Apple claims the Epic Games Store won't see any profits 'until 2027, if ever'

[Red34jfp]

Yeah, well, if companies like Apple are allowed to keep their monopolistic practices of course other stores like the Epic Store won't ever become profitable. Apple is making a curious case against itself, I wonder how it will play out.

 

[Tams80]

Yeah, what do you think I've been doing. It's great as well as they then release far less buggy and normally as "GOTY" editions with extra's in or DLC.

My initial complaint was when games like Metro were on the Steam Store, just weeks before release and they suddenly pull it because Epic gave them a wad of cash. That to me, isn't how you build trust.


First of all, this "developer makes a better cut" argument is completely hollow, Devs make plenty of money, some of them are worth billions. From a consumer standpoint we just shouldn't care, it's more about the price of the end product of which, EGS is usually the same price as Steam, GoG or anywhere else, the cheapest places tend to be third party websites selling keys.

My complaint with exclusives is due to the way they got introduced, Metro being an example, as per my comment above. My bigger issue is if it catches on and limits our ability to buy games from other competing stores.

Now when it comes to platform development, that's EXACTLY where all their effort should have gone. That's how you actually compete, I wouldn't expect them to have in-home streaming, Mod support or even game save backups, but a cart so I can buy multiple games at a time? That's an incredibly basic feature, All they had to do was get the basics right and have games on sale for slightly cheaper than the competition. Remember that games can come out on multiple stores at the same time, Metro, Borderlands, Valheim, Cyberpunk. Publishers / Devs have the option to sell their games on multiple store fronts, if you want your store to compete with another store, at least be able to sell more than a single product at a time and at least be cheaper than your competition.

If I was to place money on anything, the reason no other store is even close to Steam in terms of features is because it actually costs money to develop and run. EGS wasted half a billion dollars trying to force people to use EGS, rather than spending half a billion to make a better store...

Blah, blah, blah, I'm so entitled.

Game developers are free to sell their games wherever. If someone/company offers them a good deal in return for exclusivity, then they are free to take it.

Considering game development can be a precarious business and there are many ongoing costs to it, you (well, probably not you) can see why, say, payment upfront for a game in return for exclusivity is accepted. Or perhaps even acquisition.

 

[Puiu]

Blah, blah, blah, I'm so entitled.

Game developers are free to sell their games wherever. If someone/company offers them a good deal in return for exclusivity, then they are free to take it.

Considering game development can be a precarious business and there are many ongoing costs to it, you (well, probably not you) can see why, say, payment upfront for a game in return for exclusivity is accepted. Or perhaps even acquisition.

"Blah blah blah, I'm so ready to get b slapped by both devs and distributors."

If you don't care then don't comment about others. It's annoying to see people making stupid excuses using the word "entitled".

Imagine Valve starting doing exclusive deals to compete with EGS, it would effectively destroy smaller stores since nobody can compete with that kind of money. But you don't care.

These "entitled" people are making your gaming experience better, your game buying experience better and your games better. You are just a parasite that sits in the corner benefiting from people who are actively fighting for something good.

A good example is WoW. The "we are always right" attitude of Blizzard has become such a huge problem, they've effectively alienated everybody. Blizzard has destroyed 5 years of growth and is making less money with more games (45% drop in total player base and this is with Overwatch not being a thing 5 years ago). Why? Toxic devs lead to an even more toxic community. They haven't listened to player complaints at all and people just gave up on them.

 

[Markoni35]

Pity. We need more diversity, more stores, more freedom. Of course that Google and Apple want to remove all the competition, not only because of money, but for some more dangerous reasons. For example, they can dictate which apps will succeed, and which will fail, depending on the politics.

If you make a crappy app that conforms to their agenda, the app will get promoted and exposed to wide audience. If you make a great app, but which doesn't support their current political agenda, they will bury it. And there's nothing you can do about it. Feudalism is back.

 

[Bp968]

Depends on how you define "store"

If profits going through Fortnite microtransactions count, and given the court case they should, then I seriously doubt they're not getting a profit.

Yes they're investing it back heavily into promotional free games and exclusivity deals but the minute they scale back on those they still have TONS of cash coming in from Fortnite.

So they don't really need to do too much to be profitable, they just needed an initial boost for the store to make sure people paying for Fortnite stick around and I can say they've pretty much accomplished that already.

Its a different business. As an example lets say you make zillions of dollars with a social media company but want to open your own rocket company. So you build a rocket but its not really all that good. Sure it works and doesnt usually blown up but its way behind ste-- I mean rocket company A. So instead of making a better rocket you use your tens of billions from your social media company to subsidize the rocket company and take a loss on each launch. The fact that your taking millions of dollars in losses with each launch isn't an issue for you because its a rounding error compared to the income from your primary business. But its a *very* big deal for rocket company A and any other rocket companies that actually need a profit to survive.

