Epic Games General Thread - Its time to talk about what the AAA gaming industry does not understand about the PC console.

[Spud]

This post is sponsored by The People's Republic of China

 

[Electric Pence]

View attachment 3310926
This post is sponsored by The People's Republic of China

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taR8xb4RdpM

 

[ZMOT]

It's free shit that if you don't install it when it's free it will be unavailable in your library months later...
Actually, I have a game I know I beat when it came out that is unavailable now simply because it was uninstalled.

know which game? pretty sure reddit would have a gigantic spergfit if timmy ever pulls that.

 

[12345]

know which game? pretty sure reddit would have a gigantic spergfit if timmy ever pulls that.

All of them are unavailable, but the one specifically I beat it was Afterparty I think. But it could be any of them, none are available.

 

[Mega Man II Intro - GB]

Interesting interview with Tim Sweeney [archive]

The problem here is a classic monopoly tie. You start with hardware. Apple make smartphones and they profit from their smartphones — and they deserve to. But then they force all buyers of their smartphones to use their app store exclusively for obtaining digital content. They prevent all other app stores from competing with them on hardware that’s owned by a billion end users. That’s the first tie and that completely obstructs all competition and market forces that would shape better app stores and better deals for consumers.

And then the next tie is that Apple forces all apps in their app store to use their payment processing service for digital goods. PayPal charges 3 per cent; Mastercard and Visa charge 2 per cent; Apple charges 30 per cent. It’s a multiple larger than the actual costs of the payment processing. And Apple does that through this series of ties.

Apple make profit from their smartphones — and they deserve to. But then they force all buyers of their smartphones to use their app store exclusively for obtaining digital content . . . That completely obstructs all competition that would shape better deals for consumers

As a business, they won fairly in one market: hardware. And they use that position to gain an unfair advantage over competitors and other markets. And that breaks all the competitive dynamics that kept the tech industry healthy in the past.

Epic’s view is that every company participating in the tech industry should have to compete, and should actually compete fairly, in every market in which they do business. Apple competes in hardware fairly. Apple currently competes in stores unfairly. They should have to compete fairly against the Epic game store, and the Steam Store, and let’s assume the Microsoft Store, and the many other stores that will emerge — as they do with any other market in the world, except for digital app stores.

Apple should be free to offer their payment service to developers but they should have to compete fairly on margin. And competition will bring those payment processing fees down from 30 per cent to something very competitive with the 2 per cent to 3 per cent that’s on the market. Or perhaps even lower if they innovate, as we’ve seen in China where payment processing fees are even lower than the rest of the world.

There are two sides to Meta. There’s the metaverse side, where they’ve articulated a really interesting vision. It’s in many ways broader than Epic’s. We see this as a central entertainment medium, and they see this as a medium that will connect everybody across distances for any purpose including work, and just hanging out chatting. And they talk a lot about open platform principles: they’re not building a Meta walled garden, they’re trying to contribute to standards and practices that lead towards an open metaverse. And I really like that vision that they’ve articulated.

On the other hand, there’s all their actual existing business practices and all their actual existing businesses, where they run ads associated with your content feed and don’t revenue share that with the creators of the content that drove the engagement. And there is an ad economy that is completely controlled by them, which is not an open ad economy and has all the manifestations of an entirely closed ecosystem.

The revenue share is very little — around 5 per cent of its total revenue — with the creators. And it’s not just a transitory thing. I feel their actual business that has grown up is not a creator-centric enough ecosystem. So, it is going to be a lot of work if Meta is really to bridge the gap between their current practices and their future vision.

And there’s always business pressure to not do those open things. Because it turns out, you can often make more money by doing closed things.

I think there is another major factor that’s in play. If you look at the history of iPhone and Android, and the first social networks, everybody in the outside world was duped, all the major brands were duped, into handing their customer relationships over to these companies — based on the promise that they’d be able to have direct relationships with their customers. Then, over time, Apple and Google and Facebook built ever higher walls blocking them from directly reaching their customers.

Anybody could follow a brand on Facebook and see all their posts originally, and then they started eliminating the reachability of those customers and charging those brands and forcing them to pay for running advertisements to reach the customers that they’d helped Facebook to onboard.

Apple did look at that with game developers and app developers — saying: “Go and build apps for our platform” and, then, 10 years later, we find they are making by far the majority of the profit from these apps. They’re making much more profit from the apps than the developers are making themselves.

So you take 30 per cent off the top, which has a 70 per cent profit margin for Apple. And developers bear all of the costs, including now paying Apple to give them the first search result for their own brand name! They registered the trademark and somebody searches for it — and Apple shows them a product that’s not the thing they searched for, just to collect more money!

