Well, this is a lot of new arguments to unpack. The Epic launcher takes up disk space...the EGS is new...the EGS is losing money...cutting prices being a bad thing..."objectively" being penny-pinchers, whatever that means... Steam has stability...Epic take less of a cut than Steam (and this is a bad thing, somehow)...EGS losing money, again...EGS offering even lower dev fees, again as a bad thing...
Okay, so lemme break this down:
>"objectively" being penny-pinchers, whatever that means
Penny Pinching is not spending money on things you should, in order to 'cut costs'. Attempting to draw users is one thing (IE: Offering games on Sale/Free. Even Steam does that, and without that EGS has no cuts). It's for example not including proper APIs, not including other customer-friendly functions (whether individual customers think them necessary or not), etc. Steam's power lies in that it offers a plethora of functions, some for fun (communities for a game), some for profit (cards), some for garnering more sales (some people buy a game based on user reviews).
>Epic take less of a cut than Steam (and this is a bad thing, somehow)
In simple terms? It is a bad thing. Not for the companies that want to use EGS, but for Epic itself. As I explained, TWICE MIND YOU, in that post, EGS operates at a Deficit. This means that the Epic Game Store
LOSES MONEY just to operate. This can be attributed to a few choices, the biggest one being the 12%.
During Epic vs Apple, they revealed that the Epic Game store does not profit because of this 12% cut. They expected that the user count (edit: and 'Non-Paid Deal Exclusives') would go up in time, leading the higher profits. The reality, however, is that they're LOSING money rather than gaining. The First Party (Epic Games) income went up between 2021 and 2022, but overall Third Party income went down because nobody uses Epic Game Store for Third Party Titles. The truth comes out that the general 12% cut is not enough to sustain the store, and considering this topic, it's more likely they've lose more this year than they had in the past.
The 12% is not sustainable. Ergo, it's a BAD business strategy. They insist on it to try to bring more games to EGS, which they hope many will be, like how many do with Steam, 'platform exclusive' without them needing to pay to make deals, and thus they could rake more in. The reality however is nobody's buying 3rd parties on EGS, as I've said.
In 2021, Steam made $10,000,000,000 ($10b) Dollars. Not Valve, Valve made $13b that year. As noted above, Epic Game Store made $820,000,000 ($820m) - of that $465 million or 57% of total spend made from first-party titles; and thus made 355,000,000 in Third parties.
(Again, source is:
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/9067...2022-mostly-from-first-party-games/index.html)
$355m. At 12%. Y'know how much that is at 30%? 887.5m. They wouldn't have even broke a Billion. They're not even making 1/10th of Steam's profits on Third parties. And remember, by Epic's own admission, they are operating at a deficit, but because of a stubborn attempt to play 'gotcha' with Steam (which is all their decisions. Literally. Look how many times they've permitted/banned games that Steam otherwise banned/permitted, respectively), they are constantly losing money.
>Gonna be honest, this reads like a gish gallop. Half of these points aren't even consistent with one another (you accuse Epic of being penny-pinchers in the same sentence where you mention free games cutting into profits, not to mention the lower dev fees and general criticism of EGS being unprofitable).
Because Business is not a 'one solution solves all' deal. Some things you DO have to spend money on. It's the things they SHOULD that they don't. IE: The Client's functions, which have been repeatedly claimed as underwhelming.
There's nuance in business that you clearly don't grasp.
The other half is just asserting that Epic's tactics are bad - like them offering the 12% cut, as if its cheating to offer a better deal than Steam to devs? Like, at one point you say they're pursing exclusives to make up for (among other things) having a 12% cut instead of the "industry-standard" (read- what Steam picked) 30%. You'd rather "penny-pincher" Epic take a *bigger* cut, like Steam, who obviously can't be penny-pinching for doing that? This isn't a cohesive argument, it's just looking at everything Epic does individually and saying "that's bad".
The 'Industry Standard' is indeed the 'Industry Standard'. 30% is the price Nintendo charges for the Nintendo Store. It's what PSN charges on their store. It's what Microsoft Charges on the Microsoft Store. It's what companies charge for physical merchandise in their stores. It legitimately is the Industry Standard. And we can confirm this because, surprise: the Epic vs Apple Case addresses this directly and confirms all of this.
