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"Steam Was Killing PC Gaming", Former Valve Dev Says

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Quick, someone remind me, what cut was brick-and-mortar distributioin taking..?
Depends but from my information of the early 00's it was around 30% when you're counting the store, returns, distribution and manufacturing.
 

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Every point in that article is laughable.
Absolutely nothing funny about it.

and its their own fault for letting status quo rule the roost.
The only alternative is career change, usually contract programming or design work that has nothing to do with games. Hell, a lot of indie developers take on contract work to pay the bills because game sales don't.

Join a union and strike till the conditions improve.
There aren't any.

Quick, someone remind me, what cut was brick-and-mortar distributioin taking..?
Roughly 50% which is why Steam didn't have much trouble getting publishers to sign. Even EA did up until their launching Origin. Steam was a bargain. Sadly, Steam's ability to drive sales for publishers has been anemic in the last 3+ years. Publishers are chomping at the bit for a better deal. Discord looked like it was lining up to be the first to capitalize on that but then Epic Games Store came swooping an even better offer. That said, I don't think either store have had any trouble getting sign ups but the buzz is definitely in EGS's favor.

Keep in mind inflation and the scope of especially AAA games. AAA games are getting more and more expensive to make and market but the MSRP is not. For a time, Steam's better compensated for the shift. Costs kept rising and, because of sales events, people grew massive backlogs. Now it's harder than ever for publishers to make a sale. EGS and Discord are allowing publishers to keep more money again compensating for the growth in production costs and inflation.
 
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hat

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I must admit, there seems to be a big problem with Steam's cut. Evidently, EA, for example, decided it was cheaper to launch their own service than pay Steam for theirs. That means it's cheaper for EA to pay for a bunch of servers and bandwidth to support Origin than it is to use Steam's service. Of course, that's an easy decision when you're EA and you publish a ton of games. Epic was smart to scoop up games from smaller publishers like 4A Games. If you offer a small publisher, who can't afford to start their own service, a place to put your game for a significantly lower cut than Steam, and you get a bonus on top of it, who would refuse? 4A doesn't care if their game is on Steam or not, as long as it's somewhere. And it is, on the Epic store, and it's not hard to sign up there. Steam is absolutely going to continue losing this battle until they become more publisher friendly.
 
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I must admit, there seems to be a big problem with Steam's cut. Evidently, EA, for example, decided it was cheaper to launch their own service than pay Steam for theirs. That means it's cheaper for EA to pay for a bunch of servers and bandwidth to support Origin than it is to use Steam's service. Of course, that's an easy decision when you're EA and you publish a ton of games. Epic was smart to scoop up games from smaller publishers like 4A Games. If you offer a small publisher, who can't afford to start their own service, a place to put your game for a significantly lower cut than Steam, and you get a bonus on top of it, who would refuse? 4A doesn't care if their game is on Steam or not, as long as it's somewhere. And it is, on the Epic store, and it's not hard to sign up there. Steam is absolutely going to continue losing this battle until they become more publisher friendly.

EA had a bunch of servers and bandwidth for multiplayer game servers in the very first place.
They had the resource.
It is reasonable to do their own game store for a higher profit.
Just like Amazon cloud computing service as a byproduct of Amazon's existing servers for handling holiday sales.

EPIC scoop up these "exclusive" games because the EPIC store lacks everything.
It is barely holding up because Fortnite still relevant.
Once Fortnite dies, very high chances the EPIC store dies with it.
Therefore they had to make these "exclusive" deals with publishers, trying to populate their storefront.

The battle wasn't EPIC store vs Steam.
It is EPIC store vs Fortnite 's remaining lifespan.
If EPIC store wasn't good enough to attract ppl before Fortnite dies, it dies with it, unless they come up with another big game.


Edited: EPIC -> EPIC store.
 
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So you're saying the Epic Store wasn't going to last because they didn't have anything attracting attention to their platform, except Fortnite. How do you solve that problem? You get more games on your store, big titles like Metro and Borderlands which will attract a lot of attention. You do that by offering them a better deal than what they're currently faced with. I mean, I'm not gonna pay $8000 for a car when a competing dealership down the road has the same car for $6000.
 
