.

Quoting: LoudTechieI fully understand that Windows gamers and/or developers might see Valve as a dangerous imposing passive and unmoving force, because Valve earned that reputation in the Windows space, but in the Linux gaming space we benefit quite a lot from them.

I'm talking of getting the actual game developers to provide actual support for Steam Deck / Proton / Linux. What are they doing this way?

Quoting: LoudTechieFor Valve this is probably illegal and ineffective.
illegal:
Valve is big enough that anti-trust law applies to them and bundling services for a discount is probably a form of "tying" and thus illegal(ask Microsoft about teams and office).

If it was simply illegal, nobody would be able to do it. Bundling the Index with Half-Life: Alyx would be illegal. Microsoft tying Office & Teams is illegal because they have a monopoly with Office, putting any Teams competitor to a huge disadvantage to sell their alternative. That's not the case with the Steam Deck / Proton / Linux (they could bind it to Proton / Linux in general if we are saying they are market leader for PC based handheld devices).

Besides: They're already lowering their cut if the revenue surpasses a certain amount. This can easily be argued as illegal since they're forcing small studios to exclusively release on Steam to avoid splitting the revenue. So no, I seriously doubt any anti-trust law considerations.

Quoting: LoudTechieIneffective:
they tried bribing developers to support Linux for the Steam machine...

Steam machines were a complete disaster & failure, so that's not comparable.

Quoting: TheBardTim Sweeney is the best comedian of this century […]
3. They showed that gaming handhelds can be successful with Deck.

Funny. You have really never heard of Nintendo?

Quoting: TheBard[…] There are many things to say against Valve, starting from their cut being way to high. But saying they do nothing is just not true. Especially if you compare Steam to Epic! Comparing with GOG and Itch could be understandable. GOG has the merit to be against DRM and Itch is the platform for very indie games. There are reasons to love these two stores. But Epic? :D

You fail to provide a single point which shows what Valve is directly doing to entice developers to officially support the Steam Deck / Proton / Linux.

What directly helps the developers.
Proton basically took all the active effort needed to support SteamDeck away and left only active blocking efforts(Batteleye does support SteamDeck EA just really wants to not support it when they include it, Roblox gave active Wine isn't supported errors, LOL worked until the devs publicly declared to start blocking Linux, etc).
DXVK gave significant preformance improvements(in both Windows and Linux) that meant they've to spend less time optimising the game to get it to work.
MESA means they can work with a single graphics api instead of twenty different dirvers.
NVIDIA driver improvements means performance and more importantly stability improvements on Linux
VAC and Steam store Linux support means they can rely on the Steam API, drm and anti-cheat in the SteamDeck space.
KDE sponsorship means that the stuff they show actually gets shown right.
The Steam store separate distribution mechanism made live easier for anti-cheat providers to support SteamDeck(which they did although based on how it went I suspect Valve flatout bribed them with direct payment, which was effective in this case, since there are a lot anti-cheat products than Games, for which we can the Microsoft driver signing policy).
The SteamDeck itself means direct financial gain for the devs for supporting Linux(A growing market with paying customers)
The Nautilus patches mean better performance on the SteamDeck specifically, so they don't have to deal with a slow platform forcing them to spend time on platform specific optimizations.

\
EDIT:
What you actually meant is: what helps the direct income of the studios(cost savings don't count) for SteamDeck games?
SteamDeck(cutting into the console market with pc games).
Proton improvement(if your game becomes available on a new platform through no effort of your own, suddenly a new group of people will license it.)
VAC and Steam Store Linux support(anti-cheat and drm against pirates and cheaters which don't pay you for your services/products and are assumed to do that if they can't take them another way.)
(Grudgingly) the Steam Deck verified system. By providing a way for customers to easily check whether a game works they create a financial incentive to build working games, because customers prefer to buy working games and if they're not wasting it on non-working games they have more money leftover to spend it on the working games.
\

On the ineffectivity stuff:
The steam machine was a failure, because they took the bribery path.
What makes Steam a success all the available games.
Bribes are slow and expensive.
A successful bribe costs at least the price of porting an entire game to Linux(+profit margin), which was back than several days to months of work and gets you one game.
If you get something working in Proton it works for all games with the same dependencies and it is comparably expensive, because porting is mostly replacing Linux incompatible parts dependencies and Proton is too(and giving it the same name as the incompatible dependency) and it's forward compatible too this problem won't show up by new yet to come games.
Valve has lots of money that's true, but they don't have the kind of money that would allow all studios to do a soft rewrite of 60% of all their games and support a platform without significant amounts of users for 5 years(The SteamDeck userbase is growing rapidly, but it took 5 years to get to this point and it's still an ignorable platform, the SteamMachine wouldn't have grown faster)(I estimate that would require a 61% cut instead of a 30% cut).

