The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.
After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.
They can try all they want, but I’ll just wait until the game comes to steam. No game is worth using that dumpster fire of a launcher.
How much does steam charge for allowing the games on its platform?
Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales iirc, but does not enforce exclusivity agreements to their platform
Geez, 30% is a lot.
30% is standard in industry. Apple/Google/Xbox/Sony all take 30% from their marketplaces as well
I will never get this sentiment. It’s a fucking game launcher, it downloads the games quickly and launches them. I just don’t get this hate boner people have for it.
I played Red Dead 2 and Control through it and had absolutely zero problems. You all just want a steam monopoly for whatever gods forsaken reason.
Because it doesn’t work
The launch is a piece of shit that doesn’t do the 2 thing it’s supposedly good at. Downloads are excessively slow and game launching doesn’t work half the time. It’s so slow that it has a noticeable effect on boot times.
Yes, I’d rather a steam monopoly than have to use that shit launcher ever again. Steam is a useable piece of software that doesn’t suck donkey cock.
It’s a skill issue if you couldn’t get it to work.
I couldn’t break the damn thing.
There seems to be a lot of debate in the comments, that are disingenuous arguments.
I think the quality of the software is a factor for some people, but that’s not the main issue here.
Steam has always publicly stated their competition is piracy. They have to be more convenient than piracy to survive. And over steams lifetime I think they’ve demonstrated that’s their goal, yes they have DRM, but only to satisfy publishers, they’ve done everything they can to keep things as convenient as possible.
Epic, the company, has demonstrated their goal is money. And they’ve demonstrated an anti-consumer trend, the exclusivity deals are in great indicator of that. If epic became as popular as steam, they would make the experience awful, they would become the Disney of the game world.
So all of the arguments about
*launcher quality
*availability of DRM free games
*some publishers choosing to release on one platform
Are missing the mark, many people don’t want to financially support a market participant who will make their lives worse in the future.
Yeah, I think competition is always good and Steam should not have a monopoly, but Epic is certainly not a beneficial alternative.
I think you hit the nail in the head.
When I think about the whole missing shop cart thing, it wasn’t necessarily the shopping cart that bothered me (even if it DID cause terrible service when they released a paradox game with DLC).
It was the fact Tim himself and a posse came on Twitter to call me everything short of the R-slur just for wanting the shopping cart.
Yesterday it was shopping carts. Tomorrow it’s games working offline and with no mods. Tim made himself the villain over nothing, and deserves to fail before it’s about everything.
I think you hit the nail in the head.
When I think about the whole missing shop cart thing, it wasn’t necessarily the shopping cart that bothered me (even if it DID cause terrible service when they released a paradox game with DLC).
It was the fact Tim himself and a posse came on Twitter to call me everything short of the R-slur just for wanting the shopping cart. It was a freaking war of ideology attrition over a motherfucking shopping cart, something the Unreal Engine store had too.
Yesterday it was shopping carts. Tomorrow it’s games working offline and with no mods. Tim made himself the villain over nothing, and deserves to fail before it’s about everything.
The first few months of a game release are absolutely critical, no matter the size of the studio. I won’t buy anything on Epic just out of principle, and I’m sure there are countless other people who share the mindset. A 100% share, vs a 70% one, is definitely appealing at first glance, but it’ll butcher your numbers for short-term gain
As a patient gamer, who hates enticements to get stuck in yet-another-walled garden, I refuse to go with Epic. The benevolent kingdom of steam never forces exclusivity deals, and just out of self interest i wont reward behavior that removes options from me.
I guess this means I’ll have to wait at least 6 months for some games to show up on steam
I’m ok with other ecosystems, if they treat people right, like GoG, I’m cool with GoG.
I’ll have to wait at least 6 months for some games to show up on steam.
It raises a fun ethical question: Is piracy moral if you fully intend on buying the game at full price when it hits Steam in six months?
Spare me the “piracy is always moral” arguments; Even as a fellow pirate, the mental gymnastics to justify it get old quickly. Just admit that you won’t/can’t pay for something. So the question is whether or not the morality comes into play when you DO intend on buying the game as soon as it’s available on your preferred platform.
Patient gamer does mean actually be patient. If someone is playing a pirated game I would say that doesn’t count as patience with them not depriving themselves of anything.
I mean it when I say im a patient gamer… ill wait and no play it
Some games are already like this. Borderlands stuff has been an Epic exclusive for a year ish in the past. I played on other platforms to avoid it. I don’t know if that’s still the case or if Borderlands 3 was the exception.
So if a game is stuck in Steam’s walled garden it’s ok, but if it’s stuck in Epic’s walled garden then it’s wrong?
As a gamer living in eastern Asia, Epic’s exclusives that could only be bought in certain countries due to payment processors pissed me off enough to boycott. I generally don’t touch any games that started as exclusives there, either. The couple of exceptions I have, I waited until they were a couple of years old and > 50% off on Steam or GoG
A game that sells 10,000 copies on Epic may sell 20,000 or more on Steam since Steam is so popular. If the game sold for $20 they would get $200,000 from Epic or $280,000 from Steam in that scenario.