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If the result of this is HL3, Portal 3, TF3, etc. then count me in.
 
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So you're saying the Epic Store wasn't going to last because they didn't have anything attracting attention to their platform, except Fortnite. How do you solve that problem? You get more games on your store, big titles like Metro and Borderlands which will attract a lot of attention. You do that by offering them a better deal than what they're currently faced with. I mean, I'm not gonna pay $8000 for a car when a competing dealership down the road has the same car for $6000.

No, you cannot pay $8000 for the car (even if you are willing to).
The car is a timed exclusive in a particular store, you are forced to pay $6000 , or any amount they wanted.
You have No Choice.
That's the problem.

EPIC is not the saving grace of the industry.
They are just trying to do their own monopoly.
 
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No one can really become a proper Steam competitor unless they compete in all areas. Steam has solidified it's community greater than others. The flaw in the plan of all these devs is thinking about the money first, features later. Origin launched stripped down, Uplay stripped down, Epic has only followed suit. Steam has over a decade now building it's market and community. None of the big publishers ever look at that and say, how can we beat them? Both EA and Epic have done the same thing "Throw free games at them!" But as Origin has shown, throwing free games doesn't work. EA finally stopped doing that too.

No one looks at creating ways to actively keep players interested in a platform like Steam has. Until a competitor does that, Steam isn't going to really feel enough pressure.
 
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If EPIC wasn't good enough to attract ppl before Fortnite dies, it dies with it, unless they come up with another big game.

Epic is not going anywhere with Unreal Engine around. They may not Scrooge McDuckin' it but they won't be scavenging either.
 

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If the result of this is HL3, Portal 3, TF3, etc. then count me in.
It will not happen. Too much lead time needed for questionable returns down the road. Valve will jist keep distributing games.

If they are smart though, they will become more competitive so they can keep that easy income (much easier than making games).
 
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No one looks at creating ways to actively keep players interested in a platform like Steam has.

What is more interesting than playing games? What do you do on Steam that is better than playing games?
 

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What is more interesting than playing games? What do you do on Steam that is better than playing games?
Don’t you know? People apparently play Steam! :rockout:
 
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Epic is not going anywhere with Unreal Engine around. They may not Scrooge McDuckin' it but they won't be scavenging either.
Oh my bad.
You are right, EPIC is the company name.

I should have stated "EPIC store" instead.
 

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No, you cannot pay $8000 for the car (even if you are willing to).
The car is a timed exclusive in a particular store, you are forced to pay $6000 , or any amount they wanted.
You have No Choice.
That's the problem.

EPIC is not the saving grace of the industry.
They are just trying to do their own monopoly.
I'm not speaking from the consumer's standpoint, I'm speaking from the publisher's standpoint. 4A, for example, had the choice between Steam and their 30% cut, and Epic with whatever cut they take (I think it was 18%? A good deal lower than Steam's cut, anyway) and a bonus on top of that. If I am a publisher, why would I go with Steam? Even if I take the bonus for the timed exclusivity deal, my game is still going to be available on Epic. There is nothing stopping consumers from registering an account with Epic to get my game, unless they simply refuse to do so because they have to have it on Steam, which they will, eventually. This likely insignificantly small group of stragglers waiting 6 months to a year for my game isn't going to affect my bottom line very much, so I still come out on top by going with Epic. In turn, my placing my game exclusively on Epic, my game (and other games which Epic does the same for) is going to boost Epic's popularity. The vast majority of the consumers are still going to buy the game, regardless if it's exclusive to Epic or not.

So, it's not about the consumer. It never has been. It's not about Epic breaking up a monopoly either (although the idea that there is any such monopoly in this market is something I find debatable). Epic is just trying to get a slice of that digital distribution pie, and they're doing it by offering an attractive offer to publishers. And it seems to be working. It's not about what's good for the lowly consumer, it's about what's good for the big dogs in the industry.

