You know what would help indies? If they weren't losing 40% (30% plus returns, chargebacks and taxes) of their income on the primary PC storefront where they are in fact subsidizing AAA games which get sweetheart deals
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Just sptiballing here(not that they'd ever do this,) but what if Steam offered a discount based upon what services the game used. Like a basic 10% for access Market but all you get is listed & a landing page? If you wanted community tools or reviews or being able to administer keys for 2nd & 3rd
This is why the initial hate for EGS pissed me off. Cause instead of legit criticisms, of which there were many to be had, most of it was just worship of Steam and saying that devs who wanted a more fair share of revenue were "greedy"
I've already convinced half of my friends to just look through the entirety of the internet for an alternative way to buy 'em.
Or at least just go on GoG and that 30% is spent on reviving dead shit.
because it sucks for users. the app itself is so noticeably slow, regardless of hardware. the storefront is awful in terms of discovery. it lacks basic social features that even consoles have, like profiles (profile pics alone have been on the roadmap for like 5 years...).
As a user, it's a horrible experience. It's lacking the entire community aspect, along with plenty of the QOL features on Steam.
I've continued to claim the free games, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather buy a game on Steam than use it through Epic even when I already have it in my library.
Also Epic has a reputation. i.e., Steam Market & player inventories + trading is a really neat feature. Being able to trade and sell stuff in games is neat.
Rocket League lost its trading bc Epic buyout + Fortnite item sync, which was huge after they'd already sucked the soul out of it.
Like what the fuck was only recently adding user review scores but you can only see and give a star rating and put a emoji to say a catgeory of the game. It literaly feels worthless to see for me if I want to see peoples thoughts on a game
Well, it lacks grand majority of basic features that even the worst platform like Ubisoft connect has, it absolutely fucks you on regional pricing if you live anywhere but US, and with how often they have leaks of passwords, their customer support is some of the worst I've had to interact with.
Man I wish Epic games store was good, 12% is great but holy shit a company having billions in yearly profile and store still freeze/lag or games are just a pain to play on Epic Games. Just yesterday played a Epic Games and took 30 minutes to get my ps4 controlers working.
Lack of any community around it hurts. I don't but there are I have no idea about the current state of the games nor can I get community/dev support there like I can through Steam. It would be so easy to fix.
I think it does and I'm glad it did. PC is an open platform and allowing what we have on consoles, which is basically platform rot, to fester on PC would have been terrible
still, I wish people bought indies on itch which also takes 12% and is not a multibiliion company seeking a monopoly
Oh I agree with that.
I just hate seeing people talking about EGS like Steam didn't had those same issues. A PC game that's not on Steam nowadays pretty much doesn't exist.
yeah. I wish people realized there were better game library managers/launchers than steam and that purchasing games on something like gog/itch if they are available is better for everyone (even valve in the long run)
I don't love epic but I always see this argument and I don't really understand it. Like ok it's on epic exclusively. That still is nothing like consoles. It's on PC. Like ok it's on one free storefront or another... Idk I may be missing something but this argument never held water for me
might i just add that the platform itself (and a lot of the glue that holds it together (trust me on this one even if i'm not a dev)) is just really really bad. it fails as a storefront due to the UX being bad, the social aspect is terrible (can't change avatar) and it went 3 years without a cart
i remember when the steam app was just as shitty, but they didn't try to bully their way into a weird monopoly with exclusivity deals, Epic did. i'd honestly say it's a rare case of them getting what they deserved because i honestly doubt that cut wouldn't get larger if their plans actually worked
there were some differences. Epic would infamous poach games that had already made promises to launch Day 1 on other platforms only to sweep in right before the game was finished and throw some money at them to delay the steam release and launch on their barely-functional platform instead
I think more people just don't bother to use it, rather than refuse. From customer perspective, it's just Steam but worse in every possible way. GOG at least has the benefit of DRM free games, Epic only has once a week incentive to launch it.
The free games from Prime Gaming, I get everyone for GOG but I never bother if they are Epic Game Store and that is free games. So I am really not surprised people are not Buying from there.
I've seen the EGS described as a marketing black hole, and it holds true in my experience. On top of just nobody actually using that store, it also sucks for discoverability.
Games that launched first on Epic, people would only find out about a year later when they came to Steam.
I've been advocating for a technique based on Bandcamp music releases.
"First on Bandcamp", with as little as a week. People will get instantly interested in checking Bandcamp for once instead of waiting for a less profitable platform.
Do that with Itch.
Not really, raising the price on Steam would depress sales, and cause negative reviews about the price being too high which would make things even worse. The price being lower on itch wouldn't help with any of that
Its wild that indie games even realtively popular ones are losing pretry much 50% of their profit immediately after paying fees on steam and the others. It puts it into context that already cheap indie games are making peanuts from sales when they are on big sales on steam
The sheer amount of work to get a demo working though is a massive cost. Especially for those toeing the line of financial feasibility. Taking a month or more to get a demo built, tested, and pushed to a shopfront is a month that could have gone into making the game better.
I personally love demos, but I don't think It's for everyone, The platform splits need to change, but they won't because where else can you go. Epic, Gog and Itch don't have nearly the market share they need to get valve to change their ways.
This is fair. I've been working on this demo of mine for months, and have been eating at saving the entire time. But then again the funding aparatus's for super small indie teams (2 or less) and an actual indie team are completely different.
I can only speak for myself, but none of my games have demos and none of the return rates I'm seeing are egregious. My RPGs have a return rate of about 2%. My text-based game that you can 100% within the returnal window has a return rate of 3.5%.
I appreciate the insight. Id be awesome for more devs to release some stats so news devs have some idea what to do XD. It feels like the wild west out there business wise.
