If Steam delivers the bits and the transaction happens in game, then you are only allowed to run the transaction through steam. Note this is a little different than your DLC scenario here.
In the past they also required a revenue share for users which originated on Steam (which includes using a free key) of 20%. I think this may be gone from more recent agreements as it was a pain for them to deal with.
So one other interesting fact I just learned today about the epic store. They don’t cover 100% of the transaction fees, they pass some of them on to the consumer. This is the opposite of what Steam does. This is actually a pretty big deal.
PC gamer has an article about some up and coming new store that will use blockchain to track your game keys and allow you to resell your games with the majority of the resale going back to the game publisher. GMG once tried a form of “reselling” but it was limited to games on GMG’s terrible Capsule client and never took off.
Other features include a “Spotify style” list of discovery games for the week and the opt-in ability to mine cryptocurrency towards the store which I’m sure a lot of people will be skeptical of. They also, amusingly, already have a better laid-out and feature rich store than Epic.
Still, it’s interesting to read about a store trying to compete with something better than “We’re the only place to get this so suck it”.
I’m sure we will see quite a bit of innovation in store fronts. Both in terms of pricing and business model like this blockchain one.
Having some of the resale going to the developer is a good idea, but it might not be enough.
That’s fantastic. I definitely have games I’d resell if it was that easy.
Well, GOG seems to be increasing in success even without exclusives. They started out with only old games (which I guess were sort of exclusive to them, if only because nobody else was bothering to do the work to make them playable), then they moved on to being a full store, and they’re apparently reasonably successful. I imagine they’re nowhere near as big as Steam, I haven’t seen numbers, I don’t even know if they have 10% market share or anything, but they’re doing something and having some reasonable level of success. And that’s with, as far as I know, no exclusives at all.
Other services have had exclusives, but again as far as I know, it’s always been their own games. Valve games on Steam only. EA games started being on Origin only once they launched that. I mean, damn, Epic is being more dastardly and evil and anti-consumer than EA for crying out loud, with this going out and buying up other developers’ titles as exclusives.
Even though it’s the same bits, a used game really ought to be cheaper than a new game. If a lot of people are selling a game, then that’s a sign that it’s not as good as they thought, and so the market should be pushing the price down.
And I’m automatically skeptical of anything involving blockchain.
That said, though, it’s an interesting idea, and it is, in fact, something that Steam isn’t doing, that could potentially give this new company an edge.
It’s pretty rare that I go back to a completed game so, even if it was enjoyable, there’s still a decent chance that I’d be up for selling it. But it seems like more of a boon for the customer than the publisher – it’s not as though the publisher is spared from making more product. I guess maybe it would make customers a little more likely to buy a game if they knew they could get something back later?
The games in their little promo video don’t inspire a ton of confidence; they’re not bad games but they’re old discounted titles like Darksiders 2 and Syberia. You’re not jumping on this to play the latest AAA shooter or even 2016’s top AAA games. Still it looked interesting and, yeah, someone actually trying something new.
I disagree. I might sell an amazingly good game because I’m not the type of gamer who does much replay. Bioshock is a game I’d recommend wholeheartedly, but I’ll never go back into it. Arkham City (the second one, whatever it’s called) is the same way.
And if I know I’d have the right to resell a game once I’d finished it, I’d be a little more willing to buy it in the first place.
Think of it this way : back in the days when we still had to schlep our fat arses to brick-and-mortar game stores, the used games market was thriving (because why buy a new game 50 bucks when there’s a copy sitting next to it at 35 ?) and the developers/publishers saw not one dime of that market. In fact, the consumers didn’t really either, because Gamestop & co would buy your entire game collection for 5 bucks and re-sold each of them for 35. AFAIK that’s still the case on the console market, which is why game publishers started tying a ton of in-game content to ID keys and whatnot that the first buyer could access but not second-hand buyers.
So that new system would be step-up from the producer’s POV, even if they’ll probably still see a downturn compared to the days of “you can only buy brand new digital copies” ; and some types of games will be more adversely affected by this than others (e.g. pure adventure games à la Grim Fandango which have very low replay value besides sheer nostalgia 10 or 20 years down the line)
It’s called Arkham City. It’s the sequel to Arkham Asylum.
My son has pretty much taken over my Steam account. These days I’m more of a PS4 gamer anyway. It is disappointing that companies engage with these “engineered scarcity” tactics to goad people into paying higher prices. But as a consumer you can choose not to buy those products on first release. I no longer pay $59 for an early release game . Usually within two months there will be a sale at $39. If you really want the game, then pay the extra $20. The more profitable the game is, the more likely the publisher is to keep making games like it.
The only games I buy at full price are Elder Scrolls and Grand Theft Auto. All others can wait. $5 - $10 is what I pay for most PC games.
I’m honestly baffled as to why this is an argument at all. I don’t find any of the arguments in favor of Epic to be credible.
So, there’s a market you want to break into. So, you make a plan. You have to appeal to more to at least some customers than established players in the market. So, you create a better product. Or you sell a cheaper product. Or you create some product that appeals more to a certain niche. The competition gives consumers better options, the consumer wins. yay.
Or… you bribe the makers of the products to only be sold through your store. The consumers now have less choice, less competition, and where they previously had a whole market in which to choose where to buy their products, they now have only one option if they want that product. The consumer loses. Boo.
