Sure isn’t profitable from me, I haven’t bought shit from them.
That’s one interesting thing about this: They trained the players so hard to associate their store with the free weekly giveaways and only the free weekly giveaways, that’s all everyone uses the client for now, and never mentally considers it to be usable for anything else.
The effect is pervasive, too. Games factually have not released if they’re epic-exclusive. They’re not discoverable on PC, as nobody would ever imagine checking the Epic catalogue for a game they’re looking for. That’s not what you open Epic for, it’s those 1-2 free weekly games and nothing else.
In their bid to vie for developers not consumers they went so far too far that they have managed to alienate the concept of “selling games to players” in the consumers’ minds, therefor making their store automatically unable to compete at its main intent.
Mind you, there are far more problems with it. Among which is that despite having so little in there, discoverability and navigation are downright terrible! It’s an interesting lesson for frontend/UI design I imagine.
This. I visit the site every week to claim the free games. If a game is epic exclusive, I consider it not released yet.
Protip: isthereanydeal.com has an RSS feed which will also alert you to other givaways.
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This is a good point. Everyone harps on Epic’s exclusivity, but there are a huge amount of games that only exist on Steam. Most of these never go on other platforms, and many that do, do so only years later.
When put like this, it sounds a lot like Steam and Epic are similar. Of course the difference is that, as far as we know, Valve doesn’t pay for this exclusivity - except indirectly by visibility.
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Won’t even take their free ‘gifts’, worse than Origin when it comes to spyware and data collecting. I can’t understand anyone who willingly puts EGS on their device but complains about advertisers on other platforms collecting info about them.
Yeah let’s not forget this is the client that went through your Steam-installed files on your drive to see what it could offer you.
Because ads are something I dont want to see in general. EGS is something I knowingly use and want on my pc to play games. The choice is what makes it different.
Probably people who understand how to make their computer do what they want it to? You control who your software talks to.
Well, at least at the application level.
I got Death Stranding…
…It was free. The Epic client runs under Bottles in its own isolated sandbox, so it can’t spy on me.
If it’s free it’s for me, if you have to pay no way.
Oh what a suprise. Maybe… Just maybe…spend some bucks on developing the store to be viable(!) competition to steam. And not just a ghastly shit-shop, where people only exist because of the freebies and partially because of the exclusives (i pirate the exclusives. Fuck exclusives).
Even GOG galaxy is a better client/store and they don’t have the same budget.
Epic sucks sweaty, hairy monkeyballs. And i would welcome competition for the apex.
Did they get a shopping cart yet? I remember not being able to buy multiple games at once, but I just gave up on that store so no idea how it is now
They do now, yeah
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I do through playnite. Using their own launcher for anything else than playing a game is horrible
I get the free games via the site but I dont use windows so I’ve never even tried to play them. I’d rather support valve who have really went all in on Linux gaming.
I know it is possible to get some of epic ones working via lutris but I’m not that bothered to be honest.
Using dishonest tactics to claw away market share won’t work with gamers. Steam got to where it is by good will, good prices and good features.
Steam got to where it is by good will, good prices and good features.
Well, eventually.
When Steam was first released, the running joke was “steaming pile of shit”. It was slow, unreliable and only a couple of shades of green away from the worst color in the world. People complained about the birth of “always online” games and about paying full price but not even getting a box with it.
It’s not exactly unassailable now either. It’s my platform of choice as a user but for indie developers, the 30% cut is brutal and last I used it, the Steamworks SDK was pretty rough. The app itself also has a lot of legacy bloat like a built in MP3 player.
It’s ahead of the rest but I think “good will, good prices and good features” might be an overly romantic take on “it’s where all my games already are”.
I still remember being annoyed I suddenly needed to get a separate app just to continue playing counter strike.
Ah yeah, I was a bit of a hold out going to 1.6, but eventually all the servers started disappearing. That was like ~8 years ago… right?
