competition from epic games is forcing valve to update its client and add new features

[Rain]

nice .

[Psymon²]

Overseer님이 먼저 게시:

What features does Epic have that Steam does not have?

200 comments i can't be bothered to read, did anyone answer this question?
did anyone clarify what OP was talking about with "new features"?

[Komarimaru]

WolfEisberg님이 먼저 게시:

Komarimaru님이 먼저 게시:

Epics Highest Growth was in 2018. It's been in decline since. in 2019 they lost -50%, in 2020 they only lost another -8% due to covid so wasn't that shabby!. In 2021 they lost another -28% in profit, in 2022 they lost -31%, 2023 so far is around -37%.

where are you getting your numbers?

You saying they lost 50% in 2019 makes zero sense when in 2018 they were only open for 3 weeks. All your other numbers are suspect as well.

year - total revenue/revenue on third party games (increase from year before respectively)

2019- 680 Million / 251Million [this also includes December 2018 numbers, which skews %increases for 2020 a little since it is comparing 13 months of revenue vs 12 months)
2020 - 700 Million / 265 Million (3%/6%)
2021 - 840 Million / 300 Million (20%/13%)
2022 - 820 Million / 355 Million (-2%/18%)

The only decrease they had over those years was in 2022 due to less revenue in their own games, but the increase in revenue from third party games almost made it up. Epic stated that the reason for the big increases in third party revenue was due to the big increase in third party titles on their store, customers having more choices to choose from so more opportunity to sell customers something.

Sources:
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2022-year-in-review
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2021-year-in-review
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2020-year-in-review
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-games-store-weekly-free-games-in-2020
https://youtu.be/NwOl-tgS440

Ah, I see your issue. You see a gain, as a sign of improvement, without context.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1234193/epic-games-annual-income/

Yes, of course they are going to make it look better than it actually is, and not mention the fact they are starting in the negatives. My numbers were based off their Store Income, and the resulting drop from each year from it.


So you see, when not trying to by smooth and hide from their customers the truth, you can see the real numbers.

https://www.usesignhouse.com/blog/epic-games-stats

Yet another article that agrees with my numbers.

Also, the article you linked SHOWS them in the negatives by -2. Like, come on... You think the Microtransactions part on the right matters?

[Komarimaru]

WolfEisberg님이 먼저 게시:

Komarimaru님이 먼저 게시:

1. Valve didn't buy out Exclusives. EGS did, and it did them no good.

Valve did pay for digital distribution exclusives in their early years, for an example
https://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=40203

As part of the launch and Steam's exclusivity, we will no longer be offering Darwinia as a download option from our site,

Also seems highly suspect that Valve was able to get so many publishers to put the weakest DRM on to physical disks, that DRM that just so happened to be tied to a store. I know the answer to this due to personal conversations with various developers who are clients at the datacenter I work for.

2. Valve's revenue share changed before EGS even launched in Dec 2018, and was discussed long before then.

See no evidence it was discussed long before, but it's strange that the revenue share changes only about 1 week before EGS opened up. You don't think Valve got word through the grape vine was Epic was doing behind the scenes leading up to opening up EGS?

3. What tools do other platforms offer? Steamworks has existed since 2008...

A significant part of what Steamworks provides didn't exist in 2008, they came in the years after 2008.

4. Refund policies didn't change, at all. GoG's policy changed in 2020, the 2015 change was due to court proceedings in Australia, so made refunds more visible and easier to access.

Stores like GOG and EA were offering refunds before Steam was. Australian court didn't get them to start a refund policy since Australian Judge agreed the reason for not giving refunds wasn't illegal, rather it was the wording Valve used about having no refunds no matter the circumstance that was the issue.

1. I love when people bring up the ONE game. And you know what? That's all you'll ever find. Try harder, since you know it's true and Valve isn't the one spending billions on buying exclusives, one game, from Steam launch, proposed to Valve by the developers even.

2. It was discussed all the way back in 2017. Was news on steam itself when you logged in, and you'd see if, unless disabled the News option on login.

3. Still existed in 2008. Doesn't detract from what I said at all, and unless you can show other platforms offering similar tools, bringing it up again is silly.

4. Exactly, and they offered refunds before, they just didn't openly show you how to do it. GoG started in 2013 if you couldn't get the game to run, and other conditions and changed it in 2020 to even be more open. And I find it funny you even brought EA into it. If you launched the game once... You had 24 hours to refund it. And they only offered Refunds for THEIR titles.

Like seriously, why do you keep going when proven wrong each time?

None of them, had any impact on Steam, whatsoever...

[Tito Shivan]

Console.Write($@"{xMaxrayx}")님이 먼저 게시:

or people who want more quality games.

Inb4 people end up dissapointed with Epic's 'quality'.

