Comment by CursedSilicon
13 hours ago
I'd question the idea that they treat developers poorly. Epic Games Store exists and Famously beats Steam (and others) over the head by charging only a 12% fee
Hell, they even buy timed exclusive access to certain games
And yet. Steam persists
I lack an informed opinion on the matter but I have to wonder what you think the one thing has to do with the other? Developers have very little choice but to go where the customers are.
Why aren't the customers going to Epic Game Store? It's the PC, after all. It's explicitly not a walled garden
EGS has yet to reach the feaure parity of Steam from 15 years ago.
The Epic Game Store is just kind of mid. The app feels spammy, the game selection is less, and it doesn't really offer anything over the existing options beyond the monthly free game gimmick. If they want customers to head there it needs to be better, not just good enough.
Who knows? Presumably because Steam hasn't done anything to drive them off, they've generally been satisfied with the service, and the titles they want are available. At least that would be my guess based on my personal experience but I assume Valve has a much better grasp of their audience than I do.
Having worked in the games industry for long time, everyone is constantly trying in vain to escape the 30% tax.
It’s fascinating how (mostly western liberal) game developers argue in favor of 99% taxes for general population “for maintaining infrastructure” and yet cannot fathom paying a fee for maintaining actual infrastructure that is necessary for their business to function.
I'm not familiar with whatever strawman you're invoking here.
By "everyone" I mean game studio owners. They're desperate to not pay 30% to Valve / Sony / Apple / whatever.
The vast majority of people that work at game studios don't really care about that, they see a shrinking fraction of the profits of their employers and worsening conditions.
The epic games launcher that famously takes 46 seconds to launch. It’s cost them 100s of millions and they refuse to fix it.
> Epic Games Store exists and Famously beats Steam (and others) over the head by charging only a 12% fee
https://www.fortnite.com/news/fortnite-developers-will-soon-...
Unless you're inside Fortnite, where Epic takes a 63% cut of any 'in game item' you sell, and you don't have a choice of storefront inside the game.
Rules for me, but not for thee, so sayeth Timmy Tencent as he collects his next ten cents of revenue from a twelve year old.
The Epic store is horrendously slow though. I bought a few games there but in practice the client is just so slow that I avoid it if I can.