Epic vs Steam

nix

Cordell wrote: »

Origin doesn't make games, EA does.

You're aware they're one and the same, right?

:rolleyes:

EoinHef

Cordell wrote: »

The only bullying I see is towards Epic.
There is no competition between Origin, Steam and Uplay. There are partnerships.
Origin doesn't make games, EA does. If Origin exclusive are well within EA corporation rights, then so are Epic and their exclusive deals.

The competition is Epic, with their lower cut they are moving things in the right direction. Only the publishers are to blame if the price stays the same. If there is something hurting the competition and the consumers and the devs then that is the hate Epic receives and the review bombing happening on Steam.

With all dues respect you dont want to address anyones points and just keep spouting yours so i dont see much debate happening here.

Also some of your points dont make sense. EA is Origin,Ubisoft is UPlay. And their exclusives are games they have developed or funded in some way,Epics exclusives are not like this,they pay other companies to take their games away from other store fronts.

Until you understand this basic point you are mis representing what others are saying. Also Epic are in competition only with themselves when they buy up exclusivity. Also a basic point i think you should have grasped by now,maybe its your anger on the issue thats clouding your comprehension.

Cordell

nix wrote: »

You're aware they're one and the same, right?

:rolleyes:

They aren't, but Origin is a service provided by EA and product in itself developed by EA. I am quite aware of that.

EoinHef

gizmo wrote: »

For instance, the feature comparison list in the OP is still out of date and also has that ridiculous "Chi-Com Spying" entry.

I see a lot of criticism about that list calling out bias,and id agree there are a few there that are bias,but how many out of how many? If we say
remove 6 entries for bias how many does that leave that are valid? Quite a few from what i see.

So theres two ways to look at that list really.

Cordell

EoinHef wrote: »

With all dues respect you dont want to address anyones points and just keep spouting yours so i dont see much debate happening here.

I did address some of the points. Read carefully, with all due respect.

EoinHef wrote: »

Also some of your points dont make sense. EA is Origin,Ubisoft is UPlay. And their exclusives are games they have developed or funded in some way,Epics exclusives are not like this,they pay other companies to take their games away from other store fronts.

It makes very little to no difference to the end user if the store and the product maker have the same owner or not. Epic pay other companies they don't own, EA pays other companies that they own. Very little difference, in fact companies payed by Epic have a choice, the one payed by EA have none.

EoinHef wrote: »

Until you understand this basic point you are mis representing what others are saying. Also Epic are in competition only with themselves when they buy up exclusivity. Also a basic point i think you should have grasped by now,maybe its your anger on the issue thats clouding your comprehension.

They create a more competitive market, just on the other side of the till, as it always been. The consumer does not choose the distribution platform, there was never a real choice before Epic, and there is no real choice now. The only good thing is their reasonable cut. For us the consumers it does not matter, for us the competition means better games, from our point of view the competition is between devs and publishers, not stores.

nix

Cordell wrote: »

They aren't, but Origin is a service provided by EA and product in itself developed by EA. I am quite aware of that.

EA own Origin, they have complete control, its EA.. :rolleyes:

TitianGerm

EoinHef wrote: »

I see a lot of criticism about that list calling out bias,and id agree there are a few there that are bias,but how many out of how many? If we say
remove 6 entries for bias how many does that leave that are valid? Quite a few from what i see.

So theres two ways to look at that list really.

Knock off all the useless ones/irrelevant ones as well and your left with very little at all.

EoinHef

Cordell wrote: »

I did address some of the points. Read carefully, with all due respect.


It makes very little to no difference to the end user if the store and the product maker have the same owner or not. Epic pay other companies they don't own, EA pays other companies that they own. Very little difference, in fact companies payed by Epic have a choice, the one payed by EA have none.



They create a more competitive market, just on the other side of the till, as it always been. The consumer does not choose the distribution platform, there was never a real choice before Epic, and there is no real choice now. The only good thing is their reasonable cut. For us the consumers it does not matter, for us the competition means better games, from our point of view the competition is between devs and publishers, not stores.

