Epic Set To Lose at Least $330 Million in Efforts To Compete With Steam (gamesindustry.biz) 114
Epic Games may lose millions after struggling to recuperate costs from the Epic Games Store, following its fight to gain market share from Steam. From a report: The Fortnite giant spent around $444 million in 2020 on making the storefront more lucrative to PC gamers, mainly through giving away titles for free and exclusivity deals. The company dug deep to offer "minimum guarantees" to developers releasing games exclusive to the Epic Games Store. Under this arrangement, titles must remain exclusive to the PC storefront for one year, even if they're released on console platforms. This means that the developer will receive a guaranteed advance from Epic whether or not their game sells enough to recoup the number. As an example, the company spent over $10 million securing PC exclusivity for Remedy's Control in 2019. A report by IGN that shows players spent $700 million on the Epic Store in 2020, but only $265 million of that was spent on third-party games exclusive to it. According to predictions made by Apple, the Epic Store will not see any profitability until 2027 if it continues to operate this way. Apple also projects that the store could lose around $600 million by the end of the year. While Apple claims that the figure is a loss, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney confirmed on Twitter that he considers it a "fantastic investment into growing the business."
A Good platform (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A Good platform (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about this specific scenario, but in any scenario where you have an incumbent player that is as deeply entrenched as Steam is, momentum enough is a huge hurdle that may keep an unambiguously 'better' platform in the rear view mirror.
Re:A Good platform (Score:4, Informative)
They literally try to buy customers with free shit (carrot) while buying exclusivity contracts for highly anticipated releases to try to force people to them (stick). It's pretty fucking odious and pathetic. I will never have an Epic account. Fuck them.
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The exclusivity was what turned me off. Too much like the console wars that hurt gaming overall.
Re: A Good platform (Score:2)
I started using the epic store after they gave away a lot of free titles. It's pretty decent. Played civ6 for free, currently playing through the Metro 2033 series, also for free.
Exclusivity for app stores isn't comparable to console exclusivity to me. Console exclusivity requires you to go out and buy new hardware at great expense when you already have perfectly adequate hardware. Store exclusivity only requires another account, which password managers already make really simple to deal with.
The only store
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That's completely missing the point. What if software you purchase on one store, is available on another store, for a completely different price? What if it's also on PS4, Stadia, Xbox, etc.
Wouldn't it suck to have to buy the first game on PC, only to have the first game on Steam, but the second and third game on EGS, and the fourth game on PS5? At least I can go back and play steam games without having to do anything. PS1/2/3/4/5 if I didn't buy the physical disc and kept the console around, I can't go bac
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Yeah I have exactly that scenario - one of my Metro games is on steam, the other two are on epic. I run all of them from GoG -- it combines steam, epic, uplay, and origin into one library. GoG came with the witcher special edition director's cut for free, and I bought the refreshed diablo 1 on GoG, so it has those as well.
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Oh and for a completely different price, that's easy, just pick the one with the lowest price :)
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This.
Exactly why I gave up entirely on consoles and went with PC in the first place.
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What would I consider good competitive practices? Take a smaller cut from developers, offering the games cheaper than in Steam.
Re: A Good platform (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not like they attitude, but what I dislike the most about them is that instead of trying to support Linux, they make efforts to obstruct Linux gaming. I'll stick to Steam and others such as GoG and the Humble Store until this changes.
Re: A Good platform (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, Steam needs competitors to keep it in line. No "customer first" policy survives the process of becoming a monopoly.
On the other hand, Epic kind of sucks. So I am happy that Epic spent a fortune to help keep Steam in line, but I am not going to support them buy buying from their store because so far, Steam is still the better option (especially since I play my games on a Linux machine).
As an aside, I have read many posts on Steam forums from Windows gamers hating on Linux gamers. Their reasoning seemed to be that every time a developer chose to invest development effort into supporting Linux, they could have instead spent that effort adding more features to the game for Windows, so the Linux community just cheated them out of features.
I find that attitude to be a bit entitled, though they would counter that expecting games to run on Linux is entitled as well. In my case, I don't run Linux FOR gaming, I run Linux for Linux, and then would also like games on it if they are available. Which they are. Thanks to Steam. And no thanks to Epic.
