this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.

After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A game that sells 10,000 copies on Epic may sell 20,000 or more on Steam since Steam is so popular. If the game sold for $20 they would get $200,000 from Epic or $280,000 from Steam in that scenario.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That’s why Epic has to offer this. They NEED this to remain competitive.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or they could make a launcher that offers features that Steam lacks.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Or even just has the same features. The EGS launcher is hilariously bad. It’s barebones and intentionally difficult. It’s basically just a shell for their website API, when then raises the question of why they even have a launcher when it’s just a glorified browser.

And the lack of a shopping cart on their store is just plain aggravating. Maybe I don’t want to do a purchase for each individual game/DLC. But I’m sure they did a focus study somewhere, which found that having a shopping cart encourages people to second-guess their purchasing decisions. Like if you allow people to cart things, they may rethink some/all of those purchases once they get to the final checkout screen and see the grand total. So instead, they’ve opted to make the user experience worse, by forcing you to immediately check out for every single individual item.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not that I want to defend EGS here, but I would like to point out that they actually have had a shopping cart for a bit now. Hilarious how long it took them to implement, but they do in fact have one now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

What's even more hilarious is they have had one in the Unreal Engine store for much longer.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's an awfully generous ratio. I don't recall all the specifics, but a year or so ago an indie game dev posted the sales stats of his game and left out the Epic Store numbers. When asked, he said that EGS accounted for less than 1% of his sales. Now, I'm not saying that's going to be the case for all games, but considering EGS's status as the "black hole of videogame marketing" I would say a 10-1 Steam/EGS ratio wouldn't be surprising.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tbh EGS discovery of games is shit. I feel that's their largest issue.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's their largest issue and they literally just won't fix it.. Ostensibly because they don't "track user behavior". Yeah sure Epic, go with that.

When it introduced Steam Direct, Valve prioritized the development of Steam features that helped users discover games they might be interested in, such as the Discovery Queue. The Epic Games Store will continue to get interface updates, but as a matter of principle, Allison says that Epic will not track user behavior and use it to algorithmically recommend games. Epic has said in the past that it's more interested in supporting the game discovery that already happens outside of stores, such as on Twitch and YouTube.