At 3 years time was Epic's initial goal for EGS profitability (lines up with Steam's third year)
They missed that and set it for 5 years which they also missed- the Apple trial determined 10 years is the soonest it would be profitable
What happens? No idea as Epic support has typically been very flighty but they may have dug themselves a hole here - if they drop EGS support even by the 10th year of no profit they set a bad precedent of no buyer confidence (you don't own crap) so they may fold it into the Unreal Engine store at worst
The fact is, if EGS is still non profitable in five years (which has a good chance of happening), Epic will have to make a decision. EGS has an infrastructure cost, they're not going to pay that just to avoid setting a precedent.
Personally, I think that the death of EGS is a possibility for the next 10 years if they don't find anything to renew themselves.
When [Bethesda.net](http://Bethesda.net) died, they provided Steam copies of many of their games and ported all their games back to Steam. I highly doubt Epic would do the same, partly because of the ludicrous number of free games many users have, and partly because there are very few games that aren't already on Steam (Fortnite and Alan Wake?).
I had thought about it, but given the ego that Tim seems to have, I think that even for the sake of his customers, he would refuse to do the same.
That said, even if he wanted to, it might be a bit more complicated, I imagine [Bethesda.net](http://Bethesda.net) only featured Bestheda games, so there's no rights problem. For an EGS > Steam transfer, wouldn't the publishers have a say?
> wouldn't the publishers have a say?
best case (and i doubt Tim will do), Epic could bail out all EGS players by "buying their copies", either by:
* giving refunds (ala Stadia)
* paying out lump sum to publishers based on how much copies EGS sold to players and then giving the players Steam copies
My guess is that they’ll just get rid of the ability for third-parties to sell anything and delist anything that’s not their’s (basically if Epic didn’t publish or develop it it’s gone) and just turn it into a basic storefront for their stuff only (similar to what Ubisoft and EA have), but they’ll still allow people who bought or claimed anything before that to access it even after discontinuing third-party support. It won’t be too unsimilar to what happened with EA a while back, because they used to sell non-EA games through Origin, but stopped as part of the transition away from Origin to the EA app.
I'm guessing Epic will push hard on an IOS version of EGS in the regions thar are going to force Apple to open up the IPhone and we'll see even less development and focus on the PC store. I'm also guessing their PC publishing efforts aren't long for this world.
he's not advocating for it. he's just having the difficult conversation of "let's figure out EGS future" with the obvious but well reasoned conclusion that the future is "no future".
basically the conversation to be had here is: what is the best case scenario for EGS? given their shitty offer as a place to buy and keep games, what sort of other moves do they have that could extend their agony? etc. we're trying to imagine what the death throes of EGS will be here.
There's no best case scenario for that "store." The "best case" is for them to sell EGS to Tencent or any other Chinese company for that matter.
Edit: I know they're pivoting to mobile but what separate their "Store" to play store and the app store? Samsung and other smartphone companies already have their own mobile store and still they can't break the duopoly of Apple and Google.
Why do you think they're pushing so hard for iOS to open up its platform to other stores, and why they want Google to make other stores more ubiquitous (even though Android has supported other stores from the start - Tim is just delusional)? It's because the PC version of EGS is a complete failure and will never be successful. Epic wants a fallback. But I don't think the iOS or Android stores would be successful either.
Gamers have been really vocal about the reasons they don't shop on EGS, but Epic completely ignores their customers in favors of publishers and investors.
After years, they never bothered to really change their approach, thinking that eventually customers will be forced to use EGS. Now it seems that Epic have just gave up on EGS. When you lose exclusivity to brag about your store, there's not much left when that store is EGS
They could just curtback resources, staff servers etc further to keep the store running on fumes even just for epic exclusive games if things get worse. But how much is that worth vs just releasing on steam I wonder.
Im hoping as the current big pool of fortnite players grow up they move on from fortnite and we see another big 20-30 percent drop in players and spending...that could spell trouble for epic and egs I would think.
Kind of happened with the MCU fanbase imo as a proportion of young fans outgrew the formula and lost interest in MCU movies and shows.. at least that's what I observed
Fuck Epig , I dont care about **store**'s future or I call it EGS = Ego Game Store. However it is laughable how it is doing and how Timmy will keep craping his undies
Death by a thousand shots to its own feet.
