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Valve (steam) tos for developers prohibits having a regular price cheaper elsewhere than on their own store for a game. So you can't just price on Steam at full msrp then discount it 15% for epic permanently.
Ones without live service + micro transactions should, I agree. That's actually part of how devs have made it work with low msrps despite people's complaints.
This is based on what, inflation? Games and movies both cost millions to produce, and yet the cost of a game is now $70 while a newly released movie is like $20. It's not like movies don't have methods to capitalize outside of the movie itself, like merchandise and tie-ins. Games do this too, but they also have DLCs and micro-transactions. That $70 price isn't even fully accepted because some games like Baldur's Gate 3 is asking for $60 still. The nonsense of basing it on hours of game-play when modern games are infamous for just making you run around and do nothing for hours, because travel time is gameplay.
I don't think people purport anything about how hard or easy it is to make a storefront. It is the attitude that is the problem. If you kick in the doors with both legs, then you better have it all figured out, and not missing basic features. If EGS would've started out humble trying to win market share by catering to customers, then I think the majority would not have taken issue with them. And now even if they had the best storefront by now, it wouldn't really matter. I feel dirty just by thinking about EGS, let alone paying them a dime. I just don't see how they could make amends. Gaming is not essential, even if a title is exclusive I don't have to go there. If a dev chooses Epic money over customers money, that's on them. I'll buy their game a year later for half the price, if at all.
Afaik Valve only takes 30% cut from sales on their platform, not from retail and 3rd party sales, which also all use their platform. So their actual take might be closer to 20 or 15 percent depending on how much of the game's sales happen through the steam store.
Paying for Steam is not about hosting or making a store, a flying monkey can set up an online storefront and hosting for one game. It is about exposure, appearing on a storefront with tens of millions of visitors.
Do you have a source to back up that 10% claim? CDs and DVDs and printing covers literally costs cents on volume.
I sure the fuck haven't. If a game uses Unreal Engine it doesn't mean I won't get it - I'd be locking myself out of a lot of decent (and not) games if I did that. But as far as buying anything on Epic? That's a no-sell. I'd rather buy stuff off the Microsoft Store than do that.
Yes, I paid for a few games on there, usually on sale.
Don't use the Microsoft Store. Use the Xbox app. It works exactly like Steam these days.
The 10% was what was left over after all costs, which included shipping, the retail store cut, and everything else. I know I saw this breakdown in an old issue of Game Informer. The portion of the sale that made it back to the publisher after all the costs involved in manufacturing, shipping, and displaying a product at a brick and mortar store was in the range of 7-15%.
I know, and there is no way manufacturing and distributing physical copies cost that much. Sony and MS would've stopped selling physical console games a long time ago if that was true. No way they'd just continue to forfeit 60% of revenue on every physical copy of a game. They'd have forced the digital only option much harder and sooner.
Id imagine there is more involved, not even just in costs but complications. Shipping delays, importing crap, shipment damages or losses, thefts, manufacturing forecasts, and upfront expenses (managing MOQ's), warehousing, etc etc.
Maybe that is what the breakdown is like nowadays, but there is this from 2006 when physical sales still reigned on both consoles and PC:
That's a different breakdown which includes marketing and development costs, we are only supposed to be comparing the difference between digital distribution and physical, development and marketing is the same for both.
. New games with Steam keys are 10-20% off on GMG/Fanatical/Humble and older game keys are usually available for almost nothing if they're not already on sale (and I often don't mind waiting for a sale). Steam for sure isn't perfect but Valve is constantly working to improve it and they seem to have the notion that 'if it's good for the gamers it's good for us' which is a refreshing take for a modern corporation to have..There was a fairly recent game on EGS that didn't support controllers (I can't remember what game it was at the moment); the solution was to add the game to Steam which would allow you to use their controller configuration to enable controller support. You can do the same to use Proton for non-Steam games in Linux. It's basically to the point that Steam makes gaming with other 'platforms' better too.
At this point I pretty much only use Steam even though I do have games scattered across different stores. I primarily game on Linux and Valve has removed 95% of the friction that used to be there. I like that some devs will post patch notes with every update (viewable from the Download screen AND the library page) and interact with the Steam community. I use the discussion forums on occasion and while there are a lot of shitposts it's not unlike GenMay here
EGS and Timmy Tencent are scumbags who's main goal is to wall off the PC ecosystem for their own gain and to the detriment of the gamers; screw them and I can't wait to feel the schadenfreude when they shut down and everyone loses their library of free games
I agree with you... But we have sacrificed a lot for convenience of home. At a click we can buy the game, install and play.
A majority of the companies I was even talking about are all top of the market players.
I often do that. Get excited about a game see it as epic exclusive and just think "eh ill wait". Which has been good for me actually because then i tend to just forget about it saving me from impulse buying.
We also sacrificed ownership. With a click of the button, companies can take away your convenience by not being able to download and play the games. We've seen most companies do this, including Steam when companies release a remaster of their game. Those remasters don't always live up to the original.
Foamy is the best!
This digital rights problem has gone beyond the media we consume. It got to the point where we can even fix our own stuff without breaking copyright. At some point we really need to be given rights over the digital goods we purchase, and it needs to be as good as ownership.
Not really. I'm OK with not owning it... as long as the price reflects that.
But but, the free games...... lol
A few. Depends on the publisher. Most of the AAA ones pull the originals to upsell you on a "remaster". You can't buy the Steam version of the original Skyrim unless you have the page link itself, for example. They remove them from search results in the Steam app. At least, this was the case a couple of years ago.
If you own them you can still download and play them. Steam doesn't remove games from your library.
There is 2 methods to fixing the launcher's horrendous dl speeds.
sounds like you were getting ripped off. games never costed that much back then
I haven't payed full price in a long time. As GoldenTiger pointed out, I pirate first. If I like the game, like truly liked the game then I'd buy it. Usually at a discount because by the time I want to buy the game, the price has dropped. I also buy the keys from another website and then register the game on Steam. Gabe Newell said that "piracy is not a pricing issue", but it totally is. Just what excuse does a game have to be $60 or $70? Elden Ring off Steam is still $60, while Fifa 24 is $70. Demon Souls for the PS5 was released at $70, which is a remake of an old PS3 game, but they still wanted $70. Elden Ring is almost almost 2 year old but still $60 on Steam. Meanwhile physical copies for the PS5 and Xbox Series X are $40 off Amazon. You could buy it off key sites for $31, but you can't activate it on Steam if you live in USA. Which means that games on Steam are region locked, which is bullshit. You can actually buy a physical copy of Elden Ring for PS5 or Xbox Series X for $40, and actually own it, but the same game that's now nearly 2 years old is still $60 on Steam and you don't actually own it.
We do need competition in the PC store front, but again if Epic is just trying to entice people with game discounts then that alone isn't enough to get people to shop on Epic. In Epic's case, it is a service problem not a pricing problem.
Pretty much the only reason I have Epic installed...free games.