I find the attitude of “well it’s just business, businesses can do whatever they want as long as it’s legal, no matter how dickish, now shut your mouth and stop complaining” to be disgusting. You are essentially advocating on behalf of consumer-hostile or otherwise shitty businesses. You’re the reason we treat “the only obligation of a business is to make a profit for its shareholders” as some sort of law of the universe, as if that’s the only way it could ever be, and encourage and celebrate shitty businesses that make things worse for society as a whole.
Costco is a better, more ethical, more decent company than Walmart. In 'n Out burger is a more ethical, more decent company than McDonalds. Now you’re going to quote their profit margins and market caps to me to prove I’m somehow wrong, and that’s exactly my point. People like you are why we have such a dysfunctional idea of what capitalism is, and what it has to be.
What epic is doing is undoubtedly, conclusively bad for consumers. And to those of you saying that, well, steam is unfair with their 30% cut, then what epic could do is simply offer a 10 or 20% cut and give publishers the options of putting their games there, and if the publisher wants, only there. But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re bribing the publishers for that exclusivity. They’re forcing them to sign contracts only to offer their product there. Epic is not competing for publishers based on their cut, epic is bribing publishers not to sell on other platforms.
It’s also not Epic vs Steam, and people are shortsighted to frame the question that way. It’s Epic vs Every Other Game Store And The Way PC Gaming Has Always Worked. Somehow there are still a lot of people that have an irrational hate boner for steam, and they view Epic as heroes just for trying to compete with steam, and I really don’t think there’s a rational case to be made for that one either.
I would suggest that this isn’t even a good natured debate on which reasonable people can disagree. I would suggest there’s something flawed about the values or beliefs of people who are advocating for Epic, which, as I said above, are the sort of values and beliefs that bring out the worst in capitalism and basically have broken it in the US.
I don’t think there’s any reason to have a hyperbolic freak-out over Epic. I don’t think what they’re doing will work. Their deals are only benefiting themselves. Those offering Epic exclusivity are going to lose out by having their products only sold in one store, and as a result I don’t expect Epic is going to get very many items of quality. There’s a reason why that business model isn’t very common.
A freak-out is justified because it’s the best way to kill this in the crib. Console gaming may have tolerated exclusivity, but PC gaming has never had anything like this bribe-to-exclude type of exclusivity ever, and it’s insidious. If it’s mildly successful, it encroaches upon what’s acceptable. People get used to the idea and it grows. We once mocked Horse Armor for Oblivion, and then 10 years later we’ve got games with hundreds of microtransactions and now every other game is based around trying to hook you on gambling. Acceptance will cause it to slowly grow like a cancer that spreads. Better to hit it with maximum effect - raising it as an issue so people are aware, organize boycotts, and generally just blast Epic as much as possible so that it receives the most negative reinforcement and least positive reinforcement while it’s still able to be killed in the early stages.
I, personally, won’t buy anything from the Epic Store. I would fully encourage everyone else to do the same. If a game was once exclusive to the Epic store, but then goes on another store, I’m about 95% less likely to buy it. Maybe, maybe a game I really want I’d be willing to get down the road on another store/platform, but since I’ve got all the games I could ever play already I probably just won’t support publishers that do this.
Well, it’s still a very common tactic in the console world - and in that world, the barrier of entry isn’t “install a shit app”, it’s “buy a completely different gaming system which costs a lot of money”. I suppose it could be argued that porting games from one system to the next in itself costs money so that more money is made by only releasing games on one system compensates for the loss of sales, but I’m skeptical. I don’t think there’s a ton of in-depth market or financial research being done in the video game world.
Also, what **SenorBeef **said. PC gamers tend, by and large, to be older folks with (hopefully) the tools to identify shit marketing and cancerous business trends - like has been shown with the uproar over loot boxes in games. We can and should respond to these consumer-unfriendly methods with “fuck you where you live”.
I get that, but the only way ‘used’ digital is going to be a thing is if the publishers allow it to be so and it feels like cannibalizing their own sales even if they get a piece of the action (which is less than they get from an original sale). The way it’s set up, you don’t even know if it’s new or used and the retail price is the same. The only real difference is a smaller cut for the publisher.
I suppose more people may buy if they know they can resell it later. Not sure if that’s enough to make up the difference but I appreciate someone being willing to conduct the experiment.
I don’t think that consoles are a great comparison to Epic. Once again, it’s people conflating platform and store. “This game is on Xbox but not PS4” is like saying “This app is on iOS but not on Android”. What we have here is more like “This Xbox game is only sold from Gamestop, and Walmart, Target, Amazon, Best Buy, etc aren’t allowed to carry it”.
[Edit: I’m aware that stores sometimes have exclusive DLC or something but when the core game is the same, I don’t find “Buy from us and get a red scarf for your guy, buy from them and get a blue scarf” to be a real issue.]
Oh, I agree. From their POV it’s very probably a net loss compared to the current model, no matter how you slice it. But it’s more consumer-friendly, which as a career consumer I tend to appreciate :).
ETA : I think the 90 days grace period is a step to mollify those concerns though - because it’s true that past that “OMG it’s out !” period, people tend to only buy games when they’re heavily discounted. And at that point, what’s the difference between getting a smaller cut because you’re selling it 50% off and getting a smaller cut because it’s a used game ?
Oh good, Epic actually bought not only Rocket League, but it’s developer Psyonix. A beloved game with millions of owners on steam will now disappear from the steam store and force you to go to the epic store if you’re a new player who wants that game, or probably if you want any sort of DLC or cosmetics that come out in the future.
This competition is awesome! I love when I have a lot of choices and then get reduced to one choice from a shitty company! Exclusivity is awesome!