We have thoughts about the Epic Games Store - TalkLinked #4
TechLinked
·TechLinked
·2020-05-05
·
3,382 words · ~16 min read
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is this talk linked on a Wednesday what
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what that's exciting what is the meaning of this so before we get into the uh
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epic gam store crisis as I like to call it um we I want to let you guys know
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that we're going on workation LMG lus Media Group so there will be no Tech
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linked on Friday but then we'll be back on
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Monday so it's okay the epic game store
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it's disrupted the industry in a huge way what a mess people are mad people
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are upset on both sides of the aisle
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Democrat and Republican even Ralph nater's
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po but it's a huge mess so in order to understand it we have to go back to the
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beginning okay we have to go back
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Marty so in December epic games launched
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the epic games store okay and the big news when they launched it was that they
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had an 88 to 12% developer to store Revenue shares so
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that's 88% to the developers of sales
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12% to the store yep okay and that was a
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big deal because valve takes 30% of sales from Steam from Steam the
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deao Monopoly player in this space right if you don't know
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steam it's kind of a big deal yeah it's the big Monopoly yeah you're right so
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shortly after epic announced that valve changed their revenue share to take 25%
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from games that make over $10 million and 20% from games that make over 50
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million so they were like uh we can change the revenue share but you got to
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make a ton of money it's a weird response because on the one hand that's
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going to cost valve a lot of money from those whales those big developers so
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absolute value wise that's a lot of money going from 30 down to 25% that 5%
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means a lot on the other hand that did nothing to incentivize medium small to
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medium developers exactly it really only affects the big players and
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it's important because while epic's Revenue split is apparently designed to
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help small developers that situation
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where you have to sell a million copies of your game in order to make more money
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uh in order to have a greater Revenue share doesn't really help small
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developers at all it only helps the big guys who are like you know Ubisoft which
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is going to sell a million copies anyways and even for those big guys it's
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still 8% higher rate than epic is offering yeah it doesn't even get down
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there like significant that's they only got they only got halfway there for some
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of the people yeah so initially it it
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seemed pretty good the revenue share was cool but then epic games store started
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grabbing exclusive games so they started with some indie games and stuff but then
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they grabbed Metro Exodus which was you
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know the sequel to the Metro franchise which is pretty popular so as I
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understand it Metro was already listed on Steam you could pre-order it yes it
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was coming out just like two weeks hence that's very and then psych it's going to
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be only on Epic yeah however we will
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honor any pre-orders yeah they're going to honor pre-orders but it was still
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like a huge shock right cuz you're like wait what I was what so then they then
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they grabbed Borderlands 3 and then they had control and this is like kind of in
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this ensuing months they grabbed control from RE games a lot of Ubisoft PC titles
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like the new gross Recon and division 2 and stuff are on uh they're they're an
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exclusive to the epic game store but you still have to install up play right yeah
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the division 2 was also on up playay cuz it's it's ubisoft's game makes sense so
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then real quick adding insult to injury they also started grabbing even more
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games that had already been on other platforms so like rocket League my
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favorite game and they took that off steam basically well they they they
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bought the developer cionic so that's
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going to be only available to buy on epic's game store right now it's still
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on Steam but it'll be an Epic original in a sense yeah sort of because they own
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it and if you still own it on Steam it'll still be there but they grabbed
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that and then they also bought uh games like the outer Wilds that had
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crowdfunding uh commitments commitments to steam like outer Wilds got
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crowdfunded on Indiegogo or whatever and they said that it would launch on Steam
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and then epic bought it so they're like
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oh just kidding it won't be on Steam so see from the de developers perspective
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you're playing with fire you're right you're garnering negative sentiment from
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your own Community especially from a crowdfunding campaign where these are
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like the early adopters these are the die hards these people are really going
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on out on a limb to help you they're your real fans to betray those people is
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not a good not a good scene exactly and so this is where you know things got a
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little ugly where um yeah people were
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getting upset about it and they might be justified but real quick let's talk
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about why epic would want to do this okay because why the exclusives angle
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yeah they came in here kind of disrupting the industry you know but but but why so
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here's the argument Tim Sweeney the CEO of
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Epic uh says that exclusives are quote
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the only strategy that will change the 7030 status quo of the game industry so
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he kind of like presents this as they're doing a good thing it's not so much that
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they're he's saying that the company is not coming in here trying to be like uh
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we want all the market share and all the users we're doing a good this is social
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justice well he is saying that he wants to add competition to this Marketplace
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he does say that but yeah his major spin
