Fortnite Dev Launches Epic Games Store That Takes Just 12% of Revenue (venturebeat.com)

The 30/70 revenue-sharing split that turned into something of an industry standard is on the ropes. From a report: Epic Games, the developer responsible for the Fortnite phenomenon, is launching its own game store. And like with its asset store for developers, Epic is planning to take a 12-percent cut of revenues. This will leave 88 percent for the people who actually make the games. "As a developer ourselves, we have always wanted a platform with great economics that connects us directly with our players," Sweeney explained in a statement. "Thanks to the success of Fortnite, we now have this and are ready to share it with other developers."

Comments

Well shit

[DarkRookie2]

This better not become a thing.
The gaming industry is getting a bad as the movie industry. Each own company want to launch their own client. With shitty interfaces.
Steam is tolerable because of the details view.

Re:Well shit

[cascadingstylesheet]

Capitalism in a nutshell. If you want competition you have to accept egregious amounts of redundancy.

Redundancy which, frustrating though this may be to some, makes things better, not worse.

See Soviet era stores vs. American stores of the same era.

Re:Well shit

[Luckyo]

It would be great if this becomes even more of a thing. Competition drives prices down and cracks down on oppressive policies of the monopolist, such as steam's recent moral panic issues that had it ban and unban developers with ebb and flow of pressure.

Re:Well shit

[Anonymous Coward]

How does it benefit consumers? It simply raises prices. Especially when each service use exclusivities in an attempt to wall-off content to only their service. For example, no consumers are going to benefit from Disney's fracturing of the streaming service which will likely lead to them removing all content from Netflix and Hulu.

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

Bullshit. There are multiple video streaming services and despite this all of them have raised their prices on multiple occasions. Both Netflix and Hulu, as examples, are more expensive now than when there were fewer options.

Re:Well shit

[grumbel]

This will continue to get worse until we get transferable licenses. The music industry has it figured out more or less and many music services allow you to import your existing library. For games this only exists in very limited cases (e.g. GOG allows import of a limited number of games from Steam).

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

And as a follow up, neither Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or any other service is going to lower their prices when Disney watch as they are streaming service. In fact, most will probably raise their prices within the next couple years.

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

That should be "when Disney launches their streaming service." Stupid voice dictation.

Re:Well shit

[EvilSS]

Bullshit. There are multiple video streaming services and despite this all of them have raised their prices on multiple occasions. Both Netflix and Hulu, as examples, are more expensive now than when there were fewer options.

So your logic is that if Netflix had a monopoly on streaming it would be cheaper than it is now?

Re:Well shit

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Market fragmentation is bad cause you need multiple clients. It's great because this is the first store to move away from Apple's 30% cut. Apple, Google, Amazon, Steam, Microsofts various stores... It's like how MS Azure, AWS and Google all have the same storage costs (and have for a while as storage has gotten cheaper.) It takes a new entrant to decide to offer lower prices to steal people for that whole "competition/free market" thing to move in an oligopoly.

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

No that's not my logic at all and thanks for failing to actually address my rebuttal. If "more competition" means lower prices then please feel free to explain how every streaming service is more expensive than it used to be despite more supposed "competition." It's almost as if corporations don't actually work that way...

Re:Well shit

[thegarbz]

The gaming industry is getting a bad as the movie industry.

What do you mean "is" getting? Every idiot launching their own store has been par for the course since Steam became a profit centre for Valve. Origin? Battle.net? These have all been around for ages.

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

And as one can see from the video streaming market, no one comes in with lower prices and all the other players have all raised their prices. CBS All Access Pass is one such example. $10 a month for a single channel's content. Yep, the fracturing is so amazing for consumers...

Re:Well shit

[kurkosdr]

Microsoft is a monopoly now. Apple doesn't exist. Sure. Microsoft just has the majority share because they are cheap compared to Apple.

