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Total War Saga: TROY is now a 12 month Epic Games Store exclusive

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Total War Saga: TROY, a game that was confirmed to be coming to Linux, is now going to start life as an Epic Games Store exclusive for the first year.

For the Linux version, this would mean a total delay because Epic have no plans to support Linux on their store officially. Creative Assembly announced it will release on EGS in August and be free for 24 hours, with Steam to follow a year later. Creative Assembly mentioned they have "no plans" for future games to be exclusives.

Linux was due to get it "shortly after Windows" originally but now it's entirely unclear. Feral Interactive, the company who work with Creative Assembly to port various titles to Linux and macOS were the company doing Total War Saga: TROY. I spoke to them today but they simply mentioned they have "nothing we can share regarding A Total War Saga: TROY on macOS or Linux".

If / when we hear more about about the Linux version, we will let you know.

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scaine Jun 3, 2020
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Quoting: CatKiller
Quoting: scaineIt should be, but this is all about money.

It is, but not really for the reasons you're thinking of. A tiny indie developer benefits more than a massive AAA developer does from all the infrastructure that Steam provides. A big multiplat release is going to have their own matchmaking, their own support chain, their own marketing, their own forums, and so on, outside of Steam, so there's less of a value proposition for Valve's cut than is the case for the indie, and supporting a million players in one container is cheaper for Valve than a thousand containers with a thousand players in, so there's scope to lower the rates.

I don't doubt any of that, but I don't believe that any of it's relevant to Valve's decision to reduce their cut to AAA. They did so, I believe, to prevent those big players jumping ship to Epic. Which was my point (poorly stated) - it's all about money. Specifically, in this case, Valve keeping as much of it as possible.
kuhpunkt Jun 3, 2020
Quoting: TheSHEEEPOf course it is, while you are growing. Just look at Spotify, etc. I'm not even sure they make a profit at this point, but they sure as hell didn't initially.

If there's no profit, it's hard to innovate.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPWhich is irrelevant as Epic forwards those fees to the users, encouraging them not to use services with absurdly large transfer fees.
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/epic-games-store-faq?lang=en-US

It's not irrelevant.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPMakes what less hypocritical?
Saying that Steam's cut is way larger than it needs to be? Nothing hypocritical about it, that's just the truth.
Pointing at others doing the same (or worse) is whataboutism and adds no valid points to any discussion.

It's not whataboutism when it's the same exact issue. The head of Ubisoft complained that Valve's cut isn't "modern enough" or whatever he said, while he still pays the same cut to other companies. That's hypocritical.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPNothing bad about it, I'm just saying that it is better for developers if that cut was lower and that the cut can absolutely be lowered while storefronts would still make a profit.

Yeah and I asked you if you have the numbers - you don't. You suggested 10-20, without knowing whether it would cover costs.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPBecause they have nothing to do with anything discussed here. It's just another way for Sony, etc. to make more money to allow them to heavily subsidize their consoles to sell them at a lower price than what would otherwise make sense.

Oh, it's now just another way to make money... got it.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPAnd moderation makes a lot of difference, especially strong moderation. There used to be a time when you'd actually notice an interesting new release on Steam. Now there are so many of them that you'd basically have to go through the list every day. Who wants to do that?
On GOG and EGS, there are way fewer new releases per day (sometimes, there might not even be one in a day!), so those do get noticed simply by the fact that they got released.

You think devs will say the same thing about Epic in 10 years?

Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: GuestPersonally i think 30% is perfectly fine for AAA devs. I however think that Steam [and other Stores] could lower that Cut for Indie devs.
Funny enough, it is actually the other way around.

Edit:
There's this, which strongly favors AAA to begin with, I just remembered it as AAA devs getting a better cut to begin with (not that the end result is that much different):
https://www.pcgamer.com/valves-new-revenue-sharing-favours-big-budget-games-and-indie-devs-arent-happy/

Now you're just outright lying.

Being AAA has nothing to do with it. It just needs to sell well.
x_wing Jun 3, 2020
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: GuestPersonally i think 30% is perfectly fine for AAA devs. I however think that Steam [and other Stores] could lower that Cut for Indie devs.
Funny enough, it is actually the other way around.

Edit:
There's this, which strongly favors AAA to begin with, I just remembered it as AAA devs getting a better cut to begin with (not that the end result is that much different):
https://www.pcgamer.com/valves-new-revenue-sharing-favours-big-budget-games-and-indie-devs-arent-happy/

And also it is worth mention that publishers are allowed to generate keys to sell as retail and that Valve will not see a coin from that (and depending the game you can also consider some revenue that they game from Steam market). But when you do that you also have to take in account all the associated fraud issues.

