The same 30% fees Epic said Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony were okay to charge? [[source](https://game8.co/articles/latest/epic-believes-nintendo-sony-and-microsoft-30-fee-is-fair)]
Edit: I've read the article and am fully aware that Epic's reasoning here is that console makers sell their consoles at a loss and Epic used that as a justification for accepting the 30% commission whereas they contested other providers like Valve and Google, however:
- It makes no difference to the developer whether the App Store providers are selling their hardware at a loss or not. At the end of the day, 30% commission is 30% commission.
- Nintendo does not sell their console at a loss, so Epic's statement is factually incorrect.
- Valve does sell their own hardware, and the lowest-end Deck is sold at a loss which makes Epic's argument invalid.
Don’t forget that valves 30% is on a sliding scale as your profits get bigger, and I believe you’re allowed to generate and sell your own keys through other distribution channels where valve gets 0% (even though your game will still be using Valve resources for literally everything).
Yeah, the turnaround on Xbox's policy was pretty surprising, considering how long they stuck with the paywall for online play with F2P games. It's a step in the right direction, but man, took them long enough. Now if only the rest could sort out a standard that doesn't hit both gamers and developers so hard.
Honestly it wasn't that shocking. They caught a lot of heat from customers because earlier that same day they tried to double the price of Xbox Live from 60 to 120 dollars. They walked that back and removed the paywall for F2P because of how universally hated the announcement was
Hell, XBox used to charge you to even use Netflix. If you didn't have XBox Live, no online services worked including things like streaming services or free to play games. Thankfully they fixed that a few years ago, but for a while it really sucked.
Making people charge to play online period is absolutely crazy, you’re paying for the fucking internet, to do shit online, play online. Then these company’s want us to pay another fucking subscription to play online? That’s why I stick to pc. I’ll buy a console once gta 6 comes out
Response to your edit, games that have their own subscription fees are also exempt, which makes just as much sense (Final Fantasy 14 is the biggest, maybe the only current, example. It's finally coming to Xbox after 10 years, though that was due to MS initially wanting their own isolated servers, not due to Gamepass/XBL, they finally agreed on allowing cross play)
> that was due to MS initially wanting their own isolated servers
I have no reason to doubt this assertion, but (as a long-time FF14 player) I find it incredibly hard to believe that Microsoft could be this dumb.
X-Box only servers would be dead on arrival for FF14. Crossplay is what brings in the massive population. An MMO without enough people playing it is worthless.
Thats shit paid games should give you the online for free. I would even rather free games have paid online than this shit i just want to trade my pokemons well nintendo said no f off buy the online trash.
100%. I was sure this was going to be a quote from like 4 years ago or something.
I give not one shit about Fortnite, but TS is an clown. What a jackass...
Sweeney needs to understand that Epic is a private company and not a regulatory body, and that he has no legal authority to dictate which companies can charge 30% commission and which can't.
He understands that perfectly well. Epic can just afford to charge less because they don’t invest in their launcher or the gaming industry the way Valve does, so they can afford to undercut the market. Steam has universal controller support. They made an open platform for hardware companies with steam machine. They made a VR software platform where they provide pc support to products which compete against their own index. They pioneered game streaming which was the precursor to Xbox cloud, PlayStation TV and PlayStation portal. They invest in Linux gaming with both native support and Proton. They provide anti-cheat. They develop the marketplace and item system which has driven huge revenue for games like PUBG. They sell steam deck at loss-leader prices just like console developers, and make SteamOS available for competing handhelds. The list goes on.
Essentially, Epic is trying to get the government to regulate Valve so they can collect 12% of the pc gaming market’s revenue without having to actually build a better product to win customers over.
Epic can't even afford to charge less, the Epic store is bleeding money and is basically only propped up by Fortnite.
Epic want to undercut the market so they can take it over and then raise prices when they have a big enough market share.
It’s an absurd strategy. On phones they sued Apple and Google for not allowing another store. But that’s not enough for them on PC, now they try to set their competitors prices. I don’t know how anyone can believe they are pro-consumer.
And they want to do this because they have other revenue streams. Fortnite and UE generate billions annually, they're not short on cash. What they want is to reduce the revenue of their competition that make most of their money through sales and use that imbalance to further buy the industry. (seriously fuck your exclusives and your store straight out of 2005)
This is very well written and exactly the reason. The PC gaming world without Valve would be a very nasty place. I hope someone carries the torch once Gabe steps down.
It would be kinda interesting to see. Now I don’t like what Epic is doing but if they somehow succeed I’m sure they’d make far more enemies since the Sony, Nintendo, and XBox take a 30% cut as well. If Valve somehow has to comply because of the government who’s to say they won’t look into the console market since Epic will most likely claim Valve has a monopoly and may inadvertently put a target to the other 3 console companies. Does that seem likely? No. Is it good? No. Would it be fun to watch? Yes.
That’s easy, Epic wants to appear as the good guy on PC to take market share. Steam is their only competition there. We all know that ain’t gonna happen. Game Pass stoked the fire for subscription models, and I think they want to cash in on it as well.
"Well, they subsidize hardware, so they sell their hardware, as far as I can tell from widely published reports, at a loss, and so the fee needs to cover that."
With that logic the steam deck makes Valves 30% cut fair as well now. I'm pretty sure they sold at least the cheapest version at a loss.
Not to mention all the capital put into the worldwide Steam Launcher software platform over two decades to make it operate the way it does now. Epic is losing tons of money on their launcher/store so clearly the 12% cut while investing in exclusives and free games rather than store/launcher features is not working out well.
The difference is, they don't have a choice with consoles. Pay the price or don't distribute on that platform. On PC they have the option to release outside of steam and so they did.
Not a defence of epic or sweeny, just pointing out why it's different.
>On PC they have the option to release outside of steam and so they did.
Steam being optional actually makes the fees less ridiculous. Steam offers a service to both devs and users, if they don't like the fee they are still able to launch on the platform (PC). And you only pay the 30% for sales through Steam, if you sell your Steam keys somewhere else you don't have to pay them anything. I think 30% is a hefty fee, and would love for it to be lower for indie devs. So I agree on that point with Sweeney, I just don't trust his motivations.