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

Also, please englighten me to the lower prices brought about by CBS All-Access. A single channel's content that costs nearly the same per month as what used to be the cost of both Hulu and Netflix combined. Yep, all that fracturing is showing great wins for consumers... NOT.

Re:Well shit

[DarkRookie2]

Battle.net is older than Steam. Which is the reason I still have the account.
And the problem with Origin and uPlay is that it is not a complete collection of all their work. If it was, I would have a lot less to complain about in regards to their services.

Re:Well shit

[Voyager529]

This better not become a thing.

The gaming industry is getting a bad as the movie industry. Each own company want to launch their own client. With shitty interfaces.

Steam is tolerable because of the details view.

I mean, it kinda already is. EA has Origin. Activision/Blizzard has Battle.net. Epic has EGL. Valve (and basically everyone else) has Steam.

The core difference between the movie industry and the games industry with the 101 client situation is that the movie industry is trying to get everyone to see movies as opex, while games are still capex. I have all four of those download clients installed on my laptop, and I load up the one that, in turn, launches the game I want to play. If I want to buy a new game, I generally know which one to open based on the publisher, and I make a one time* purchase on that particular client. The movie industry wants me to subscribe to 101 different services, each requiring $X per month. Subscribing to one or two is viable for many people, but when getting half a dozen in combination with the required internet bill can easily eclipse the cable bill it replaced, it's not something that solves anything from the client's perspective.

To be fair, buying one-off movies and TV episodes/seasons has been a thing on iTunes and Amazon for a over a decade now, arguably with the most cross-service content available (Star Trek Discovery and Game of Thrones are both available on it, though Netflix titles are absent). The trouble with the per-movie or per-episode model is that it's not easy to know what to buy, and at $20-30 a pop for TV seasons and $10 a pop on movies**, they too can add up very quickly unless the viewer intends to rewatch, which is tough to know from the outset. The subscription model trades the guesswork for a larger bill if several subscription services are utilized.

*Yes, In-Game purchases are becoming a thing in PC releases. Even so, they aren't required, regularly-recurring payment requirements, without which your already-purchased games stop working. Also, I know EA is working to fix this; we'll see how well that works for them - I'm sure Activision is watching closely.

**Yes, many movies and TV series can be gotten on sale for less money if it's timed right, but even at $10/season and $3/movie, it's still more expensive than a month of Netflix. I'm no fan of the MPAA, but I can understand that selling movies for a one-off $3 a pop expenditure in order to make purchases compete more favorably with Netflix is likely to be a losing proposition even if they *weren't* the sort of infinitely greedy, terrible people that they are. Moreover, Netflix makes it easier for them to have regular income, making the bean counters far happier than the spikes and valleys that come with capex purchases.

Re:Well shit

[stealth_finger]

For people who really really want Disney content won't mind the extra premium

Disney content is shit and anyone who really really wants is either a tween or headcase.

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

Supposedly Disneyflix will be cheaper than Netflix and Hulu.

The cutest part is you believe that.

In the long-term, the new streaming services will drive UP competition and either drive DOWN market prices or drive UP quality/amount of content.

History says otherwise. None of these fractured services have resulted in lower costs. Every single service is more expensive now than they were years ago and when there were fewer options. It's so cute that you think companies will purposefully take in less money when they knownthey can charge more.

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

Every service has raised prices not just Netflix. This faux competition between fractured services has not once brought about lower prices for video streaming.

Re:Well shit

[reanjr]

Don't support this shit. Not only should you not buy games through this travesty of an app store, but you should stop buying anything from Epic.

Re:Well shit

[reanjr]

Open source is no more "communist" than charity is. And charity is very much a "capitalist" ideal as it is predicated on wealth stratification. Some people have some form of capital and share it.

Re:Well shit

[Rockoon]

No that's not my logic at all

Well you are right that there is no logic in it, but it was in fact your argument.

Re:Well shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Disengenuous argument.

In the car example, one company has a car with seats but no wheels, the other company has wheels but no seats, one company exclusively has a radio.