Anyway, when we have to talk about Epic advantages we always end up talking about publisher revenue advantages but never about enduser store features. So, at some point I'm not sure if I'm talking with people that like to play games or game companies shareholders...
As I said before. If Valve takes only a 5% cut when a game has a Linux version, keeping the current 30% cut if the game is Windows only, We gonna have a lot of AAA games for Linux.
amatai Jun 3, 2020
The 30% is only for game bought on steam. Valve gives dev key generator so they can sell how much keys they want without the need to pay a cut to Valve.
Mal Jun 3, 2020
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Quoting: amataiThe 30% is only for game bought on steam. Valve gives dev key generator so they can sell how much keys they want without the need to pay a cut to Valve.

It's true also that to sell those keys you have to pay for a variety of infrastructure and services unless you want to drown in frauds. I came to realize that for small indies generating steam keys (outside the free ones for press and PR) can often result being a bad idea. Sometimes even when they sell those on sanctioned stores (see g2a controversy). But then they'll have to pay a cut anyway so...

Ofc none of this is Valve fault. Just nothing that choosing to renounce some of their services to save some bucks still mean that you have to pay to build those services or pay someone to provide them to you in their place.


Last edited by Mal on 3 June 2020 at 4:49 pm UTC
randyl Jun 3, 2020
Quoting: Mal
Quoting: amataiThe 30% is only for game bought on steam. Valve gives dev key generator so they can sell how much keys they want without the need to pay a cut to Valve.

It's true also that to sell those keys you have to pay for a variety of infrastructure and services unless you want to drown in frauds. I came to realize that for small indies generating steam keys (outside the free ones for press and PR) can often result being a bad idea. Sometimes even when they sell those on sanctioned stores (see g2a controversy). But then they'll have to pay a cut anyway so...

Ofc none of this is Valve fault. Just nothing that choosing to renounce some of their services to save some bucks still mean that you have to pay to build those services or pay someone to provide them to you in their place.
Your answer is hyperbole in an effort to dismiss a valid claim. How does a studio generating its own keys suffer from fraud? Do you have any proof of that? What are the additional costs for self-hosting keygen?

A studio may suffer from stolen credit card fraud, but there is no inherent massive cost to hosting your own keygen. Many studios do offer keys through their own site and they don't have to pay the 30%. Authorized reseller sites also don't suffer from keygen fraud (again credit card, but not keygen).

I really need to see proof of your claims because they don't sound grounded in reality at all.
Salvatos Jun 3, 2020
That's not what I’m reading from Mal’s post at all. They’re saying that even if you get the Steam keys for free, there is a cost to then distribute and control those keys outside of Steam. Meaning that you may be better off just selling them on Steam and letting Valve take their cut if you don’t have the infrastructure in place to handle this easily.
Mohandevir Jun 3, 2020
Why not sell these Steam keys on the Epic store then? :D
Don't answer to that, just being sarcastic.
Mal Jun 3, 2020
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Quoting: randyl
Quoting: Mal
Quoting: amataiThe 30% is only for game bought on steam. Valve gives dev key generator so they can sell how much keys they want without the need to pay a cut to Valve.

It's true also that to sell those keys you have to pay for a variety of infrastructure and services unless you want to drown in frauds. I came to realize that for small indies generating steam keys (outside the free ones for press and PR) can often result being a bad idea. Sometimes even when they sell those on sanctioned stores (see g2a controversy). But then they'll have to pay a cut anyway so...

Ofc none of this is Valve fault. Just nothing that choosing to renounce some of their services to save some bucks still mean that you have to pay to build those services or pay someone to provide them to you in their place.
Your answer is hyperbole in an effort to dismiss a valid claim. How does a studio generating its own keys suffer from fraud? Do you have any proof of that? What are the additional costs for self-hosting keygen?

A studio may suffer from stolen credit card fraud, but there is no inherent massive cost to hosting your own keygen. Many studios do offer keys through their own site and they don't have to pay the 30%. Authorized reseller sites also don't suffer from keygen fraud (again credit card, but not keygen).

I really need to see proof of your claims because they don't sound grounded in reality at all.

Quoting: SalvatosThat's not what I’m reading from Mal’s post at all. They’re saying that even if you get the Steam keys for free, there is a cost to then distribute and control those keys outside of Steam. Meaning that you may be better off just selling them on Steam and letting Valve take their cut if you don’t have the infrastructure in place to handle this easily.

Yeah, basically what Salvatos said. I wasn't trying to dismantle any argument. I'm very much pro Valve (or better, firmly anti EGS). But saying that if you sell steam stuff outside steam you get 100% profit is inexact because of what Salvatos said better then me: selling those keys safely has a cost.

Besides, I got this idea from Factorio dev diaries, where in these long years they enumerated a good amount of exploits and issues they faced with the steam keys they distributed outside steam (again, is not steam fault. It's credit card circuits fault, but regulate those is not in the agenda of any world institution so people can only cope with their shit). Eventually they found a solution they are satisfied with. But to arrive there they paid a cost both in terms of damages along the way and man hours invested to figure them out. Which not all indies may be ready or willing to face.
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