>PAYING game developers for exclusivity is much different than CHARGING game developers 30% of their revenue.
The way you frame it is totally incorrect and completely misrepresents
Steam (who is obviously relevant in the PC space) doesn't "charge" developers 30% of the revenue. Steam is acting as an affiliate. Affiliate agreements work on the fact that one party will get a commission for driving sales of a particular product.
Steam drives sales of a particular product by providing the market place, they provide the payment mechanism, the hosting and update infrastructure and probably a bunch of things I am not aware of.
Also the 30/70% split for an affiliate relationship is standard across many industries. This could be Travel, Gambling, House hold items.
> Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice.
You are getting wrong way around. If would be fine if the EPIC store offered the same games as Steam at a lower price (by taking a lower commission). Then that would drive competition and that would benefit the consumer.
However that isn't happening here.
They are artificially dividing an open market by making some PC games exclusive to their store. This stops competition because the two store fronts can't compete because they cannot offer the same games. In the same way that if you wanna play Halo you aren't doing it on a PlayStation.
GoG and Steam will have many of the same games sold on them. I end up buying them on the GoG store, why is that? GoG is guaranteed to be DRM free. That choice cannot exist when some games are exclusive to one store. So GoG competes with the Steam store and offers a better refund policy (you can refund for any reason and at any time) and no DRM.
Now it may benefit developers to be exclusive to the EPIC store but this will ultimately make the PC ecosystem less open for the consumer.
You're really missing one part about Valve. Game developers that publish games on Steam are not allowed to set lower prices on other stores; at least on release when bulk of sales happening and most of full price sales occur.
So developer can't sell game on Steam for $60 and at the same time sell it on Epic Games Store for $50 due to lower commission. So Epic don't have any other tools to compete with Steam.
> They are artificially dividing an open market by making some PC games exclusive to their store.
This sounds suspiciously like Amazon's KDP Select[1]:
Q. What does it mean to publish exclusively on Kindle?
A. When you choose to enroll your book in KDP Select, you're committing to make the digital format of that book available exclusively through KDP. During the period of exclusivity, you cannot distribute your book digitally anywhere else, including on your website, blogs, etc.
... I really don't like Amazon when it comes to the demands they make for publishing books through their platform. I am no lawyer, but the whole system reeks of wrongness. I publish a few books on KDP, but none have been enrolled in KDP Select - why should I give up Google Play, iBooks and a whole host of other distribution channels just to please the owners of the biggest distribution platform of them all?
Now consider that Valve games like Half Life: Alyx are platform exclusive to Steam -- presumably because Valve gets ~100% of the money spent on Valve games on Steam. Is that "less open for the consumer" as well?
Them doing exclusives is on their own IP isn't really the same thing is it? I will give them a pass on it.
People have to remember perfect is the enemy of the good. Considering Steam's position in the market they don't seem to abuse their position. Anecdotally I know people that have developed indie games and they told me they are generally quite happy with Steam.
We are talking about stores acting as if they are publishers (because with a exclusivity deal that is what is really happening). Steam is a open market place for all intents and purposes.
If Epic is successful we will have every store front acting as a publisher. This won't benefit the consumer (publisher tend to interfere with the creative process) and it won't benefit the developers because those low commission rates will suddenly vanish.
I am all for free markets. But this is not what is happening here. EPIC is flush with cash from Fortnight and dominating the game engine market with UE3, UE4 and probably do the same with UE5 (they have over 25% in a very fragmented market) and they are trying to artificially divide what is an open ecosystem.
No it doesn't weaken the argument. The point is that seems to elude you is that they aren't bribing other devs by offering cash for an exclusivity deal. In the cases you highlight they bought IP outright. Also people seem to forget that Valve released a lot of their games on consoles which aren't open market places.
Anyway this is distraction from the general point I was trying to convey that store specific exclusives doesn't promote competition, it actually retards it.
If Epic had a store and just offered the same games for cheaper. I would be fine with it.
Also everyone keeps pretending that EPIC is this tiny company when nothing could be further from the truth.
The way you frame it is totally incorrect and completely misrepresents
Steam (who is obviously relevant in the PC space) doesn't "charge" developers 30% of the revenue. Steam is acting as an affiliate. Affiliate agreements work on the fact that one party will get a commission for driving sales of a particular product.
Steam drives sales of a particular product by providing the market place, they provide the payment mechanism, the hosting and update infrastructure and probably a bunch of things I am not aware of.
Also the 30/70% split for an affiliate relationship is standard across many industries. This could be Travel, Gambling, House hold items.
> Also, the PC is an open platform. Game developers don't have to use Epic's or anyone else' store to distribute games on PC. With iOS you have no choice.
You are getting wrong way around. If would be fine if the EPIC store offered the same games as Steam at a lower price (by taking a lower commission). Then that would drive competition and that would benefit the consumer.
However that isn't happening here.
They are artificially dividing an open market by making some PC games exclusive to their store. This stops competition because the two store fronts can't compete because they cannot offer the same games. In the same way that if you wanna play Halo you aren't doing it on a PlayStation.
GoG and Steam will have many of the same games sold on them. I end up buying them on the GoG store, why is that? GoG is guaranteed to be DRM free. That choice cannot exist when some games are exclusive to one store. So GoG competes with the Steam store and offers a better refund policy (you can refund for any reason and at any time) and no DRM.
Now it may benefit developers to be exclusive to the EPIC store but this will ultimately make the PC ecosystem less open for the consumer.