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General discussionTim Sweeney attempts Extortion, says no more exclusives if Steam gives 88% cut.(181 posts)(181 posts)
(181 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 30, 2019
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Spectre: Steam has loads of games only available there.
GoG lost the Arma series to Steam.
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Linko64: Difference between signing deals that make a game exclusive and developers/publishers making a choice to pull a game from a store for whatever reason, often in the case on here due to updates. Let's not get this confused else the topic will just fall into chaos :P
The problem, though, is when such sites(steam/etc) make it so that if you try selling elsewhere(even after exclusivity periods) they threaten you under the table with dropping your title from their platform/service to keep you in line.
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rtcvb32: Assuming Valve agrees and gave a fixed 88% to developers/publishers, i would think what Epic has done so far would be good, because they improved things.

Though the question of censorship on steam...

Anyways, my stance hasn't changed.
Do you mean the game content censorship with certain titles? Or what?

But yeah, that is miles worse than gog cutting titles/files in titles due to IP holders demands(as their hands are basically tied, legal wise)

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Linko64: ... The only exclusive Steam games are their own games ...
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Trilarion: I'm not a legal expert, for me the practical impact is more important and there I would say this is not true. There are tons of Steam exclusives out there, in the sense of games that only work with Steam. Might not be 100% Valves fault (although they surely like it and do everything they can to keep it that way), but I don't care - I just want to have DRM free games as many as possible even from different shops if necessary. Epic against Steam - I couldn't care less who wins.
I don't care what shop I shop at as long as the games are DRM free or can be made such legally(like with older classic games that can be played without steam running, through source ports/etc)......I just don't want to have too many stores to remember/juggle around(logins/payment info/urls/etc)/worry about them holding my info/etc.
Post edited April 30, 2019 by GameRager
Posted April 30, 2019
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Dray2k: Valve can easily save face if they work on enhanced useability, including store redesign, while also keeping their servers cutting edge. All while allowing to give devs at least a larger cut. Remember that it took Epic months to put a dang search feature into their client as well. Valve certainly is in the position to handle this competition the correct right. Kinda like how CDPR earned its respect I feel like, I don't believe that I'm wrong in thinking there is a sort of similarity in PR here. Its just that compared to CDPR is that Valve basically has infinite resources available.
As long as valve/steam doesn';t make a crap resign like the one they just tried pushing/pushed through that looks like another mobile/win 10 UI based layout. That one is pure cr*p, and the old layout was already pretty decent, imo.

Sidenote: I hate when sites(youtube/steam client/etc) redesign stuff dramatically for hipness/coolness points or to seemingly mess with longtime user's heads. If a current design works add some minor stuff to it and polish the rest. Don't majorly change it all or scrap everything just to look cool and draw in the younger crowd.



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gibbeynator: I can't wait for Fortnite to crash and burn, and for everyone to switch over to Unity so that Epic is left penniless and broken.
I dislike the fortnite phenomenon due to how those bloody "dances" and slang keep being pushed everywhere(on tv/ads[even non-gaming ones]/etc).
Post edited April 30, 2019 by GameRager
Posted April 30, 2019
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GameRager: Sidenote: I hate when sites(youtube/steam client/etc) redesign stuff dramatically for hipness/coolness points or to seemingly mess with longtime user's heads. If a current design works add some minor stuff to it and polish the rest. Don't majorly change it all or scrap everything just to look cool and draw in the younger crowd.
YouTube is pushing a new statistics page for channels and it takes over 10 seconds to load !!! The old design loads instantly and shows everything I need.
Posted April 30, 2019
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GameRager: Sidenote: I hate when sites(youtube/steam client/etc) redesign stuff dramatically for hipness/coolness points or to seemingly mess with longtime user's heads. If a current design works add some minor stuff to it and polish the rest. Don't majorly change it all or scrap everything just to look cool and draw in the younger crowd.
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antrad88: YouTube is pushing a new statistics page for channels and it takes over 10 seconds to load !!! The old design loads instantly and shows everything I need.
Youtube always changes the UI or replaces whole parts entirely......it's as if they WANT to lose more of their base than they already have. :\
Posted April 30, 2019
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GameRager: Do you mean the game content censorship with certain titles? Or what?
I mean devs getting more money, who can not only survive but maybe make more games.