If you can sustain those losses indefinitely than what happens to your competitors?

And back to actual reality, that's a real concern for some of EGSs competitors I suspect (though not likely for steam). And even if EGS sucks so bad it isn't a real threat its still a really dirty tactic.

This entire case has been weird for me. I *want* apple to lose, but I also want EGS to eat it too.

I guess in my dreams the best possible outcome is for apple to lose and then within a year or two everyone get bored of fortnite and it die a much needed death. Sadly this is the real world so something far less impactful is most likely what will happen and nothing at all will change. Both companies will line each others pockets at someone elses expense and go on their merry way while all the lawyers involved will buy new yachts or private jets or islands.

 

[Bp968]

Pity. We need more diversity, more stores, more freedom. Of course that Google and Apple want to remove all the competition, not only because of money, but for some more dangerous reasons. For example, they can dictate which apps will succeed, and which will fail, depending on the politics.

If you make a crappy app that conforms to their agenda, the app will get promoted and exposed to wide audience. If you make a great app, but which doesn't support their current political agenda, they will bury it. And there's nothing you can do about it. Feudalism is back.

Google allows 3rd party stores. Im not sure how they get dragged into this so often. Anyone can install anything on their android phone. Its a simple security switch in the settings menu. Sure, random plebs are probably scared to do it (rightly so) and that will effect uptake on the alternate store but thats not really googles fault. If they dont do that it would be a huge security hole.

Apple on the other hand locks down the hardware so hard you can't install anything outside the app store. Apples and oranges (or googles, or whatever).

 

[Bp968]

Blah, blah, blah, I'm so entitled.

Game developers are free to sell their games wherever. If someone/company offers them a good deal in return for exclusivity, then they are free to take it.

Considering game development can be a precarious business and there are many ongoing costs to it, you (well, probably not you) can see why, say, payment upfront for a game in return for exclusivity is accepted. Or perhaps even acquisition.

He is saying that it might not be as good a deal as it seems, or wouldn't be if it was a reasonably sane and realistic offer. Control and metro would have been day 1 buys at 50-60$ for me. Since they were not on steam they were not. Instead I bought them earlier this year, as GOTY editions for 20-25$ each (roughly). So they lost out on those full price sales due to EGS.

Of course the reality is that EGS paid them *way* more than the exclusively was really worth so EGS took a big loss. They are subsidizing these timed exclusives using fortnite cash, and thats a fairly dirty tactic imo. I can't blame a dev for taking the huge wad of cash, but I agree with the OP that yanking it from the steam store last minute was exceedingly lame. It means they used the steam store as free advertising.

The thing that should stand out to people is how magnanimous valve has been through all of that. They complained about metro being yanked because they had so many customer complaints, but they never took retaliatory action against those devs. Personally id have removed any game from steam that was a timed exclusive and forced them to resubmit the game shortly before they intended to release it on steam. Instead valve allowed them to not only continue to advertise an egs exclusive on their store, they also provided forums for the games that users used for support and help because EGS has nothing similar to support customers.

For me the whole EGS nonsense has just shined a light on how amazing steam treats their customers. Easy refunds, reviews, the ability to share a library, remote play together, game streaming, proton and linux support, VR support and open source support, and now what looks to be an amazing handheld that could potentially totally change the PC gaming landscape for the next decade.

 

[Puiu]

He is saying that it might not be as good a deal as it seems, or wouldn't be if it was a reasonably sane and realistic offer. Control and metro would have been day 1 buys at 50-60$ for me. Since they were not on steam they were not. Instead I bought them earlier this year, as GOTY editions for 20-25$ each (roughly). So they lost out on those full price sales due to EGS.

Of course the reality is that EGS paid them *way* more than the exclusively was really worth so EGS took a big loss. They are subsidizing these timed exclusives using fortnite cash, and thats a fairly dirty tactic imo. I can't blame a dev for taking the huge wad of cash, but I agree with the OP that yanking it from the steam store last minute was exceedingly lame. It means they used the steam store as free advertising.

The thing that should stand out to people is how magnanimous valve has been through all of that. They complained about metro being yanked because they had so many customer complaints, but they never took retaliatory action against those devs. Personally id have removed any game from steam that was a timed exclusive and forced them to resubmit the game shortly before they intended to release it on steam. Instead valve allowed them to not only continue to advertise an egs exclusive on their store, they also provided forums for the games that users used for support and help because EGS has nothing similar to support customers.

For me the whole EGS nonsense has just shined a light on how amazing steam treats their customers. Easy refunds, reviews, the ability to share a library, remote play together, game streaming, proton and linux support, VR support and open source support, and now what looks to be an amazing handheld that could potentially totally change the PC gaming landscape for the next decade.

