Quoting: CyrilI was thinking of buying it, it was on my wishlist since the GOG release, and then I thought the game would be on sale on the GOG Summer sale, but no....

If you've got Humble Monthly... you get it for $1.

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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 [External Link]

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/ [External Link]

Now you're just outright lying.

Being AAA has nothing to do with it. It just needs to sell well.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPI've seen that argument a few times, and frankly, it is a myth.
Ever since Valve opened the floodgates and accepted every piece of garbage game on their platform without any moderation whatsoever, the number of games coming out is so huge that a developer gains pretty much nothing from the fact that they are on Steam. This is especially true for indie developers.
Valve doesn't "present" a damn thing, users have to actively wade through the masses of unmoderated games.

Tell how awesome being on Steam alone is to all the developers who didn't do their due diligence, didn't do any marketing, and as a result barely sell anything on Steam.
And if you have to do the marketing routine anyway, what exactly is so great about being "presented" on Steam, again?

What does that have to do with anything? There is too much of everything. Moderation doesn't change that. You won't notice the trash anyway, but do you complain about spotify and bandcamp, too? Everybody can upload their stuff there. There's a billion musicians. Not all of them can break through.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPYes, I do. Because I actually work in the same field (not exactly gaming storefront, but hosting and payments costs are hosting and payment costs, no matter what exactly the servers do and which goods are sold) and know the costs. What exactly was your qualification here, other than "I saw it on TV"?

I saw devs say it.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPNot a huge profit margin, mind you, it might be only covering their expenses. And I do expect them to raise it somewhat, as I wrote above.

And covering your expenses is good enough?

Quoting: TheSHEEEPYes, they are. Because of their exclusivity deals. Not because of their cut.
Also, I said 10-20%, don't put words in my mouth just to try to make a point.

I'm not putting words in your mouth, but when transfer fees can be up to 15%, it's not covering costs. Sweeney himself once said it's not sustainable in certain areas. And they lose money with their sales, too.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou don't see anyone complain because complaining could make you enemies you don't want to have. Also, it would be entirely pointless. What are devs gonna do, not publish on PS4 because they don't like the cut?

And that makes it less hypocritical?

Quoting: TheSHEEEPDo you honestly think 30% would have become the standard if there wasn't a fat profit margin in it?
Capitalism, baby!

I'm not sure who started with the 30%, but once upon a time it was a dream for developers/publishers to get 70%. And what's so bad about them making profit? I don't think it's exploitative.

Also you didn't address the monthly fees for XBOX Live etc. that you don't have on PC.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: kuhpunktAnd how low should they go?

10-20% is fair, with a higher cut as developers can opt in to additional services (forum, matchmaking, etc.) with 20-30% being the cut for all services used.

The problem is that at the basic level (which is what most developers actually use), they really just host their game and offer the community service with it - but they don't really have any work with it that would justify the high share for developers.

How do you know that 10%-20% is fair? Do you have the numbers? gog uses 20% to pay the bills to run the service and the other 10% as actual profit.

I have been working on the backend side of many web services for many years. I know about the cost of hosting huge amounts of data with loads of traffic, web and application development pretty well.
You can roughly extrapolate what income Valve gets from what little data they give us (which is certainly not nearly all the data or income they make, which non-publicly-traded company does that, right?) combined with some average gamer spendings per time period. And if Valve aren't running an entire country, there simply isn't a way they really need that 30% share.

The 10-15% Epic takes (forgot the exact number) is much closer to the real cost of a service (+ profit) and I don't see Epic ever raising that cut to more than 20%. Except if there suddenly was a giant increase in hosting cost.

GOG can claim those numbers (do they, actually?). I don't believe it one bit, as I just know a bit more about the backend side of things and its cost.

Epic at the moment takes 12%. Do you honestly think they make profit with that, when the payment methods alone can cost more? And you think 10% is fair... Epic is losing money to get into the market. 30% is the standard everywhere and I have yet to see developers complain about MS, Sony, Nintendo, Apple etc. - and I don't think they offer as much as Valve does - and when they do, they charge for their service.

