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Epic explains why it hasn't sued Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft over 30% fee
(www.gamesindustry.biz)
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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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30% fees are insane. Those cost are passed down to us the consumer. We get shittier game because a third of the profit goes to these marketplaces.
I get the epic hate bandwagon but what the fuck is up with the constant bootlicking? Google sucks for doing this and all the other platforms as well. They ALL employ monopolistic tactics to keep their moats, stop defending them because the circle jerk tells you too.
Whilst that may be the case, every single day one launch on EGS and other stores (GOG, Microsoft, Steam) launch at exactly the same price on Epic despite the lesser cut. Not one single title I’ve seen launch at a lower price on EGS.
I feel it’s naive to think that is, the consumer would ever benefit from a lesser cut, the fat shits at the top would just keep more.
And they're hemorrhaging money
The price is the same because of a Most Favored Nations clause in Steam's ToS. Publishers have to sell it at the same or higher price on other platforms to keep their product on Steam, which is the lion's share of the market. This is part of the accusation in the lawsuit: https://programming.dev/comment/5159579
Now you could argue that even if it were removed, publishers would still sell at the same price and keep the extra profit, but that's just hypothetical at this point.
Even on EGS exclusives? No such clause should affect the price if it’s not on sale on another store.
Not one single EGS exclusive has been sold at less than standard prices afaik.
The whole thing is bullshit.
How do you compare it with other platforms if it's exclusive to EGS? For timed exclusives, it would mean the price would have to go UP on EGS when the Steam version launches, which seems like pretty dumb marketing honestly.
I know I'm playing devil's advocate defending Epic and publishers, but I don't see how defending rent extracting monopolies is any better.
Not that hard to compare to be honest when games launch at price parity with console launches despite the lesser cut.
Borderlands 3 launched on Xbox, PlayStation and EGS, each at $59.99
PlayStation and Xbox had a 30% cut and cost the same.
0 benefit to the consumer.
Fuck them. It’s all bullshit.
Sony also has an MFN, not sure about Xbox: https://tryhardguides.com/epic-games-ceo-says-sony-is-the-reason-they-cant-lower-prices/
The real reason Epic hasn't sued Sony is because they're an Epic shareholder
I don't even think Sony's MFN is an issue as Alan Wake 2 is $10 cheaper than on consoles, a boon for the consumer and something I could get behind, but no.
Vbucks aren't even lower cost on pc where 100% of the sale goes to Epic. No 30% cut there but prices are the same.
I'm all for supporting the message that Tim is trying to portray but they're so inconsistent with the way they manage the business I can't for the life of my accept that they're being honest.
They briefly cut the price of vbucks on mobile when they pulled the stunt and could easily do the same on pc permanently. PC Vbucks aren't transferable to Playstation wallets so they should be able to do something.
Didn't that clause already go to court, and it was found to only apply to steam keys, not all releases of the game?
No, the trial hasn't started yet. In the complaint, the plaintiffs quote Valve saying that it applies not only to Steam keys but to everything.
The consumer would benefit from a higher quality of games, since they would become more lucrative to make and the available budget after a successful title would be higher.
There's also the indie scene that would benefit from every dollar. A 30% middleman tax can affect a lot more than just the price.
Cutting ceo pay is a good idea too but one problem doesn't forgive another and regulating soft monopolies would be a first step in that direction anyways.
They don't set the prices.
Who is they?
The publishers could already set the prices lower on EGS by default with the 18% difference being put in consumers pockets making EGS a more enticing place to buy games for now, instead, they want to sell games the same price on EGS vs all other stores they offer titles on pocketing the difference.
EGS Exclusives even launch at the standard pricing despite the money they used to receive up front from Epic and the lesser cut. None of this grandstanding is a benefit to me as a consumer and I won't give a fuck in supporting Epic/Tim until it is.
Epic, of course.
Man, just imagine the shitstorm if a game launched at $50 on Epic, then a year later increased prices to $62 everywhere due to Steam's terms and conditions so that the dev could maintain the same profit from steam.
Of course that will never happen because there's zero consumer benefit and instead they just launch at $60 on Epic. If that did happen and the savings were benefiting the consumer then Epic might have a point.
The 30% covers storage, distribution, discovery, and probably more. If you had to implement that yourself you'd wind up with a shittier version for probably more money.
This is horseshit. Apple is making billions of dollars a year on the app store.
Setting a CDN and a document search service take like 5min on Azure / AWS / GCP, and get you 90% of the way there, and your annual bill for them might push into the hundreds of thousands, but nothing close to approaching the amount of money that Google and apple are taking in through the app store.
People really need to stop defending this horseshit behaviour. If it's so hard to run an App store then why won't Google or Apple fairly compete against any?
Google does, not sure what's up with apple.
I'll happily pay these 30% if it means I get quality services for them:
(using Steam as an example here)
People always act like those are to be taken as granted, but if you have ever worked in dev/devops, you would know that there's a lot of work maintaining each one of them.
Also, you can use these services for as long as you want, despite paying for them with a single one-time purchase.
Of course, if the platform doesn't provide any services or benefits, your point stands. In that case just avoid it.
Responsive support? On Steam?
Apart from the forums, Epic offer all those things and take only 12%. Microsoft offer most of those things and also take 12%.
Hosting a forums platform costs almost nothing. Moderating them like Valve, expecting the game creators to do the work and doing an extremely poor job, with each big game hub filled with toxicity and people earning points for racism and other forms of bigotry, is certainly not worth 18%.
Except even without the fees games generally get released at the same price
You're just licking someone else's boot. Epic is by no means pro-consumer.
And yes, google is evil. But that doesn't imply there's someone good in this situation.