PC Tim Sweeney's latest ridiculous ultimatum to Valve/Steam: permanently match Epic's 88/12 revenue split and we'll "hastily retreat" from EGS exclusives

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Hey, Tim, isn't the phrase "hastily retreat" effectively a self-admission that the up-front cash payments for the timed EGS exclusivity plus the 88/12 revenue split is essentially unsustainable for Epic and all Valve has to do is wait it out?

 

In any event, this ludicrous  "ultimatum" on the part of Tim Sweeney/Epic has landed with a resounding thud among the PC gaming community, even with the writers over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun who have been highly critical of Valve/Steam over the last year or so. 

[TwinIon]

I'm also skeptical that Epic would really do that. It doesn't really matter to Epic's bottom line how much money Valve makes from Steam, and if exclusives drive sales on their platform, I don't see how that calculus would change.

 

Still, I also don't harbor the same kind of ill will that the folks over at Reddit seem to have for Epic. The idea that having exclusives is some kind of red line for gamers is kinda silly to me. There are exclusives all over the place, including on the PC. 

 

While I doubt that Epic's 88% revenue share is any kind of genuine altruism on their part, I also think that the industry standard of 30% is insane. There was a time when digital distribution was hard, and that 30% felt like a good deal compared to traditional retailers. That is far from the case now. Maybe we'll actually get a look at some real numbers with the antitrust cases against Apple, but I'm guessing most of the 30% is pure profit at this point.

[Bacon]

I am fine with devs getting a bigger cut, but also, fuck Epic. 

[Ghost_MH]

48 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

While I doubt that Epic's 88% revenue share is any kind of genuine altruism on their part, I also think that the industry standard of 30% is insane. There was a time when digital distribution was hard, and that 30% felt like a good deal compared to traditional retailers. That is far from the case now. Maybe we'll actually get a look at some real numbers with the antitrust cases against Apple, but I'm guessing most of the 30% is pure profit at this point.

 

That's exactly it. Digital distribution was hard to decades ago. That's just not at all the case anymore. I find it hard to believe that Valve isn't taking a large chunk of that 30% as profit. It's not like they're doing much curation, so they aren't spending money there either.

[Brian]

Gabe must have pissed in Tim’s coffee at one point. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

17 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I am fine with devs getting a bigger cut, but also, fuck Epic. 

If we as consumers were seeing tangible benefits from the enhanced developer cut, then there would be far less scorn for Sweeney's statements, but we have yet to see a single thing.

 

Edit: OK, there's a discount for Metro: Exodus because of the better cut, but it applies to the American EGS only.  

[Brian]

Doesn’t a good portion of the 30% allow for devs to sell their Steam keys on other sites like GMG and Fanatic? 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

3 minutes ago, ManUtdRedDevils said:

Doesn’t a good portion of the 30% allow for devs to sell their Steam keys on other sites like GMG and Fanatic? 

Absolutely.

 

Those sites can discount their cut and pass the savings on to us because Valve doesn't take a cut of those non-Steam Store key sales.

 

A side "benefit" of EGS is that it effectively kills the third-party storefront market.

[Keyser_Soze]

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

There are exclusives all over the place, including on the PC. 

 

The distinction is that PC exclusives are generally limited to games only published by that company. You can only get EA games, Battlefield on EA's store. You can only get Half-Life 2 on Steam. When you throw 3rd party games in the mix is when things get shitty.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 minute ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

The distinction is that PC exclusives are generally limited to games only published by that company. You can only get EA games, Battlefield on EA's store. You can only get Half-Life 2 on Steam. When you throw 3rd party games in the mix is when things get shitty.

There we go!  That's the key distinction right there!

[Zaku3]

28 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

There we go!  That's the key distinction right there!

 

Also games being a go for steam then switching at the drop of a hat. Even crowdsourced games.

[Firewithin]

Tim Sweeny retire bitch

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

6 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

 

Also games being a go for steam then switching at the drop of a hat. Even crowdsourced games.

That Phoenix Point bait n' switch pissed me off severely as a backer.

[Paperclyp]

This isn’t an original take, but I just can’t summon the venom towards epic when it’s really just a minor inconvenience. 

 

I think this has caused valve to at least re-evaluate what they’re giving devs, and the pressure from not just epic but discord and the like is making them actually do SOMETHING with steam, which seems to have been relatively stagnant for years. 

 

Giving them an ultimatum is revealing though. 

[SimpleG]

57 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

Absolutely.

 

Those sites can discount their cut and pass the savings on to us because Valve doesn't take a cut of those non-Steam Store key sales.

 

A side "benefit" of EGS is that it effectively kills the third-party storefront market.