In a perfect world (for consumers, that is) every game would be available on every platform. That means Metro Exodus would be found on Steam, HL2 could be found on GOG, and Borderlands 3 would be found in stores without a launcher attached to it. But what's good for us isn't necessarily good for the big players, which is why things like this happen. The big dogs are all fighting to get as big of a piece of the pie as they can, which is how we wound up with publisher specific launchers like Uplay and Origin. It's how we wound up with Steam's 30% cut, and how we have exclusivity deals with Epic.
 
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I'm not speaking from the consumer's standpoint, I'm speaking from the publisher's standpoint..

From a publisher's standpoint, you also have to think as a consumer.
If you don't , you came up with anti-consumer acts like this "EPIC timed exclusive" , which hurts both sales and company reputation.

The extra 12% cut from EPIC won't justify the lost of player base and company reputation.
Let say Metro Exodus. (Exclude any Extra Bonus under the table)
If you check the numbers, the pre-order on steam was $60 and $50 on EPIC.
If your game sells for $60, when there are 100 ppls bought your game on steam, you get $4200.
On EPIC however, $50 x100 x 0.82 = $4100.

You made LESS money for the same amount of customers.
And does EPIC had more player base than STEAM ? NO WAY, at least for now.
And there are some "region lock" feature presented on EPIC which further limits its player base.

(Exclude any Extra Bonus under the table) They lose money for doing this "EPIC timed exclusive".

Then we talked about company reputation.
Although the decision was made by DeepSilver, 4A Games still took a hit, really badly.
The EPIC Store also took a hit in company reputation, too.
They have to announce the Borderlands 3 for 6 months "timed exclusive" , why not a whole year like all the other games ? There are room for speculations.


So,
From a publisher's standpoint, signing a "Time exclusive" deal with EPIC is also a bad move.
You earn less and loses company reputation.
Oh of course the "Extra Bonus under the table" might have solved all these problems, which we have no information.


Anyway.
EPIC store isn't a saving grace,
They are just trying to make their own monopoly, like all the others in the industry.
Making Steam look bad doesn't make EPIC right.
 
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PC Gaming has been getting stronger year on year since the late 00's, but Steam has been killing it?

Wut.
 

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From a publisher's standpoint, you also have to think as a consumer.
If you don't , you came up with anti-consumer acts like this "EPIC timed exclusive" , which hurts both sales and company reputation.

The extra 12% cut from EPIC won't justify the lost of player base and company reputation.
Let say Metro Exodus. (Exclude any Extra Bonus under the table)
If you check the numbers, the pre-order on steam was $60 and $50 on EPIC.
If your game sells for $60, when there are 100 ppls bought your game on steam, you get $4200.
On EPIC however, $50 x100 x 0.82 = $4100.

You made LESS money for the same amount of customers.
And does EPIC had more player base than STEAM ? NO WAY, at least for now.
And there are some "region lock" feature presented on EPIC which further limits its player base.

(Exclude any Extra Bonus under the table) They lose money for doing this "EPIC timed exclusive".

Then we talked about company reputation.
Although the decision was made by DeepSilver, 4A Games still took a hit, really badly.
The EPIC Store also took a hit in company reputation, too.
They have to announce the Borderlands 3 for 6 months "timed exclusive" , why not a whole year like all the other games ? There are room for speculations.


So,
From a publisher's standpoint, signing a "Time exclusive" deal with EPIC is also a bad move.
You earn less and loses company reputation.
Oh of course the "Extra Bonus under the table" might have solved all these problems, which we have no information.


Anyway.
EPIC store isn't a saving grace,
They are just trying to make their own monopoly, like all the others in the industry.

But you are assuming the number of sales will be the same whether the price is $60 or $50. In the case of Metro Exodus that has not been the case. Exodus sold 2.5 times better on Epic than Last Light did on Steam. Part of that is due to Exodus being a more desirable game but bear in mind that on console it only sold 1.5 times better than Last Light. There are also future financial considerations for Publishers. If making their games timed exclusives on Epic gets Steam to lower their cut a little in the future to compete then that's more money that they will have to make better games. Obviously they could choose to just keep the extra money as profit also but either way it benefits Publishers to try to get Steam to lower their cut.
 