Except it does make a difference for some people that Epic exclusives are bought not made. It should worry consumers that they are at the will of Epic when it comes to some games. A forced monopoly isnt good for consumers.

EA owns said companies,it helps those companies fund those games. Without EA some of those games may not have been made. With Epic those games would have been made its just a business deal to make them exclusive to their store. For that reason people dont mind 1st party exclusives but reject 3rd party exclusives as they dont like the practice. So far the practice has brought zero positives for the consumer,just negatives. If you can poimt out a positove for the consumer im all ears.

Also saying Epic store will lead to higher quality games is a stretch,it will just lead to more profits for companies. Great for them,no real positive for the consumer. If that doesnt bother you fair enough,but it does bother others.

EoinHef

TitianGerm wrote: »

Knock off all the useless ones/irrelevant ones as well and your left with very little at all.

Ive used at one time or another a lot of the features on that list so no there wouldnt only be very little at all left for me.

OptimusTractor

It's all fun and games until Football Manager becomes an epic store exclusive.

EoinHef

OptimusTractor wrote: »

It's all fun and games until Football Manager becomes an epic store exclusive.

That one they can have:pac:

Shiminay

My main question is this:

I wait for <insert exclusive here> to become available on Steam in the X months after it's exclusivity deal with Epic ends and buy it on Steam, but I want to play the game with my friend who bought it on Epic's Game Store at launch. How will that work?

I can tell you right now, a few months ago I tried playing a game I own (Battletech) on GoG with my friend who owns it on Steam and it won't work and a visit to the forums confirms it doesn't work for a LOT of people. Neither "launcher" company is taking ownership of this issue and going out of their way to fix it and the developer doesn't seem to be too interested. It's the last time I'll buy something I intend to play with friends on GoG, that's for sure.

The benefits of an environment like Steam or Origin for 3rd party games is that there's a layer of this sort of infrastructure in place to tap into, but it then means that if they spend the time developing for that (which is expected), isn't that time wasted if no one ends up using it?

With all of the various launchers out there, I simply use Discord for managing a friends list and community elements, but even that has its own launcher now (and exclusives btw, didn't hear any fuss about that) for a number of months and so when will it end?

Cordell

EoinHef wrote: »

So far the practice has brought zero positives for the consumer,just negatives. If you can poimt out a positove for the consumer im all ears.

I'll do it, so please do the same. We, the consumers, care about price, quality and choice, all together.
- smaller cut means a potentially smaller price, so far only happened with Metro on the US market, but it did happen.
- quality, I see no reason to will it be affected (stretching it, the publishers may choose to invest some of the extra money, but I doubt it).
- choice: in terms of distribution platform, there was none, there is none. In terms of games, how can another store restrict it?

Bottom line, there are some small positive aspects.
Now, your turn with the negatives. Please do tell exactly how we can have higher prices, lower quality or fewer choices with another store.

gizmo

EoinHef wrote: »

I see a lot of criticism about that list calling out bias,and id agree there are a few there that are bias,but how many out of how many? If we say
remove 6 entries for bias how many does that leave that are valid? Quite a few from what i see.

So theres two ways to look at that list really.

Well there's a difference between bias and inaccuracies. I prefer to focus on the latter because they're easy to discuss in an objective manner; could anyone really argue against the point that the Epic Game Store has considerably less features than the Steam store? Even Sweeney himself has referred to its "spartan feature set" as a "fine target for ire". So, if you update the list to reflect the currently available features and remove the nonsense ones, then I'd say nearly every other entry in the list is valid.

The question, however, is how import are those features for each person and this is where the bias comes in. In my case, there's a number of things on that list which I don't think every store front needs and there's a bunch of other things that are currently absent from the EGS that, although I think they are needed and should be implemented at some point in the near future, wouldn't stop me from using it now. As these will obviously differ from person to person, the point at which both stores will be "comparable" will be completely different which I why I see relatively little value in that particular argument in general.

