Vlambeer co-founder blames steam for metro's sudden swap to epic. - Sensationalist Headlines

Rami is privileged to have games sell just because of the Vlambeer brand. He does not know what it's like to struggle on the steam store, his takes are worthless and this proves it. In my experience, on the steam store, the problem with dropping sales is that Valve is constantly changing the way store stuff designed for promotion work, such as trading cards, sales, coupons, updates etc work. Every time they update them, they become less effective for promotion. I assume Valve is just doing this to stop smaller "shovelware" games from abusing them, but it's hurting other devs too. The store cut has 0 part in this at all. My views are the same as they've always been, but my sales are down because Valve has messed with the coupon system. Vlambeer doesn't have to rely on these features, they don't know how it feels. Epic, though, has none of these features, so it is totally not comparable.

Nah, blame Epic and the publishers. Jullian Gollop, the creator of X-COM, ran a Kickstarter campaign for his upcoming game Pheonix Point promising backers a choice between a steam key and a GoG key. He then went to Epic and signed an exclusivity deal with them. The backers were/are pissed off at essentially being used as risk and interest free short term loans, causing many to perform charge backs rather than going through the intentionally difficult refund process.

I find it absolutely hilarious to blame Steam for poor discoverability. If they were paying attention they'd realize that Epic Store is going for Support-A-Creator approach which relies on referrals from influencers rather than store visibility. Good luck getting your game found when the store has more than a thousand titles. Epic has so much goodwill over developers due to their grants and Unreal Engine that they are so willing to support their cause without further scrutiny. At the very least I wouldn't blame the devs when they are offered a deal they couldn't decline (and trading majority of their PC fanbase for it), but those who are not offered should really reconsider their stance. Is competition necessary when the other is worse? We're going to get more info tomorrow when their GDC talk happens.

I can kind of see what he's getting at from an indie standpoint. If you're a smaller indie on Steam and you don't have as much of a marketing budget squared away or no real name to your "brand", you tend to get buried by both AAA and/or other much more recognized indie devs (like Vlambeer ironically enough). Combine this with the issues of Greenlight still not being fixed (just behind a relatively cheap paywall now), and you get this air of Steam either favoring the quick and dirty (porn games, cheap asset flips) or the already established. Since there's no real curation, there's no real sense of accomplishment or guarantee that your game will see some success on Steam. Epic is fully curated, much like Steam was back before Greenlight, so if your game gets added and is also featured (which happens with every new game due to how the store is set up right now), you may actually end up getting more success than you would by putting your game on Steam due to lower chances of it being buried. The lower revenue share is just essentially a bonus to that. Really though, part of me would see indie devs performing better on Discord. In your early days of being an indie dev, having a community and maintaining it through interaction with them are insanely important, and Discord is literally built for that. Why not have both your storefront and community in the same place? Not to mention having your game as part of the "Games with Nitro" deal not only gives you some monetary support, but it gets your game out there in the hands of the many people who have Nitro and maybe wouldn't have thought about buying it or didn't even know of its existence until they saw it was "Free with Nitro." More exposure to your game gets more people interested in it gets more people buying it. Tbh, I'm really surprised Discord hasn't taken off as more of an alternative since people seemingly lost their faith in Epic. It's got more in place than Epic does, and it's an application I'm sure more people have open constantly than the Epic Store. Maybe Discord just doesn't do enough to push it? Nobody wants to sell on GOG for 2 reasons. Developer experience on GOG (things like managing and updating builds) is a massive pain compared to other store fronts. This is why GOG builds of games tend to be behind Steam builds DRM-free. No AAA dev, and most indie devs, wants to chance their games getting pirated Pair all of that with the typical 30% cut, along with the massively smaller user base, and most devs and publishers lose interest. The reason why GOG is dying out isn't because of Epic and their "evil revenue sharing", it's because most devs don't want what GOG is offering, and most consumers don't care about DRM being in their games and just use Steam. As for Humble, no idea, but I know most Humble keys are just Steam keys, so it probably seems redundant to them outside of later in the game's life when they have to rely on sales to sell their games.

Thats what I really don't get. Plenty of indie games have been huge hits on steam by being genuinely good or having tons of influence with content creators. Prime example was slay the spire, which is coming off it's 1.5 million sales mark now: https://www.pcgamesn.com/slay-the-spire/slay-the-spire-sales Bitching at steam for not giving you free publicity is stupid, and its your own fault if no one finds your game interesting or never heard of it. Its basically bitching at a game store for not putting out free publicity on your behalf (which steam does pretty often with the new section in the list section).