Na homie that was almost 10 years ago.
the 30% cut is brutal
This part always confuses me. When Steam started allowing non-Valve games on their storefront, 30% was considered a bargain compared to selling your games at retail. In fact, PC versions of games were often $10 cheaper than their console counterparts specifically because distribution and platform fees were lower. It wasn’t until MW2 came out that PC prices started reflecting console prices.
It’s confusing to you that manufacturing, shipping, and selling physical copies of a game was more expensive than digital distribution? The world is very different today. Digital distribution is the norm and everybody knows you don’t need 30% to make it sustainable.
It’s confusing to you that manufacturing, shipping, and selling physical copies of a game was more expensive than digital distribution?
That is not what is confusing to me.
Digital distribution is the norm and everybody knows you don’t need 30% to make it sustainable.
I’m not sure I buy this. Epic’s 12% is the bare minimum just to cover basic infrastructure costs for distributing modern AAA games. It doesn’t even include transaction fees, which vary based on which payment method the user selects (whereas Steam and other storefronts eat these as part of their 30% cut).
Simply sustaining your existing platform is also not enough. Where Epic runs a barebones storefront and client with little in the way of useful features beyond “download game and keep it updated”, storefronts like GOG and Steam take their actual profit and re-invest it in improving their platform for everyone. Think of all the time and money that goes into making things like Steam Input, Proton, or even GOG themselves fixing up older games for modern PCs.
The fact that it has been 5 years and Epic still hasn’t been able to make their 12% cut break even speaks volumes.
Epic’s 12% doesn’t do much because they’re constantly burning money trying to find more revenue. It’s obvious they’re not doing anything efficiently. They also have far fewer sales than Steam which further hurts their bottom line.
The standard internet payment processors take 3% as their cut.
With modern cloud systems we can quickly distribute files globally for tiny amounts of money.
The truth is that Valve makes a ton of money off of this fee. It’s great that they contribute to open source projects but plenty of companies make similar contributions with a fraction of the resources.
“it’s where all my games already are.”
My pet theory is this was realized by epic and so the only reason they give games away is to “help” users build a library they won’t want to “leave behind” for another store platform. Once they reach the market share they were aiming for I fully expect the practice to stop.
Moreover, just like that guy, Epic thinks that’s the only thing that matters, or at least the biggest issue. The idea that gamers might not use them because their service is actually just worse seems to have never crossed their minds in any serious fashion.
That is their exact strategy…
Valve is constantly looking for ways to help the customer, just in their own weird ass way. Having linux as a competitive option to windows and being able to refund/return digital games, as well as a built in mod searcher and loader being some of the things they brought to the platform because Valve employees themselves are gamers and want their platform to be useful towards gamers needs
I think they do hell the consumer. And agree it’s weird. But would argue against that being their goal with the caveat that what I’m about to say makes no real difference to anything.
I think they’re looking to increase profits first and foremost. However, because they’re not answerable to shareholders, they understand that the best way to do this is by building loyalty and ensuring “stickiness” loyalty. ¹
It’s still about money. They just understand that the safest way to make it is by having a long term view and not burning people.
I think its both tbh. Money is certainly a factor, we live in a Capatalist society, the more money you have, the more you can do and influence, so even companies with the best of intentions will focus on profits. But with the shit Valve does, like the Steam Deck being a Linux machine (and thus open source), and working through the legal hassle of designing and making developers agree to digital item returns/refunds, I’m thoroughly convinced Valve generally does just want to make the gaming scene better as well because the employees themselves are also gamers
I think they just understand whatost executibes are too greedy / shit sighted / stupid to understand. Doing what’s right for consumers drives revenue. It can be good for the consumer and motivated by profit. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Refunding/returning digital games is an outcome of a lawsuit if I remember correctly
the 30% cut is brutal
Reportedly Epic’s 12% barely covers costs and would not if they included transaction fees. 20% seems to be the bare minimum if you want a store to actually have good service, and then I’m giving Valve additional credit for sinking boatloads of money into general infrastructure, in the long term Proton alone is worth those 10%. Much unlike the rest of the stores (exception GOG) which take the same 30% and are run by humongous multinationals.