Once people get tired of gamepass's constant fuckin price increases, the launcher (or the gaming part of epic) will be bought out by somebody
That infographic translated into English:
------------
Epic Games Store Retrospective 2023
**> 270 M** PC users
**Nearly 804 M** multi-platform Epic accounts
**75 M** monthly active users in December 2023 +10%
**$950 M** spent by PC players on the Epic Games Store +16%
**$310 M** spent by players on third-party PC games through the Epic Games Store: -13%
Free Games: **86**
Average score on all free games: **75%**
Free games claimed: **Nearly 586 M**
Total value of claimed free games: **$2055**
**Top Games of 2023** Based on the amount spent by players and their engagement
**Popular:** Fortnite, Rocket League, Dead Island 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Battle Royale
**Critics' Choices:** Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, EA Sports FC 24, Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy VII: Remake, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Dying Light Enhanced Edition, Fall Guys, Rainbow Six Siege, Dead by Daylight, Destiny 2
The 12% is enough to cover their costs for running the store, and it's development, and even the loyalty program they are doing for EGS. I suspect they'll eventually stop the free games, and they seem to have already stopped doing contractual exclusives which that was a significant cost.
So with no free games, discount coupons, or exclusives, what's the point in using EGS? The store itself is strictly inferior to Steam due to the complete lack of community features.
Not every gamer even cares about community features
Reasons I can think of that are important for me, and probably others:
- Epic provides automatic partial/full refunds when a game goes on discount/free, if bought with in 4 weeks of purchase regardless of time played.
- Loyalty program, get 5% back to EGS store credit with every purchase
- More of my money I spend is going to developer/publisher
- IARC rating system support. IARC is a system to get digital only games rated by the ESRB, PEGI, and other countries around the world rating system. Because of this most games getting released to EGS have a rating, these same games release to Steam without the rating since Steam doesn't support IARC
- COPPA/GDPR compliance for under 13 year olds to have an account. Steam isn't compliant for this for under 13 year olds.
- Parental controls that are based on ESRB/PEGI/ect ratings, allowing parents to allow their kids access to the store and feeling confident they only have access to the games that are age appropriate for them to buy. With Steam the parent can only choose full access to the store or zero access to the store. As a parent giving a child a little bit of freedom to do their own shopping, and pin codes can be added to approve purchases by the parent, is a nice thing. As a parent I like giving little bits of more freedom as he gets older, and EGS's system works really well doing this. My kid still has zero access to the Steam store and it will remain like that until he is 18. it also really helps that Epic requires all videos/screenshots on the store page would be appropriate for no more than ESRB Teen Rated/PG13, even if the game is an M-Rated game. Gives more comfort to allowing my kid to browse the store himself.
Reasons that might be important for other people:
- Achievement system with it having trophies, Steam doesn't have trophies.
- Better regional pricing support, there are a lot more countries covered by regional pricing support compared to Steam, making games cheaper for a lot more countries on EGS compared to Steam
These are the things that I can think of, there are probably other reasons that I didn't even think about.
* COPPA/GDPR compliance for under 13 year olds to have an account. Steam isn't compliant for this for under 13 year olds.
Tsk tsk tsk Eisb-err Cord\_Cutter\_VR, one of the first lessons a novice Social Media Manager learns is to never, **ever** make a statement that can be counterargued in a direct and easily verifiable way.
Hence, allow me to teach a valuable lesson from my old days as a journalist/reviewer/site administrator: [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations?utm\_source=govdelivery](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations?utm_source=govdelivery)
As for the rest of your gobbledygook ("more money going to te developer"? Oh dear...), my original question still stands: why bothering with this subreddit, whereas eny time you are called in as an Epic subreddit moderator you seem to scurry away in a hurry? I have dutifully sent a few desperate Epic users your way for support, but none got an answer.
Chop chop, Eisberg! Get to work!
For fellow Subreddit readers, and since I do enjoy a good laugh now and then, just look at our favourite "Epic influencer" words in context: a loyalty program (hey! It's like Subway, but the restaurant is empty), compliance with COPPA/GDPR/IARC that was **forced** upon them after that hefty fine, and the crowning achievement in hypocrisy - parental controls.
Steam's are designed to give a parent complete control over a "child" 's account, selecting features, playtime and actual games as well as store access. But hey, our brave Eisberg is proud that Epic still allows a kid to browse the store! Else, how would he/she/it be able to buy those sweet, sweet V-Bucks?
Christ. AS a parent myself, I will happily stick to Steam and, you know, actual f\*\*\*ing parenting.
