Tim… suing everyone else wont make epic store a great place to buy games
Look to GOG for inspiration…
He’s just salty because the only games people “purchase” are the weekly free ones.
I don’t even bother with those anymore. I never play the free ones I have, because I’d have to use Epic’s software.
Keep collecting them. Each one you get costs Epic money and helps counter some of that Fortnite cash that lets Epic keep paying for exclusive contracts. Keep bleeding them and eventually they won’t be able to keep buying exclusive releases.
Epic pays a flat rate to offer games for free, they don’t pay per download.
Downloading them just helps Epic inflate their “active users” number when talking to investors.
Not even. I’ve bought games on Steam that I forgot I had in Epic because Epic is just that trash. Fuck Epic for trying to start their store by bribing developers for exclusivity on their platform. Bitch ass tactics to begin with and then crying and whining when their mob mentality strong arming didn’t work. Best believe if their shit had worked and they became popular those greedy assholes would be asking a higher percentage once everyone was locked in.
I love hating epic just as much as anybody else, but those exclusivity deals are not necessary just bribing the devs.
The first Hades game would have been much smaller in scope and features, without epic funding them and helping them implementing something like EOS, the game would be definedly worse than it is.
Remedy has also stated they could not make Alan Wake 2 without Epics funding. People often say the Epic exclusivity ruined its salea, but realistically without it there would not be a game.
But even so, i think them suing Steam is a asshole move.
Ok, and what about games like Rocket League? It was already wildly popular. And didn’t we get interviews from a few exclusivity deal people saying that in the long run it wasn’t better than just launching on steam?
But yes, I’m glad 2 games got made despite Epics shittiness. Maybe if they built features into their launcher they’d have more. How long did it take them to make a friends list? And last I heard, wasn’t viewing your own library still largely dependent on you knowing what games you already owned?
Yeah, never gonna defend that shitstain of a company. They tried to bully their way in and failed and they deserve it 100000%
He’s still right in this instance.
Exactly. The number of people on Lemmy who simp for Valve’s monopoly just because Epic (along with every game developer, big or small) stands to benefit is kind of shocking.
It doesn’t have anything to do with Epic, it’s because Steam provides a great service with a ton of features nobody else offers, and Valve has demonstrated time and time again that they make policies that benefit consumers.
It would be great if Steam had some competition, but Epic ain’t it. What people want is another service of equal quality to Steam. Instead the best we have is GOG and that still falls well short of feature parity nevermind the anti-consumer cesspool of Epic.
Suing Valve isn’t going to do anything to improve the situation. Realistically what could Valve do to be “less of a monopoly”? Lower the percentage they take of sales? Consumers wouldn’t see any benefit from that only developers. Ironically it would also increase Valves monopoly because if they took a smaller cut there would be even less reason for companies to sell on Epic as Epics lower cut is literally the only reason developers (outside of Epic literally paying some of them mounds of cash by way of exclusivity contracts) pick Epic over Steam.
If Epic really wants to do something about Valves monopoly it’s simple, they just need to offer all the same features that Steam does. Things like family sharing, streaming support, a cross platform store and launcher, and an excellent review system so people can better understand the games they’re thinking about buying. Until that happens yes people will stick with Steam because it’s the objectively superior experience.
You know what annoys me about the people defending Epic’s lawsuit? The fact that there are actually legitimate issues with Valve and somehow they’re hyper-fixated on the non-issues. If they were instead talking about CS2 gambling, lootboxes, etc, I would be in support of it. But no, it’s about how they’re a “monopoly” because they’re one of only two stores that seem to care about their customers…
It’s not a reason to charge 30% The $500 million Gabe Newell’s superyacht is here to remind you that prices are too high.
Sure but it’s also a badly done lawsuit for that. It’s a class action of Valves customers when the percentage almost entirely impacts developers and publishers not customers. If this was really about Valves cut it would be a class action by developers. The reasons it isn’t are that that’s a much smaller group, consumer protections don’t apply to them so that would be a much harder case to win, and finally they would struggle to find developers willing to join that lawsuit. There’s also the slight problem that the 30% cut is the industry standard. Both Apple and Google take a similar cut. I’m not sure who originated that as the standard, could go all the way back to brick and mortar stores or it might have originated with one of the games consoles, but Epic is actually the odd one out in this case not Valve.