Yes we should be able to have multiple services. But I should be able to access *everything* I own/have access to on any service I choose. I need to be able to switch services and *take my licenses with me* using steam as an example - if I switch to GoG I should be able to take all of my game licenses over to the GoG client if i like GoG better,

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

Exactly. It's the fact that these services silo you into their service with their exclusive content is why all this "competition" has not lead to lower prices. Everyone views their silo'd content as premium and thus charges more not less.

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

Oh really? So where are the lowered prices in video streaming? All I see are price increases. I'll concede I'm wrong when you show me where either of Amazon, Hulu or Netflix has lowered their prices due to more "competition."

Re:Well shit

[Desler]

Also, lower prices may not be achieved immediately, if the service is already barely profitable.

Netflix streaming has been around for 10 years and is highly profitably. And yet they have never announced a price decrease.

Re:Well shit

[EvilSS]

Oh really? So where are the lowered prices in video streaming? All I see are price increases. I'll concede I'm wrong when you show me where either of Amazon, Hulu or Netflix has lowered their prices due to more "competition."

"Lower prices due to competition" doesn't always mean "prices must go down" it can also mean "prices will not go up as much". If Netflix had a monopoly do you really think you would be paying what you are today for it? Hell no, it would be higher. Probably way higher.

Re:Well shit

[kurkosdr]

Open source is a joint-development license where everybody can join at any time. It relies on copyright and freedom to participate (or not) and other fine capitalist ideals.

Re:Well shit

[Zak3056]

Exactly. It's the fact that these services silo you into their service with their exclusive content is why all this "competition" has not lead to lower prices. .

Except in this exact case we are discussing, where the cost to the game developer is 40% lower than the competition?

Re:Well shit

[Zak3056]

Sorry, 60%. One of the few times I wish I could edit a /. post.

Re:Well shit

[Luckyo]

Inflation makes their intake go down on a constant basis as long as the price stays the same. The value of money itself goes down over time. That's how inflation works.

Re:Well shit

[Holi]

and How long will that last?

Re:Well shit

[spire3661]

It already is a thing. Stardew Valley just announced that they will be starting their own launcher and leaving steam, and that is a 'small' developer. Its apparent the costs of running a storefront have dropped to the point where any dev with decent sales can pop one up. Elite Dangerous has been doing it for a while, and we saw Bethesda put Fallout 76 only on its store.

Re:Well shit

[Anonymous Coward]

So what is your argument exactly? That game developers should tie themselves to Steam and lose 30% today because you fear that if they sell on Epic Games Store and lose only 12% they may some day lose more in the future? Game developers are free to sell on multiple platforms or just one platform. Epic Games is just giving game developers a less expensive place to sell their games. There's no restriction on them selling on steam as well if they want to lose more money.

Re:Well shit

[Spy Handler]

Free linux distros isn't communism, it's volunteer work. Like how if you volunteer to tutor a neighborhood kid in math for free, because you feel like doing something decent.

Communism Linux would be, if the state forcefully took possession of Red Hat and SuSe and all other money-generating Linux-related entities, and redistributed the funds to everyone involved.

Re:Well shit

[eth1]

This better not become a thing.

The gaming industry is getting a bad as the movie industry. Each own company want to launch their own client. With shitty interfaces.

It's nowhere near as bad... e.g. Steam (and I assume this new Epic store) doesn't try to charge you a monthly fee for the privilege of shopping there, so there's no problem with having several different channels to buy things.

Re:Well shit

[Junta]

The moment it is no longer cheaper, then devs will go elsewhere.

The issue is that 'app stores' take an obscene cut compared to rates in other industries.

Re:Well shit

[Tadlon]

There are more variables in play here, inflation for one, and licensing costs from the content creators. It's not so simple, in fact you could argue the fact that the prices have not went up even higher proves that multiple services created competition and kept them low. That said i'm guessing from your posts you're not interested in logically thinking about the issue.