[Komarimaru]

WolfEisberg님이 먼저 게시:

RasaNova님이 먼저 게시:

Gog DOES sell a large number of games that are not on Steam, and you can't deny that Steam sells games that are not on GoG. I won't try to guess the ratio, the earlier qualifier of "largely" is arguable, but the numbers are certainly high.

That is basically old DOS games, looking at GOG's search narrowing it down for between 1980 to 1998, there are about 575 games for those years, and looking at the first 2 pages alone many of those are on Steam too, so less than 575 games that are on GOG are not on Steam. There are over 6000 games on GOG. So in large part the games on GOG are also on Steam.

GoG has a small list of exclusive games for it.

https://github.com/m-lohmann/GOG-only_games

The games on Steam that GoG doesn't have, is I believe 100 times the size. Including nearly all Triple A games.

[Lord Of War]

Can I have some of clowns which were meant for the OP? Cheers

[Komarimaru]

WolfEisberg님이 먼저 게시:

Komarimaru님이 먼저 게시:

Never stated it? Are you sure?
Tim Sweeney was actually quite vocal about it on Twitter, quite a bit actually.

Feel free to provide the link to said tweet.

And no, I'm not making stuff up. Some Developers have realized that the buy out for exclusive isn't worth it, since while they get a large chunk of cash up front, they were getting better sales on Steam later on.

Feel free to provide quotes, with links, from developers who have stated going exclusive was not worth it.

On top of that, the better deal which would "Offer a better deal for customers" never happened. The prices didn't drop any. They charged the exact same prices as before.

Some games actually did drop their prices for an example WWZ. But the statement that was stated was that after many cycles of developer decisions, many dev/pubs haven't decided to make such changes, but given that 2 different developers have decided to bring lawsuit against Valve for Most Favored Nation clauses (something the Judge agrees if true is against the law), it makes sense why dev/pubs didn't do it that would be willing to do it otherwise.

I don't make things up, since would look like an idiot.

For the fact that you literally stated that nobody spends money on Epic Store... yeah, you did make things up.

As it stands right now, EGS is heavily used mostly for the free games. If they were making many sales, the store component of Epic wouldn't be at a heavy loss still after 5 years.

That isn't how business works, companies running at a loss for even a decade is not unusual, Unity is still running at a loss since 2004, Netflix ran at a loss in their first 7 years, and then again for the last decade while they spent a ton making content, Spotify ran at a loss for around a decade too. These are entire companies that are ran at a loss, where as Epic is only running at a loss for a single segment, a loss they are doing on purpose because that is their investment strategy into this new segment of their company.

Mind you, I don't hate Epic, Unreal Engine 5.X is freaking awesome to use and work on. But their store? It's a mess... It's going to take ages for it to actually bring them profit, and they don't even have to host as many things as Valve does for Steam currently.

Epic is clearly not looking to make a profit on the store itself, they decided to run the store at cost since 12% is enough to cover costs + loyalty program. it's a vehicle to sell their own published games, and it helps to sell those games when people already have a library of games and more opportunity to sell those games when people keep on coming to the store.

Oh, this is easy.
https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1051707964673921025 One of his many tweets.

One of many developers who turned down the exclusive.
https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7
There's more if you want? And you can see one of many Sweeney's snarky tweets in that article too.

And finally, I am sorry, but you saying "That's not how a business works" Is the poorest reasoning I've ever seen. They do not make money from their store. And you thinking the the Microtransactions they get makes up for it, come on, really?
And Netflix has made profit since 2003, and gone up, not down, UP.

WolfEisberg님이 먼저 게시:

Komarimaru님이 먼저 게시:

What false information? Show me how many Triple A game recently released on GoG, that are not part of CDProjektRed. Not that many, are there?

You deciding to move the goal posts like you just did there doesn't change the fact that your original statement was false.

And again, EGS isn't making that many sales or their revenue for the Store wouldn't be that far in the negatives, now would it?

Them getting 820 Million, 18% increase for third party sales shows that people do in fact buy games on EGS. So you keep on saying nobody puts money into Epic Store is factually false.

I didn't change any goal posts, did you not say GoG sells the same Games as Steam? You did.

Also, the site I linked is quite accurate. Know why? Since they pulled it from the Court Proceedings from Epic and Apple. Epic hid their losses and never told anyone, but the moment court gets involved, everyone got to finally see the numbers.

But I'm guessing you didn't know that Epic's records were made public due to that, quite obviously.

[🍋 Lemonfed 🍋]

is this a competition between gog , steam and epic to see who can make the most bloated game launcher ?

beause it's look like it's the case these days. lol

it's a joke

[Lystent]

Lord Of War님이 먼저 게시:

Can I have some of clowns which were meant for the OP? Cheers

It is literally just the one from this thread...

[Max]

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

Console.Write($@"{xMaxrayx}")님이 먼저 게시:

or people who want more quality games.

Inb4 people end up dissapointed with Epic's 'quality'.

better than when Steam let crypto games in the store or games that exit for achievements, especially with lame R-18 puzzle games.

