Why don't publishers make games available for both Steam and Epic Store?

[Wyvernyx]

Won't they get more money this way?

[TheRandomGuy]

To answer the OP

Epic is making exclusivity deals with said publishers and developers. This means they are given money worth however much the game is expected to sell in a given time (usually 1 year) and in return they only sell their game on the Epic Store. So far the only two Epic games that took deals and are NOT 100% EGS Exclusive are The Outer Worlds (Available on the Windows 10 Store), and every Ubisoft Game (Available on Uplay)

Yes, the developer WOULD make more money through higher sales, across two stores. There'd be some overlap sure, but releasing a game on all avenues is not only Pro-Consumer but also ensures the developer gets decent sales in total from all platforms. In a best case, a developer would release a game across Steam, GOG, and Epic, and get access to the Steam Userbase, the Anti-DRM GOG Userbase, and the Epic Userbase.

Frankly, keeping a game to one store is anti-consumer. I wouldn't be mad if they at least released them on GOG or the Windows 10 Store (Like Outer Worlds is going to do), but no, they're all exclusives, which reduces consumer choice and typically nets the developer lower sales and harms their reputation.

[Rockets]

引用自 Start_Running：

引用自 Rockets：

Lol tell that to US Steel, Standard Oil, and Microsoft who all got sued for exclusive deal anti trust violations.

Different context. MIght I suggest adding anti-trust law to your recommended reading list.
But seriously, are you arguing that a seller has no autonomy in determining where, when, and under what terms they transact business?

lol you can debate the points of it that you want, but if you want to just assign me labors of research to prove the point you can't then no

[Start_Running]

引用自 Rockets：

引用自 Start_Running：

Different context. MIght I suggest adding anti-trust law to your recommended reading list.
But seriously, are you arguing that a seller has no autonomy in determining where, when, and under what terms they transact business?

lol you can debate the points of it that you want, but if you want to just assign me labors of research to prove the point you can't then no

And therein lies your problem. You argue from ignorance and limited understanding because you lack the intellectual curiosity to learn about things you clearly know little about.

Why else would you be arguing against seller's rights.

[Rockets]

引用自 Start_Running：

引用自 Rockets：

lol you can debate the points of it that you want, but if you want to just assign me labors of research to prove the point you can't then no

And therein lies your problem. You argue from ignorance and limited understanding because you lack the intellectual curiosity to learn about things you clearly know little about.

Why else would you be arguing against seller's rights.

Lol

you are arguing with anything, just claiming something isn't so without referring to any known cases, like I told you three cases where sellers couldn't sell to who they wanted to.... and your response is like read something that says you are wrong.... lol

[Aachen]

引用自 Rockets：

Lol

you are arguing with anything, just claiming something isn't so without referring to any known cases, like I told you three cases where sellers couldn't sell to who they wanted to.... and your response is like read something that says you are wrong.... lol

.... never actually referenced any cases. Merely mentioned the names of three companies.

[Rockets]

Those are famous cases..and you mentioned nothing

you want to say that anti trust laws don't exist or that what?

[Aachen]

引用自 Rockets：

Those are famous cases..and you mentioned nothing

you want to say that anti trust laws don't exist or that what?

I can’t discuss secretive, ambiguous hand-waved “references” to court cases by armchair lawyers.

You want to actually bring up the relevant case law that demonstrates how the courts and legislature support your interpretation at of anti-trust law?

[Cherrycat]

引用自 Juggy：

Won't they get more money this way?

Epic would lose that, which is why they pay millions for exclusive rights to sell games.

Steam does not do that.

[Start_Running]

引用自 Aachen：

引用自 Rockets：

Those are famous cases..and you mentioned nothing

you want to say that anti trust laws don't exist or that what?

I can’t discuss secretive, ambiguous hand-waved “references” to court cases by armchair lawyers.

You want to actually bring up the relevant case law that demonstrates how the courts and legislature support your interpretation at of anti-trust law?

Likely because they cases do not in fact support his interpretation of anti-trust. I mean if such cases did then book publishing or even game publishing could never exist as it does now.

Edit: A little research proves me right. Standard Oil was indeed a landmark case where standard oil was split up. Because aside from producing 80% of americas oil.. they also owned several railroad companies, and controling interest in many other co,panies related to the transport, slae, and distribution of pertroleum products. So an entirely different context, and the joke is even to this day there's a lot of debate as to whether or not the supreme court's ruling was correct.

US Stell also faced antitrist allegations but that suit failed.

