Steam vs. Epic Games - What Can Steam do to Remain Competitive?

[AsianGirlLover]

Greetings! As some of you may know, Steam has dominated the PC gaming market for the past 15 years. Recently, Epic Games, the creators of the wildly-successful and free-to-play game Fortnite, have decided to launch their own PC gaming platform in an effort to rivial Steam. Unlike other platforms like Origin, Uplay, etc., Epic Games may be an actual cause for concern due to expectations of it being pro-developer, pro-consumer, and pro-influencer. The way that the media and some Youtubers have been covering this topic has painted Steam in a light which makes it appear much worse than it actually is. My purpose in creating this discussion is to point out some of the ways Epic Games plans to challenge Steam's dominance, why those plans may be successful, and how Steam can adapt to counter them.

Here are the three main ways I believe Epic Games will challenge Steam:

1. Pro-Developer Revenue Splitting

Steam currently offers a revenue splitting plan which becomes more generous as sales increase for the product. This plan is known as a tiered system, which Epic Games plans to undermine by offering a flat rate system. What this means for the gaming community is that developers, especially indie and other low-budget creators, will be more incentivized to exclusively sell their products on the EG platform - essentially making Epic Games the new, defacto platform for any and all indie titles.

The main issue I can see with this system is that Epic Games may have to host their platform at a cost. As the platform is bound to grow, maintenance costs are sure to dig into their bottom line; causing them to do something similar to what Google does for Youtube: run it at a cost until they figure out how to make it profitable.

2. Pro-Consumer Practices (Better Customer Support & More Sales)

Anyone who has ever had to use Steam Customer Support will be able to tell you why it has rightfully become a meme of disappointment; however, the platform redeems itself by offering fantastic prices for a vast market of compelling products. Epic Games' plan to rival Steam is to offer actual, live phone support to assist customers in real-time as well as an increased rate of games going on sale.

Regarding the live phone support, my only concern with this would be the sheer amount of new employees EG would need to hire to make this practical. I forget the actual percentage, but a majority of Steam's users actually comprises of people outside of English-speaking countries, which adds another hurdle to EG's plans if they intend to provide support for this global market.

Regarding the increased amount of sales, this may be practical due to the aforementioned flat rate plan which gives developers a higher cut of profits. Again, my only concern would be making this profitable for the platform may prove to be a challenge.

3. Pro-Influencer Practices

Similar to affiliate links you may see attached to Youtube videos and other social media content, Epic Games plans to award content creators with a percentage of all sales made via the link used to promote the platform and its products. Steam does not currently offer anything similar to this, which may result in an increase of content that promotes games for the sake of earning a cut of the sales - disregarding honesty/objectivity and pushing people towards making a purchase they may have otherwise avoided.

I'm not entirely sure how this can be countered on the consumer side besides saying the wise, old phrase, "buyer beware."

Ok, ok, enough of this ranting! What can Steam do to remain competitve?

One major advantage Steam has over Epic Games is their authority. Steam has been around for a decade and a half now, and it has built a community of loyal customers who have grown financially (the library), and emotionally (the community), attached to the platform. If Steam decides not to take any action, what we will most-likely see in the coming months is that people will simply decide to download yet another platform and juggle their games between them. However, as time goes on, users who are new to the PC gaming market and who have no attachment to the Steam platform may easily find themselves choosing Epic Games as their preferred digital gaming distributors.

So, here are my suggesstions for how Steam should respond to maintain its dominance:

1. Make a NEW, Free-to-Play Game

You were probably expecting me to say "offer a better flat rate" or "create a more-compelling tiered system," right?

My reasoning behind this suggesstion is that I expect EG to cover the cost of maintaining their platform by cutting into the profits made by the microtransactions they receive from Fortnite. Obviously, creating "the next big hit" that will be as successful as Fortnite or Minecraft is bound to be a near-impossible task, but the alternative is for Steam to simply undercut EG's current offer, which may be impractical due to how extremely generous it is.

2. Offer More Game Bundles

Again, unless Steam is able to undercut EG in some way, one potential solution is to spread out the revenue splitting among multiple developers, which allows developers to pay a smaller percentage for each sale while also letting Steam keep/receive the percentage required to stay profitable.

