Epic Store exclusives are worth the pressure they put on Steam

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Days after announcing its new store, Epic took a direct swing at Valve by luring high-profile independent games such as Satisfactory, Hades, and Super Meat Boy Forever away from Steam. For many, this is an annoyance, but it's an annoyance that could make PC gaming better in the long run—at least, if Epic succeeds at making a decent store.

Individual indie devs have no bargaining power with Steam. They know that Steam offers the largest base of potential customers, along with features that ease multiplayer logistics, mod distribution, and promotion. More games are releasing on Steam than ever before, and so Valve's challenge for the past few years has been categorizing indies and surfacing them to people who might want to buy them.

The only developers that have been able to put real pressure on Steam are the largest of them, and they did so by building their own platforms. In 2018, Steam lost Call of Duty and Bethesda opted to launch Fallout 76 on its own platform. Will the next Elder Scrolls release on Steam? Probably not. EA has been gone for a while. Losing Ubisoft, Square Enix, 2K, or CD Projekt, which owns GOG but still releases on Steam, is probably a scary proposition: some of the best-selling Steam games of 2018 were Grand Theft Auto 5, Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry 5, Civilization 6, Assassin's Creed Origins, and The Witcher 3. These games bring in revenue for years and years. One GTA feeds a city.

Smaller studios typically don't have the resources to walk away from Steam, so short of every small studio somehow banding together, they were never going to get Valve to reconsider their deal. But with Epic potentially posing a real threat—an option for indies instead of a Steam release, rather than in conjunction with one—Valve may finally have to. 

Epic is taking 12 percent of the revenue for all games on the Epic Store, and waiving Unreal Engine royalties, whereas Steam still takes 30 percent of on-Steam sales up to $10 million, a target most indies will never exceed. It's about time someone besides itch.io challenged Valve's rate. That's especially true in a year when so many studios closed or laid off employees. Small, independent, and niche developers often make our favorite games. They deserve a better deal, and we ought to support them getting it.

That's only going to happen if Epic has something that Steam doesn't, and 'better features' (which it definitely doesn't have) was never going to cut it. Fortnite was the catalyst for this, a Trojan llama full of millions of new PC gamers who are now being introduced to Subnautica, but even that isn't enough. If Epic doesn't take potential revenue away from Steam, it isn't a real threat.

I'm not one to think that competition is good in and of itself, though. There could be bad outcomes to Epic's venture: here's yet another store to trust with our personal information, another store that can screw up in innumerable ways, or that could end up exerting too much pressure on GOG and itch.io as a side effect of taking on Steam. This is a Goliath vs Goliath situation, not a feel-good story about an underdog.

Epic's store currently lacks basic features such as cloud saves, and it's important to note that Steam allows developers to generate keys and sell them off Steam, something Vertigo Gaming owner David Galindo calls out in his criticism of the Epic Store. That's Valve's way of getting new users onto its client, but it also means that the 30 percent cut can be bypassed to a degree. Additionally, the Epic Store isn't brimming with up-and-comers. It currently only houses well-known indies, so it's way too soon to call it a boon for independent developers in general.

Right now, though, the only way to release an 'exclusive' on PC is not to release it on Steam, because we just assume that everything'll be on Steam. That's how entrenched it is, and even GOG owner CD Projekt didn't find the success it wanted releasing Thronebreaker as a GOG exclusive. Epic has to show that Steam isn't the beginning and end of PC gaming. It needs a ton of users and it needs case studies: new examples of games that weren't made by EA or Activision succeeding outside of Steam. 

That's what these exclusives are for, and without them, I don't think the Epic Store could ever come close to pressuring Valve into reconsidering its deal with indies (even if it doesn't go all the way down to 12 percent, given that it allows off-Steam key sales). It still may not, but to me, the chance is worth the inconvenience of having to open a different program to run Super Meat Boy Forever.

From here on, Epic needs to make its store much, much better, as well as more accessible to the niche developers who will benefit most from earning greater revenue from a smaller number of sales. (Epic said it will "open up more broadly" following the curated launch.) If it follows through, the Epic Store could be genuinely good for us and for PC gaming, and not just another thing we have to install to get the games we want.

Replies • 59
Interstellar

Steam, is the top leading PC gaming platform for a reason.
Now, EPIC, made a bunch of money due to Fortnite, and they are now illusional that they can compete with Steam or something like that. I would like to call that... EPIC fail.

