Epic's New Program Lets Developers Keep Their Revenue In Exchange For Exclusivity (theverge.com) 24
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Epic Games will let developers keep 100 percent of their net revenues from the Epic Games Store for six months if they choose to make their games or apps exclusives for that time through its new First Run program, the company announced on Wednesday. Typically, Epic lets developers keep 88 percent of their revenues, with the company taking a 12 percent cut. For developers who launch a product through First Run, the split will return to 88 / 12 once the six months are up.
Developers who choose to participate in the Epic First Run program will see a few other benefits as well. Epic says First Run games and apps will be presented to Store users with "new exclusive badging, homepage placements, and dedicated collections" and will be featured in "relevant store campaigns including sales, events, and editorial as applicable." The program is open now, and the first products that will be eligible to be part of the program must launch on or after October 16th. [...] However, developers can be a part of First Run and still release their products on their own stores. Here's what Epic says about which products are eligible: "A new release game or app which has not been previously released on another third-party PC store or included in a subscription service available on another third-party PC store. Games or apps with a pre-existing exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store are not eligible for the program."
Developers who choose to participate in the Epic First Run program will see a few other benefits as well. Epic says First Run games and apps will be presented to Store users with "new exclusive badging, homepage placements, and dedicated collections" and will be featured in "relevant store campaigns including sales, events, and editorial as applicable." The program is open now, and the first products that will be eligible to be part of the program must launch on or after October 16th. [...] However, developers can be a part of First Run and still release their products on their own stores. Here's what Epic says about which products are eligible: "A new release game or app which has not been previously released on another third-party PC store or included in a subscription service available on another third-party PC store. Games or apps with a pre-existing exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store are not eligible for the program."
Re: This is as opposed to giving epic 2 slices... (Score:2)
There doesn't appear to be any kind of tying arrangement. You can publish games on epic without needing to use unreal engine. And unreal engine has really generous terms itself, basically the first million dollars of revenue your game makes are free. And they added that despite already being the most popular and pretty much the most technically advanced game engine.
None of this even begins to break any antitrust rules.
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They're just saying "give us a higher multiplier on our store cut % (i.e. more sales) and you can keep the engine part"
Idea. RTFA before commenting. That's not at all what it/they said.
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Getting a discount for using multiple things from the same company is a pretty well-established practice and not inherently anti-competitive.
Re: This is as opposed to giving epic 2 slices... (Score:2)
Nor is that even what epic is doing here.
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Maybe, I might have misunderstood what the OP was referring to.
In certain scenarios, you have to pay Epic for the engine, and if you use their distribution platform you have to pay for that. You can use UE but not distribute on Epic (and presumably you can distribute on Epic and not use UE), but if you do both, you get a discount in the form of the engine fee being waived.
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Competitive, not Anti-competitive (Score:3, Insightful)
This is anti-competitive behavior and should be stopped.
Anti-competitive would be saying that if you use our engine you can only release your game on our store. Saying that regardless of whether you use our engine we'll give you a financial incentive to release it on our store exclusively for 6-months is exactly the sort of competitive behaviour you want to encourage in a free market since it presses their competitors to make their offers to developers more attractive, driving down costs for developers which ultimately tends to lower prices for consumers.
Tha
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Usually you're paying a slice to epic for sales and another to epic for the engine. They're just saying "give us a higher multiplier on our store cut % (i.e. more sales) and you can keep the engine part"
No idea what you're getting at here.
Epic Store charges a 12% royalty. Most stores charge 30%.
The fees for Unreal Engine are 5% of any revenue you make after the first $1 million.
If you use Unreal Engine, Epic waives the 5% on revenue that comes from the Epic Store.
This program has nothing to do with Unreal Engine. No matter what engine you use, Epic waives all royalties for the first 6 months if you grant them exclusivity for your PC release.
And in the end almost no one buys games off the Epic Store, so not
Re: This is as opposed to giving epic 2 slices... (Score:2)
I've bought a lot of them personally. Typically way better deals than steam. The only downside is no steamworks, but I don't really care for 99% of games I play. That and most of the games I've gotten from epic were completely free, and they're generally pretty good.
Fuck exclusives (Score:3, Interesting)
It's one thing for Epic or Valve or whoever to release their own titles exclusively on their own store while also selling titles from other publishers. It's quite another for those other publishers to get roped into exclusivity contracts.
