I mean it's not like Epic does anything to help sales, they just give devs slightly more of the money. Or at least it cannot prove that. Their store is so badly organized that the reduction in discovery and the Sweeney-created (and in fact at this point seemingly deliberate) negative association of the epic store and in particular exclusivity on it, it's impossible for a company to judge whether the 25.7% increased money (70%->88%) is not easily eaten up by the loss in sales compared to other stores.

Valve can also trivially point to all the stuff Steam provides like forums, mod integration and streaming to justify higher cost, and Sweeney suspiciously never talks about that. I bet if he had to, he'd have to admit that he actually provides less value with his baby store considering how little devs get for the 12% taken compared to what Valve provides for the 30% they take.

Is it cool that stores take 30%? No.

Can I, as a gamer, judge whether it's a valid amount of even one worthy of critique in particular comparing brick&mortar supply chains (his 75%-loss-criticism is a false equivalence, as the extra costs he adds existed with physical stores, too)? No, I cannot.

Does it feel to me as a gamer that I get "more" buying a game on Steam than on Epic? For sure! Sometimes I can get it cheaper on Epic, which might be worth it compared to having stuff like workshop integration or prompt updates on Steam. Or it might not be, that's something everyone has to judge.

For me personally, my takeaway from Sweeney's baby trantrum antics and aggressive exclusivity has been this:

I window-shop on all digital store fronts.
I select where to buy based on isthereanydeal, with no particular weight given to any store except a little one towards GOG because I get actual installers for offline storage there.
However, Epic is explicitly excluded. I browse there, I take the freebies, I don't buy there. The only money Swine-y ever got from my was the 7€ when that bug around Death Stranding happened and I didn't realize my free game actually cost me money instead of being free.

His criticism might be valid. Or not. I cannot judge that. Regardless, he's an asshole and his shop is terrible for me as a customer comparing the alternatives.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How so

Well

Then Sweeney adjusts his flight goggles and gets ready for takeoff on one of his pet peeves: the 30% platform fee on Steam. "There was a good case for [such fees] in the early days," writes Sweeney, "but the scale is now high and operating costs have been driven down, while the churn of new game releases is so fast that the brief marketing or UA value the storefront provides is far disproportionate to the fee."

Sweeney opines that, if you were to strip away the top 25 selling games on Steam, "I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the developer themselves made." The maths to get there is 30% to Valve, 30% on marketing, and 15% on servers / engine costs, so "the system takes 75% and that leaves 25% for actually creating the game, worse than the retail distribution economics of the 1990s."

Sounds valid, it's a really high cut

"Right now, you assholes are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30% is for the little people," writes Sweeney. "We're all in for a prolonged battle if Apple tries to keep their monopoly and 30% by cutting backroom deals with big publishers to keep them quiet. Why not give ALL developers a better deal? What better way is there to convince Apple quickly that their model is now totally untenable?"

Sounds valid, making deals with the big publishers for smaller cut and taking the big cut from smaller publishers. Sounds pretty shit

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but OTOH I can easily see this be discussed away. Economy of scale is very much a thing in physical distribution (so smaller board games have to set aside significantly higher percentages to manufacturing, logistics and marketing), and I lack the business knowledge to know how this does or does not translates to digital distribution.

In other words I cannot judge that, but I have two indicators to suggest it might be a thing:

Physical distribution mirrors it.
Sweeney is an absolutely untrustworthy source, and him so vehemently poking at it suggests it's a false narrative.

(Plus let's not forget that Sweeney would take a 105% cut if he could get away with, he himself is a money-greedy bastard)

[–] [email protected] -3 points 8 months ago

I think their claims seem credible. I think Steam lowering their take shows that 30% was indeed higher than necessary. And lowering it for those selling shitloads of copies and keeping it high for smaller sellers does sound a bit backwards and scummy.

But both Epic and Valve are businesses. Of course they're going to be greedy and scummy. I wouldn't really expect anything else. I just think in this case the specific arguments towards Steam seem valid.