Some interesting industry news for you here. Epic Games have announced a change to the revenue model of the Epic Games Store, as they try to pull in more developers and more gamers to actually purchase things.
Assassin’s Creed, FIFA, Call of Duty? Not big enough. Still have to deal with Steam.
They don’t have to. OK, maybe Microsoft has to because they are the actual monopolist and making the Activision Blizzard franchises available on storefronts other than Microsoft’s own is to keep the watchdogs away.
Also, none of the franchises are exclusive to Steam, so Steam has no monopoly.
It takes being significantly bigger than the entire Epic store to even consider not doing Steam on PC.
That sentence makes no sense. Fortnite is exclusive to EGS, therefore it cannot be “significantly bigger than the entire Epic store”.
Steam has no policies that forbid offering games on other stores, Epic has policies that makes certain games timed exclusives to EGS.
What makes EGS unattractive compared to Steam is the simple fact that Epic chooses to most prominently display their own games on EGS. Valve does front page banners, fests, that window that opens with every Steam launch, etc. and goes out of their way to make everything from big launches as well as solo dev indie games discoverable.
Epic has it in their own hands to make EGS more than the Fortnite launcher. They could promote other EGS games inside Fortnite but they don’t. They host concerts inside Fortnite but nothing to promote 3rd party EGS games, for examle.
That’s a bad look for competition on the PC market. There aren’t that many Fortnites or Minecrafts coming in the future. Gaming investment is drying up and gaming is becoming a cash business, rather than an investment business. And the cash flows to Valve.
USD 45 billion overall PC gaming revenue and all of Steam combined is 8.6bn. “And the cash flows to Valve”? Sure…
Oh, yeah, they have to. All of those examples are from publishers that tried to have their own platforms and then could not sustain that option and had to come back to the Steam platform.
So they’re not big enough.
As for Fortnite being bigger than EGS… well, yeah, it is. So much so that Epic themselves report on the two separately. And Fortnite makes more money than every other game in there put together.
10 Bn for Steam revenue this year, by the way. They are the only thing growing in the space. Everything else pulling money is aging games, 5-10 years old, that have a fossilized playerbase mobile-style. The money flows to Valve because Valve doesn’t need to make ANY games at all, pay for exclusives or do anything else. Especially since the fanboys paint any attempt at competing against a monopolistic actor as an anticompetitive act, somehow.
So still far off anything resembling >50% market share on PC. Good to know they’re still not a monopoly.
The money flows to Valve because Valve doesn’t need to make ANY games at all, pay for exclusives or do anything else.
So Valve is not engaging in any anti-competitive behaviour as well as pumping resources into Linux support to break the Windows hegemony? Great!
Especially since the fanboys paint any attempt at competing against a monopolistic actor as an anticompetitive act, somehow.
Yeah, these people are very strange. I mean, it’s a fact that Microsoft is the convicted monopolist because of the grip Windows has on the industry, the same Microsoft that bought Minecraft, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard King to become the world’s single biggest games publisher and their Windows-exclusive PC GamePass is also growing (surely at least partially thanks to Microsoft “continuing to misuse its Windows operating system monopoly” to promote their other services).
And yet, there are people who put the sole Linux supporter in the same corner, as if that company had anything approaching Microsoft’s market power. Not even the EU thought Valve was important enough. Microsoft, Apple, Google, ByteDance, and Meta are Digital Market Gatekeepers, not Valve.
But nobody is complaining about Steam OS having a monopoly on PC OSs, the issue is with Steam having control of the PC gaming market.
I am exhausted by humanity’s ongoing inability to hold more than one idea in their heads at once. The world isn’t made of good guys that play for your team and bad guys that play for the other team. Can people be adults for one moment at some point this century? Holy crap.
Steam can ABSOLUTELY have a dominant position in one market while attempting to erode a competitor’s dominant position in another market.
Microsoft has a dominant position in the OS market that should be eroded by both competitors and regulators.
That dominant position includes having about 75% of the PC OS market.
Steam has about 80% of the PC digital distribution market for new releases.
One of those facts isn’t tolerable just because you’ve decided to make supporting a specific alternative in the OS market your entire personality. That’s not how that works. Microsoft should be held back from the areas where it has dominance (and that includes keeping them on a very tight leash when it comes to aggregating more studios under their gaming division) and Steam should be kept on a tight leash when it comes to their dominant position on the gaming digital distribution space. Ideally by having other competitors not only survive but thrive and grow to prevent regulators having to intervene in the first place.
