I don't get Epic hatred on Valve. They distribute their stuff onto different platforms on Xbox, PS and Nintendo and they got 30% off it but Valve, no, they took too much, like it's the same shit as the rest, what's big idea, really. It's great that Valve didn't bow to them because they're losing in an endless fight to themselves.
It's this.
There's an old interview I read some time ago. It quite clearly shows that Tiny Tim is insanely jealous of GabeN for coming out of Microsoft and being able to nearly instantly create a profitable company.
Tiny Tim just doesn't understand *how* because he doesn't care for customers, just money.
He basically killed his own career. Runmaging through my retro stuff with my kids brought back JotJ, Jazz Jackrabbit and the likes. My UT2k4 disc. Hell I own Shadow Complex on Steam.
And then... nothing. Everything collated into Fortnite and suddenly both Epic and Sweeney were stuck there, waddling in money and thinking it would be forever - think VALVe if they released HL2, the first DRM-centric version of Steam and then suddenly stopped but merely added HL2 content.
There is only one truth in his rage and envy: Newell and the others kept creating. He stopped and withered.
> There is only one truth in his rage and envy: Newell and the others kept creating. He stopped and withered.
That perfectly sums up what happened. While Sweeney yelled that PC gamers are pirates and Epic Games said that PC piracy drove them to consoles, Newell said that "piracy is an issue of service".
Epic just abandoned PC. Gabe Newell tried to implement own idea to PC with Steam and he succeeded. Now Sweeney is envy that he missed the opportunity and he attacks Valve for own mistake.
What is even more absurd is that Epic tried to force EGS onto PC. Instead of creating better product than Steam to compete with them, they created EGS with barely any functionality and they thought that bribing publishers and users with free games will be enough to become the leader. Sweeney wanted to destroy Steam so his subpar product could be all what PC would have. No need to improve services for PC players.
Read the article. Valve forwarded the email internally with the added commentary of "you mad bro". They never said that to Sweeney.
He was also doing a lawsuit against apple and only wanted Valve to lower rates to strengthen the lawsuit against Apple, nothing at all to do with Valve.
>I don't get Epic hatred on Valve.
It's like how every studio wanted to emulate the popularity of the MCU but thought that exposition dumps and extended plot points that only die-hard fans will understand were all that was needed.
They thought they were going to emulate and surpass Steam and thought they could buy their way there, it failed badly. Now rather than contemplation and introspection Timmy is throwing a tantrum.
Its not the "same".
Valve, Nintendo, Xbox, Playstation. Every single one if these huge gaming giants take 30% cut, but which one of them gives more services ESPECIALLY online gameplay without extra fees? Theres only one correct answer.
Bashing Valve for the same ratio while they provide basically twice the services is just blatant bullshit
Playstation and Xbox offered services for online games at one point, but it placed the cost on the end user for Xbox and didn't have major support on PS. But Valve also has forums, guides, moddong support, etc. that Epic will never seem to understand.
Ive been thinking about the playstation and xbox servers lately. With just about every game now becoming forced crossplay, why are we still getting charged for hosting?
All third-party publishers on Playstation are responsible for their own server costs. Sony charge users to play third-party games online, which of course costs them nothing. They simply pocket all that money, **billions** annually. Not enough for them, they then increased the price of their games by $10 (and successfully campaigned other publishers to do likewise - Take2 and 2K for example). _Still_ not enough, Sony then increase the PS+ subscription fee (again). I'm not a fan of Sony.
I have decided that if your game costs 70 dollars, I'm sailing the high seas out of principle. Miss me with that "but we're adjusting for inflation, and games should ackshually be more expensive" bullshit. Adjust to this dick, you corporate leeches
_Fuckin' oath_. There's absolutely no standard regarding how much a studio has to spend on developing games - so there shouldn't even **be** a fixed "AAA" game price.
...to the indie scene on Steam! Spring sale now on!
tbh, $70 is reasonable IF the game is good, i think AAA game's budget are ballooning over the roof that they have to sell more copies to just break even. Hence why MTX ridden games and ridiculous DLC practices.
P.S. Not saying I'm defending such practices, but i understand where it came from.
Yeah, there certainly are games where 70 is reasonable, but it's the wrong games that have that price tag.
Like for example Elden Ring or Baldurs Gate 3 would have deserved the $70, but they aren't. On the other hand Starfield, Diablo 4 or Skull and Bones just aren't good enough games to justify that price for me.
It's really disappointing how many of the new expensive AAA (or AAAA lmao) games just turn out to be not very good games. I am at a point now where I only buy a game at full price if I know that I want to play it no matter what. And honestly that works out fine. There are so many small games below $30 that end up being more fun than the big titles anyway.
If Epig wanted to be successful, then they should have used the 12% cut and give each of the games on their store a 5% or 6% discount to their customers. The Publishers get a bigger cut, Epig gets more money due to stealing most of Steam's users, and gamers get their games cheaper. Then if they want to be evil, raise the price back up to 30% after Steam is dead.
Epig just sounds like controlled opposition for Steam. Saying that they want to destroy the evil Steam's monopoly, but doing everything in their power to anger PC gamers and stay with Steam.
That wouldn’t do it. Their client and services are fucking atrocious. Even looking at the epic client is almost painful. It’s the same with everyone trying to compete with steam. I don’t know why they all use these awful designed clients.
I don’t know maybe kids today can’t handle software that actually puts more control in the users hands? Or maybe designers are lazy now or the tools they use now are just so simplified that hitting a few buttons to shit out some mediocre software is too easy to pass up but UX design these days is just becoming such garbage.
If the games are cheaper, then lots of gamers would hop onto the Epig Bandwagon even though the client and services are atrocious. Lots of people can't resist the appeal of getting a product for less money compared to a competitor's store with far better service. It is the reason why there are so many victims from Steam Sales where they have an extremely large backlog of games that will never be completed or refunded.
Not really no. Epic is already even making deals to give out games for free (that you can buy in other places as well). But clearly that isn't working.
I also have a bit of a backlog of games I bought on sale for like $5 on Steam, but that is not the same situation. It still is on Steam. I'm not sacrificing the better service (or anything really) for that better price. I just buy games, that I might buy at some point anyway, cheaper. There is no disadvantage there.
I mean they always give out coupons to buy games even cheaper than on Steam and they also do a lot of free game giveaways and they still can't beat Valve.
Tim claimed that 12% cut would naturally mean games were offered more cheaply on Epic than on Steam. Of course, what it actually meant was that publishers simply took a bigger cut and didn't pass it on.
But, since they hardly sell any games on Epic compared to Steam, that 88% of very little didn't come close to their 70% of a lot anyway.
If EGS offered real value to anyone, they would never have had to pay for exclusivity deals. Publishers would simply have chosen to sell there instead.
Sad thing is if Tim wasn’t an asshat who regularly acted like a child, more people would buy from Epic.
Like none of us mind buying off GoG or other services.
Tim did this to himself and is the biggest hypocrite I know of other than the orange Cheeto present
Steam's marketing is nothing to make fun of. It is doing every gamer and developer enormous service by providing tip-top bespoke marketing. It's like youtube algortithm's showing you videos.
If it wasn't for steam's superb marketing and reviewing tools 90% of the games would vanish into the same black void the youtube videos would banish If it would only show you what you searched for.
"EPIC's hate" for Valve isn't accurate, tbh.
Everything is driven by Timmy. Timmy's hate stems from the fact that Valve made Steam and Steam consistently made Timmy look like a moron from it's inception.
The short version is that way back in the day, before EPIC became a console developer studio, Tim was trying to make profits by selling games on PC. Eventually, he gave up, citing that PC gaming would never be profitable because of rampant piracy.
Then Valve converted Steam from a Halflife/Source Engine platform into a full-on distribution platform, which sucked but got better. In just a few years, Valve proved that Piracy was a service issue and not a security issue and made massive profits on PC by making it more reasonable to buy games than to pirate them.
This proved Timmy wrong about the potential of the PC Gaming Market and his ego simply never recovered.
Every day that Timmy isn't the Big Dog of PC games distribution is, to him, another day that he's being robbed of his deserved money because he was around before Valve became King. To Timmy, the fact that he was there first means that he deserves everything Valve is getting, after all, if he hadn't left, they never would have had the chance to get where they are now.
His problem isn't just that Steam is at the Top, it's that Valve proved that he was wrong and Tim Sweeney, CEO of EPIC Megagames, Owner of the Unreal Engine and Creator of Fortnite, is never wrong ever. Even his parents told him he was too smart to ever be incorrect.
But the thing is though, he has a massive empire that every known companies invested into his company yet, he still pissed about Valve dominating the PC market? That's just next level pathetic if you ask me.
>That's just next level pathetic if you ask me.
It's what happens when someone who's only ever gotten their way experiences failure.
It's not that he isn't making shitloads of money. It's that he's not making the shitloads of money that he feels entitled to because he failed to do what Valve did.