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he he's even gone so far to as to say that if steam were to change their
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prices to the same split that epic has that they would just close up shop and
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even list the epic games on Steam that's true and I you have to wonder if he said
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that because he knows Val isn't going to do that or whether I think it's all spin
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the reason that they're doing the exclusives thing is just because it's a smart play from a a network economics
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perspective so instead of instead of
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building an app that's feature Rich let's say it matches the it matches
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steam feature for feature you spend all the money developing that app and then
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you try to give players a reason to go to it right that's risky right they took
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the opposite approach they made a minimally viable product they made a
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store that's just a store there's no carts there's no reviews there's no wish
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list they didn't even have refunds they got nothing it's just barebones you can
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buy stuff they started with that mvp and
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they but critically they give you a reason to actually go there fortnite
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other titles right so you start with getting users to the platform and then
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you build out the platform with the features that users will eventually want
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and that strategy while it probably
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seems good to team Sweeney is people are
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not happy about it because then that means that they are forced to use a
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platform that they don't really want to use because it doesn't have all the
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stuff that steam has a lot of Creature Comforts especially if you're talking about a sequel like Borderlands where
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you've played the first two games with all of the community aspects and social
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aspects that are built into steam and now if you want to play the third one
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you can't carry over all those Creature Comforts that you're used to exactly so
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in terms of the features you mentioned that epic games has way less features
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than steam epic has released a road map
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for development they have said you know
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obviously we're not just bringing in all these people and then just going to like
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make them use our crappy store like we want to make the store good so they've
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released a road map uh it's publicly viewable on Trello um it's a live
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document it's a Bo and they're changing it as as they go but the problem is as
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some people on Reddit have pointed out they've already missed a bunch of deadlines and this is the way the road
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maps go that that's part for the chus for software yeah yeah exactly they say
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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
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making people concerned there have also been concern some concerns about data
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collection because Chinese gaming giant
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company tensent has a stake in the company so people were kind of concerned
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that like 10 cent was like stealing their data and stuff I think those concerns are valid and uh concern those
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concerns are concerning they're valid concerns and
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they really um kind of stink up the soup but I think that those concerns will be
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minimized once the other concerns about the platform and the feature set are
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assuaged once they deal with that people won't care as much about this other
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thing right now they're focusing on games that are destination games you're
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going to you will switch because you really want to play this game and when
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they load up their library with games like that um the users that they gain on
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a per game basis is very large right and
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eventually they'll have so many users that um a lot of developers want to be
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on the platform they'll have acred enough finances that they'll be able to
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build all these new features and they'll be able to afford to add new games to
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the library because right now like with
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the thing with dark you read about unfold games um dark is an indie game
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very popular and they invited the developer and the game to be on Epic and
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the developer said no yeah they refused and even though they offered him upfront
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money they offered him um guaranteed
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Revenue you I don't know how that is how that works but they just basically throw
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a ton of money at them being like even if you don't sell as many as you think
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you're going to sell or something we're going to give you that money as if you
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had broke even yeah and I that's kind of the interesting thing is that they're
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throwing so much money at developers uh in order to gain these
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exclusivity deals but I think Gamers what they want in ex what they actually
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want is for the company to spend that money on the platform itself and get it
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to a point where it is competitive with steam they will do that though well
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that's that's the promise but it it seems so far that they are you know
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getting in all of these users and then just like keeping them there like they
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have a road map for development I I know but like they're going super slow
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they've been out since December it's coming up on a year and they haven't
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really added that much that is actually useful I know that they've added some
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things on the back end like the the the game tagging is better for like
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searching and and stuff but they still don't have a shopping cart a lot of it's
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going to be invisible to you though a lot of it is like localization new
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currencies and stuff like that true you'll never see cuz they already have US dollars but that's not what that's
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not what Gamers want Gamers want
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electrolytes they they want they want the things that they can see a yeah
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achievements friends list communities mods they want all of these things um so
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it's it's it's hard to see it's hard to
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I think that what it really comes down to is not knowing what is going on in
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epic's head like are they evil or are
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they good they have to be one you have to pick