As someone else pointed out there are things that Valve could be better about, things like lootboxes in some games or the frankly predatory CS item markets. The issue of course is that none of that is actually illegal even if it is anti-consumer. It would also be nice if Steam had some actual competition, but there isn’t anything Valve can do about that, rather it’s everyone else that needs to get on Valves level.
It isn’t a monopoly because they don’t require you to use their store. Epic has a monopoly of epic exclusive games.
And ecommerce sellers don’t “have to” sell on Amazon, so they don’t have any market power they can abuse to extract 40-50% fees from sellers, right?
Amazon requires price matching for most sellers, which is shit and makes this an apples to oranges comparison.
Could Steam back down on their 30% cut? Sure, but not a monopoly.
It’s not apples to oranges, because the network effects (and coercive pressures they create) are in fact incredibly similar: sellers have to go where most customers are, and most PC gamers begin and end their search for games on Steam, just like most online shoppers begin and end their searches on Amazon.
Steam is the last company that has held out against enshittification.
“They charge developers too much!”
“Ok, Tim, so how exactly do you make money for your company, then? Because giving away all the free stuff seems like awfully bad business.”
Never thought I’d be defending a company charging a lot of money but since Steam actually does provide an excellent, stable service with bonuses like Linux development and the Steam Deck I mean, I really ain’t that mad, especially they still offer really good sales.
“They charge developers too much!”
So you should be able to undercut them, right? Right?
Not when the Steam Terms of Service prevents them from charging less on other stores.
People are still repeating this lie, huh?
“They charge developers too much!”
“Ok, Tim, so how exactly do you make money for your company, then? Because giving away all the free stuff seems like awfully bad business.
I think you’re missing the point that Epic’s store is only not profitable at their margins because of scale. If they had even half of Steam’s user base they would be profitable. Their problem is that gamers insist on backing Valve’s monopoly because it’s what other gamers tell them to do online.
And Epic provides Unreal Engine, the gaming engine that powers the majority of modern games, with free and extremely cheap tiers for indie devs, and they provide explicit Linux support for their engine and dev environment. They’ve also used a substantial amount of their Fortnite money to break up app store monopolies on Android and iOS.
They are not the villain that the gaming community thinks they are.
They may want to work on their marketting, then. I won’t lie when I say that I’m surprised to learn that Epic Games not only developes Unreal engine but that Tim Sweeney seems to have actually created it and not just be a CEO who buys stuff and puts his name on it.
There do, however, seem to be a few points really not working in their favour. Sketchy policies around reviews and a lot of forcing exclusivity(Steam’s monopoly? Ok buddy) are big ones I found.
Look, I’m sure there’s plenty of learning to be done as far as the Epic Games store is concerned but seriously, why is Steam so bad and why is Epic Games especially good? Sorry that I’m happy to use Steam and not switch to a new store with fewer features? Like, what’s the point being made here?
There do, however, seem to be a few points really not working in their favour. Sketchy policies around reviews and a lot of forcing exclusivity(Steam’s monopoly? Ok buddy) are big ones I found.
Forcing exclusivity? They force exclusivity for the games that they make (just like Valve does for theirs) and otherwise Epic offers developers cash deals for exclusivity, the developers are under no obligation to take them.
And the overall point is not that the Epic Launcher is amazing, but that Tim Sweeney is right about Valve’s exorbitant 30% fees, but whenever that comes up gamers just go haha Valve=Good, Epic=Bad.
Yeah, but you do not seem to grasp that good service and agreeable progresses e.g with proton and the nice hardware is worth the money.
I don’t really get your point. Epic already offers free games and more money to devs, but isn’t working out. Steam isn’t forcing exclusivity on third parties here. And they’re not using tricks like the crazy good (for the devs that’ll find it hard to say no to easy money) exclusivity deals or paying for the free games in desperate attempt to get anyone even look their way.