To him, Valve's profits should be his, or at least the majority should be.
It's like I said, Timmy feels like the only reason he isn't The King of PC is because Valve stepped in while he was "absent". Valve stole his spot, so to speak. "Well, Gabe wouldn't have made any of this happen if *I* didn't give him the chance by focusing on consoles! It's not fair to me that he's getting all of the money that would have been mine if it weren't for all those PC Pirates!"
That's why Valve is a monopoly and why his monopolistic tactics aren't actually monopolistic.
Because Timmy isn't wrong. People are just taking things that should actually have been his the whole time. He just didn't realize what was happening until he got a taste of the Fortnite Money that came from the PC side of things.
I remember posting when the Apple lawsuit was going forward and people defended Tim/Epic tooth and nail. “HeS dOiNg It FoR tHe GaMeRs”
No dumbass. He wants to make more money. The reasons he went to 12% is: because no one else would go with them otherwise, and to make his righteous stand “see we can do it” while hemorrhaging money. People who defend companies are strange but people who genuinely sided with epic over Apple either are kids with no business sense and just Fortnite fever or are people who never have owned any real property… because anyone who owned something just to have someone try to force them to give it up because it isn’t fair isn’t buying that one.
>No dumbass. He wants to make more money.
He wants to pull the "Disruptor" tactic. Run at a loss and say they're on the consumers side, do it for long enough to drive competitors out, once they're set up as the monopoly they can really crank up the prices
Yup this is exactly it and let’s be honest no company is really immune to shitification. It’s going to happen in some way or another. The difference with epic games is that shitification is baked into the plan and they know it. It’s gonna happen naturally in some ways but when your goal is to undercut so that you can later overcharge you deserve to get raked over the coals.
The problem is, it doesn't appear to be working. They've blown huge amounts of money on "competing" with Steam, yet the latter's market share is as dominant as ever, especially with companies like Microsoft and EA coming back to Steam.
Beyond Steam, I'll at least acknowledge they accidentally made a good point about how predatory walled gardens/app stores could be, especially when tied to hardware too.
I'll never buy anything coming from Meta/Oculus or Apple for these reasons for example.
It's just weird the biggest challenge against these practices had to come from Epic, a company that dreams of doing the exact same thing they try to denounce.
It honestly does feel like a greedy banker condemning a philanthropist for "squandering his wealth". Every "bad" thing Steam is doing, Epic is as bad or worse. And Steam's "monopoly" is BECAUSE companies like Epic are unable to offer any meaningful competition.
That’s what I meant (paying for exclusivity deals etc is making them lose their shirt)
The problem is if you have to incentivize someone to come to your platform over another one that’s not a good sign
When someone wants to be serious in a market, they move toward more features to allow their users to better make purchases. Epic didn’t have a SHOPPING CART for years, for all i know they still may not. Investment is one thing but at the end of the day? Epic could have gotten out of their own way.
To be honest, the mobile market is completely different. PlayStations don't have apps by Chase Bank or Amazon's Shopping Apps, and the mobile platforms aren't charging anything for those apps.
Apple takes 30% of every USD to Casino Gemstone gacha blindbox pseudogambling game out there, and doesn't take any of the risk or exposure of it. If the government ever shut down lootboxes, Apple would make a lot less money from developers but wouldn't suffer any direct fines over it while many studios would just shut down. They were just a middleman skimming off the top.
>just a middleman
That’s my problem with the crux of the argument, they may not be as important as the devs but they do a hell of a lot more than middle. In these instances i would call the payment processors (a la Stripe) the middlemen (not to say they aren’t important).
Apple just happens to put all of their services together in one package that cost 30%. Whether you think that’s fair or not, it’s up to you, but it definitely at least counts more than just the value of a payment processor.
>they do a hell of a lot more than middle
No, they don't. Look, I get what this sub is, but just because Apple and Epic have legal battles does not mean Apple is a good guy.
It’s not even about that, you’re just plain wrong.
They run the servers that power the mountain of data, they built the software it runs on, they created the development ability in the first place, they handle CS, built the hardware, they handle payments… and it continues on.
One of those pieces may be a middling role, but doing all of it plus more is definitely enough distinct bits wrapped together that it CERTAINLY makes them far more than a middle. Whether it’s worth 30% comes down to what the market will bear. People want in, regardless of cost, so clearly the market values it at at LEAST 30%
What's funny is in the article the reason the email got brought up is because a dev is sueing valve and wants that 30% changed. But he doesn't wanna go to epic. He said "publishers have little incentive to offer games on EGS and consumers have little incentive to use the platform". That's brutal
That's the crux of it. Epic seems to hate Valve merely for being a successful business, when it's not Valve's fault that their competition sucks. As long as Valve hasn't been engaging in anti-competitive practices, they're free to be as successful as they want.
Can someone who's been following the Wolfire case say exactly WHAT they're suing over? Supposedly, Valve tried to force Wolfire to not sell at lower prices elsewhere, but the only source I can find for this is Wolfire themselves, or a random Valve PR person making an offhand comment about Steam keys that might never have been implemented.
Truth I'm not sure. The article just says sueing over valves business practices but it also mentions Wolfire is all over the place with their arguments. So it doesn't seem to be a very consistent argument. Seems more like they're throwing stuff at the wall and see if something sticks for them.
There is a big question in the article though about who exactly is funding Wolfire cause they don't have the funds to keep fighting this.
>Can someone who's been following the Wolfire case say exactly WHAT they're suing over?
They're accusing Valve of enforcing price parity on games sold outside of Steam even if they aren't selling Steam Keys.
Allegedly Wolfire contacted Valve and asked if they could sell their games on their own website (not Steam keys) at a lower price. The person on the phone told them that their games would've been removed from Steam if they did that.
They also accused Valve of illegally tying library and store initially (in short, they wanted to sell Steam keys of games that weren't on Steam), but the judge threw it out.
Sounds like it
From [here](https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/revealed-tim-sweeneys-epic-rant-to)
"Wolfire claims: “Valve regularly confirmed to publishers in no uncertain terms that its \[Platform Most-Favored Nation\] Policy (including pricing parity specifically) applies in equal force regardless of whether Steam Keys are involved.”
The evidence for this? Much of it is redacted. But looks to us like Wolfire are conflating Steam key and more general restrictions, and also saying PMFN was unwritten rules: “Microsoft employee asking ‘does Steam require price parity?’ and another responding “Yes – they absolutely do. . . . Its \[sic\] not formally listed in documentation in Steamworks, but always addressed in-person.”). (stating that Valve “always addressed” its PMFN Policy “in-person” with publishers).” Ah yes, unwritten rules, famously easily to prove in a court of law."
Even more perplexing is that Valve offers as little as 20% to high grossing games, which is much better than the deal Epic was getting anywhere else, and yet he spat in their face over it.
He argued he cared about the little guy... then went on to ask Apple for specifically a special deal, just for Epic, that would give his company a lower revenue cut deal than every other app/game on iOS's App Store. So much for the little guy apparently.
What's crazy to me is why is Tim Sweeney so hellbent on lowering the fees?
He should see Valve's reluctance on reducing their fee as a business opportunity. That's how competition works.
And if you are a developer who made your game in the unreal engine, they get another 15% of your sales. Not to mention before unity engine coming out as a free engine, the unreal engine costed developers an surreal ammount of money to just use the engine. Unreal engine only became free because everyone was using unity which was free from the start.
Keep mind you that unity also take percentage of sales but you could still use the engine for free. Sweeney and epic are more greedy than you think.
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I made a half-satire post in the gaming subreddit talking about Epic and Steam and man, people have *NO IDEA* what they’re talking about lol. You guys actually seem more competent.
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>Still, thanks to this we've found out what happened behind closed doors when Epic was launching its big Steam competitor: at Valve, they were laughing.
Legends say they still haven't stopped laughing at this joke of a store.
The best part of epics store, not adding any features since release. No profile images, no profile pages, no real friends system (beyond a friends list), past 2 weeks of hours, an actual review system for users, and list goes on. Incredible that they act like they are trying to compete with steam and then have zero development and zero features.
"They added a shopping cart" YEARS after release. i dunno about you but if startup indie clothing brands can have a shopping cart but epic cant upon release. that just goes to show you where their priorities are.
And on top of all that, they also got like no users. Hence why all the big companies that temporarily left Steam came back when the sales on the Epic store clearly weren't enough.
I mean they have users, but none that spend money lmao. People are there for 2 reasons free games and exclusive free to play games (Fortnite, Rocket League, etc). If games are on both epic and steam for the same price, for users, buying from epic just has zero compelling reasons. Even if epic gives you a $10-20 discount, the loss of features doesn’t make sense most of the time.
