Epic Games Officially Rolls Out Their Own Game Store Alternative To Steam

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Epic Games Officially Rolls Out Their Own Game Store Alternative To Steam

After weeks of rumors, Epic Games today officially announced the Epic Games Store as their own electronic game store alternative to Steam...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Epic-Games-Store

[schmidtbag]

Ugh not another one... Can't they learn from EA and Ubisoft that nobody is asking for this? Epic Games isn't anywhere near as corrupt or out-of-touch as them, but I still suspect this store isn't going to be much of a success. The only reason why this might really work is if Fortnite gets exclusive benefits.

[Azpegath]

Ugh not another one... Can't they learn from EA and Ubisoft that nobody is asking for this? Epic Games isn't anywhere near as corrupt or out-of-touch as them, but I still suspect this store isn't going to be much of a success. The only reason why this might really work is if Fortnite gets exclusive benefits.

I believe that the fact that you only pay half the price, compared to Valve, will be very interesting for most game creators.

[skeevy420]

I believe that the fact that you only pay half the price, compared to Valve, will be very interesting for most game creators.

Just think, all Valve needed to do was implement a progressive royalty system. 10% up to $100,000, 15% between 100,000 and 1,000,000, 20% for anything above that.

There you go, Valve. A random stoner on Phoronix just solved the problem of losing developers to other platforms.

[Kemosabe]

I believe that the fact that you only pay half the price, compared to Valve, will be very interesting for most game creators.

Yes, that all that counts. I hope Valve is able to react since they are the one who are interesting in promoting Linux as a platform.

[TemplarGR]

This has a lot of potential. Fortnite is the most played game in the world right now, and the low royalties are really a nice incentive. If they follow an aggressive sales policy, they might get a nice marketshare.

Sadly, Valve enjoyed a monopoly with fat profit margins for years without really thinking about the future. They stopped making quality games, they stopped really improving their engines, and they kept fleecing their clients. As a result, alternatives became viable...

I suppose this explains why Valve cut down on their royalties recently...

I am sorry Valve, i really want you to succeed, for the benefit of Linux, but your greed was too much...

[discordian]

Ugh not another one... Can't they learn from EA and Ubisoft that nobody is asking for this? Epic Games isn't anywhere near as corrupt or out-of-touch as them, but I still suspect this store isn't going to be much of a success. The only reason why this might really work is if Fortnite gets exclusive benefits.

No one is asking for Steam either, but multiple stores is better than one dominant corrupt one. Getting Valve to open up about their revenue and slices, instead of bullying devs in private would be a good thing.

[TemplarGR]

Just think, all Valve needed to do was implement a progressive royalty system. 10% up to $100,000, 15% between 100,000 and 1,000,000, 20% for anything above that.

There you go, Valve. A random stoner on Phoronix just solved the problem of losing developers to other platforms.

It is not a tax, those who sell more have no obligation to pay more. If anything, Valve should put the cost at 10% for everyone. 10% is a lot of money, when you are doing NOTHING other than managing a website with a desktop client.

The reason Valve used to get 30% was because 10 years ago retail stores cost a lot to distribute games, but now that digital distribution is more widespread and there are alternatives there really is no justification. If anything, i believe even a 5% cut should be very lucrative by 2018 standards. Webservers and bandwidth are cheap these days...

[Azpegath]

No one is asking for Steam either, but multiple stores is better than one dominant corrupt one. Getting Valve to open up about their revenue and slices, instead of bullying devs in private would be a good thing.

I agree, we really need a competetive market for this as well. But with that said, of course I don't like the idea of having 3 different native store software installed (along with Gnome Software, the package system, etc)... But that's a price I'm ready to pay if it means that the competition gets us cheaper games, better software, better support and more money to the game developers (and not the distributors).

[L_A_G]

Considering how they went trough a pretty great effort to get their sales and payment infrastructure set up for Fortnite it was probably to be expected that they'd try to use that infrastructure for something like this. When you think about it, the lower share of revenue makes sense when it's either that, or then them having to shoulder all of the cost of maintaining and developing the infrastructure they built for Fortnite all on their own.

Me? I really don't see this as any different than Activision's Battle.net, Ubisoft's UPlay and EA's Origin, i.e another software vendor's own store where they can implement their own DRM and avoid having to share any of the revenue with the developers on a store that's actually worth using from the perspective of the user. Steam has the selection, GoG has the lack of DRM and if a store isn't up to snuff in either of those aspects, it's just a waste of time.

There you go, Valve. A random stoner on Phoronix just solved the problem of losing developers to other platforms.

Only problem with your idea is that all the big publishers are going to have absolutely none of it. They're just not going to accept being treated as second class citizens and will only become even more eager to move onto their own platforms, leaving behind little but the indies who pay much lower royalties.

If you're ever going to try to run a business, you probably better lay off the weed at least when you're planning how to run the business.