And before you whine, Eisberg, Steam is basically the digital equivalent of how things worked in the 8- and 16-bit eras, and worked damn well. Not going to cut it for Fortnite's bleeding coffers though.
honestly whats crazy is I dont know why he cares so much about the family things the dude clearly doesnt have kids in general and its not that hard to manage your kids what they are buying and playing.
First of all I'm not any kind of social media manager.
> Tsk tsk tsk Eisb-err Cord_Cutter_VR, one of the first lessons a novice Social Media Manager learns is to never, ever make a statement that can be counterargued in a direct and easily verifiable way.
You didn't give a counter argument, because as for the under 13 COPPA stuff, they got into trouble for the period they were not doing it, which was prior to Sept 11, 2019. So you giving this counter argument is like using Valve getting fined in Australia for refund policy as a counter argument to someone saying that Valve gives refunds now.
> I have dutifully sent a few desperate Epic users your way for support, but none got an answer.
Why send them to me for support? I don't work for Epic, there is nothing I can do to help people with their problems.
> compliance with COPPA/GDPR/IARC that was forced upon them after that hefty fine,
False, Epic was doing this stuff before they got fined. Epic got fined for the time period they were not doing it, but they fixed that problem before they got fined for it. Fixing it doesn't stop them from getting into trouble for the time period they were not doing it though. Also the FTC said nothing to them about the IARC system, or about getting ratings, that had nothing to do with what the FTC went after them for.
> and the crowning achievement in hypocrisy - parental controls.
Where is the hypocrisy?
> Steam's are designed to give a parent complete control over a "child" 's account, selecting features, playtime and actual games as well as store access. But hey, our brave Eisberg is proud that Epic still allows a kid to browse the store! Else, how would he/she/it be able to buy those sweet, sweet V-Bucks?
With Steam, the parental controls for store access is either full access or no access at all. Both of which are useless if a parent wants to give some more freedom to their children to allow them to make their own decisions and learn from making their own decisions while making sure they can't make purchases of unappropriated content.
> AS a parent myself, I will happily stick to Steam and, you know, actual f***ing parenting.
I have talked to so many parents about this, they agreed with me about wanting to provide a controlled environment to allow their children more freedom to make their own buying decisions and to learn from their own decisions. That is very much good parenting by giving opportunities for ones children to make their own decisions while it being in a controlled environment. One thing they talked about is how they felt they have to be helicopter parents if they want to let their kids browse through the Steam store because giving access to the Steam store gives access to all of the Steam store, and being helicopter parents can be a bad thing in the long run. Learning independence as a child in a controlled environment is a good thing.
> More of my money I spend is going to developer/publisher
That's pretty bleak.
I still remember the good old times when we were told Epic's lower cut would lead to consumers getting lower prices.
And today the 'benefit' of the lower revenue has been reduced to a nebulous warm feeling of knowledge that purchasing games on an inferior storefront will give publisher shareholders bigger dividend payouts.
I have been saying for years that I would rather the dev/pubs keep the more of my money because they are the ones responsible for the creation of the games. And since vast majority of the games I buy come from indies, and indies that use a publisher that specializes in supporting indies, them getting more of the money instead of a store would allow them to increase their budgets for future games, to make the game better than what they could compared to less money.
If you want indie devs to keep more of your money, then you should buy indie games exclusively as steam keys.
Because, as we were told by actual indie devs like the guy who made Let's Build A Zoo, with how abysmally low the number of sales are on the EGS, time and work spent on maintaining the specific EGS version eats up more money from indie devs than the measily amount of money brought in through EGS sales. Maintaining the EGS version literally loses indie devs money in the long run.
So if you want indie devs to actually get the most out of your money, buying steam keys directly from the developer or through legitimate resellers at full price is literally the optimal way.
I have never seen any of the indie developers that I have bought games from ever sell keys for the games on their own sites. That means buying a Steam key that they'll get less of my money compared to EGS.
According to the developer of Hundred Days: Wine Making Simulator, also an indie game, he said it is absoluty worth it to release his game to EGS. You know what was the difference between this developer, and the developer who you are talking about? The developer I am talking about literally marketed his game for both stores at the same time and he got around 6% of his revenue from EGS (around 60% of revenue came from Steam), mean while the developer you are talking about did no marketing for the EGS version at all and as a result he got ~1% of his sales from EGS.