So Steam still wins. For now.
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On the one hand, Steam needs competitors to keep it in line. No "customer first" policy survives the process of becoming a monopoly.
Steam has competitors. You like many people believe that Epic, a store with a tiny fraction of the games of Steam's other competition such as Gog is somehow being a serious competitor while at the same time only gaining its position by literally forcing a more horrible product down the throats of a consumer.
Steam has zero 3rd party exclusivity contracts. Several other stores exist. Some publishers (e.g. Ubisoft) even run their own stores in parallel. Other stores (e.g. Gog) offer games at discount independe
Re: A Good platform (Score:5, Insightful)
Agree, Epic have stated they have no intention to support Linux.I'm not a fan of Valve but at least they try to support Linux and new tech like VR.
Also Tencent own a large chunk of Epic now. I don't want to support any Chinese companies whilst China continue to torture, disappear, sterilise and intern Uyghers.
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If that were then end of it that would be fine. But Epic has also bought popular game franchises and developers to force them towards their own store (literally buying customers). If you start Rocket League on Steam now you need to run the Epic launcher. Rocket League worked perfectly on Linux before Epic came along. Worked. Past Tense.
Re: A Good platform (Score:2)
Valve really only supports a single 3-year-old version of one distro of Linux. Anything besides Ubuntu 18.04 is pretty much on your own.
Add in all the half-finished crap and Steam hae become a cesspool for Linux users.
Re: A Good platform (Score:3)
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The $700m is what gamers spent on Epic. Much of that is Fortnite related spending.
The amount Epic spent on their store is substantially less than that. Even the $444m they've spent promoting it has had to pay for a lot of exclusive games and a lot of 'free' games to try and attract customers. That's not investment in the store, it's investment in the store's customer base.
I decided not to get bought, and have been enjoying new releases on Steam and via other stores without even realising they were out a yea
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Re: A Good platform (Score:1)
GOG. GOG exists.
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GOG has brand new games too. It's where I got Outer Worlds, which was an Epic exclusive for one year. Many times when I see a new game on Steam it is also on GOG. Where it is Steam only, then most of the time it's junk I don't want anyway (shooters, assassin's greed, etc). Modern gaming is turning into junk anyway.
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Historically that was true, but now GOG is not concentrating on "good old games" at all anymore.
In fact, at this point they're probably adding more new-ish games to their service than old-ish games, simply because the old-ish games either are already being sold there or have been abandoned by the publishers/developers or are stuck in licensing hell. (And sometimes GOG can convince them to un-abandon them or work out the licensing issues, and they definitely have worked out technical issues with old games o
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GOG as a subsidary of CDRP of course also features all their games, and CDPR is kind of Bioware but without the American puritan standards. Hence they just cut the middlemen that mod the porn into their games and just do it themselves.
But they do not have those adult only games where porn IS the game as far as I can see.
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Yes, I mean the literal porn games -- "ESRB Mature" is fine with GOG, and they even have at least one "ESRB Adults Only" game [gog.com], but they don't seem to do the literal porn games that Steam has started doing.
That said, some (well, a few) of the literal porn games do seem to have actual gameplay and production values and aren't "just porn".
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Because the parent assertion wasn't limited to Steam v. Epic, it was any company v. any other company.
E.g. one could have said Amazon was obviously worse than Wal-Mart, because Amazon operated at a loss, by the parent assertion that the only reason to operate at a loss is because your product is worse.
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Sure, competing against the incumbent powerhouse in any industry is an uphill battle that the established player can sometimes win by doing nothing against a smaller competitor who has a better offering. But what we have here is a slightly smaller competitor trying to unseat a market leader that people actually generally like while giving us a lesser service.
The one thing they have going for them is their better compensation for game developers for sales through their platform. But to an end user that's i
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that may keep an unambiguously 'better' platform in the rear view mirror.
I mean it may. We'll never know because the Epic Games store is a steaming resource intensive featureless turd compared to Steam, hell even compared to other steaming turds like Uplay.
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Epic reminds me of that High school kid, who became the High School football star (in their small local town) who put all his eggs into being a professional football player, only to realize when he got to college, that he was just just middle of the road for college at best, where he would either quit school, or live in his own past success and end up like Al Bundy.