3. Offer Better Influencer Incentives

Steam Customer Support is a can of worms that I will trust Steam to figure out. I can only imagine the headache associated with trying to serve such a large community, so we'll just put that topic to the side for now.

As for influencer incentives, these rates could be negotiable on a case-by-case basis depending on the developer. Perhaps if Steam hosted an event specifically highlighting and rewarding influencers who have done the most towards promoting the platform and its games, that might incentivize people to promote Steam instead of EG due to the potential rewards for hitting the top 10 spots.


TL;DR: I love Steam and I expect that they're already considering these issues as well as hatching up plans to tackle them. I doubt that there will be any cause for concern regarding Steam being ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED as some people like to exaggerate, but it might be useful to let your voice be heard and let Steam know that you wish them the best and hope they take this new, compelling rival seriously.

I'll finish by linking a Youtube video which goes into some deeper detail on the subject for those who may be interested in how this topic is being covered: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2eGiVa0chE

UPDATE:
As expected, some indie developers are already starting to pull their games from Steam in favor of Epic Games. I would imagine that we can expect to see launches on EG that take a year or two before being made available on Steam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcuzoARWrfM

UPDATE:
A commenter here shared an interesting thread from reddit which discusses how Epic’s TOS allows them to spy on you and own the rights to all content you post there. For example, the TOS allows them to profit off your content without being required to share nor notify you.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/a9lntx/ubisoft_needs_to_stop_with_this_always_online/ecltfdj/?context=1

UPDATE:
This is a long thread, so to save you time, you should know that people have generally leaned towards defending Steam, including myself. Now we have more than speculation to back up our dislike of Epic.

Valve, please, it’s time to make some sort of move to combat things like this from happening. Somewhere in your contract needs to stop people from being able to take advantage of your superior platform to market to a larger audience, only to stab you in the back and sell the game somewhere else.

You are being used and I and many others are begging to hear from you on how you’ll respond.

Here’s the game in question for people not in the know: https://store.steampowered.com/app/412020/Metro_Exodus/

Notice: Sales of Metro Exodus have been discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store.

The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam.

We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know.

UPDATE:
Someone commented a very useful video that summarizes this whole situation. You can watch the 20 minute video, (or quickly read its summary), here. (In case the link doesn't work for you, it's post #4344).

[ROCKIN2835]

Steam is getting avoided!

- Fallout 76 not coming to steam.
- Call of duty black ops 4 not coming to steam.

My Question is, why hasn't isnt steam compromising with these Publishers to get these games on steam?

[Kargor]

Because most likely Valve, for some reason, doesn't understand the necessity of having long-term relations with big players. The general thing appears to be that everyone who's big enough starts making their own thing, and some don't even sell through Steam anymore.

[CJ HUNTER]

It's their loss because a lot of people avoid creating accounts on multiple platforms.

[Robin3sk]

Originally posted by ROCKIN2835:

- Fallout 76 not coming to steam.
- Call of duty black ops 4 not coming to steam.

My Question is, why hasn't isnt steam compromising with these Publishers to get these games on steam?

It is solely the publisher / developer's decision to bring the game to Steam.

Steam, in actuality, is a store-front — and not every pub / dev is compelled by content to utilize it.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by ROCKIN2835:

- Fallout 76 not coming to steam.
- Call of duty black ops 4 not coming to steam.

My Question is, why hasn't isnt steam compromising with these Publishers to get these games on steam?

Why should they?
Valve doesn't need either of these games and both these games will be forgotten in about a year or so.

[BossGalaga]

Originally posted by ROCKIN2835:

Steam is getting avoided!

- Fallout 76 not coming to steam.
- Call of duty black ops 4 not coming to steam.

My Question is, why hasn't isnt steam compromising with these Publishers to get these games on steam?

Blizzardvision owns Call of Duty now. Blizzard has zero need to push their games to a separate gaming platform. Pushing gamers to their own platform creates more sales on their platform. It's not that Valve refuses to work with those publishers, it's simply that there isn't an incentive for them. They are household names by themselves. They have no reason to share revenue with Valve.

