Alex Birlo on May 23, 2019
Let us finally talk about the “PC war” that began almost four months ago. The aggressive attempts of the EPIC games store to gain market share, over the giant that is Steam.
I cannot believe that while console “rivals” are somewhat uniting – currently over streaming technologies – the PC community is beginning to be forcefully divided. Now it will be not only the “console wars” as usual but also the “PC wars” … It seems “Wars” are indeed in human DNA.
One of the centerpieces of how EPIC were marketing their store, is that the developers are receiving a better cut from each sale of their game on the EPIC games store.
In short, when a game is being sold on Steam then the developer receives 70% from the earnings and Valve receives 30%. As of October 2018, it changed slightly, rewarding the developers with a bigger cut of the earnings for more sales of their games. So if the game sold over 10 million USD on Steam the developer’s / Steam’s cut becomes: 75% / 25% and after 50 million it becomes 80 and 20 percent respectively.
Now, when a game is being sold on EPIC games store the developer always receives 88% of the earnings and EPIC only 12%. And this is a generous cut that sweetens the deal for developers, but what of the consumers?
While the 88/12 percent cut from earnings is all well and dandy, the conflict rises not on the developers’ side but on the consumers’ side. EPIC’s store is providing almost nothing in terms of store functionality. The difference between the features that Steam has and EPIC games store has not is enormous and is visible to the naked eye. No broadcasting, no cloud saves, no forums, no gifting, no library sorting and etc. And over the time that the EPIC store exists, there was no significant effort made to improve the store or statements released that suggest this is even a concern for EPIC. Instead, their focus is on bringing more games to their platform, but with a catch…
For the past several months, EPIC have used their massive cash reserves – thanks Fortnite – to get developers of both big and small titles to sell their games exclusively on the EPIC games store, avoiding sales on Steam for good or for a limited time.
All started with the release of “Metro Exodus” a highly anticipated AAA game that already had preorders made on Steam but shifted to EPIC exclusive and made a mess, then games like “Borderlands 3” and “World War Z” followed after. Now Ubisoft announced that all further games will be sold only on their own Ubisoft Store and EPIC.
Gamers obviously met this with a seemingly endless stream of hate and dissatisfaction. And Valve’s silence on the matter also began raising concerns of the “why our favorite store doesn’t stand up for us” type.
Now, EPIC shifted slightly. They launched a big sale on their store, where they – again using their immense financial reserves – are going to opt-in on every deal provided in their store, paying from their own pocket to further reduce the price of the game.
Now, EPIC shifted slightly. They launched a big sale on their store, where they – again using their immense financial reserves – are going to opt-in on every deal provided in their store, paying from their own pocket to further reduce the price of the game.
So for example, a game is being discounted by a developer on EPIC’s store from 50 USD to 40 USD – then EPIC pays another 10 USD from their own pocket to the developer for each unit sold. Which means the consumer buys the game for 30 USD while the developer still receives 40. These are not actual numbers, they are just for the sake of simplicity and to demonstrate how it works. But never the less, EPIC is going to lose a lot of money on this anyway. Such sales cannot and will not continue forever, thus it is just a temporary measure attempting to “gain face” with the consumer, but only time will show what “more permanent” measures will be taken by EPIC.
People are being forced to use an inferior platform to play their favorite games and that is wrong. The practice of forcefully bringing games to be sold exclusively on their digital storefront is debatably anti-consumer – as of now – and with the massive sale, they decided to do after 4 months of hate towards their platform… It just seems that EPIC are all over the place with their strategy and are yet to gain any solid standing on the market.
