The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.
After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.
There seems to be a lot of debate in the comments, that are disingenuous arguments.
I think the quality of the software is a factor for some people, but that’s not the main issue here.
Steam has always publicly stated their competition is piracy. They have to be more convenient than piracy to survive. And over steams lifetime I think they’ve demonstrated that’s their goal, yes they have DRM, but only to satisfy publishers, they’ve done everything they can to keep things as convenient as possible.
Epic, the company, has demonstrated their goal is money. And they’ve demonstrated an anti-consumer trend, the exclusivity deals are in great indicator of that. If epic became as popular as steam, they would make the experience awful, they would become the Disney of the game world.
So all of the arguments about
*launcher quality
*availability of DRM free games
*some publishers choosing to release on one platform
Are missing the mark, many people don’t want to financially support a market participant who will make their lives worse in the future.
If you don’t like valve, that’s fine, support a different distributor who makes the ecosystem better, like GoG.
I think you hit the nail in the head.
When I think about the whole missing shop cart thing, it wasn’t necessarily the shopping cart that bothered me (even if it DID cause terrible service when they released a paradox game with DLC).
It was the fact Tim himself and a posse came on Twitter to call me everything short of the R-slur just for wanting the shopping cart.
Yesterday it was shopping carts. Tomorrow it’s games working offline and with no mods. Tim made himself the villain over nothing, and deserves to fail before it’s about everything.
Yeah, I think competition is always good and Steam should not have a monopoly, but Epic is certainly not a beneficial alternative.
I think you hit the nail in the head.
When I think about the whole missing shop cart thing, it wasn’t necessarily the shopping cart that bothered me (even if it DID cause terrible service when they released a paradox game with DLC).
It was the fact Tim himself and a posse came on Twitter to call me everything short of the R-slur just for wanting the shopping cart. It was a freaking war of ideology attrition over a motherfucking shopping cart, something the Unreal Engine store had too.
Yesterday it was shopping carts. Tomorrow it’s games working offline and with no mods. Tim made himself the villain over nothing, and deserves to fail before it’s about everything.
Say what you will about epic, but this is compelling as hell for Devs. Hopefully this puts more pressure on Steam to reduce their cut. Competition is good.
If you’re so against epic, have a little patience and wait until it comes to steam 6 months later. That’s what I’ll be doing. But don’t just mindlessly shit in epic because you (as a consumer) don’t like their business model intended to attract devs. You can dislike something while also recognising the good in it.
My view is that it incentiveses exclusives in the PC space, as opposed to lowering Steam’s charge for their services. My biggest concern for gaming is that we end up just like streaming services. A bunch of exclusives and a marketplace that is such a mess you can barely find what service has what you want.
It’s a fair concern, but I don’t think anything has remained exclusive on epic, they all come to Steam eventually. If that changes and epic starts incentivising permanent exclusivity, then I’ll be upset. But as it is right now, I have no issues with epic.
I know so many people call those situations a “mess”, but I’m still in favor of it: Each potential service option keeps the other in check through competition. I only get to use so many streaming services for so cheap because they’re lowering their prices in a bid to seem more appealing than the others. When it comes to game stores, their unique features (like say, Xbox’s game pass) can make them more compelling.
Granted, 90% of that last argument has just been “Steam has Xfeature, and YStore doesn’t…so I prefer Steam”
I’m not so sure, this seems like a less compelling deal than what Epic was offering before, which didn’t seem to be working out so well for devs.
Before, they were outright paying for exclusivity, offering studios and publishers huge sums of money to make up for the revenue they lose by not being on Steam, and then some. And they often paid for 12+ months of exclusivity. You were guaranteed profitability regardless of whether or not your game actually succeeded.
In order to break even in the new program, your game needs to retain 70% of the customers that would have bought it day 1 on Steam instead. That seems an impossibly high target to hit, given how much Epic has struggled to make EGS succeed even when they were thowing a lot more money around.
I never truly understood the hate for epic. They’ve made some of the best games of all time, give away 1-2 games for free every single week, and they ensure that most annoying kids are in fortnite and not games that adults want to play. Oh noooo. You have to open a separate launcher to play your video game! The horror!
