Epic Games CEO promises a 'retreat from exclusives' if Steam lowers its revenue share to 12 percent

Epic Games and Steam have been facing off for months now, and things have gotten pretty cutthroat. Epic has convinced multiple developers to yank their upcoming (sometimes highly-anticipated) games from Steam in favor of timed Epic Games Store exclusivity, and the company doesn't appear to be stopping that trend anytime soon.

Now, in an attempt to cast Epic as the benevolent side in this platform war, the company's CEO – Tim Sweeney – has published a tweet promising a "retreat from exclusives" if Steam drops its 30 percent revenue cut to match Epic's 12 percent "without major strings attached."

Sweeney says such a move, if it occurred, would be a "glorious moment" in the history of PC gaming, adding that the effects would likely radiate to other digital distribution platforms, such as Ubisoft's Uplay, EA's Origin, or even CD Projekt Red's Good Old Games.

more here:
techspot.com/news/79811-epic-games-ceo-tim-sweeney-promises-retreat-exclusives.html

Attached: 2019-04-25-image-22.jpg (2410x1380, 321.81K)

Other urls found in this thread:

reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/b9i4yd/to_everyone_complaining_about_steams_cut_please/
youtube.com/watch?v=fDF-S68kx5o
trilema.com/2013/of-skimmed-milk-and-skimming-the-milk/
forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-and-steam-worth-billions/
marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tcehy/financials/balance-sheet
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Considering he never kept his word on exclusives not happening again I would not believe him. Hes a worse lair than todd.

Calm your tits, Gabe.

Fuck epic. Fuck steam.

PlayStation store FTW

I wish, then halflife 2 episode 3 would have been made by now, as well as 3.

Fuck soyny and ther censorship.

Why would Steam be this stupid? Every time Epic goes and pays off another developer for exclusive sales, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Why are they acting like they have the leverage. Nobody gives a fuck about epic store

Got my own gripes with Steam/Valve, and plenty do, but to be fair they've been around for 15+ years and have proven mostly trustworthy despite some bumbled experiments here and there and overall just don't seem… well, evil. Epic, not so much. They both mine data. I suppose it's a matter of who you trust more. An American company with some history and clout in the industry as well as overall positive user trust, or the newcomer willing to dish out big cash to developers to remove their game from a platform that caters to a large chunk of PC gamers and in it's short existence has already been accused of data mining and sharing that data with Tencent, a Chinese company associated with the "social credit" system. The launcher is a piece of botnet garbage as well and nowhere near in a state to compete with Steam.

Also this.

Attached: nx4rmgj.png (1914x4402, 1.46M)

what the fuck is that procmon screenshot, are you retarded? that has absolutely nothing to do with malware

Oooo Mr. Xi Jinping-san hello I am big fan yes?

The best thing for Steam to do is ignore them. They likely will, but responding implies they are worthy of a reply.
I'm trying to find it but I also read recently that they don't actually take less from developers at Epic and it's all bullshit in the end, they just word it all fancy-like to appear like they don't. Typical tricks tbh.

Do you know what I find so funny about this whole situation? Tim Sweeney criticized Microsoft about them wall gardening the PC market with some Winblows 10 DRM for Microsoft's Winblows 10 only PC games. But fast forward to today and his company is doing the same exact move as Microsoft but worse on top of going out of their way to monopolize the PC market much faster than Steam will ever do. It's ironic I tell; guess this is a side-effect of being partially owned by Tencent.

Attached: Bugs bunny reading himself.jpg (564x564, 68.83K)

The fundamental problem here is that people who have little or nothing to do with making games want to ensure continued revenue by doing grimy shit.

If you’re a brilliant game developer, you know you’re going to keep getting a paycheck because you’ll have good ideas and make more good games.

If you’re an IP holder with no knowledge of what makes a good game, the only way to keep the money coming is to lock your customers and creators into contracts so your insignificant little piece of the system keeps making income.

Steam and Epic’s client do nothing you couldn’t do yourself with a web browser and a credit card. They’re the warner bros and sony of the game industry.

copyright exclusivity is fucking gay

Are all you steam fanboys critically retarded? Epic store charges 12% vs steam's 30%+. Why do you think Epic said drop it to 12? Because they only charge 12 you retard. Fuck steam, apple store, and google play for their, 30% cuts.


Fuck your steamy pile of shit Gabe.

Enjoy your chinese spyware.

pirate bay yu fuken niggers

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.

Never said any of that. I don't give a fuck if steam lowers there cut or not or Epic's ultimatum.

I also don't give a fuck how much China owns of Epic.
To quote you:
I don't give one flying fuck what country owns what megacorporation you dumb steam cuck.
I am annoyed by this Steamboy chimpout though. Fuck steam. Valve is the laziest game company in the world and deserved to die years ago. They're not even truly a game company anymore just a ((merchant)) company. Fuck those greedy kikes.

what is the next game that I care about that is exclusive? shrugs

Also, all the exclusives seem to be American and European-developed or published.
East Asian-developed or published games are on Steam. Weebs have a better dog on Steam in this fight.
Epic doesn't seem to care about this crowd (and they're funded by the paper tiger of the world, so why should they?), but Valve at least does to a point.

PC gaming started to go to shit around the same time the internet and everything else did.. when corporations realized sucking all the blood out of computer users was less difficult and more profitable than creating new software and technologies for them to buy.

I get the feeling that some people arguing about game license fees here are too young to remember the long-gone golden age of gaming, and are on a crusade to rewind us all back to an era shortly after its demise.

Wouldn’t it just cause game prices to be higher to make up the loss?

ssoooooo….what has this faggot done to prove that he's trust worthy?
oh nothing?
lol, get fucked, i would trust a nigger with my bicycle before i trusted sweeney to keep to his word on something like this.

What is even out on Epic that hasn't bombed?

What loss? Do you think people will have a hard time finding the latest epic/ea/blizzard/etc titles without the benefit of the steam store?

exclusives are great. its why i own a ps4 :^)

That’s the only reason anyone owns any PlayStation model isn’t it?