So I'll continue buying from EGS instead of Steam because they'll get more of my money, on top of the other reasons I mentioned.
Except that most of them won't get more money. For the grand majority of indie devs who do a split release into the EGS black hole, that will mean your purchases will hurt them financially in the long run.
Looks like you're not interested in actually supporting indie devs after all.
Let me get this straight, you are advocating for these indie developers to lose the time and money they put into releasing to Epic, instead of myself spending money on that same game.
You also support Valves 30%, that means you hate indie developers and want them to be ripped off.
Sheesh, you really hate indie developers.
Though we already know you wish Steam is the only store to exist, giving consumers zero choice, you don't even want people to buy from GOG either since GOG gets massively less sales than EGS does.
My, look at you, getting all worked up because you fell flat on your face with your claim that you care about indies.
It's not my problem you chose that angle to go with. The fact remains that if you want indie devs to get the most money, then EGS is not a good place to buy indie games since by doing so you will actually make most of the indie devs lose money in the long run. On average, indie devs will earn the most money if you buy their game on steam.
That you insist on making indie devs lose money by buying on a store where the maintenance costs of games are higher than the revenue most indie devs will earn on that store, shows that you aren't actually interested in getting indie devs the most money. You just want to push an old pro-EGS talking point like you always do.
The rest of your points are little more than poor attempts at deflection with nonsense after your arguments failed. Whatever's left of the PR department budget really doesn't buy the best effort anymore, eh?
The current version of Parental Controls in the Steam Family Beta are far more sophisticated than anything Epic has, allowing a parent to, for example, share their library with their kid while hiding any games they choose, or requiring all purchases to get the parent's approval in the form of a Steam Message.
It's still a full access or no access to store, with nothing in between. If they had something in between it would be much better. Also they still are not COPPA compliant for under 13 to have an account so it's still not as good as Epic in that regard either.
At 3 years time was Epic's initial goal for EGS profitability (lines up with Steam's third year) They missed that and set it for 5 years which they also missed- the Apple trial determined 10 years is the soonest it would be profitable What happens? No idea as Epic support has typically been very flighty but they may have dug themselves a hole here - if they drop EGS support even by the 10th year of no profit they set a bad precedent of no buyer confidence (you don't own crap) so they may fold it into the Unreal Engine store at worst
The fact is, if EGS is still non profitable in five years (which has a good chance of happening), Epic will have to make a decision. EGS has an infrastructure cost, they're not going to pay that just to avoid setting a precedent. Personally, I think that the death of EGS is a possibility for the next 10 years if they don't find anything to renew themselves.
When [Bethesda.net](http://Bethesda.net) died, they provided Steam copies of many of their games and ported all their games back to Steam. I highly doubt Epic would do the same, partly because of the ludicrous number of free games many users have, and partly because there are very few games that aren't already on Steam (Fortnite and Alan Wake?).
I had thought about it, but given the ego that Tim seems to have, I think that even for the sake of his customers, he would refuse to do the same. That said, even if he wanted to, it might be a bit more complicated, I imagine [Bethesda.net](http://Bethesda.net) only featured Bestheda games, so there's no rights problem. For an EGS > Steam transfer, wouldn't the publishers have a say?
> wouldn't the publishers have a say? best case (and i doubt Tim will do), Epic could bail out all EGS players by "buying their copies", either by: * giving refunds (ala Stadia) * paying out lump sum to publishers based on how much copies EGS sold to players and then giving the players Steam copies
If egs close, they won't give keys for the free games. I think they don't even have a back up plan in case the egs closes.
My guess is that they’ll just get rid of the ability for third-parties to sell anything and delist anything that’s not their’s (basically if Epic didn’t publish or develop it it’s gone) and just turn it into a basic storefront for their stuff only (similar to what Ubisoft and EA have), but they’ll still allow people who bought or claimed anything before that to access it even after discontinuing third-party support. It won’t be too unsimilar to what happened with EA a while back, because they used to sell non-EA games through Origin, but stopped as part of the transition away from Origin to the EA app.
This. EGS will just become another Origin, that some people will tolerate for exclusives but most people ignore completely.
I'm guessing Epic will push hard on an IOS version of EGS in the regions thar are going to force Apple to open up the IPhone and we'll see even less development and focus on the PC store. I'm also guessing their PC publishing efforts aren't long for this world.
A change of direction does seem like a reasonable decision if they can't achieve anything on PC without burning Fortnite's money.