Cordell wrote: »

I'll do it, so please do the same. We, the consumers, care about price, quality and choice, all together.
- smaller cut means a potentially smaller price, so far only happened with Metro on the US market, but it did happen.

I'd bolden, italicise and underline potentially in that sentence but it seems Saber are passing on some of the savings for WWZ too.

EoinHef

Cordell wrote: »

I'll do it, so please do the same. We, the consumers, care about price, quality and choice, all together.
- smaller cut means a potentially smaller price, so far only happened with Metro on the US market, but it did happen.
- quality, I see no reason to will it be affected (stretching it, the publishers may choose to invest some of the extra money, but I doubt it).
- choice: in terms of distribution platform, there was none, there is none. In terms of games, how can another store restrict it?

Bottom line, there are some small positive aspects.
Now, your turn with the negatives. Please do tell exactly how we can have higher prices, lower quality or fewer choices with another store.

One game and in a region that doesnt apply to us is not a positive for us.

I dont see the quality of games getting better because of Epic,nor worse. They only thing that would be worse is the restriction of choice.

Another store can restrict choice when it limits the choice to one via buying up exclusivity. This is a fact no matter what way you want to frame it.

I dont really see any positives in your list. If epic just sold the games devs wanted to have on their store without any exclusivity there wouldnt be this issue.

The negatives are restriction of choice that doesnt benefit the consumer. And being forced to buy from a company whos launcher doesnt even have basic features that every other launcher has in 2019. All in the name of lining said companies pockets.

TitianGerm

EoinHef wrote: »

One game and in a region that doesnt apply to us is not a positive for us.

I dont see the quality of games getting better because of Epic,nor worse. They only thing that would be worse is the restriction of choice.

Another store can restrict choice when it limits the choice to one via buying up exclusivity. This is a fact no matter what way you want to frame it.

I dont really see any positives in your list. If epic just sold the games devs wanted to have on their store without any exclusivity there wouldnt be this issue.

The negatives are restriction of choice that doesnt benefit the consumer. And being forced to buy from a company whos launcher doesnt even have basic features that every other launcher has in 2019. All in the name of lining said companies pockets.

The developer sets the price not the store.

ED E

Dravokivich wrote: »

And how much does it cost a publisher to patch via Steam?

Why wouldn't you expect them to pay for it? I work in IT and software roll out changes would cost far more, for a lower user base, than a games console. $40,000 is relatively cheap.

I dont think you're comparing apples to apples here. XBL acts as the CDN here, the actual patch is what costs money to create and is work already done by the developer. MS just provide bandwidth.

40K is what a company pays to get tweaks to a CRM, not hosting a glorified FTP.


As far as I can tell Steam doesn't charge for them.

Raging_Ninja

TitianGerm wrote: »

The developer sets the price not the store.

The store adds it's cut as well - Valve adds almost 50% on top of what the publisher asks for.

TitianGerm

Raging_Ninja wrote: »

The store adds it's cut as well - Valve adds almost 50% on top of what the publisher asks for.

I don't think that's right. Developer sets the price at €60 and then Valve/Steam take 30% of that as their cut. Epic would take 12% of the €60.

deceit

I have both installers installed since they were released (HL2 for Steam and Unreal Engine for Epic - Monthly sub days). It doesn't bother me having multiple launchers. I have 7 installed not including launchers for invidiual games.

When it came to Epic offering more to the Developer I was very interested in it and I would have choosen my games here over steam for games I liked as I would want to support the Dev's. Once they started messing around with exclusivity agreements I had no interest in them. This shows an anti consumer thinge to the company that I don't want to support.

Borderlands 3 was my most anticipated game which I would have bought on Epic as it would have gave the Dev a bigger cut but I will be skipping it with this deal in place. A better option would have been to add the cost onto the consumer on steam if they really wanted to purchase it there. Then the consumer would have still had the same choice and the dev would still get the same cut.