…and then there’s itch.io. If you’re a small and scrappy indie very much an option: They’re also small and scrappy. And they’ll probably shout at you if you try to upload a 20G game I very much doubt their servers would survive an AAA launch. OTOH, reportedly their average revenue split is 8% (customers can choose).
The difference is that Steam sells a ton of copies every single day. The vast majority of Valve’s fortune has come from that fee. People jump to defend Steam but it’s already been established by lawsuits against other major corporations that a 30% cut is mostly driven by greed.
Yes, there’s bloat from old features, but there’s also quality tools built into Steam, such as Steam Input and Proton.
Well, eventually.
When Steam was first released, the running joke was
Has anything ever worked perfectly when first released?
If that was true, EA would have been dead in the water 12 years ago.
Didn’t EA shut down Origin or at least make it optional?
Remember Valve is the company and Steam is the storefront/launcher.
Epic is the company, EGS is the storefront/launcher.
EA is the company, Origin is (was?) the storefront/launcher.
Didn’t EA shut down Origin or at least make it optional?
Technically no. EA now just calls it “The EA App”
If Mass Effect Legendary Edition actually included ME3’s multiplayer I might’ve considered installing Origin again.
Nope. Star Wars Squadrons (which I got from Epic, BTW) required me to download and install Origin first. I’d be salty as fuck about that if all parties involved hadn’t already guaranteed that it was a game that I was never going to pay for anyway.
Yeah, making it a requirement for playing your physical copy of Half-Life definitely looks like good will to me.
And in turn diminished the industry’s piracy problm for many years, making PC Games market a stable ecosystem instead of letting all of PC gaming die.
No? Cracks were created for that too
Yes? How can you possibly deny that? Steam was able to claw a market in russia, a country famous for piracy. Gaben was right, convenience with good prices trumps everything.
Sure, cracks still exist, but I’ve stopped downloading them in favour of buying off Steam because the user experience was a lot better. I’m sure I can’t be the only one to do this.
Before Steam existed i would even crack games I had legitimate copies of solely because pre-Steam DRM was such an enormous pain in the ass to deal with.
Even today Denuvo is a veritable paradise compared to what DRM used to be like.
On one hand, thanks to the nonstop giveaways, I have way more games on Epic than I do on Steam, so I have a reason to continue using Epic.
On the other hand, Epic’s launcher runs like shit, constantly refreshes my library page, slow as hell, glitchy as hell, and makes me feel dirty when I use it.
Steam is just so cozy and is on the whole a much more enjoyable PC gaming experience. I imagine 95% of Epic users are people like me: sign in on Thursdays for the free game and then bounce.
Have you tried Heroic Games Launcher?
they have no excuse for it to be slow as shit
thanks to the nonstop giveaways, I have way more games on Epic than I do on Steam
I still have more games on Steam, however, Itch.io has had a couple of insane bundles in the last couple of years, which mean I have way more games and content on Itch than on Steam, which I did not see coming. I still use Steam the most, though, because I’m used to their interface and it works really well on Linux.
Valve has not optimized big library, so me with 4k games and good computer but Steam performs like PoS.
I talked to their support about the library force refresh and it’s apparently intended. That library refresh is literally the only reason the EGS isn’t open all the time like Steam is. Random data usage is bad, and can fuck off. I do not need random lag spikes.
Shocking literally no one, the game store that took a shot at the king with store that (initially) didn’t have baseline stuff like reviews and a cart, and tried to get by on giving away product and paying a bunch of money to make stuff exclusive isn’t doing so hot financially.
Maybe just uh…
Put your games on steam?
Steam won’t let Tencent put their spyware on the platform.
Valve happily censor their client and games for the Chinese audience.
Nope, they have the moral high ground, like pioneering and perfecting how to market gambling and loot boxes to kids through video games.
Or do we only hate that when EA does it?
