Epic Games are once again trying to entice more game developers to not only ship same-day on the Epic Games Store, but to use Unreal Engine too.
Announced during Unreal Fest Seattle 2024 is the new "Launch Everywhere with Epic" program. A deal for game developers and publishers that use Unreal Engine, to get a reduced royalty cut from 5% to 3.5%. This reduced cut will apply to all platforms and all stores (including Steam and consoles), as long as they ship their games at least same-day on the Epic Games Store. This new royalty model will begin January 1st, 2025.
This is on top of previous exclusive deals like Epic First Run, that can give developers 100% of the revenue for 6 months before going back to their standard 88%/12% split.
No doubt something that will entice more developers to get their games shipped on the Epic Store, and likely Unreal Engine too since the royalty fee is quite low. It's also another way for them to get more developers to release on their new mobile stores too, since developers also get 100% of net revenue if they use their own in-app payment solution (or 88% using Epic's).
The Epic Games Store still has no official Linux desktop or Steam Deck support, so you'll need community-built software like Heroic Games and Lutris to work with it.
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualIn 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 context, the plaintiff's expert witness produced a report saying what the plaintiff wanted; Valve's expert witness (compellingly, IMO) said that plaintiff's report was terrible and shouldn't be allowed in the case, and the document you're looking at is plaintiffs arguing that their export report should totally be allowed. None of it's actually in the case as evidence yet. Both sides are still in the "what is this case actually about" stage. Although, to be fair, once "what a case is actually about" is decided in anti-trust cases, the outcome tends to follow directly - hence the years of haggling before that point.
Quoting: CatKillerI won't pretend to understand the specifics here (and there are a lot of documents to sift through), but my understanding is that these are direct quotes from emails. I think the only way Valve could come out of this cleanly is if the emails were completely fabricated.Quoting: pleasereadthemanualIn 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 context, the plaintiff's expert witness produced a report saying what the plaintiff wanted; Valve's expert witness (compellingly, IMO) said that plaintiff's report was terrible and shouldn't be allowed in the case, and the document you're looking at is plaintiffs arguing that their export report should totally be allowed. None of it's actually in the case as evidence yet. Both sides are still in the "what is this case actually about" stage. Although, to be fair, once "what a case is actually about" is decided in anti-trust cases, the outcome tends to follow directly - hence the years of haggling before that point.
But it does seem early to conclude whether that is evidence or not.
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI won't pretend to understand the specifics here (and there are a lot of documents to sift through), but my understanding is that these are direct quotes from emails. I think the only way Valve could come out of this cleanly is if the emails were completely fabricated.Oh, I'm sure they were excerpts of actual emails sent from actual people at Valve. Discovery dredges up a tonne of stuff - from other companies, too, as you noted. The court will look at the context of the documents, and both sides will make their arguments, and the court will decide whether it shows a policy or pattern of wrongdoing, or whether it's just perfectly fine course of business stuff.
But it does seem early to conclude whether that is evidence or not.
Plaintiffs have to throw every accusation they can, since they can't generally add them afterwards, and then they have to dig around to find something that might support their position; the court case is what determines whether there's any validity to it.
Media and commentators love to look at accusations of the plaintiff, since they get to go first and they necessarily have to throw in the most salacious stuff, whereas actual court cases are really long and kinda boring.
Quoting: CatKillerI agree with all of this, though assuming all of these emails are factual, I don't think any amount of context will change my opinion. But we'll see.Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI won't pretend to understand the specifics here (and there are a lot of documents to sift through), but my understanding is that these are direct quotes from emails. I think the only way Valve could come out of this cleanly is if the emails were completely fabricated.Oh, I'm sure they were excerpts of actual emails sent from actual people at Valve. Discovery dredges up a tonne of stuff - from other companies, too, as you noted. The court will look at the context of the documents, and both sides will make their arguments, and the court will decide whether it shows a policy or pattern of wrongdoing, or whether it's just perfectly fine course of business stuff.
