Valve COO on Epic's Tim Sweeney "you mad bro?" when launching the Epic Store (repost, clarified was internal email)
Valve COO on Epic's Tim Sweeney "you mad bro?" when launching the Epic Store (repost, clarified was internal email)
In the ongoing saga of the Wolfire versus Valve lawsuit, which is continuing, we've been able to see a funny little look behind the curtain and Tim Sweeney was not happy with Valve.
Can think about Steam tax whatever you want, but they provide a hell of a lot more than just a half-assed store and some exposure for your games like Epic does. Don't get me wrong, I do gratefully take the free games and I do appreciate the competition, what I want to say is that Steam doesn't just pocket that money. They provide forums; frameworks for stuff like modding and achievements; a much better client useful beyond games they sell; subsidized hardware and support for Linux as an alternative to Windows. All of this also benefits game developers one way or another and costs money to develop and maintain. (Software) engineers are anything but cheap.
Epic does have its steamworks alternative called epic online services which provide more or less the same functionality (achievements, p2p networking, anti cheat...) but it's also completely free, cross store, and cross engine
I agree partially. They are competent rather than just able to do whatever cause money.
Now if they invested their profits into workers salaries and made a bid for management salaries to only double per rank, we would be going somewhere.
It does suck, but I think the only thing Tim Epic can do is to fix his own store.
Tim Epic
Lmao
Reminds me of how one time Trump had a meeting with Tim Cook and called him Tim Apple
I loathe Epic Store but I wish there was better competition to Steam. They definitely offer better cuts for devs but I think they still need to understand what makes Steam popular the way that it is. There's a huge social media aspect, proton, bigger picture with the controller support...
We are in a very delicate situation where Valve can do whatever they want. They can suddenly decide to start making steam worse for users, adding more ads than we already have and we won't be able to do anything, because in the end we don't really own anything we have there.
Edit: many typos lol
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There's a lot of stuff from Sweeny I disagree with, but I don't think he's wrong on this.
Wrong with what? 30% cut? It seems a lot, but from the greater distance I don't think it's that much.
Developers do get great benefits from this. The game is downloadable at any time with great speeds everywhere in the world. They get steam workshop for mods, free forums, reviews, steamplay, proton, friendlists with super easy game invites, ... and all this is basically free advertisment for developer.
Now what does Epic offer in this regard? Nothing.
I think many folks are too young to remember before the Internet when everything was published through retail stores. Publishers took big risks paying for advance copies of games to be produced and shipped, and developers typically got less than 70% all told.
When steam came out 30% and you didn't need to print advance copies, or deal with retail channels, it was a huge win.
Now, the world has changed, but so has steam. Steam has continued to introduce features, sales based % tiers, grown the community, push Linux development, push VR, etc. they also go out of their way to support their devices and make them user repairable.
In any other sector people would be bitching about not having a pro customer option, and yet in this market we get a bunch of non-developers bitching about the revenue split from the best game store other than GoG.
It boggles the mind.
I don't have any frame of reference for how much content delivery on Valve's level costs, and whether a lower cut would be sustainable. I assume that a lower cut for the first $X of revenue a game makes on Steam would be doable without cutting into profits too much, and would probably help smaller indie devs. In the end, since Valve is private, we can kinda only speculate about what would be fair, or even just feasible.
Of course, Valve isn't obligated to do any of this, but if they would in response to pressure from Epic, I'd consider that a good thing. Considering the article above, that seems unlikely, needless to say.
I also do agree that Epic's store isn't all that great.
Yep, as much as I benefit from valve's push on Linux, I know it's not out of the kindness of their hearts, it's out of self preservation.
I would gladly use epic's store if it gave devs more of the profits, but it's just incredibly immature. Basic options are missing, and it doesn't support Linux. I can try to work around their shortcomings as much as possible using bottles and proton, but eventually I can't play their games due to their invasive anti-cheat. On top of that, they seem to be building a walled garden of micro transactions that's just a worse version of NFTs. They really don't want me as a customer, and I'm not going to argue.
it's out of self preservation.
It’s understandable though, if my entire business was fully dependent on Microsoft of all things I’d be desperate to make alternatives viable too.
OK a bit of a rant from me but here I go:
Tim could easily see a smaller cut from Valve for a big game and say "yeah that's great sign me up" but he doesn't. He literally says "You should support the smaller players rather than the large ones". He's arguing to give a better rate to struggling developers rather than the successful ones. That's what the COO says "umadbro" to. Honestly, that's enough for me to really reconsider buying new games from Steam.
The issue is: This is exactly how Sweeney talks to people on Twitter. There was a particularly good reply to him once, which basically went: I agree with you and support your principled stance, but I can't trust you because you are such a troll.
This is the problem. I truly believe Sweeney is a good person, and he actually wants more open markets not just for Epic but for everyone. Yes, he ships Unreal which smaller devs use and a sale for them means a sale for him, but really you don't lean into things like this unless you actually want to democratise making games as a principled stance.
But he can just be such a jerk that people just don't like talking to him or dealing with him or his companies. It's frustrating to be honest, because he can be such a voice for good.