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That's because Valve knows their value.

lots of in-yo-face pictures and "pre-order now" and "coming soon" all over the place.

Hmmm. Let's see. Its April 2019.

Steam frontpage:

Take special note of the ordering of 'Browse by Genre' there: Free to Play and Early Access are top options. Why?! Simple: the vast majority of the 'valuable userbase' on Steam is always waiting for those 5 dollar deals during sales and has a backlog they'll never play. This is the frontpage that belongs to that group: old junk, free stuff, and a GOTY from years back. Another one of those 'featured' games was Counterstrike: Danger Zone. Two BR's that are dying fast and represent the lower end of the quality scale in this genre.

1554792885802.png



EGS: 50/50 pre order versus playable now, and 2 free games. That's a 33% split over free to play (but not actually free games), buy to play and play in future. Seems about right?

1554792935975.png


As far as I can tell the only difference here is (2016?) 2017-2018 games versus actually new ones, both offer a clean page and large pictures, Steam has an expansive search/filter navigation bar on the left.

But the actual content of that frontpage, it may be different for you, but you can rest assured that is what really counts. Steam Workshop modding on a few B-games is only fun for so long, and the userbase is fragmented over thousands of small, insignificant subcommunities that pop up as quickly as they die off.

You overestimate the resilience of the customer. They will cave and it already happens. People use Steam to play games, when they can't find anything interesting, they will move. But above all: people look at game releases, not whatever any store has on offer. They read a review, click through some sites and find a key. The EGS/Steam consideration comes later, for most.

They are just trying to do their own monopoly.

That is actually how business tends to work all over the place. Everyone wants to carve out their piece of the pie, and what better way to do it than with something nobody else can offer.

If everyone tries really hard, the end result is usually a pretty vibrant marketplace. If only one company tries hard, what you get is that Steam frontpage up here. Stagnation.

But you are assuming the number of sales will be the same whether the price is $60 or $50. In the case of Metro Exodus that has not been the case. Exodus sold 2.5 times better on Epic than Last Light did on Steam. Part of that is due to Exodus being a more desirable game but bear in mind that on console it only sold 1.5 times better than Last Light. There are also future financial considerations for Publishers. If making their games timed exclusives on Epic gets Steam to lower their cut a little in the future to compete then that's more money that they will have to make better games. Obviously they could choose to just keep the extra money as profit also but either way it benefits Publishers to try to get Steam to lower their cut.

I'd be careful with that news story. It includes some nasty spin as well with the numbers. Metro LL was on Steam but also available outside of it and it had a very rocky start. Its release coincided with THQ going under, and that is when Koch Media took over to save the day. The reception of Metro LL was good, but not stellar. That is why they made Redux as well, to get some more attention to the franchise and get compensation for fine tuning the engine. I think Redux is what made Metro big with a larger audience; the hardware had also caught up better and the engine ran better.

As with many other games, the Steam release was buried under a load of other releases. It was 'one of the many' places you could buy it. That is different from today. I don't doubt Exodus sold more than Metro LL or 2033 on Steam; but Steam never really sold the lion's share. Metro LL / Redux basically was a staggered launch spanning a full year.
 
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From a publisher's standpoint, you also have to think as a consumer.
If you don't , you came up with anti-consumer acts like this "EPIC timed exclusive" , which hurts both sales and company reputation.

The extra 12% cut from EPIC won't justify the lost of player base and company reputation.
Let say Metro Exodus. (Exclude any Extra Bonus under the table)
If you check the numbers, the pre-order on steam was $60 and $50 on EPIC.
If your game sells for $60, when there are 100 ppls bought your game on steam, you get $4200.
On EPIC however, $50 x100 x 0.82 = $4100.

You made LESS money for the same amount of customers.
And does EPIC had more player base than STEAM ? NO WAY, at least for now.
And there are some "region lock" feature presented on EPIC which further limits its player base.

(Exclude any Extra Bonus under the table) They lose money for doing this "EPIC timed exclusive".