But it does seem early to conclude whether that is evidence or not.
Plaintiffs have to throw every accusation they can, since they can't generally add them afterwards, and then they have to dig around to find something that might support their position; the court case is what determines whether there's any validity to it.
Media and commentators love to look at accusations of the plaintiff, since they get to go first and they necessarily have to throw in the most salacious stuff, whereas actual court cases are really long and kinda boring.
Do you have a link to Valve's rebuttal? I'd be interested in reading it.
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI agree with all of this, though assuming all of these emails are factual, I don't think any amount of context will change my opinion. But we'll see.
What Valve have said is that they want their customers to get a fair deal, and if it looks like they aren't they would like to find out why and if there's anything they can do to change that. Is that "getting a good deal for your customers" or is that "monopolistic price-fixing"? Given that it's publishers that set their own prices, and you can find games cheaper than on Steam, is there any actual harm from Valve's actions even if their intent was super nefarious? Those are the kinds of questions that the court would have to find answers for.
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualDo you have a link to Valve's rebuttal? I'd be interested in reading it.It's the first two attachments (reports from two expert witnesses) on the motion to exclude testimony of Dr Schwarz, as I recall. The first one is about 300 pages. It's a while since I read it. Um... these two, I think: Attachment 1 and Attachment 2
Quoting: CatKillerWhat Valve have said is that they want their customers to get a fair deal, and if it looks like they aren't they would like to find out why and if there's anything they can do to change that. Is that "getting a good deal for your customers" or is that "monopolistic price-fixing"? Given that it's publishers that set their own prices, and you can find games cheaper than on Steam, is there any actual harm from Valve's actions even if their intent was super nefarious? Those are the kinds of questions that the court would have to find answers for.For sure, it's up to the courts and not armchair lawyer P.R.T Manual. My opinion is this:
Threatening to de-list a publisher's game from Steam if they do not bring the price down to match the game's price on other stores has a direct impact on other stores—namely, Epic Games Store (EGS). EGS takes a smaller cut than Steam, which means publishers would be able to price their games lower on EGS to get more sales. But because of Steam's price parity policy, publishers can't take advantage of this. We can argue whether Steam's cut is fair or not (I think it is), but it's that royalty split that is responsible for EGS customers getting a better deal than Steam customers. If Valve is really so concerned about making sure Steam customers get a better deal, they should match EGS' royalty split. If not, they shouldn't threaten publishers with de-listing because EGS has a more attractive deal.
I mentioned EGS because of its obvious relevance to the case, but this applies equally to smaller stores like itch.io. Wolfire is an indie publisher, and Valve is not above threatening smaller publishers. If Valve didn't enforce price parity, itch.io could rightfully be much more relevant because of its ridiculously good royalty deals for publishers. And I think that's kind of sad.
There's also the fact that Valve has said, for years, that there is no such price parity policy when in reality they actively enforce it, so clearly they think they're doing something wrong too by attempting to hide it.
Quoting: CatKillerIt's the first two attachments (reports from two expert witnesses) on the motion to exclude testimony of Dr Schwarz, as I recall. The first one is about 300 pages. It's a while since I read it. Um... these two, I think: Attachment 1 and Attachment 2Thanks! This should make for some exciting bedtime reading.
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualThreatening to de-list a publisher's game from Steam if they do not bring the price down to match the game's price on other stores has a direct impact on other stores—namely, Epic Games Store (EGS).
Note that it's not just that they don't want publishers to specifically rip off Steam customers on price, they also don't want them to shaft Steam customers on content. If, say, a game bought on PlayStation has a PlayStation exclusive item, and bought on Xbox has an Xbox exclusive item, and bought on EGS has an EGS exclusive item, then they for sure want the game bought on Steam to have an equivalent Steam item.
As to whether games can be sold cheaper on EGS (or wherever), they absolutely can.
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