Chill shill, we don't have to trust anybody to be skeptical of everybody. Don't have to be a fanboy to see this is a dumping strategy for China-owned Epic to be the last distributor standing.
Self-funded Incumbent takes 30% publishing cut, builds market for 15 years. (actual amount has always been confidential, but certain indie devs have hinted at it: reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b9i4yd/to_everyone_complaining_about_steams_cut_please/ )
Challenger enters market after selling out to Fascist China, and the new investors have them enter the market taking a 12% cut.
You're saying the Challenger wants to Incumbent to take a lower cut "Because [Challenger] only charge[s] 12 you retard".
OK, that's not a motivation, that's not a reason, that's a plea. "We're only charging this, so they should too!" That's how kids bargain for free stuff, not how companies compete.
There's lots of rumours and unverifiable info so lets pretend we know nothing certain about how many devs/users are eager to switch or even willing to consider it.
Lets imagine millions of people are switching, but the investors aren't happy yet. Maybe the numbers are plateauing already, whatever, something's happening the investors don't like. They put pressure on Epic, "We want the WHOLE market, we need to be the last one's standing, and we need to see the trend for that starting pronto."
The digital game distribution market is a monopoly, steam has vastly more content than anyone else.
(When exclusive titles are involved each distributor is its own market, their 'product' is not interchangeable, you can't play Half Life on Origin or Fortnite on Steam etc, see: youtube.com/watch?v=fDF-S68kx5o )
Epic can't get all the content Steam has, and they don't want a fragmented market like Netflix has to deal with. What's the easiest way for them, in their unique position, to topple Valve? Goad them into lowering their profit margin and outlast them; operate at or below cost for publishing until one of them has to exit the market or go bankrupt.
( trilema.com/2013/of-skimmed-milk-and-skimming-the-milk/ )
Lets say they both spend $1B/yr more than they're making. If Valve has $10B cash and Tencent has $12B, Valve will run out of money a couple years before Tencent, thus Tencent wins and can restructure to start profiting again. But that's just blind guessing, what kind of *liquid* assets do they both really have to work with?
forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-and-steam-worth-billions/
Valve is private so we still have to do some guessing. As of 2011, when Valve had an unchallenged publishing dominance, they maybe have $0.5B yearly profits. Lets be super generous (since they've spent a lot on R&D with no return, lots of cancelled hardware and games) and say they've got, in 2019, $5B in the bank.
marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tcehy/financials/balance-sheet
Tencent is publically traded so we have some numbers straight from them. At the closing of 2018, Tencent has 193.67 B HKD in liquid assets, and 114.5 B HKD *cash*. They've got a diverse portfolio and they're making money regardless of whatever Epic does, but lets pretend they drop everything and just work with their cash reserves and Epic. We'll convert their moonbucks to USD too.
Valve: $5 B
Epic: $14.5
Hm, Tencent's got a lot of money they can afford to burn.
Don't think like a wageslave. The people running these companies have different ambitions and priorities than grocery baggers and Bernie voters.