Then we talked about company reputation.
Although the decision was made by DeepSilver, 4A Games still took a hit, really badly.
The EPIC Store also took a hit in company reputation, too.
They have to announce the Borderlands 3 for 6 months "timed exclusive" , why not a whole year like all the other games ? There are room for speculations.


So,
From a publisher's standpoint, signing a "Time exclusive" deal with EPIC is also a bad move.
You earn less and loses company reputation.
Oh of course the "Extra Bonus under the table" might have solved all these problems, which we have no information.


Anyway.
EPIC store isn't a saving grace,
They are just trying to make their own monopoly, like all the others in the industry.
Making Steam look bad doesn't make EPIC right.
There's loads of people playing Exodus via EGS. I don't think the playerbase or the publisher's rep was harmed. The truth is, millions will still buy the game, while the vocal minority oppose not having their game on Steam. And some of them, even, are probably still playing Exodus anyway, via Epic. Let's look at the review bombing as an example. I'm currently seeing 22,452 reviews on Steam for Metro: Last Light Redux, a game which was subject to review bombing. Even though these reviews are considered "mostly positive", let's assume every single one of these 22.5k reviews were negative. That's still nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who are playing Exodus on Epic.

I suspect most people who want the game are already playing it on Epic. There's probably a lot of sales Steam could have had, but instead those people made their purchase on the Epic store. That's more money for Epic, and more money for the publisher, who would have otherwise lost a larger amount from Steam's cut. And no, I don't think Epic is saving anyone, except themselves. They're doing what a business does: making the most money they can however possible. They're doing so by offering a more attractive deal than Steam, with an added bonus if they put their game on Epic exclusively (at least for a certain amount of time).

Sure, I'd rather have the game on Steam myself, and I may have it on Steam when it's on sale. Same for Borderlands 3. That's because I'm one of the few who actually is holding out for the Steam release, but I think I'm a somewhat rare case among all the others who are complaining about it. I have two main reasons for this. One is that all my games, except some old ones which I have discs for, are on Steam (with the exception of some fluff I have on Origin, which isn't even installed). The other is that Epic has yet to prove itself, and in fact has already successfully been attacked, so I'm not sure I want my personal info there just yet anyway, even if I didn't intend to keep all my games in one place.
 
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There's loads of people playing Exodus via EGS. I don't think the playerbase or the publisher's rep was harmed. The truth is, millions will still buy the game, while the vocal minority oppose not having their game on Steam. And some of them, even, are probably still playing Exodus anyway, via Epic. Let's look at the review bombing as an example. I'm currently seeing 22,452 reviews on Steam for Metro: Last Light Redux, a game which was subject to review bombing. Even though these reviews are considered "mostly positive", let's assume every single one of these 22.5k reviews were negative. That's still nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who are playing Exodus on Epic.

I suspect most people who want the game are already playing it on Epic. There's probably a lot of sales Steam could have had, but instead those people made their purchase on the Epic store. That's more money for Epic, and more money for the publisher, who would have otherwise lost a larger amount from Steam's cut. And no, I don't think Epic is saving anyone, except themselves. They're doing what a business does: making the most money they can however possible. They're doing so by offering a more attractive deal than Steam, with an added bonus if they put their game on Epic exclusively (at least for a certain amount of time).

Sure, I'd rather have the game on Steam myself, and I may have it on Steam when it's on sale. Same for Borderlands 3. That's because I'm one of the few who actually is holding out for the Steam release, but I think I'm a somewhat rare case among all the others who are complaining about it. I have two main reasons for this. One is that all my games, except some old ones which I have discs for, are on Steam (with the exception of some fluff I have on Origin, which isn't even installed). The other is that Epic has yet to prove itself, and in fact has already successfully been attacked, so I'm not sure I want my personal info there just yet anyway, even if I didn't intend to keep all my games in one place.