Re:Well shit

[Actually, I do RTFA]

And as one can see from the video streaming market, no one comes in with lower prices

Seems like a stupid statement, because the article we are responding to is about someone coming in with lower prices. And my comment was about that company. So, clearly, it does happen

There is also a huge difference between cloud services (B2B) and video streaming (B2C). This feels more analogous to cloud services, because while it is fracturing the userbase, the ultimate customer is the developer. They're the ones paying the fee. So, I hope this does very well, and leads someone to do the same in cloud hosting.

Re:Well shit

[tlhIngan]

It already is a thing. Stardew Valley just announced that they will be starting their own launcher and leaving steam, and that is a 'small' developer. Its apparent the costs of running a storefront have dropped to the point where any dev with decent sales can pop one up. Elite Dangerous has been doing it for a while, and we saw Bethesda put Fallout 76 only on its store.

You could always run your own storefront. Just it usually involves having to hire people to maintain it, people to secure it, etc.

Payment processing is quite easy if you use something like Amazon, Google or Paypal as your backend.

The problem is the ongoing expense of securing the site - after all, you're only one data breech away from spilling your customer table.

It's usually the latter aspect that you run into a hosted service like Steam, App Stores or even services like Shopify and Big Cartel. Instead of paying to maintain and update the software stack, you just maintain the product list and those stores handle all the billing and taxes and other details

And yes, sometimes it's actually better to leave it to the pros like Big Cartel and Shopify - let them handle the mess of user IDs and passwords, payments, etc instead of having to harden your systems and worry about data breeches.

Re:Well shit

[blahplusplus]

Redundancy which, frustrating though this may be to some, makes things better, not worse.

See Soviet era stores vs. American stores of the same era.

Whoever voted this insightful was clueless, the reality is there is no competition in the games market because gamers are grade A fucking stupid about how computers work. As someone who grew up playing Warcraft 2 and descent over Kali/Kahn, you have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

The reality is the modern videogame industry is not a market, its a god damn shit show if idiot kids being raped and games having been literally stolen and destroyed because the average gamer is ill educated and dumb as fuck as slashdot is clearly demonstrating. Gaming has been a market for lemons since the 90's with ultima online when the powers that be learned that gamers are stupid enough to give up ownership of PC games via simply relabelling games mmo's putting a server lock on them and charging a subscription.

With that came the end of the games market, you can't have a market when companies own and control the software because now they got you over a barrel and can extort money from you because you gaveup your rights to own the software you were buying, thereby making it a non market organization.

Let us remember it was Valve who launched DRM into a game we had full control over (half life) with server exe's, level editors and sdk's... then they went and dialed all that back as steam became popular with a new generation of computer illiterate kids.

People who believe billion dollar mega corps who have a lock on human culture who now own the game software outright are 'competing' on price are delusional since the average consumer is downright subhuman in their purchasing decisions and their inability to see how they are being robbed - microtransactions, lootboxes, day one DLC, MMO's, steam, all that is a sign of a consumer culture that has no functioning brain.

In a real market customers are informed, the game market is anything but a functioning market.

Re:Well shit

[j-beda]

The moment it is no longer cheaper, then devs will go elsewhere.

The issue is that 'app stores' take an obscene cut compared to rates in other industries.

Do they? A 30% overall manufacturer/wholesaler/retailer markup seems on the low side to me. I'm not saying it is low enough, but for TVs and shoes and hamburgers it is significantly higher I think.

Re:Well shit

[thegarbz]

Yes Battle.net is older than steam but it developed into an online store after if I remember my history. It used to be a glorified multiplayer system back in the day. Or maybe my memory is fading in my old age. They did say it was down hill from 30 :)

Re: Well shit

[Luckyo]

Are you familiar with basic math? As in the fact that you can multiply a natural number that isn't zero by any number that is 0x1 as many times as you want, without ever reaching zero, which is the natural "bottom"?

Seriously, this is slashdot. It's assumed that even ACs can at least do basic math. What the fuck are you doing here?