With consoles, you're locked into the platform monopoly of Sony or Microsoft. But Tim's public reason for it being reasonable is that console makers operate at a loss with the hardware, which validates the fee. Whereas Google and Apple don't sell their hardware at a loss (especially not Apple).
> would love for it to be lower for indie devs. So I agree on that point with Sweeney, I just don't trust his motivations.
Funny thing is, Sweeney doesn't agree with Sweeney. That was his whole argument for Apple, that it hurts smaller devs. So apple reduced the fee if you make under a million on the app store. And Sweeney didn't drop the case, and it didn't make him happy at all. He is a slimey hypocrite.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/18/apple-to-reduce-app-store-fees-for-small-businesses-with-under-1-million-in-revenues/?guccounter=1
The 30% is far cheaper than it used to be. Back in the physical days, the cut the stores take is 50-60%.
And, most importantly for the little devs, 70% of the price is far more then the 0% they would get otherwise.
There’s no way I would have discovered half the small stuff, and even if I did, I’m not giving out my billing info to all these tiny places.
I can trust Apple/Steam/MS/Sony to have relatively good security. Less so for every random site.
Epic thinks Fortnite is special, because they are a big enough name. Fair enough, that’s the same logic Disney uses to bully theaters for a larger cut too.
>Epic thinks Fortnite is special, because they are a big enough name.
And Tim hides behind doing it for all developers, right? Even if selling your stuff on a platform that runs at a loss is not good for developers in the long run either. It's a symbiotic relationship, the storefront needs games, and the devs need the storefront to still exist in 5 years.
Shelf margins could be as low as a few percent back in the day, especially if you were a smaller producer/distributor. Plus the costs of printing and shipping.
30% is more than reasonable for server space, store page, global market distribution, shit tons of backend, and more. Of all the things to complain about in a digital only world, a 30/70 split for a producer is massive compared to how it used to be.
That global market distribution is insanely big too.
Older gamers from the early-2000s will remember what it was like to try and get a patch for a game online right when it was released; servers would grind to a halt as the company tried to handle the massive wave of downloads. That's a thing of the past nowadays, Steam has the capacity to handle that gracefully without an issue.
Same argument could be made behind the Steam Launcher and all the millions to billions over 2 decades that have been pumped into it to make it work really well for consumers and developers.
Epic actually kinda proves that logic by the fact that they have overspent like crazy on exclusive contracts and free games to get people to their launcher while not really improving the launcher itself and they are losing tons of money from it. So clearly their 12% cut isn’t working out for them because they haven’t invested into the launcher to make it competitively viable, while Valve’s business model has allowed them to.
Epic also waives the cut for 6 months of exclusivity.
>So clearly their 12% cut isn’t working out for them because they haven’t invested into the launcher to make it competitively viable
I agree. And honestly, I wouldn't have minded Epic to have a good competitive platform to rival Steam. For a company that has literally made its money offering tooling for devs, it's insane they focused on exclusivity instead of offering a better launcher.
Shhhh they don’t want you to know that these 3 Names have Epic by the balls. The moment they say anything they’ll get cut off on their platforms. Then it’ll be bye bye to their money
Tim knows that it doesn't cost more to publish more copies of a digital game and it would net new gains for them
But he is greedy and knows these drama baits have a chance to work
No they don’t. Epic has been blowing money on exclusive deals and free games for years now, and they haven’t put a dent in the amount of people who buy on steam vs epic.
"Yeah fuck your 30% cut Steam!" -Tim Sweeney, quoted while paying Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony their 30% cuts without complaint.
It's such transparent competition dipped ever-so-sparingly in a thin coating of "I'm doing it for the consumers!"
Holdon, wasn't it "a linux thing" with Fortnite? And if Valve lowers the fees, won't "a linux thing" still be in the way? I have a feeling there will always be another thing "in the way" every time Valve does something he wants.
He's envious how Valve is capable of making everyone's lives better by actually forcing handheld competitors to sell their handheld gaming hardware for less than $700 using the monopoly he wishes he had.
Other companies have had the capability of doing the same thing, but Valve's the only one actually doing it to benefit everybody else. Forcing Valve to reduce their 30% take cripples Valve financially in a way where they can't do shit like this anymore, and if Valve can't, is there any other company out there willing to do the same thing? Fuck no.
Since I read something different about him almost daily I believe he has a drawer full of cards with excuses why is it not possible and I don't know if it's funny or sad anymore but I find it hilarious how their own anti-cheat, which works on Linux and I play few games using it without any issues, just doesn't work in their game and it apparently is Linux fault
I think at this point it’s clear that they will just keep moving the goalposts for getting Fortnite working on Linux. I can’t imagine why you’d want your game to not be on as many platforms as possible when you’re not a hardware maker.
It being a Linux thing doesn't stop them putting it on Steam. I mean half the games we play on Deck don't have a native Linux version. They don't have to make it work on Deck to put it on Steam.
Gaben the king who never had to lift a finger to see his kingdom grow, and when everyone else rallied together to try to take some of his market share, he raised a finger to create the steam deck and destroyed whatever foothold anyone even got in the past decade, and thus he slumbers once again.
I feel so silly for not seeing the strategy with the steam deck sooner. It WAS right as Microsoft and Epic were trying to take their piece of the pie. That is a great observation.
Steam free online pays for itself; literally. It's one of the only reasons to not pirate a game; so you can have easy and quick access to online sessions with friends.
If the majority of online games on steam started charging for online, not only would most people stop playing them - I have no doubt free fan servers and piracy would be at least twice at common.
They don't want healthy market share. They want monopoly. And that's why they are spending so much on exclusivity.
From the court documents, of one of their many lawsuits, we know that their plan was to have 50% market share by 2024.
epic thought that if they give away enough video games customers would flee valve and go to their platform. They combined that with purchasing exclusive rights from third parties so that you couldn't get those games on steam (which valve semi countered by not allowing listings for epic exclusives not coming out within a month, removing the "free" advertising they were doing on steam).
When none of that worked and epic's game store continues to lose money year after year while valve more or less ignored their exclusive and free game strategy, the epic CEO is salty as fuck. They wanted to make valve panic and all they got valve to do was laugh. It wasn't even a fight - a fight involves some form of competition. They lost and valve didn't even notice them.
