The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.
After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.
It’s pro-publisher and pro-developer. What benefit does this give me as a consumer? I get to have fun watching Bobby Kotick and the other game studio execs buy a sixth yacht? Or are you trying to make an argument for trickle-down economics here?
Maybe I should explain my use of the term “mark”. Because the Epic store has had these pro-developer policies for a while, and has been my go to for purchasing smaller games.
But in my experience the store has been constantly called anti-consumer, by people clearly upset Steam has competition. Hence the use of “mark” a pro wrestling term for over enthusiastic fans.
Pro-publisher and pro-developer do not equal pro-consumer. In fact, Epic has never minced words that consumers are not their primary goal. “Developers will decide the game store wars, not consumers”, remember? Tim Sweeney aaid that to justify not improving his store. I don’t know about you, but in my view if Epic does not value my experience as a customer then I simply won’t value them as a company. Is that not fair?
If you’re running a platform based on selling games, you need games to sell. So of course developers are the target, that’s been true since the first consoles were released. It’s why Nintendo lost ground with the N64, why the PSP failed, why the Dreamcast failed.
That’s not what Tim Sweeney was saying, he was saying they didn’t need to improve EGS to woo customers because developers would leave Steam for Epic to get the smaller cut anyway. No gaming platform thinks catering publishers and developers should actually outweigh the needs of their customers, or if they did they certainly would never say it out loud lol.
The history of the Sega Saturn says overwise.
Epic fans can’t seem to grasp that no one likes exclusivity deals for non first party games, and honestly thanks to MS and Sony even that paradigm is changing, trying to force them to use a sub par service and that people who like Steam also like GoG, green man games, humble bundle just fine and welcome actual competition without the exclusivity bullshit.
Hell even the recent case of Activision/MS the merger was even hinged as CoD potentially becomes a exclusive and calling that anti-consumer, for good reason, because exclusivity of third party titles is anti-consumer.
There we go with the exclusivity deals. That’s the maypole the G*mers dance around this time. Heaven forbid you guys have to wait for 6 months for a random indy game you’ve never heard of. It’s a bloody online storefront, you can use both on the same PC. But marks like you love to bring in the tribalism.
The fact you would even consider comparing this the Microsoft merger is insanity. Two completely different situations.
As for exclusivity of third party titles. I wouldn’t call my local record store anti-consumer because it’s 8-track selection was lacking, or my local 2nd hand game store because it doesn’t carry n-gage titles.
This isn’t like when your parents bought you the wrong console, you have the choice to use both.which is a lot more then what we had previously.