That’s an awfully generous ratio. I don’t recall all the specifics, but a year or so ago an indie game dev posted the sales stats of his game and left out the Epic Store numbers. When asked, he said that EGS accounted for less than 1% of his sales. Now, I’m not saying that’s going to be the case for all games, but considering EGS’s status as the “black hole of videogame marketing” I would say a 10-1 Steam/EGS ratio wouldn’t be surprising.
Yeah same, but I also won’t touch anything that goes Epic Games exclusive even when it comes to Steam.
Say what you will about epic, but this is compelling as hell for Devs. Hopefully this puts more pressure on Steam to reduce their cut. Competition is good.
If you’re so against epic, have a little patience and wait until it comes to steam 6 months later. That’s what I’ll be doing. But don’t just mindlessly shit in epic because you (as a consumer) don’t like their business model intended to attract devs. You can dislike something while also recognising the good in it.
I’m not so sure, this seems like a less compelling deal than what Epic was offering before, which didn’t seem to be working out so well for devs.
Before, they were outright paying for exclusivity, offering studios and publishers huge sums of money to make up for the revenue they lose by not being on Steam, and then some. And they often paid for 12+ months of exclusivity. You were guaranteed profitability regardless of whether or not your game actually succeeded.
In order to break even in the new program, your game needs to retain 70% of the customers that would have bought it day 1 on Steam instead. That seems an impossibly high target to hit, given how much Epic has struggled to make EGS succeed even when they were thowing a lot more money around.
I never truly understood the hate for epic. They’ve made some of the best games of all time, give away 1-2 games for free every single week, and they ensure that most annoying kids are in fortnite and not games that adults want to play. Oh noooo. You have to open a separate launcher to play your video game! The horror!
No review system for games, no return policy, no community tabs or markets, no appear offline mode, they allow shitcoins and nfts on their platform, forcing their launcher onto games they own (Rocket League that launches through Epic but I bought it on Steam), collecting a metric fuckton of user data and input, and finally very close connections with Tencent. Sure i’m missing a bunch more.
Origin and Ubisoft launchers are starting as well on their games
Did they ever add a shopping cart? That was the reason I never bought games from them.
There is shopping cart.
…I only use it to add two free games to cart and “buying” them with one click 🤷
In your comment you admit you don’t know, and then end your comment with an out of touch assumption. Good job.
Yeah, if that launcher is not so suck ass at what it does that I have to resort to Heroic Launcher. Not to mention some of the games on Epic just… weird, like Epic Skyrim doesn’t work with SKSE
Someday maybe they will try to improve the launcher instead of burning all the money in exclusives that only pisses people off. I uninstalled that shit and don’t even bother to take the free games anymore.
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I had to request and confirm the deletion of my account to stop chinese people trying to hack it or something because I kept getting e-mails from Epig that someone in China is trying to access my account EVERY GODDAMN MONTH.
The launcher launches the games and that’s good enough for me 👍
Why should you be happy it has the most bare functionality it could possibly have. It’s 2023. On Steam I can stream from a Linux PC to my living room, play on some Nintendo Joycons with full gyro support, have a YouTube video playing picture-in-picture and bringing up an achievement guide with one button press. Epic is just a launcher, Steam is a full-fledged gaming platform.
I just claim the free games and after installing them, i add them to steam.
I’m not one for company or brand worship but valve is straight GOATed.
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The issue is not the launcher. The issue is the exclusivity. It demonstrates an anti-consumer mindset. The GOG, which people here have demonstrated acceptance of, is yet another launcher, the launchers less elegant to steam, and everyone is just fine with.
It will probably work fine but it’s not an officially supported use case of the software. You can’t exactly submit a ticket to Valve if something doesn’t work right because the game isn’t even on their store.
Fucking hell, don’t hurt your back carrying that goalpost mate!
The person asked what the problem was and I explained what the problem was. Why are you butting in with this nonsense?
That guy has a weird hard-on for the epic games store. There was a post about it last month and that guy was saying the same things.
Funny you should mention Linux…
“Linux is so much nicer than Windows because it doesn’t have all the bloat! Yuck!”
“Epic is so much worse than Steam because it doesn’t have all the bloat! Yuck!”
The hypocrisy is strong with this one.
… What are you even talking about. I never even said the first statement so how could I possibly be a hypocrite lmao. And having features isn’t “bloat”. Your argument is just all kinds of nonsensical.
I could launch my games without a launcher. And I prefer it that way.
Good news!
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_Epic_Games_Store
Pretty much all free games they’ve given so far are DRM free and can be launched without the launcher!
Can’t wait to read the next reason why you refuse to install it!
The way people talk about the epic store its like the company personally kicked their dog.
Take the free game and shut the fuck up
They would have been complaining about Steam killing distributors when it released and vowing to boycott it forever. I’m old enough to remember these guys back in the day, now they’re basically sucking Gaben’s dick and bowing in front of his virtual monopoly.
