Epic Games Store is awful, but we can’t let it fail

The single greatest driver of innovation is competition in the free-market. If a supplier has a complete monopoly of a paying customer base, with no concerns of anything jeopardising that, there is typically very little motivation to improve on their service or product, why should they?

As someone in the process of developing an indie game, and getting far enough through development that we need to start exploring distribution channels and building out a model of ROI for future investment, it infuriates me that not only does Steam take a 30% cut, but you really have no choice but to use Steam because there is no comparison between the sizes of the markets of Steam and Epic Store.

Steam recently updated their pricing model, an update which I was convinced the person explaining it to me had got it backwards. Instead of pretty much all taxes, where the more you earn the more you pay, Steam instead opted to follow the traditional route of physical products which benefits bulk buyers. Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales for the first $10 million, upon hitting this threshold they’ll reduce their margin down to 25% for all sales above $10 million but less than $50 million. Reach that golden milestone and Steam will reduce their margin further still for all sales above $50 million to 20%.

My first question to you, why do you think they did this?

The most likely answer, and I have no insight to back this up other than pure assumption, Valve were under extreme pressure from the biggest game development studios who hadn’t gone as far as setting up their own storefront and launcher and were most likely holding their game revenue ransom with the threat of migrating over to Epic. Because what Steam did doesn’t benefit the smaller independent studio at all, I read somewhere (but now can’t find it) that only some 3% of games break the $1million mark. This means the number of games that break past the $10million or $50million mark will be only the AAA behemoths. The difference on the margins for those AAA titles is just whether their execs can buy a 2nd yacht or not. For smaller studios, those reduced margins could be the difference between actually breaking even or not which fundamentally impacts peoples livelihoods. But of course, the little guys don’t really matter to Valve, because they only account for low % of Steams total revenue.

So, regardless of their ‘new model’, for the 99% of games that get sold on steam, the 30% cut is what you should expect to fork out.

Ethics and morality aside, it brings me back to my first point. Why would Steam do anything about it? Developers really don’t have any other choice, it’s 70% of something or 88–100% of sweet fuck all.

This is why it’s absolute paramount that Epic Games Store doesn’t fail.

Without the threat of competition, Valve are never going to be moved to act and smaller studios will forever be held over a barrel. This isn’t all doom and gloom though, I come with solutions.

First

The first responsibility lies with Epic. I’ll be as delicate as I can, but sort your shit out. Jesus Christ, you’ve been out 3 years and you still can’t even tell how good the game you’re buying is because nobody can leave reviews. I get it, you want to deal with any possibility of abusing the system or toxic behaviour, I get it. But seriously? What’s taking you so long. (Edit: As typing this I actually discovered that some games can now display an out of 5 rating and the random selection for reviews has gone live). The incremental improvements to the Epic Games Store are more glacial than a salmon trying to swim up a waterfall. I’m not going to turn this into an in-depth review of the Epic Games Store because that would be a very, very long article but here’s the highlights

• Reviews/Recommendations
• Godawful performance
• Terrible UX
• ‘At a glance’ info
• Open up the market place to more developers

Credit where credits due, it has improved marginally since I last properly used it, even if it does feel like they only have a single developer working on it at the rate of change. My biggest concern is the potential for ‘too little too late’. My worry would be the product came out so barebones, and has improved so little in the last 3 years that the vast majority of the userbase has now written it off and the cost of reengaging them will be exponentially higher than if they came out of the gate swinging and kept pushing. Especially considering the amount of capital they’ve thrown at the whole free games aspect, which is obviously great, they really should have used some of that to fund the development of it further.

Second

The second responsibility actually lies on us as developers. Quite simply, we need to keep our greed in check. The only way we’ll entice users over to use anything other than Steam, is if there’s something in it for them. As an example. God of War, on Epic for £39.99 retail currently on sale for 20% off so £31.99. On Steam for £39.99 retail currently on sale for 20% off so £31.99. Why would I ever buy it on Epic when I can have a better user experience for the same price through Steam?

The only way we’re going to encourage the players to purchase through Epic, or whatever competitor comes along to challenge Steam, is by passing on the savings to them. If your game retails for $20 on Steam, meaning you net $14 from each sale, then you need your list price on Epic to be $15.91 (or thereabouts). You will walk away with exactly the same revenue per unit sold as you will with Steam, but the buyer will have an incentive to buy through Epic instead of Steam. Now it’s not just about the user experience, suddenly all games are 21.45% cheaper for just simply buying it through Epic, now as a buyer I’m seriously considering purchasing somewhere other than Steam. As it’s said time and time again, players speak with their wallets. Wherever the money goes, that’s where change happens.

Third

Something else. If neither of the above work/it’s too little too late for Epic then a new disruptor needs to come to the market. In my travels I happened across Ultra which appears to be a new challenger in the digital storefront landscape.

That’s all I have for today. Keep an eye out for the ‘Excommunicado’ listing coming soon on Steam (I would practice what I preach and list it on Epic for a cheaper price but Epic doesn’t let just anyone list a game…). That is of course as long as Valve don’t read this article and decide to punish me by removing us from their platform! Fingers crossed!