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Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

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Re: Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

#221

Post by snarfybarfy »

imtyler wrote: post #122
hesdeadjim wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard rumors from people I trust that they are going to crack down even further on keys, possibly to the point of making it so you can't resell elsewhere.

This may not be a bad thing, though. (As long as they're doing it with discretion.) A comment by 'vatueil' in this thread hinted at an important point: Steam is currently battling the massive library of half-baked 'crapware' that snuck onto the platform for the _sole purpose_ of being sold off as cheap keys in bulk. It's really more of a scam than anything. Valve has a reputation to uphold, and it's no wonder they wa…

Maybe they should not have let crapware onto their platform in the first place?

It did not passively sneak in, it was actively let in by Steam.

Re: Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

#222

Post by zimpenfish »

imtyler wrote: post #122
hesdeadjim wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard rumors from people I trust that they are going to crack down even further on keys, possibly to the point of making it so you can't resell elsewhere.

This may not be a bad thing, though. (As long as they're doing it with discretion.) A comment by 'vatueil' in this thread hinted at an important point: Steam is currently battling the massive library of half-baked 'crapware' that snuck onto the platform for the _sole purpose_ of being sold off as cheap keys in bulk. It's really more of a scam than anything. Valve has a reputation to uphold, and it's no wonder they wa…

> Valve has a reputation to uphold

They're not doing very well there though. See any of e.g. Jim Sterling's videos about Steam over the last couple of years for excellent "Why are Steam sliding into the crapper?" commentary.

Re: Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

#223

Post by snarfybarfy »

In my opinion taking a percentage cut on something that is not strongly correlated with any special effort, borders on scam.

And yes the scammers are everywhere: your bank, broker, recruitment agency, financial adviser, real estate agent, etc...

Call me bitter, but I paid way to many years 20% of my paycheck (yay, work for free on Fridays!) to some agency because they, for no good reason at all, somehow are into this percentage margin business as well.

The country I live in all major stockbrokers will charge you the higher of $90 or 1% (discount brokers take about half that), whereas a lot of other countries have enough competition that you get actual flat prices per trade.

You are selling some service, then please put some actual price on it. E.g. $2000 to review your game and put it onto our platform.

If the service requires ongoing efforts than put some price on this as well.

Without price there can not be any free market.

Re: Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

#224

Post by ppseafield »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #214

I absolutely welcome the competition, but it's going to take a lot for me to trust the Epic Games Store as much as I trust Valve. Lots has been written about Valve (employee handbook, supposedly-not-there-but-actually-just-hidden political hierarchies), but I don't think of them as a normal for-profit company though they most certainly are. They've taken bets like steam for linux, the steam controller, steam boxes, t…

> I've also never seen them do anything blatantly greedy/money grubbing on a large scale

Well... Steam launched with Half Life 2, and you had to install it and have an internet connection to play the game on the CD you just bought. And Steam didn't work for several days after HL2's launch, so everyone who bought the game day one was forced to wait for the Steam gatekeeper to let you into your own game (again, that was sitting in the physical box). And it was quite buggy for a long time, even though it did very little for the user. They eventually rewrote the entire thing as an embedded web app!

Also besides the Half-Life IP, many of Valve's franchises are either takeovers of user-created mods (Team Fortress, Counter Strike, DotA 2), and now Artifact appears to be heavily "inspired" by hearthstone.

As for Steam for Linux, that was a contingency against the Windows Store when it was released. Valve recognized Microsoft could theoretically kick app and game stores off it's platform, leaving Valve with nothing.

Re: Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

#225

Post by imtyler »

snarfybarfy wrote: post #221
imtyler wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may not be a bad thing, though. (As long as they're doing it with discretion.) A comment by 'vatueil' in this thread hinted at an important point: Steam is currently battling the massive library of half-baked 'crapware' that snuck onto the platform for the _sole purpose_ of being sold off as cheap keys in bulk. It's really more of a scam than anything. Valve has a reputation to uphold, and it's no wonder they wa…

Maybe they should not have let crapware onto their platform in the first place? It did not passively sneak in, it was actively let in by Steam.

I feel like there's some hindsight bias here. By that I mean:

If I took two equally bad games-- one by a legitimate developer who may need some practice, and another by a developer whose intention is to scam the system-- would you be able to tell which is which?

I would argue that the former has a right to be on the platform (good luck trying to objectively define what constitutes a 'good' game, after all) and the latter does not. But there's no way to tell them apart until the devs show their true colors.

Seems fair to me.

Re: Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

#226

Post by needle0 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #202
needle0 wrote: post #199

Everyone seems to be talking about Steam but the forthcoming Android store feels to me like a much, MUCH bigger deal. I mean, nobody stops anyone from setting up a new PC game store, and the Epic PC store is just another entry added to the already long list of stores all competing with Steam. But on Android (outside China), the Google Play Store pretty much has a complete monopoly that they made sure was virtually im…

Indeed, I feel like people missed the bigger news here. And I was always surprised Steam never tried to take this on: Many Steam library apps are also available for Android, but Steam has never tried to support cross-platform access to it. Another highlight of this: Do bear in mind there's a class action antitrust lawsuit being bandied about by the Supreme Court right now against Apple and the App Store. If that does…

I was half expecting Valve to expand to mobile stores back when they first released their mobile apps. But no, it never went beyond a companion app and 2-factor authenticator.