Al Bundy (Score:1)
It's wasn't lack of ability that grounded Bundy, but getting Peggy Wanker pregnant.
Re: A Good platform (Score:2)
More like the guy that asks for a quote for repairs then screams he is being cheated. He declares he can do it cheaper but will end up screwing something that costs him way more than the original quote.
I know a guy like this. Asked for a plumbing repair and was quoted $150 to replace a valve. He said this was too much and fought with his wife that he could do it (despite him being somewhat of an idiot when it came to any home repair work). In replacing the valve he forgot/missed reinstalling the compression
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More like the guy that asks for a quote for repairs then screams he is being cheated. He declares he can do it cheaper but will end up screwing something that costs him way more than the original quote.
... And then complain when the company won't do the repair for the original quoted price.
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First movers have advantage and only a ton of money can overcome it.
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I'd say: 'A good platform shouldn't have used extorsion to set itself up.'
"Oh you want to buy Half-Life 2? Well..
First, you cannot buy it on your PC,
and second, you can only play it from this on-line software renting platform.
You don't like this? You have no other choice, come here and bend over."
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What world do you live in? In the world I live in, VCs keep pouring millions^W billions into money-losing businesses to try to reap those sweet sweet monopoly profits on the other side. (AFAIK, this is why Uber is cheaper than taxis.) And luxury prices for superior software, especially in the consumer market, are not a thing and haven't been since adware started giving away 80% as good apps.
If you told me that som
Losing or investing? (Score:2)
When you spend a few billion to buy a company it's investing. But when you spend a few million in buying customers it's losing.
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It is funny because it is true!
Take Microsoft for example...
In 2001 analysts predicted [irishtimes.com] that MS would "invest" $2 Billion into the Xbox program before it would break even. Back in 2013 MS was losing [destructoid.com] $2 billion/year. In 2018 they made [venturebeat.com] $2.25 Billion in a quarter. This year (2021) MS mentioned they had +40% change in Xbox content and services" [microsoft.com]
I even see that even their LinkedIn has a +23% change. I guess they are trying to recoup that $26.2 billion [microsoft.com] purchase to buy LinkedIn.
Re:Losing or investing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking of shitty game stores, MS has managed to build one of the worst.
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Epic: We have the worst gaming store
MS: Hold my beer.
Re:Losing or investing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on the strategy. If your goal is to buy consumers for a long term win then that could be considered an investment, e.g. MS's strategy into the Xbox.
If on you one the other hand only buy consumers by offering them free stuff with precisely zero compelling features of your own as soon as they've consumed the free stuff they will disappear again. All of their perceived benefits have amounted to nothing. ....
- Those lower store fees that would pass on savings to consumers were never passed on. Games cost just as much (and sometimes more) on EPIC as Steam
- The higher quality control for games flat out doesn't exist with several Epic exclusives being nothing more than horribly broken turds turned cash grabs. The most egregious of this being Human Head who signed an exclusivity deal, released a horribly broken Rune 2 and then dissolved as a studio the day after abandoning the game. Ironically users went to the Steam forums to vent because
- Epic's roadmap to actually add features to their "platform" simply has missed every single goal with trivially easy to create features still absent 2 years after launch, features such as a review system or a user forum.
Epic's entire strategy seems to be to attempt to force users onto its system through exclusives and in some cases lock in purchase of users (e.g. purchasing Psyonix and then forcing previously happy Steam Windows players of Rocket League to download and install the shitshow of a launcher while telling Linux users to go fuck themselves).
Tim Sweeney once complained that users are clueless and should stop caring about where they buy their games. The complaints about the Epic store were counted with "You'll be fine it's just another icon". Yeah that about sums it up. Tim thinks he should be making as much money as Steam except he delivered "just another icon" to compete with whole ecosystems.
Re: Losing or investing? (Score:1, Troll)
Epic does not force lock-in. They give away free games. Once the game is in my library, I am more likely to load their launcher (to play it) than Steam's, and thus more likely to see a game I want to purchase.
