is this talk linked on a Wednesday what
what that's exciting what is the meaning of this so before we get into the uh
epic gam store crisis as I like to call it um we I want to let you guys know
that we're going on workation LMG lus Media Group so there will be no Tech
linked on Friday but then we'll be back on
Monday so it's okay the epic game store
it's disrupted the industry in a huge way what a mess people are mad people
are upset on both sides of the aisle
Democrat and Republican even Ralph nater's
po but it's a huge mess so in order to understand it we have to go back to the
beginning okay we have to go back
Marty so in December epic games launched
the epic games store okay and the big news when they launched it was that they
had an 88 to 12% developer to store Revenue shares so
that's 88% to the developers of sales
12% to the store yep okay and that was a
big deal because valve takes 30% of sales from Steam from Steam the
deao Monopoly player in this space right if you don't know
steam it's kind of a big deal yeah it's the big Monopoly yeah you're right so
shortly after epic announced that valve changed their revenue share to take 25%
from games that make over $10 million and 20% from games that make over 50
million so they were like uh we can change the revenue share but you got to
make a ton of money it's a weird response because on the one hand that's
going to cost valve a lot of money from those whales those big developers so
absolute value wise that's a lot of money going from 30 down to 25% that 5%
means a lot on the other hand that did nothing to incentivize medium small to
medium developers exactly it really only affects the big players and
it's important because while epic's Revenue split is apparently designed to
help small developers that situation
where you have to sell a million copies of your game in order to make more money
uh in order to have a greater Revenue share doesn't really help small
developers at all it only helps the big guys who are like you know Ubisoft which
is going to sell a million copies anyways and even for those big guys it's
still 8% higher rate than epic is offering yeah it doesn't even get down
there like significant that's they only got they only got halfway there for some
of the people yeah so initially it it
seemed pretty good the revenue share was cool but then epic games store started
grabbing exclusive games so they started with some indie games and stuff but then
they grabbed Metro Exodus which was you
know the sequel to the Metro franchise which is pretty popular so as I
understand it Metro was already listed on Steam you could pre-order it yes it
was coming out just like two weeks hence that's very and then psych it's going to
be only on Epic yeah however we will
honor any pre-orders yeah they're going to honor pre-orders but it was still
like a huge shock right cuz you're like wait what I was what so then they then
they grabbed Borderlands 3 and then they had control and this is like kind of in
this ensuing months they grabbed control from RE games a lot of Ubisoft PC titles
like the new gross Recon and division 2 and stuff are on uh they're they're an
exclusive to the epic game store but you still have to install up play right yeah
the division 2 was also on up playay cuz it's it's ubisoft's game makes sense so
then real quick adding insult to injury they also started grabbing even more
games that had already been on other platforms so like rocket League my
favorite game and they took that off steam basically well they they they
bought the developer cionic so that's
going to be only available to buy on epic's game store right now it's still
on Steam but it'll be an Epic original in a sense yeah sort of because they own
it and if you still own it on Steam it'll still be there but they grabbed
that and then they also bought uh games like the outer Wilds that had
crowdfunding uh commitments commitments to steam like outer Wilds got
crowdfunded on Indiegogo or whatever and they said that it would launch on Steam
and then epic bought it so they're like
oh just kidding it won't be on Steam so see from the de developers perspective
you're playing with fire you're right you're garnering negative sentiment from
your own Community especially from a crowdfunding campaign where these are
like the early adopters these are the die hards these people are really going
on out on a limb to help you they're your real fans to betray those people is
not a good not a good scene exactly and so this is where you know things got a
little ugly where um yeah people were
getting upset about it and they might be justified but real quick let's talk
about why epic would want to do this okay because why the exclusives angle
yeah they came in here kind of disrupting the industry you know but but but why so
here's the argument Tim Sweeney the CEO of
Epic uh says that exclusives are quote
the only strategy that will change the 7030 status quo of the game industry so
he kind of like presents this as they're doing a good thing it's not so much that
they're he's saying that the company is not coming in here trying to be like uh
we want all the market share and all the users we're doing a good this is social
justice well he is saying that he wants to add competition to this Marketplace
he does say that but yeah his major spin
he he's even gone so far to as to say that if steam were to change their
prices to the same split that epic has that they would just close up shop and
even list the epic games on Steam that's true and I you have to wonder if he said
