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Epic reduce their cut to 0% for the first $1 million in revenue for devs on the Epic Games Store
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Here's a different take, as a game dev: Epic actual employs quite a few people who work with Linux. The Unreal engine (and even, to a certain degree, editor) has native support for Linux. The reasons they're not including Linux support in their store front are two fold: 1) There aren't enough pure Linux users to matter - 0.1% of an already small user base is negligible. 2) The only serious Linux user base in gaming relates to the Steam Deck, a product that pushes a rival (and the dominant) store front. While Valve's move to push Linux gaming is brilliant for us gamers, it also kind of cements us in their camp. There is absolutely no reason for Epic to support Linux in anyway, and it absolutely supports their bottom line to attack it. And, no, it isn't because of any David v. Goliath tale of a little guy standing up to a brute: it's because a fellow giant has decided to ally itself with Linux, and all of us have - invariably - been shuffled into their camp. I think the Epic Games Store has a place in this world as a niche storefront with limited visibility but higher access to sales profits as a result of that. They'll never grow to the size of Steam, and that's okay. The largest storefront in the world supports Linux not just on its platform, but by developing tools for everyone that makes Linux gaming viable. That is enough, IMO.
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So what does Steam's revenue share look like in comparison?Steam takes 30% at first, and there is a discount after tens of millions of dollars in sales. Steam offers a ton of benefits for game companies through steam, such as the Friends list, reviews, having a way to show live play from the store page, and a bunch of other things. There is a reason that everyone is flocking to steam, and that 30% cut isn't keeping anyone away.
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Steam really needs something like this. Even the first 100k would be a great start for boosting indie devs. Instead they do the opposite and reward the big players. >Steam actually reduces their cut as you hit certain milestones. For your first $10M in sales, they take that standard 30%. Hit the $10M mark, and their cut drops to 25% for sales between $10M and $50M. Push past $50M, and Steam only takes 20%.
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> I definitely want Steam to lose some market share I want them to have *some* competition...Yeah. I mean, same thing. The point is you ideally want multiple players in the PC market competing with each other on features and approach that are all viable, sustainable and give users and developers a better deal as middlemen. I don't want Steam to go away, it's an insanely good client and a great piece of software. But I don't want every game having to be on Steam no matter what and only doing GoG or Epic or Xbox if they are being given a deal or for ideological reasons.
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This post did not contain any content.This goes along with their 0% engine fees
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Yeah. I mean, same thing. The point is you ideally want multiple players in the PC market competing with each other on features and approach that are all viable, sustainable and give users and developers a better deal as middlemen. I don't want Steam to go away, it's an insanely good client and a great piece of software. But I don't want every game having to be on Steam no matter what and only doing GoG or Epic or Xbox if they are being given a deal or for ideological reasons.
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Steam takes 30% at first, and there is a discount after tens of millions of dollars in sales. Steam offers a ton of benefits for game companies through steam, such as the Friends list, reviews, having a way to show live play from the store page, and a bunch of other things. There is a reason that everyone is flocking to steam, and that 30% cut isn't keeping anyone away.User base and brand loyalty Nothing about what Valve does but you can’t afford to not be on Steam
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Epic only does it because they know they're the underdog. If that were to one day become untrue they would never do anything like this again.
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You have given money laundering via making terrible games a suspicious amount of thought. I mean, one could argue that this is on Steam to manage, and that the way to manage it shouldn't be "we'll just keep 30%". It was Steam who spent an inordinate amount of effort and terrible half-assed attempts automating game curation so they could have fewer people looking at approving games the way other first parties do. If Valve wants to Uberify game distribution they have an onus on moderation and on protecting the developers using their platform. But that's irrelevant because nobody needs them to lower their cut to 0%. 20% would be great. 10% would be fantastic. Flipping the current order of things to give more money back to smaller games and keep more money from bigger games would be more than good enough. Whatever arbitrary bar you think would stop this entirely imaginary scheme they could meet and it'd still be an improvement. Hell, I have never laundered money, but from what I hear out there 30% may not be enough to put a stop to that. That may be a decent return for some squeaky clean money out of Unreal asset flips. Should Valve set their cut to 50%? You know, in the interest of international security? That was a serious reach, friend.