I haven't loaded the Steam launcher in ages. I just get pissed off looking at boxed games in the physical store that say 'requires Steam'. WTF? Why but a physical copy if I have to kiss gabe's ring to play it?
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Most games sold in stores nowadays require some kind of store. If not Steam, then Origin, or uPlay or something similar.
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Epic does not force lock-in.
Sorry but are you stupid or did you live in a coma the past 3 years and completely miss the very real and enforced lock in that Epic games introduced to PC gaming through the practice of buying 3rd party exclusives, and buying out gaming studios in an attempt to boot them off Steam?
I mean how retarded do you need to make that claim when publishers were forced by Epic as part of contracts to refund pre-orders on other platforms 1 week before release, as was the case with Metro Exodus, and Assassins Creed whi
Re: Losing or investing? (Score:2)
Nice to see stupidity is still an issue. Nothing requires those games to use Steam for boxed copies, the Publishers are just too fucking lazy to set up their own servers for patches and updates.
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features such as a review system or a user forum.
Why does the downloader/launcher need to integrate a review system and user forum? I would rather it not have those things. I want a lightweight version of Steam that does not have chat, user profiles, a points system for buying emojis and trading cards, an embedded web browser. The worst part of Steam is the launcher UI: my operating system already has a system for organizing applications and running them. I don't need another one.
Steam is a great system for purchasing, downloading, and updating applic
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Why does the downloader/launcher need to integrate a review system and user forum?
Then don't use them. It's not like Steam actively uses any resources for those features on account of it being effectively a web front end for them. There's literally no downside to you for the extra features existing. And despite having none of those features Epic somehow manages to consume significantly more RAM and an actual order of magnitude more CPU time.
Given how people are getting active tech support for games they bought on Epic on the Steam forums I'd argue that while you may not appreciate or nee
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What EPIC could have done is insisted that any sale price on EPIC was 20% less than Steam. I would consider it if they had a "we match every sale on Steam, it's -20% no matter what" policy. That could have had people buy enough EPIC games to leave it installed once that special promotion expired.
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You're under the mistaken assumption that Epic give a shit about customers. From the very beginning their position has been clear.
Tim doesn't give a shit about what you think: https://twitter.com/TimSweeney... [twitter.com] He works with developers not with consumers https://twitter.com/TimSweeney... [twitter.com]
And he has been very clear about that from the beginning: Epic Boss Says Developers Will Decide Who Wins The Game Store Wars, Not Consumers [thegamer.com]
They're both right (Score:3)
This will probably take a while to pay off for Epic. There's no real incentives for anyone to stop using Steam. That's going to make gaining traction in the market difficult and I don't think Epic has enough titles of its own to really get customers to use it as a primary platform.
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Hard to argue with this. Exclusives on PC platform piss people off. However if the game developers will make more money directing people to Epic, then they would do that. They would talk up the platform and Epic avoids the massive expense to bribe exclusitivy, still has developers pushing their platform, and avoids pissing off gamers by exclusives.
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Steam contracts used to require that if you're going to use DRM for online sales that you use the Steam version and thus be exclusive digitially on Steam. So not really exclusive, as there could also be DVD releases without the Steam system, or on GOG without DRM. It must have changed because I have one game that pissed me off after buying on Steam and then I was required to use an Origin account to get the promised free bonus content.
I'm not going to investigate but I suspect there is some type of lockin
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but by offering a better rate to developers than Steam does
Two problems with that. The industry's dirty secret that Epic doesn't want you know is that while they take a 12% cut instead of Steam's 30%, Steam offer developers the ability to take a 100% cut if they distribute keys and handle purchases themselves.
But that's beside the point. Developers will chase profits. Epic Store's timed exclusives have largely netted more profits in their first week on Steam for developers than the entire exclusivity period on Epic's Store. And it's obvious why. As a consumer why w
Monopolies (Score:2)
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There is nothing that prevents Epic Games Store form competing with Steam other than Epic's gross incompetence, callous attitude towards their user base, and broken marketing strategies.
I feel there are enough complaints about Steam that, given a well managed platform, they could establish themselves in the market.