We just going to ignore the fact that Metro: Exodus was a highly advertised AAA Game compared to Metro: Last Light that was a AA Game at best? There was almost no marketing put into Metro: Last Light, and less than nothing but into Metro 2033. 2033 got by mostly by being very demanding and people picking it up for $5 on Steam as a benchmark for their new PC's. People aren't buying Metro: Exodus because they want to be on the EGS, they are buying Metro: Exodus in spite of that fact. The game was pushed by Deep Silver harder than any title they've published in the past. Just look at their previously published games, and most of them are A/AA titles with a few exceptions--I suppose Dead Island and Saints Row are the 2 biggest name titles they have prior to Metro: Exodus.
 

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As far as I can tell the only difference here is (2016?) 2017-2018 games versus actually new ones, both offer a clean page and large pictures, Steam has an expansive search/filter navigation bar on the left.
That's just on point for continuous revenue for devs/publishers. Games don't drown in the abyss of new releases - they get recirculated. All I care about is my whishlist and "browse by genre" with all filters.
Top section changes on every page refresh. After last year's filtering update, I no longer get myriads of voxelized/pixelated shit games, I no longer see any manga games, only the stuff that I'm actually interested in (or might be interested).
Other than that - just look at GOG. Structurally and content-wise it looks exactly the same (btw. WC and Diablo is on sale).

You really have forgotten how basic Steam was when it started, and how slowly they trickled their changes and updates in over a decade, huh?
Well, it took humanity several decamillenia to figure out that wiping ass after taking a shit is a good thing, that's why the modern men won't have an excuse walking around and stinking like goats.
When Steam started - there was no "big de-facto online game distributor", you had to develop features yourself, or steal interesting ideas from others (the Apple way).
In case of Epic: it's 2019 and you can build an e-Commerce portal in 2 clicks (or pay a few grand to a Eastern European outsourcing company to do the clicks, if you are too lazy). Plus they had a big advantage of having good examples (e.g GoG, Steam), bad examples (Bethesda Launcher), 4 years of data from Steamspy, and finally - being a multi-billion dollar corporation with backing from tencent - a Chinese multi-billion dollar corporation. Instead they chose to roll with their badly copied Origin look-alike with several years worth of backburner plans and bugs.
 
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There's loads of people playing Exodus via EGS. I don't think the playerbase or the publisher's rep was harmed. The truth is, millions will still buy the game, while the vocal minority oppose not having their game on Steam. And some of them, even, are probably still playing Exodus anyway, via Epic. Let's look at the review bombing as an example. I'm currently seeing 22,452 reviews on Steam for Metro: Last Light Redux, a game which was subject to review bombing. Even though these reviews are considered "mostly positive", let's assume every single one of these 22.5k reviews were negative. That's still nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who are playing Exodus on Epic.

I suspect most people who want the game are already playing it on Epic. There's probably a lot of sales Steam could have had, but instead those people made their purchase on the Epic store. That's more money for Epic, and more money for the publisher, who would have otherwise lost a larger amount from Steam's cut. And no, I don't think Epic is saving anyone, except themselves. They're doing what a business does: making the most money they can however possible. They're doing so by offering a more attractive deal than Steam, with an added bonus if they put their game on Epic exclusively (at least for a certain amount of time).

Sure, I'd rather have the game on Steam myself, and I may have it on Steam when it's on sale. Same for Borderlands 3. That's because I'm one of the few who actually is holding out for the Steam release, but I think I'm a somewhat rare case among all the others who are complaining about it. I have two main reasons for this. One is that all my games, except some old ones which I have discs for, are on Steam (with the exception of some fluff I have on Origin, which isn't even installed). The other is that Epic has yet to prove itself, and in fact has already successfully been attacked, so I'm not sure I want my personal info there just yet anyway, even if I didn't intend to keep all my games in one place.


You are completely missing my point.
My point is simple.
If there are X number of customers buying the game on steam.
With the same X amount of customers buying the game on EPIC store, they made LESS money on EPIC store when they are selling it for $50.
They will make more money if there is a bigger player base on EPIC than Steam but it is impossible right now.
So the publisher did not make more money.
So their claim is questionable.

Numbers won't lie.
Launching it on steam definitely earns more (Excluding any "Bonus under the table").


