Discussion Thoughts on Epic?

Neptune

Member
Do you support the Epic store as a Steam contender?
Would you buy a game on there?
Would you release a game on there?

Any thoughts welcome~
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
Do you support the Epic store as a Steam contender?
Yes, competition is good for consumers, whether the competitors themselves like it or not. It breeds innovation and change.

Would you buy a game on there?
Yes and I have. I have also acquired plenty of the free offerings, some that are just sitting there waiting on the time to get to them.

Would you release a game on there?
If I had a game that they would take, I certainly would. If I used their engine, it would be an even better deal(and I may use their engine if I ever get to the 3d project I have on the backburner).
 
Do you support the Epic store as a Steam contender?
Yes; 100%. Steam needs actual competition.

Would you buy a game on there?
Not yet. I dislike how they handled their first major push (specifically, their making exclusives of already Kickstarted games) enough that I'm not buying from them until they actually do the most basic thing to show they care about the consumer. Once Epic adds the ability to read and post consumer reviews as well as a freaking shopping cart, I will be more than willing to spend money there.

Would you release a game on there?
Simultaneous release with other storefronts? Absolutely. Exclusivity? Depends on the deal.
 
Simultaneous release with other storefronts? Absolutely. Exclusivity? Depends on the deal.
This is something that I often prematurely think about. I definitely wouldn't want to sell out after how many years I've spent on my FPS wanting to get it out there to as many people as possible, but I also am in my 30's making way less than I should be at this point because of my focus on this damn game for so long while pining for my dream car, so I also wouldn't necessarily want to give up a shortcut to financial success just for artistic integrity on a potentially sinking ship.
 
This is something that I often prematurely think about. I definitely wouldn't want to sell out after how many years I've spent on my FPS wanting to get it out there to as many people as possible, but I also am in my 30's making way less than I should be at this point because of my focus on this damn game for so long while pining for my dream car, so I also wouldn't necessarily want to give up a shortcut to financial success just for artistic integrity on a potentially sinking ship.
It's less a matter of "artistic integrity" and more of a financial concern.

If you're getting an exclusivity offer from Epic—or heck, even getting accepted to the EGS—the assumption should be that your game is going to already be moderately popular. You'd be easily making 5 to 6 figures/year on Steam. Will the exclusivity payout be more than you expect from a normal release? If it's less than you expect to make over the exclusivity period, but you get it up-front, I wouldn't consider that a wise financial decision in most cases.

Sales are not going to be very good compared to a normal release. Figures for Epic-exclusive games are notably absent almost everywhere, and Epic's info on the amount of money spent by customers on 3rd party games was not encouraging. Not insignificant is the hit to your reputation from the mass of diehard EGS haters. Can you afford this as an indie? If your specialty is in niche genres, you might not be able to. Can you handle the PR? Some devs have made fools of themselves by making passive-aggressive comments or even been straight-up antagonistic towards "the haters" (i.e. potential customers) in their PR statements regarding Epic exclusivity.
 
Last edited:
Interesting, so what are these haters hating about - exclusivity deal games?
A variety of reasons. Here are some I've seen; stupid or reasonable:
  • Exclusivity in general. Whether it's from artificial platform fragmentation or because they think devs are being "bribed."
  • Because they poached exclusives off of platforms they were already committed to. Games that were already listed on Steam became Epic exclusive. Kickstarted games that committed to giving out Steam keys became Epic exclusive. Kickstarted games were prevented from releasing the DRM-free copies they committed to to become Epic exclusive.
  • They don't like Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. He was very vocal about his disdain for the PC market for many years, and still tends to come off as abrasive when he interacts with people.
  • They feel the EGS itself offers a horrible experience. Website is slow, buggy, less features, etc. I really can't overstate just how few features it had. The EGS on launch didn't even compete feature-wise with Steam on launch—in 2003. The client is slow and compounds all these problems.
  • Epic made Fortnite. (yes, I have seen someone unironically use this as a reason)
  • They don't like Tencent's 40% stake in Epic.
  • Epic getting into a stupid legal spat money fight with Apple.
  • Epic doesn't support Linux
  • Epic doesn't support some currencies

Overall, a lot of it stems from an unfathomably horrible first impression. Ironically, people's initial reactions to Steam were much the same up until around 2006. That kind of impression takes heaps of goodwill to change. I hope they're able to push through and offer something unique to compete.
 