The problem with this mindset is games can be genuinely good but without the mainstream appeal to get content creators to help with publicity. Asking for publicity for free is dumb, but plenty of games need to cut some kind of deal in order to get their name out there. If you're interested, the cult simulator devs have a good writeup where they go into the publishing deal they took with Humble, the publicity they got from it, and how much it impacted their sales. Incidentally, Slay the Spire was also published by Humble, and I'm curious if their deal was similar to cult sim or if it really was just hard work and influence that made it so popular. Point being, Steam doesn't (and shouldn't have to) give out free publicity, but it's hard to put the blame on any developer for getting a good grant/publishing deal when they see one. I'm partial to Humble but what can you do? I'm really hoping people who have taken these Epic grants make some kind of finance post once the exclusivity deals run out. That way we can maybe get some insight on how they were impacted by this controversy and how these deals work out in the long run.

But if indies started flooding into epic, they would have the exact problem with steam. Steam only has so much front page material, and about 50% of it is curated to your interests as a user. Epic doesn't have the issue of people coming to them nearly as much. I much rather have games shown off because they are genuinely good or part of my interests, rather than having an arms race to see who can pay/exclusive more for front page privileges or ads. Basically, blaming steam for being too open to other indie devs is extremely selfish sounding, esp when shovelware hasn't been an issue for a long time. And slay the spire was extremely affluent because its genuinely a great game that has a lot of social media backing. I didn't even know it was on humble till you telling me.

Again, not every game that is 'genuinely good' has the mainstream appeal to get on the front page. I imagine Epic's curation deal probably has some kind of constraint that they stagger out which games they're pushing on the front page to give the spotlight to different groups, but I haven't looked into it so that's just a guess. Wanting games to be shown off because they're 'good' (which isn't easy to define) or part of your interests is a great, strong ideal - but it's tough. Algorithms can only do so much, and you probably want to get your game out there to everyone, not just people within a certain niche. Slay the Spire wasn't just on Humble, it was published by Humble. I only know that because I looked it up before my last post, haha. I would be surprised if that was common knowledge because it got a lot of word of mouth popularity from streamers and the Chinese market. Most buyers, me included, probably saw it from their favorite streamer / a friend / being on the top sellers list on steam or something similar. But something you have to consider is - how did that word of mouth start? How did these streamers find the game in the first place? I would not at all be surprised if what started all of that off was, say, a forced front page deal on Humble or something similar. Blaming steam for being open to a bunch of indie devs is selfish and pointless, yeah, but that's the market. It's also the reason publishers are even a thing. If I had a product I wanted to sell and was given the choice between self-publishing and hoping my game is just 'good' enough to sell beaucoup copies or letting a publisher get my name out there, I'd go with the publisher every time.

My main issue with steam's storefront is that despite being fifteen years in the making it still feels like it was released yesterday and has yet to receive basic QOL features. Most of the systems Valve implemented are (true to Valve's usual MO) bandage solutions that just kind of stack on top of one another and feel like they usually introduce more problems than they solve. Because they have such nonexistent interactions with their massive userbase it's always hard to tell what's being actively improved, what's effectively considered as complete and not worth touching up on, or what's an abandoned/derelict feature left to deprecate somewhere off the side of an increasingly busy and messy store page. Their reliance on user-driven curation is not working as intended because the automated parts on valve's ends are inherently flawed (shit like the tag system being absurdly wide and recommending games based on the most generic categories such as "singleplayer" or "action", or the language preferences being shoddy and lacking options to make them either more strict or more lenient) and the community part is often kind of a shitshow, with things like the curator system being full of gimmick accounts and reviews being as reactionary as they are. You'd assume by now that they'd implement options like being able to hide games from the Special Offers tab when they're already in your library, or the option to outright disable store components deemed useless on a per user basis, but those features have yet to appear and, at this rate, will likely only show up when five other halfbaked solutions crop up. Valve's notoriety for introducing and abandoning ideas is so prevalent by now that I find it hard to trust them with nearly anything. I feel more like a fucking janitor than a customer with how much I have to clean up after the mess they leave whenever I go to the platform that's supposed to be designed to make me want to spend money on games.

I s2g nobody considered steam to be an issue until that ONE data point came out. Every thread now is 'but valve takes this cut so they're an issue!!!' as if they don't host the single most trafficed gaming platform in history or something

Steam's cut is industry standard and that standard has been around for a long time, Steam didn't define it. Epic could also not be anti-consumer, anti- competitive and not do exclusives that benefit no one but Epic.

A different perspective: 10% is anticompetitive because any up and coming stores could physically not afford such a low amount. 30% may be a bit high for a top competitor but 10% would be too low to keep the field competitive as a whole.

You still are ignoring the differences of features. Steam has Stu like Steamworks, developers streaming their game on the store page, the community features, etc. Discord and Epic only give the very basics that a Store can give you, that's why they ask less (and in the Epic case they can afford it thanks to the Fortnite money) Valve cut is awfully low if you compare it with the others stores and what features they have. Sony asks you 30% and offer much less.

this is just a games journalist publishing a troll's comments. Who cares that some guy thinks "it will be funny".