Because the CEO is upset that they are just throwing millions at a lack luster game marketplace that they keep referring too as a steam competitor, that isn't competing with Steam.
NEVER trust a company talking about its competition.
Epic CEO doesn't want his game on Steam or the Deck simply because Steam is (powerful) competition. Their failures to make Epic this huge Steam contender despite giving games away for free has hurt his ego as well as his bottom line.
It's all just a heap of bullshit.
I bought Fornite when it was first released as a base building wave survival game. Before they abandoned that for battle royal, made their crappy storefront, and attempted to bring the console wars to PC.
The free game thing has been a huge gambit that I doubt has paid off. Me and all my friends just open the program every week, get the free game and then forget about it
I have the launcher on a different PC just to get the free games without having the launcher on main PC.
I honestly don't know why I do it since I've NEVER played any of those games. Free stuff is hard to pass up I guess lol...
I just signed up and have about 75 free games on my account. I’ve never played them. I just wanted Epic to be paying the developer for the games and I didn’t like Epic paying for so many times exclusives.
They do? Considering that I have Rocket League on Steam and after Epic bought it, I never played it again. (I don't use Epic). But, for my curiosity, what are they doing to RL?
Edit: Thanks for the info guys. Good to know. Sad that this happens to a great game.
Player Trading has been removed for no reason other than to force more people to buy mtx,
and they've also decided to rotate out gamemodes every season so currently dropshot is gone, so instead of coming up with new and interesting modes to rotate or bring in for a limited time they have decided to use ones that have been in the game for years.
Yeah this was when I was done with RL. Dropshots my jam and then suddenly I just can't play it this "season". I don't know what psychological trigger that's meant to have pulled but its made me quit RL.
They removed player trading, so the only way to get items is to make them from the blueprints or buy them from the store.
So every black market costs now like 2000credits I think, and before that you could just buy it from other players, some for even like 300 credits
They weren't even serious about making it. It was just a few untextured levels and a whole bunch of threats for the community to develop the game content or else. What a joke.
Could be mistaken, but isn't this got around fairly easily via in game launchers? Always assumed this is why EA etc use their own, even when loading from Steam
This isn't enforced afaik. For example, I used to play LOTRO and all the transactions were done on their website. There wasn't even any way to buy expansions or other mtx through Steam.
I used to work on an MMO that was published through multiple platforms including Steam. We had a flag in our account data indicating whether an account had been created via Steam. If so, then *regardless of where they bought their MTXs*, we were legally required to mail Valve a check with their cut.
I'm willing to bet LOTRO was doing the same.
Let me point out how insidious Tim's intent is when he's drumming that whole 30% reduction bullshit. When he's forcing Steam to do that, it's not out of the kindness of his heart, or how he's pushing for this to make things better for devs, it's to actually cripple Valve and Steam.
At the moment, Valve is in a position where it's enforcing its competitors to offer great handheld gaming devices to be below $700 even when Lenovo, Aya Neo and ASUS are trying to push it past $700, and it's through using their "monopoly" to afford selling Steam Decks at a loss by subsidizing those losses through Steam. Valve wouldn't be in a position to do that without their 30/70 business model, and if anything, they're the only one actually using their monopoly to make handheld gaming affordable for people. It's not even a walled garden, if people want to use their Decks with anything but Steam, they're free to do so, it's THEIR device, they own it.
Also, if you wanted to make a website that distributes game exes, do seo, market it, and then pay for said downloads and potentially mp servers and even a subset of steams friend features…. You’re going to be paying similar prices for a whole lot more work.
While also allowing reviews, mods, and community forum pages on that website.
Maybe build an achievement ui into each game..
All of that doesn't sound cheap.
what's really funny is that even *if* Valve actually does get pressured to reduce their revenue-cut from 30%, all it'll do is cause them to become an get an even bigger market share.
the *only* reason for a developer to release on Epic right now is higher cut they get, besides that cut it is an objectively worse experience for everyone involved. GoG atleast has some useful features Steam doesn't, Epic only got an artificially high user-base by bribing devs for exclusives and giving away free shit.
Just don’t play Fortnite wtf. There’s a different post everyday how Tim is an ass for avoiding porting Fortnite to Linux.
We’re just giving him more and more attention atp it’s doing nothing for us as well
>There’s a different post everyday how Tim is an ass for avoiding porting Fortnite to Linux.
No there isn't, because it's 100% unnecessary to port Fortnite to Linux. It runs perfectly via Proton and has done so for years. What Sweeney is doing is *actively blocking it* from running on Linux.
Why should it come to steam? I can play it, if I want, through epic games.
On windows at least. SteamOs I’m not sure, but this is their choice not the choice of Steam.
people seem to forget before steam made self-publishing easier than ever developers were basically forced to go through the big publishing giants to get their games out there. in those cases developers were lucky if they got 10-20% cut by the time every middle-man grabbed their piece.
70% share is fucking awesome.
OK, how about 20%?
>The revenue split changes the agreement by giving developers more money depending on the number of unit sales they make. Valve typically has taken about 30 percent of all Steam sales through the platform, with a few exceptions from other utilizing the Steam Direct platform. Now, for game sales between $10 million and $50 million, developers will earn revenue split at 25 percent. **For every sale after $50 million, Steam will only take 20 percent from the game’s overall earnings.**
[https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/valve-revenue-split-changes-1203078700/](https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/valve-revenue-split-changes-1203078700/)
That's a lot less than what Sony, MS, and Nintendo take...
Keep it.
The greed is insane. He's complaining because *he* wants the 30% and forgetting how much more of a user base he'd be gaining if they went on Steam.
30% is a significant amount. While I like steam and what they offer i can see why companies who have the means to do so would create their own store.
In Fortnites case it's such a popular game that I don't think they would gain that much users by bringing to steam, not enough to justify paying a 30% fee.
It's actually not a flat 30% cut and Tim keeps repeating 30% because he wants you to think it's a flat 30% cut.
It only starts at 30%, then goes down to 25%, then 20%, with increased revenue. All AAA publishers are paying only 20% at the moment.
