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.
I think they should double their offer and keep the duration adjustable:
Be one week exclusive, get 100% for two weeks,
Be one month exclusive, get 100% for two months.
Then, it becomes a game for the publisher. Launch on Epic and if there are no transactions, abort after one day. But if there are sales, hold on a bit to pocket the 100%.
Publishers will gamble and stay on Epic a bit longer to get better percentages from the strongest fans but they have to end exclusivity to capture the entire market.
They’ll get 100% of my zero dollars that way.
God I hate Epic. I hate them with every fiber of my being. The fact that I have to have their crappy, insecure game store bloatware just to try to learn Unreal for personal projects is dumb. Hence why I am learning Unity and Godot.
Any game that signs a deal with epic like this goes on my boycott list.
Never forget that GOG is also an option!
This is probably a worse deal than the previous offer of guaranteed revenue regardless of performance.
Fuck Epic and any store who tries to remove games from others.
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.
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.
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
Yeah same, but I also won’t touch anything that goes Epic Games exclusive even when it comes to Steam.
It’s that upfront money they give that’s the big thing for some of these devs I can’t blame them for taking that upfront influx of development capital.
Still not buying it from Epic, I hate console exclusivity, including Nintendo, and I’m not going to support it on PC.
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.
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?
A lot of people seem to view it this way. Borderlands 2 was Steam exclusive for like 5 years and nobody complained, but Borderlands 3 was EGS exclusive for 6 months and people flipped out.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think Valve went out of their way to bribe 2k into signing a contract to prevent them from releasing on other platforms. Like Xbox did with Tomb Raider preventing launch release on Sony.
Or do you not understand the distinction? At least play the “well it’s PC so what is the big deal over downloading another launcher” card if you are going to try and argue the exclusive angle.
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I’ve never understand why, as a consumer, I would care why something is exclusive.
Difference between knowing a game isn’t being prevented from coming to the PC like Yakuza and Persona 5 before they got PC ports versus knowing it will never happen, so not even entertaining the possibility like Zelda. Even with Epic exclusives its the difference between knowing that eventually the game will be available outside Epic versus being locked there forever. And it’s why I’ve decided to wait patiently for a Ghost of Tsushima release on the PC versus getting a PS5 or getting it for my PS4. Maybe you are a day 1 purchaser, but I am willing to wait if there is a chance of a game being released on my preferred platform. So its pretty important. Otherwise, I’d get a PS5 if I knew that no amount of waiting would result in PC ports.
Like I said before. You are so much better off saying you don’t care about exclusives if you are going to be an Epic apologist.
Maybe Gabe called up and asked nicely? Maybe someone at 2K used to work with Gabe when he was at Microsoft and thought they’d do him a favor? Maybe Valve paid? Does it matter why? Exclusives suck
You just seem to be falling back to hypotheticals to try to downplay third party exclusives. You say exclusives suck but then don’t bother putting in half the effort of actually calling out a verifiable recent actions of paying to remove the game from other platforms. Like the most infamous example being Metro Exodus that was set to release on Steam getting paid to pull it by Epic, and being the most lasting impression Epic left on consumers. It’s instead hypothetical 2k exclusives that bother you more than actual concrete current events.
Why would I care? The problem with exclusivity is that it’s anti-competitive and limits consumer choice. It doesn’t do that any less whether it’s exclusive because the developer was too lazy to offer the game somewhere else or because they were contractually obligated to be exclusive.
The leaps in logic you take to try and downplay paid third party exclusives as being as egregious as a dev or publisher not bothering to release on multiple platforms is an interesting one… But, I guess you have to do that if you are both claiming you hate exclusives, but then also trying to defend Epic and having to resort to hypotheticals.
Honestly, if you want to downplay criticisms towards Epic you are much better off saying you aren’t bothered by exclusives. I’m not sure why you are going through such a round about approach when you end up coming off as a fanboy with the leaps in logic and reliance on constant hypotheticals while downplaying or ignoring actual events that could hurt Epic.