Id also like to add that each of those non steam bought steam keys, is negative for Steam. Thats cloud saves,data storage,updates,server cost that Steam just straight eats.

 

1 hour ago, Bacon said:

I am fine with devs getting a bigger cut, but also, fuck Epic. 

Tim likes to mix the word "dev" and "publisher". The devs have been paid already with the exception of bonus agreements , EGS lower cost benefits the publisher. If he tweeted how much more money 2k made or how much Ubisoft made because of the split , consumers would be taking this even worse.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

4 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

Id also like to add that each of those non steam bought steam keys, is negative for Steam. Thats cloud saves,data storage,updates,server cost that Steam just straight eats.

Exactly!  

 

Valve receives 0% of the revenue and bears 100% of the costs for non-Steam Store sales of Steamworks-enabled titles.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

@Zaku3 - a FIG investor who posts at ResetERA estimated that Epic paid about $2.25 million for the Phoenix Point EGS exclusivity.

 

Don't worry @AshsToAshs - I'm not gonna ask you to confirm this

[Xbob42]

I dunno, when you think about server hosting costs alone, 30% doesn't seem too wild to me. Consumers have unlimited downloads of your sometimes 100+ GB game, free cloud saves, store pages, community pages, reviews, forums, game servers, Steamworks integration, workshop support, etc. The ability to sell your keys elsewhere, too. Could they lower it some? Probably. Should they lower it that dramatically because Epic made a shitton of Fortnite money (despite their store ALSO being 70/30 prior to Fortnite...) as a knee-jerk reaction? I'm gonna have to say no on that one. All the consoles are also 70/30 and the consumer has to pay for fucking cloud saves and playing online there. That's $30-$60/year/person that Valve ISN'T making.

 

Anyone who has had to pay for servers/bandwidth before will tell you those costs are not trivial. None of it is free.

I think there's a path forward where developers can get a better deal, I don't think stupid bullshit like this is that path.

[AshsToAshs]

4 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

@Zaku3 - a FIG investor who posts at ResetERA estimated that Epic paid about $2.25 million for the Phoenix Point EGS exclusivity.

 

Don't worry @AshsToAshs - I'm not gonna ask you to confirm this 

 

👀

[HGLatinBoy]

This whole revenue share drama is bullshit. 

 

It'd be like MS telling Sony to drop down their revenue share and they'll stop buying exclusives. 

[Zaku3]

11 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

@Zaku3 - a FIG investor who posts at ResetERA estimated that Epic paid about $2.25 million for the Phoenix Point EGS exclusivity.

 

Don't worry @AshsToAshs - I'm not gonna ask you to confirm this

 

I still question if the bad PR generated will be worth it. I also heard they will fund their next game and offered a guaranteed minimum sales.

[DarkStar189]

Valve can easily sit back and let this all run its course. With their install base none of their customers are just going to up and leave. Epic can continue to try and shake up the industry and spend money for all the timed exclusives they want. And in 2 years or so if it's not working out like they planned we will see them suddenly scale back. Fortnite isn't going to last forever. I'm all for competition. For now Epic is offering the better deal for game makers but Valve has the millions and millions of potential Steam customers. Could be a hard choice for game makers. 

[Keyser_Soze]

2 minutes ago, DarkStar189 said:

Valve can easily sit back and let this all run its course. With their install base none of their customers are just going to up and leave. Epic can continue to try and shake up the industry and spend money for all the timed exclusives they want. And in 2 years or so if it's not working out like they planned we will see them suddenly scale back. Fortnite isn't going to last forever. 

 

Valve will make Team Fortnite and people will flock back to steam.

[TwinIon]

15 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

If we as consumers were seeing tangible benefits from the enhanced developer cut, then there would be far less scorn for Sweeney's statements, but we have yet to see a single thing.

 

Edit: OK, there's a discount for Metro: Exodus because of the better cut, but it applies to the American EGS only.  

Hypothetically, I would think that game makers getting a larger cut could show itself as a benefit in limiting otherwise consumer hostile monetization practices. If a dev is less incentivized to put microtransactions or whatever else into a game, that could be a real consumer good. Of course, I emphasize the hypothetical nature of this, because we've seen no evidence that has been the case (nor would I expect to at this point).

 

 

15 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

The distinction is that PC exclusives are generally limited to games only published by that company. You can only get EA games, Battlefield on EA's store. You can only get Half-Life 2 on Steam. When you throw 3rd party games in the mix is when things get shitty.