Last edited:

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Yeah, not a fan of exclusivity either. It corrupts the market, because the stores then compete not for quality of the distribution service, but the quality of the distributed content. One often ends up cluttering their disk with many games distribution clients just to get specific titles.

Still, it's still not as bad as video streaming services, I suppose, because at least you don't have to subscribe to use a specific game distribution service - you pay for games themselves.

Exclusivity aside, I'm fine with more competition among the distribution services; there's always potential some will add nice value to players and/or the developers (maybe by payment schemes, or maybe making games more discoverable/fitting etc.). My first choice right now (i.e. which service would be listed first in my game announcements etc.) would be itch.io, in large part because of pay-what-you-want scheme which I find more potentially profitable (I don't have hard data on that, though).
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
Do you support the Epic store as a Steam contender?
Would you buy a game on there?
Would you release a game on there?

Any thoughts welcome~
Honestly, I really dislike this kind of topic... If you want other people's opinions and you want to spark a discussion, you should ALWAYS try and give your own opinion too, as well as reasons for why you are looking for the opinions of others. I personally feel that creating topics like this is cowardly and usually only done by someone looking to spark controversy but with no real interest in the subject either way (I'm not saying that this is the case, I'm saying that this is how I feel when I see topics devoid of any actual discussion from the creator themselves...). If you create a topic to discuss something, at least explain why you are making the topic and give it some direction...

You said any thoughts welcome and those are my thoughts. Now...

Tell us what YOU think. :)
 

O.Stogden

Member
@Alice
The fees part of all distribution services is a little muddled unfortunately.

Steam take fees and taxes out of your gross revenue, and leave you with a net revenue, and then they take 30% off your net revenue.

Itch show you how much money your sales have made, and then when you request payment, charge you extra fees related to PayPal processing fees per sale etc. Which works out at a fixed fee, plus a percentage fee.

For example, some payment details from Itch for my sales, for a game charged at $4:

$18.70 gross revenue (the amount people paid for my game)

Payment processing was charged at $2.22

Itch then take $1.86 as their share. (Set to 10% for this)

Itch then take $3 to verify tax information (This is a one off payment for your first payout)

Out of $18.70 sales, I received $12.02, would have been $15.02 if not for the tax fee.

Of course if you have a $20 game (Which you might struggle to sell on Itch), the payment fees would be a lower percentage of your sales, but for a $4 game, you roughly end up paying 10% to the payment processor, and then whatever percentage you set to give Itch as well. Ultimately, Itch will pay more than Steam, if you have them set to <15%, you'll be earning more on Itch than Steam, but Steam brings in far far more customers than Itch, so in the grand scheme of things, you'll make more money on Steam.

I have no idea how Epic handles this side of things, they're a fair bit more closed off than Itch and Steam, with them only accepting basically "verified" developers.

Because of that I don't have much thoughts on them, I think the client (as others have said) is awful, it's laggy for no reason and isn't nice to use, but I'm fairly neutral when it comes to the whole "evil" companies thing, so I don't feel strongly one way or the other about them. They've done some arguably dodgy things, but that's par for the course for any large company. You won't find a big company out there that hasn't done it, or if you do, they're probably just good at hiding it. :p
 
D

Deleted member 16767

Guest
@Alice


Of course if you have a $20 game (Which you might struggle to sell on Itch), the payment fees would be a lower percentage of your sales, but for a $4 game, you roughly end up paying 10% to the payment processor, and then whatever percentage you set to give Itch as well. Ultimately, Itch will pay more than Steam, if you have them set to <15%, you'll be earning more on Itch than Steam, but Steam brings in far far more customers than Itch, so in the grand scheme of things, you'll make more money on Steam.
Steam holds your game/app around their finger. Whereas itch.io is more anarchistic (note: not democratic). Steam also has a lot of toxic reviewers, whereas in itch.io they post and ask for the problem at hand. If you want to put your game or app on Steam, then be ready for toxicity.
 

