More heat between Epic Games Store and Steam
Epic Games Store has been nothing but good news for the game developer community. On EGS they will make more per sold than on Steam. It is also good for EGS because thank the developers they have been able to expand and become this influential and powerful in the PC gaming world. However, we have to ask ourselves - is it good news for the players?
The normal players might not even give a thought about the money split between the digital distribution platforms and the developers' companies. The players know only one thing, they used Steam before and they will keep using it to get new games because it is already a habit of them. Then now the task of EGS is to change that habit and make customers buy games from EGS which is much more complicated than just winning over some developers.
That's also the reason why in the survey recently showed that while the fact of Valve earns 30% cut is not proved yet, though developers said that they would continue to sell their games on Steam. Because that simply is the place player is, and that's why publishers and developers would need much more security than just more money to make them change distribution platform.
Free games are maybe one first step. And the new Metro Exodus is coming to EGS first is surely amazing news. These things have shown the companies together with big shot publishers and developers that EGS is seriously competing with Valve.
Big profits and Lower prices
Metro Exodus a big game title in the market will be for sold exclusively on EGS for the whole of its first year and then will have its debut on Steam in early 2020. The game will be sold at $10 lower than the original price on Steam, it will be at $49.99.
This is a huge difference in price point comparison between the two platforms, this should cause much more press release than it has had in fact. Of course, the publisher of the game Deep Silver also understands this fact.
When you sold a copy for $59.99 then the publisher makes $41.99 so the split is 7/3 for the publisher and the digital distribution platform, this is the deal that Steam has offered to Deep Silver. But as for EGS, the publisher will get to keep $43.99 from the price of $49.99 which means 88 percent, 18 percent higher than Steam. So with EGS, the publisher gets high profit while the customer has a low price, the store, in this case, EGS the distribution platform gets profits from the volume.
Players might have been comfortable with Steam before than to its massive game library and features, however, this pricing may change that formula. If you are a player and you want to buy a game - for example Metro Exodus - and then you find out that it's not only exclusive on EGS but also cost 10$ less.
The general public may keep on complaining about the exclusive deal of Deep Silver and EGS to keep Metro Exodus on only EGS for the first year. However, if they already decided to buy the game they will buy it either way.
From this deal and with your purchase within the first year, both companies will achieve their targets: EGS gets players to get on their platform, Deep Silver gets more profit from the sale. In some way, the player also wins because they get to buy the game as a lower price and get to enjoy the game.
The target should be players
According to EGS, for the public to understand the benefit of EGS is very important to Epic Games. Therefore, the CEO of EGS Tim Sweeney has helped us to explain the benefits of this revenue split that to developers, publishers, and players.
Sweeney said that Metro Exodus is one of the most amazing and anticipated game titles of 2019. And EGS is partner up with Deep Silver to launch the game on its platform. EGS offers a split of 88 percent to Deep Silver with in turn will help the developer to make new and better games, improving the game market for everyone.
But Steam sill holds a big advantage in term of players, features and easy to use.
Here we are talking a lot about marketing but then the main idea is that the players should care more about the revenue split, mainly because if the developers get more money then they would have more resources to develop better games for the players. And improve the game market for everyone means a ring to make players pay attention to the low price tag. Improve the market means less money you pay and more money for them.
With the condition that Valve is not included, for sure.
The what is Valve's plan? Valve could try to hold on it a much more superior number of users and hope it won't lose game exclusive deals to Epic Game Store. Valve is calling the situation of Metro Exodus is not fair to players on Steam. However, this will not help Steam to win.
Even though, we still have to account for the much more mature service of Steam. Steam has so much features and services that it has already become a go-to location and hub for PC gaming. The reason why some customers keep being hostile to EGS is also that of that EGS makes that they couldn't but Metro Exodus on their beloved platform with services like cloud saves, achievements board and others_ well not in the first year.
Some players on Reddit then have commented that Valve is playing as the higher ground here, despite the monopoly Valve has on the PC gaming market, it never has been really trying to use this power to restrict the market. Steam even allows the third party like UPlay to have its own launcher integrated into Steam for games like War Thunder or Warframe. And we couldn't forget the fact that it's Valve who standardize many feature that we take for granted like saves,anti-cheat, automatic patching,... which are not available on EGS.
Finalize speaking, this is good news for players because as the companies compete for market share the prices for games will certainly drop and the quality of services will rise along with it. Let's wait and see the outcome of this war in 2019.