Re: Well shit

[Luckyo]

Bloody retarded slashdot formatting.. "Any number that is greater than zero and lesser than one".

Re:Well shit

[Dragonslicer]

Bullshit. There are multiple video streaming services and despite this all of them have raised their prices on multiple occasions. Both Netflix and Hulu, as examples, are more expensive now than when there were fewer options.

In the case of video streaming services, increased competition in the delivery service can hinder competition in the creation market, since people have less freedom to select individual shows and movies (a person would need to pay for a full subscription to a service if they wanted a single movie).

Video game stores are different, as long as you don't have to pay for access to each store. If there's a game you want from Epic's store that isn't available on Steam, the only cost (beyond the price of the game) is a small amount of time and disk space. The cost isn't zero, even though the monetary cost is, so it may not be perfect freedom to choose the games you like, but it's certainly much better than video streaming services.

Re:Well shit

[d0rp]

That's not a very good example, because all of the streaming services aren't really competing in the same sense. There is very little overlap of content between Netflix, Hulu, etc and each service has their own exclusive content which they view as "premium content", so they charge premium prices for it. If these streaming services were all forced to license their original content to the other services for a reasonable fee, then we could see real competition.

This new game store will be closer to real competition, since there is nothing stopping the developers from publishing their content on both platforms to maximize their audience. This competition likely will improve things for consumers.

Re:Well shit

[scdeimos]

IMO, the problem is the mere existence of services.

When you buy a car you own it. It's sitting in your garage when you're not driving it.

When you "buy" games, music or movies from a service you're not buying a physical product, you're renting access to a digital stream of bits. If you're not screwed by DRM immediately then you're screwed by it when the service goes offline or permanently out of business. There's no way for you to transfer your purchases between services or to some kind of escrow service so that you can retain access to the content that you've paid for. So you never own it.

Re: Well shit

[EvilSS]

Idiots like you are why I usually ignore ACs. That's the dumbest fucking argument I've seen all week.

Re: Well shit

[flopsquad]

Tweens and headcases.

Humans have been rehashing the same stories for 4,000 years and you suckers still eat it up.

FTFY

Re:Well shit

[Waccoon]

Redundancy is good. What concerns people is exclusivity, which is what runs rampant in today's software store market.

Re:Well shit

[Can'tNot]

Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth here: this is great. Taking a 30% cut is exploitative, 12% is quite reasonable. Fragmentation is a solvable problem, and is the problem we can only hope to have under the present circumstances.

Re:Well shit

[blahplusplus]

Steam is tolerable because of the details view.

Man gamers today are dumb, the reason everyone is going with clients is they want that microtransaction money, as soon as everyone fell for the mmo scam 20 years ago setup by CEO's and game devs, I watched as regular PC rpg's in development were reballebed mmo's and given a server lock and a subscription. As soon as gamers were dumb enough to pay for games they didn't own and ran from someone elses computer, you all encouraged all this by falling all over yourselfs to give money to games you didn't own.

Of course they want launchers, their own online drm platform that allows what valve newell did - to steal the fucking game, run it from a server in his office and collect MTX. Up until the late 90's mid 2000's we owned and controlled all the files of our games outright for most games because internet penetration had not yet fully reached the idiot masses of the globe.

As soon as UO, Everquest and World of warcraft were things, all the rest became inevitable, people kept allowing companies to scam them and steal game software, kept buying locked drm'd game with 'in game stores', mtx and 'in game economies', all encouraging them to further double down on undermining game ownership.

So yeah, the reason why big companies like epic want off steam nad their own launcher/drm, is because idiots and kids kept feeding money to microtransactions inside games they didn't own. Watching the the small 3% of huge spenders from rich, stupid and impulsive gambling types of gamers enable corporations to steal fucking PC games was pretty alarming.