Fuck that shit.
Everyone should be putting their games on GoG, Steam, and Epic wherever possible. Then let the buyer decide which marketplace is best.
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Everyone should be putting their games on GoG, Steam, and Epic wherever possible. Then let the buyer decide which marketplace is best.
Why shouldn't the developers get a say in where they sell their games? As a developer, I certainly have very strong preferences for which marketplaces I prefer working with.
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They didn't get a say back in the box-o-software days, why should they now? And it's pretty damn anti-consumer as well. If you're an at-large developer and you lock your game up on one store, you're a pissant developer that deserves scorn. Same for those publishers that set up their own exclusive stores that sell only in-house products and nothing else. At least battle.net sort of had an excuse for awhile there, but by now they should have opened their store up to other publishers/developers outside of A
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You can decide to make your game an Epic exclusive. I just won't buy it.
Not Steam (Score:4, Insightful)
100% of zero is still zero.
Looks like a very good deal, but for who? (Score:5, Interesting)
* For Epic? Sure they have run the numbers and they would not be doing it if it wasn't.
* For the users? I don't think so. Exclusivity is never good for users. In this case they might be forcing you to play in a platform you do not like.
* For the devs? Looks like it is. They get every buck of the game for the first 6 months, that for many many games is when most of the sales are, and then you can release the game on other platforms, so if anyone didn't buy it on Epic, they can buy it anywhere else. But will it work like this? In these 6 months you are restricting the reach to a much lower audience. And I don't know how many of them are, but some users will not get the game on the Epic store even if you give it for free (yes, I know because I am one of them). Will these people buy the game 6 months after release on other stores like Steam? Maybe, but maybe not: the exclusivity can cause rejection for the title on some users, or maybe 6 months after release, your game is not the next big thing anymore.
So, I'm not that sure anyone other than Epic will benefit that much from this. Consider that the usual way to get 6 month exclusives before was paying big bucks upfront... to me this does not look like a better deal for devs.
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* For Epic? Sure they have run the numbers and they would not be doing it if it wasn't.
* For the users? I don't think so. Exclusivity is never good for users. In this case they might be forcing you to play in a platform you do not like.
* For the devs? Looks like it is. They get every buck of the game for the first 6 months, that for many many games is when most of the sales are, and then you can release the game on other platforms, so if anyone didn't buy it on Epic, they can buy it anywhere else. But will it work like this? In these 6 months you are restricting the reach to a much lower audience. And I don't know how many of them are, but some users will not get the game on the Epic store even if you give it for free (yes, I know because I am one of them). Will these people buy the game 6 months after release on other stores like Steam? Maybe, but maybe not: the exclusivity can cause rejection for the title on some users, or maybe 6 months after release, your game is not the next big thing anymore.
So, I'm not that sure anyone other than Epic will benefit that much from this. Consider that the usual way to get 6 month exclusives before was paying big bucks upfront... to me this does not look like a better deal for devs.
I think that's the point.
I'm pretty sure that publishers and developers have realised the Faustian bargain that Epic was offering. Exclusivity in exchange for a pittance but the result was far fewer sales than if they had of released just on Steam, let alone a simultaneous release on multiple platforms (Epic, GOG and Steam). So publishers are getting to the end of their 6/12 months exclusivity and are finding that people just aren't interested in paying full price for an old game... Or not interested in
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I can imagine a game being made in two parts. Part one is released in Epic and part 2 is released in 6 months to all platforms.
I don't mean a literal 2 parter, just an extensive update, with extended "side quests" and such, extra ending options, maybe even a graphical update.
So even at 6 months time, it may still have a buzz to get some sales in the other platforms.
You get some initial money to carry on development and do a full game later.
EPIC store has a brand problem (Score:3)
Whether it is true or not is beside the point - most people think it is.
Steam is percept as US company, GOG as EU one, EPIC store - as a Chinese company wearing the skin of a US one.
Is Epic running out of money? (Score:1)
No thanks (Score:2)
Dear Devs, do this and you will lose a sale from me. I will get the PBE of a game.
What's the catch? (Score:2)
This is making it sound like you are basically distributing for fee for those six months. What's the catch then? I feel like I'm missing something.