No review system for games, no return policy, no community tabs or markets, no appear offline mode, they allow shitcoins and nfts on their platform, forcing their launcher onto games they own (Rocket League that launches through Epic but I bought it on Steam), collecting a metric fuckton of user data and input, and finally very close connections with Tencent. Sure i’m missing a bunch more.
Did they ever add a shopping cart? That was the reason I never bought games from them.
There is shopping cart.
…I only use it to add two free games to cart and “buying” them with one click 🤷
One more thing - really annoying how if you click a game in the sidebar it launches it instead of going to the game in your library. It’d be fine to have a smaller launch button in the same space, but having the whole thing do it is not very intuitive.
Origin and Ubisoft launchers are starting as well on their games
In your comment you admit you don’t know, and then end your comment with an out of touch assumption. Good job.
Yeah, if that launcher is not so suck ass at what it does that I have to resort to Heroic Launcher. Not to mention some of the games on Epic just… weird, like Epic Skyrim doesn’t work with SKSE
you guys can pay developers all you want but nobody is gonna stick if your launcher is still shit
Just use playnite or one of the alternatives, it’s so much easier launching every game from the one place.
I only open epic launcher once a week to get the free game I’ll never play and that’s it.
Playnite is a must for any gamer
It can open any game
Yeah being able to add and launch the more nefariously obtained games along side legitimate games is one of my favourite things about it. The filter to quickly see owned vs installed across every account is also up there as a top feature.
Can’t gog galaxy do this?
gog can do the same but I kept having issues with the plugins for each launcher randomly crashing and signing me out and it just got so annoying to use
100% it can handle pirated games yeah, I used to use this a few years ago but swapped to playnite and I honestly can’t remember what made me swap. I don’t remember it having view filters… maybe it does
playnite is phenomenal!! I use it as well but have to occasionally still jumpscare myself opening the epic launcher to update stuff
But why does the launcher matter when all you need it for it to launch a game?
Because it’s actually dogshit. Like in every thinkable way a launcher “could be bad” it is.
Examples:
-Cannot move games or files, IN ANY CAPACITY. If you move a game folder or file the Epic launcher loses sight of it and the launcher has no way at all to tell it where existing files are. I learned this when I tried to move GTA V and had to reinstall the full game in the exact same location so that epic could see it.
-The launcher is the slowest loading launcher and service in the world. I have a 7800x3D and an nvme and EGS is the slowest launcher on my computer by a country mile (fucking Uplay is faster). Also on top of that, it has a major hard on for making you log back in on the same fucking computer (what feels like weekly). Meanwhile I don’t touch steam for 2 weeks and, guess what? It still logs me in! How the hell did they figure out that crazy tech?!
-It has absolutely 0 of the function the steam launcher has. Besides letting you spend money on games and launch them. No communities, workshop, friends features, profiles, voice calling, steam share, remote play together, etc.
I could go on but this all just grinds my gears when they do nothing but tout how they are “for gamers” and “for developers” when they’re clearly just here for fucking money. They use anti consumer practices to lock people into an ecosystem that for some reason you refuse to improve (wild fucking concept, maybe people would use your launcher if it wasn’t one of the least functional ones available!), and instead try to bait people in and keep them around with a free game a week. I’ll never, ever willingly give a cent to epic games. They’ve proven they don’t give a fuck about gaming or the consumer experience
edit: changed you to they when referring to Epic Games at the end
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When a new product like a TV from a new manufacturer shows up people judge it by standards from 10 years ago as opposed to current ones? Same from software?
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Half Life 2 launched in 2004. Which will be 20 years next year. I’m not sure why state of a product from over a decade ago matters for judging products now. I’m not exactly time traveling and being forced to use 2004 steam.
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Why couldn’t that happen a second time?
Maybe because steam is already extremely popular and has improved more in the last few years than Epic has.
I don’t know how popular stardock was but it couldn’t have been anywhere close to how popular steam is now.
Epic hasn’t really done anything to improve.