\
Edit:
Also you might argue that it's not comparable, but it's the failure Valve learned from for the SteamDeck.
First they published a failure.
Then they published a success.
That's because the first they did things that don't work.
Than they did things that work.
It's how learning through experience works and as we all know "experience is the best teacher, but the tuition fees are really high."
\




On the anti-trust stuff:
A. just because it's illegal doesn't mean people can't do it. Murder is illegal in the USA, yet on average somebody is killed at least every day. Piracy is illegal, but there are still million and even billion dollar businesses if you count AI companies(trillion if you count Google) based on it, GPL violations are super common in the IOT space(AHEM Samsung, Vizio, CISCO, etc.) and they still get rich from it, Microsoft pays on average 30$ dollars par Windows license worth in active litigation of patent violations in Windows.
Firing workers for going on strike is illegal in the USA, but according to Trump in their X conversation Elon Musk did it.
I'm happy to hear you're such a law abiding citizen that you can't imagine people could break the law to get rich, but not everybody thinks like you.
B. Tying isn't simply illegal.
It's illegal if you're the seriously dominant player in one of the markets your tying.
Valve is that in the pc gaming distribution space.
Marketshare matters in whether or not something is anti-competative.
This lawsuit actually accuses them of tying.
One of google's defenses in the Google search anti-trust trial was that they had always even when they were smaller behaved this way.
That got thrown out, because the same behavior can be anti-competative when done by a dominant player.

Edit:
About the increasing discount:
In that case they're using only one service/product to achieve what they want, the Steam Store.
That falls under Bulk discounts.
A big difference in such case is that you can explain to the judge that thanks to scale economics you actually spend less par product and that you're simply calculating your discount through to the customer.
This doesn't work for tying, because the different products are supposed to have a mostly different supply chain(translated in an example most to all of the developer time spend adding features and improvements UE doesn't help adding features to Epic Store and vice versa).
It's how Sweeney negotiated this one out.
He argued that the 30% percent made sense when the Steam Store was smaller in scale, but that, because these same economics of scale Valve spend a lot less on it and Valve agreed(grudgingly) and gave large publishers a discount, because their larger scale provided them with cost savings(the only cost savings agreed to officially were marketing, big games pull many customers, but this's at least also true for hosting(storing one file of a hunderd gb is easier to index and store than a 10 of 10gb), legal and moderation).
Epic Games negotiation. Sweeney might not have gotten his favored outcome, but he did win this round.


Last edited by LoudTechie on 3 October 2024 at 12:09 pm UTC

Quoting: LoudTechieOn the anti-trust stuff

What about the price parity enforcement Valve has been doing?

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: LoudTechieOn the anti-trust stuff

What about the price parity enforcement Valve has been doing?

They're currently in court for that on anti-trust charges, so the option: "yes, that is illegal" is very much on the table.
As Google can tell you doing multiple anti-trust violations can very much result in multiple really expensive convictions.
Valve's lawyers might be getting wise and slowly start advising Valve to not break the law.

I suspect this will actually turn out to be asymetric tying in a market in which they aren't a monopolist(drm(the market in which they do the tying) to SteamStore) instead of enforced price parity, because you can use SteamStore without SteamDRM(ask Epic Games), but not SteamDRM without SteamStore, but that is a question for the judge.


Last edited by LoudTechie on 3 October 2024 at 7:18 pm UTC

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: LoudTechieOn the anti-trust stuff

What about the price parity enforcement Valve has been doing?

There's been no evidence that that's a thing that they've done.

Maybe some evidence of that will turn up, but it hasn't yet.