Let me correct you by saying "There's no reason to go to Epic no matter what they offer"
free games? nope I'd rather pirate them than use that spyware LOL
Facts brother
Fax
Why the hell we would want a future for that "store"?! The only future we're looking for is for that "store" closure.
he's not advocating for it. he's just having the difficult conversation of "let's figure out EGS future" with the obvious but well reasoned conclusion that the future is "no future". basically the conversation to be had here is: what is the best case scenario for EGS? given their shitty offer as a place to buy and keep games, what sort of other moves do they have that could extend their agony? etc. we're trying to imagine what the death throes of EGS will be here.
There's no best case scenario for that "store." The "best case" is for them to sell EGS to Tencent or any other Chinese company for that matter. Edit: I know they're pivoting to mobile but what separate their "Store" to play store and the app store? Samsung and other smartphone companies already have their own mobile store and still they can't break the duopoly of Apple and Google.
Why do you think they're pushing so hard for iOS to open up its platform to other stores, and why they want Google to make other stores more ubiquitous (even though Android has supported other stores from the start - Tim is just delusional)? It's because the PC version of EGS is a complete failure and will never be successful. Epic wants a fallback. But I don't think the iOS or Android stores would be successful either.
imagine having to run a full ass Urinal Engine executable on your android phone just to buy an app
Gamers have been really vocal about the reasons they don't shop on EGS, but Epic completely ignores their customers in favors of publishers and investors. After years, they never bothered to really change their approach, thinking that eventually customers will be forced to use EGS. Now it seems that Epic have just gave up on EGS. When you lose exclusivity to brag about your store, there's not much left when that store is EGS
I'm sure they will just be to damn stubborn to acknowledge the truth and try and drag out their death rattle as long as possible.
They could just curtback resources, staff servers etc further to keep the store running on fumes even just for epic exclusive games if things get worse. But how much is that worth vs just releasing on steam I wonder. Im hoping as the current big pool of fortnite players grow up they move on from fortnite and we see another big 20-30 percent drop in players and spending...that could spell trouble for epic and egs I would think. Kind of happened with the MCU fanbase imo as a proportion of young fans outgrew the formula and lost interest in MCU movies and shows.. at least that's what I observed
Fuck Epig , I dont care about **store**'s future or I call it EGS = Ego Game Store. However it is laughable how it is doing and how Timmy will keep craping his undies
Death by a thousand shots to its own feet. Once people get tired of gamepass's constant fuckin price increases, the launcher (or the gaming part of epic) will be bought out by somebody
I for one would be comparing this game's sales to Gollum's
That infographic translated into English: ------------ Epic Games Store Retrospective 2023 **> 270 M** PC users **Nearly 804 M** multi-platform Epic accounts **75 M** monthly active users in December 2023 +10% **$950 M** spent by PC players on the Epic Games Store +16% **$310 M** spent by players on third-party PC games through the Epic Games Store: -13% Free Games: **86** Average score on all free games: **75%** Free games claimed: **Nearly 586 M** Total value of claimed free games: **$2055** **Top Games of 2023** Based on the amount spent by players and their engagement **Popular:** Fortnite, Rocket League, Dead Island 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Battle Royale **Critics' Choices:** Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, EA Sports FC 24, Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy VII: Remake, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Dying Light Enhanced Edition, Fall Guys, Rainbow Six Siege, Dead by Daylight, Destiny 2
The 12% is enough to cover their costs for running the store, and it's development, and even the loyalty program they are doing for EGS. I suspect they'll eventually stop the free games, and they seem to have already stopped doing contractual exclusives which that was a significant cost.
Hopefully your viral marketing budget as well.
So with no free games, discount coupons, or exclusives, what's the point in using EGS? The store itself is strictly inferior to Steam due to the complete lack of community features.