I can't see myself purchasing anything else from epic again with this (I can be stubborn that way).
The one thing since after learning the early lessons at the beginning of steam is they have usually been very good to consumers which is why they garnered such good will and have fans defending them.

gizmo

ED E wrote: »

I dont think you're comparing apples to apples here. XBL acts as the CDN here, the actual patch is what costs money to create and is work already done by the developer. MS just provide bandwidth.

40K is what a company pays to get tweaks to a CRM, not hosting a glorified FTP.


As far as I can tell Steam doesn't charge for them.

The fee charged by the platform holders was mainly to cover the costs involved in the certification process for said title updates.

Steam don't charge for them because they do no such testing.

TitianGerm

For those who say they'll boycott/not buy from Epic because of the exclusivity deals, have you availed of the free games they offer?

dreamers75

TitianGerm wrote: »

For those who say they'll boycott/not buy from Epic because of the exclusivity deals, have you availed of the free games they offer?

No, have most of them from the Humble Bundles.

Again only main gripe with EGS is the inability to play games online with my buddies. Big enough gripe to stop me buying games on it again.

TitianGerm

dreamers75 wrote: »

No, have most of them from the Humble Bundles.

Again only main gripe with EGS is the inability to play games online with my buddies. Big enough gripe to stop me buying games on it again.

Is that down to individual games though? Thought that the developer had to allow cross play?

dreamers75

TitianGerm wrote: »

Is that down to individual games though? Thought that the developer had to allow cross play?

Posted this elsewhere but a quick skim tru of the EGS store front and the games they buy are all SP games mostly made with Unreal.

I bought Ashen as I was looking forward to it since it was announced, it simply doesnt work in EGS. The only MP game that really works is Fortnite.

Ashen is a travesty as an MP game and I would bet a testicle it worked in Steamworks before being yanked last minute to EGS.

Varik

dreamers75 wrote: »

Posted this elsewhere but a quick skim tru of the EGS store front and the games they buy are all SP games mostly made with Unreal.

I bought Ashen as I was looking forward to it since it was announced, it simply doesnt work in EGS. The only MP game that really works is Fortnite.

Ashen is a travesty as an MP game and I would bet a testicle it worked in Steamworks before being yanked last minute to EGS.

Epic don't charge for unreal upfront they take a 5% after a (lowish) sales tier, that 5% is covered by the 12% for games sold on EGS.

So another 5% off the likes of Borderlands 3 compared to other stores or console.

Raging_Ninja

TitianGerm wrote: »

I don't think that's right. Developer sets the price at €60 and then Valve/Steam take 30% of that as their cut. Epic would take 12% of the €60.

If the game price is €60 euro, the publisher/developer gets €42 and Valve gets €18.

Think of it this way, if Valve took a lower cut, the publisher would be able to compete more on price before it affected their ability to both cover costs and make more profit.

Dravokivich

ED E wrote: »

I dont think you're comparing apples to apples here. XBL acts as the CDN here, the actual patch is what costs money to create and is work already done by the developer. MS just provide bandwidth.

40K is what a company pays to get tweaks to a CRM, not hosting a glorified FTP.


As far as I can tell Steam doesn't charge for them.

I'm talking additional software distribution to locally installed clients. Which is what patching is. And is needed anytime someone installs the initial software. That cost after the configuration of the patch is also attributing to additional storage and network bandwidth. As anyone who does a fresh install of the application (which is all a game is) needs to be updated afterwards.

CRMs are primarily web based applications now. So I don't get why you reference it as an example.

Retr0gamer

Raging_Ninja wrote: »

If the game price is €60 euro, the publisher/developer gets €42 and Valve gets €18.

Think of it this way, if Valve took a lower cut, the publisher would be able to compete more on price before it affected their ability to both cover costs and make more profit.

But they won't. And don't in the case of on the epic store.

Star Lord

TitianGerm wrote: »

Do those people do the same when Sky buy the rights to TV shows?

Do you want ants pirates? Because that's how you get ants pirates!

Buying up exclusivity will undoubtedly lead to a lead in piracy of games, that competition would greatly reduce.