If my reliable old grocery store that says hi to me every morning and always delivers when I ask them for anything, add nice features to make the shopping just feel smooth and welcoming, then also, on the side, made huge contributions to open source in a consistent basis, being one of the sole corporate interest driving the current Linux gaming paradigm forward…
If they suddenly had a shop pop up next door with cheaper prices and free food stuffs every week, I would be very fucking suspicious. Nobody greets you there either. No nice features. It’s cold and lacks accessibility features. Goes out to buy all the bread from the old reliable shop and then sells them with big signs on the sidewalk saying “this is the only place to get bread!”, I would 100% not go there. Ever. Just from principle alone. They can give out all the free shit they want, do whatever sleazy tricks they want, but I’ll go shop in the place that is friendly, listens to me and others, helps the community and does not go buying other shops out of bread as a cheap ass trick to force customers there. It may cost more, they may pay a little less to the producers, but it’s very rarely just about money. If the volume alone covers the producers’ wants and needs so they are happy to remain, and customers are more than happy not getting free shit or occasionally having to wait a year or so before they can get bread again because the fucking rats next door keep buying some out of existence anywhere else.
Sometimes it’s just a service question. Money isn’t everything. This is true almost everywhere. I almost exclusively shop in co-op groceries where we the customers are owners. It’s more expensive, but I have a say in everything, it’s inclusive, does not do sleazy marketing or exclusivity tricks or other ratty stuff, so I’m more than happy to pay the premium for it.
And I’m not the only one. Not by a mile.
Same’s true for steam, at least for now.
The second they sell out or stop contributing good around them or start ratty shit, I’ll be looking to shop elsewhere. But that’s still not going to be the rats next door…
If they had even half of Steam’s user base they would be profitable. Their problem is that gamers insist on backing Valve’s monopoly because it’s what other gamers tell them to do online.
Well, see, here’s your first mistake; you think Valve has a monopoly. But they’re just one store out of many, including game console stores. The difference is they’re actually providing a good service.
Yes, it’s shocking; people tend to gravitate towards the service that’s actually good!
And Epic provides Unreal Engine, the gaming engine that powers the majority of modern games…
And what a total shite of an engine that is. It’s actively destroying the gaming industry by emphasising all the worst development practices gamers have complained about for the past 8 years.
… with free and extremely cheap tiers for indie devs…
Just like with their service fee, they’re doing this to completely undercut competitors, to ensure the Game engine everyone used is Unreal.
This isn’t a good thing.
… they provide explicit Linux support…
No they don’t. They barely support Linux with some elements. But Unreal Engine runs like absolute shit on Linux, if at all, and Tim Sweeny infamously hates Linux with a passion. He has some personal grudge against it.
They’ve also used a substantial amount of their Fortnite money to break up app store monopolies…
Because they want Fortnite to be the one game young people play. The One Live Service To Rule Them All. The only way they can do that, to reach the maximum amount of the youngest generations to squeeze them and their parents for all their money, is to be as widely available as possible.
Valve got skin gambling. Epic got Fortnite. The latter involves children and is massively more profitable.
Lmfao, you’re so brain dead that you think Unreal Engine is a bad thing.
Jesus fucking Christ learn how to think critically and not just suck Gabe’s billionaire dick.
Unreal Engine is a bad thing. Or maybe you haven’t noticed how every game that’s made with Unreal Engine, all the way back since UE4, requires far more resources than is necessary to run what it’s running.
If you support UE5 and Epic you support actively destroying gaming as an industry, and game creation as a multi-faceted art.
Or maybe you haven’t noticed how every game that’s made with Unreal Engine, all the way back since UE4, requires far more resources than is necessary to run what it’s running.
We’ll all wait for you to cite your source on that one, because, no Unreal does not perform particularly worse then any other game engine.
Unreal is broadly available and not just hidden behind AAA walls so a lot of A and AA devs won’t have time to optimize their games with it, but they wouldn’t have had time to optimize regardless of whether they published with Unity or Godot or any other engine. Unreal is certainly a vastly more efficient engine then Unity, which is its main competition.