Trust me. It’s way better to just say I like the Epic launcher being bare bones and I don’t care about exclusives. It’s just a launcher. This is by far the worst attempt to defend Epic I’ve seen. Bravo.
Any exclusive clearly is bad for consumers. If you want to tell yourself that Steam exclusives are better than EGS ones, Origin ones, or UPlay ones for some bizarre reason, do it. But that doesn’t make it true, sensible, or sane.
I don’t want games to be exclusive to any launcher. In fact, I have never purchased a game that is exclusive to one launcher. I have always either waited until the game was available multiple places (ideally somewhere like GOG that doesn’t require a launcher at all), or just never bought it. This includes Steam exclusives. But, sure, I’m just an EGS apologist.
But, sure, all of you guys who waited until publishers were being paid to use shitty launchers before you cared about consumer options have the moral high ground over those of us who realized it was shitty to require a launcher and started caring 20 years ago (and have been fighting it ever since).
As far as I’m concerned, consumers lost as soon as launchers were required. I don’t care why they’re required. To me, feeling better about it just because no one got paid to require the launcher makes no damn sense. It makes about as much sense as getting shot and then saying, “You know what? I feel better knowing that nobody got paid to shoot me. I’d feel a whole lot worse if someone got paid.” The problem isn’t that someone got paid! The problem is that you got fucking shot! You’re missing the point if you make that statement.
Launcher exclusivity is bad. Full stop. EGS isn’t worse. Steam isn’t worse. They’re all fucking bad.
Waiting 6 months means you will find out if the game was any good anyways
Found lot of the big titles that go to epic have been terribly unoptimized too at launch requiring fixes anyways, and I don’t want to pay more to be a beta tester. I don’t want to pay more for early access for a game that will be a better experience for customers who buy it much later.
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.
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.
I mean it when I say im a patient gamer… ill wait and no play it
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.
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.
Tbh EGS discovery of games is shit. I feel that’s their largest issue.
It’s their largest issue and they literally just won’t fix it.. Ostensibly because they don’t “track user behavior”. Yeah sure Epic, go with that.
When it introduced Steam Direct, Valve prioritized the development of Steam features that helped users discover games they might be interested in, such as the Discovery Queue. The Epic Games Store will continue to get interface updates, but as a matter of principle, Allison says that Epic will not track user behavior and use it to algorithmically recommend games. Epic has said in the past that it’s more interested in supporting the game discovery that already happens outside of stores, such as on Twitch and YouTube.
There’s no winning with you guys is there?
“We don’t track you…”
“I don’t believe you, I’ll use that paycheck that I know for a fact is tracking me, fuck you!”
“Eh…”
Why the fuck do you care if I don’t like your favorite multibillion dollar corporation? Fuck I wish I could find someone who loves me as much as you love Epic Games Store of all things
I just like pissing you guys off because you’re acting like child
It’s Tim. Why else would he be personally offended on behalf of epic when people say they don’t use it. He got offended I didn’t install the launcher and play the games despite having an account and at least claiming them on the browser.
That’s why Epic has to offer this. They NEED this to remain competitive.
They’re not really trying to compete financially at the moment. They’re trying to build a solid userbase and gain a high market share with younger gamers (the Fortnite crowd). They’re more than willing to lose money to do this. Once they meet the userbase target deals like this and the free weekly games will disappear.
Or they could make a launcher that offers features that Steam lacks.
Or even just has the same features. The EGS launcher is hilariously bad. It’s barebones and intentionally difficult. It’s basically just a shell for their website API, when then raises the question of why they even have a launcher when it’s just a glorified browser.
And the lack of a shopping cart on their store is just plain aggravating. Maybe I don’t want to do a purchase for each individual game/DLC. But I’m sure they did a focus study somewhere, which found that having a shopping cart encourages people to second-guess their purchasing decisions. Like if you allow people to cart things, they may rethink some/all of those purchases once they get to the final checkout screen and see the grand total. So instead, they’ve opted to make the user experience worse, by forcing you to immediately check out for every single individual item.
Not that I want to defend EGS here, but I would like to point out that they actually have had a shopping cart for a bit now. Hilarious how long it took them to implement, but they do in fact have one now.