O.Stogden

Member
Steam holds your game/app around their finger. Whereas itch.io is more anarchistic (note: not democratic). Steam also has a lot of toxic reviewers, whereas in itch.io they post and ask for the problem at hand. If you want to put your game or app on Steam, then be ready for toxicity.
I think you can have problems with both, in my experience, I've had to deal with more hate on Itch than on Steam, admittedly I've only released 1 game on Steam, and I've had 5 or 6 projects on Itch.

But I've been accused of uploading viruses and endangering peoples computers on both, and saying that my games are a waste of money etc. on both, so I think that's just the internet, be prepared for hate whenever you put yourself out there.

Might be a reason why Epic don't have a review system yet, they might want some form of moderation in place before they do it...
 
D

Deleted member 16767

Guest
That's true, Stogden. However, I think Epic Games are going the same route as Itch.io from the twitter news I read. I might have misread it, but it seems like they want to give the developers more control.
 

Neptune

Member
@Nocturne I didn't have really any opinion. I don't have any hard feelings toward Epic, but I've also never used their store and I was not familiar with the "Epic hate"... I just wanted to see how developers were perceived after releasing a game on EGS, and why.
 

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
I think it's more convenient to have everything on just one platform. This goes for any kind of media. I liked when everything was still on Netflix, or every music on Spotify, every video on YouTube, but with more and more competition, your favourite media gets spread/scattered around many different platforms which becomes overwhelming. Personally, 95% of all the games I play are on Steam, and the rest on Nintendo handhelds. I'd love to keep it that way. I see my Steam profile as a personal memory photo album, I've had it since I was a child, and still, as an adult, all games I ever played, all the dates of my achievements, all my screenshot are still on the same place. I love Steam, and I want them to contain all PC games. So personally I'm not a fan of Origin or Epic.
 

Neptune

Member
I love Steam, and I want them to contain all PC games. So personally I'm not a fan of Origin or Epic.
I understand and participate in consumer convenience, but personally I'd prefer to see more competition to level the playing field, hopefully being more fair for everyone in the long term.
Granted I can't tell if you're being a troll as usual and I'm just replying to... Some sort of sarcastic mocking.
 
I understand and participate in consumer convenience, but personally I'd prefer to see more competition to level the playing field, hopefully being more fair for everyone in the long term.
Granted I can't tell if you're being a troll as usual and I'm just replying to... Some sort of sarcastic mocking.
You can't just ask for thoughts and then accuse someone of trolling when they give you their thoughts...

Canta's view is very common. Steam didn't become the juggernaut it is today artificially. People use Steam because they want to. It offers so much value to consumer that it's nigh impossible for other storefronts to compete on a QoL/feature basis. Trying to ask someone who is purely a consumer to give up those conveniences solely in the name of "fairness" is silly.
 
Last edited:

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
Yes, I was serious this time! o_O
I am so fond of Steam, and I don't mind it being a monopoly, but that's because I love Steam so much. I enjoy almost every aspect of it, so I'm happy to see it thrive.
I'm so used to it that for me it's hard to imagine a PC game industry with different platforms that are all equal.
Often, for me, it's it's hard to go out of my comfort zone, and in this case, my comfort zone is Steam, and any other platforms intimidate me.
 
D

Deleted member 16767

Guest
Well, just an update on Epic Store. They still are seeking only "good fits" for their store. So yeah, good luck getting on there everyone!
 
Top