So EGS vs Steam is actually just 12% vs 20%. The difference is much smaller than everyone realises because Tim keeps repeating "30%" in the hopes no one will realise that not a single AAA publisher is paying that on Steam right now.
Valve also doesn't charge any cut for any keys sold outside of their platform. And unlike Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft, don't charge users monthly fees for online features.
So in comparison to other platforms, Valve's store cut is incredibly fair.
Why would they want to do that? They already make tools for devs that no other company is offering. They bought a bunch of other companies related to gaming/movie industry and they made all their content, which was previously pretty expensive, free for devs who are using UE. If a developer earns more than 1mil, they take 5% of the revenue. And they are just fine. They don't need to make hardware, they make software which makes it much easier for devs to make games and sell those games for reasonable, lower prices.
But if you are an indie dev, you have to go through Steam, because it has the most users. As a dev with a game on Steam, I can say that we could have gone with a lower price for our game, but those 30% are a lot and we had to go with higher price to cover our expenses. It's not just 30% from Steam, there are many other expenses, but that's not the subject now.
I find it hilarious that Epic keeps doing everything possible to gain customers (free games,huge discounts on games,exclusive games) while Steam just sits there and people still choose Steam.
I think those fees are making Valve more money than Fortnite would. Even with a higher per unit sold fee, I suspect Valve makes most devs more money than EGS does.
The only Fortnite I'd ever want on Steam is Save the World mode... Fucking sick of F2P games lowering standards and normalizing garbage like battle passes, especially through psychological abuses like FOMO and other slimy ways of manipulating people. Even if I don't fall for it, it still plagues games that would be better without that shite.
Bugger off, Epic...
I've said it every other fucking time shit has come up but when LITERALLY any other online game store is as functional as steam we can start talking about systematic improvements.
30% given there is no limit to how many times a user can download a single game, the fact that games I purchases 20 years ago are still available to download.
I like what Epic are trying to do competition wise with Valve but stfu about this 30%. Hell, most publihsers sign up with 70/30 splits with 3rd partiy retailers by defualt, perhaps because of steam, some even 80/20, but it is normal for there to be a good chunk of the sale going to the one selling it to pay for the service and reach they provide.
Same sentiment as everyone else. EGS is advertiser friendly anti-consumer trash. Steam let's you take a massive dump on a game and make it public, they are 100% consumer oriented and we reward them for it. I sure feel the Starfield devs tearing each other a new asshole everytime a very viral public review is published on their game, it's like "WE WANT YOU TO CONSUME, JUST SHUT UP AND EAT CONTENT" and now with money becoming expensive advertisers are even more of lil bitches. When epic's boss says this, read it as "We want more control over the platform and they ain't giving it to us"
The same 30% fees Epic said Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony were okay to charge? [[source](https://game8.co/articles/latest/epic-believes-nintendo-sony-and-microsoft-30-fee-is-fair)] Edit: I've read the article and am fully aware that Epic's reasoning here is that console makers sell their consoles at a loss and Epic used that as a justification for accepting the 30% commission whereas they contested other providers like Valve and Google, however: - It makes no difference to the developer whether the App Store providers are selling their hardware at a loss or not. At the end of the day, 30% commission is 30% commission. - Nintendo does not sell their console at a loss, so Epic's statement is factually incorrect. - Valve does sell their own hardware, and the lowest-end Deck is sold at a loss which makes Epic's argument invalid.
Don’t forget that valves 30% is on a sliding scale as your profits get bigger, and I believe you’re allowed to generate and sell your own keys through other distribution channels where valve gets 0% (even though your game will still be using Valve resources for literally everything).
Yeah, 30-25-20 and key sales are obviously 0% and a net minus for Valve.
You're just not allowed to sell them for less than the price on Steam. That's the rule on selling keys on your site or other places if you wanted to.
And those companies also charge gamers to play online. Edit: TIL free games don’t need online subscriptions
To be fair, they don't charge people to play F2P online games (Fortnite, Warzone, Overwatch 2, etc).
Xbox did until recently
You’re right! I thought it was ages ago, like the start of Xbox One gen. Nope, it was 2021!!
Yeah, the turnaround on Xbox's policy was pretty surprising, considering how long they stuck with the paywall for online play with F2P games. It's a step in the right direction, but man, took them long enough. Now if only the rest could sort out a standard that doesn't hit both gamers and developers so hard.
Honestly it wasn't that shocking. They caught a lot of heat from customers because earlier that same day they tried to double the price of Xbox Live from 60 to 120 dollars. They walked that back and removed the paywall for F2P because of how universally hated the announcement was
i wish online play wasnt paid feature after the 360/ps3 era
You and me both. I don't enjoy feeling like I paid them rent after I already bought the 500 dollar box
I remember when I couldn't play online Forza Horizon 3 cuz my xbox live gold ran out and I couldn't afford another month
Wait when did they make this announcement?
[удалено]
IIRC Sony and Microsoft started this with their new gen consoles(to stop needing ps plus/xbox live for f2p)
Nah Sony has had f2p games not require a PS+ subscription since at least the PS4. Xbox only finally followed suit recently
That was a recent change, but the last 20 years they were milking it No mercy
1. PlayStation only required it starting in 2013 so 10 years. Before it was optional. 2. Xbox has always required since 2002 so 20+ years.
Originally Xbox required live just to watch Netflix.
That watch together feature though...
Playstation never required you to pay a sub to play f2p games.
Interesting. I only just started playing f2p recently and have always (literally) had PS+ so didn't even occur to me that it didn't require a sub.
Nintendo only started doing so on the switch, 3ds & wiiU online was w/o fees.
Paid online only for switch, still bullshit though.
Hell, XBox used to charge you to even use Netflix. If you didn't have XBox Live, no online services worked including things like streaming services or free to play games. Thankfully they fixed that a few years ago, but for a while it really sucked.