=Smidge=
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I don't know of any before Steam that offered games from other publishers. I know there were some that seemed to only sell their own games. I'm not positive though since I was perfectly fine going to the brick-and-mortar store and buying discount or used AA and AAA games when that was still allowed and not made verboten.
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I don't know of any before Steam that offered games from other publishers.
Steam initially offered only Valve games. Later they expanded to 3rd party games; there were concerns if Steam would treat non-Valve games fairly.
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It's actually pretty rare that the first company to do X becomes the big successful one to do X.
Typically, the "innovators" make something pretty good, and then someone else comes along and makes a slightly better one that takes off because it doesn't have the foibles of the innovator.
For example, Apple wasn't the first smartphone, but Palm and RIM insisted on making devices that kept resembling their older devices. So they wouldn't do touch interfaces because their entire UIs were built around a stylus or
Am I missing something (Score:2)
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Licensing money. (Score:3)
While the servers, the electricity, and the physical space likely cost a big 'ol chunk of millions too - most of that money is licensing money to folks to give out their game in giveaways and the like.
But that's the Epic Store bank account.
The other side is the licensing for the Unreal Engine.
You know those Epic store exclusives the store largely trades in - developers get those for using the Unreal engine.
And no - they're probably not making a ton of money off those indies - but they are seeding the industry with Unreal engine developers, used to the lack of many limitations that say, Unity might have.
It's a pretty reasonable path given the market they're in.
It's just a little out of whack if you're just looking at it as competing as a storefront with Steam.
Really - they also just want Steam to lower it's cut of digital game income, so the market itself becomes a bit more fluid, in a percentage sense.
But the whole reason Steam's cut is so big is because they set themselves up to be a mirror of physical stores. If Steam went along to lower that cut, it would shift the balance harder away from physical/console licensing... which isn't the kind of aggressive stance Steam prefers to engage in compared to other platforms, even though they very much could and be far more comfortable than the other companies after everything settles.
In any case - Epic Store isn't really hurt by being second banana in this whole trade. Their niche isn't really for being a storefront - but keeping the Unreal developer community nicely populated with a wide base of developers. And they're doing that just fine, whatever Steam chooses.
Ryan Fenton
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but they are seeding the industry with Unreal engine developers
Unreal has been one of the most dominant game engines in the industry since the release of the game series it is named after. Epic doesn't need to seed anything on that front.
Unity is the newcomer seeking developers.
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In the AAA and AA industry, you'd be correct - this and making the engine free for general use (until a certain income), is to get the upcoming generations of developers to consider it for their initial projects.
For a while, it did look like job opportunities were going in the Unity direction, and Unreal jobs were kind of drying up too.
So - I at least think there's reasons they were feeling pressure to plant more, instead of harvesting all they could.
Ryan Fenton
Spend money to make money (Score:5, Interesting)
This "loss" should be put into context: as Bloomberg reported just three weeks ago [bloomberg.com]: "Epic Games could be worth about $28 billion based on its latest round of fundraising, Sky News reported, propelling the company into the ranks of the world’s 10 most valuable startups."
So, did Epic "lose $330 million" - or did it invest 12% of what the market says it's worth to cultivate its customer base and secure IPs for the future?
I know people are salty about Epic's exclusives and may not be on their side in the Apple fight, but I don't see how anyone can construe this as Epic in any way "struggling."
Re:Spend money to make money (Score:5, Insightful)
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1.2%
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1.2%
You're right. I didn't math properly.
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People can dislike Epic all they want, but in the future we're going to see a lot more Unreal Engine games.
Re: Spend money to make money (Score:2)
You act like EGS was a primary or even secondary driver of that increase and not the change to licensing structure not involving EGS and the increased accessibility of UE4 over UE3.
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Epic isn't struggling. Their store strategy is struggling. Epic is a behemoth in the gaming space, It's just unfortunate for consumers that they are using their money from their truly successful and innovative technologies such as the Unreal engine, and their truly successful and not at all innovative games such as Fortnight to fund literally setting PC gaming back 15 years by forcing consumers onto a platform with a fraction of the features of the competition.