I hate censorship and DRM in all it's forms.
Posted April 30, 2019
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GameRager: Do you mean the game content censorship with certain titles? Or what?
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rtcvb32: I mean devs getting more money, who can not only survive but maybe make more games.

I hate censorship and DRM in all it's forms.
Oh. To me that isn't censorship(unless you/others have some specific cases where some games were dissuaded from being sold/made using such methods)....just people being greedy f*cks.
Posted April 30, 2019
You know what really upsets me, The death of the game demo disk.

I really miss those because more often then not they had FREE full utilities and free full games on them

like video game demo discs

PC had them
PSX had them
Sega Saturn & Dreamcast had them

Quite frankly they were great, Good Times.
Posted April 30, 2019
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fr33kSh0w2012: You know what really upsets me, The death of the game demo disk.

I really miss those because more often then not they had FREE full utilities and free full games on them

like video game demo discs

PC had them
PSX had them
Sega Saturn & Dreamcast had them

Quite frankly they were great, Good Times.
I miss those as well as what I mentioned a bit above/before this post.

(Tbh I wonder if they'd even be viable nowadays with people moving away from optical drives being included with laptops/etc. Maybe flash drives would be an alternative? Or flash cards like SD?)
Post edited April 30, 2019 by GameRager
Posted April 30, 2019
Extortion or not, I'm actually on the record for saying that 10% cut for the middlemen is more than enough for Steam, Epic or GOG long before Tim Sweeney said something similar. I mean they just put up a website, operate a webshop and a file service and collect some statistics (they didn't have to for me). That is not really a major thing and 10% of the total revenue seems like an fair compensation for this kind of service. Of course it's probably more complex than I think but 10% of a multi billion dollar business sounds really like a sufficiently large amount to offer the services of Epic, Steam or GOG. If Epic who are big enough to thrive on their own don't want to pay a higher cut to Steam, I can understand that.
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GameRager: ... I just don't want to have too many stores to remember/juggle around(logins/payment info/urls/etc)/worry about them holding my info/etc.
I just looked at my password manager app and there are credentials for 36 online shops, among them services like booking.com, amazon, ebay, gog, mytoys, steam, ...

Sure, a 100 might be a problem but one or two more is not. My desire for a healthy competition is fighting against my desire for laziness.
Post edited April 30, 2019 by Trilarion
Posted April 30, 2019
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fr33kSh0w2012: like video game demo discs

PC had them
PSX had them
Sega Saturn & Dreamcast had them
And sometimes when they put the whole game in the demo :P

For console that sorta made sense when you had prescription services like magazines that included CDs, because it didn't really cost anything more.

Alas, with internet being a decent speed, that is no longer needed. Especially with digital purchases/downloads.

Worse demos seem to usually make sales go down rather than up (at least studies show it).

And the most successful games did the shareware model (give chapter 1 of a game, hours of fun for free, not too unlike letting you read the first chapter of a book online on amazon or wherever.).
Posted April 30, 2019
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fr33kSh0w2012: like video game demo discs

PC had them
PSX had them
Sega Saturn & Dreamcast had them
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rtcvb32: And sometimes when they put the whole game in the demo :P

For console that sorta made sense when you had prescription services like magazines that included CDs, because it didn't really cost anything more.

Alas, with internet being a decent speed, that is no longer needed. Especially with digital purchases/downloads.

Worse demos seem to usually make sales go down rather than up (at least studies show it).

And the most successful games did the shareware model (give chapter 1 of a game, hours of fun for free, not too unlike letting you read the first chapter of a book online on amazon or wherever.).
Yeah I suppose it has.
Posted May 01, 2019
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Trilarion: Extortion or not, I'm actually on the record for saying that 10% cut for the middlemen is more than enough for Steam, Epic or GOG long before Tim Sweeney said something similar. I mean they just put up a website, operate a webshop and a file service and collect some statistics (they didn't have to for me). That is not really a major thing and 10% of the total revenue seems like an fair compensation for this kind of service. Of course it's probably more complex than I think but 10% of a multi billion dollar business sounds really like a sufficiently large amount to offer the services of Epic, Steam or GOG. If Epic who are big enough to thrive on their own don't want to pay a higher cut to Steam, I can understand that.