Sweeney's arguments seem well-reasoned. The metaverse is a pile of shit and I will never use it but these tech monopolies are no great thing either. Letting a few companies sit back and collect rent on so much digital space ought to be a thing of the past.

 

[Kane Lives]

Well shit, Sweeney. If only someone made a viable alternative to all these functional monopolies.

What's that? EGS just implemented a shopping basket, a feature that's been ubiquitous since the 00s? Golly gee let me uproot my Steam account just to migrate to a platform with a fraction of the games and no regional support.

 

[SiccDicc]

Well shit, Sweeney. If only someone made a viable alternative to all these functional monopolies.

What's that? EGS just implemented a shopping basket, a feature that's been ubiquitous since the 00s? Golly gee let me uproot my Steam account just to migrate to a platform with a fraction of the games and no regional support.

What's that? You're buying up exclusives on the market like those megalithic console companies do? Golly gee, that sure sounds consumer friendly!

 

[AnOminous]

Oh thank God that grayscale bullshit is gone.

 

[Mega Man II Intro - GB]

What's that? You're buying up exclusives on the market like those megalithic console companies do? Golly gee, that sure sounds consumer friendly!

You can't break a monopoly without breaking a few of your own rules... or something like that. Valve taking 30% is no better than Apple taking 30%. Arguably it's the most predatory of all since Valve takes less of a cut the more you earn meaning indies get the worst deal. Even if you license Unreal Engine and use it to make a game you don't have to pay until you earn real money. Say what you will about Epic but they're not fucking over game developers and that's important.

 

[SiccDicc]

You can't break a monopoly without breaking a few of your own rules... or something like that. Valve taking 30% is no better than Apple taking 30%. Arguably it's the most predatory of all since Valve takes less of a cut the more you earn meaning indies get the worst deal. Even if you license Unreal Engine and use it to make a game you don't have to pay until you earn real money. Say what you will about Epic but they're not fucking over game developers and that's important.

You get way more back out of that 30% with Steam than Apple would give you. It's been listed in this thread, but Steam offers Anti-Cheat, Key Generation, Servers, etc.

 

[Mega Man II Intro - GB]

You get way more back out of that 30% with Steam than Apple would give you. It's been listed in this thread, but Steam offers Anti-Cheat, Key Generation, Servers, etc.

If a game isn't making much money it's not using many resources and so shouldn't be paying for them. Steam should be taking nothing from developers until they're making serious money. Charging more for those least able to afford it is predatory!

 

[SiccDicc]

If a game isn't making much money it's not using many resources and so shouldn't be paying for them. Steam should be taking nothing from developers until they're making serious money. Charging more for those least able to afford it is predatory!

I'm... I'm not sure if we're doing a bit here or not...

Sweeney doesn't pay out the nose for games that won't make much money or games he thinks won't. Steam doesn't stop games from going on EGS, but EGS does stop games from going on Steam. If the developer wants they can have the game on both EGS and Steam to diversify their options. I could have sworn EGS put some games on sale or for free without telling a developer, but that was awhile ago and I don't trust my memory that much.

 

[Pissmaster]

You get way more back out of that 30% with Steam than Apple would give you. It's been listed in this thread, but Steam offers Anti-Cheat, Key Generation, Servers, etc.

That, and Steam doesn't even take a commission if you generate and sell keys elsewhere. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...ets-less-than-30-percent-of-steam-game-sales/ https://archive.ph/7CsXk/ You can't just abuse that though, since there's a rule somewhere in their documentation that says unsold keys should be revoked if you take your game off the Steam storefront.

 

[Mega Man II Intro - GB]

If I sell 10,000 copies of a $5 game on Steam, Valve takes a 30% cut.
If I sell 10,000,000 copies of a $5 game on Steam, Valve takes a lower cut of the sales past a certain point. I don't know the exact numbers but it's true, I read it on the internet.
If you're a struggling game developer Valve takes a higher percentage of your revenue, making it harder to be a not-so-struggling game developer.
Valve has a lot of money and could be more generous to indie developers who aren't selling many copies.

 

[Bonesjones]

The backend work steam puts out is exactly the same if you sell 1 or 1 million copies. The only difference is bandwidth at that point. The benefit of a small indie developer being on steam is that they handle pretty much everything else for you. Steam gives every half finished but fun idea a place to shine because it only takes a risk free impulse purchase to get the ball rolling. How many early access clones have sold half a million copies that would otherwise sell about 10 without steam?