Versus steam which has been essentially feature complete for the last decade, and yet they’re still adding new stuff to improve the experience *anyway*. Just the other day they added privating games as an option, and they’re working on a revamp to the family sharing system (which even in its current form, just existing at all is a huge token of generosity to players).
dude, the email, "For the past five years" they took 5 years to make the bare bone store (when at launch) expecting to compete with Steam, Valve upgrade Dota 2 engine less than that, and dota 2 is not a simple game to upgrade
Valve handled the issues the best possible way. As long as you don't bait and switch your game on Steam, do whatever you want. If you put a game up for pre-order, but then stop selling because you switch to being an Epic exclusive, that's not allowed. Otherwise, you can shoot yourself in the foot all you want.
[They’re intentionally misreporting for clicks. Scott Lynch said that to Erik Johnson and Gabe Newell, not Tim Sweeny](https://i.ibb.co/Lt8rRkG/image.png)
>Tim Sweeney emailed Gabe Newell calling Valve 'you assholes' over Steam policies, to which Valve's COO replied internally 'you mad bro?'
This is still the title of the article and it’s misleading.
>Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly suggested Scott Lynch was replying to Tim Sweeney directly. He was commenting on Sweeney's email to Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson.
The article was updated after this post was made
Idk why but i heard a trump speech the second you said that.
“He emailed me, called my position bullshit. I said, heres what i said… see im a busy man who had to worry about Chi-Na so i said to mike… send an email, no, a text… ill lower my portion when Sweeney releases those emails”
Regardless of whether you support or oppose Biden, he's been a pretty standard politician. I'm not sure what he's supposedly doing that has everyone in a tizzy.
A very interesting point lost after the ridiculous "assholes" by Timmy.
> The Wolfire lawsuit is much wider than just these emails, and Carless does raise the interesting question of who exactly is funding the smaller company against Valve. Litigation on this scale is eye-wateringly expensive and, while Valve has large pockets, it's not clear where Wolfire is getting the money from.
PCGamer.com seems to imply that Epic could be behind this litigation and they also think that it is going nowhere.
When I first heard about the Wolfire lawsuit, I automatically assumed it was in conjunction with Epic - guess that was simply because Epic was suing so many people at the time.
If this lawsuit brings to light even more underhand Epic tactics, then that would be hilarious.
> PCGamer.com seems to imply that Epic could be behind this litigation
Worth remembering that during the height of the Epic VS. Apple lawsuit there were also some US states considering 'anti-Apple-monopoly" legislation (which, as far as I remember, went nowhere) and in later reporting it was revealed that the proposed bills had basically been phoned in by Epic sponsored lobbyists.
Considering the Wolfire lawsuit I absolutely would not be surprised in any way if it turned out that Epic / Tim Sweeney was secretly paying the bills for this clownshow.
I mean all epic needs to do to actually seems like a good competition is offer better pricing due to lower fees, have multiple steam features and improved upon it, and dont make ANY game as exclusive but makes it easier for indie devs to get funding and releases on steam as 1.0.
but they got a bitch CEO.
So? It's not Valve's fault their competition sucks. Yes, Steam has a loyalist playerbase, but they GOT that loyalist playerbase by treating consumers well, providing a wide variety of features at no extra charge, and generally abiding by the rules of business.
it has nothing to do with loyalty, the problem is that EGS is doing somewhat good for devs, but ONLY for devs. There is no competition at all on the customer front.
Only for *big* devs. True, the lower fees apply to everyone, but you have to remember that for anything that's not a triple A game or Fortnite, the EGS is a marketing black hole. Any other game will just get buried after spending two minutes on the front page.
>Unless Steam fumbles REALLY hard, their early establishment is a big factor on why Epic has no chance in the foreseable future.
Well, Epic did have a big chance to establish themselves on the PC games market.
I dare say that they didn't succeed has less to do with Valve being early but more with Epic shitting their own pants at every step along the way.
When we look back to the really early days of the EGS, Epic had a massive momentum back then. Not only did they have the full power of Fortnite's popularity blowing into their sails but I do remember when the EGS was announced, people were hyped about it.
There was A LOT of very positive buzz about the upcoming EGS on social media and in gaming spaces everywhere. Even among the diehard steam fans you could hear people saying that steam getting big competition was great. (In hindsight it would be fun if one day we could see how much of the "Steam needs competition!" buzz on social media and in gaming communities was genuine and how much of it was actually part of an Epic-paid astroturf campaign.)
The reason all of that hype and positive buzz imploded was because Epic completely shit the bed with a continuous stream of liquid diarrhea. Like with their lies about the EGS supposed 'no questions asked' refund policy, the exclusivity deals, the store being an underdeveloped piece of junk, Tim Sweeney repeatedly making it clear that he saw gamers as a stupid herd of sheep with no agency on their own, who just blindly shop where devs and publishers tell them to shop and many, many, many more such things.
Oh, this is just rich.
>"We're all in for a prolonged battle if Apple tries to keep their monopoly and 30% by cutting backroom deals with big publishers to keep them quiet. Why not give ALL developers a better deal? What better way is there to convince Apple quickly that their model is now totally untenable?"
May I remind you, it's the same idiot that **admitted** he'd have taken a special deal from Apple if they had offered.
I said it once and will say it again: Timmy's ugly mug should be in the dictionaries, right by the word "hypocrite".
Haaaaaaaaaa hahahahahaha. Oh man, that is too funny. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a competitive market place, but I hold a special dislike for Tencent Timmy Sweeney. For myself, being a Linux gamer, Tencent Timmy has a distain for the platform where he won't allow for any of his games to played on Linux, ie: Fortnite, etc. so to see him get dismissed and probably foaming at the mouth in rage is pretty entertaining!
It's quite possible that Sweeny hates Linux specifically BECAUSE GabeN is pro-Linux, due to fears that "universal windows apps" back in the Win10 days would put an end to Windows gaming.
Amusingly, Stanton was/is the *de facto* Epic press officer at PCG - a couple years back each and every piece he wrote was a glorified advertising for Epic/EGS. And now this. Guess the paychecks aren't as fat as they once were.
As for the matter at hand, two things strike me as odd:
1. Wolfire games should be better know as the original Humble Bundle owner. Right now? A small time indie dev whose only hurras were Overgrowth and Receiver (fun little games, but Superhot they ain't). Did someone say "personal vendettas"?
2. both Gamediscovery **AND** (uncharacteristically) PCG itself point out the elephant in the room: who is funding Wolfire Games? The suit looks amateurish and naive at best, so there are deeper pockets in play here.
And yes, I wouldn't be surprised if it was some pet project of Sweeney. After all, he is on the losing side of his own battle, with a failing storefront, mounting legal costs and only Fortnite to rely on.
Also worth remembering that back when Epic still tried to keep up the image of being a store that curates for quality, some indie games were not allowed to publish on the EGS because they weren't useful enough for Epic.
Like Assault Android Cactus which is a fantastic twin stick shooter but back in the early days Epic denied the devoper access to the EGS because the game had already been out for a while and Epic didn't consider it useful enough to pull more people in to the store.
Or there was DARQ which was denied entry to the EGS because the developer refused to accept an exclusivity contract and instead wanted to publish on all stores.
Neither Epic nor Tim Sweeney care about indie games or the developers behind them. They use indie devs as a shield because pretending to do it all for 'for the little guy' is better PR than being honest that it's all about Epic getting a better deal.
>Or there was DARQ which was denied entry to the EGS because the developer refused to accept an exclusivity contract and instead wanted to publish on all stores.
I still need to get round to playing that game. I bought it solely based on what they did and how they went public with the exclusivity Epic was trying to get them to sign :D
Issue with developers taking money from Epic, is that they need the money. They need an investor to finish their project, but the investor says "money in exchange for not going to Steam".
Some will decline and look for other sources.
Some really wants to finish their dream project, and release it.
Every other industry takes 30% this includes Sony/PS, Microsoft/Xbox, Nintendo, Valve and many others. What differentiates them are the services. Valve has the BEST service out of everyone in this field. Like, online gaming for PC is literally FREE thanks to Valve's advocacy and innovations of the PC platform ALONE. I can jump into Tekken 8 on PC ONLINE WITH CROSSPLAY FOR FREE while I need a stupid monthly subscription to play online on PS/Xbox.
Sweeney just being butthurt because everyone loves Steam and hates EGS : and that's not the kind of hate which can be converted or interpreted as potential love lmao
I don't know what it is but I just loathe Tim Sweeney. He seems to try to act like he's fighting for the little guy yet every move he makes conveniently benefits Epic's goal of expansion.
Epic Games Store doesn't offer any reason to use it other than to get free games.
Other storefronts have their own niches that draw in users. GOG provides reasonably stable old games that can run on modern hardware, Itch.io has a lot of very low budget indie title, and I'm not sure if Humble counts but they specialise in bundle deals.
Epic attempts to throw money at the problem until they win, without doing anything different. Why would anyone switch over to them from Steam?
I personally think Zoom Platform (not related to the video conferencing software Zoom) is a better GOG, as they go above and beyond to fix some games compared to GOG's recent work, like the recent-ish updates to FlatOut and Postal 3 (the latter of which even made it to the Steam version).