What’s even more hilarious is they have had one in the Unreal Engine store for much longer.
If you want to criticize the product you should at least stay up to date on what they offer because now we know you don’t know what you’re talking about :)
On the other side of the same coin, it proves that I don’t use the EGS because the launcher has historically been (and still continues to be, as far as I can tell) hilariously bad.
By that logic fuck steam because it sucked when half life 2 launched
It’s got all functionalities required by a launcher, get over it.
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
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.
They’re winning me over steam. I pick up their free games each month and my library is getting good enough that I’m spending more time on it.
Elite Dangerous was their free game for the month awhile back. I made extra accounts and snagged free copies for people that wanted to try it, because I adore that game and love having people to fly with.
You know, oddly enough, no one wants it, even for free, expressly because they don’t want to deal with the dog’s anus EGS launcher.
I claim every epic game through the website, but I actually haven’t bothered installing the epic launcher since I did a fresh install of my OS months back. I’ve got other non steam launchers like GOG installed. So yeah, I’ll take the free game, but I don’t feel like spending money on the epic store even if it were more heavily discounted.
You’ve got the GOG launcher… Which can be linked to the Epic launcher… But don’t want to install the Epic launcher to play the free games they give…
Fucking hell you guys are pathetic.
I’m already claiming them. You want me to actually play them too? What more do you want from me Tim.
Yep, I used to pick up the free games, then realized I’d never play any of them because I expressly do not want to deal with the EGS launcher.
It sucks, because it really is better for the devs, but steam is just so much better
not in the long term it’s not
it really is better for the devs
This is said a lot but… Is it really? And if so why should I, the customer, care?
I can’t think of any other good or service in my life that I would go out of my way to buy from an alternative store so that the manufacturer makes more money. I don’t choose between Aldi and Whole Foods based on whether the manufacturer of my chicken bullion cubes makes more margin with one or the other. It’s just fuckin weird.
Dude I have purchased Elite 4 times now, 1 for me and 3 for my mates
I wish they would do SOMETHING with the game to make it more accessible, all my friends gave up after realising how much grinding they had to do
That game is a ruined orgasm. So much build up and anticipation for fucking nothing.
Once you trick out an Anaconda you “beat the game”.
My biggest complaint about E:D is that star citizen’s flight mechanics and ship design ruined the game for me. Star Citizen has a wider variety of ship designs than E:D. Additionally, the ships I’ve tried in SC are incredibly responsive, to the point where even the nimblest E:D ship feels like a whale. However, that’s about all I can say for star citizen. I mean, it’s getting there, slowly but I swear to god the world is going to end before they finish the fucking game.
Meanwhile, E:D is very much a complete game in a massive galaxy. Sure, it may not have as much detail as CIG is trying to put into star citizen, sure it may not have the complexity of star citizen, but that doesn’t matter if you can’t finish your game. However, E:D’s ships suck.
Can we take star citizen’s good half and E:D’s good half and make one complete game please?
Which is kind of weird since Elite has its own stand alone launcher, right?
All my stuff on Epic I just install and either run direct on the PC or add to steam as a non-steam game on my deck.
If you still happen to have one handy I’d love a copy! Missed this one and finally getting a card that will let me play it
DM me and we can set up a Discord chat
Same with GTA when it was free. Only got one person to use one of the many and they only used it like twice.
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.
It doesn’t work on Linux at all
It never worked in the first place. It’s so slow that disabling brought seconds back to my boot times.
Oh Linux. My bad carry on.
I can’t figure out how to stop EGS from pushing notifications that don’t go away without clicking on them in Windows.
And occasionally it will just push a quasi-notification through just the app to make it start flashing on the taskbar and forcing itself over other open apps. Nothing even is happening it just desperately wants to be on top.
An absolute garbage fire of a game launcher, barely worth the free games it gives. (and seeing as I don’t play them I guess fully not worth)
I personally am not willing to support their exclusivity stuff.