Also, how are you squaring away the idea that Unreal is ruining games as art? There are two options:
-
be a creative game designer and spend all your resources on engineers to build you a custom game engine, then spend more resources training everyone at your company on how your specific niche engine works
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be a creative game designer and use an off the shelf engine like Unreal to run and render your game so you can spend your resources on artists, writers, and designers, and everyone comes in knowing how to use it
Do you really think that number 1 leads to more artistic games? The literal entire reason we’re in an indie game mecca right now is because of the widespread proliferation of third party game engines, that let small dev teams focus on the game and not the engine.
We’ll all wait for you to cite your source on that one, because, no Unreal does not perform particularly worse then any other game engine.
You’ve been living under a rock.
Nothing else you say matters after this, because good gods, you don’t know anything.
Cite your source dumbass.
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Have you considered maybe Valves monopoly is natural? That is convenient to have all the games in one place and their customers like what they’re selling?
Have you considered maybe Valves monopoly is natural?
Yes that changes literally nothing.
All monopolies, be they natural or otherwise, need to be heavily regulated or else they can:
a) easily do stuff to prevent competition. Stuff like preventing developers from selling their game for cheaper on other stores.
b) charge exorbitant markups, markups like 30% of all revenue for a listing in a store.
I do not understand why gamers have such a hard time grasping that Valve taking a massive cut off the top of every single game sold, just enriches the already rich for doing nothing, at the expense of consumers and creators.
Sorry to bust your balls, but here’s a thing from a fucking 6 years ago that debunks your B point to the ground.
30% has used to be standard in a PHYSICAL releases too, except these wont give you any convenience like cloud saves, remote play, family share, friend/community integration, support for older releases, huge ass discounts, linux support, and may other pro-consumer things. Valve takes this chunk and actually invests in the quality of their service.
Do you really think that MS or Epic would keep low markups if they have gained majority of the market?
Lmfao bro, you think that digital storefronts cost more to run then physical ones?
You think it takes more resource to change a database entry, then it does to run a physical store, staffed by real people, that have to import and store a physical item that they then have to sell you, and potentially take back and return?
Lmfao, Valve has tossed you trinkets over the course of 20 years and you praise them like they’re altrusitic gods, instead of the wealth hoarding millionaires and billionaires that they actually are.
Do you really think that MS or Epic would keep low markups if they have gained majority of the market?
Jesus Christ, thats literally the whole fucking point. Valve has been overcharging you because they have a monopoly.
Competition is what keeps prices low, and that’s not possible when Valve has clauses that prevent developers from selling their games for less on other stores.
Steam provides much more than just a store. Having to print, burn, deliver and sell physical CDs is not cheap. Nor is the service Steam provides that physical discs wont. Also, did you pass over the fact that PS, Xbox, Nintendo, Apple and Google also have charged 30% for their online stores?
Anyone can go get free games at Epic and be happy they save 100% cash on their games. and that is why Epic’s user base grew 173% withing last 6 years but with 1.6% revenue growth. If this doesn’t make you realize that we pay for a good service, then nothing will.
PlayStation and Xbox subsidize the cost of the console.
Apple and Google have been having their 30% fees (and the monopolies that allow them) struck down by courts and competition regulators around the world.
I think the problem you’re running into is that Valve isn’t doing nothing with that pay.
Like valve is actively making my gaming experience better by developing cheap hardware and a good system for gaming on Linux.
All the games I’ve ever bought, regardless of if they still sell them are in my library.
My save files are cloud synced for free.
I as the end user am having a good time.
I also have a sunk cost thing going on. I’ve been trying to buy and play more GOG games but I just have so much that works already on Linux without any work that it’s hard to justify the tinker time to get it working otherwise.
They provide such a good service I think we’ve all forgotten about the children casinos for CSGO2 skins, but even that they’re fixing (kinda).
Maybe its just nice to not be mad about something. Like its just video games, I don’t really care if Valve has a monopoly on that since 1) Experience is good 2) they’re not trying to have like a monopoly on water or something important. Bad take maybe, but there’s enough going on that I just don’t know if I could make myself care that valve is like 90% of videogame sales. Or whatever it is.
Isn’t Tim the guy that advocates for pedophelia through AI generation?
