Rocket League's popular, but it's kind of old now. I'd imagine most everyone who wanted to play it on PC has already bought it at some point, and current Steam players can enjoy it indefinitely. We even got plenty of fair warning to go buy it before it gets pulled, What a bizarre move that totally wasn't stupid, but congrats to the creators of the game for all the money they just made.
The thing is that might violate some Valve agreements with publishers, as they might only have the right for digital, not physical distribution. I can imagine maybe them starting to sell special editions or weird sort of stuff you can't normally get. And as @BillyGoat2 said, publishers aren't even printing discs anymore. So even if it wanted to, it'd basically be impossible. It'd be cool if Valve could send you a disc or a FOB with all your games on it.
Actually, that gave me a great idea. Being able to sell game merch on your store page in Steam. You get 100% of the profit, except Vavle only takes a cut from shipping and will ship and distribute for you. So even if Valve is taking a cut from your game sales, they'll distribute and ship your merch at cost where you keep all the profits. So you don't need to operate a separate website. When people go to your page you can just buy it and not even worry about shipping and handling because Valve takes that out automatically.
So instead of Sweeny 'match my cut', Valve goes, 'Nah, we'll allow our devs and publishers to sell merch with only our cut being shipping and distribution at cost. We won't take a dime of pure profit from them.' I think he would literally shit himself.
The only thing is that I think is that Valve is a bit gunshy about going into shipping physical merch as it wants to keep itself as small as possible.
That's something Twitch/Amazon could clean house with, and considering they also have a launcher where they give out tons of free games to Prime subscribers, they could give Steam a run for their money better than Epic. Both Twitch and Steam have reasons to use their launchers outside of games, unlike Epic's.
There's another thing that's also being missed: Steam doesn't give a fuck about platform exclusivity. As long as you don't undercut their storefront, you can sell your game on any other storefront you want.
There's a reason for this, and that's if you want to buy something, and it's available on many platforms, and one of them is Steam, guess where the vast majority of people are going to buy it? On fucking Steam!
This really undercuts the argument about market competition because even in the cases where it actually exists, despite Steam's actual monopolistic practices (that probably do have to be shut down at some point if possible), people actually do voluntarily choose Steam over others.
This is sort of like the situation with Microsoft, an obvious monstrous ogre in the OS field, where people constantly bitch about it, sue it, and its practices actually are and were (even more so in the past) brazenly monopolistic, but yet once you actually put in free market practices people STILL kept buying their shit.
And literally GOG exists for all of this. If that's your issue, you can get DRM-free on GOG every time, and that's literally its selling point. Don't want DRM? Get the GOG version. They even fairly often make it possible to get games free on GOG that you already have on Steam.
And GOG isn't bunch of goddamn dicks and certainly not a bunch of fucking ChiCom spies.
Actually, that gave me a great idea. Being able to sell game merch on your store page in Steam. You get 100% of the profit, except Vavle only takes a cut from shipping and will ship and distribute for you. So even if Valve is taking a cut from your game sales, they'll distribute and ship your merch at cost where you keep all the profits. So you don't need to operate a separate website. When people go to your page you can just buy it and not even worry about shipping and handling because Valve takes that out automatically.
So instead of Sweeny 'match my cut', Valve goes, 'Nah, we'll allow our devs and publishers to sell merch with only our cut being shipping and distribution at cost. We won't take a dime of pure profit from them.' I think he would literally shit himself.
The only thing is that I think is that Valve is a bit gunshy about going into shipping physical merch as it wants to keep itself as small as possible.
Merch requires making an entire production line or outsourcing it to a production company, after you decide what you actually can sell as merch. This entire cut business was pitched to help smaller studios who care about getting more money, so they can get out of the small business barely afloat status that most start ups linger in. That and it sounds more "fair" because Steam doesn't do anything, apparently. I don't fully agree with that sentiment, but that is the idea.
As for the costs, the cuts, and all that under this hypothetical idea that I assume Steam itself is getting involved in. I decided to consult Amazon's FAQ about its fees to sell on its platform as it gives me at least an idea on how to estimate what Steam would/could do comparatively speaking.