And yes, gog said that. I saw a documentary about them.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: kuhpunktAnd how low should they go?

10-20% is fair, with a higher cut as developers can opt in to additional services (forum, matchmaking, etc.) with 20-30% being the cut for all services used.

The problem is that at the basic level (which is what most developers actually use), they really just host their game and offer the community service with it - but they don't really have any work with it that would justify the high share for developers.

How do you know that 10%-20% is fair? Do you have the numbers? gog uses 20% to pay the bills to run the service and the other 10% as actual profit.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe real question is, is this kind of thing working for Epic, or are they just throwing money into a pit?
I'm not convinced it's working. Steam use keeps growing and the last figures I saw about Epic store sales (other than Fortnite) looked big until I compared them with the size of the market, at which point they looked tiny.
Anyone got any more recent stats?

No stats, but they are bleeding money. When they pay $10 out of their own (hehe) pocket during the Epic Mega Sale stuff, they lose money on every game sold.

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Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: psy-q

Quoting: kuhpunktRelease it on several stores then. It's not like it's complicated.

Last I heard it's very complicated. Each store has its own toolset for uploads, its own publishing requirements, its own system for how updates and patches are handled. An indie dev once compared the experience between GOG, itch.io (the easiest) and Steam (the most complicated), but that was before EGS existed and I can't find the article now. But the conclusion was "think carefully before adding another store", so it seems it isn't something you just do on a whim.

That's ridiculous. It's fucking SEGA. Even if the toolsets are a bit complicated... that's no reason to go to just one store. They got a ton of cash. That's it.

Except its not this was Creative Assembly call as it was there call to port the other total war games and alien isolation to linux its why there are no sonic games etc on linux sega have not authorised any linux ports. I do not have the tweet about it anymore but this was a CA lead decision.

SEGA, CA, whatever... fucking tiny indies are able to set up Steam and sell their shit. Saying it's too complicated makes no sense.

oh you don't understand it not difficult its cash and you cant say in the same position you would do the the same exmaple i will give you two million upfront for a year of exclusivity on your game plus i will compensate you for lost sales plus i am going to take less of a cut of your profits. Still going to be noble and say no ?

What does that have to do with the argument?

The argument was that it's allegedly too complicated to upload the game on multiple stores. It's not.

Also: they said they want to offer their games on multiple stores, but they do the opposite. Don't say this bullshit then.

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Quoting: eldaking

Quoting: kuhpunkt"As mentioned, and like others in the industry, a key reason for exploring other digital stores is that we don’t want to be limited just to Steam."

Release it on several stores then. It's not like it's complicated.

Except that Epic has said at least once before to a dev that they are "not interested in non-exclusive titles" or something to that effect - or, in other words, you either make it an exclusive or you don't get in. (Edit: and that's based on the premise that they just want to be on more stores, ignoring the upfront money in sales guarantees and extra revenue due to the larger cut that would also be reasons to be exclusive anyway).

And yet several games will be released on both stores at the same time.

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Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: psy-q

Quoting: kuhpunktRelease it on several stores then. It's not like it's complicated.

Last I heard it's very complicated. Each store has its own toolset for uploads, its own publishing requirements, its own system for how updates and patches are handled. An indie dev once compared the experience between GOG, itch.io (the easiest) and Steam (the most complicated), but that was before EGS existed and I can't find the article now. But the conclusion was "think carefully before adding another store", so it seems it isn't something you just do on a whim.

That's ridiculous. It's fucking SEGA. Even if the toolsets are a bit complicated... that's no reason to go to just one store. They got a ton of cash. That's it.

Except its not this was Creative Assembly call as it was there call to port the other total war games and alien isolation to linux its why there are no sonic games etc on linux sega have not authorised any linux ports. I do not have the tweet about it anymore but this was a CA lead decision.

SEGA, CA, whatever... fucking tiny indies are able to set up Steam and sell their shit. Saying it's too complicated makes no sense.

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