Epic Games Takes on Steam


So I imagine many of you may have heard the news but for those that haven’t…


Epic Games takes on Steam with its own fairer game store

Epic says it will only take 12 percent of all game sale revenues within its store, with the remaining 88 percent going directly to developers and publishers.

With Steam, Valve has traditionally taken around 30 percent of all revenue generated by game sales, in-game transactions, and downloadable content like expansions, leaving just 70 percent for creators. That’s standard across app stores run by Apple and Google, too, but Epic wants to take a different and more developer-friendly approach.



While I don’t play Fortnite nor have any interest in it whatsoever the game is apparently massively popular (including Epic Games are the devs behind Unreal Engine). Combined with them throwing down the revenue split gauntlet they just might have a shot at busting up Steam’s dominance just a lil, tho I imagine they are going to have to work at it for awhile.

Epic Games Store



To further build up momentum it appears they are also doing ‘free game’ giveaways.

The newly minted Epic Games Store will be giving away free games starting next week

Beyond all that though you may want to download the launcher (or re-install it if you’ve lapsed on Fortnite and still have it on your PC) for the free stuff Epic will be doling out each month. According to the publisher they’ll provide two freebies a month, starting with Subnautica (December 14 through 27) and Super Meat Boy (December 28, January 10).



This all actually comes along with Steam’s very recent developer revenue changes…

Valve’s new Steam revenue agreement gives more money to game developers



… funnily enough it wasn’t all that long ago that an article surfaced blasting Steams poor practices regarding game developers…

Steam developers speak: Maximum profits for Valve, minimum responsibilities



What a crazy time in PC gaming we are experiencing tho… even Discord has a store now. Not sure what to think about all this.

Discord Store

It’s great, steam’s needed competent competition for over a decade and now Epic’s poised to do what EA utterly fluffed up. And as an added bonus, Epic will actually not just let anything onto their store, which is brilliant given the overload of crap on steam these days. Oh the fact Epic’s only taking 12% cut of the sales is just brilliant for indie dev’s.

Sadly though, getting Valve to let go of their magic money tree that is steam’s 30% cut is going to be very difficult, since Valve’s become addicted to it so they can avoid making games for the most part. I suspect it’ll take quite a few big exclusives to light a fire under Gaben’s arse due to reduced incomes from steam

However, Epic’s got work to do on the store, it’s needs a wishlist, genre tagging for games, search bar and also in these days of the steam workshop - their own version. Since many games on steam that involve player made stuff basically tie users to steam’s workshop for sharing their creations.

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Yeah, it will be a while I think before Valve really has to worry but the situation as it stands should definitely be making Valve’s eyebrow arch right up in to space. This is the heavyweight PC gaming has needed to balance Valve’s dominance. GoG isn’t ‘bad’ and it has its place in the scheme of things but hasn’t really been able to turn the screws on Steam significantly. Discord I’m really not expecting to be more than a boutique curiosity, more a low key alternative.

But Epic is already taking big shots with that massive dev cut plus when Epic does something it gets big attention, as this situation is making apparent. I’m pretty sure I just heard Gabe say, “Fuck”.

I am definitely interested to follow and see what becomes of this.

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I’m digging the free game every 2 weeks thing right now - My son has been wanting to play Subnautica and I’m too cheap to buy it :smiley:

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It’s actually a smart move on their part to get people semi-invested in their ‘store’ and begin building a game library with something in it, for free. The same tactic is how my own GoG library began forming, slowly at first just to take advantage of the free games including gaining some games from my Steam account thru GoG Connect which allows you to get games you own on Steam from time to time as well on GoG, free.

Now I have like 74 games on GoG, alot of them free and/or part of various sale offers. Still, I have hundreds more on Steam.

It really depends how Epic will go forward with all of this. On one hand competition is good. For the overall market that’s a good development. That means we’ll have Steam, GoG, Epic and Itch.io. These are actual stores and not just key re-selling stores like Fanatical, Humblebundle etc.

For me as gamer there are also some caveats that I’m not happy with. I personally prefer to have everything as centralized as possible. I do not want to have a ton of different installers for different stores with my games library being spread all over the place. In that regard I hope there will be someone out there who is smart enough to jump on this angle. Create a singular shell program that can access all the store libraries that you got games stored at.