So yeah everyone fell for the scam because they are not very bright and tech illiterate, to watch people on slashdot who claim to be nerds support steam or mmo's was prettty disturbing, proving even nerds are not immune to being fucking stupid and not seeing the forest from the tree's. The whole goal since the 90's for silicon vallley, of which the game industry is a part, was to remove software ownership and take control of users PC's and turn them into dumb terminals for profit. Smartphones, kids mmo's were part of the big push to lock down software inside corporate offices. Once companies had control of the software now they are home free.

They can now do anything they want to the software because people fell upon their own swords giving up ownership rights because they are not very bright. To over the last 20 years, big companies steal videogame software from a gullible lay public and the public just lapping it up was prettty surreal for a nerd who grew up in the 80's and 90's. We used to get Server exe's and level editors and programming sdk's with AAA Games. The fact we have lootboxes and microtransactions and mmo's is proof the average gamer is a fucking moron.

Re:Well shit

[Rolgar]

I used to pay $25 per month for basic cable. Now I pay $12 for Hulu with no commercials. And after we watch the 12-15 series of programs that are interesting to us, (It would probably take about 3-5 years at our pace), then we may consider only having the service in Oct-Dec (watch new episodes from Sept-December), then again in February and April-May),and we could probably catch all of our shows for about $36-$48/yr. Not a bad deal considering the alternatives.

Re:Well shit

[Junta]

For physical goods, there's risk and costs associated with keeping and moving actual inventory. Those can be pretty significant.

For an electronic store, the burden is much smaller, and is closer to the role that credit cards play in terms of costs (though the later carries a lot more liability). So a modest percentage beyond what the credit card companies directly charge (since that electronic store is going to be inflicted with that) seems more in line with the costs of that sort of endeavor.

Re: Well shit

[reanjr]

I will 100% support paying developers selling their software direct. What I will never support is another DRM scheme or online account with each new game, with requisite passwords, and credit cards, and auth factors, and spam, and scams, and...

Valve = screwed

[noodler]

Valve. They are screwed. Finally.

Re:Valve = screwed

[noodler]

Their model won't sustain 12.5% and developers will leave them. They are screwed.

Re:Valve = screwed

[Stolovaya]

I think you underestimate the install base that Steam has. In addition, how many people will actually know what Epic and what Steam charges? How many players will care?

Re:Fortnite limited scope

[Luckyo]

Nothing here says "exclusively". You can still be on steam, gog, etc.

Oh joy

[DrXym]

Yet another company with a fat monolithic, app store that wants to sit on my PC and devices. Steam/Valve, Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, GOG, Blizzard etc.

I know this is a wild and crazy concept, but how about building a federated system where people are free to buy their games from multiple sources without being trapped in a vertical slice? Games for Windows was more or less that concept, but it seems to have been forgotten about and really it needs to be revisited.

Re:Oh joy

[Actually, I do RTFA]

This one only charge 12% for third-party developers. The others charge 30%. This is a huge motion. I only hope Steam, Apple, etc. follow them down to 12%, and Epic doesn't drift up to 30% after they get some market share.

Re:Oh joy

[DrXym]

Last time I checked GOG didn't have a federated platform of services.

Re:Oh joy

[DrXym]

That's great, but if devs now have 2, 3, 4 different platforms just on the PC to maximize their footprint, then that still sucks and costs a lot of money. My point is why is this even necessary when all these platforms share essentially the same core services. It should be possible for a game to run without modification regardless where it is sold.

Re:Oh joy

[evanh]

Only because the others don't want it that way. And there in lies the problem. There is no interest from the competing platforms to collaborate. Similar story for music downloads going right back to the 1990's.

It's probably the biggest reason why so-called "free-to-play" games got so big for a while. Without the bother of sorting out pre-game purchasing the game can get started immediately and do the rest in-game.

Re:Oh joy

[chispito]

Yet another company with a fat monolithic, app store that wants to sit on my PC and devices. Steam/Valve, Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, GOG, Blizzard etc.

You are not supposed to use all the services. You are supposed to pick the one or two that work best for you. If a game is only available on a service you do not use, then learn to live without. Maybe even apply a little pressure on the developer/publisher to branch out. Be a responsible consumer.