I was up for a Steam competitor. I signed up for the Epic store a few years back. Tried to get the first free game. It wasn’t available in my region despite being plastered all over the store in my region. The exact same thing happened the next month. Both of those games were available on Steam in my region at some pretty low prices by then.
Then, Epic started paying for exclusivity, making games not available in my region at all. I had at least deleted their stupid app by then anyway. Fuck Epic entirely.
Used to have similar problem with Steam back in the day.
Edit: I like how some people disagree that i experienced something by downvote. It’s not like i can change it or something 😅 👌
I don’t doubt it, but I’ve been a pretty regular user since 2009, and I’ve never had a game advertised to me on the front page that wasn’t available in my region. In fact, there are games I want that I know aren’t available on Steam here, and the only way to get to the Steam page for them is by using a proxy or VPN. I definitely can’t buy them with my account. It seems pretty amateurish of Epic to advertise unavailable games and to even let me click “buy” before telling me I can’t buy it. Maybe they’ve fixed that by now, but whatever. The paid exclusivity bullcrap showed me where their priorities lie.
There are mistakes being done unintentionally when you develop complex software.
Take my example, Humble showed me Bandai Namco game that I could not even get in a bundle. So out of 10 games, I received 9, while other regions receive 10.
That is even worse than Epic’s (probably honest) mistake.
Humble isn’t trying to compete with Steam or Epic, and they don’t engage in the anti-consumer practice of paying off developers for exclusive access to games.
I’m aware of the complexities of software development. If Epic seriously wanted to compete with Steam, they really should have tried harder to provide a better service instead of trying to buy loyalty through free games and exclusivity contracts.
It’s not amaterish anymore than GOG or Steam giving out free games back in the day. Even before it used to be magazines with free games on CDs. I still have these games in my libraries. It’s widely used strategy by bigger business to start new departments or even child companies. It’s why they say money makes money.
It’s amateurish that their store advertised games to me that were unavailable to me. I’m no code whiz, but it can’t be that hard to chuck in an if (region == false) then !advertise; Valve and GOG don’t seem to have any problems with that.
I have no issue with them giving away free games. Too bad that and the paid exclusives don’t earn them a loyal customer base. Maybe if they’d put more effort into their store. Like maybe not advertising region locked games to regions where they’re not available.
That part i agree. It’s not that unrealistic with their budget .
See it’s not all negative news on the internet.
My launcher shows that I have 379 games from Epic. Not DLC, not demos. Full games.
I have never given Epic a single cent and I never will. (That is to say, until they offer me something that makes me want to use their platform). They have no killer features - AT ALL.
To make it worse, I have all these games, but I still rarely play them. Not that it’s a bad selection, but between steamdeck, gamepass and just a crazy backlog on Steam makes me rarely think of Epic store.
Well that’s at the crux of it, indeed. Steam has these killer features that enable and empower me as a gamer.
Then there’s Epic that still doesn’t have controller support.
LoL. Yeah I’ve got a ton and I’ve never actually launched a single one
I spent about $600 with epic. All of that was on fortnite skins. None of it on games.
Just wow
Hey man, it provided value to my life… its a fun game, i play it quite a bit. Plus half of that was for my kid, he would ask for vbucks every birthday and Christmas for years.
The “killer feature” is that they pay more to the developers, so if you are getting the exact same game on (e.g.) Steam versus Epic Games, then whomever actually made the game gets more money from the Epic sale. Isn’t that a good thing?
(Note that I may be conflating the publisher with the developer, but either way, it’s still the case that less money is taken by intermediaries, which is a good thing.)
That’s a reason for developers to use them, not for consumers to use them.
EPICs anti-customer practices (such as trying to make everything exclusive) are reasons for consumers not to use them.
There are tens of thousands of Steam-exclusive games: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_exclusive_to_Steam
What is the alternative to Steam?
And are those because Steam is trying to pressure them into being exclusive on Steam? Or did they just not bother releasing anywhere else?