For those reasons I don’t even bother installing a client for ORigin, Uplay, Battlenet and Bethesda. Those publisher stores do not support a proper market. They’re closed environments allowing those publishers to keep their prices artificially high. They use other storefronts less and less as well. Those studio’s get away with a shit ton of anti-consumer practices on the consoles, but we PC players are not that gullible and will push back. And as said before they will lose a fair amount of customers like me. People who do not want a ton of different installers for different games. Thankfully most of those studio’s aren’t worth buying games from anymore anyway so that helps a lot as well.

With Epic we’ll just have to see. Several tried and folded. I won’t be buying games from Epic store any time soon. As said. I’d hate to invest in a store front and lose my library because they couldn’t make the final step. At least they’re open to all games and not just Unreal based games. So that’ll help at least.

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It is unsettling that reading this causes my mind to focus on what happens to my steam library when steam closes down.

Vakve has successfully developed an image of a don’t fuck with me company, and imagine the huge surge in revenue for gaming when everyone is forced to rebuy.

Not that I really fear the Epic store will end steam. Epic cannot even write a decent uninstaller. But it is a step closer to that day where gabe has enough money and decides to pay himself an enourmous severance and move on.

Time for steam to hand out free games every week as well. Lets do this! :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah, I don’t foresee Steam going under in our lifetimes, if it does WW3 will probably be in full swing or the Reptilians will have landed and begun subjugation and extermination of the human race and it likely won’t much matter at that point.

With that out of the way the question has been asked alot and apparently there are cases of Steam reps replying that there is a plan in place to ensure people retain their games. Of course there is nothing legally binding them on such a thing currently so it’s all basically smoke in the wind.

This is what Gaben was quoted as saying back in the start of Steam that “if” Steram closed down they would release the keys to customers of all their owned games, Just trusing a large money focused company to actually do this.

Regards the FREE unified, all in one game manager, I’ve only just downloaded this and it’s still being developed but try Playnite https://playnite.link/

I am just curious, will we see Grim Dawn being sold under the banner of Epic Games? :stuck_out_tongue:

I like this program since I can add stand-alone games AND even emulators if I want.

Epic games may gain traction if they can leverage enough exclusives to just their platform. The next game from SuperGiant games seems to be exclusive to the Epic Games store right now. Journey is finally being released on PC and it’s also on Epic’s store. The sequel to the awesome capital ship indie game Rebel Galaxy is for now exclusive to Epic’s store.

its only normal they invest money to buy timed exclusivity and try to make their platform a bit more interesting/relevant. Build up a user base.

but i’ve been having doubts with Epics customer service and security. They’re not really known for it. So if they get hacked…again… as with many other systems/games. Then customer service just says to make a new account. Making you lose your library. Not sure that’s something I’m up for.

Wondering that too. Suppose we’ll find out in time.

I noticed all that as well so it’s kinda obvious that is part of their strategy going forward… and being Unreal’s owners they have a pretty good ‘in’ on getting future exclusives in order to give Steam the shaft. That revenue split is also heavily in their favor but they are going to need the userbase to make it all work.

They’ve definitely been preparing for battle and giving out a free game every 2 weeks across the entirety of 2019 seems to indicate they’ve been talking to game devs and lining their ducks in a row.

There is no way in hell they are going to be able to get away with a response like that with a storefront and people’s game libraries. They’d have to fold automatically if they can’t do better than that.

One thing Steam has going for it in that area they are definitely internet-hardened and used to being attacked by hackers and how to go about handling them.

First 2 free games are already crap. I don’t do survival games and Super Meat Boy isn’t even fun since the difficulty is bullshit for the sake of being bullshit.

super meat boy isn’t that difficult. its skill based :rolleyes:
people always complain about “artificial” and “bullshit” difficulty when they just suck at fairly basic stuff I’ve noticed.

+Always looked about as fun as a herpes infection to me.

At this point I already despise Epic Games. Rebel galaxy Outlaw is planned to be a ONE YEAR exclusive to Epic’s launcher before it’ll be ‘available elsewhere’. Maneater, which i think looks interesting, says coming soon in Epic’s store but on Steam its ‘to be decided’. Several games have even chosen to kill off Steam releases entirely and remain Epic exclusives to force ‘industry change’.

In 5 years, these devs will be b!tching the same about the 88/12 split like they are about the 70/30 split now. How many servers does Valve run to support every single multiplayer game on the platform?