While some accuse the Epic Games Store of unfair competition, others, for example, - believe that the store is pursuing the right policy, unlike Steam, which "killed" the PC game industry. Recently, the head of the North Carolina company Tim Sweeney (Tim Sweeney) explained that exclusive deals are a way to combat the unfairly high commission of a competitor, and promised that Epic Games would stop entering into them if Valve starts paying developers 88% of revenue instead of the current 70%.
βIf Steam starts paying 88% of revenue to all developers and publishers on an ongoing basis without significant restrictions, Epic Games will abandon the policy of exclusives (while continuing to fulfill obligations to partners) and consider releasing their own games on Steam,β β Sweeney in conversation with Twitter users. - Such a decision would go down in the history of the computer games industry and would have a very strong influence on the development of other platforms for many generations. It would be nice to buy goods in stores again.β
βThe dominance of the 30% royalty store is a major problem for game developers and publishers who survive off this business,β supervisor. βWe want to make a difference, and itβs [exclusives] that will help us do that.β
Sweeney also what he meant by "substantial restrictions". These include the requirement to use certain online systems like accounts and friend lists, rather than what developers would like; incompatibility of game versions for different platforms and stores; charging fees from other services (for example, if the user plays Fortnite on PC and iOS); the availability of purchased items is not on all platforms for which the project is released; tedious certification processes. βGenerally speaking, the spirit of the open platform is in stores where you just look for and buy games, and not those that are more like a tax office for developers,β he concluded.
A little before Sweeney that the Epic Games Store intends to continue to adhere to the scheme with 12% deductions in favor of the store and 88% in favor of developers. It is worth noting that since the end of 2018, the revenue distribution system on Steam has been slightly . As soon as the game brings in the first $10 million, Valve's share of its sales is reduced to 25%, and upon reaching the 50 million milestone - to 20%.
The Epic Games Store has been known to pay certain amounts to developers and publishers for signing exclusive deals. There is no official information on the amount of such payments, but there are assumptions in this regard. Recently, one of the investors who supported the development of a tactical game with elements of the Phoenix Point strategy on Fig, that for the annual exclusivity, its authors received about $ 2,2 million. Thanks to this, it paid off even before the release, so there is nothing surprising in the fact that companies willingly refuse to cooperate with Valve.
However, at the Game Developers Conference 2019, the head of the Epic Games Store, Steve Allison (Steve Allison) that sooner or later the company will reduce the number of exclusive deals to a few per year, or even completely abandon them. Apparently, non-exclusive games are selling quite well on the Epic Games Store. So, this store fell (250 copies) launch sales of World War Z zombie action.
Source: 3dnews.ru