There's the added issue that D&D is a massive juggernaut, so much so that the whole hobby is sometimes described as "playing D&D" (or, to a somewhat lesser extent, Das Schwarze Auge in the German-speaking European parts)
You basically don't hear about anything else in any news publication
There was more of an awareness of this years ago, but then when Epic opened their gamestore, consumer psychology kicked in, and gamers had to "pick a team." Criticism of Steam became less frequent afterward. Typical capitalist trick imo
Epic's account recovery is dogshit enough that it's plainly not worth risking the money on. Wish I could say otherwise, I gave them plenty of shakes and spoke against the stupid FUD at start, but plainly, I trust Itch a whole lot goddamn more then that clownshoes operation.
i would indeed like to see major releases subsidize indies. i mean shit, a lot of them already charge so little (and dare i say it, arent making it up in volume). not even JUST indies tbh, any developer that doesnt have control over a popular ecosystem needs a boost imo.
And it doesn't feel that bad does it, 30%? If a game earns 150k Steam takes 45k and the devs get 105k
Except that ain't profit. Losing almost half your money when you're trying to not profit but just recoup development cost, pay back *debt*, that fucking sucks man
If you ever wondered why so many indie studios put out their first game, and it looks like it's doing okay, not amazing but alright, and they never make a second game, that would be why
Their studio closed. But when indie studios close its not called that, it's called having to get a day job
ugh.. my first gamedev job was at small studio and it was cycle of getting a money by freelance/contracts to pay salaries, and try to save for making own game, then fail in management and uncertainty, run out of money and start cycle again…
And I dunno but it just feels bad to me that when a dev is trying to frantically pay back debts Steam passively gets tens of thousands of dollars they didn't need, barely even notice, and which largely get funneled into Gaben's next mega-yacht
I went through this when I started looking for indie bands I was really into in high school 25 years ago and realized that when it's an indie band and they don't make enough money to be a band the band goes away.
This is reminding me when I was producing my first audiobook that Amazon takes *60%* of all sales on Audible. The book author and myself had to split those profits 20% each. 😅
yeah I do hate this after learning about it - Epic Games Store is technically more friendly to use as maybe put it there first to and then release it fully on Steam and both simultaneously to maybe get more attention/buyers but Steam needs to be nicer to Indies (like a lot more).
I mean steam can be good because it can sorta legitimize a game in the eyes of consumers. Unfortunately, launching exclusively on platforms like Itch makes a game come off as well, cheap.
It's obviously not necessarily true, but I think consumers see Steam as a more serious big-time platform
Not to mention, yeah it might suck when steam takes 30-40% of your money but if the game is selling 2-300% more than it would have otherwise it's still better than if they had say launched only on itch and gotten a third the sales
All that said, I do agree that Steam should have some kind of more indie-friendly policy. If a game sells sub 10k or even 100k units it's not like they're making much money off of it anyways, especially if it's only being sold for <20 bucks and compared to basically any AAA release short of Concord
I'd prolly do what most engines do. Make it either free or a miniscule (<=5%) cut if a game makes less than say 100k bucks then increase the cut at different brackets. Up to the full 30% if a game makes over a million or so. They can even keep the same deals for the big heavy hitters too
if the game is not a multiplayer, I consider piracy + email developers to get the way to donate directly a better option, but it only works if the developer works solo and there is no incentive to buy it on Steam instead (multiplayer)...
If indies have ways to buy outside of steam (direct from them, or from itch) I will typically buy that way instead. Steam is almost a last resort for me.
I think this year i'm going to make an effort to buy only indie games.... Theres so many great devs out there cranking out great games that are underappreciated
Those AAA games paying less comission are also getting the most visibility/featuring while most indies get buried/locked out of basic features like profile badges
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Or at least just go on GoG and that 30% is spent on reviving dead shit.
Workshop, family library-
I've continued to claim the free games, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather buy a game on Steam than use it through Epic even when I already have it in my library.
Rocket League lost its trading bc Epic buyout + Fortnite item sync, which was huge after they'd already sucked the soul out of it.
unfortunately it's just a terrible piece of software. can't even handle basic stuff well like managing a download queue or moving games across drives.
and i have to go "what the hell is EGS???"
people got mad and EGS rep never recovered from those poaching incidents
IMO it doesn't deserve all the bad rep it got.
still, I wish people bought indies on itch which also takes 12% and is not a multibiliion company seeking a monopoly
I just hate seeing people talking about EGS like Steam didn't had those same issues. A PC game that's not on Steam nowadays pretty much doesn't exist.
Doubly frustrating when small indie projects, especially those that start there, don’t end up on itch
Games that launched first on Epic, people would only find out about a year later when they came to Steam.
"First on Bandcamp", with as little as a week. People will get instantly interested in checking Bandcamp for once instead of waiting for a less profitable platform.
Do that with Itch.
And yes, I'm hearing the same things from the ttrpg space about that and about discoverability, etc.
You basically don't hear about anything else in any news publication
Except that ain't profit. Losing almost half your money when you're trying to not profit but just recoup development cost, pay back *debt*, that fucking sucks man
Their studio closed. But when indie studios close its not called that, it's called having to get a day job
All I got was credit card debt, fibromyalgia, and alcoholism.
Following their Bandcamp pages helps keeping up with small bands, but yeah, a lot don't publish much after a first album or even EP
And then you research the band members and find references to their "actual" jobs
The MS antitrust case was just a glitch in the end
It's obviously not necessarily true, but I think consumers see Steam as a more serious big-time platform
Valve creates a race-to-the-bottom for smaller developers, they skew the consumers idea of value, and they killed physical media on PC
Zero idea why they are so lauded, they fucking ruined everything - their games aren’t even that good, lmao