Not really because Epic is literally just paying devs to come to the platform. They're throwing money at it to make themselves a success instead of being a competent storefront.

The only way that I can think of Valve making a lower cut is if they offer a "Lite" version to the developers with less features but better revenue share. And even doing that I don't think that is gonna make a huge difference. Steam is already super appealing to developers, that's why even Japanese developers starting making PC ports like never before. The only big problem that Valve has with Steam are the very poor communication between them, the developers and the consumers.

I think you might underestimate how much Epic throws at them and how fucking greedy Publishers are. They gladly take the quick buck over uncertain sales, even if the new platform will mean less sales.

Not really. It's just guaranteed money which is what short-sighted executives look for. They'd rather take a quick paycheck than anything else. Like said, Phoenix Point promised Steam and GOG, then swapped to Epic at the last minute. They admitted that everyone who has backed them could be given refunds and they'd be fine.

Discord and ich.io (along with Epic) also offer far fewer features than steam. Steam allows you to use their servers for online interaction (matchmaking, leaderboards), they host forums for every game (no other store but GoG does this), recommendations based on user preference (which actually INCREASES the chance your game will be seen), and steam has recently given developers direct access to their back end (or they're bringing it son, I can't remember). Along with giving far more to the consumer, including reviews, review aggregation, forums (again), and all the extra bullshit like cards and backgrounds (which I don't give a fuck about but a lot of people do). Steam is far from perfect, but simplifying the issue to "But they take a bigger cut of the revenue", while ignoring the substantially larger userbase (meaning more sales) and the extra features offered is disingenuous at best. I'd rather take 70% of the revenue from a service with better features, a better store page, and with the ability for my game to be shown directly to people who are known to be interested, rather than take 82% for a service which has no additional features, has no means of directly showing my games to interested consumers, and is a pain in the dick to navigate. Also, framing it as "Steam takes 30%, Epic takes 18%" makes it look WAY more generous than "With steam I get 70%, with Epic I get 82%". Don't be tricked by the mind games, it's only a 12% increase in revenue for no features or services in return, it's a bad deal. Taking Epic's lump sum of cash is just short sighted, which doesn't surprise me as most game companies struggle to think about the next year, never mind anything else.

People shouldn't ask for refunds in this case, rather just force a chargeback.

Worse yet they made the refund process intentionally difficult requiring going to a third party service and providing your bank account information to them, then telling you to wait up to four weeks. Geel, are user here, directly got in touch with their support and told them that was unacceptable. They lied and tried to weasel out of it until they were pretty directly told where they stood legally and then suddenly they actually could process the refund themselves.

I don't really use the epic store, so I decided to look into it. How the hell would this store promote visibility? https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/204712/f528f579-b28f-44d9-a1a1-ee8860e69b5b/unknown (1).png This is most of the store, there's no new tab, no sorting by genre, no sales tab.

Discord's store is a new store setup by an already established and popular brand. Itch.io isn't really comparable because it caters to a different demographic, both for developers and customers, than Steam and Epic do. Itch caters largely to indie and amateur devs and doesn't have an enormous userbase like Steam since it only appeals to a smaller subset of gamers. So their operating costs are obviously going to be lower than Steam's.

Both of those storefronts only -sell- titles, which is a much cheaper venture than Steam

30% sounds like a lot until you consider what valve does for you. They host your game, hold your save files, host the community, for as long as steam exists. All you have to do is upload it. Seems pretty fair to me.

Epic already confirmed no forums, limited reviews, no Linux support on the foreseeable future, etc. Hell, the shopping cart feature is expected to be added to the store on 6+ months. The store right now doesn't even deserve the 12% cut that they ask, even Discord and itch.io have more features and a more functional launcher.

Are you forgetting: steam market place support, multiplayer servers, free anticheat with said servers, leader boards, forums, free patching, steam workshop support, ect. There's tons of services that justify the average cut for publishing and then some. Epic just recently added a fucking search function, and has something as basic as a fucking shopping cart 6+ months down the road. Discord has the same issue as epic with giving 0 information for games that have horrid metacritic scores or reviews, gee i wonder why. Instead of competing with customer support and features, epic is entirely skipping that and rather bribe the developers instead.

Phoenix Point. Still mad about it.

The requirements for being a succesful indie game on steam has jumped up since the darwinia and audiosurf days, you actually have to compete against an extensive library of great games from the start and all those accolades and game of the show awards won't differentiate you from the pack when your competitors all have the same awards and more. So if you get offered to put your title on a smaller platform with less internal competition and the funds to make up for lost potential sales due to a smaller userbase it isn't a huge surprise why studios would go for that option. This is often why a lot of indie games jump ship to a new platform as soon as they're available and do relatively well on those platforms starving for games.

But we're not getting those small indie devs. We're getting development companies already established.