===================================================

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GameRager: ... I just don't want to have too many stores to remember/juggle around(logins/payment info/urls/etc)/worry about them holding my info/etc.
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Trilarion: I just looked at my password manager app and there are credentials for 36 online shops, among them services like booking.com, amazon, ebay, gog, mytoys, steam, ...

Sure, a 100 might be a problem but one or two more is not. My desire for a healthy competition is fighting against my desire for laziness.
Agreed....10% seems fair. But then they'd likely need to stop doing such low-cut sales as often(which cut into their profit margins) to drive sales.

=============================================

Password managers can fail/get corrupted, though, and paper records can be stolen/be lost/be damaged. This is why I use a small group of passwords/logins(bad opsec, I know). Too many more stores to use would mean i'd have to either make more unique passwords/logins or reuse some of them....both choices are equally bad imo.

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fr33kSh0w2012: like video game demo discs

PC had them
PSX had them
Sega Saturn & Dreamcast had them
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rtcvb32: And sometimes when they put the whole game in the demo :P

For console that sorta made sense when you had prescription services like magazines that included CDs, because it didn't really cost anything more.

Alas, with internet being a decent speed, that is no longer needed. Especially with digital purchases/downloads.

Worse demos seem to usually make sales go down rather than up (at least studies show it).

And the most successful games did the shareware model (give chapter 1 of a game, hours of fun for free, not too unlike letting you read the first chapter of a book online on amazon or wherever.).
As I said before, many companies don't make demos anymore(or if they do they're super short or timed versions of full games) for the most part.
Post edited May 01, 2019 by GameRager
Posted May 01, 2019
People forget all the other expenses that may or may not come out of these 10%, 12% or 30%'s. Including credit card processing fees which are completely lost in the case of fraud and chargebacks.

Is easy to say, knowing nothing about the business that 10% is enough, but even beyond that, you have employees, servers, property taxes, business taxes, lawyers for drawing up the contracts, health insurance and so on.

I think you vastly underestimate the cost of doing business. GoG, even with a 30% cut barely made money when exchange rates worked against them.

Also consider that we don't know the details of these numbers. Is Epic's 12% after all processing fees and processing fees and chargebacks come out before the split or after? These numbers being thrown around may be interpreted differently for each storefront...
Posted May 01, 2019
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RWarehall: People forget all the other expenses that may or may not come out of these 10%, 12% or 30%'s. Including credit card processing fees which are completely lost in the case of fraud and chargebacks.

Is easy to say, knowing nothing about the business that 10% is enough, but even beyond that, you have employees, servers, property taxes, business taxes, lawyers for drawing up the contracts, health insurance and so on.

I think you vastly underestimate the cost of doing business. GoG, even with a 30% cut barely made money when exchange rates worked against them.

Also consider that we don't know the details of these numbers. Is Epic's 12% after all processing fees and processing fees and chargebacks come out before the split or after? These numbers being thrown around may be interpreted differently for each storefront...
10% might not be enough on smaller stores(who have thinner margins due to various factors), but it is pretty fair for bigger stores imo.
Posted May 01, 2019
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GameRager: 10% might not be enough on smaller stores(who have thinner margins due to various factors), but it is pretty fair for bigger stores imo.
So YOU say, based on absolutely no knowledge about their business and revenue streams and based on not knowing 10% of what...

If 4% of that 10% is processing fees, can the business really run on 6%?
Even Epic and their 12% is projecting losses for the year with no real storefront, forums or anything else...

I can't think of a single retailer anywhere that only marks up 10% from wholesale.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionTim Sweeney attempts Extortion, says no more exclusives if Steam gives 88% cut.(181 posts)(181 posts)
(181 posts)