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It’s an incredibly poor look having to even resort to comparing epic to the era of 2004. That’s like someone referring back to the days of flip phones for why a new current day phone release should get a pass. Even having to do that is a poor reflection.
Having to rely on hypotheticals over the actual offering of epic isn’t a good look. It’s not our job or your job to convince us why epic is worth spending money in. That’s epic’s job.
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Steam has proton, Epic games does nkt even have a linux launcher, its obvious who I’m sticking with
I mean, I’ve been able to get epic games working on my deck through the heroic launcher. I’ve still not given them one thin dime and I don’t intend to but I’ve got a fair sized collection of giveaway games that are nice to have around
Effectively no percent of the market uses Linux
That percent of the market really changes for some indie titles who have noted a substantial amount of their purchases were from Steam Decks.
100% of me uses Linux so epic can get fucked as far as I’m concerned
Linux users are the vegans of lemmy.
I’m sure all couple hundred of you are really excited about it but you are also no percent of the market
Shit I only have epic installed to get free games I forget to play because I never use the launcher. It’s just nothing to do with who is using Linux.
I don’t really give a crap what you think of linux users. But it’s not true that “no percent” uses it. Seems a little ironic that you say “nobody uses it” on one hand and also complain about the number of people who talk about it…
The large number of people talking bout it exists pretty much just on this social media.
Not sure why you are so personally invested, hence the vegan comment.
The point is no one really develops with Linux in mind because the consumer base is tiny
Someday maybe they will try to improve the launcher instead of burning all the money in exclusives that only pisses people off. I uninstalled that shit and don’t even bother to take the free games anymore.
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I had to request and confirm the deletion of my account to stop chinese people trying to hack it or something because I kept getting e-mails from Epig that someone in China is trying to access my account EVERY GODDAMN MONTH.
Just use playnite you plebians
The launcher launches the games and that’s good enough for me 👍
Why should you be happy it has the most bare functionality it could possibly have. It’s 2023. On Steam I can stream from a Linux PC to my living room, play on some Nintendo Joycons with full gyro support, have a YouTube video playing picture-in-picture and bringing up an achievement guide with one button press. Epic is just a launcher, Steam is a full-fledged gaming platform.
I just claim the free games and after installing them, i add them to steam.
I’m not one for company or brand worship but valve is straight GOATed.
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The issue is not the launcher. The issue is the exclusivity. It demonstrates an anti-consumer mindset. The GOG, which people here have demonstrated acceptance of, is yet another launcher, the launchers less elegant to steam, and everyone is just fine with.
It will probably work fine but it’s not an officially supported use case of the software. You can’t exactly submit a ticket to Valve if something doesn’t work right because the game isn’t even on their store.
Fucking hell, don’t hurt your back carrying that goalpost mate!
The person asked what the problem was and I explained what the problem was. Why are you butting in with this nonsense?
That guy has a weird hard-on for the epic games store. There was a post about it last month and that guy was saying the same things.
Funny you should mention Linux…
“Linux is so much nicer than Windows because it doesn’t have all the bloat! Yuck!”
“Epic is so much worse than Steam because it doesn’t have all the bloat! Yuck!”
The hypocrisy is strong with this one.
… What are you even talking about. I never even said the first statement so how could I possibly be a hypocrite lmao. And having features isn’t “bloat”. Your argument is just all kinds of nonsensical.
I could launch my games without a launcher. And I prefer it that way.
Good news!
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_Epic_Games_Store
Pretty much all free games they’ve given so far are DRM free and can be launched without the launcher!
Can’t wait to read the next reason why you refuse to install it!
Never forget that GOG is also an option!
Huh? GOG still seems to be online. Did anything get announced?
Oh no, sorry if I scared anyone. I just wanted to remind people to buy games from GOG
I don’t think GOG is going anywhere, perhaps the poster above you just used weird phrasing (English might not be their first language)
I should’ve just added “Never forget [buying games from] GOG!” already 😅
“Let us offer you 100% of the money from a marketplace 0.0001% as large! Did we mention you get all the money that neither of us are making? We will throw in all the good will with gamers we’ve earned too.”
If the game is in demand, people will go there if it’s the only option. It’s not a great option for some obscure indie game, but it is for mid-budget projects that have already gotten interest.