that because he knows Val isn't going to do that or whether I think it's all spin
the reason that they're doing the exclusives thing is just because it's a smart play from a a network economics
perspective so instead of instead of
building an app that's feature Rich let's say it matches the it matches
steam feature for feature you spend all the money developing that app and then
you try to give players a reason to go to it right that's risky right they took
the opposite approach they made a minimally viable product they made a
store that's just a store there's no carts there's no reviews there's no wish
list they didn't even have refunds they got nothing it's just barebones you can
buy stuff they started with that mvp and
they but critically they give you a reason to actually go there fortnite
other titles right so you start with getting users to the platform and then
you build out the platform with the features that users will eventually want
and that strategy while it probably
seems good to team Sweeney is people are
not happy about it because then that means that they are forced to use a
platform that they don't really want to use because it doesn't have all the
stuff that steam has a lot of Creature Comforts especially if you're talking about a sequel like Borderlands where
you've played the first two games with all of the community aspects and social
aspects that are built into steam and now if you want to play the third one
you can't carry over all those Creature Comforts that you're used to exactly so
in terms of the features you mentioned that epic games has way less features
than steam epic has released a road map
for development they have said you know
obviously we're not just bringing in all these people and then just going to like
make them use our crappy store like we want to make the store good so they've
released a road map uh it's publicly viewable on Trello um it's a live
document it's a Bo and they're changing it as as they go but the problem is as
some people on Reddit have pointed out they've already missed a bunch of deadlines and this is the way the road
maps go that that's part for the chus for software yeah yeah exactly they say
that we're going to oh we're going to have these many in 6 months but they don't hit it and that obviously is
making people concerned there have also been concern some concerns about data
collection because Chinese gaming giant
company tensent has a stake in the company so people were kind of concerned
that like 10 cent was like stealing their data and stuff I think those concerns are valid and uh concern those
concerns are concerning they're valid concerns and
they really um kind of stink up the soup but I think that those concerns will be
minimized once the other concerns about the platform and the feature set are
assuaged once they deal with that people won't care as much about this other
thing right now they're focusing on games that are destination games you're
going to you will switch because you really want to play this game and when
they load up their library with games like that um the users that they gain on
a per game basis is very large right and
eventually they'll have so many users that um a lot of developers want to be
on the platform they'll have acred enough finances that they'll be able to
build all these new features and they'll be able to afford to add new games to
the library because right now like with
the thing with dark you read about unfold games um dark is an indie game
very popular and they invited the developer and the game to be on Epic and
the developer said no yeah they refused and even though they offered him upfront
money they offered him um guaranteed
Revenue you I don't know how that is how that works but they just basically throw
a ton of money at them being like even if you don't sell as many as you think
you're going to sell or something we're going to give you that money as if you
had broke even yeah and I that's kind of the interesting thing is that they're
throwing so much money at developers uh in order to gain these
exclusivity deals but I think Gamers what they want in ex what they actually
want is for the company to spend that money on the platform itself and get it
to a point where it is competitive with steam they will do that though well
that's that's the promise but it it seems so far that they are you know
getting in all of these users and then just like keeping them there like they
have a road map for development I I know but like they're going super slow
they've been out since December it's coming up on a year and they haven't
really added that much that is actually useful I know that they've added some
things on the back end like the the the game tagging is better for like
searching and and stuff but they still don't have a shopping cart a lot of it's
going to be invisible to you though a lot of it is like localization new
currencies and stuff like that true you'll never see cuz they already have US dollars but that's not what that's
not what Gamers want Gamers want
electrolytes they they want they want the things that they can see a yeah
achievements friends list communities mods they want all of these things um so
it's it's it's hard to see it's hard to
I think that what it really comes down to is not knowing what is going on in
epic's head like are they evil or are
they good they have to be one you have to pick
one Tim be a good guy or a bad guy yeah what
does Epic do well they have the revenue
