Many developers welcomed the news of the launch of the Epic Games Store positively. But there are alternative opinions. Developer of the indie project Cook, Serve, Delicious! David Galindo believes that the recently launched Epic Games Store is not a competitor to Steam and is generally not needed by anyone except developers.
Galindo stated his point of view in a blog on Gamasutra.
Epic Games Store is not needed by players
The store launched by Epic Games last week is very profitable for developers, Galindo believes. The store takes only 12% from the sale of games and guarantees their creators full marketing support. At the same time, Steam takes 30% for itself, and there is no guarantee that the game will not get lost among thousands of others (especially if Valve does not help with advertising).
At the same time, in its current state, the Epic Games Store is beneficial only to developers. He will not be able to please the players, because at launch he offers them only a few functions:
- a list of friends with the ability to block unwanted users;
- packages without DRM;
- refund of funds;
- regional price tags (but not yet in all regions).
Both Humble Bundle, GOG, and even more so Steam have a very large set of functions. Epic Games does not have most of the classic features (wish lists, achievements, reviews, rating tables, the ability to give the game to another user), as well as specific ones, such as streaming in the launcher or family access. But all of the above is available on Steam.
Developers whose games are already sold in the Epic Games Store claim that the store’s launcher gives “a direct connection with the players.” But Galindo did not find any confirmation of this.
I didn't expect Epic to offer as many features at launch as Steam has accumulated over 15 years. I expected Epic to offer more.
Creator of Vertigo Gaming
He concluded that such a low percentage of game sales from the Epic Games Store is due to the fact that the store has nothing to offer the consumer. And taking a larger percentage with such a small number of functions would be a crime. The store offers only exclusives similar to the PC versions of Journey and Ashen. But at the same time, gamers go to the Steam forums to discuss Ashen bugs, because there is no such social function in the Epic Games Store.
Ashen
According to Galindo, developers who want to move to the Epic Store will have to make a very difficult business decision: either give 30% of Steam, where all conditions are created for players, or give 12% to the Epic Games Store, which does not give players any advantages.
In the second case, the developer will have to accept that he gets more money than on Steam (and let’s not forget about marketing support), while for his fanbase, playing in the Epic launcher will be the worst experience.
Instead of working on a powerful set of features that can be improved in the future, Epic Games decided to simply stuff their store with exclusives and launch the player into the most primitive launcher.
Creator of Vertigo Gaming
Epic Games Store does not motivate competitors
The appearance of new competitors on the market pushes digital distribution services to develop. When stores with new useful features are launched, similar features soon appear on Steam.
When the Twitch streaming service launched its store, Valve introduced streaming into its client around the same time. Discord then created its own showcase—and Valve responded by adding new community and friend list features.
Such a large company as Valve can certainly find out in advance what competitors are preparing, writes Galindo. Their success motivates the company to improve Steam. And it is only beneficial for the players.
Chat on Steam
Galindo noticed that before the launch of the Epic Games Store, Valve increased the share of large companies in Steam in order to return them to its store.
It can also attract players with its own exclusives and take away marketing support from those developers who switch to the Epic Games Store.
But for now Valve doesn’t need to do anything, Galindo believes. Epic Games Store is not as complete as Steam — the latter has more advantages. The competition between Steam and Epic Games Store only contributes to an increase in the number of exclusives on both platforms. To push Steam or any other store to the development of Epic Games Store is simply not able.
The situation with Epic is not beneficial to anyone. This store has no advantages over Valve and there are no new interesting features for players that Steam could spy on.
Creator of Vertigo Gaming
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