1: A set monthly fee of 39.99 USD if you intend to sell more than 40 items a month.
2: Referral fee based on category, that varies between 8-15% depending on category of whatever you're selling.
3: A fulfillment fee if you use the fulfillment service Amazon provides which is what is more or less suggested Steam would do, which is basically the price you pay to not ship the product to your customers yourself. This amount appears to be the net cost to ship to an Amazon fulfillment center, store it (this is important for later), and then ship it on your behalf.
4: A variable closing fee that I have no idea what this value is.
In addition storing, well anything, can get really expensive. It is a cost to basically sit around and do nothing with stuff you technically are paying to own in some way if you're retail, making it, whatever you basically paid money to pay more money to store things you already paid to make/own. It just isn't very smart to have high storage costs. So to keep this a very short and mostly unrelated tangent, that you can read below if you're interested, companies with traditionally high storage cost fees have been trying to do what is called a just in time inventory system which is a logistical pain in the ass.
To keep this brief you basically estimate how much you sell and you have a constant fleet of shipments and product development of everything you think you need that will come "just in time" to be sold. This reduces how long you store things, thus lowering storage costs, reduces your chances of over producing inventory, etc etc.
You also need to estimate possibility of stock outs as you don't want to just have nothing to sell as that can make you seem unreliable which can lose business. So you still need just enough inventory to overcome stock outs, but how much is that? Is it even enough? These are difficult questions with answers that can only be 100% true if you can see the future. The moment we perfect crystal ball future reading technology is the moment we make a killing on having little to no storage costs.
So this is a fairly complicated thing that has a huge layer of estimation behind it, you never fully know how much you need without a lot of past data and a lot of trial and error, and it is just plain difficult. So all that logistical bullshit is still more profitable then just storing stuff for no reason.
Asking Steam to take up this business is very difficult and requires a lot of consulting and personnel that I doubt would be very effective in the end and it still requires people to actually develop merch. One possible solution is Steam basically just makes Amazon do all this bullshit under a selling account ran by Steam that will just accept merch and place it on their selling account.
That is still a fairly costly venture and I'm not sure how effectively smaller studios can take advantage of this. You're also basically adding 2 middle men in the customer seller relationship which just sounds unnecessarily expensive, you might as well just sell on Amazon yourself.
The only way it can possibly survive is through exclusives right this moment, because Sweeny somehow thinks developers are going to win this for him when people can get the entirety of Dark Souls 3 for 20 bucks or RE 2, the best survival horror game out right now for $40. Can he offer that to people? No. He can't. Because instead of putting capital into his store to make it, you know, a store and not a fucking webpage, he decided the PC community would just bend over and take it. Which, I don't know why he thought that, since the PC community is full of grognards, elitists and people who will spite fuck you for no reason. And that's the good side. The PC community obviously didn't because the costs of them offering exclusives is going up exponentially.
The Sinking City released an 18 minute gameplay video showcasing ugly low resolution graphics, janky stiff animations, and MEA tier facial animations so unless it gets a complete rework in the next month and a half I've gone back to giving zero fucks about any Epic Store exclusives.
The Sinking City released an 18 minute gameplay video showcasing ugly low resolution graphics, janky stiff animations, and MEA tier facial animations so unless it gets a complete rework in the next month and a half I've gone back to giving zero fucks about any Epic Store exclusives.
Reminds me of Knights of the Old Republic where the animation recycles or they cut to a different cycle. Of course, its animations had more expressions.
There's a reason for this, and that's if you want to buy something, and it's available on many platforms, and one of them is Steam, guess where the vast majority of people are going to buy it? On fucking Steam!
This really undercuts the argument about market competition because even in the cases where it actually exists, despite Steam's actual monopolistic practices (that probably do have to be shut down at some point if possible), people actually do voluntarily choose Steam over others.
This is sort of like the situation with Microsoft, an obvious monstrous ogre in the OS field, where people constantly bitch about it, sue it, and its practices actually are and were (even more so in the past) brazenly monopolistic, but yet once you actually put in free market practices people STILL kept buying their shit.
And literally GOG exists for all of this. If that's your issue, you can get DRM-free on GOG every time, and that's literally its selling point. Don't want DRM? Get the GOG version. They even fairly often make it possible to get games free on GOG that you already have on Steam.