None of their other initiatives (Big Picture Mode, Steam Controller, Steam Machine, Steam Link, SteamVR, etc.) ever steered in the general direction of mobile gaming, either. They've been married to PC gaming since their inception over 20 years ago, I guess mobile gaming is just not in their DNA.

Re: Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

#227

Post by hardwaresofton »

pjc50 wrote: post #220
hardwaresofton wrote: post #214

I absolutely welcome the competition, but it's going to take a lot for me to trust the Epic Games Store as much as I trust Valve. Lots has been written about Valve (employee handbook, supposedly-not-there-but-actually-just-hidden political hierarchies), but I don't think of them as a normal for-profit company though they most certainly are. They've taken bets like steam for linux, the steam controller, steam boxes, t…

Interesting, since I remember how controversial the Steam DRM was at the time of its launch. But Valve have outcompeted and outlasted other vendors by being the least anti-consumer DRM system with the best discounts that doesn't interfere with playing your games. If anyone remembers Games For Windows Live, that's an example of how not to do it. Here's the cheering on RPS when its closure was announced: https://www.ro…

Point taken, that particular controversy definitely slipped my mind... There was a time when it didn't have that.

This annoucement definitely made me think of UPlay and Origin, I think I played a demo of "The District" (?) and there was much gritting of teeth.

I might also be biased against fortnite....

Re: Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

#228

Post by hardwaresofton »

Felz wrote: post #219
hardwaresofton wrote: post #214

I absolutely welcome the competition, but it's going to take a lot for me to trust the Epic Games Store as much as I trust Valve. Lots has been written about Valve (employee handbook, supposedly-not-there-but-actually-just-hidden political hierarchies), but I don't think of them as a normal for-profit company though they most certainly are. They've taken bets like steam for linux, the steam controller, steam boxes, t…

> I've also never seen them do anything blatantly greedy/money grubbing on a large scale Have you ever heard of TF2?

I feel like they just wandered into a crazy profitable business model and didn't know what to do?

Could you be more specific -- I never played TF2 for very long, and I know hats were basically a huge thing, but from what I understand they allowed people to make hats right? Did they like take all the profit from community made hats or something?

This must just be a controversy I didn't see because I don't play TF2

Re: Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

#229

Post by hardwaresofton »

ppseafield wrote: post #224
hardwaresofton wrote: post #214

I absolutely welcome the competition, but it's going to take a lot for me to trust the Epic Games Store as much as I trust Valve. Lots has been written about Valve (employee handbook, supposedly-not-there-but-actually-just-hidden political hierarchies), but I don't think of them as a normal for-profit company though they most certainly are. They've taken bets like steam for linux, the steam controller, steam boxes, t…

> I've also never seen them do anything blatantly greedy/money grubbing on a large scale Well... Steam launched with Half Life 2, and you had to install it and have an internet connection to play the game on the CD you just bought. And Steam didn't work for several days after HL2's launch, so everyone who bought the game day one was forced to wait for the Steam gatekeeper to let you into your own game (again, that wa…

> Well... Steam launched with Half Life 2, and you had to install it and have an internet connection to play the game on the CD you just bought. And Steam didn't work for several days after HL2's launch, so everyone who bought the game day one was forced to wait for the Steam gatekeeper to let you into your own game (again, that was sitting in the physical box). And it was quite buggy for a long time, even though it did very little for the user. They eventually rewrote the entire thing as an embedded web app!

This has definitely colored my view of valve, thanks for sharing. I bought HL2 on CD (DVD?) to play counter strike and didn't remember this happening since I got it so late.

> Also besides the Half-Life IP, many of Valve's franchises are either takeovers of user-created mods (Team Fortress, Counter Strike, DotA 2), and now Artifact appears to be heavily "inspired" by hearthstone.

Maybe this is the difference -- they don't actively kill things that made them successful. I feel like I've seen things like that happen to other companies and they step in and ruin it/don't know how to just let the community be and let it grow.

> As for Steam for Linux, that was a contingency against the Windows Store when it was released. Valve recognized Microsoft could theoretically kick app and game stores off it's platform, leaving Valve with nothing.

While I'm not sure that windows store was ever a real competitor to steam I definitely see the point here. Glad they did it though!

Re: Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

#230

Post by moate »

nottorp wrote: post #161
moate wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortnite is making hundreds of millions of dollars a month{1}. IDK what "free to play crap" is, but if it can pull in over a billion a year I think most companies would be happy to have it on their ledger. 1- https://www.recode.net/2018/6/26/17502072/fortnite-revenue-g...

It's simple. 99.9% of the users play without paying a dime, and the game has to cater to the "whales" that spend thousands. That's fine when you peddle digital hats, but if they want to open a store, they want paying customers in it don't they? Most actual games they'd want to sell need to be paid for upfront... and I don't see the average Fortnite (or any other free to play abomination) player doing that.

Lower posts have shown that your math is off on this 99.9% thing you made up, so we're not going to address that.

We're talking about user base and network effect. Fortnite is your gateway to getting people to install Epic Game Store. You've already shown people will pay real human money to buy digital hats, so use those digital hats to get them to install EGS. (you just give a free skin every month if you have an EGS account. easy peasy). Now you've got a few million installs of your platform. Pretty good starting place to start selling the other games if you ask me.

Sounds like you just have a lot of problems with FTP and Pay to Win type games based on how you talk about them. That's fine, you don't need to play them, but the rest of the gaming community seems to be using them pretty regularly. Don't assume everyone else is like you.

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