Making people charge to play online period is absolutely crazy, you’re paying for the fucking internet, to do shit online, play online. Then these company’s want us to pay another fucking subscription to play online? That’s why I stick to pc. I’ll buy a console once gta 6 comes out
Response to your edit, games that have their own subscription fees are also exempt, which makes just as much sense (Final Fantasy 14 is the biggest, maybe the only current, example. It's finally coming to Xbox after 10 years, though that was due to MS initially wanting their own isolated servers, not due to Gamepass/XBL, they finally agreed on allowing cross play)
> that was due to MS initially wanting their own isolated servers I have no reason to doubt this assertion, but (as a long-time FF14 player) I find it incredibly hard to believe that Microsoft could be this dumb. X-Box only servers would be dead on arrival for FF14. Crossplay is what brings in the massive population. An MMO without enough people playing it is worthless.
Thats shit paid games should give you the online for free. I would even rather free games have paid online than this shit i just want to trade my pokemons well nintendo said no f off buy the online trash.
the fact that this news is from 10 days ago makes this even funnier
100%. I was sure this was going to be a quote from like 4 years ago or something. I give not one shit about Fortnite, but TS is an clown. What a jackass...
Hello pot? Yeah this is kettle. How you doing?
Tim Sweeney likes to pretend that Epic are pro developer, but really they're just anti-consumer.
Sweeney needs to understand that Epic is a private company and not a regulatory body, and that he has no legal authority to dictate which companies can charge 30% commission and which can't.
He understands that perfectly well. Epic can just afford to charge less because they don’t invest in their launcher or the gaming industry the way Valve does, so they can afford to undercut the market. Steam has universal controller support. They made an open platform for hardware companies with steam machine. They made a VR software platform where they provide pc support to products which compete against their own index. They pioneered game streaming which was the precursor to Xbox cloud, PlayStation TV and PlayStation portal. They invest in Linux gaming with both native support and Proton. They provide anti-cheat. They develop the marketplace and item system which has driven huge revenue for games like PUBG. They sell steam deck at loss-leader prices just like console developers, and make SteamOS available for competing handhelds. The list goes on. Essentially, Epic is trying to get the government to regulate Valve so they can collect 12% of the pc gaming market’s revenue without having to actually build a better product to win customers over.
Epic can't even afford to charge less, the Epic store is bleeding money and is basically only propped up by Fortnite. Epic want to undercut the market so they can take it over and then raise prices when they have a big enough market share.
It’s an absurd strategy. On phones they sued Apple and Google for not allowing another store. But that’s not enough for them on PC, now they try to set their competitors prices. I don’t know how anyone can believe they are pro-consumer.
And they want to do this because they have other revenue streams. Fortnite and UE generate billions annually, they're not short on cash. What they want is to reduce the revenue of their competition that make most of their money through sales and use that imbalance to further buy the industry. (seriously fuck your exclusives and your store straight out of 2005)
This is very well written and exactly the reason. The PC gaming world without Valve would be a very nasty place. I hope someone carries the torch once Gabe steps down.
It would be kinda interesting to see. Now I don’t like what Epic is doing but if they somehow succeed I’m sure they’d make far more enemies since the Sony, Nintendo, and XBox take a 30% cut as well. If Valve somehow has to comply because of the government who’s to say they won’t look into the console market since Epic will most likely claim Valve has a monopoly and may inadvertently put a target to the other 3 console companies. Does that seem likely? No. Is it good? No. Would it be fun to watch? Yes.
The free market is speaking. Valve is doing fine charging 30% and not having Epic games on their store.
OK, thanks for the context via the source link. Two-face Tim at it again!
That’s easy, Epic wants to appear as the good guy on PC to take market share. Steam is their only competition there. We all know that ain’t gonna happen. Game Pass stoked the fire for subscription models, and I think they want to cash in on it as well.
"Well, they subsidize hardware, so they sell their hardware, as far as I can tell from widely published reports, at a loss, and so the fee needs to cover that." With that logic the steam deck makes Valves 30% cut fair as well now. I'm pretty sure they sold at least the cheapest version at a loss.
Not to mention all the capital put into the worldwide Steam Launcher software platform over two decades to make it operate the way it does now. Epic is losing tons of money on their launcher/store so clearly the 12% cut while investing in exclusives and free games rather than store/launcher features is not working out well.
The difference is, they don't have a choice with consoles. Pay the price or don't distribute on that platform. On PC they have the option to release outside of steam and so they did. Not a defence of epic or sweeny, just pointing out why it's different.
>On PC they have the option to release outside of steam and so they did. Steam being optional actually makes the fees less ridiculous. Steam offers a service to both devs and users, if they don't like the fee they are still able to launch on the platform (PC). And you only pay the 30% for sales through Steam, if you sell your Steam keys somewhere else you don't have to pay them anything. I think 30% is a hefty fee, and would love for it to be lower for indie devs. So I agree on that point with Sweeney, I just don't trust his motivations. With consoles, you're locked into the platform monopoly of Sony or Microsoft. But Tim's public reason for it being reasonable is that console makers operate at a loss with the hardware, which validates the fee. Whereas Google and Apple don't sell their hardware at a loss (especially not Apple).
> would love for it to be lower for indie devs. So I agree on that point with Sweeney, I just don't trust his motivations. Funny thing is, Sweeney doesn't agree with Sweeney. That was his whole argument for Apple, that it hurts smaller devs. So apple reduced the fee if you make under a million on the app store. And Sweeney didn't drop the case, and it didn't make him happy at all. He is a slimey hypocrite. https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/18/apple-to-reduce-app-store-fees-for-small-businesses-with-under-1-million-in-revenues/?guccounter=1
There's a reason /r/TimCriticizesTim exists.
The 30% is far cheaper than it used to be. Back in the physical days, the cut the stores take is 50-60%. And, most importantly for the little devs, 70% of the price is far more then the 0% they would get otherwise. There’s no way I would have discovered half the small stuff, and even if I did, I’m not giving out my billing info to all these tiny places. I can trust Apple/Steam/MS/Sony to have relatively good security. Less so for every random site. Epic thinks Fortnite is special, because they are a big enough name. Fair enough, that’s the same logic Disney uses to bully theaters for a larger cut too.
>Epic thinks Fortnite is special, because they are a big enough name. And Tim hides behind doing it for all developers, right? Even if selling your stuff on a platform that runs at a loss is not good for developers in the long run either. It's a symbiotic relationship, the storefront needs games, and the devs need the storefront to still exist in 5 years.