 

[Mega Man II Intro - GB]

The backend work steam puts out is exactly the same if you sell 1 or 1 million copies.

What "work"? I'd understand charging the same if there was a room with thousands of women at switchboards frantically connecting the lines so people could download their games. But it all happens in computers. It's all paid for already. Saying "we gave you a place to put your game, now we will take an percentage" is perfectly fine but the percentage ought to be FAIR.

30% is the norm with digital distribution but 30% is far too much from the little guy. It was established as the norm because they could get away with it. And everyone had to take it because where else could you sell? But that doesn't make it fair. Wal-Mart can roll into Small Town, USA and put dozens of people out of business. It's possible for them to do that. It's legal. But it's not fair.

You pay taxes to the government. But should a poor man pay the same percentage in taxes as a rich man? Or should the rich man pay more? Which is fair?

 

[SiccDicc]

You pay taxes to the government. But should a poor man pay the same percentage in taxes as a rich man? Or should the rich man pay more? Which is fair?

Okay so this is a bit.

The rich man does pay more if he's paying the same percentage as you. That's how percentages work. The man who makes more pays more. A man makes $100, he pays $30. A man makes $1000 he pays $300. So on and so forth.

 

[Bonesjones]

What "work"? I'd understand charging the same if there was a room with thousands of women at switchboards frantically connecting the lines so people could download their games. But it all happens in computers. It's all paid for already. Saying "we gave you a place to put your game, now we will take an percentage" is perfectly fine but the percentage ought to be FAIR.

30% is the norm with digital distribution but 30% is far too much from the little guy. It was established as the norm because they could get away with it. And everyone had to take it because where else could you sell? But that doesn't make it fair. Wal-Mart can roll into Small Town, USA and put dozens of people out of business. It's possible for them to do that. It's legal. But it's not fair.

You pay taxes to the government. But should a poor man pay the same percentage in taxes as a rich man? Or should the rich man pay more? Which is fair?

What work does a web host do? What work does a dns do? What work does a currency exchange do? You literally pay a small fee, upload your content to steam and they do literally everything else for only a cut of the revenue. While it might not be the most monetary efficient choice, it's one of the least hassle free ones. While Valve isn't perfect they've shown more integrity than pretty much every other large internet corporation. I can still download and access games I've bought that were removed for whatever reason. Amazon or whoever just steals your shit with no recourse. There's a reason every company that used Blizzard or Epic goes back to steam when they can. The only reason anyone uses epic in the first place is because they throw fistfuls of Chinese and Fortnight money at people to buy favor and even that isn't working very well.

 

[ZehnBoat]

What work does a web host do? What work does a dns do? What work does a currency exchange do? You literally pay a small fee, upload your content to steam and they do literally everything else for only a cut of the revenue. While it might not be the most monetary efficient choice, it's one of the least hassle free ones. While Valve isn't perfect they've shown more integrity than pretty much every other large internet corporation. I can still download and access games I've bought that were removed for whatever reason. Amazon or whoever just steals your shit with no recourse. There's a reason every company that used Blizzard or Epic goes back to steam when they can. The only reason anyone uses epic in the first place is because they throw fistfuls of Chinese and Fortnight money at people to buy favor and even that isn't working very well.

also considering that "wait a year then you can go to steam" is only for the big guys
if you're a small team, that game is there forever

 

[Kane Lives]

What "work"? I'd understand charging the same if there was a room with thousands of women at switchboards frantically connecting the lines so people could download their games. But it all happens in computers. It's all paid for already. Saying "we gave you a place to put your game, now we will take an percentage" is perfectly fine but the percentage ought to be FAIR.

30% is the norm with digital distribution but 30% is far too much from the little guy. It was established as the norm because they could get away with it. And everyone had to take it because where else could you sell? But that doesn't make it fair. Wal-Mart can roll into Small Town, USA and put dozens of people out of business. It's possible for them to do that. It's legal. But it's not fair.

You pay taxes to the government. But should a poor man pay the same percentage in taxes as a rich man? Or should the rich man pay more? Which is fair?

Like I said earlier, Sweeney could have made it fair. He could have put out a well-made, competitive alternative to Steam with Fortnite money. Instead, he screeched like an autistic retard on twitter, and pushed out his turd of a storefront that lacked a majority of the features a modern consumer would expect, banking on the goodwill that being a competitor to Steam boogeyman would carry him to the finish line. When that didn't work, he started outright buying exclusives so that people would be forced to use EGS. Why should anyone, even those using GOG, use EGS then?

Sweeney is directly responsible for this retarded strategy, and no amount of "b-but steam is MONOPOLY" will change that.