Those two ideas are, in fact, entirely consistent with each other with no contradiction. I am imploring social media dwellers to stop treating every issue as a football match or get off the Internet.
Steam has about 80% of the PC digital distribution market for new releases.
So it is a bad thing now that Steam makes new releases more discoverable than the other storefronts that have a larger installed base than Steam?
Microsoft’s store has a close to 100% penetration of home installation of Windows 10 and newer.
Opening Microsoft Store: Boom, top spots for Microsofts properties (Activision Blizzard sale, Minecraft, Candy Crush).
Switching to the Games tab: PC Game Pass, more Activision Blizzard sale, COD Black Ops 6 with a dedicated banner, more Minecraft, more Candy Crush.
Visiting one of Microsoft’s other game stores, Battle.net: 100% Microsoft exclusive. Not just Blizzard games but Doom, Avowed, Sea of Thieves, PC GamePass. That’s unregulated Microsoft on full display. Not a single 3rd party game even available but the rest of the Microsoft catalogue integrated after the takeover of Activision Blizzard.
Compare that to Steam: Huge banner advertising the sale promotion of EA.
Scrolling a bit further down, Microsoft games advertised, some convention for narrative games.
Nobody but Microsoft and Epic are to blame for their huge installed bases not converting to sales of 3rd party games. Mostly advertising their own properties and paid exclusives.
Well, hey, I’m going to assume the army of rabid fanboys doing free PR for Steam helps somewhat.
But it’s good to know you support Epic investing more of its money on funding third party games. We may agree after all. I’m not as much of a fan of the implication that it’s Fedi’s own fault that they’re less popular than Reddit and Twitter. I mean, screw network effects, right? Shoulda given users some incentive instead.
Again, Steam doesn’t promo its first party exclusives because making first party exclusives costs money and Steam doesn’t spend money. They don’t have to make exclusives because they have network effects that make every other game be in their store and give them 30% of everything they make. It’s free money.
Especially if you all flip the lid every time Epic pays someone to put their game on their store first or exclusively then there is not much to be done to leverage anything. Epic could co-market until they are blue in the face, but if nobody is buying any third party games there then a huge banner in an empty store is nowhere near as value than the SEO madness that is vying for placement on Steam.
You’re just making excuses for your monpoly because you’ve decided it’s YOUR monopoly even though some billionaire who isn’t you owns it. That’s not an emotional outburst, it’s an accurate observation. Me being frustrated at how insanely dumb that extremely widespread approach to life has become is emotional, I suppose, but I’d say entirely justified.
They don’t have to. OK, maybe Microsoft has to because they are the actual monopolist and making the Activision Blizzard franchises available on storefronts other than Microsoft’s own is to keep the watchdogs away.
Also, none of the franchises are exclusive to Steam, so Steam has no monopoly.
That sentence makes no sense. Fortnite is exclusive to EGS, therefore it cannot be “significantly bigger than the entire Epic store”.
Steam has no policies that forbid offering games on other stores, Epic has policies that makes certain games timed exclusives to EGS.
What makes EGS unattractive compared to Steam is the simple fact that Epic chooses to most prominently display their own games on EGS. Valve does front page banners, fests, that window that opens with every Steam launch, etc. and goes out of their way to make everything from big launches as well as solo dev indie games discoverable.
Epic has it in their own hands to make EGS more than the Fortnite launcher. They could promote other EGS games inside Fortnite but they don’t. They host concerts inside Fortnite but nothing to promote 3rd party EGS games, for examle.
USD 45 billion overall PC gaming revenue and all of Steam combined is 8.6bn. “And the cash flows to Valve”? Sure…
Oh, yeah, they have to. All of those examples are from publishers that tried to have their own platforms and then could not sustain that option and had to come back to the Steam platform.
So they’re not big enough.
As for Fortnite being bigger than EGS… well, yeah, it is. So much so that Epic themselves report on the two separately. And Fortnite makes more money than every other game in there put together.
10 Bn for Steam revenue this year, by the way. They are the only thing growing in the space. Everything else pulling money is aging games, 5-10 years old, that have a fossilized playerbase mobile-style. The money flows to Valve because Valve doesn’t need to make ANY games at all, pay for exclusives or do anything else. Especially since the fanboys paint any attempt at competing against a monopolistic actor as an anticompetitive act, somehow.
