Maneater 1 year Epic Exclusivity

[CruiseCTRL]

I was wondering if any Steam devs could comment on Steam exclusivity via the ToS. They are planning to release 1 year out from Steam...

See Tweet: https://twitter.com/maneatergame/status/1256420669975408641

Thought this broke Steamworks ToS as written below?

“Company shall submit the Applications to Steam for release no later than the first commercial release of each Application or Localized Version, or, if already commercially released as of the Effective Date, within thirty (30) days of the Effective Date.

“Thereafter, Company shall submit to Steam any Localized Versions and Application Updates (in beta and final form) when available, but in no event later than they are provided to any other third party for commercial release. Company shall provide these copies in object code form, in whatever format Valve reasonably requests.”

[TheTycoon]

This thread is hilarious (stopped reading during page 2.)

[CruiseCTRL]

Escrito originalmente por TheTycoon:

This thread is hilarious (stopped reading during page 2.)

How do you think I feel T_T

[Gambit-3k]

Escrito originalmente por CruiseCTRL:

Escrito originalmente por TheTycoon:

This thread is hilarious (stopped reading during page 2.)

How do you think I feel T_T

Yeah, sorry for getting off-topic. I've been trying to stay off the forums, but I just couldn't resist. I'll let it go and hopefully the topic can get back on track. I mean it appears you already got your answer anyway.

[wuddih]

Escrito originalmente por Eisberg:

Escrito originalmente por wuddih:

as said in my comment, not relevant for them.
Maneater is on Steam since Mid 2017.
they never signed this version of the SDA (not "Steamworks ToS")

This version of the SDA has existed since at least 2017, if not before.

somewhere within november 2018 - feb 2019.
i have printed out SDAs from before that, its not in there.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Escrito originalmente por Kelthorian:

That's a bold claim considering that the number of exclusive have kept rising.

That doesn't mean much. The number of exclusives at a single time have not increased. They could get a new exclusive every month or one a year and it would still "have kept rising".

Also, quantity of exclusives does not equate to quality, so the statement doesn't really counter the other's argument.

But, it is more a matter of opinion then anything. They may feel that all of the exclusives are trash, you may feel they are all great games. As I have said many times before, you can't really argue opinion.

[crunchyfrog]

Escrito originalmente por Eisberg:

Escrito originalmente por Gambit-3:

The usual reason is devs want to maintain perceived value, the same reason Borderlands 3 got pulled from Epic during a sale to avoid the 10 dollar coupon, and why Wither 3 GOTY is priced at 14.98 on Epic to avoid selling it for 5 dollars even though it's not coming out of their pocket. I don't understand it much, but they seem to want their customers to pay more even if it costs them nothing.

Mafia has a 10% discount on GMG, where as it is a full $60 on Humble with only 5% going back.

https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/mafia-trilogy-pc/
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/mafia-trilogy?hmb_source=search_bar

If your reasoning was true, then GMG wouldn't have their's at 10% off.

So we are back to it being 5% going back to customer because Humble is taking less than 25% from the sale.

This is all very nice but here's a very big flaw in looking at these figures and assuming you can calculate cut from it and that's one simple thing - loss leaders.

How do you know that isn't happening in those cases? You can't.

All this is just guesswork with little evidence.

[Gambit-3k]

Escrito originalmente por Eisberg:

Escrito originalmente por crunchyfrog:

This is all very nice but here's a very big flaw in looking at these figures and assuming you can calculate cut from it and that's one simple thing - loss leaders.

How do you know that isn't happening in those cases? You can't.

All this is just guesswork with little evidence.

Loss leaders? As in Humble taking less of a revenue cut?

Also, there is no guess work or assumptions on my part, I know for a fact that many of the third party key stores are doing negotiated deals for higher cut to dev/pub, and this started due to GOG doing negotiated deals for revenue share and giving more to developers, and due to Epic having a lower revenue share for the store. Revenue share in this industry is slowing changing, making it so the stores take less and dev/pubs are taking more.

Notice how we know about it for GOG, so why is this a super secret thing everywhere else where you swear you heard it from multiple developers breaking NDA to tell you about it in the "Data Center", whatever that means. What about EGS exclusive games also being sold on the Microsoft Store, are they also getting special treatment that you are somehow privy too as well?

There is no public evidence of any special rev splits for other stores (at least the ones we've been discussing), I'd be happy to see such evidence and you're quite welcome to present some, but no we aren't going to just take your word for it. Also, info has been out there that GOG negotiates deals years before EGS was a thing. If stores lowered their rev split it would be seen as a good thing, so there would be no reason to keep it secret.

What's not a secret is the reason publishers are releasing games exclusively (not really exclusive, just not on Steam) is because Epic is paying them not to release their games on Steam. I'm sure publishers love the split and if you make a game on Unreal Engine it's even better, nobody is denying this, but if the 12 percent split was the only thing driving these decisions, every single publisher wouldn't be releasing their games on Steam the second paid exclusivity is over, maybe one day that will change.

edit:
I forgot to mention it's known Humble does negotiate deals, but it's for the bundles and monthly Humble Choice offerings. The same is probably true for Fanatical bundles, but I haven't actually seen this discussed publicly, I haven't really looked for it though.

[Gambit-3k]

Escrito originalmente por Eisberg:

There is evidence by the mere fact that on Humble there are games that do not get the full 10% back to the customer, logically that would happen because Humble is not getting the same amount.

