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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[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 89 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The first few months of a game release are absolutely critical, no matter the size of the studio. I won't buy anything on Epic just out of principle, and I'm sure there are countless other people who share the mindset. A 100% share, vs a 70% one, is definitely appealing at first glance, but it'll butcher your numbers for short-term gain

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

As a patient gamer, who hates enticements to get stuck in yet-another-walled garden, I refuse to go with Epic. The benevolent kingdom of steam never forces exclusivity deals, and just out of self interest i wont reward behavior that removes options from me.

I guess this means I'll have to wait at least 6 months for some games to show up on steam

I'm ok with other ecosystems, if they treat people right, like GoG, I'm cool with GoG.

[–] gibmiser@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Waiting 6 months means you will find out if the game was any good anyways

[–] NightOwl@lemmy.one 9 points 1 year ago

Found lot of the big titles that go to epic have been terribly unoptimized too at launch requiring fixes anyways, and I don't want to pay more to be a beta tester. I don't want to pay more for early access for a game that will be a better experience for customers who buy it much later.

[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’ll have to wait at least 6 months for some games to show up on steam.

It raises a fun ethical question: Is piracy moral if you fully intend on buying the game at full price when it hits Steam in six months?

Spare me the “piracy is always moral” arguments; Even as a fellow pirate, the mental gymnastics to justify it get old quickly. Just admit that you won’t/can’t pay for something. So the question is whether or not the morality comes into play when you DO intend on buying the game as soon as it’s available on your preferred platform.

[–] NightOwl@lemmy.one 16 points 1 year ago

Patient gamer does mean actually be patient. If someone is playing a pirated game I would say that doesn't count as patience with them not depriving themselves of anything.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 9 points 1 year ago

I mean it when I say im a patient gamer... ill wait and no play it

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

Some games are already like this. Borderlands stuff has been an Epic exclusive for a year ish in the past. I played on other platforms to avoid it. I don’t know if that’s still the case or if Borderlands 3 was the exception.

[–] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

It's that upfront money they give that's the big thing for some of these devs I can't blame them for taking that upfront influx of development capital.

Still not buying it from Epic, I hate console exclusivity, including Nintendo, and I'm not going to support it on PC.

[–] tiredofsametab@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

As a gamer living in eastern Asia, Epic's exclusives that could only be bought in certain countries due to payment processors pissed me off enough to boycott. I generally don't touch any games that started as exclusives there, either. The couple of exceptions I have, I waited until they were a couple of years old and > 50% off on Steam or GoG

[–] dan1101@lemm.ee 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.

[–] qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] phi1997@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 13 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.

[–] MisterFeeny@kbin.social 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.

[–] Zana@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Davel23@kbin.social 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.

[–] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Nefyedardu@kbin.social 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.

[–] verysoft@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah same, but I also won't touch anything that goes Epic Games exclusive even when it comes to Steam.