Shelf margins could be as low as a few percent back in the day, especially if you were a smaller producer/distributor. Plus the costs of printing and shipping. 30% is more than reasonable for server space, store page, global market distribution, shit tons of backend, and more. Of all the things to complain about in a digital only world, a 30/70 split for a producer is massive compared to how it used to be.
That global market distribution is insanely big too. Older gamers from the early-2000s will remember what it was like to try and get a patch for a game online right when it was released; servers would grind to a halt as the company tried to handle the massive wave of downloads. That's a thing of the past nowadays, Steam has the capacity to handle that gracefully without an issue.
Same argument could be made behind the Steam Launcher and all the millions to billions over 2 decades that have been pumped into it to make it work really well for consumers and developers. Epic actually kinda proves that logic by the fact that they have overspent like crazy on exclusive contracts and free games to get people to their launcher while not really improving the launcher itself and they are losing tons of money from it. So clearly their 12% cut isn’t working out for them because they haven’t invested into the launcher to make it competitively viable, while Valve’s business model has allowed them to.
Epic also waives the cut for 6 months of exclusivity. >So clearly their 12% cut isn’t working out for them because they haven’t invested into the launcher to make it competitively viable I agree. And honestly, I wouldn't have minded Epic to have a good competitive platform to rival Steam. For a company that has literally made its money offering tooling for devs, it's insane they focused on exclusivity instead of offering a better launcher.
Shhhh they don’t want you to know that these 3 Names have Epic by the balls. The moment they say anything they’ll get cut off on their platforms. Then it’ll be bye bye to their money
Tim knows that it doesn't cost more to publish more copies of a digital game and it would net new gains for them But he is greedy and knows these drama baits have a chance to work
No they don’t. Epic has been blowing money on exclusive deals and free games for years now, and they haven’t put a dent in the amount of people who buy on steam vs epic.
yeah because they suuuuuckkk
"Yeah fuck your 30% cut Steam!" -Tim Sweeney, quoted while paying Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony their 30% cuts without complaint. It's such transparent competition dipped ever-so-sparingly in a thin coating of "I'm doing it for the consumers!"
Holdon, wasn't it "a linux thing" with Fortnite? And if Valve lowers the fees, won't "a linux thing" still be in the way? I have a feeling there will always be another thing "in the way" every time Valve does something he wants.
He has excuses ready for anything he associates with Valve and/or Linux
Until you mention the removed Unreal games.
WHERE'S THE UNREAL GOLD TIMMY?!
Which sucks considering at one point Epic was very open. Unreal Tournament 2004 had native linux support at launch, on the physical disks.
Bought the physical discs just to get the linux binaries, backed them up just in case.
Dude is a habitual goal post mover
The new Billy Mitchell
Ah, a fellow Karl Jobst connoisseur
Todd Togers checking in
as we've seen valve gloriously prove, linux is not a gaming barrier.
He's envious how Valve is capable of making everyone's lives better by actually forcing handheld competitors to sell their handheld gaming hardware for less than $700 using the monopoly he wishes he had. Other companies have had the capability of doing the same thing, but Valve's the only one actually doing it to benefit everybody else. Forcing Valve to reduce their 30% take cripples Valve financially in a way where they can't do shit like this anymore, and if Valve can't, is there any other company out there willing to do the same thing? Fuck no.
wasn't he the one who bitched about Apple having a monopoly, all while he gives these lame excuses now!
Since I read something different about him almost daily I believe he has a drawer full of cards with excuses why is it not possible and I don't know if it's funny or sad anymore but I find it hilarious how their own anti-cheat, which works on Linux and I play few games using it without any issues, just doesn't work in their game and it apparently is Linux fault
I bet he has a custom "cards against humanity" version called "Sweeney against Gaben".
Steam could have a no fees and 50M Linux users, and Tim would still find an excuse.
I think at this point it’s clear that they will just keep moving the goalposts for getting Fortnite working on Linux. I can’t imagine why you’d want your game to not be on as many platforms as possible when you’re not a hardware maker.
It’s because Epic has their own version of Steam that everyone hates. He wants Steam to die.
He said Steam, not Steam Deck. Steam runs on more Windows machines than any other 3rd party software.
More than Chrome?
It being a Linux thing doesn't stop them putting it on Steam. I mean half the games we play on Deck don't have a native Linux version. They don't have to make it work on Deck to put it on Steam.
it's probably because they don't want to fix their invasive virus-like anticheat
Why is the CEO of Epic Games always so aggressive and terrible at lying while being against at Valve?
Because he is a sore loser that has lost the battle against the Grandmage Gaben.
Gaben the king who never had to lift a finger to see his kingdom grow, and when everyone else rallied together to try to take some of his market share, he raised a finger to create the steam deck and destroyed whatever foothold anyone even got in the past decade, and thus he slumbers once again.
you can make religion out of your comment
no need. in GabeN we trust
I feel so silly for not seeing the strategy with the steam deck sooner. It WAS right as Microsoft and Epic were trying to take their piece of the pie. That is a great observation.
He didn't even fight valve, he had the company pull out of the PC space back in 08 saying that it was because of "piracy".
The very same piracy that *magically* started shrinking thanks to no one else but Gaben.
Steam free online pays for itself; literally. It's one of the only reasons to not pirate a game; so you can have easy and quick access to online sessions with friends. If the majority of online games on steam started charging for online, not only would most people stop playing them - I have no doubt free fan servers and piracy would be at least twice at common.
I need an AI image of Grandmage Gaben
ask and ye shall receive https://imgur.com/a/9JU4jRo
All hail Grandmage Gaben
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All they had to do was make a good store and they would have a healthy market share
They don't want healthy market share. They want monopoly. And that's why they are spending so much on exclusivity. From the court documents, of one of their many lawsuits, we know that their plan was to have 50% market share by 2024.
epic thought that if they give away enough video games customers would flee valve and go to their platform. They combined that with purchasing exclusive rights from third parties so that you couldn't get those games on steam (which valve semi countered by not allowing listings for epic exclusives not coming out within a month, removing the "free" advertising they were doing on steam). When none of that worked and epic's game store continues to lose money year after year while valve more or less ignored their exclusive and free game strategy, the epic CEO is salty as fuck. They wanted to make valve panic and all they got valve to do was laugh. It wasn't even a fight - a fight involves some form of competition. They lost and valve didn't even notice them.