The majority of game sales happen in the first few weeks unless something huge changes and it becomes very popular (kinda like what happened with Amung Us after streamers picked it up)

 

[Tams80]

He is saying that it might not be as good a deal as it seems, or wouldn't be if it was a reasonably sane and realistic offer. Control and metro would have been day 1 buys at 50-60$ for me. Since they were not on steam they were not. Instead I bought them earlier this year, as GOTY editions for 20-25$ each (roughly). So they lost out on those full price sales due to EGS.

Of course the reality is that EGS paid them *way* more than the exclusively was really worth so EGS took a big loss. They are subsidizing these timed exclusives using fortnite cash, and thats a fairly dirty tactic imo. I can't blame a dev for taking the huge wad of cash, but I agree with the OP that yanking it from the steam store last minute was exceedingly lame. It means they used the steam store as free advertising.

The thing that should stand out to people is how magnanimous valve has been through all of that. They complained about metro being yanked because they had so many customer complaints, but they never took retaliatory action against those devs. Personally id have removed any game from steam that was a timed exclusive and forced them to resubmit the game shortly before they intended to release it on steam. Instead valve allowed them to not only continue to advertise an egs exclusive on their store, they also provided forums for the games that users used for support and help because EGS has nothing similar to support customers.

For me the whole EGS nonsense has just shined a light on how amazing steam treats their customers. Easy refunds, reviews, the ability to share a library, remote play together, game streaming, proton and linux support, VR support and open source support, and now what looks to be an amazing handheld that could potentially totally change the PC gaming landscape for the next decade.

Again, it's up to the developer.

And we have no rights to have to be sold games, nor should we. Of course, this is countered by the developers having no rights (nor should they) that mean we must buy their games.

Those exclusives are still available to purchase and play, and the developers got a lot of security from the deals they struck.

And things are different when you are entering a mature market. Valve got their advantage by being first, but that doesn't mean they deserve to be the largest player in the market.

And if we're talking about having bones against companies: I'm still not happy with no guarantee of owning any of my purchases from Steam and am still pissed at Valve for their offline play not working years ago. They prevented me from using something I purchased.

 

[Puiu]

Again, it's up to the developer.

And we have no rights to have to be sold games, nor should we. Of course, this is countered by the developers having no rights (nor should they) that mean we must buy their games.

Those exclusives are still available to purchase and play, and the developers got a lot of security from the deals they struck.

And things are different when you are entering a mature market. Valve got their advantage by being first, but that doesn't mean they deserve to be the largest player in the market.

And if we're talking about having bones against companies: I'm still not happy with no guarantee of owning any of my purchases from Steam and am still pissed at Valve for their offline play not working years ago. They prevented me from using something I purchased.

"And we have no rights to have to be sold games, nor should we." - Very wrong. You have a lot of rights as consumers and actively boycotting anti-consumer practices is one of them. How is this simple thing that hard to understand? O_o

You don't have to stay silent and accept everything, nor should you. Fight for yourself and what you want.

As a consumer you should want a competitive landscape that benefits you. Guaranteed money also has a direct impact on the quality of the games being made (what is the point of making something good and innovative if you will be profitable will much less work?)

And exclusivity deals 100% hurt smaller stores as the majority of game sales happen near launch. You'll end up with Valve and Epic grabbing everything they can and the money will stop going into developing the stores and into paying for the deals (that's if Epic manages to grab a big enough market share to scare Valve - hopefully it doesn't happen).

 

[Markoni35]

Google allows 3rd party stores. Im not sure how they get dragged into this so often. Anyone can install anything on their android phone. Its a simple security switch in the settings menu.

Yeah, they do allow it, but nobody even knows that alternatives exist. Android is a lot more open than iOS, but still for 99% of people there's only one source of apps for Android.

 

[Markoni35]

You don't have to stay silent and accept everything, nor should you. Fight for yourself and what you want.

That's what I'm constantly saying about this pandemic and mandatory vaccination, which is coming soon.

But, if the majority accepts everything, you're screwed too.

 

[Puiu]

That's what I'm constantly saying about this pandemic and mandatory vaccination, which is coming soon.

But, if the majority accepts everything, you're screwed too.

I agree with mandatory vaccinations if you are in positions that require you to work with many people (teachers, nurses, etc). Vaccinations and consumer practices are two entirely different things, not comparable.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Yeah, they do allow it, but nobody even knows that alternatives exist. Android is a lot more open than iOS, but still for 99% of people there's only one source of apps for Android.

Google allow it but the manufacturers don’t. If you have a Samsung phone you void your warranty if you install applications outside of the play store. Other manufactures like Oppo go even further and lock the boot loader so you are forced to use the version of Android that they feed you.

Android is actually for most users not very open at all. It can be but the companies that load Android onto their devices close it off.