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one Tim be a good guy or a bad guy yeah what
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does Epic do well they have the revenue
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share they they have the 8812 split in order to actually help Indie developers
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that's what they say is one of their main objectives more money that a
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developer can spend making the game better that's true or they can actually
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pass it on to Consumers which actually happened with Metro exus it's not really
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clear if it came from True the game company or from EGS but when they moved
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from Steam to the game store it was cheaper it was $10 cheaper I think they
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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
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cheaper so because the developer has all that more all that much more percentage
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to deal with they can actually just make the game a little cheaper and still be making more money indeed so they they
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also Al have the influencer marketing program which is kind of like iffy I
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guess but they are making it really easy for Indie developers to reach out to
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influencers like twitch streamers and say hey you want to play our game and
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we'll give you a bit of the cut or whatever so they're helping them again
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in that way and they also have pledged to support crossplay uh initiatives so
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like with rocket league and fortnite and now pubg I think just added it that's
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not on epic game store but that kind of thing where you have people from
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different platforms playing together epic has said that that's important to them so they they they are doing some
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good things there is a downside for India developers too whereas the
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exclusive model is really attractive if your game is a destination title like
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Metro Exodus where people are going to move platforms just to play that game
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that's great but if you're an indie developer and no one knows your game
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it's better for you to be on multiple platforms indeed it's better for you to
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be on Steam and on Epic because you just want as many people to see your game as
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possible and that really kind of like ties into the fact that epic games seems
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like they say that they're trying to help the market but it really seems like
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they're trying to help themselves it seems like they're gobbling up exclusives gobbling up users and then
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not really paying off with the rich feature experience um if we look at
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something like Discord okay Discord has
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a game store they have a 90% Revenue
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share they give 90% of the revenue to developers and what did they do they had
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a interesting app that had cool features
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and everyone started using and then they added a store to it they started with
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the features then added the store right now the the Discord store is amazing
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either it doesn't have nearly as many features as Steam either but Discord has
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a compelling reason to use it beyond the revenue share and the
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exclusives so I I mean I have Discord everyone who plays PC games basically
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uses Discord to chat now so if they have a story they tack a store on there
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you're like oh okay that's fine it's a little more wholesome yeah how can you
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be mad at that you're already using Discord exactly but epic games come in
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there and be like oh this is we're doing a good thing for the people at least
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they have that going for them though that's good for games they got fortnite
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going for them if the conclusion of all of this is that steam ends up giving
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more money to developers and we have two platforms that are both very
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feature that would be great that would be great I want to live in that world I
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mean that depends on on Epic fulfilling their promise to build out the features
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which I'm sure they will I mean or they could just like nope the experience
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sucks forever and you just come here cuz you have no choice where you going to go
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I think they'll where you going to go you can't leave I think everyone will
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hate them and want to leave but they'll
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still have all the fortnite money if it got so bad and that's the real problem
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if it got so bad if sentiment was so bad then a game developer wouldn't want to
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be an exclusive for them regardless of the money they'd be like true that's
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true we'll have to see whether they get to the point where they their reputation
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is so tarnished yeah that a studio just
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doesn't even want to be associated with them which is kind of what unfold games
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did with dark said I'm not going to do that to my fans cuz dark is already on
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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
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whole issue uh becomes slightly less
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toxic but uh it's hard to see how that could happen when Epic isn't really
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taking large strides towards what they say they want which is a featur you know
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alternative to steam so Sweeney if you
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disagree with us if you think you are taking large strides toward that then
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come and sit in this chair yeah you can talk to Riley come on tuck link you
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could be here hi Riley I'm Tim Sweeny I got something to say to you Mr Sweeney
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hey we're trying our best Riley well okay I have to believe you
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well that was a to link episode if you didn't know uh it's on TechLink is the
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channel talk link is the show and we're going to have more we're not going to be
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here on Friday in case you watched all the way to the end thank you so much and
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that's the end buy this merch oh yeah it's for a different Channel but we got
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hoodies we got a t-shirt we we got we
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got a set you can't buy the set check out these plants woo this isn't even
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real bet you didn't know that we don't have the money for it we don't have the
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time to water plants but we might have that time if you just give us more
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money I like how that's the we have a lot in common with epic
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actually TechLink gam
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store see you later