I know this is a wild and crazy concept, but how about building a federated system where people are free to buy their games from multiple sources without being trapped in a vertical slice?

How are you trapped in a vertical slice? What does "federated" mean in this context? What is stopping you from purchasing a game on GOG and joining a game with your friend who purchased it on Steam? Do you just want universal chat/grouping functions? Isn't that called Dischord (or any number of clients/services before it)?

Re:Oh joy

[sanf780]

Without modification except for DRM (except GOG) and online services. Online services by the storefront may include hooks to your profile, manage friends and invites, provide voice and text chat. All of these are split the same as IM is at the moment: Facetime, Skype, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Telegram and so on. Cross-platform gaming is also discouraged by company owners, at least on the consoles.

Online is important these days. Most people will not appreciate using basic services like Kali, IP addresses and IRC in order to get an online match. I do understand the Discord thing, though.

Re:Oh joy

[Junta]

If Microsoft had plaid it differently, the OS could have provided a framework for this that would be federated, in the same way yum and apt are federated on Linux distros.

The problem is that as a commercial endeavor, no one is particularly motivated to provide that neutral, no-charge federated solution.

Re:Oh joy

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Well, I'm a little scared of them using the store to force the UE4 engine down people's throat. If big enough, it'd be a clever way to get 5% of Steam, etc. sales too.

Re:Oh joy

[Kjella]

I know this is a wild and crazy concept, but how about building a federated system where people are free to buy their games from multiple sources without being trapped in a vertical slice?

A younger and more idealistic version of myself thought that many groups would cease control over their own distribution through a broad non-profit organization or foundation because the Internet got near infinite space for the long tail. Like instead of the market being dominated by a few for-profit giants hundreds of indie game companies would band together to create a open service that by statute only takes a flat cut of the gross to break even, like a basic shared service on top of a hosting/payment solution. I don't know why it never materialized, a lot of companies rolled their own shopping cart and forum system instead but each alone was no match for Steam etc.

Re:Oh joy

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I meant more like, "You must use UE4 to use our store." It's obviously not there now, but if it takes off...

Re:Oh joy

[DrXym]

Please try and understand, it isn't difficult. If I sell my game on Steam, I must compile and link to their platform services. If I sell my game on Epic, I must compile and link to their platform services. And so on. Not just compile & link, but test and maintain. Essentially multiple platforms despite this being a single operating system running on a common architecture.

Now as a publisher I bear the cost of every damned platform I support. Yeah it's great (I guess) that one platform rakes less than some other, but the reality is that any additional profit I make is probably wiped out by the above effort.

Re:Oh joy

[DrXym]

How are you trapped in a vertical slice? What does "federated" mean in this context? What is stopping you from purchasing a game on GOG and joining a game with your friend who purchased it on Steam? Do you just want universal chat/grouping functions? Isn't that called Dischord (or any number of clients/services before it)?

Trapped means exactly that. Every service comes with a massive set of terms & conditions. My games are locked into that service and those terms. I buy my game subject to those terms, I can't move my games, I can't connect to games running across different services, or talk to my friends across those services, or play people on those services. I can't choose which store to buy a game from and then choose the service I choose to run it over. It's all linked together.

This is a completely solvable issue, but it is not in the interest of the stores to solve it. And thus it isn't solved. The closest thing that game to it was Games for Windows - you bought a game with the GfW logo and it offered single sign on, achievements and some other stuff regardless of where you bought it.

Re:Oh joy

[DrXym]

Ah yes so your solution as to how a developer might have federated chat, achievements, multiplayer etc. is to tell them not to use those features in the game. Way to miss the point.

Re:Tyranny of the Default

[Luthair]

Oh, weird.

Disneyflix can be tied to espn / bully ISP to forc

[Joe_Dragon]

Disneyflix can be tied to espn / bully ISP to force into the all internet planes just like they do on the cable tv side.