I hope their shitty store fails. I fully suppor
I'm Not A Fan Of Epic (Score:3, Insightful)
But Apple is trying too hard to prove they're not assholes over banning them from the iStore. They've literally subpoenaed everyone that remotely sells games asking for all kinds of confidential sales records. It's like they're trying to prove Epic are the bad guys because "they can't make money" while simultaneously gathering information for their use that would be considered unethical to use outside of purposes of a lawsuit.
A reasonable judge should tell Apple to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and explain how their tight controls and behavior don't make them a monopoly.
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Well, Epic can't make money from their store. They make a really shitty store, missing key features like reviews and a shopping cart. And have missed their timelines on adding those features.
So, yeah it's not at all unreasonable to point out the lawsuit is Epic trying to buy their way into the AppStore business on phones, like they've been trying to buy their way into the AppStore business on PC.
If Epic wanted to show some consistency in their argument, they need to fire off some lawsuits at Microsoft and
Watch the money burn! (Score:5, Insightful)
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Tim Sweeney unleashed a cancer to PC gaming in the form of aggressive 3rd party exclusives and attempting to buy users by acquiring developers of popular games all to force users to a completely crap games launcher that doesn't even offer a fraction of the features of the competition. In the process he also managed to cut off not one but 2 linux gaming communities telling them "sorry Epic launcher now required and it only runs on Windows" giving the formerly happy Steam users the middle finger.
He fractured the community, promised features that never materialised, is aggressive towards users, hasn't delivered a cent of the promised savings from his cheaper store, and cut off gamers in many countries completely through geoblocking.
He is the worst thing to happen to PC gaming in the past 10 years. (Note, that is PC gaming, shit like loot boxes and crappy titles are universal to all gaming, but Timmy hasn't screwed up other platforms). I hope his shitty store fails. I hope he loses his money. I hope he suffers a HDD failure with complete data loss and that backhoe digs up the cable providing his home internet connection just for good measure.
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He is the worst thing to happen to PC gaming in the past 10 years. (Note, that is PC gaming, shit like loot boxes and crappy titles are universal to all gaming, but Timmy hasn't screwed up other platforms). I hope his shitty store fails. I hope he loses his money. I hope he suffers a HDD failure with complete data loss and that backhoe digs up the cable providing his home internet connection just for good measure.
I absolutely agree, but there's one little thing. In every market (gaming isn't an exception), monopoly isn't good. And Steam was a monopoly before Epic Game entered the game.
I do agree that the platform is shit and they act as A-Holes, but they are the first player to put a dent in Steam's domination. Furthermore, I love Steam and, IMHO, it's the best thing that happened in PC gaming in the 21st century, but I still think it will be for the best to have a 2nd player in the market, even if it's only to remi
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Because GOG, Humble and others don't exist.
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monopoly isn't good
A monopoly is neither good nor bad. It just is. What is bad is the abuse of a monopoly. Can you point to where Steam abused a monopoly, maybe through price fixing (they charge the standard rate every store does), beating down the competition (they don't have 3rd party exclusives unlike some stores), forcing companies not to bundle, or anything at all really?
I'm sure you can't because ...
And Steam was a monopoly before Epic Game entered the game.
No it wasn't. Steam has a lot of market power through volume but it doesn't fit any definition of monopoly. If it did you
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One of the good things that I've heard about Sweeney in the past—and I'm not sure if it's still true—is that the pay scales were really good at Epic. He made a couple hundred bucks a year, and nobody made more than him. But when the games sold well, the bonuses were extremely large and well distributed. People would go out and buy houses with the money. Sweeney would get another Lambo, everyone was happy.
Not sure how it works now, but at least for a time, Epic was a great place to work if you we
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I'd not heard this, so I did a Google search with some positive selection bias. "Epic games good place to work" turned up the following as the first and second result:
How Fortnite’s success led to months of intense crunch at Epic Games [polygon.com]
Report: Fortnite developers recount horrible working conditions at Epic Games [windowscentral.com]
So maybe Tim shat on that reputation too.
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Actually I would disagree slightly on account of the Unreal engine itself also being quite frankly awesome. And it's a real shame Tim decided to shit on his own good legacy.
I guess you could say... (Score:1)
Thats an EPIC loss
$300m could buy a lot (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a game marketplace client that didn't require updates every month, like one that is mostly complete on the launch date. Time and a big pile of cash could buy that kind of experience.