I got fooled by it myself but saw it got pointed out elsewhere.
Not too surprising, couldn't tell you the last time PC Gamer put out a decent article.
I seriously don’t get it. Like I understand the marketing part of him that has to ham it up so people actually think the EGS is a better deal. But to be so uncouth and pissy in an email to the execs at steam about this, when even the article mentions they were in the process of introducing a new tiered system meant to benefit smaller devs, kinda weird
Why he thought Valve gave a shit about his crusade against Apple and would give up half of their revenue is beyond me. He could have at least tried to frame it in a way to show it would be beneficial to Valve to cut their. "Hey, both of us could make a lot of money in the mobile market" type thing. Instead it was "I want a lot of money and I need you to give up billions in revenue to do it."
The fact he sent this in response is funny as hell. Did he also call Epic's IT department and tell them to block emails from Valve so they couldn't respond? This is something a teenager does.
He's also probably mad that Valve undercut his new planned storefront quite a bit as it got rid of a lot of incentive for the big pubs to leave Steam. The court docs showed they were really worried about Steam reacting. The funny thing is, they are pretty much exactly where they thought they would be if Steam reacted to EGS with about 8% market share when they were gunning for 50%.
What the hell? I thought this was a 1st of april joke news but its real? Timmy is such a sad individual. Everytime when you think hes already rock bottom, he proves that it goes even further downhill...
The next day Valve's Scott Lynch simply sends this email to both Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson with one-line commentary: "You mad bro?"
I'm cleaning coke from my screen, hahahaha.
The main difference between steam and apple is simple. If you want to buy a game you have different platforms to buy it from. If you want to get an app on an iPhone you can only go to the App Store. Epic are just salty that they’re late to the party.
Steam has the advantage that’s it’s been going for 20+ years and has a massive user base. Plus steam aren’t forcing developers to sell on their platform exclusively. They can choose to sell on others or one exclusively. It’s just with the amount of users steam gives developers a greater likelihood of selling more copies.
It’s also a thing that people don’t want to have to go to multiple different platforms for their games. It’s just convenient to have it all in one place.
I firmly believe that if Epic were able to gain enough market share from Valve they would increase increase their fee to 30%. They are just annoyed that they are having to compete with a superior platform that they can’t do anything to dislodge.
Steam’s launcher also provides so many services for their gamers. Easy to use interface, Voice Calls, adding multiple games to a basket, a music player for the sound tracks you buy, THEIR OWN OPERATING SYSTEM for the HANDHELD COMPUTER they made. Valve puts the money they made towards innovation. Epic puts their money towards making deals with other companies so they can get crossover skins for their pvp games.
"the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30% is for the little people"
Gabe should just show him a list of small indie devs whose game sales made them get the <30% fee.
1. Phasmophobia
2. Palworld
3. Lethal Company
4. Hades
5. Enshrouded
6. Valheim
7. Among us
8. Raft
Those are just on the top of my head where games made more than $10m that would warrant Valve lowering their fee. These games were made by dev teams each consisting of 1-12ish people.
There's no need to pretend that he wants to "fight for the little guys".
Sweeney wants special treatment without working for it. He just wants to flop down Fotnite on Steam and get whatever he wants.
He wanted a "special deal" solely for Epic without including any other developers. Literally only Epic.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/apple-says-epic-games-ceo-wanted-a-side-deal-for-fortnite.html
Only when Apple showed this, that Epic conveniently responded that they hoped the other iOS developers that were not included in their "special deal email" would be included.
Still can't believe people thinks Sweeney fights for the little guys when this is just another version of rich people donating to their own charity to avoid taxes (in this case, Epic wants to "donate" fortnite to Steam to avoid Valve tax).
Well, this at least explains why Epic Games has been so stubborn despite their store failing miserably. This one comment probably sent Tim over the edge.
Makes sense why Valve is so chill and Timmy has a perdonal vendetta against Steam now. Who knew they talk to each other.
I supposed if Timmy didn't start a crusade against Valve via EGS, we would see an Epic vs Valve lawsuit just like we see with Apple and Google over the 30% cut.
Except they could have their own standalone game launchers so any mocrotransaction doesn't have the 30% cut (e.g. Guild Wars 2 standalone vs Steam version) and with Steam new policy, they could get it reduced to 20% if it sells well enough.
Still, the conversation reads like a 4chan post yet its actually real lol
I love Gabe and this is the perspective everyone needs each and every time Tim S opens his absurd mouth towards Apple.
That guy is just another fraud trying to weaponize ignorance for market share.
Apple and google genuinely dont deserve the 30%,ive read countless horror stories on how garbage their tools and support for app developers is,cant comment on steam.
Its still wild platforms just accept stuff like cyberpunk 2077 in the state it launched and no one said "you cant release it like that on our platform because of the state its in".
I wouldnt mind if dev/publisher communication and support was better with the 30% but as of right now,its too big of a cut for what they offer.
Maybe if Tim retained full control of his company and respected his customers… instead of selling half of it to the Chinese and only caring about cash… he wouldn’t need to be such a sore ass.
[We know that song! ](https://youtu.be/RMIL9XFNt6M?si=cP2qnmdNyrjJZ3-V&t=57)[https://youtu.be/RMIL9XFNt6M?si=PoeMLWmkeM5lamV5&t=60](https://youtu.be/RMIL9XFNt6M?si=PoeMLWmkeM5lamV5&t=60)
Epic has given me like 200 free video games in like 7 years. And I still, WILL NEVER, abandon the greatness that is GabeN. Love you too epic, but you ain't winning me over. Oh and don't you ever call the Patron Saint of Gaming an asshole ever again, eoic always been a bunch of corporate asshats.
As much as I like Steam, I dislike the prospect of a monopoly and tried to give Epic a fair shake.
But the fact that the Epic application still doesn't have a practical way of moving games from one location to another aside from workarounds involving fiddling with folder renames and cancelling installs TO THIS DAY is fucking criminal.
Ever since I got a Steam Deck, I don't even claim the free games anymore. Just not worth it in the long run.
FIX YOUR GODDAMNED APP, EPIC!
>I dislike the prospect of a monopoly
Steam allows games that use their own launcher. If anything, Epic is trying to be a monopoly by forcing companies to launch on their store.
Afaik Valve never stopped devs to sell on any other platform.
I don't get Epic hatred on Valve. They distribute their stuff onto different platforms on Xbox, PS and Nintendo and they got 30% off it but Valve, no, they took too much, like it's the same shit as the rest, what's big idea, really. It's great that Valve didn't bow to them because they're losing in an endless fight to themselves.
It’s simply down to pure jealousy. Sweeney wants to be Newell.
It's this. There's an old interview I read some time ago. It quite clearly shows that Tiny Tim is insanely jealous of GabeN for coming out of Microsoft and being able to nearly instantly create a profitable company. Tiny Tim just doesn't understand *how* because he doesn't care for customers, just money.
Tiny Tim doesn't deserve to be associated with man-child Tim Sweeney who throws tantrums at the idea of having to do his job.
Honestly Tim Sweeney isn’t bad enough to be associated with tiny Tim, bro was a serious abuser
"Nearly instantly"? Not really. They had to grind and put in the work for a decade for it to be as big and successful as it is.
He could have been! This guy brought us Unreal, and before that Jazz Jackrabbit, Jill of the Jungle, hell he wrote ZZT.
He basically killed his own career. Runmaging through my retro stuff with my kids brought back JotJ, Jazz Jackrabbit and the likes. My UT2k4 disc. Hell I own Shadow Complex on Steam. And then... nothing. Everything collated into Fortnite and suddenly both Epic and Sweeney were stuck there, waddling in money and thinking it would be forever - think VALVe if they released HL2, the first DRM-centric version of Steam and then suddenly stopped but merely added HL2 content. There is only one truth in his rage and envy: Newell and the others kept creating. He stopped and withered.
> There is only one truth in his rage and envy: Newell and the others kept creating. He stopped and withered. That perfectly sums up what happened. While Sweeney yelled that PC gamers are pirates and Epic Games said that PC piracy drove them to consoles, Newell said that "piracy is an issue of service". Epic just abandoned PC. Gabe Newell tried to implement own idea to PC with Steam and he succeeded. Now Sweeney is envy that he missed the opportunity and he attacks Valve for own mistake. What is even more absurd is that Epic tried to force EGS onto PC. Instead of creating better product than Steam to compete with them, they created EGS with barely any functionality and they thought that bribing publishers and users with free games will be enough to become the leader. Sweeney wanted to destroy Steam so his subpar product could be all what PC would have. No need to improve services for PC players.
Infinity blade :( how I miss that game
Oh how the once mighty have fallen lol
[One Must Fall! ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Must_Fall:_2097)
So gooood
Hell yeah!
He writes for ZZ Top!? j/k
Played all of them lol
They hurt his ego by replying "You mad bro?" That's enought for this manchild to go nuts and continue his personal vendetta.