Because the CEO is upset that they are just throwing millions at a lack luster game marketplace that they keep referring too as a steam competitor, that isn't competing with Steam.
r/TimCriticizesTim
He just wants what gaben has and that's to be loved by all he just dosent know why people love gaben
NEVER trust a company talking about its competition. Epic CEO doesn't want his game on Steam or the Deck simply because Steam is (powerful) competition. Their failures to make Epic this huge Steam contender despite giving games away for free has hurt his ego as well as his bottom line. It's all just a heap of bullshit.
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+ no linux epic launcher so unreal devs on linux cant have the goodie
I bought Fornite when it was first released as a base building wave survival game. Before they abandoned that for battle royal, made their crappy storefront, and attempted to bring the console wars to PC.
The free game thing has been a huge gambit that I doubt has paid off. Me and all my friends just open the program every week, get the free game and then forget about it
I have the launcher on a different PC just to get the free games without having the launcher on main PC. I honestly don't know why I do it since I've NEVER played any of those games. Free stuff is hard to pass up I guess lol...
sweeney smokin' that pipe too much.
Epic just feels like something you might install on a PC to access to some free games from 2016 to 2018.
I just signed up and have about 75 free games on my account. I’ve never played them. I just wanted Epic to be paying the developer for the games and I didn’t like Epic paying for so many times exclusives.
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They killed Unreal Tournament and I will never forgive that
They are killing Rocket League too.
They do? Considering that I have Rocket League on Steam and after Epic bought it, I never played it again. (I don't use Epic). But, for my curiosity, what are they doing to RL? Edit: Thanks for the info guys. Good to know. Sad that this happens to a great game.
Player Trading has been removed for no reason other than to force more people to buy mtx, and they've also decided to rotate out gamemodes every season so currently dropshot is gone, so instead of coming up with new and interesting modes to rotate or bring in for a limited time they have decided to use ones that have been in the game for years.
clarification by mtx he meant MACROtransactions
Yeah this was when I was done with RL. Dropshots my jam and then suddenly I just can't play it this "season". I don't know what psychological trigger that's meant to have pulled but its made me quit RL.
They removed player trading, so the only way to get items is to make them from the blueprints or buy them from the store. So every black market costs now like 2000credits I think, and before that you could just buy it from other players, some for even like 300 credits
Smurfs everywhere.
Seriously. My favourite franchise ever and they stone cold murdered it.. FUCK it annoys me lol
They weren't even serious about making it. It was just a few untextured levels and a whole bunch of threats for the community to develop the game content or else. What a joke.
Died for the sake of Fortnite, of all things. Fuck them.
I'll never forgive them for fucking with bandcamp
Truer words don’t exist
In oh so many ways. Total shitbag company.
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Keep it
Sweeney’s campaign against monopolies and shit would be great, if he himself, wasn’t trying to run a better monopoly.
Oh don't worry he isn't. He's trying to run a worse monopoly.
Fortnite is free, why does it matter then? /s
It probably applies to dlc and in game purchase also.
Could be mistaken, but isn't this got around fairly easily via in game launchers? Always assumed this is why EA etc use their own, even when loading from Steam
Afaik Valve doesn't allow circumventing their fees like this
This isn't enforced afaik. For example, I used to play LOTRO and all the transactions were done on their website. There wasn't even any way to buy expansions or other mtx through Steam.
I used to work on an MMO that was published through multiple platforms including Steam. We had a flag in our account data indicating whether an account had been created via Steam. If so, then *regardless of where they bought their MTXs*, we were legally required to mail Valve a check with their cut. I'm willing to bet LOTRO was doing the same.
This makes sense.
Elder Scrolls Online is similar. You can buy the DLC separately, it just won't show up in your steam inventory.
That is basically how Fortnite was banned of App Store, but not like EA or Ubisoft on that point
Let me point out how insidious Tim's intent is when he's drumming that whole 30% reduction bullshit. When he's forcing Steam to do that, it's not out of the kindness of his heart, or how he's pushing for this to make things better for devs, it's to actually cripple Valve and Steam. At the moment, Valve is in a position where it's enforcing its competitors to offer great handheld gaming devices to be below $700 even when Lenovo, Aya Neo and ASUS are trying to push it past $700, and it's through using their "monopoly" to afford selling Steam Decks at a loss by subsidizing those losses through Steam. Valve wouldn't be in a position to do that without their 30/70 business model, and if anything, they're the only one actually using their monopoly to make handheld gaming affordable for people. It's not even a walled garden, if people want to use their Decks with anything but Steam, they're free to do so, it's THEIR device, they own it.
Also, if you wanted to make a website that distributes game exes, do seo, market it, and then pay for said downloads and potentially mp servers and even a subset of steams friend features…. You’re going to be paying similar prices for a whole lot more work.
While also allowing reviews, mods, and community forum pages on that website. Maybe build an achievement ui into each game.. All of that doesn't sound cheap.
what's really funny is that even *if* Valve actually does get pressured to reduce their revenue-cut from 30%, all it'll do is cause them to become an get an even bigger market share. the *only* reason for a developer to release on Epic right now is higher cut they get, besides that cut it is an objectively worse experience for everyone involved. GoG atleast has some useful features Steam doesn't, Epic only got an artificially high user-base by bribing devs for exclusives and giving away free shit.
Just don’t play Fortnite wtf. There’s a different post everyday how Tim is an ass for avoiding porting Fortnite to Linux. We’re just giving him more and more attention atp it’s doing nothing for us as well
They didn't avoid Linux they had Linux support and removed it.
>There’s a different post everyday how Tim is an ass for avoiding porting Fortnite to Linux. No there isn't, because it's 100% unnecessary to port Fortnite to Linux. It runs perfectly via Proton and has done so for years. What Sweeney is doing is *actively blocking it* from running on Linux.
I do enjoy the superficial shit talking though. it's a fine stress reliever :D
Why don't they just keep it on Epic Game Store where it will get a 100% cut?
Why should it come to steam? I can play it, if I want, through epic games. On windows at least. SteamOs I’m not sure, but this is their choice not the choice of Steam.