If it's users that you need. Then an optional membership program with a nominal free that gives you a free game each month(or week) would keep people coming back and those users who built up a significant collection would be less inclined to walk away. Weirdly charging a monthly fee can keep people from leaving. (something something psychology)
For about 1/10th the price you could build a small children's hospital. There's a gamer audience right there ... j/k. But seriously some kind of annual charity event can also pull people in. Live streaming e sports for charity is generally a huge draw. Especially if it is a regular scheduled event and you have a budget to bring in some big names and big prizes.
But sadly I don't have an MBA. So my opinions on how to piss away hundreds of millions of dollars will never be realized.
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$30M might buy a small building, but it sure as hell won't build you a hospital
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As much as I like to shit on MBAs Tim Sweeney doesn't have one either. No, concepts such as buying consumers by offering them free games or forcing them to come to you through exclusivity deals with popular franchises rather than actually producing an even partially functional product are all his own idea.
Going on the record as saying consumers don't matter at all when it comes to which platform to use, then being confused why consumers will wait for your exclusivity period to be up only to buy the game on
Exclusived (Score:3)
Their aggressive use of exclusives pretty much soured me on ever using that platform and a lot of the games that had exclusive deals.
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Not really, but thanks for the opinion.
Undoing moderation (Score:2)
Hilariously Bungled (Score:3)
Full disclosure, I think Sweeny's an arrogant bastard. How this guy is running a company like Epic truly makes me believe that there is a devil; how else would an asshole like him end up in that position?
He says he courts developers, but it's actually publishers (though sometimes they're one and the same). I haven't seen that translate into any lower prices for games.
I think if he didn't have such an inflated ego, and if he didn't parade that ego around on Twitter, it wouldn't be so bad. I use Steam and prefer it to other platforms, but competition is good, as it can help drive improvement. But Epic can hardly be called a competitor. It seems like they're using Fortnite and Unreal Engine money to pay for the launcher, which...is that sustainable? Unreal Engine will be around for a long time it seems, but I'm not so sure about Fortnite.
If he didn't sound like some 14-year old edgelord, or could keep to the feature roadmap, or wasn't a complete ass about exclusivity, I don't think the numbers would be like they are.
I mean, Epic has saved me money. With the exception of a couple games, if a game is Epic exclusive at all, I have no plans to buy or play it (no, not even pirating). Look at Kingdom Hearts. I was super excited to see it come to PC. Now? Maybe if I can get it in an Humble Bundle, but otherwise, I'll pass and buy games that don't pull that kind of shit. I mean, look at the pricing. $230 for a set of games that I could get for WAY less on a previous gen system. Same with games like Control. There are so many games out there that I can easily pass those games up and still have more content than I could play in my lifetime.
If I was working for Epic... (Score:2)
... I'd move along the lines of Steam.
Steam's success isn't in giving away hundreds of games for free, their success lies in stability and a great functional social platform, that is even loyal to old and new users of old and new games - this works brilliantly, and would be hard to beat.
Valve is an expensive platform to publish for, Epic is super cheap in comparison.
And they fail still? I know the secret to steams success, and that is several factors:
- Games we bought 17 years ago, still works on steam with
That is what you get (Score:2)
I will get the TPB Edition of a game if it isn't on Steam.
Also, why we are at it, I will also get TPB Edition if your game requires a separate launcher from Steam (Looking at you EA, UbiSoft, CroTeam, and StarDock) or requires or constantly bugs me about getting a third party account. (Looking at you Bethesda) [Halo gets a pass, and is the only one that will.
Comment section is ridicious (Score:2)
GOG is superior... (Score:2)
I can install a couple big games while Epic is churning my SSD 5x more than it really should need to to verify game integrity.
I *much* prefer to buy games on GOG.
"Lose" ... depends... (Score:2)
Only if the fail.
Otherwise the term is "invest".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Really hard to justify a separate piece of data collecting software, or an another account with all the many pitfalls that entails, or a service with a lacking game library, or a company that seems to be at odds with it customers, run by a crazy person, hasn't put out a good game since 2K4, and is based in a country that makes mine look good.