I already explained that it's because AAA's want to protect perceived value and when they alter the Humble Choice member discount it also effects the non-member cash back discount. This is because if a AAA said Choice members get 10% off instead of 20% and non-members got 10% as well, it would hurt the value proposition for Humble Choice members. The reason publishers opt-out of the full discount is the same reason Borderlands 3 got pulled from EGS during the mega sale to avoid customers getting 10 dollars off, and also why currently The Witcher 3 is priced at $14.98 which is one penny less than needed to qualify for the coupon at EGS. Publishers simply want to maintain perceived value and they don't want customers getting 20% off day one even if it costs them nothing. It sucks, but it's the way it is and we see the same kind of thing on EGS.

Escrito originalmente por Eisberg:

Coming to Steam later time would be something about maximizing profits. Get as many customers as they can get buying a product on EGS at better revenue share, and then come to Steam later on to pick up the scraps that didn't buy it on EGS.

Scraps, that is actually hilarious. I guess that's why Epic has to pay them to stay then.

[Silverkite]

Game is just a generic 10 hours whac-a-xyz thing, with denuvo.
I'm surprised that Tripwire is still alive and people is still willing to buy their crap after all the things they did with Ost Front, KF, RO2, KF2 and RS Vietnam

[crunchyfrog]

Escrito originalmente por Eisberg:

Escrito originalmente por crunchyfrog:

This is all very nice but here's a very big flaw in looking at these figures and assuming you can calculate cut from it and that's one simple thing - loss leaders.

How do you know that isn't happening in those cases? You can't.

All this is just guesswork with little evidence.

Loss leaders? As in Humble taking less of a revenue cut?

Also, there is no guess work or assumptions on my part, I know for a fact that many of the third party key stores are doing negotiated deals for higher cut to dev/pub, and this started due to GOG doing negotiated deals for revenue share and giving more to developers, and due to Epic having a lower revenue share for the store. Revenue share in this industry is slowing changing, making it so the stores take less and dev/pubs are taking more.

No, loss leaders are a marketing trick as old as the hills.

Supermarkets love to do it - it's sellling an item for LESS than it's wholesale purcahse price, so they're making a LOSS on each sale. The purpose is to further OTHER sales. In supermakrets, tins of beans just to get people to come in the store and they will likely buy something else while they are there.

Hell, even console manufacturers do it - you know that PS3s, Xbox 360s and so were mostly sold at a loss just to get people innvolved so they could make the money on the games.

That's a loss leader.

[Satoru]

I mean if a dev/publisher wants to take a truckload of money from Epic, as a hedge against what is a very very competitive marketplace, would you blame anyone from doing so? Epic functionally gives out FREE MONEY to devs/publishers. And well, business people, make business decisions. And FREE MONEY means that

1) your ROI on the product is going to be more stable
2) if the game bombs, then you're on much better financial footing and you might not have to close your studio and unemploy dozens of people

Its really easy for a consumer, who has no skin in the game other than "what shortcut do I use to launch a game" to be whiny about something

Its not so easy to tell your coworkers, friends, family etc, that your company is now bankrupt and you might have avoided that if you had taken some Epic money, but you know you listened to some random Steam user and decided not to? Would not the future viability of the company, and your coworkers, be something you'd think about as something worth protecting?

Are you going to tell someone "I would rather you have financial instability and potentially lose your job if the game doesn't do well, as long as I get to use steam".

[Darren]

Escrito originalmente por Satoru:

I mean if a dev/publisher wants to take a truckload of money from Epic, as a hedge against what is a very very competitive marketplace, would you blame anyone from doing so? Epic functionally gives out FREE MONEY to devs/publishers. And well, business people, make business decisions. And FREE MONEY means that

1) your ROI on the product is going to be more stable
2) if the game bombs, then you're on much better financial footing and you might not have to close your studio and unemploy dozens of people

Its really easy for a consumer, who has no skin in the game other than "what shortcut do I use to launch a game" to be whiny about something

Its not so easy to tell your coworkers, friends, family etc, that your company is now bankrupt and you might have avoided that if you had taken some Epic money, but you know you listened to some random Steam user and decided not to? Would not the future viability of the company, and your coworkers, be something you'd think about as something worth protecting?

Are you going to tell someone "I would rather you have financial instability and potentially lose your job if the game doesn't do well, as long as I get to use steam".

Except it's not free money now it is?

If it were completely free there would be no drawbacks to taking it, but there are definitely potential drawbacks:
* In good will with your consumers (typically only really justified in cases where it was promised it was going to come out on Steam and then it didn't)
* Removing a segment of your audience either temporarily (because they don't use Epic but will buy once you get to Steam but will expect a discount at that point as essentially every ex-Epic game has had so far) or permanently (because they take an even harder line on it.

Now I'm not going to argue with any business that looks at the pros and cons and decides that given their financial situation, the Epic offer, and all other data they have they think they'll be better off taking the money from Epic. That is their call it's their business.

But they also don't get to decide whether or not I buy their game afterwards which I might not for a number of reasons:
* A similar game comes out of Steam before their exclusivity ends so I end up getting that game instead costing them a sale
* I am just no longer interested in it after having a year to consume various YouTube videos about it (several Epic exclusives that are heavy-story games I've just watched full-plays by YouTubers and so feel no incentive to purchase anymore, I could also imagine in other games I'll see things in the mechanics I don't like and decide to pass)
* I just really don't want to because I dislike their decision (which is my right as a consumer).

As of yet there are a couple of Epic exclusives I might pick up when they get out of being exclusives, and a few more that I've been promised Steam keys for due to backing on Kickstarter and they plan to still hour those. Things might change between now and then, that's the drawback on cutting out a large slice of your customer base for a year.