That’s fair. I personally just skip those. But maybe few enough people skip to make the lower fees worth it.
For the majority of game studios this seems like a terrible deal though.
I feel like zero fees vs 30% fees is a pretty big difference. But you have to be able to sell at least enough to make up for the difference either way. It also very well could just attract devs who think they’re going to sell more than they will.
Well 0% fee for a store that has zero added features vs 30% for a launcher with cloud saves, overlay, online couch play, tradeable in-game items, gifting, community, profiles, wishlist, notifications, etc.
Someone has to pay for the server time and storage.
Oh and Steam has way bigger userbase.
Other posters seem to forget that competition is very important for this kind of thing.
Sure it’s annoying when Epic stops games releasing in other platforms, and especially how the epic launcher and it’s games do not support Linux.
But without competition, steam can continue with an insanely high cut of indie game sales, and that is NOT ok.
How is it competition when you only have one place to get it? Isn’t that just a monopoly? Sure it’s temporary, but there’s nothing competitive about “buy here or nowhere.”
I don’t think that’s the same thing as a monopoly. Or at the very least it’s not nearly as bad. The presence of Epic on the market has been great for developers, because they can get good deals at epic AND Valve has been forced to reevaluate their prices.
it’s games do not support Linux.
I just use Heroic and like 90% of my epic library just works. Admittedly, still won’t spend anything on epic, but then, I like Heroic more than Steam at the moment…
Until I see official Linux support, I’m not putting any eggs in the community Linux launchers. Rug could easily be pulled
Definitely. This is why i don’t spend money on that account. Well, that and not wanting to spend on that store.
Heroic Game Launcher ist awesome. Use it for both, my Epic and GOG libraries.
I can’t wait for lemmy to become a viable competitor to Reddit, I hate seeing those smug bastards at the top of my search results.
I think this is pretty viable, at least as a daily driver. Reddit has a lot more as far as help threads go, but the community here is fantastic.
I already block ads and advertisements, so the game will just be completely off my radar for another six months until I see friends start playing it. Eh. It’s far too much effort to try a new platform after the dumpsterfires of Origin and Uplay to play 1-3 games.
The only game I’d actually install a new launcher for would be a new Half Life Game.
I had a friend who really got into satisfactory. And since we were all a factorio group, it seems like our kind of crazy. We are excited for it. When it came out as an epic exclusive, that one friend went for it. And tried to get us all to join him. We’re like okay we’ll join you soon as it comes out on steam. Some converted some didn’t.
But over time I’ve had my personal friends tell me, yeah I see why you didn’t make that choice, earlier I thought you were just being stubborn but now I totally understand it.
Totally understand what exactly?
They now understand the logic behind not supporting exclusive titles to walled gardens.
That the game wasn’t worth playing. Lol?
Guess I’ll get the game on sale
Fuck Epic and any store who tries to remove games from others.
Fuck giving the devs and artists more money. Fuck them.
Game dev here, please stop licking these dirty boots. 99% of the money goes way up the ladder and into the heads of people with 0 interest in making fun games
👌
You’re being downvoted, but i think it’s from people that think you’re being genuine. Not necessarily from steam fanboys.
No, he is being downvoted for using the “think of the children” argument. Nobody, is saying anything remote to what he is saying about devs and artists. It is so dumb and so lazy that is hard even trying to start arguing.
They’ll get 100% of my zero dollars that way.
Developers, or their MBA publishers? I HIGHLY doubt developers beyond indie studios benefit from this.
Good for early access. Then time 1.0 for steam release.
Hades did that and was successful.
I actually never considered that possibility. Sort of genius in a way.
Yeah GalCiv4 and Sins of a Solar Empire II is doing it too. Get that Epic bag while in development and launch on steam. I would. That’s free money.
Sorry Timmy Tencent we still won’t use your service.
A 100% of $0 is still $0.
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Sorry to reply to a random comment, but I’ve been trying to get the attention of one of the tvplus mods. Could you check your DMs?
Apologies, it seems DMs are somewhat broken. I’ve found your DM and sent you a reply.
