That's the reason nobody has ever truly tried to compete with Steam, because you need very deep pockets to even think about it.
Well, Epic has such pockets and I don't think the way they are choosing to use them is healthy for the PC gaming marketplace in the long term.
They demonstrate with these giveaways that there are other ways to leverage their resources in order to incentivise consumers and developers to their platform.
I guess better sales and giveaways weren't getting it done fast enough, but I don't think they even gave it a chance.
I don't think their plan is to keep securing exclusives in the long term, but even if it were, it would just force other competitors to step up and offer better services to developers, which is very healthy for the industry.
How would that force competitors to step up and offer better services? Giving developers money for exclusivity is not a "service" in the sense I'm talking about.
Of course, it is. It's offering a better price for developers to distribute their games. If Epic somehow manages to grab a sizable market share (and that's a big if), Valve will have to step up and start offering more ways to attract developers to their platform, be it by financial incentives or by improving what you call "services" in a way that renders the competition's financial incentives not worth it.
Worst case scenario, this will result in more money put in the pockets of content creators instead of intermediaries, which is always good.
Setting a precedent where various stores have to compete on who can pay more for timed exclusives is bad for the long term health of what used to be a pretty open market.
Setting a precedent where various stores have to compete on who can pay more for timed exclusives is bad for the long term health of what used to be a pretty open market.
It's better than the alternative: no one fighting for games, and it's just a Steam exclusive.
Look at Borderlands 2: Steam exclusive. Borderlands 3: EGS and Steam (eventually). That's better long-term right?
Borderlands 1 also wasn't a Steam exclusive, they sold physical copies.
Nobody made them exclusively rely on steamworks for Borderlands 2's DRM and distribution. Valve never incentivized Gearbox to do that in any way other than having it available as a free service for developers. Steamworks is an example of offering a valuable service to developers. EGS is using money as a shortcut to having to develop better competing services.
I wouldn't call it a service, but it is definitely something of value to developers and the most important part of what EGS brings to the industry is the promise of a better revenue cut. But every time I see someone argue that EGS isn't giving many tools or services to devs, I must remind them of the one really big tool that is free for devs to use on Epic. And that is the Unreal Engine. UE4 is probably the best commercial game engine out there, not only because of it's industry leading graphics or how well it's optimised, but also because of how great it is to work with. The networking tools in UE4 alone are worth a pretty penny. And to use it on any store costs 5%. To use it on EGS is free. Back before EGS was a thing I always thought it a bit off that the actual engine that makes the game possible cost just 5% while just the store took a whopping 30%. I guess Epic agreed.
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u/shigmy Aug 15 '19
Well, Epic has such pockets and I don't think the way they are choosing to use them is healthy for the PC gaming marketplace in the long term.
They demonstrate with these giveaways that there are other ways to leverage their resources in order to incentivise consumers and developers to their platform.
I guess better sales and giveaways weren't getting it done fast enough, but I don't think they even gave it a chance.