Also, again, ignoring the nuances of the business. Penny Pinching is NOT SPENDING MONEY WHERE NEEDED FOR A COMPETENT PRODUCT, not 'Not Charging High enough'. You're reinforcing your lack of awareness of business practices.
Steam somehow seems to get the benefit of the doubt. Their 30% cut is "industry standard" next to Epic's penny-pinching 12%. Devs that go for exclusive Steam releases are just being tempted by Steam's better architecture - which is *totally* different to Epic offering a better cut for devs, yknow, that's the wrong kind of better deal to make. That's putting a gun to their heads, unlike when Steam threatens to remove games from their store if the devs want to sell them elsewhere for less. And I guess the games that don't need Steam's features are just paying extra for the fun of it, and not because Steam's market share would make it suicidal to opt-out without some sort of deal (which they'd be bad for taking).
Steam doesn't get any benefits of the doubt. They're the PC Standard. If they put out an incompetent product, people would have shipped to EGS instantly. But the Steam Client is extremely well designed.
IN particular btw, you clearly did no studying here:
That's putting a gun to their heads, unlike when Steam threatens to remove games from their store if the devs want to sell them elsewhere for less.
Steam has no such threat. What they do have is a promise to punish developers who repeat the Shenmue 3/Metro Exodus/Etc incidents, where a company makes a clear designation they
will 'ship' a game to Steam, and then don't and ship elsewhere. Basically put, as is EXPECTED of businesses, once one advertises their product is going to be sold somewhere, it
needs to be sold there.
And best of all, the EGS should have just started existing when Steam did so that they could have history, and features built up over years from being the only major PC storefront. Quite an oversight.
On top of what Xzi said, you ignore that a company that is along for longer has a higher 'guarantee' of stability. They have been in the business for a nearly two decades, ergo there's a level of prestige and expectation for them to actually have a competent product. And because they've been around longer, that also means they have a far higher install base, which makes them a shoe-in for business. And like Xzi said - Sweeney was too busy jerking himself off to bother getting into the game early, which lead to issues competing with Steam. They're in a VERY uphill battle that is nigh impossible to win.
Also, you ignore that the hypermajority of the features you laud here as something 'built up', were available on Steam in 2005. AKA within 2 years, at most. (Edit: A year, depending, if you want to debate when it was 1st party vs opening 3rd party). Communities was in 2007, reviews by '13. All features Steam more or less pioneered, were ignored by Epic despite being released 5 years after the LAST of those.
Epic Game's store has been up since 2018. 5 years, and it's lacking in features (including API functions) that Steam had since the first year. So yes, it's a hell of an oversight that they can't accomplish in 5 years what Steam had either on launch or in the first year.
To satisfy all your arguments at the same time, the only option available for Epic would be to stop existing and not try to compete with Steam. Because they can't be new, and they lack a time machine. They can't pay for exclusives, and without that, they can't offer lower prices due to Steam's own practices. A 12% rate is penny-pinching, as is anything lower...they could try the "industry standard" 30% rate maybe, but that probably wouldn't be acceptable either unless Steam does it, and then they've also lost their only remaining point of attraction for devs. But that's a good thing, because offering a better deal for devs is cheating. Unless Steam does it. Then it's fine, even if they charge extra for it. All of which leaves EGS with...well, no way to compete with Steam, which I'm sure would suit Steam just fine.
To compete, they need to first make the store SELF SUSTAINABLE profit wise. That, or take MORE risks and invest money into giving the EGS functions it lacks, and with better quality and UI than what Steam offers. They need to make something that is truly 2023, not 2000 (protip: Steam came out in 2003 and included Third Parties in 2005).
They need to be high quality enough that exclusives COME TO THEM, not that they pay for exclusives - something GoG and Steam don't need to do. They also need, and this is the big one: to get a ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE influx of users - EGS only has ~50m vs Steam's 130m - if they don't get WAY more users, they will NEVER, under ANY circumstances, be able to make up the 12% vs 30% difference SOLELY because of the sheer gulf of users.
All of this is common business sense, something you would be able to figure out through High School Classes.
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