If a developer just wants to release on Epic and nowhere else they can do that. My issue comes from Epic approaching games that have already announced a Steam release asking for exclusivity, and having no interest in hosting the game if they don’t accept the exclusivity offer.
There are almost 40,000 entries, I obviously cannot answer for all of them.
Still waiting for you to answer my question.
Well you sound like someone trying to have a good faith discussion and attempting to continue would be a good use of my time.
What is the alternative to Steam?
However because of their 40% ownership, you’re ALSO giving more money to Tencent.
Wait tencent has ownership of epic games?
Yikes. Good point.
No, because epic has been engaging in anti consumer practices from the start. This is literally the only category epic has a leg up on steam, and if they didn’t need to bully their way into the marketplace, I have no reason to believe they’d treat creators any better than they currently do customers
edit: The revelation that they are running the store at a loss just furthers me not believing they are helping developers from the goodness of their heart, it shows they’re likely running the Walmart strategy of using their vast wealth to choke out their competition until there is none, and then once they have a monopoly, jack everything up, which’d probably include their cut of the pie
Note that I may be conflating the publisher with the developer
You think?
Yes, I do, or else I wouldn’t have mentioned it. I’d prefer the publisher gets money over a middleman store. Isn’t that preferable?
Its a phrase that signals something else, and not a literal content reply.
How about you write what you mean and have quality conversation in the future?
How about you write what you mean
I did. Its a standard phrase used by people in conversation. See defintion #2 below.
Below definition is from here …
you think
- A question one uses at the end of a sentence to express uncertainty. We’re not going to get into trouble—you think?
- A sarcastic rhetorical question used as a retort when someone states the obvious. A: “Wow, I bet that fire is really hot.” B: “You think?”
and have quality conversation in the future?
Quality is in the eye of the beholder, apparently. /shrug
I did.
If you did, then I answered the genuine question you asked.
EGS losing money has been great for gamers, as they continue to give away free games in an attempt to claw any marketshare. Gamers continue to win as long as this situation lasts. But reading these comments, nobody seems to recognize this.
Gamers lose when the store shuts down and you lose access to all of the games you got for free, or worse actually paid for.
Many of the games are DRM-free, as evidenced on PCGamingWiki.
I actually didn’t know this. Fuckin eh!
Yeah but Unreal Tournament goes back on the shelf
ESG losing money is great for me just on principle, Tim Sweeney can go fuck himself.
Tencent is a despicable company
Consumers also won when a Walmart would open up in their neighborhood and run the local stores out of business by selling everything at a loss.
Of course, once the competition was eliminated, Walmart stopped selling things at a loss.
Epic Games launcher/store is nothing more than Tencent spyware using “free games” as bait and masquerading as a Steam competitor.
I have no idea why this is newsworthy. Epic’s own 2019 documents and testimony in the Apple trial showed that the company did not expect the store to be profitable until 2024 or even 2027. The strategy of heavy investment and operating at a loss to turn a profit later worked for Spotify, Netflix, Microsoft, and many others. Even this week, there are headlines like “Elon Musk Says SpaceX’s Starlink Achieves Breakeven Cash Flow”.
Spotify has never turned a profit, at least not yearly.
That could be true, making it an even stronger argument.
But all the other companies had in mind something else besides “gotta beat the other guys” and actually brought something to the table.
You can’t deny that Epic taking 12% revolutionized the industry, with Microsoft following suit and even Valve making some small changes. As Gabe himself said on the competition, “it keeps [them] honest”. That’s a win for game creators.
For the gamers, we got many free games and I think the Epic freebies inspired Microsoft to offer similar deals with Game Pass, Amazon with Prime, and even GOG recently gave away a pretty notable game, Blacksad, which was uncharacteristic in relation to their past giveaways.
Pretty sure all those were offering games with their subscriptions long before Epic store was a thing.
But, on the other hand, every other thing they did outweighs the rest - exclusivity, shitty launcher, and spyware.
I am also not sure if any game given away by Amazon Prime really interested me at all.