But you are assuming the number of sales will be the same whether the price is $60 or $50. In the case of Metro Exodus that has not been the case. Exodus sold 2.5 times better on Epic than Last Light did on Steam. Part of that is due to Exodus being a more desirable game but bear in mind that on console it only sold 1.5 times better than Last Light. There are also future financial considerations for Publishers. If making their games timed exclusives on Epic gets Steam to lower their cut a little in the future to compete then that's more money that they will have to make better games. Obviously they could choose to just keep the extra money as profit also but either way it benefits Publishers to try to get Steam to lower their cut.

Sales of LL and exodus is not comparable since the success of exodus is based on LL and the original Metro.
Using this figure to judge the selling platform is utterly pointless.
It is like saying PS1 is worst than PS2 cause MGS2 sold more copies than MGS1 .
Not to mention the first Metro and LL was not exclusive on steam either.
 
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That's just on point for continuous revenue for devs/publishers. Games don't drown in the abyss of new releases - they get recirculated. All I care about is my whishlist and "browse by genre" with all filters.
Top section changes on every page refresh. After last year's filtering update, I no longer get myriads of voxelized/pixelated shit games, I no longer see any manga games, only the stuff that I'm actually interested in (or might be interested).
Other than that - just look at GOG. Structurally and content-wise it looks exactly the same (btw. WC and Diablo is on sale).

Not to mention if you go through Steam's queue system, it refines what it shows you. As time goes on it filters out a lot of the junk that might populate the front page. When I looked at it I didn't even see PUBG. It was 1-2 F2P games (one of which I had installed in the past), mostly Indies that had recently released new content, and a handful of AAA titles that were newer (AC: Odyssey and Sekiro most notably).

You are completely missing my point.
My point is simple.
If there are X number of customers buying the game on steam.
With the same X amount of customers buying the game on EPIC store, they made LESS money on EPIC store when they are selling it for $50.
They will make more money if there is a bigger player base on EPIC than Steam but it is impossible right now.
So the publisher did not make more money.
So their claim is questionable.

Numbers won't lie.
Launching it on steam definitely earns more (Excluding any "Bonus under the table").

Sales of LL and exodus is not comparable since the success of exodus is based on LL and the original Metro.
Using this figure to judge the selling platform is utterly pointless.
It is like saying PS1 is worst than PS2 cause MGS2 sold more copies than MGS1 .
Not to mention the first Metro and LL was not exclusive on steam either.

The problem with that, is not all games are launching at $50. So far, Metro: Exodus has been the only one, and I imagine Epic covered the cost reimbursing Deep Silver for the $8.80 they lost per sale. It was discounted because of the outrage related to it being switched to an EGS exclusive last minute.
 
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That's just on point for continuous revenue for devs/publishers. Games don't drown in the abyss of new releases - they get recirculated. All I care about is my whishlist and "browse by genre" with all filters.

There you go. You don't like that frontpage either, you don't even go there, and Steam's inherent problem shows: you need filters and preference lists to make sense of it all and *hopefully* get what you're looking for.

But, then this happens, and is already in full effect for you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble Its not just a plain filter, between wishlists and a few algorithms determining game types and genres. You don't really know what you're not seeing anytime you search like this.

Its a catch 22 with Steam at this moment. Its not a value judgment on my part, its just an observation. Steam has too much for big publishers to get sufficient exposure, and for the exposure it does offer, the cut they ask is too high. End result: publishers don't get their money's worth out of Steam. Now, back to that EGS frontpage. Maximum exposure, and after having scrolled down the page to see what's what, you're actually done. No endless wishlists, search and filter options etc etc. Its not superior or anything, but it does have recent, relevant offerings and does what it needs to do: showcase games.

The comparison to GOG is also a bit off. GOG offers a specific niche already, so you go there with a purpose; 'I'm gonna buy some old, great game' or 'I'm going to get game X DRM-free'. It has far less of a need for all these filters, you tend to know what you're looking for and maybe look for some deals. For gamers that don't go there out of nostalgia, ie younger ones, they've usually read or seen about an old game on 'tube or RPS and also come straight in with a purpose.

See the problem?
 
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