From a consumer standpoint, I feel like that's a distinction without a difference. In the same way that the next Spider-man movie is a Sony film and not a Disney one, who cares where the money is going to? If Borderlands 3 was an EA game and only available on their terrible launcher, no one would care, but it being only available on Epic's is somehow a big problem because they're not owned by Epic?

[Keyser_Soze]

59 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

From a consumer standpoint, I feel like that's a distinction without a difference. In the same way that the next Spider-man movie is a Sony film and not a Disney one, who cares where the money is going to?

 

The problem is you can pull the wool over the eyes of the average joe but the average joe doesn't have a gaming PC. PC gamers can tell the difference.

 

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

If Borderlands 3 was an EA game and only available on their terrible launcher, no one would care

 

Correct

 

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

but it being only available on Epic's is somehow a big problem because they're not owned by Epic?

 

Right, there is no reason for it to be exclusive other than the fact that the publisher likes money. However, if they really liked money they would probably think it would be a good idea to sell their game anywhere they could.

[TwinIon]

5 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

The problem is you can pull the wool over the eyes of the average joe but the average joe doesn't have a gaming PC. PC gamers can tell the difference.

I don't even know what that means. They can tell the difference between which enormous corporation is profiting from the sale of their game? Maybe, but I doubt most care at all?

 

4 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Right, there is no reason for it to be exclusive other than the fact that the publisher likes money. However, if they really liked money they would probably think it would be a good idea to sell their game anywhere they could.

Certainly the publishers, who have access to the actual data, assume that exclusivity deals are in their best financial interest.

 

All of that remains beside the point. The game remains the same. The purchase process remains basically the same. The only difference between a game on one launcher or another is a small, largely inconsequential, middleman. I don't think most gamers actually care who that middleman is, and I don't understand why the few that do seem to care so much. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

It's not the launcher.

 

It's the ability to purchase keys from third-party storefronts at a discount, something that Steam has enabled and something that Epic's approach all but seeks to eliminate.  As an end consumer, that is what matters to me.

[Zaku3]

5 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

It's not the launcher.

 

It's the ability to purchase keys from third-party storefronts at a discount, something that Steam has enabled and something that Epic's approach all but seeks to eliminate.  As an end consumer, that is what matters to me.

I think they started selling keys but ehh. I have no faith they wouldn't kill that as soon as they could. 

 

I bought 2 games this week. Imperator and Mortal Kombat one from GMG and another from Fanatical. Valve sees 0 dollars from both of those sales but still has to support me in terms of downloading the games, giving me the patches, etc.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Just now, Zaku3 said:

I think they started selling keys but ehh. I have no faith they wouldn't kill that as soon as they could. 

 

I bought 2 games this week. Imperator and Mortal Kombat one from GMG and another from Fanatical. Valve sees 0 dollars from both of those sales but still has to support me in terms of downloading the games, giving me the patches, etc.

Yes, there are EGS keys on Humble but the price is identical to EGS.

[Zaku3]

Just now, SFLUFAN said:

Yes, there are EGS keys on Humble but the price is identical to EGS.

Lol so much fail. I got MK11 with the season pass for like 75 dollars on fanatical.

[SimpleG]

1 minute ago, SFLUFAN said:

It's not the launcher.

 

It's the ability to purchase keys from third-party storefronts at a discount, something that Steam has enabled and something that Epic's approach all but seeks to eliminate.  As an end consumer, that is what matters to me.

Ding! Ding!

 

But Ill add to this , the launcher is shit. If at any point time an online store as has a future goal of "adding a search function",  or needs an invoice ID and IP address to refund a game doesnt deserve my business. Not going to give my credit card info to store who cant be bothered to do email verification when setting up an account.  

 

 

 

 

 

[Paperclyp]

1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

It's not the launcher.

 

It's the ability to purchase keys from third-party storefronts at a discount, something that Steam has enabled and something that Epic's approach all but seeks to eliminate.  As an end consumer, that is what matters to me.

This is totally legit.

 

But I get the sense most people who are acting incensed over this are not basing it off of this. It’s more how dare epic take my games off of steam in and of itself. 

[crispy4000]

Didn't Humble announce that they would start selling Epic keys?  That's a start.  If we could see more of that, I'd consider buying something with an EGS key.

Humble's not really that cheap outside of their bundles however.

[AbsolutSurgen]

If publishers and devs flow through the savings to me, I don't particularly care.

 

I only buy a handful of games on launch day, and buy most of my games when they hit the pricepoint I am willing to pay.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

30 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Didn't Humble announce that they would start selling Epic keys?  That's a start.  If we could see more of that, I'd consider buying something with an EGS key.

Humble's not really that cheap outside of their bundles however.

Humble and GMG are carrying EGS titles at the same price as EGS itself.