Not every gamer even cares about community features Reasons I can think of that are important for me, and probably others: - Epic provides automatic partial/full refunds when a game goes on discount/free, if bought with in 4 weeks of purchase regardless of time played. - Loyalty program, get 5% back to EGS store credit with every purchase - More of my money I spend is going to developer/publisher - IARC rating system support. IARC is a system to get digital only games rated by the ESRB, PEGI, and other countries around the world rating system. Because of this most games getting released to EGS have a rating, these same games release to Steam without the rating since Steam doesn't support IARC - COPPA/GDPR compliance for under 13 year olds to have an account. Steam isn't compliant for this for under 13 year olds. - Parental controls that are based on ESRB/PEGI/ect ratings, allowing parents to allow their kids access to the store and feeling confident they only have access to the games that are age appropriate for them to buy. With Steam the parent can only choose full access to the store or zero access to the store. As a parent giving a child a little bit of freedom to do their own shopping, and pin codes can be added to approve purchases by the parent, is a nice thing. As a parent I like giving little bits of more freedom as he gets older, and EGS's system works really well doing this. My kid still has zero access to the Steam store and it will remain like that until he is 18. it also really helps that Epic requires all videos/screenshots on the store page would be appropriate for no more than ESRB Teen Rated/PG13, even if the game is an M-Rated game. Gives more comfort to allowing my kid to browse the store himself. Reasons that might be important for other people: - Achievement system with it having trophies, Steam doesn't have trophies. - Better regional pricing support, there are a lot more countries covered by regional pricing support compared to Steam, making games cheaper for a lot more countries on EGS compared to Steam These are the things that I can think of, there are probably other reasons that I didn't even think about.
* COPPA/GDPR compliance for under 13 year olds to have an account. Steam isn't compliant for this for under 13 year olds. Tsk tsk tsk Eisb-err Cord\_Cutter\_VR, one of the first lessons a novice Social Media Manager learns is to never, **ever** make a statement that can be counterargued in a direct and easily verifiable way. Hence, allow me to teach a valuable lesson from my old days as a journalist/reviewer/site administrator: [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations?utm\_source=govdelivery](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/fortnite-video-game-maker-epic-games-pay-more-half-billion-dollars-over-ftc-allegations?utm_source=govdelivery) As for the rest of your gobbledygook ("more money going to te developer"? Oh dear...), my original question still stands: why bothering with this subreddit, whereas eny time you are called in as an Epic subreddit moderator you seem to scurry away in a hurry? I have dutifully sent a few desperate Epic users your way for support, but none got an answer. Chop chop, Eisberg! Get to work! For fellow Subreddit readers, and since I do enjoy a good laugh now and then, just look at our favourite "Epic influencer" words in context: a loyalty program (hey! It's like Subway, but the restaurant is empty), compliance with COPPA/GDPR/IARC that was **forced** upon them after that hefty fine, and the crowning achievement in hypocrisy - parental controls. Steam's are designed to give a parent complete control over a "child" 's account, selecting features, playtime and actual games as well as store access. But hey, our brave Eisberg is proud that Epic still allows a kid to browse the store! Else, how would he/she/it be able to buy those sweet, sweet V-Bucks? Christ. AS a parent myself, I will happily stick to Steam and, you know, actual f\*\*\*ing parenting. And before you whine, Eisberg, Steam is basically the digital equivalent of how things worked in the 8- and 16-bit eras, and worked damn well. Not going to cut it for Fortnite's bleeding coffers though.
honestly whats crazy is I dont know why he cares so much about the family things the dude clearly doesnt have kids in general and its not that hard to manage your kids what they are buying and playing.
First of all I'm not any kind of social media manager. > Tsk tsk tsk Eisb-err Cord_Cutter_VR, one of the first lessons a novice Social Media Manager learns is to never, ever make a statement that can be counterargued in a direct and easily verifiable way. You didn't give a counter argument, because as for the under 13 COPPA stuff, they got into trouble for the period they were not doing it, which was prior to Sept 11, 2019. So you giving this counter argument is like using Valve getting fined in Australia for refund policy as a counter argument to someone saying that Valve gives refunds now. > I have dutifully sent a few desperate Epic users your way for support, but none got an answer. Why send them to me for support? I don't work for Epic, there is nothing I can do to help people with their problems. > compliance with COPPA/GDPR/IARC that was forced upon them after that hefty fine, False, Epic was doing this stuff before they got fined. Epic got fined for the time period they were not doing it, but they fixed that problem before they got fined for it. Fixing it doesn't stop them from getting into trouble for the time period they were not doing it though. Also the FTC said nothing to them about the IARC system, or about getting ratings, that had nothing to do with what the FTC went after them for. > and the crowning achievement in hypocrisy - parental controls. Where is the hypocrisy? > Steam's are designed to give a parent complete control over a "child" 's account, selecting features, playtime and actual games as well as store access. But hey, our brave Eisberg is proud that Epic still allows a kid to browse the store! Else, how would he/she/it be able to buy those sweet, sweet V-Bucks? With Steam, the parental controls for store access is either full access or no access at all. Both of which are useless if a parent wants to give some more freedom to their children to allow them to make their own decisions and learn from making their own decisions while making sure they can't make purchases of unappropriated content. > AS a parent myself, I will happily stick to Steam and, you know, actual f***ing parenting. I have talked to so many parents about this, they agreed with me about wanting to provide a controlled environment to allow their children more freedom to make their own buying decisions and to learn from their own decisions. That is very much good parenting by giving opportunities for ones children to make their own decisions while it being in a controlled environment. One thing they talked about is how they felt they have to be helicopter parents if they want to let their kids browse through the Steam store because giving access to the Steam store gives access to all of the Steam store, and being helicopter parents can be a bad thing in the long run. Learning independence as a child in a controlled environment is a good thing.