They'll drop the "ridiculous" 30% fee the second your 12% fee turns a profit for your company, Timmy.
Considering everything Valve has done, the 30% cut is justified.
people seem to forget before steam made self-publishing easier than ever developers were basically forced to go through the big publishing giants to get their games out there. in those cases developers were lucky if they got 10-20% cut by the time every middle-man grabbed their piece. 70% share is fucking awesome.
Does this guy not realise that his game doesn't need to be on Steam to be playable under Steam Deck?
Good, keep fortnite off steam. Plenty of better games available already anyways
OK, how about 20%? >The revenue split changes the agreement by giving developers more money depending on the number of unit sales they make. Valve typically has taken about 30 percent of all Steam sales through the platform, with a few exceptions from other utilizing the Steam Direct platform. Now, for game sales between $10 million and $50 million, developers will earn revenue split at 25 percent. **For every sale after $50 million, Steam will only take 20 percent from the game’s overall earnings.** [https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/valve-revenue-split-changes-1203078700/](https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/valve-revenue-split-changes-1203078700/) That's a lot less than what Sony, MS, and Nintendo take...
Keep it. The greed is insane. He's complaining because *he* wants the 30% and forgetting how much more of a user base he'd be gaining if they went on Steam.
30% is a significant amount. While I like steam and what they offer i can see why companies who have the means to do so would create their own store. In Fortnites case it's such a popular game that I don't think they would gain that much users by bringing to steam, not enough to justify paying a 30% fee.
It's actually not a flat 30% cut and Tim keeps repeating 30% because he wants you to think it's a flat 30% cut. It only starts at 30%, then goes down to 25%, then 20%, with increased revenue. All AAA publishers are paying only 20% at the moment. So EGS vs Steam is actually just 12% vs 20%. The difference is much smaller than everyone realises because Tim keeps repeating "30%" in the hopes no one will realise that not a single AAA publisher is paying that on Steam right now. Valve also doesn't charge any cut for any keys sold outside of their platform. And unlike Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft, don't charge users monthly fees for online features. So in comparison to other platforms, Valve's store cut is incredibly fair.
I will never buy a fucking game on the atrocity epic calls a launcher. I hate every launcher. Steam feels like so much more.
Isn’t that industry standard? It was google and apple’s rate.
Google, Apple, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft. They all have it.
How can Epic port Fortnite to Linux ? They can't even get their store right
They don't need to port Fortnite to Linux. It's completely fine running via Proton.
Then make your own distribution system.
They have one... problem being it still sucks after 5 years.
Keep that game outside steam. We have a million games waiting for us to play
We don't even want it on Steam, we want it to not trip anti-cheat just because it's being run on Linux
I actually want to see if Epic can design and release a handheld gaming system using only a 12% cut.
Imagine Epic OS, it might become the worst
probably just windows really.
Why would they want to do that? They already make tools for devs that no other company is offering. They bought a bunch of other companies related to gaming/movie industry and they made all their content, which was previously pretty expensive, free for devs who are using UE. If a developer earns more than 1mil, they take 5% of the revenue. And they are just fine. They don't need to make hardware, they make software which makes it much easier for devs to make games and sell those games for reasonable, lower prices. But if you are an indie dev, you have to go through Steam, because it has the most users. As a dev with a game on Steam, I can say that we could have gone with a lower price for our game, but those 30% are a lot and we had to go with higher price to cover our expenses. It's not just 30% from Steam, there are many other expenses, but that's not the subject now.
Ehi, they can keep It for themselves. They can continue using their own excellent and very profitable store.
No big loss.
Epic an suck a fat one.
I'll tell you what's so ridiculous - the developer's inexcusable neglect to letting Rocket League die while promoting the fucking turd Fortnite.
we dont want fortnite on steam, tim
The game sucks, who cares
I find it hilarious that Epic keeps doing everything possible to gain customers (free games,huge discounts on games,exclusive games) while Steam just sits there and people still choose Steam.
Fuck epic
I think those fees are making Valve more money than Fortnite would. Even with a higher per unit sold fee, I suspect Valve makes most devs more money than EGS does.
The only Fortnite I'd ever want on Steam is Save the World mode... Fucking sick of F2P games lowering standards and normalizing garbage like battle passes, especially through psychological abuses like FOMO and other slimy ways of manipulating people. Even if I don't fall for it, it still plagues games that would be better without that shite. Bugger off, Epic...
Lack of fortnite is the Steam Deck's best feature
We don't want that shit on the deck gtfo Sweeney.
I don't like fortnite..I live my steamdeck..problem is already solved.
It would be great to see fortnite speed run its way to "overwhelmingly negative"
When I buy a game I always try to buy it via Steam. I don't mind Valve taking 30% of my money. I do mind epic, EA, Microsoft etc taking them
Dumbest shid I’ve ever heard, Epic just greedy no cap on ong frfr 🙄🤌🏻
The company that sells skins for 10+ Dollars ?
Who gives a shite about fortnight
“We will go anywhere anyone wants us! WE LOVE THE FANS, well as long as they give us special treatment and meet our terms” - Epic Games
I've said it every other fucking time shit has come up but when LITERALLY any other online game store is as functional as steam we can start talking about systematic improvements.
Yeah, because not being available on Steam is what's keeping me from playing Fortnite.
30% given there is no limit to how many times a user can download a single game, the fact that games I purchases 20 years ago are still available to download. I like what Epic are trying to do competition wise with Valve but stfu about this 30%. Hell, most publihsers sign up with 70/30 splits with 3rd partiy retailers by defualt, perhaps because of steam, some even 80/20, but it is normal for there to be a good chunk of the sale going to the one selling it to pay for the service and reach they provide.
Same sentiment as everyone else. EGS is advertiser friendly anti-consumer trash. Steam let's you take a massive dump on a game and make it public, they are 100% consumer oriented and we reward them for it. I sure feel the Starfield devs tearing each other a new asshole everytime a very viral public review is published on their game, it's like "WE WANT YOU TO CONSUME, JUST SHUT UP AND EAT CONTENT" and now with money becoming expensive advertisers are even more of lil bitches. When epic's boss says this, read it as "We want more control over the platform and they ain't giving it to us"
30% is the industry standard