[Lystent]

WolfEisberg님이 먼저 게시:

Lemonfed님이 먼저 게시:

is this a competition between gog , steam and epic to see who can make the most bloated game launcher ?

beause it's look like it's the case these days. :cocochan2: lol

it's a joke

are you talking about in system resources? Because due to some recent updates Epic uses about 50% of the RAM as Steam does, but Steam currently has a problem where the RAM can massively increase over time.

https://i.imgur.com/rs9N9nk.png

Steam's "one-up" only just happened. And all you can do to top a possible leak is a faster possible leak.

[Tito Shivan]

Console.Write($@"{xMaxrayx}")님이 먼저 게시:

better than when Steam let crypto games in the store or games that exit for achievements, especially with lame R-18 puzzle games.

Don't be surprised if those end up on Epic too.

[Max]

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

Console.Write($@"{xMaxrayx}")님이 먼저 게시:

better than when Steam let crypto games in the store or games that exit for achievements, especially with lame R-18 puzzle games.

Don't be surprised if those end up on Epic too.

Now? I don't think because Fortnight is the main face of Epic beside idk that Chinese company owns part of Epic.

maybe after a long time when they have huge active users.

[Komarimaru]

WolfEisberg님이 먼저 게시:

Snip since quoting broke.

Well, that was a failure of the quote system breaking.

1. You're right, was wrong on the date, not 2020. Article was for something else, it was their projected sales.

2. Many developers turned down the Exclusives offered since predatory and demanding. And Square is on the stance of no longer keeping their contract with EGS due to the lack of profits plus they like where Steam is going it seems.

3. I can't find the Steam News linked, but here's the changed back in Nov 2018.
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/1697191267930157838 Well before EGS launch.

4. Netflix was not at a loss for that long. First they became a company in 1998 for the business, they suffered minor losses in 2000, and boomed in 2003. No where near the losses EGS has accrued in the slightest.

5. You claimed GoG sells the same games as Steam, which isn't true in the slightest. It's very rare to find new games on GoG from triple A developers. Indie games don't really count...

6. No, you don't know for sure that you've more knowledge on the case of Apple vs Epic. And secondly their records were public for far longer then 2018-2019. They even showed their recent records, showing why Apple removing Fortnite impacted sales, as a basis to try and show they were being hurt.

7. No you will not find more games that were exclusive to Steam, especially since the Developers themselves contacted Valve about the deal. But by all means, try your best. And I assure you, it wouldn't be the large money sink that EGS has committed to.

8. You've no basis or evidence to present that Valve made more tools due to competition, since they were doing it the entire time from 2008 to current. Even giving revenue share to modders etc. GoG launched in 2008 and offered nothing but games. EGS in 2018 and offered nothing then that Steam didn't already have.

9. I got a refund back in 2009 from Valve, and in 2013. So I knew the option existed. I rarely refund though, so my only others are 2014, 2018 and 2021.

[Komarimaru]

They did, one freaking game... One... And they were again, Approached by the developers themselves. There was no competition back then. You're just blindly trying to defend the billions Epic has spent on Buying Exclusives and giving away free games, thinking it helps your narrative when it makes you look worse.

Valve had no competition at all, pre EGS, and developed Steamworks greatly before then, so again you're reaching hard. Starting to see a pattern here, as you not being an EGS user, but an EGS fan. GoG was never a competitor, but another platform to pick up a few older games DRM free.

And how do you explain my refunds before the whole "Competitors Offered"? I simply didn't enjoy the games, that was my only reasoning.


As for the documents, you have me at an impasse, since the only link working is for 2018-2019. The link for the other now gives me.

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<RequestId>5VR8B67V0AVRGNPM</RequestId>
<HostId>
V0IBIssoaIcEQ9h6AgRuayLW7NIO1nAoN5gYzJXd3qYVpn54+NmjE4tMkf98nYy+qPyIZ3pRVYc=
</HostId>
</Error>

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20696836/epic-apple-trial-epic-games-exhibit.pdf
2018-2019 works. I wonder if the other got taken down due to legal reasons. Either way, they admit openly the store is not profitable. They make their money from microtransactiions, not their store.
And, others apparently got to see the documents and statements from the lawyers.
https://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/mustafa-mahmoud/the-epic-games-store-wont-make-a-profit-until-2027/
They are living off microtransactions, billions of dollars worth of them.

And I am facepalming at the fact you now bring up Discord as a competitor for a game store...

And I got my information for Netflix under it's life history.
https://www.zippia.com/netflix-careers-8010/history/
If you've a better source, by all means.

So, I stick to my stance.

Most use EGS for the free games. Or they'd have turned a profit by now.
GoG has a different library offering than Steam, rarely offering new games that Steam does.
And I'll add, Discord is not a competitor in the slightest... Microsoft Game Pass? Yes. Discord? What the...

Edit:
Now I remember you... You're the EGS fanatic... That explains everything...