[DarkStarKnight]

Originally posted by Kargor:

Because most likely Valve, for some reason, doesn't understand the necessity of having long-term relations with big players. The general thing appears to be that everyone who's big enough starts making their own thing, and some don't even sell through Steam anymore.

Or as you and other people don;t seem to understand, it's the publisher, not valave that decides if a game is going on Steam

Originally posted by CJ HUNTER:

It's their loss because a lot of people avoid creating accounts on multiple platforms.

Yeah, it's Valve's loss when the PUBLISHER decides not to put the game on Steam, yes, it's all Valve

[kaibarnard]

TBH it's not on Steam makes me a lot less likely to own it. And I think the 'their' in the 'their loss' sttement is the devs not steam

[cinedine]

Originally posted by CJ HUNTER:

It's their loss because a lot of people avoid creating accounts on multiple platforms.

Not true at all as you can see perfectly well with Origins and Battle.net.
These "lot of people" must be the same percentage of users as the platform cut is - allegedly 30 % - which simply isn't the case. And even then you have the added benefit of having complete control over your product by yourself and not be subject to Valves's marketing and promotion rules, sales, and issues.

[kaibarnard]

EA made orgin out of greed they wanted a bigger cut, there is no need for it to exist. Battle.net predates Steam and as such I have some respect that basically they're doing their own thing, if fallout moves over to a new service I won't buy it - if it's not on steam - I won't buy it - considering the game looks like♥♥♥♥♥♥I'm not likely to buy it and I'm not a PvP fan

[J4MESOX4D]

Originally posted by ROCKIN2835:

My Question is, why hasn't isnt steam compromising with these Publishers to get these games on steam?

Because they can't. Established publishers with money to burn would and quite rightfully should be in position to publish their products and maintain them so they can't maximise income and not have to rely on a rival company to still peddle their software at a 30% cut/loss. I'm actually surprised Ubisoft are still here in all honesty.

Overwatch proved to Activision that one of their products can be sustained on their partnered platform with over 30m sales on PC so moving BO4 was a smart business decision especially as Valve would've looked to have got a cut out of COD points on top plus Black Ops Pass sales.

Bethesda on the other hand have got a lot to prove - first thing that happened on their platform was the beta for Fallout 76 deleting itself which wasn't a good start.

All eyes on whether Cyberpunk 2077 and RDR2 (if it comes to PC) will be on Steam as both those products already have established functional platforms. I also expect more breakaway platforms in the close future to the extent; it could turn into one per major publisher and then Valve will miss out on quite a lot of AAA revenue which it will mititage with more trash in the store but also allow other smaller games and studios to shine.

[Dovisally]

steam takes 30% of sales and black ops 4 company refused to do so this time,

anyway i won't buy any game outside steam no matter how good it is, i don't want to open x5 or x6 clients to play video games.

[BossGalaga]

Originally posted by kaibarnard:

EA made orgin out of greed they wanted a bigger cut, there is no need for it to exist. Battle.net predates Steam and as such I have some respect that basically they're doing their own thing, if fallout moves over to a new service I won't buy it - if it's not on steam - I won't buy it - considering the game looks like♥♥♥♥♥♥I'm not likely to buy it and I'm not a PvP fan

There's nothing wrong with Origin or not wanting to revenue share with Valve. The problem with EA, is the crap games they keep churning out and their extreme fetish with customer abuse via DLC/microtransactions.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by PABLO /M/:

hi

Originally posted by PABLO /M/:

.

Stop and read it again... https://steamcommunity.com/id/KingSteam85/badges/2

Originally posted by ROCKIN2835:

My Question is, why hasn't isnt steam compromising with these Publishers to get these games on steam?

Because Valve does not need to. It is completely up to the publisher where they want to have their game.

[SterlingStar]

Originally posted by Dovisally:

steam takes 30% of sales and black ops 4 company refused to do so this time,

anyway i won't buy any game outside steam no matter how good it is, i don't want to open x5 or x6 clients to play video games.

I won't buy anything on steam until they fix the crap UI and chat.... so thanks to all the other publishers going elsewhere!