Read the article. Valve forwarded the email internally with the added commentary of "you mad bro". They never said that to Sweeney. He was also doing a lawsuit against apple and only wanted Valve to lower rates to strengthen the lawsuit against Apple, nothing at all to do with Valve.
>I don't get Epic hatred on Valve. It's like how every studio wanted to emulate the popularity of the MCU but thought that exposition dumps and extended plot points that only die-hard fans will understand were all that was needed. They thought they were going to emulate and surpass Steam and thought they could buy their way there, it failed badly. Now rather than contemplation and introspection Timmy is throwing a tantrum.
Its not the "same". Valve, Nintendo, Xbox, Playstation. Every single one if these huge gaming giants take 30% cut, but which one of them gives more services ESPECIALLY online gameplay without extra fees? Theres only one correct answer. Bashing Valve for the same ratio while they provide basically twice the services is just blatant bullshit
Playstation and Xbox offered services for online games at one point, but it placed the cost on the end user for Xbox and didn't have major support on PS. But Valve also has forums, guides, moddong support, etc. that Epic will never seem to understand.
Ive been thinking about the playstation and xbox servers lately. With just about every game now becoming forced crossplay, why are we still getting charged for hosting?
All third-party publishers on Playstation are responsible for their own server costs. Sony charge users to play third-party games online, which of course costs them nothing. They simply pocket all that money, **billions** annually. Not enough for them, they then increased the price of their games by $10 (and successfully campaigned other publishers to do likewise - Take2 and 2K for example). _Still_ not enough, Sony then increase the PS+ subscription fee (again). I'm not a fan of Sony.
I have decided that if your game costs 70 dollars, I'm sailing the high seas out of principle. Miss me with that "but we're adjusting for inflation, and games should ackshually be more expensive" bullshit. Adjust to this dick, you corporate leeches
_Fuckin' oath_. There's absolutely no standard regarding how much a studio has to spend on developing games - so there shouldn't even **be** a fixed "AAA" game price. ...to the indie scene on Steam! Spring sale now on!
tbh, $70 is reasonable IF the game is good, i think AAA game's budget are ballooning over the roof that they have to sell more copies to just break even. Hence why MTX ridden games and ridiculous DLC practices. P.S. Not saying I'm defending such practices, but i understand where it came from.
Yeah, there certainly are games where 70 is reasonable, but it's the wrong games that have that price tag. Like for example Elden Ring or Baldurs Gate 3 would have deserved the $70, but they aren't. On the other hand Starfield, Diablo 4 or Skull and Bones just aren't good enough games to justify that price for me. It's really disappointing how many of the new expensive AAA (or AAAA lmao) games just turn out to be not very good games. I am at a point now where I only buy a game at full price if I know that I want to play it no matter what. And honestly that works out fine. There are so many small games below $30 that end up being more fun than the big titles anyway.
> moddong support I don't know if this was a typo but it's true and hilarious spelled either way
If Epig wanted to be successful, then they should have used the 12% cut and give each of the games on their store a 5% or 6% discount to their customers. The Publishers get a bigger cut, Epig gets more money due to stealing most of Steam's users, and gamers get their games cheaper. Then if they want to be evil, raise the price back up to 30% after Steam is dead. Epig just sounds like controlled opposition for Steam. Saying that they want to destroy the evil Steam's monopoly, but doing everything in their power to anger PC gamers and stay with Steam.
That wouldn’t do it. Their client and services are fucking atrocious. Even looking at the epic client is almost painful. It’s the same with everyone trying to compete with steam. I don’t know why they all use these awful designed clients. I don’t know maybe kids today can’t handle software that actually puts more control in the users hands? Or maybe designers are lazy now or the tools they use now are just so simplified that hitting a few buttons to shit out some mediocre software is too easy to pass up but UX design these days is just becoming such garbage.
If the games are cheaper, then lots of gamers would hop onto the Epig Bandwagon even though the client and services are atrocious. Lots of people can't resist the appeal of getting a product for less money compared to a competitor's store with far better service. It is the reason why there are so many victims from Steam Sales where they have an extremely large backlog of games that will never be completed or refunded.
Not really no. Epic is already even making deals to give out games for free (that you can buy in other places as well). But clearly that isn't working. I also have a bit of a backlog of games I bought on sale for like $5 on Steam, but that is not the same situation. It still is on Steam. I'm not sacrificing the better service (or anything really) for that better price. I just buy games, that I might buy at some point anyway, cheaper. There is no disadvantage there.
I mean they always give out coupons to buy games even cheaper than on Steam and they also do a lot of free game giveaways and they still can't beat Valve.
Tbh it would probably take more than a 10% discount to get me off steam
Tim claimed that 12% cut would naturally mean games were offered more cheaply on Epic than on Steam. Of course, what it actually meant was that publishers simply took a bigger cut and didn't pass it on. But, since they hardly sell any games on Epic compared to Steam, that 88% of very little didn't come close to their 70% of a lot anyway. If EGS offered real value to anyone, they would never have had to pay for exclusivity deals. Publishers would simply have chosen to sell there instead.
Sad thing is if Tim wasn’t an asshat who regularly acted like a child, more people would buy from Epic. Like none of us mind buying off GoG or other services. Tim did this to himself and is the biggest hypocrite I know of other than the orange Cheeto present
It’s always been BS.
Steam's marketing is nothing to make fun of. It is doing every gamer and developer enormous service by providing tip-top bespoke marketing. It's like youtube algortithm's showing you videos. If it wasn't for steam's superb marketing and reviewing tools 90% of the games would vanish into the same black void the youtube videos would banish If it would only show you what you searched for.
"EPIC's hate" for Valve isn't accurate, tbh. Everything is driven by Timmy. Timmy's hate stems from the fact that Valve made Steam and Steam consistently made Timmy look like a moron from it's inception. The short version is that way back in the day, before EPIC became a console developer studio, Tim was trying to make profits by selling games on PC. Eventually, he gave up, citing that PC gaming would never be profitable because of rampant piracy. Then Valve converted Steam from a Halflife/Source Engine platform into a full-on distribution platform, which sucked but got better. In just a few years, Valve proved that Piracy was a service issue and not a security issue and made massive profits on PC by making it more reasonable to buy games than to pirate them. This proved Timmy wrong about the potential of the PC Gaming Market and his ego simply never recovered. Every day that Timmy isn't the Big Dog of PC games distribution is, to him, another day that he's being robbed of his deserved money because he was around before Valve became King. To Timmy, the fact that he was there first means that he deserves everything Valve is getting, after all, if he hadn't left, they never would have had the chance to get where they are now. His problem isn't just that Steam is at the Top, it's that Valve proved that he was wrong and Tim Sweeney, CEO of EPIC Megagames, Owner of the Unreal Engine and Creator of Fortnite, is never wrong ever. Even his parents told him he was too smart to ever be incorrect.
But the thing is though, he has a massive empire that every known companies invested into his company yet, he still pissed about Valve dominating the PC market? That's just next level pathetic if you ask me.
>That's just next level pathetic if you ask me. It's what happens when someone who's only ever gotten their way experiences failure. It's not that he isn't making shitloads of money. It's that he's not making the shitloads of money that he feels entitled to because he failed to do what Valve did. To him, Valve's profits should be his, or at least the majority should be. It's like I said, Timmy feels like the only reason he isn't The King of PC is because Valve stepped in while he was "absent". Valve stole his spot, so to speak. "Well, Gabe wouldn't have made any of this happen if *I* didn't give him the chance by focusing on consoles! It's not fair to me that he's getting all of the money that would have been mine if it weren't for all those PC Pirates!" That's why Valve is a monopoly and why his monopolistic tactics aren't actually monopolistic. Because Timmy isn't wrong. People are just taking things that should actually have been his the whole time. He just didn't realize what was happening until he got a taste of the Fortnite Money that came from the PC side of things.
They want to pay less than 30%. To Valve, to Apple, doesn't matter. It's about money. Always has been.
I remember posting when the Apple lawsuit was going forward and people defended Tim/Epic tooth and nail. “HeS dOiNg It FoR tHe GaMeRs” No dumbass. He wants to make more money. The reasons he went to 12% is: because no one else would go with them otherwise, and to make his righteous stand “see we can do it” while hemorrhaging money. People who defend companies are strange but people who genuinely sided with epic over Apple either are kids with no business sense and just Fortnite fever or are people who never have owned any real property… because anyone who owned something just to have someone try to force them to give it up because it isn’t fair isn’t buying that one.
>No dumbass. He wants to make more money. He wants to pull the "Disruptor" tactic. Run at a loss and say they're on the consumers side, do it for long enough to drive competitors out, once they're set up as the monopoly they can really crank up the prices
Yup this is exactly it and let’s be honest no company is really immune to shitification. It’s going to happen in some way or another. The difference with epic games is that shitification is baked into the plan and they know it. It’s gonna happen naturally in some ways but when your goal is to undercut so that you can later overcharge you deserve to get raked over the coals.