Steam got everything a that companies would need: Proper promotions for companies, the biggest player base, biggest sales that a game could get, best deals, proper Support / Refund assistance, enormous Games catalogue, etc etc.
If Bethesda, EPIC, or Origin, THINK that they are the "something else", they can try and go for it. And those developers that think that by doing "exclusives" that they will make a difference, they are dead wrong.
Take the - then - GOG exclusive Witcher game "Thronebreaker" also for example... Didn't do good in sales. And guess what... it's on Steam now.
Simple think of it like this: Steam IS the biggest place, and the place everyone wants to have their games.

edited

Sheik Yerbouti
5L3ap0fFa1th3 said:

Steam, is the top leading PC gaming platform for a reason.
Now, EPIC, made a bunch of money due to Fortnite, and they are now illusional that they can compete with Steam or something like that. I would like to call that... EPIC fail.

Steam got everything a that companies would need: Proper promotions for companies, the biggest player base, biggest sales that a game could get, best deals, proper Support / Refund assistance, enormous Games catalogue, etc etc.
If Bethesda, EPIC, or Origin, THINK that they are the "something else", they can try and go for it. And those developers that think that by doing "exclusives" that they will make a difference, they are dead wrong.
Take the - then - GOG exclusive Witcher game "Thronebreaker" also for example... Didn't do good in sales. And guess what... it's on Steam now.
Simple think of it like this: Steam IS the biggest place, and the place everyone wants to have their games.

If Steam doesn't have any real competition it will just get lazy... there are already a shitton of shitty games on Steam just because they don't really care what gets on the platform... Plus there's this article about devs losing confidence in Steam so I think they really should step up their game. Don't get me wrong, 99% of my games are on Steam but I want for Valve to get more involved with the platform and the community and I want Steam to become the best distribution platform ever


Interstellar

is it now?

competition is good though, less monopoly, better for gamer

but taking down steam?


Everything of significance is the result of conquest.
Peetstar said:
5L3ap0fFa1th3 said:

Steam, is the top leading PC gaming platform for a reason.
Now, EPIC, made a bunch of money due to Fortnite, and they are now illusional that they can compete with Steam or something like that. I would like to call that... EPIC fail.

Steam got everything a that companies would need: Proper promotions for companies, the biggest player base, biggest sales that a game could get, best deals, proper Support / Refund assistance, enormous Games catalogue, etc etc.
If Bethesda, EPIC, or Origin, THINK that they are the "something else", they can try and go for it. And those developers that think that by doing "exclusives" that they will make a difference, they are dead wrong.
Take the - then - GOG exclusive Witcher game "Thronebreaker" also for example... Didn't do good in sales. And guess what... it's on Steam now.
Simple think of it like this: Steam IS the biggest place, and the place everyone wants to have their games.

If Steam doesn't have any real competition it will just get lazy... there are already a shitton of shitty games on Steam just because they don't really care what gets on the platform... Plus there's this article about devs losing confidence in Steam so I think they really should step up their game. Don't get me wrong, 99% of my games are on Steam but I want for Valve to get more involved with the platform and the community and I want Steam to become the best distribution platform ever

Steam already has competition it's called GOG, and Humblebundle.

When you start making everything exclusive to one storefront it turns into cheap console warfare between platforms.. and no one wins.


Galactic

surely temporary exclusives, we will see all of them soon on steam :)

revenue difference doesn't matter - dev of a good game like "Hades" or "Super Meat Boy Forever" will be overflooded with money on the first day on Steam



Sheik Yerbouti
mxtomek said:

surely temporary exclusives, we will see all of them soon on steam :)

revenue difference doesn't matter - dev of a good game like "Hades" or "Super Meat Boy Forever" will be overflooded with money on the first day on Steam

Super Meat Boy Forever has a 1 year exclusivity on Epic Games Store and quite a few people are not thrilled (looking at this trailer "can't wait for it's actual release in 2020." or "no steam no buy" or "Kind of a middle finger to fans of the original SMB to not bring SMBF to Steam." or "No thanks, i dont need one more launcher ."). There's no news for now about Hades heading to Steam anytime soon. Maybe some won't buy the games even after they release on Steam out of spite


Sheik Yerbouti
Mischievous Emperor said:

Steam already has competition it's called GOG, and Humblebundle.

When you start making everything exclusive to one storefront it turns into cheap console warfare between platforms.. and no one wins.

Humble Bundle isn't really competition, most of the codes you get are for Steam, only a handful are DRM free. Also GOG can't really stand against Steam, just look at Thronebreaker, they had to release it on Steam too cuz sales on GOG were mediocre at best... The market needs healthy competition and maybe Epic Games store will make that possible (they have a lot of cash and they could make a good distribution platform). For now Steam pretty much has the monopoly on the market

 


Lunar

OMG...…  more to  crap install to play other games here I come xbox

edited

Solar

Others have tried... if Epic is serious about this then good luck to them. Competition is good in the short term, so great for me I have no reason to hate.