And GOG isn't bunch of goddamn dicks and certainly not a bunch of fucking ChiCom spies.
Exactly. There's nothing Epic doesn't offer that other stores don't as well. Except timed exclusives. Which if you are busy, have plenty of games, aren't that big of a deal.
Merch requires making an entire production line or outsourcing it to a production company, after you decide what you actually can sell as merch. This entire cut business was pitched to help smaller studios who care about getting more money, so they can get out of the small business barely afloat status that most start ups linger in. That and it sounds more "fair" because Steam doesn't do anything, apparently. I don't fully agree with that sentiment, but that is the idea.
As for the costs, the cuts, and all that under this hypothetical idea that I assume Steam itself is getting involved in. I decided to consult Amazon's FAQ about its fees to sell on its platform as it gives me at least an idea on how to estimate what Steam would/could do comparatively speaking.
1: A set monthly fee of 39.99 USD if you intend to sell more than 40 items a month.
2: Referral fee based on category, that varies between 8-15% depending on category of whatever you're selling.
3: A fulfillment fee if you use the fulfillment service Amazon provides which is what is more or less suggested Steam would do, which is basically the price you pay to not ship the product to your customers yourself. This amount appears to be the net cost to ship to an Amazon fulfillment center, store it (this is important for later), and then ship it on your behalf.
4: A variable closing fee that I have no idea what this value is.
In addition storing, well anything, can get really expensive. It is a cost to basically sit around and do nothing with stuff you technically are paying to own in some way if you're retail, making it, whatever you basically paid money to pay more money to store things you already paid to make/own. It just isn't very smart to have high storage costs. So to keep this a very short and mostly unrelated tangent, that you can read below if you're interested, companies with traditionally high storage cost fees have been trying to do what is called a just in time inventory system which is a logistical pain in the ass.
To keep this brief you basically estimate how much you sell and you have a constant fleet of shipments and product development of everything you think you need that will come "just in time" to be sold. This reduces how long you store things, thus lowering storage costs, reduces your chances of over producing inventory, etc etc.
You also need to estimate possibility of stock outs as you don't want to just have nothing to sell as that can make you seem unreliable which can lose business. So you still need just enough inventory to overcome stock outs, but how much is that? Is it even enough? These are difficult questions with answers that can only be 100% true if you can see the future. The moment we perfect crystal ball future reading technology is the moment we make a killing on having little to no storage costs.
So this is a fairly complicated thing that has a huge layer of estimation behind it, you never fully know how much you need without a lot of past data and a lot of trial and error, and it is just plain difficult. So all that logistical bullshit is still more profitable then just storing stuff for no reason.
Asking Steam to take up this business is very difficult and requires a lot of consulting and personnel that I doubt would be very effective in the end and it still requires people to actually develop merch. One possible solution is Steam basically just makes Amazon do all this bullshit under a selling account ran by Steam that will just accept merch and place it on their selling account.
That is still a fairly costly venture and I'm not sure how effectively smaller studios can take advantage of this. You're also basically adding 2 middle men in the customer seller relationship which just sounds unnecessarily expensive, you might as well just sell on Amazon yourself.
Man, I have almost nothing to say that others haven't already. I'll just restate this: piracy exists for a reason. I'm grabbing timed exclusives instead of going for Epic, and when they hit Steam, sure, I'll buy them then. Fuck, these people can't read a consumerbase.
I'd say that is normal when you propose anything off the cuff like on a forum post. Just a lot of great ideas in theory from a business perspective likely die when you start hashing out details, devising a plan of action, and then you have to evaluate how much that all costs against what you think will be the most conservative/generous estimate of what you'll earn, try and find out what number between those two values is the most likely outcome, and apply a bunch of financial ratios to that. If financial ratios are lacking for the amount of effort/risk you need to take, you just don't take the proposal.