So still far off anything resembling >50% market share on PC. Good to know they’re still not a monopoly.
So Valve is not engaging in any anti-competitive behaviour as well as pumping resources into Linux support to break the Windows hegemony? Great!
Yeah, these people are very strange. I mean, it’s a fact that Microsoft is the convicted monopolist because of the grip Windows has on the industry, the same Microsoft that bought Minecraft, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard King to become the world’s single biggest games publisher and their Windows-exclusive PC GamePass is also growing (surely at least partially thanks to Microsoft “continuing to misuse its Windows operating system monopoly” to promote their other services).
And yet, there are people who put the sole Linux supporter in the same corner, as if that company had anything approaching Microsoft’s market power. Not even the EU thought Valve was important enough. Microsoft, Apple, Google, ByteDance, and Meta are Digital Market Gatekeepers, not Valve.
But nobody is complaining about Steam OS having a monopoly on PC OSs, the issue is with Steam having control of the PC gaming market.
I am exhausted by humanity’s ongoing inability to hold more than one idea in their heads at once. The world isn’t made of good guys that play for your team and bad guys that play for the other team. Can people be adults for one moment at some point this century? Holy crap.
Steam can ABSOLUTELY have a dominant position in one market while attempting to erode a competitor’s dominant position in another market.
Microsoft has a dominant position in the OS market that should be eroded by both competitors and regulators.
That dominant position includes having about 75% of the PC OS market.
Steam has about 80% of the PC digital distribution market for new releases.
One of those facts isn’t tolerable just because you’ve decided to make supporting a specific alternative in the OS market your entire personality. That’s not how that works. Microsoft should be held back from the areas where it has dominance (and that includes keeping them on a very tight leash when it comes to aggregating more studios under their gaming division) and Steam should be kept on a tight leash when it comes to their dominant position on the gaming digital distribution space. Ideally by having other competitors not only survive but thrive and grow to prevent regulators having to intervene in the first place.
Those two ideas are, in fact, entirely consistent with each other with no contradiction. I am imploring social media dwellers to stop treating every issue as a football match or get off the Internet.
So it is a bad thing now that Steam makes new releases more discoverable than the other storefronts that have a larger installed base than Steam?
Microsoft’s store has a close to 100% penetration of home installation of Windows 10 and newer.
Opening Microsoft Store: Boom, top spots for Microsofts properties (Activision Blizzard sale, Minecraft, Candy Crush).
Switching to the Games tab: PC Game Pass, more Activision Blizzard sale, COD Black Ops 6 with a dedicated banner, more Minecraft, more Candy Crush.
Visiting one of Microsoft’s other game stores, Battle.net: 100% Microsoft exclusive. Not just Blizzard games but Doom, Avowed, Sea of Thieves, PC GamePass. That’s unregulated Microsoft on full display. Not a single 3rd party game even available but the rest of the Microsoft catalogue integrated after the takeover of Activision Blizzard.
Compare that to Steam: Huge banner advertising the sale promotion of EA.
Scrolling a bit further down, Microsoft games advertised, some convention for narrative games.
Nobody but Microsoft and Epic are to blame for their huge installed bases not converting to sales of 3rd party games. Mostly advertising their own properties and paid exclusives.
All your emotional outbursts do not change facts.
Well, hey, I’m going to assume the army of rabid fanboys doing free PR for Steam helps somewhat.
But it’s good to know you support Epic investing more of its money on funding third party games. We may agree after all. I’m not as much of a fan of the implication that it’s Fedi’s own fault that they’re less popular than Reddit and Twitter. I mean, screw network effects, right? Shoulda given users some incentive instead.
Again, Steam doesn’t promo its first party exclusives because making first party exclusives costs money and Steam doesn’t spend money. They don’t have to make exclusives because they have network effects that make every other game be in their store and give them 30% of everything they make. It’s free money.
Especially if you all flip the lid every time Epic pays someone to put their game on their store first or exclusively then there is not much to be done to leverage anything. Epic could co-market until they are blue in the face, but if nobody is buying any third party games there then a huge banner in an empty store is nowhere near as value than the SEO madness that is vying for placement on Steam.
You’re just making excuses for your monpoly because you’ve decided it’s YOUR monopoly even though some billionaire who isn’t you owns it. That’s not an emotional outburst, it’s an accurate observation. Me being frustrated at how insanely dumb that extremely widespread approach to life has become is emotional, I suppose, but I’d say entirely justified.