There is a core difference.
A better analogy, would be shut up and eat the cheese it’s only a trap if you get caught.
It’s still designed as a trap.
We know epic has demonstrated that their anti-consumer by their public, frequent, numerous exclusivity deals for their store.
Steam had de facto exclusivity for years and I didn’t see anyone complain, weird how that goes, right?
Steam did not force any developer to make an exclusive. The developers had the choice of using every platform available to them. They thought steam was good enough.
And the reason nobody complained about steam being the de facto place to get games? It treated people fairly, it was easy, good enough. More convenient than piracy.
If the only choice is storefront A that’s used by 100% of consumers and storefront B that’s used by 0.1% of consumers then storefront A has a monopoly even if technically there’s a competitor. They means storefront A doesn’t need to sign exclusivity agreements because it knows no one will choose not to sell through them as it would mean not selling at all.
Epic doesn’t force third party developers to sell exclusives with them either, they’re free not to take their offer.
Man epic games store is actual industry aids. We don’t buy games on steam because we have no other choice. We buy them because it’s by far and large the best platform. I don’t want 10 different apps for different games. I want my collection in one spot. Epic games sucks. I’ve never given them a single cent and never will. I’ve claimed many a free game on there but the irony is I just buy them on sale through steam and never actually play them on epic. I want playtimes, achievements and the games themselves in one fucking spot. If steam becomes wildly anti consumer I would absolutely change my stance. But valve and it’s customers have a pretty good relationship imo.
Steam has proton, Epic games does nkt even have a linux launcher, its obvious who I’m sticking with
I mean, I’ve been able to get epic games working on my deck through the heroic launcher. I’ve still not given them one thin dime and I don’t intend to but I’ve got a fair sized collection of giveaway games that are nice to have around
Never forget that GOG is also an option!
Huh? GOG still seems to be online. Did anything get announced?
Oh no, sorry if I scared anyone. I just wanted to remind people to buy games from GOG
I don’t think GOG is going anywhere, perhaps the poster above you just used weird phrasing (English might not be their first language)
I should’ve just added “Never forget [buying games from] GOG!” already 😅
They’ll get 100% of my zero dollars that way.
Lol, Epic losing steam? No pun intended.
Also, fuck Epic.
“Let us offer you 100% of the money from a marketplace 0.0001% as large! Did we mention you get all the money that neither of us are making? We will throw in all the good will with gamers we’ve earned too.”
If the game is in demand, people will go there if it’s the only option. It’s not a great option for some obscure indie game, but it is for mid-budget projects that have already gotten interest.
Other posters seem to forget that competition is very important for this kind of thing.
Sure it’s annoying when Epic stops games releasing in other platforms, and especially how the epic launcher and it’s games do not support Linux.
But without competition, steam can continue with an insanely high cut of indie game sales, and that is NOT ok.
How is it competition when you only have one place to get it? Isn’t that just a monopoly? Sure it’s temporary, but there’s nothing competitive about “buy here or nowhere.”
I don’t think that’s the same thing as a monopoly. Or at the very least it’s not nearly as bad. The presence of Epic on the market has been great for developers, because they can get good deals at epic AND Valve has been forced to reevaluate their prices.
I can’t wait for lemmy to become a viable competitor to Reddit, I hate seeing those smug bastards at the top of my search results.
I think this is pretty viable, at least as a daily driver. Reddit has a lot more as far as help threads go, but the community here is fantastic.
it’s games do not support Linux.
I just use Heroic and like 90% of my epic library just works. Admittedly, still won’t spend anything on epic, but then, I like Heroic more than Steam at the moment…
Heroic Game Launcher ist awesome. Use it for both, my Epic and GOG libraries.
Until I see official Linux support, I’m not putting any eggs in the community Linux launchers. Rug could easily be pulled
Definitely. This is why i don’t spend money on that account. Well, that and not wanting to spend on that store.
This is probably a worse deal than the previous offer of guaranteed revenue regardless of performance.
I already block ads and advertisements, so the game will just be completely off my radar for another six months until I see friends start playing it. Eh. It’s far too much effort to try a new platform after the dumpsterfires of Origin and Uplay to play 1-3 games.
The only game I’d actually install a new launcher for would be a new Half Life Game.
I had a friend who really got into satisfactory. And since we were all a factorio group, it seems like our kind of crazy. We are excited for it. When it came out as an epic exclusive, that one friend went for it. And tried to get us all to join him. We’re like okay we’ll join you soon as it comes out on steam. Some converted some didn’t.
But over time I’ve had my personal friends tell me, yeah I see why you didn’t make that choice, earlier I thought you were just being stubborn but now I totally understand it.
Totally understand what exactly?
They now understand the logic behind not supporting exclusive titles to walled gardens.
That the game wasn’t worth playing. Lol?
Fuck Epic and any store who tries to remove games from others.
Fuck giving the devs and artists more money. Fuck them.
Game dev here, please stop licking these dirty boots. 99% of the money goes way up the ladder and into the heads of people with 0 interest in making fun games