Even then, you never fully know what is going to happen especially in ventures you're not familiar in because things can get complicated fast, that is typically why business people exist and can seem very harsh to great ideas in theory. Because great ideas are also typically very ambitious and ambition leads to risk, and risk needs good returns to be taken at all as most people in finance are risk adverse,
This entire story about this Epic Store is an ambitious idea that got accepted and ran into complications that weren't predicted most likely, at least not to this extent. Epic thought they had a winning idea. Everyone hates Steam according to people like Jim Sterling, YongYea, and Totalbiscuit (RIP) who are seemingly big voices for the consumers of video games in the PC space. So if we appeal to them, take down Steam, and come off as a shining star in the sky they'll eat it up, then their fanbases will eat it up. BAM instant win, we get to become Valve 2.0, Fortnite will probably end up like TF2 has in a few years, and we can just rack in money by existing. Easiest proposal of my life.
Obviously we missed 1, 2, 300 or so different complications and problems, but it was a great idea WITHOUT those problems, just like this merch idea was great without all those problems. The difference is we're a bunch of randoms on the internet who aren't in charge with millions of dollars.
Epic claims another backer funded indie. Are they just trying to piss off as many people as they can? You're not EA guys, you're indie fucks. EA can survive pissing off fans for a while, I doubt you will after Epic's cash infusion dries up. Backers won't let people forget that you fucked them.
Updated: Mobius Digital’s open world exploration game “Outer Wilds” will be a timed exclusive on the Epic Games Store when it launches, the developer revealed in an
variety.com
‘Outer Wilds’ Now an Epic Game Store Exclusive, and Backers Aren’t Happy BySTEFANIE FOGEL
CREDIT: MOBIUS DIGITAL Mobius Digital’s open world exploration game “Outer Wilds” will be a timed exclusive on the Epic Games Store when it launches, the developer revealed in an update on Friday.
Additional platforms are “coming later,” Mobius Digital said. “Rest assured that we read all of your comments and our goal is to bring the game to your preferred platform as quickly as possible. We will keep you up to date with the latest info here.”
“Throughout the development of the game, we’ve welcomed helpful partnerships with Annapurna Interactive, Xbox, and Epic to support us and keep our small studio running long enough to ship the game at the level of quality that it is today,” the studio added. “Each of these partnerships has enabled us to make the game better and more accessible for everyone who will play it.”
“Outer Wilds” (not to be confused with Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming role-playing game “The Outer Worlds,” which is also an Epic Games Store exclusive) was crowdfunded on gaming-centric platform Fig. Some backers there are not happy with the title’s timed exclusivity and see the move as a betrayal of their trust.
“That is deeply disappointing,” said backer Jesse C. “If the delay for a Steam release of more than a few months, I think I’ll have to seek a refund.”
“I’ve not been happy about past Epic store exclusives (due to the typical reasons: a HUGE lack of features compared to Steam, splitting my library), but it didn’t bother me too much because I could simply choose not to purchase those games, thereby ‘voting with my dollar’ and not supporting a company I didn’t like,” said backer thegroundbelow. “Now, this? I am FURIOUS. Say goodbye to any remaining goodwill you had from me. Pulling this bait-and-switch at the last moment after FOUR YEARS of development and my money LONG gone is NOT. KOSHER.”
The Epic Games Store launched in December 2018 and quickly established itself as a serious competitor to Valve’s digital storefront Steam. Its rising popularity is mainly due to its 88%/12% revenue share model with developers and its aggressive approach to acquiring exclusives of both AAA and indie titles like “Outer Wilds,” “Borderlands 3,” “Tom Clancy’s The Division 2,” and “Metro Exodus.”
Dude NO. I have a fair amount of games, all but a handful bought from the respective stores at commensurate prices, and I'm not gonna be culturally enriching my PC. Steam (for weeb stuff) and GOG (for everything else) is enough.
Well, then you never bought an Ubisoft game because it requires Uplay to use.
Also, the unintended consequences of Epic picking up backer funded projects is that people aren't going to trust kickstarter games. I sure as fuck wouldn't trust a single game on Fig right now as they've gone two for two.
Fig is owned by Mr. Shitface so just for that reason you should never put your money into that platform, also Randy Pitchford is on the board of directors.
Fig is owned by Mr. Shitface so just for that reason you should never put your money into that platform, also Randy Pitchford is on the board of directors.