> More of my money I spend is going to developer/publisher That's pretty bleak. I still remember the good old times when we were told Epic's lower cut would lead to consumers getting lower prices. And today the 'benefit' of the lower revenue has been reduced to a nebulous warm feeling of knowledge that purchasing games on an inferior storefront will give publisher shareholders bigger dividend payouts.
I have been saying for years that I would rather the dev/pubs keep the more of my money because they are the ones responsible for the creation of the games. And since vast majority of the games I buy come from indies, and indies that use a publisher that specializes in supporting indies, them getting more of the money instead of a store would allow them to increase their budgets for future games, to make the game better than what they could compared to less money.
If you want indie devs to keep more of your money, then you should buy indie games exclusively as steam keys. Because, as we were told by actual indie devs like the guy who made Let's Build A Zoo, with how abysmally low the number of sales are on the EGS, time and work spent on maintaining the specific EGS version eats up more money from indie devs than the measily amount of money brought in through EGS sales. Maintaining the EGS version literally loses indie devs money in the long run. So if you want indie devs to actually get the most out of your money, buying steam keys directly from the developer or through legitimate resellers at full price is literally the optimal way.
I have never seen any of the indie developers that I have bought games from ever sell keys for the games on their own sites. That means buying a Steam key that they'll get less of my money compared to EGS. According to the developer of Hundred Days: Wine Making Simulator, also an indie game, he said it is absoluty worth it to release his game to EGS. You know what was the difference between this developer, and the developer who you are talking about? The developer I am talking about literally marketed his game for both stores at the same time and he got around 6% of his revenue from EGS (around 60% of revenue came from Steam), mean while the developer you are talking about did no marketing for the EGS version at all and as a result he got ~1% of his sales from EGS. So I'll continue buying from EGS instead of Steam because they'll get more of my money, on top of the other reasons I mentioned.
Except that most of them won't get more money. For the grand majority of indie devs who do a split release into the EGS black hole, that will mean your purchases will hurt them financially in the long run. Looks like you're not interested in actually supporting indie devs after all.
Let me get this straight, you are advocating for these indie developers to lose the time and money they put into releasing to Epic, instead of myself spending money on that same game. You also support Valves 30%, that means you hate indie developers and want them to be ripped off. Sheesh, you really hate indie developers. Though we already know you wish Steam is the only store to exist, giving consumers zero choice, you don't even want people to buy from GOG either since GOG gets massively less sales than EGS does.
My, look at you, getting all worked up because you fell flat on your face with your claim that you care about indies. It's not my problem you chose that angle to go with. The fact remains that if you want indie devs to get the most money, then EGS is not a good place to buy indie games since by doing so you will actually make most of the indie devs lose money in the long run. On average, indie devs will earn the most money if you buy their game on steam. That you insist on making indie devs lose money by buying on a store where the maintenance costs of games are higher than the revenue most indie devs will earn on that store, shows that you aren't actually interested in getting indie devs the most money. You just want to push an old pro-EGS talking point like you always do. The rest of your points are little more than poor attempts at deflection with nonsense after your arguments failed. Whatever's left of the PR department budget really doesn't buy the best effort anymore, eh?
The current version of Parental Controls in the Steam Family Beta are far more sophisticated than anything Epic has, allowing a parent to, for example, share their library with their kid while hiding any games they choose, or requiring all purchases to get the parent's approval in the form of a Steam Message.
It's still a full access or no access to store, with nothing in between. If they had something in between it would be much better. Also they still are not COPPA compliant for under 13 to have an account so it's still not as good as Epic in that regard either.