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And steam doesn't do it at all. One approach is objectively better for the little guys than the other.
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Reminder that the world's biggest money makers in PC gaming are not on Steam. Minecraft isn't (it's on Microsoft Store and a stand-alone web store), Fortnite isn't (it's EGS exclusive), Roblox isn't (its own store), League of Legends and Valorant aren't (Riot Launcher and EGS),...
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User base and brand loyalty Nothing about what Valve does but you can’t afford to not be on SteamSteam is, in my opinion, way better for the user (even if it may be worse for the developer). Epic lacks features that are important to me like reviews, the ability to view your library in a browser, warnings about DRM, Linux support, a hole bunch of features to discover games, a workshop, big picture mode. Additionally, in my experience at least, their official launcher under Windows is a buggy mess compared to steam.
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Here's a different take, as a game dev: Epic actual employs quite a few people who work with Linux. The Unreal engine (and even, to a certain degree, editor) has native support for Linux. The reasons they're not including Linux support in their store front are two fold: 1) There aren't enough pure Linux users to matter - 0.1% of an already small user base is negligible. 2) The only serious Linux user base in gaming relates to the Steam Deck, a product that pushes a rival (and the dominant) store front. While Valve's move to push Linux gaming is brilliant for us gamers, it also kind of cements us in their camp. There is absolutely no reason for Epic to support Linux in anyway, and it absolutely supports their bottom line to attack it. And, no, it isn't because of any David v. Goliath tale of a little guy standing up to a brute: it's because a fellow giant has decided to ally itself with Linux, and all of us have - invariably - been shuffled into their camp. I think the Epic Games Store has a place in this world as a niche storefront with limited visibility but higher access to sales profits as a result of that. They'll never grow to the size of Steam, and that's okay. The largest storefront in the world supports Linux not just on its platform, but by developing tools for everyone that makes Linux gaming viable. That is enough, IMO.Where are you getting 0.1%? According to [Steam Hardware Survey](https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey) Linux is over 2% of Steam Users. This puts Linux way ahead of Mac which supported by Epic
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This post did not contain any content.Is this an apology for the bad performance issues of UE5?
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Reminder that the world's biggest money makers in PC gaming are not on Steam. Minecraft isn't (it's on Microsoft Store and a stand-alone web store), Fortnite isn't (it's EGS exclusive), Roblox isn't (its own store), League of Legends and Valorant aren't (Riot Launcher and EGS),...Yeah. And that's a fantastic showcase of the bar you need to hit to not be effectively toiling in the Steam mines. Assassin's Creed, FIFA, Call of Duty? Not big enough. Still have to deal with Steam. It takes being *significantly bigger than the entire Epic store* to even consider not doing Steam on PC. And none of those is even close to having a viable platform for third party releases outside of Epic, which is perhaps the last one standing on that front and currently not managing to get a foothold. And judging by the rabid fanboy backlash anytime they try to do something nice to attract devs, not even finding a path towards one at any point in the future, either. That's a bad look for competition on the PC market. There aren't that many Fortnites or Minecrafts coming in the future. Gaming investment is drying up and gaming is becoming a cash business, rather than an investment business. And the cash flows to Valve.
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Until it doesnt and your entire game library is done...For generic SteamWorks integration, there already exists a open source DLL called Goldberg Emulator. If publishers opt for real DRM, the games are not available on GOG anyway. Also, downloading and backing up the games have to be done by yourself before the storefront goes bust. Distributing GOG games outside of GOG is a copyright violation, unless the copyright holders explicitly allow it. So, to sum up: You can backup DRM-free Steam games and make them work with little effort.