[Darren]

If you read the FTCs own website on anti-trust behaviour you find it isn't a cut and dried situation. Depending on company size, the extent of the practice, the extent of the restraints (permanent is worse than merely a timed exclusive), etc indicate whether the same behaviour violates anti-trust laws.

So Steam due to it's size of the market can't do things Epic could get away with. Similarly Microsoft is judged more harshly on any anti-trust behaviour in their OS than any Linux distributor would be.

I agree that on the surface Epics behaviour smacks of something that should violate anti-trust laws but the 6 months to a year duration, number of games they do it to (a fraction of the market even of AAA games not all of them), and relative sizes of Epic versus Steam mean that Epic would likely not be found in breach of the rules.

[Start_Running]

The key point in ANtitrust is whether the action restricts competition.
Consider that The Disneyt has managed to avoid tripping that law inspite of owning.. well.. its actually frightening how much the house of mouse owns.


And again being the exclusive retailer of a luxury product/non-vital product is not grounds for it on any level. Games are not considered vital and there are many viable substitutes available on the market.

As mentioned what EGS is doing is literally no different from what publishers of books, movies, music, and games have been doing for literally decades. Even if Steam started doing that, there would literally be no grounds for anti-trust. Because at the end of the day, no one has enough money to buy exclusivity to every game in existence.

[Ron]

If Epic applies a lower cut to developers, then developers/publishers could sell the games on Epic at a lower price, if Steam applies an higher cut then they could/should sell the same game on Steam at an higher price, so, at end, games on Epic will just cost less and on Steam will cost more, those who just care of lower price will buy on Epic and who desire to buy games only on Steam, like me and many others, will just spend more but will have their games in their preferred platform, everyone would be happy and have benefits from this, and the market would be free again, but actually what Epic is doing is very bad.

[Start_Running]

Doesn't work that way. Price Parity. NBo store will stock a product when they think the supplier/distributor is just going to undersell them. Hence suppliers/distributors must keep the same standard price across all stores.

No store is going to allow themselves to be made into 'the expensive' one to make someone else's price look cheaper.

And while EGS is giving developers a larger cut, to no one's surprise the developers are not passing this on to consumers.

[Ron]

引用自 Start_Running：

Doesn't work that way. Price Parity. NBo store will stock a product when they think the supplier/distributor is just going to undersell them. Hence suppliers/distributors must keep the same standard price across all stores.

No store is going to allow themselves to be made into 'the expensive' one to make someone else's price look cheaper.

And while EGS is giving developers a larger cut, to no one's surprise the developers are not passing this on to consumers.

Then someone should change the system, i think is not fair for the developers they can't modify the price of a game if one of 2 platforms give them less money compared to the other one, i think this should justify them to raise the price in the platform where they get less money, i don't know who created these rules, but, i believe that someone should be more flexible on them.

[Start_Running]

引用自 Ron：

引用自 Start_Running：

Doesn't work that way. Price Parity. NBo store will stock a product when they think the supplier/distributor is just going to undersell them. Hence suppliers/distributors must keep the same standard price across all stores.

No store is going to allow themselves to be made into 'the expensive' one to make someone else's price look cheaper.

And while EGS is giving developers a larger cut, to no one's surprise the developers are not passing this on to consumers.

Then someone should change the system, i think is not fair for the developers they can't modify the price of a game if one of 2 platforms give them less money compared to the other one.

Then it wouldn't be fair to the platform/store. See this is the thing about business, real business. Fair has to be fair to everyone.

i think this should justify them to raise the price in the platform where they get less money,

At which point the store has no reason to waste time and resources promoting or selling a product that they are getting the short end of the stick on. Put yourself in the position of a store owner. You've just ordered 12 cases of item x. Which the distributor says as an MSRP of $50. You buy them for $30 per unit and expect to make a $20 profit per unit.
Then a week later you fiund that the same distributor is selling the item directly to your customers at $30 a pop and is making money hand overfist because you are selling it at the MSRP they stated. YOu are essentially driving business to them because there's no way you can match their price and make any ROI. You will always be more expensive than their price.

Does that sound fair to you? Would you even bother buying or selling anything from that distributor? What the hell do you do with the 24 cases you can no longer sell?

i don't know who created these rules, but, i believe that someone should be more flexible on them.

The rules evolved over decades of each party trying to shaft the other. Here's the thing. Business owners are much, much, MUCH better at taking unified stands than consumers. (because its an inherently smaller population).

The flexibility comes in that this applies to the base price. Discounts are different. You can discount a product on one store and not the other. (fo course then consumer protection laws kick in and in many regions it is illegal for an item to be perpetually on sale.)