And Hitler was a vegetarian, but that tells us literally nothing about whether we should abuse animals in factory farms
Sure, but I think wanting to fuck children does kind of paint a vivid picture about your general moral character in a way your dietary preferences might not.
Has epic games developed anything like Proton? Valve isn’t just a store.
What do you mean? Isn’t Kratos dancing orange justice innovative enough?
That Whataboutism is Not really relevant to the lawsuit.
Just because they made someone useful to expand their control over the games industry, that you happen to like, doesn’t mean them abusing their monopoly position isn’t still bad.
>Open source, publicly available tool to aid in Linux adoption
>“some[thing] to expand their control over the games industry”
Found the Sweeney fanboy. Just because Timmy-boy can’t install kernel-level malware on Linux doesn’t mean Gabe Newell is going to use it to conquer the Earth, bud.
Why are you acting like there aren’t steam games with additional drm?
Steam doesn’t require DRM to publish on their platform.
Steam also places DRM and states in their EULA that you pay to license the title and not own it. Looks like you’re a Steam fanboy. We shouldn’t be fanboys of anything but simply notice the good and bad thaf companies do because either way they aren’t our friends
Developers place DRM, that’s not s requirement of Steam publishing. Also, 99% of digital stores state you’re only buying a license. That’s a problem with modern society, not Steam.
So Steam is part of the problem. They can simply not have that in their EULA. With that attitude no change will ever happen for the better
I don’t think blaming Steam for society’s ills is a valid response.
Again with the complete and utter lack of ability to understand that nuance exists, and both can be bad people doing self interested things, and one bad person saying something correct does not mean you agree with everything they stand for just because you agree with the one smart thing.
Like more than one of you are stuck in this moronic binary mindset. It’s pathetic.
They developed the Unreal engine. Not sure how “like Proton” you meant, but it’s used by lots of games and is quite a complex and well-regarded 3D engine.
Epic makes tons of money off licensing Unreal to developers and have since before their store was a thing.
Proton makes direct zero profit, though it does make Steam the best store for anyone on Linux.
Not sure why “direct profit” is important.
Proton is basic infrastructure for Steam Deck (which runs Linux). Valve has sold millions of units that I doubt would have been sold without Proton. There’s just a ton of games that will never be ported to native Linux.
Proton isn’t only Valve’s doing though. It’s heavily built on top of Wine which is a very mature open source project that has seen extensive leadership and contributions by CodeWeavers.
To quote an old comment of mine:
Meanwhile Steam is a feature rich platform with a bunch of features that regular C-suite types would never green light because they don’t have a direct ROI.
Direct profit is the main driving factor for decision making by C-suite types. EGS is a great example of this: it has the very bare bones of what constitutes an online store, you can see products and make purchases. Almost everything else is half assed and tacked on. It’s frankly amazing that a system like Steam exists when they could (and still could) enshittify really badly.
I don’t see how SteamOS is any different from iOS in this regard. Apple spends a ton of resources developing APIs to support all kinds of optional functionality that 3rd party developers can take advantage of. None of it earns any direct profit.
Apple directly makes money off iOS apps and in most of the world you can only buy via their store. On the other hand, I can and do buy games from GoG and run them just fine on my Steam deck and can still benefit from proton.
The only reason I buy most of my games from Steam is they make things even easier than buying from GoG.
Epic doesn’t do a single thing that doesn’t directly result in profits. Features are only added off they can derive income from them. Lawsuits are filed so they can take a larger percentage of profits. Even his twitter posts are mainly about him getting a larger cut, when he isn’t defending AI child porn.
Valve is very old school in their ‘keep improving your offering and it will work out’ way. Usually companies like that get bought out and their name run into the ground. It sadly happens in all industries, from Samsonite luggage to BioWare games and even service companies.
Wine?
I didn’t know epic games developed that.
I never said epic made wine.
Wine is like 99% of proton. Historically it was mostly sposored by Collabora and I think they were doing it so they clould run some windows programs on mac (my memory is fuzzy, was a long time ago).
Valve came later. There were already out-of-tree patches speciffically for games. The wine team didn’t put those in because they are hacks while wines aim is 100% compatibility with windows.