DRM free

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer GOG. Once I buy a game there and download it, the store I bought it from no longer matters. I can reinstall the game whenever I want, and play it whenever I want. I also buy DRM free from other sources. I don't want to have to install a dozen clients to be able to play the games I want. Steam was enough. I got stuck with Origin for some RPGs. I do have Uplay for some of the free games they offered. Battle.net for Diablo 3 and recently Overwatch. Epic for Fortnite, which I only got into to play with my kid. I don't use GOG Galaxy because I don't care about achievements. Now I hear Bethesda has their own client for Fallout 76. Luckily it seems Fallout 76 is garbage, so that is one less client to worry about.

Re:Fortnite limited scope

[darkain]

It isn't just Fortnite. This is Epic Games, who creates the Unreal engine, one of the most popular game engines in the entire industry (and thus the engine's market place as well). They also make the Unreal series of games and Gears series of games. They have a long history in the industry, not just Fortnite. I think ~20 year success is enough establishment to take them seriously on what they know and what they do.

Re:This is piracy!!

[darkain]

Marketing, distribution, infrastructure, and all the people required to keep all of that running isn't free. Game developers are more than welcome to self-publish and absorb all of these costs themselves, this isn't like on Android or iOS where things are REQUIRED (mostly) to run through the centralized ecosystem. This is the PC world where we are free to download and install whatever the hell we want. So why WOULD developers even dream of using such services? Exactly as the reasons just mentioned. These services bring very credible and measurable value to developers.

GOG is a little different

[RoloDMonkey]

GOG Galaxy is entirely optional. Their core business model has always been games that are DRM free. You can download the games directly from the website and install them on as many devices as you want. The Galaxy "app" is just a convenience for most people.

7 minute abs

[Moof123]

Why 12%? Why not even less? Still seems like an arbitrary and painful tax between the buyer and the seller.

Re:7 minute abs

[Anonymous Coward]

They have to pay for credit card processing, handle taxes where applicable, pay for bandwidth to distribute sold games, servers to host games for sale, development on their store front, salaries for sysadmins, accountants, developers of the store application, game launcher and any related in-game network services, managers of employees, support personnel for consumers and support personnel for game developers.

When everyone else is charging 30% to do this and Epic is only charging 12%, what do you think they should be charging if not 12% and what do you base this on?

Re:7 minute abs

[thegarbz]

It only seems painful until you realise the standard tax rate is 30%. Then it feels like a bargain.

Re:Fortnite limited scope

[dstyle5]

They don't make Gears anymore as they sold the IP to Microsoft in 2014. :) Glad they did otherwise the series would most likely still be dead.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/20...

That's not an apples to apples comparison

[rsilvergun]

The USSR was destroyed by WWII. The US of A got away largely unmolested. We lost some soldiers, but they were really just surplus population (yes, that's a horrifying thing to say from a moral standpoint, but capitalism doesn't care about your morality and supply and demand means that if there's an oversupply of labor wages plummet).

Still, video games are definitely something that can and should be left in the hands of the free market. They're relatively harmless and not at all essential.

Flat fee pricing is the only fair way

[Tony Isaac]

Why should the app store need to take a percentage? The only pricing model I would be happy with is a flat fee model, where you pay a fixed amount to be listed. Whether it's 30% or 12%, they are still gouging you.

Re:Flat fee pricing is the only fair way

[tacroy]

While that would be neat, I don't think it's realistic. Since the app store has ongoing costs since they host the content, provide the bandwidth, and provide significant numbers of api's and services that app creators tie into.

Re:Flat fee pricing is the only fair way

[Tony Isaac]

I get your point. So I'd be OK with a per-user charge, but a flat fee per user, not one based on your sales price. Not all apps are created equal, some deserve a higher price, and that does not necessarily justify a higher fee to the store.

Re:Tyranny of the Default

[telek83]

Their game store is for PC games. EPIC Games primarily makes Windows PC games. This has nothing to do with Fortnight on Android, Android or Google yet.

Fixed that for you