I have a crazy idea for Epic. Instead of paying a fortune for exclusives, leverage the lower 12% cut and have game publishers sell for less (so that the publisher makes the same amount on Steam and Epic)
And GOG. They used to have several games up there, and then delisted them.
Publishers sets their own prices though.
So why can’t they sell their game for $56 on Epic and $70 on Steam? They’d make about the same money per sale on each?
Are you seriously asking why a company in a capitalist economy would keep more money for themselves?
Most likely reason, contracts.
Example Nike sales shoes directly at the same price as footlocker. Why dont they under cut footlocker? They have a contracts that says they won’t under cut footlocker
There could br an issue like that but well you can make new contracts
But price disparities already exist in other places sometimes. Like YT premium using the App store (due to the 30% cut) and everywhere else.
it depends on what the contracts say
Valve prohibit that, according to the lawsuit filed by Wolfire Games.
There’s no way that can be legal. I generally support Valve but that is monopolistic as hell.
That only applies to the steam keys valve supplies to developers that have a 0% cut. Also doing regional pricing would be a massive headache if that were true due to different stores having different recommended price conversions.
The claim specifically mentions Epic and quotes a Valve employee who made statements to the effect of it being prohibited, irrespective of whether a Steam key is involved. Read from page 47 and pay attention to the last paragraphs of page 55.
What do you mean by this?
doing regional pricing would be a massive headache if that were true
Aren’t games regionally priced like forever ? I’ve buying key’s in GB because they are cheaper. Also Doesn’t steam lock you out of your games if you bought US version and travel to the other side of the world? I just vaguely remember people complaining about it.
No and no.
The time lock lasts 3 months, not forever.
I’m pretty much sure that they had 60$ = 60€ kind of regional prices.
If the developer chooses to do so themselves then it’s likely ok, but forcing the developer to do so likely violates some sort of law.
I imagine that when Epic instituted it’s lower percentage they hoped that developers would sell exclusively on their platform for higher profits. Instead the developers decided to sell on both platforms and just make a larger percentage on the Epic sales. From the developer perspective it would have been wise in the long run to lower prices so that Epic could grow, but that hurts their short term profits and also stymied Epic’s potential.
If Epic’s store grew to truly rival Steam more developers might have jumped ship, but to do so prematurely would be losing a large portion of the potential customers.
Ultimately Epic had to develop a full Steam clone quickly while all Steam had to do was not suck for the end user.
Why would the developer sell at a loss to help Epic out? What’s in it for the developer?
Well it shouldn’t be at a loss. As the person I responded to pointed out, Epic had a lower fee than Steam so the developer can sell on Epic for less than they would on Steam and make the same amount of money.
Doing so wouldn’t be at a loss, but it wouldn’t make as much profit as possible.
If the developers did choose to sell on Epic for less than it would bolster the Epic store and potentially lead to more people moving to Epic.
If Steam’s fee is 30% and Epic’s is 15% the developer could sell on Steam for $70 and make $49 and they could sell on Epic for $60 to make $51. That’s a 4% increase in profits.
If the Epic store takes off and a large enough user base switches they could maybe increase the Epic price to $62.5 which would result in an additional 4% increase in profits.
Epic’s deal is that they’re offering a lower rate, but the developers aren’t sharing the benefits of that to help Epic grow. If they did the long term profits would likely exceed the short term.
Again, why would the developer care about making Epic grow? It’s the store’s responsibility to offer good service, you don’t see Nintendo trying to help out Target or anything like that now do ya?
hing like that now do ya?
I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or if you really don’t understand. If you don’t understand I’d be happy to elaborate.
Epic paid $146 to make borderlands exclusive to epic. The game kind of flopped.
Completely untrue. It was a major success and brought record numbers of new customers to the store, which is the main metric pursued by Epic.
I might actually buy a game of the app didn’t constantly sign me out.
I know, right! The “Remember Me” option does absolutely nothing ffs
Would you though
I’ve already purchased a few, tbh