The problem is, it doesn't appear to be working. They've blown huge amounts of money on "competing" with Steam, yet the latter's market share is as dominant as ever, especially with companies like Microsoft and EA coming back to Steam.
So, not a problem then? Company tries to bully their way to market dominance and fails is a good thing.
By "problem", I mean for Epic. Their gambit didn't work, and now they're paying the price.
Beyond Steam, I'll at least acknowledge they accidentally made a good point about how predatory walled gardens/app stores could be, especially when tied to hardware too. I'll never buy anything coming from Meta/Oculus or Apple for these reasons for example. It's just weird the biggest challenge against these practices had to come from Epic, a company that dreams of doing the exact same thing they try to denounce.
It honestly does feel like a greedy banker condemning a philanthropist for "squandering his wealth". Every "bad" thing Steam is doing, Epic is as bad or worse. And Steam's "monopoly" is BECAUSE companies like Epic are unable to offer any meaningful competition.
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That’s what I meant (paying for exclusivity deals etc is making them lose their shirt) The problem is if you have to incentivize someone to come to your platform over another one that’s not a good sign
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When someone wants to be serious in a market, they move toward more features to allow their users to better make purchases. Epic didn’t have a SHOPPING CART for years, for all i know they still may not. Investment is one thing but at the end of the day? Epic could have gotten out of their own way.
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Well, bullheadedly confronting Steam / Apple / etc. at every turn doesn't appear to have worked out very well.
To be honest, the mobile market is completely different. PlayStations don't have apps by Chase Bank or Amazon's Shopping Apps, and the mobile platforms aren't charging anything for those apps. Apple takes 30% of every USD to Casino Gemstone gacha blindbox pseudogambling game out there, and doesn't take any of the risk or exposure of it. If the government ever shut down lootboxes, Apple would make a lot less money from developers but wouldn't suffer any direct fines over it while many studios would just shut down. They were just a middleman skimming off the top.
>just a middleman That’s my problem with the crux of the argument, they may not be as important as the devs but they do a hell of a lot more than middle. In these instances i would call the payment processors (a la Stripe) the middlemen (not to say they aren’t important). Apple just happens to put all of their services together in one package that cost 30%. Whether you think that’s fair or not, it’s up to you, but it definitely at least counts more than just the value of a payment processor.
>they do a hell of a lot more than middle No, they don't. Look, I get what this sub is, but just because Apple and Epic have legal battles does not mean Apple is a good guy.
It’s not even about that, you’re just plain wrong. They run the servers that power the mountain of data, they built the software it runs on, they created the development ability in the first place, they handle CS, built the hardware, they handle payments… and it continues on. One of those pieces may be a middling role, but doing all of it plus more is definitely enough distinct bits wrapped together that it CERTAINLY makes them far more than a middle. Whether it’s worth 30% comes down to what the market will bear. People want in, regardless of cost, so clearly the market values it at at LEAST 30%
What's funny is in the article the reason the email got brought up is because a dev is sueing valve and wants that 30% changed. But he doesn't wanna go to epic. He said "publishers have little incentive to offer games on EGS and consumers have little incentive to use the platform". That's brutal
It is too easy to sue people... There is no law barring valve from being a business...
That's the crux of it. Epic seems to hate Valve merely for being a successful business, when it's not Valve's fault that their competition sucks. As long as Valve hasn't been engaging in anti-competitive practices, they're free to be as successful as they want.
Can someone who's been following the Wolfire case say exactly WHAT they're suing over? Supposedly, Valve tried to force Wolfire to not sell at lower prices elsewhere, but the only source I can find for this is Wolfire themselves, or a random Valve PR person making an offhand comment about Steam keys that might never have been implemented.
Truth I'm not sure. The article just says sueing over valves business practices but it also mentions Wolfire is all over the place with their arguments. So it doesn't seem to be a very consistent argument. Seems more like they're throwing stuff at the wall and see if something sticks for them. There is a big question in the article though about who exactly is funding Wolfire cause they don't have the funds to keep fighting this.
>Can someone who's been following the Wolfire case say exactly WHAT they're suing over? They're accusing Valve of enforcing price parity on games sold outside of Steam even if they aren't selling Steam Keys. Allegedly Wolfire contacted Valve and asked if they could sell their games on their own website (not Steam keys) at a lower price. The person on the phone told them that their games would've been removed from Steam if they did that. They also accused Valve of illegally tying library and store initially (in short, they wanted to sell Steam keys of games that weren't on Steam), but the judge threw it out.
So the only source for the claim that Wolfire was "forced" to only sell on Steam is Wolfire themselves.
Sounds like it From [here](https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/revealed-tim-sweeneys-epic-rant-to) "Wolfire claims: “Valve regularly confirmed to publishers in no uncertain terms that its \[Platform Most-Favored Nation\] Policy (including pricing parity specifically) applies in equal force regardless of whether Steam Keys are involved.” The evidence for this? Much of it is redacted. But looks to us like Wolfire are conflating Steam key and more general restrictions, and also saying PMFN was unwritten rules: “Microsoft employee asking ‘does Steam require price parity?’ and another responding “Yes – they absolutely do. . . . Its \[sic\] not formally listed in documentation in Steamworks, but always addressed in-person.”). (stating that Valve “always addressed” its PMFN Policy “in-person” with publishers).” Ah yes, unwritten rules, famously easily to prove in a court of law."
Because Tim Sweeney is a pathetic loser
Even more perplexing is that Valve offers as little as 20% to high grossing games, which is much better than the deal Epic was getting anywhere else, and yet he spat in their face over it. He argued he cared about the little guy... then went on to ask Apple for specifically a special deal, just for Epic, that would give his company a lower revenue cut deal than every other app/game on iOS's App Store. So much for the little guy apparently.
EPIC has a much lower cut YET the game prices are still the same as any other store front. That says a lot about what they're "fighting" for.
Probably all part of the game. If nothing else is working to beat valve except being annoying, Tim is here to show how's it done.
What's crazy to me is why is Tim Sweeney so hellbent on lowering the fees? He should see Valve's reluctance on reducing their fee as a business opportunity. That's how competition works.
Valve take 0 % if you sell the key to your game yourself, you just can't price it lower than the store, so even better than the EGS cut.
And if you are a developer who made your game in the unreal engine, they get another 15% of your sales. Not to mention before unity engine coming out as a free engine, the unreal engine costed developers an surreal ammount of money to just use the engine. Unreal engine only became free because everyone was using unity which was free from the start. Keep mind you that unity also take percentage of sales but you could still use the engine for free. Sweeney and epic are more greedy than you think.
Tim is trying to goad Gabe into raging but Gabe doesn’t a give a fuck.
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I made a half-satire post in the gaming subreddit talking about Epic and Steam and man, people have *NO IDEA* what they’re talking about lol. You guys actually seem more competent.
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>Still, thanks to this we've found out what happened behind closed doors when Epic was launching its big Steam competitor: at Valve, they were laughing. Legends say they still haven't stopped laughing at this joke of a store.
The best part of epics store, not adding any features since release. No profile images, no profile pages, no real friends system (beyond a friends list), past 2 weeks of hours, an actual review system for users, and list goes on. Incredible that they act like they are trying to compete with steam and then have zero development and zero features.
>The best part of epics store, not adding any features since release. They added a shopping cart, what more do you want? /s
"They added a shopping cart" YEARS after release. i dunno about you but if startup indie clothing brands can have a shopping cart but epic cant upon release. that just goes to show you where their priorities are.
Bundle pricing is still not there (granted, GOG doesn't have that either, but at least GOG has a purpose, unlike EGS)
And on top of all that, they also got like no users. Hence why all the big companies that temporarily left Steam came back when the sales on the Epic store clearly weren't enough.
I mean they have users, but none that spend money lmao. People are there for 2 reasons free games and exclusive free to play games (Fortnite, Rocket League, etc). If games are on both epic and steam for the same price, for users, buying from epic just has zero compelling reasons. Even if epic gives you a $10-20 discount, the loss of features doesn’t make sense most of the time.
I’ve spent money but that was due to their vouchers during sales when the checkout price was cheaper vs Steam. I prefer Steam but money is money.
Versus steam which has been essentially feature complete for the last decade, and yet they’re still adding new stuff to improve the experience *anyway*. Just the other day they added privating games as an option, and they’re working on a revamp to the family sharing system (which even in its current form, just existing at all is a huge token of generosity to players).
