There’s a lot of stuff from Sweeny I disagree with, but I don’t think he’s wrong on this.
Yep, as much as I benefit from valve’s push on Linux, I know it’s not out of the kindness of their hearts, it’s out of self preservation.
I would gladly use epic’s store if it gave devs more of the profits, but it’s just incredibly immature. Basic options are missing, and it doesn’t support Linux. I can try to work around their shortcomings as much as possible using bottles and proton, but eventually I can’t play their games due to their invasive anti-cheat. On top of that, they seem to be building a walled garden of micro transactions that’s just a worse version of NFTs. They really don’t want me as a customer, and I’m not going to argue.
Wrong with what? 30% cut? It seems a lot, but from the greater distance I don’t think it’s that much.
Developers do get great benefits from this. The game is downloadable at any time with great speeds everywhere in the world. They get steam workshop for mods, free forums, reviews, steamplay, proton, friendlists with super easy game invites, … and all this is basically free advertisment for developer.
Now what does Epic offer in this regard? Nothing.
I don’t have any frame of reference for how much content delivery on Valve’s level costs, and whether a lower cut would be sustainable. I assume that a lower cut for the first $X of revenue a game makes on Steam would be doable without cutting into profits too much, and would probably help smaller indie devs. In the end, since Valve is private, we can kinda only speculate about what would be fair, or even just feasible.
Of course, Valve isn’t obligated to do any of this, but if they would in response to pressure from Epic, I’d consider that a good thing. Considering the article above, that seems unlikely, needless to say.
I also do agree that Epic’s store isn’t all that great.
Still, with 30% cut, it was never easier for indie devs to release their game before. Now it’s basically like “you made your own game in your garage or basement in your free time, then you log in to steam, fill some paperwork, set price, upload, and you can start selling copies already as you have link you can share on your social media and everywhere”. Some 20 years ago you’d need to find publisher that would like the game, be willing to invest in pressing CD/DVD and distribute this across the city/state/country/world/whatever. Then you had to market the game in paper magazines, online ads or wherever and hope people will see the ad/review and go to store to buy the game. Then wait for money to run the circle back to you. With much greater cut than current 30%, especially with indie titles. Even like 10 years ago, you’d have to be “green lit” for steam to actually sell your game, meaning you had to beg for a lot of clicks, to be able to put your game on steam.
I think many folks are too young to remember before the Internet when everything was published through retail stores. Publishers took big risks paying for advance copies of games to be produced and shipped, and developers typically got less than 70% all told.
When steam came out 30% and you didn’t need to print advance copies, or deal with retail channels, it was a huge win.
Now, the world has changed, but so has steam. Steam has continued to introduce features, sales based % tiers, grown the community, push Linux development, push VR, etc. they also go out of their way to support their devices and make them user repairable.
In any other sector people would be bitching about not having a pro customer option, and yet in this market we get a bunch of non-developers bitching about the revenue split from the best game store other than GoG.
It boggles the mind.
A bigger cut for developers would be nice if mostly any gaming studio actually did profit sharing. I’m not going to be riled up and motivated for some capitalists to get a fat fucking bonus while using a shittier platform. But billionaire Sweeny is all for claiming it’s all for the little guy while not giving a shit if his own employees stack up 60hr work weeks.
Do you really think that an indie game with a few people working on it should pay the same cut than bigger companies? And even so, the game industry is not doing good, that’s why games are getting worse and worse and there are so many lay-offs.
Why not? It’s the magic of % that with huge sales you’ll throw money at steam, but with few copies sold you’ll pay steam next to nothing.
I would not say game industry is doing bad. It’s jist many big corpos thought too mich about themselves and now they face the reality. Shitty recycled games and another 1000th successor to your once-famous series with juat shiny graphics but nothing interesting is simply not enough now. Greedy CEOs realized it too late so now they have to lay off people so they can keep their $$ for themself.
But there are examples like Palworld or Helldivers or BG3 or others where smaller/independent studios release absolute smash game because they either 1) were bold enough to do something fresh, inovative and/or 2) absolutely love what they do and put so much more than “now the usual bare minimum” in their game it simply shows.
Just deliver good product and people will buy it.
And it’s the advice for Tim Swepic too. Steam is just better in every aspect, so maybe if you delivered better experience instead of just bitching about unfairness, people would actually buy in your store.
It does suck, but I think the only thing Tim Epic can do is to fix his own store.
Tim Epic
Lmao
Reminds me of how one time Trump had a meeting with Tim Cook and called him Tim Apple
