How are they affording this? It can't be a sustainable model, right?

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.

Fortnite, and it's not. The store loses them hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

> Steam keeps getting slammed from both sides. They keep getting accused of being a monopoly, , while also getting accused of their rates. ...those are not different sides? The only reason they can charge such absurd rates is because of their position in the marketplace.

What they had been charging was about what other stores have been charging. Do you think a company that was by far in the lead over other stores dropping their prices further wouldn't increase their user base even further, making it even harder for competition? They already have active legal cases against them for monopolizing.

Sure. They also chose not to have their own layer of controller translation or their own game recording backend. Linux is 2% of the market even on Steam with official support. DRM-free means DRM-free for everybody. I would like more official Linux support, but I'll take good unofficial support in the meantime. There's no workaround for monpolistic positions or mandatory DRM-free policies.

Do they even have one? I thought it's rare situation when the product speaks for itself.

How are they affording this? It can't be a sustainable model, right?

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.

> I’ll take good unofficial support in the meantime. And that unofficial support is brought to you by Valve's contributions to Wine, DXVK, RADV, LibSDL,... > There’s no workaround for monpolistic positions Considering that the only monopolist in PC gaming is Microsoft, the workaround for that Windows monopoly is to spend money on products that make non-Windows PC gaming better and currently that's almost exclusively Valve.

What they had been charging was about what other stores have been charging. Do you think a company that was by far in the lead over other stores dropping their prices further wouldn't increase their user base even further, making it even harder for competition? They already have active legal cases against them for monopolizing.

> Assassin’s Creed, FIFA, Call of Duty? Not big enough. Still have to deal with Steam. They don't have to. OK, maybe Microsoft has to because they are the actual monopolist and making the Activision Blizzard franchises available on storefronts other than Microsoft's own is to keep the watchdogs away. Also, none of the franchises are exclusive to Steam, so Steam has no monopoly. > It takes being significantly bigger than the entire Epic store to even consider not doing Steam on PC. That sentence makes no sense. Fortnite is exclusive to EGS, therefore it cannot be "significantly bigger than the entire Epic store". Steam has no policies that forbid offering games on other stores, Epic has policies that makes certain games timed exclusives to EGS. What makes EGS unattractive compared to Steam is the simple fact that Epic chooses to most prominently display their own games on EGS. Valve does front page banners, fests, that window that opens with every Steam launch, etc. and goes out of their way to make everything from big launches as well as solo dev indie games discoverable. Epic has it in their own hands to make EGS more than the Fortnite launcher. They could promote other EGS games inside Fortnite but they don't. They host concerts inside Fortnite but nothing to promote 3rd party EGS games, for examle.

I mean, cool. I don't need Valve to be a moustache-twirling cartoon villain to not like them having a monopolistic position. They make a great platform, I generally like their hardware and, much as it is a byproduct of them trying to cut Microsoft out of the loop, I think it's great that they are basing their efforts on Linux. They still shouldn't become the sole platform for PC gaming and that means they should lose some market share, though. You really, really, really don't need to pick a side between multibillion dollar corporations and support it like it's a sports team.

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.

*"Bite my shiny metal ass, penguins!"* ~ Epic CEO ^(paraphrased)^

Do they officially support Linux yet? No heroic doesn't count.

Fortnite, and it's not. The store loses them hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

How are they affording this? It can't be a sustainable model, right?

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.