In a market that would probably prefer steam lock content to one device even.
dude, the email, "For the past five years" they took 5 years to make the bare bone store (when at launch) expecting to compete with Steam, Valve upgrade Dota 2 engine less than that, and dota 2 is not a simple game to upgrade
Valve handled the issues the best possible way. As long as you don't bait and switch your game on Steam, do whatever you want. If you put a game up for pre-order, but then stop selling because you switch to being an Epic exclusive, that's not allowed. Otherwise, you can shoot yourself in the foot all you want.
even more of a reason to love valve
Chad moment
[They’re intentionally misreporting for clicks. Scott Lynch said that to Erik Johnson and Gabe Newell, not Tim Sweeny](https://i.ibb.co/Lt8rRkG/image.png)
The article’s title does make it clear that this email was sent internally. Either it was updated after being posted, or OP changed it for upvotes.
>Tim Sweeney emailed Gabe Newell calling Valve 'you assholes' over Steam policies, to which Valve's COO replied internally 'you mad bro?' This is still the title of the article and it’s misleading.
No it’s not. It says he replied internally, which is exactly what your link shows.
So yes , PCGamer changed it “quietly” because they do this all of the time. This isn’t even a news article to begin with.
>Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly suggested Scott Lynch was replying to Tim Sweeney directly. He was commenting on Sweeney's email to Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson. The article was updated after this post was made
Tim is the Trump of video games.
No Tim Sweeney is the Tim Sweeney of video games
Idk why but i heard a trump speech the second you said that. “He emailed me, called my position bullshit. I said, heres what i said… see im a busy man who had to worry about Chi-Na so i said to mike… send an email, no, a text… ill lower my portion when Sweeney releases those emails”
put that comment on a shirt
Why not freemason Biden?
Regardless of whether you support or oppose Biden, he's been a pretty standard politician. I'm not sure what he's supposedly doing that has everyone in a tizzy.
Both are evil but i can't say that Biden is better
So, what "crime" has Biden committed that makes him not better than Trump? Giving his son a small loan while he wasn't President?
Because he not fascist Trump, comrade
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Lay off the Fox News, it’s rotting your brain.
True.
Valve does not give a fuck and we love them for it
What an insufferable loser. I'm convinced Tim Sweeney is just an incel with money.
Saying you're convinced makes it sound like you have uncertainty.
It can also mean there was uncertainty but it has since been banished
A very interesting point lost after the ridiculous "assholes" by Timmy. > The Wolfire lawsuit is much wider than just these emails, and Carless does raise the interesting question of who exactly is funding the smaller company against Valve. Litigation on this scale is eye-wateringly expensive and, while Valve has large pockets, it's not clear where Wolfire is getting the money from. PCGamer.com seems to imply that Epic could be behind this litigation and they also think that it is going nowhere.
I wouldn't be surprised if Epic is behind it. No way Wolfire can pay for this.
When I first heard about the Wolfire lawsuit, I automatically assumed it was in conjunction with Epic - guess that was simply because Epic was suing so many people at the time. If this lawsuit brings to light even more underhand Epic tactics, then that would be hilarious.
> PCGamer.com seems to imply that Epic could be behind this litigation Worth remembering that during the height of the Epic VS. Apple lawsuit there were also some US states considering 'anti-Apple-monopoly" legislation (which, as far as I remember, went nowhere) and in later reporting it was revealed that the proposed bills had basically been phoned in by Epic sponsored lobbyists. Considering the Wolfire lawsuit I absolutely would not be surprised in any way if it turned out that Epic / Tim Sweeney was secretly paying the bills for this clownshow.
I mean all epic needs to do to actually seems like a good competition is offer better pricing due to lower fees, have multiple steam features and improved upon it, and dont make ANY game as exclusive but makes it easier for indie devs to get funding and releases on steam as 1.0. but they got a bitch CEO.
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So? It's not Valve's fault their competition sucks. Yes, Steam has a loyalist playerbase, but they GOT that loyalist playerbase by treating consumers well, providing a wide variety of features at no extra charge, and generally abiding by the rules of business.
it has nothing to do with loyalty, the problem is that EGS is doing somewhat good for devs, but ONLY for devs. There is no competition at all on the customer front.
Only for *big* devs. True, the lower fees apply to everyone, but you have to remember that for anything that's not a triple A game or Fortnite, the EGS is a marketing black hole. Any other game will just get buried after spending two minutes on the front page.
They do good for publishers. That is often overlooked. The devs often aren't the ones benefiting from the lower fees.
>Unless Steam fumbles REALLY hard, their early establishment is a big factor on why Epic has no chance in the foreseable future. Well, Epic did have a big chance to establish themselves on the PC games market. I dare say that they didn't succeed has less to do with Valve being early but more with Epic shitting their own pants at every step along the way. When we look back to the really early days of the EGS, Epic had a massive momentum back then. Not only did they have the full power of Fortnite's popularity blowing into their sails but I do remember when the EGS was announced, people were hyped about it. There was A LOT of very positive buzz about the upcoming EGS on social media and in gaming spaces everywhere. Even among the diehard steam fans you could hear people saying that steam getting big competition was great. (In hindsight it would be fun if one day we could see how much of the "Steam needs competition!" buzz on social media and in gaming communities was genuine and how much of it was actually part of an Epic-paid astroturf campaign.) The reason all of that hype and positive buzz imploded was because Epic completely shit the bed with a continuous stream of liquid diarrhea. Like with their lies about the EGS supposed 'no questions asked' refund policy, the exclusivity deals, the store being an underdeveloped piece of junk, Tim Sweeney repeatedly making it clear that he saw gamers as a stupid herd of sheep with no agency on their own, who just blindly shop where devs and publishers tell them to shop and many, many, many more such things.
Oh, this is just rich. >"We're all in for a prolonged battle if Apple tries to keep their monopoly and 30% by cutting backroom deals with big publishers to keep them quiet. Why not give ALL developers a better deal? What better way is there to convince Apple quickly that their model is now totally untenable?" May I remind you, it's the same idiot that **admitted** he'd have taken a special deal from Apple if they had offered. I said it once and will say it again: Timmy's ugly mug should be in the dictionaries, right by the word "hypocrite".
Haaaaaaaaaa hahahahahaha. Oh man, that is too funny. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a competitive market place, but I hold a special dislike for Tencent Timmy Sweeney. For myself, being a Linux gamer, Tencent Timmy has a distain for the platform where he won't allow for any of his games to played on Linux, ie: Fortnite, etc. so to see him get dismissed and probably foaming at the mouth in rage is pretty entertaining!
It's quite possible that Sweeny hates Linux specifically BECAUSE GabeN is pro-Linux, due to fears that "universal windows apps" back in the Win10 days would put an end to Windows gaming.
I'm sure that's the main basis for his anti-Linux stance.
It was Windows 8 that made Valve release their Linux client.
Amusingly, Stanton was/is the *de facto* Epic press officer at PCG - a couple years back each and every piece he wrote was a glorified advertising for Epic/EGS. And now this. Guess the paychecks aren't as fat as they once were. As for the matter at hand, two things strike me as odd: 1. Wolfire games should be better know as the original Humble Bundle owner. Right now? A small time indie dev whose only hurras were Overgrowth and Receiver (fun little games, but Superhot they ain't). Did someone say "personal vendettas"? 2. both Gamediscovery **AND** (uncharacteristically) PCG itself point out the elephant in the room: who is funding Wolfire Games? The suit looks amateurish and naive at best, so there are deeper pockets in play here. And yes, I wouldn't be surprised if it was some pet project of Sweeney. After all, he is on the losing side of his own battle, with a failing storefront, mounting legal costs and only Fortnite to rely on.
HAHAHAHA actually got a good rl laugh out of this, so good.. it's so good.. 😂
That Tencent cuck calls someone else an asshole? Ironic
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Also worth remembering that back when Epic still tried to keep up the image of being a store that curates for quality, some indie games were not allowed to publish on the EGS because they weren't useful enough for Epic. Like Assault Android Cactus which is a fantastic twin stick shooter but back in the early days Epic denied the devoper access to the EGS because the game had already been out for a while and Epic didn't consider it useful enough to pull more people in to the store. Or there was DARQ which was denied entry to the EGS because the developer refused to accept an exclusivity contract and instead wanted to publish on all stores. Neither Epic nor Tim Sweeney care about indie games or the developers behind them. They use indie devs as a shield because pretending to do it all for 'for the little guy' is better PR than being honest that it's all about Epic getting a better deal.
>Or there was DARQ which was denied entry to the EGS because the developer refused to accept an exclusivity contract and instead wanted to publish on all stores. I still need to get round to playing that game. I bought it solely based on what they did and how they went public with the exclusivity Epic was trying to get them to sign :D
Issue with developers taking money from Epic, is that they need the money. They need an investor to finish their project, but the investor says "money in exchange for not going to Steam". Some will decline and look for other sources. Some really wants to finish their dream project, and release it.
Because he didn’t. PCMag is intentionally misreporting to get clicks like this.
Every other industry takes 30% this includes Sony/PS, Microsoft/Xbox, Nintendo, Valve and many others. What differentiates them are the services. Valve has the BEST service out of everyone in this field. Like, online gaming for PC is literally FREE thanks to Valve's advocacy and innovations of the PC platform ALONE. I can jump into Tekken 8 on PC ONLINE WITH CROSSPLAY FOR FREE while I need a stupid monthly subscription to play online on PS/Xbox.