share they they have the 8812 split in order to actually help Indie developers
that's what they say is one of their main objectives more money that a
developer can spend making the game better that's true or they can actually
pass it on to Consumers which actually happened with Metro exus it's not really
clear if it came from True the game company or from EGS but when they moved
from Steam to the game store it was cheaper it was $10 cheaper I think they
did that because of the way it was right before launch they didn't want people were mad so hey at least it's $10
cheaper so because the developer has all that more all that much more percentage
to deal with they can actually just make the game a little cheaper and still be making more money indeed so they they
also Al have the influencer marketing program which is kind of like iffy I
guess but they are making it really easy for Indie developers to reach out to
influencers like twitch streamers and say hey you want to play our game and
we'll give you a bit of the cut or whatever so they're helping them again
in that way and they also have pledged to support crossplay uh initiatives so
like with rocket league and fortnite and now pubg I think just added it that's
not on epic game store but that kind of thing where you have people from
different platforms playing together epic has said that that's important to them so they they they are doing some
good things there is a downside for India developers too whereas the
exclusive model is really attractive if your game is a destination title like
Metro Exodus where people are going to move platforms just to play that game
that's great but if you're an indie developer and no one knows your game
it's better for you to be on multiple platforms indeed it's better for you to
be on Steam and on Epic because you just want as many people to see your game as
possible and that really kind of like ties into the fact that epic games seems
like they say that they're trying to help the market but it really seems like
they're trying to help themselves it seems like they're gobbling up exclusives gobbling up users and then
not really paying off with the rich feature experience um if we look at
something like Discord okay Discord has
a game store they have a 90% Revenue
share they give 90% of the revenue to developers and what did they do they had
a interesting app that had cool features
and everyone started using and then they added a store to it they started with
the features then added the store right now the the Discord store is amazing
either it doesn't have nearly as many features as Steam either but Discord has
a compelling reason to use it beyond the revenue share and the
exclusives so I I mean I have Discord everyone who plays PC games basically
uses Discord to chat now so if they have a story they tack a store on there
you're like oh okay that's fine it's a little more wholesome yeah how can you
be mad at that you're already using Discord exactly but epic games come in
there and be like oh this is we're doing a good thing for the people at least
they have that going for them though that's good for games they got fortnite
going for them if the conclusion of all of this is that steam ends up giving
more money to developers and we have two platforms that are both very
feature that would be great that would be great I want to live in that world I
mean that depends on on Epic fulfilling their promise to build out the features
which I'm sure they will I mean or they could just like nope the experience
sucks forever and you just come here cuz you have no choice where you going to go
I think they'll where you going to go you can't leave I think everyone will
hate them and want to leave but they'll
still have all the fortnite money if it got so bad and that's the real problem
if it got so bad if sentiment was so bad then a game developer wouldn't want to
be an exclusive for them regardless of the money they'd be like true that's
true we'll have to see whether they get to the point where they their reputation
is so tarnished yeah that a studio just
doesn't even want to be associated with them which is kind of what unfold games
did with dark said I'm not going to do that to my fans cuz dark is already on
the steam that's true I'm not going to pull it and do that to my fans I can only hope that the discourse about the
whole issue uh becomes slightly less
toxic but uh it's hard to see how that could happen when Epic isn't really
taking large strides towards what they say they want which is a featur you know
alternative to steam so Sweeney if you
disagree with us if you think you are taking large strides toward that then
come and sit in this chair yeah you can talk to Riley come on tuck link you
could be here hi Riley I'm Tim Sweeny I got something to say to you Mr Sweeney
hey we're trying our best Riley well okay I have to believe you
well that was a to link episode if you didn't know uh it's on TechLink is the
channel talk link is the show and we're going to have more we're not going to be
here on Friday in case you watched all the way to the end thank you so much and
that's the end buy this merch oh yeah it's for a different Channel but we got
hoodies we got a t-shirt we we got we
got a set you can't buy the set check out these plants woo this isn't even
real bet you didn't know that we don't have the money for it we don't have the
time to water plants but we might have that time if you just give us more
money I like how that's the we have a lot in common with epic
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