I still think it's funny that Tim laid off 870 people from the company in September of 2023, because the company was in such financial trouble that they could not possibly find some other method of employing them that did not require them to kick staff to the curb. Somehow, the elimination of 16% of their total work force is not grounds for his own dismissal from his position as CEO of the company, though even if he had been dismissed, I'm sure he would have had a substantial golden parachute to send him on his way.

He then not more than a day ago makes a statement at Unreal Fest 2024 saying that the company is now financially stable, and then proceed to launch what will undoubtedly be yet another massively expensive lawsuit aimed at Google and Samsung.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: LoudTechieOn the anti-trust stuff

What about the price parity enforcement Valve has been doing?

There's been no evidence that that's a thing that they've done.

Maybe some evidence of that will turn up, but it hasn't yet.

I was looking through the court documents for the case the other day: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59859024/wolfire-games-llc-v-valve-corporation/

In the Exhibit 85 document on Aug 23, 2024, there is some reference to emails from Valve about price parity that is being submitted as evidence.

For example:

QuoteTom Giardino, a Steam Business Team member, described Valve’s pricing padty requirement as "a platform goal that goes beyond Steam keys[.]" See: Valve, Emails Regarding Game Pricing, 7/23/2018-7/25/2018 (VALVE_ANT_0605887-89, at VALVE_ANT_0605887).

For example, Valve withholding promotion unless the publisher prices the game the same as they do on other platforms:

QuoteWhen publisher XXX asked Valve if it could leave XXX out of a discount it was planning to run, Valve told the publisher that "we didn't want to be known as the store where XXX prices are unfair. We’ve pursued this same policy with other partners and in other regions, to make sure Steam customers aren't put at an unfair disadvantage to customers shopping at retail or online at other stores." See: Valve, Emails Regarding XXX Game Promotion, 1/21/2015-2/5/2015 (VALVE_ANT_0809427-434, at VALVE_ANT_0809428-429). (Emphasis in original.)

Valve explicitly asking that prices for games not be cheaper anywhere else, even if only by a dollar:

QuoteA drafted Valve announcement regarding new currencies on Steam asks publishers that "Just make sure that you're not disadvantaging Steam customers; if you sell your game for £8.99 on another store, it shouldn’t be £9.99 on Steam." See: Valve, Emails Regarding New Currencies on Steam, 7/9/2015-7/24/2015 (VALVE_ANT_0114214-20, at VALVE_ANT_0114215), available at Tom Giardino, Dep. Tr., 11/2/2023, Exhibit 187 (Emphasis added.)

Valve suggesting that publishers should stop selling their games on Steam if they refuse to price their games on Steam at parity elsewhere, and then saying they've de-listed games for this behaviour before:

QuoteValve remarked in another email that "if you wanted to sell a non-Steam version of your game for $10 at retail and $20 on Steam, we’d ask to get that same lower price or just stop selling the game on Steam if we couldn’t treat our customers fairly[,]" and went on to confirm that this was not a new policy: "we’ve always asked that partners treat our customers fairly, and we've often opted not to promote games or stop selling them altogether if we aren’t able to get fair treatment for our users." See: Valve, Emails Regarding Steam Key Guidelines, 6/28/2018-7/3/2018 (VALVE_ANT_0605087-89, at VALVE_ANT_0605087)0 available at Gabe Newell0 Dep. Tr., 11/21/2023, Exhibit 349.

Valve talking about how important price parity is and referencing a game they de-listed for refusing to tow the line:

QuoteValve, Emails Between XXX and Valve, 6/6/2013-6/7/2013 (VALVE_ANT_1216044-45, VALVE_ANT_1216044). ("[T]his
presents a problem for us on Steam. We want to make sure that our price on Steam is competitive with retail and other
digital stores in XXX so that we do not teach customers that Steam is always the expensive option.")

QuoteValve, Emails Between XXX and Valve, 8/15/2014 (VALVE_ANT_2576464). (Valve tells XXX that it "[j]ust saw today that the pricing for XXX on Steam is uncompetitive with other retailers, similar to the issue we’re having with XXX and XXX.... We’ve made the choice to take the game down until we can reach price parity.")

I recommend reading through some of the documents in courtlistener. There seem to be several publishers involved in this case willing to enter email correspondence from Valve as evidence.


Last edited by pleasereadthemanual on 4 October 2024 at 1:44 am UTC