Their checkout still doesn’t have a cart, it takes forever to load, the UI is terribly clunky, the library sorting is terrible (how do you fuck this up), it’s resource heavy, and I’d be willing to overlook all that oof they had an in game overlay with web browser.
Aside from the terrible experience, they have profit seeking investors, one of which is Tencent. We all have seen were it goes when profits are priority over consumers.
Not a hate boner. Just genuine dislike of the platform as it stands right now.
They do in fact have a cart I fucking used it last week to add two free games and check em out at the same time.
Nice. I’ll have to take a look next time I’m on there. I didn’t see anything that showed it was available last time.
Good on them.
When did you last use it to pay for a game? Just curious, I find most people are more tolerant of issues with something they didn’t have to pay for.
I bought Tetris Effect on it back when that game seemed to take every single exclusive offer before finally landing on steam (PS4, then Epic then Gamepass/Xbox THEN Steam) man that’s annoying. Prior I picked up Rebel Galaxy Outlaw on the cheap cheap thanks to a coupon but later got a Steam copy through a bundle.
I don’t remember when they added the cart but it’s there. I can see it right now. It works. At least when adding 2 free games at once.
I mean that’s seems like a decent deal for developers but I’m not buying it until it goes Steam and GoG.
I don’t think I’ve spent any money on the Epic Launcher yet but I’m happy to see them try their best. Competition is good and needed.
They’ve mostly tried their best to make as much money as possible, not actually compete as a service, though, unfortunately.
The problem with Epics approach is theyre doing competition for devs, not compition for consumers.
Compition for content usually comes at the cost of consumer convenience or benefit (e.g the multitude of streaming platforms for movies and videos)
Exactly. This isn’t encouraging competition; It’s encouraging exclusivity. The two are diametrically opposed. If you’re competing over exclusives, you’re not really competing to make the best platform possible. It’s a race to the bottom, because Epic has consistently proven that they don’t care about the consumer experience. Their launcher is hot garbage, and they seemingly have no plans on improving it. Meanwhile, Steam has a best-in-class launcher and has been making improvements every single week.
If Epic focused on improving the usability and the feature set, I think they’d find gamers much more willing to give it a try. But when every single experience with a platform is bad, gamers are going to dig their heels in and refuse to use it out of spite.
Competition for dev’s is fine, its the exclusivity deals that show them to be evil.
Offer devs a better cut of the profits, devs can sell the game for less on Epic and make the same money as steam… a real price war to reduce fees. The devs and customers would naturally follow.
But Epic has demonstrated they want to take advantage of their “customers”… so many reasonable people are like… Steam is the devil we know, a chill devil we can get a beer with, and eat some hot dogs on the weeknds with, The Lowbowski of devils… were good.
Not inplying compition between devs is bad, its just if you go for devs and little for the consumer, it would make sense at a consumer standpoint, that’s not competition.
The mistake a lot of Pro Epic defenders make is equivalating that all forms of competition is equally great for everyone, when it isn’t.
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.
I wish more companies were like Valve. They are following that old style of making a great product and/or providing a great service to make consumers happy to spend their money there. The only mixed feelings I have about spending money on steam is “do I really need more games when there’s a ton in my library that I still haven’t even installed let alone played?”
I hope they stay private and that Gabe has or finds an heir that follows his mindset rather than decides to go for a quick payout.
Even when those other companies embrace shitty business practices to make more money and it works for them, they are just setting the stage for a better company to come along and replace them.
Not to mention valve making a device that proliferates Linux game support more than anything else… ever.
Dude, we are so fucking boned if Gaben ever retires/dies/does not become GLaDOS. Valve is one of the only companies I can think of that hasn’t squandered goodwill completely and generally maintains a tight ship (aside from maybe Costco).
Can guarantee some random, unkempt, 38 year old asshole from the pharmaceutical industry will make Steam subscription only, throw it on the stock market, and have it tank due to some hedge fund mindset within 5 years if they hire a new CEO.
They’ve done everything to encourage game developers, expecting consumers to follow. But none of this entices me to leave steam. I, like many, will gladly wait.
Monopolies are the best for the consumers, we all know that 👌