As those patches grew, stuff like wine-staging emerged that would massage those patches into what the wine project would accept. And even later proton was born (i think from some guys repo, i think valve hired him).
If you want to attribute something to valve, then ACO is a better option. It’s amazing.
I’m just a bit annoyed that nobody praises wine while everybody speaks like it was all valve.
I never said epic made wine
You implied it by responding with “Wine?” to the question “Has epic developed anything similar to proton?” 🤦♂️
Yes yes whatever i dont care
I’m really tired of seeing this idiot quoted.
Reminder: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has defended child pornography, saying that stopping it is “gatekeeping”.
Please link to a source when you say things like that.
Well… duh. The guy runs a competing storefront who’s only claims to fame are:
- Spending a bunch of money for timed exclusivity and free giveaways, rather than building out core features.
- They give devs a better cut than Steam to claim moral high ground.
… that’s it, that’s all the reasons to use Epic, unless you want to play Fortnite or participate in an Early Access period where they chose Epic to reduce the overwhelming amount of feedback like Hades.
No instead epic charges 12%, and if you use unreal engine but don’t sell on egs they get a 5% royalty fee on all your sales. Sure those number are lower but egs isn’t out here “empowering” devs
if you use unreal engine but don’t sell on egs they get a 5% royalty fee on all your sales.
Sounds like abusing market power.
100%. Valve needs to start suing Epic for their game engine monopoly. It’s not about Valve it’s about protecting gamers.
Epic would charge Steam’s fees if they had Steam’s marketshare.
Everyone thinking they care about creators or customers is a fucking moron.
Out of all the digital stores Steam arguably offers by far the most actual functionality and features for its cut. It’s still too high, but it’s possibly the least egregious example vs Apple, Google etc
It’s only too high if they demand exclusivity.
And they don’t.
They are providing PLENTY of value to anyone who is listing their games there.
Would I like to see them do more now for small and independent outfits? I would! but 30% isn’t that much comparatively to the old days of buying physically distributed things in a brick and mortar store.
I remember buying final fantasy 2 (4) on snes and it cost 95$ US this was 1988 or 1989
Which was about 129 CAD (the exchange rate is between usd then and now is about the same conveniently for this tidbit)
Today after years of inflation it would cost about 250-260 USD or 340-355 CAD
I don’t fucking miss those days at all. And while there are multiple factors here in play, this is entirely fair to charge silksong 6 dollars ish per sale on a 20 dollar sale whilst the failing AAA games 30 dollars on a 90 dollar sale. There is a cost involved and it is because of steam, specifically steam, that made digital distribution what it is today. And by that I mean they have set the standard for what is a healthy location to sell your digital goods.
And to give an example of what garbage (yes you Tim Sweeney you giant whiny fecal faced fuck) digital distribution for games would look like if steam didnt actually do a great job, look at books.
Buying books on through amazon you pay more for them then you used to for a physical copy of the book itself.
I was almost forgetting Tim’s whole deal seems to be antagonizing more successful companies than his.
He wants access to massive user bases for fortnite without having to pay anything to the platforms. That’s why he’s so intent on attacking Steam, Apple and Google. Steam would be a massive increase in revenue even with a 30% cut going to steam for epic, but mutual benefit isn’t in vogue at the moment.
Being obviously self-interested doesn’t make him wrong about app store monopolies, whether Apple, Google, or Valve.
RIP Mandy
I would use other words, but I don’t think you are actually interested in understanding market power, coercion, or network effects. It is a little tricky, but if you’re not just shitposting in bad faith, Lina Khan has a great paper on digital platform monopolies and Matt Stoller has a good podcast on Valvle’s monopoly in particular. Or does Matt Stoller also not understand what a monopoly is, according to you?
Appeal to expertise is not an appeal to authority. Otherwise we could never cite scientists, epidemiologists, or other experts. You might be interested in the fallacy of equivocation.
But Epic is super successful. Its Unreal Engine has almost the entire gaming landscape in a stranglehold and is making big gains in film productions.
Fortnite is one of the most successful games on Earth and EGS exclusive Rocket League recently achieved one million concurrent players.