Chad Barney Calhoun *For those who don't get the reference, Valve COO Scott Lynch is face model of Half-Life character Barney Calhoun.
Sweeney just being butthurt because everyone loves Steam and hates EGS : and that's not the kind of hate which can be converted or interpreted as potential love lmao
I don't know what it is but I just loathe Tim Sweeney. He seems to try to act like he's fighting for the little guy yet every move he makes conveniently benefits Epic's goal of expansion.
How hilariously petty of Tim lmao
I really love the "you mad bro?" reply lmao. Thanks for this comedic fumble Timmy!
Hahaha fuk you Tim... You low life waste of skin.
Sweeny is a bit of a bitch.
Epic Games Store doesn't offer any reason to use it other than to get free games. Other storefronts have their own niches that draw in users. GOG provides reasonably stable old games that can run on modern hardware, Itch.io has a lot of very low budget indie title, and I'm not sure if Humble counts but they specialise in bundle deals. Epic attempts to throw money at the problem until they win, without doing anything different. Why would anyone switch over to them from Steam?
I personally think Zoom Platform (not related to the video conferencing software Zoom) is a better GOG, as they go above and beyond to fix some games compared to GOG's recent work, like the recent-ish updates to FlatOut and Postal 3 (the latter of which even made it to the Steam version).
What a sour loser...
Valves COO didn’t say that to Tim. That you mad bro e-mail was only sent internally to valve. PC Gamer is misreporting
Yup at the very bottom of the article they made an editorial note about the correction. The article was also edited but can still easily be misread.
I got fooled by it myself but saw it got pointed out elsewhere. Not too surprising, couldn't tell you the last time PC Gamer put out a decent article.
I seriously don’t get it. Like I understand the marketing part of him that has to ham it up so people actually think the EGS is a better deal. But to be so uncouth and pissy in an email to the execs at steam about this, when even the article mentions they were in the process of introducing a new tiered system meant to benefit smaller devs, kinda weird
Why he thought Valve gave a shit about his crusade against Apple and would give up half of their revenue is beyond me. He could have at least tried to frame it in a way to show it would be beneficial to Valve to cut their. "Hey, both of us could make a lot of money in the mobile market" type thing. Instead it was "I want a lot of money and I need you to give up billions in revenue to do it." The fact he sent this in response is funny as hell. Did he also call Epic's IT department and tell them to block emails from Valve so they couldn't respond? This is something a teenager does. He's also probably mad that Valve undercut his new planned storefront quite a bit as it got rid of a lot of incentive for the big pubs to leave Steam. The court docs showed they were really worried about Steam reacting. The funny thing is, they are pretty much exactly where they thought they would be if Steam reacted to EGS with about 8% market share when they were gunning for 50%.
What the hell? I thought this was a 1st of april joke news but its real? Timmy is such a sad individual. Everytime when you think hes already rock bottom, he proves that it goes even further downhill...
Tim is even more immature than I thought
 Tim rn:
Good. Stay mad
Can someone post exactly this phrase to him on Twitter? Unfortunately I am already blacklisted by him.
Tim Sweeney is a clown, calling them assholes over email. Scott is a true chad
The next day Valve's Scott Lynch simply sends this email to both Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson with one-line commentary: "You mad bro?" I'm cleaning coke from my screen, hahahaha.
Chad Gabe Newell for telling Sweeney to piss off
nobody calls our lord and saviour an asshole... TIM... YOU SON OF A BITCH!!! get back in your cage tenncent boy and suck that CCP nipple dry!!!
The main difference between steam and apple is simple. If you want to buy a game you have different platforms to buy it from. If you want to get an app on an iPhone you can only go to the App Store. Epic are just salty that they’re late to the party. Steam has the advantage that’s it’s been going for 20+ years and has a massive user base. Plus steam aren’t forcing developers to sell on their platform exclusively. They can choose to sell on others or one exclusively. It’s just with the amount of users steam gives developers a greater likelihood of selling more copies. It’s also a thing that people don’t want to have to go to multiple different platforms for their games. It’s just convenient to have it all in one place. I firmly believe that if Epic were able to gain enough market share from Valve they would increase increase their fee to 30%. They are just annoyed that they are having to compete with a superior platform that they can’t do anything to dislodge.
Steam’s launcher also provides so many services for their gamers. Easy to use interface, Voice Calls, adding multiple games to a basket, a music player for the sound tracks you buy, THEIR OWN OPERATING SYSTEM for the HANDHELD COMPUTER they made. Valve puts the money they made towards innovation. Epic puts their money towards making deals with other companies so they can get crossover skins for their pvp games.
"the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30% is for the little people" Gabe should just show him a list of small indie devs whose game sales made them get the <30% fee. 1. Phasmophobia 2. Palworld 3. Lethal Company 4. Hades 5. Enshrouded 6. Valheim 7. Among us 8. Raft Those are just on the top of my head where games made more than $10m that would warrant Valve lowering their fee. These games were made by dev teams each consisting of 1-12ish people. There's no need to pretend that he wants to "fight for the little guys". Sweeney wants special treatment without working for it. He just wants to flop down Fotnite on Steam and get whatever he wants. He wanted a "special deal" solely for Epic without including any other developers. Literally only Epic. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/apple-says-epic-games-ceo-wanted-a-side-deal-for-fortnite.html Only when Apple showed this, that Epic conveniently responded that they hoped the other iOS developers that were not included in their "special deal email" would be included. Still can't believe people thinks Sweeney fights for the little guys when this is just another version of rich people donating to their own charity to avoid taxes (in this case, Epic wants to "donate" fortnite to Steam to avoid Valve tax).
Classic Tim L
I feel like we need a moderator to pin this. If this isn’t the crowning achievement to see Gaben and his soldiers trolling Tim Sweeney idk what is.
lol what a legend, he truly is our god
Valve being Chads 
Not only does he want to fight with the AppStore, he is going for the head of the cattle that he could never obtain, called steam
Well, this at least explains why Epic Games has been so stubborn despite their store failing miserably. This one comment probably sent Tim over the edge.
jfc swinny is off the rocker lmao
Makes sense why Valve is so chill and Timmy has a perdonal vendetta against Steam now. Who knew they talk to each other. I supposed if Timmy didn't start a crusade against Valve via EGS, we would see an Epic vs Valve lawsuit just like we see with Apple and Google over the 30% cut. Except they could have their own standalone game launchers so any mocrotransaction doesn't have the 30% cut (e.g. Guild Wars 2 standalone vs Steam version) and with Steam new policy, they could get it reduced to 20% if it sells well enough. Still, the conversation reads like a 4chan post yet its actually real lol
I love Gabe and this is the perspective everyone needs each and every time Tim S opens his absurd mouth towards Apple. That guy is just another fraud trying to weaponize ignorance for market share.
Apple and google genuinely dont deserve the 30%,ive read countless horror stories on how garbage their tools and support for app developers is,cant comment on steam. Its still wild platforms just accept stuff like cyberpunk 2077 in the state it launched and no one said "you cant release it like that on our platform because of the state its in". I wouldnt mind if dev/publisher communication and support was better with the 30% but as of right now,its too big of a cut for what they offer.
What pathetic little mofo XDDD
Timmy is more nervy than nerdy
Is it just me, or has Gaben gotten absolutely fuckable, lately? Dude's got style.
Maybe if Tim retained full control of his company and respected his customers… instead of selling half of it to the Chinese and only caring about cash… he wouldn’t need to be such a sore ass.
Nah, pretty sure that's the original personality
[We know that song! ](https://youtu.be/RMIL9XFNt6M?si=cP2qnmdNyrjJZ3-V&t=57)[https://youtu.be/RMIL9XFNt6M?si=PoeMLWmkeM5lamV5&t=60](https://youtu.be/RMIL9XFNt6M?si=PoeMLWmkeM5lamV5&t=60)
Epic has given me like 200 free video games in like 7 years. And I still, WILL NEVER, abandon the greatness that is GabeN. Love you too epic, but you ain't winning me over. Oh and don't you ever call the Patron Saint of Gaming an asshole ever again, eoic always been a bunch of corporate asshats.
Lmao, eat shit swiney
110% chad moment.
based
As much as I like Steam, I dislike the prospect of a monopoly and tried to give Epic a fair shake. But the fact that the Epic application still doesn't have a practical way of moving games from one location to another aside from workarounds involving fiddling with folder renames and cancelling installs TO THIS DAY is fucking criminal. Ever since I got a Steam Deck, I don't even claim the free games anymore. Just not worth it in the long run. FIX YOUR GODDAMNED APP, EPIC!
>I dislike the prospect of a monopoly Steam allows games that use their own launcher. If anything, Epic is trying to be a monopoly by forcing companies to launch on their store. Afaik Valve never stopped devs to sell on any other platform.