They know that Steam offers the largest base of potential customers, along with features that ease multiplayer logistics, mod distribution, and promotion. If we dig our Steam and Epic trenches too deep, we risk losing sight of the problems driving this battle in the first place.Individual indie devs have no bargaining power with Steam. PC gaming is better than ever right now, but we're also in a time when massive layoffs and studio closures are common, the culture at big developers is crappy as usual, and giants like Google are pushing game streaming without telling us how it'll really benefit us or small developers. I don't know what will come of all this once Epic is established and its store better built-out, but in a year or two, I hope we can say that PC gaming in general has improved-not for Valve or Epic, but for us and the developers we support. And by putting some of that Fortnite cash toward exclusivity deals with developers such as Remedy, as well as $100M toward no-strings-attached developer grants, Epic helps ensure that those devs can continue making games-games which are likely to come to Steam, possibly with no timed Epic Store exclusivity for future releases. By creating new PC gamers who are eventually going to wander beyond Epic's walls, Fortnite helps Valve, too. These exclusives are certainly hurting Valve, but killing it? That's hyperbole for now.Įpic itself mitigates some of Steam's losses. It'll miss out on the initial sales of those games, but Grand Theft Auto 5 has been a top seller on Steam every year since it released on PC in 2015-a big enough game can do that. Valve has Microsoft's support (if putting the Master Chief Collection on Steam isn't a statement of intent for future games, I'll be very surprised), a massive userbase that includes the Chinese market (where Epic currently does not sell), and a huge library that will eventually include current Epic Store exclusives. That isn't something to be concerned about right now. These exclusives are certainly hurting Valve, but killing it? That's hyperbole for now.īut fears that Epic will throw its capital around so hard it'll put Valve out of business are way, way overblown. (Though big publishers are obviously into it, too.) Epic's human curation and smaller selection is understandably attractive to top-tier indie developers like Unknown Worlds and Supergiant, who also benefit more than 2K or Ubisoft from an increased cut of their sales. Steam is an open market, where anyone can set up shop and sling hentai puzzle games, whereas Epic offers tidy shelves that look a bit more inviting to parents of Fortnite kids, even though it'll list M-rated games. So Steam and the Epic Store, for the moment, do serve different functions. And as for what the Epic Store won't sell, "crappy games" and "asset flips" will be culled, said Tim Sweeney. That's a far cry from Steam, which devs poured 9,000 games into in 2018. The Epic Store, on the other hand, is more boutique-like.Īt a Game Developers Conference Q&A, Epic said that every developer or publisher that releases a game on the store will have an account manager to discuss sales and promotion opportunities with (though there'll be no paid promotion). (I've criticized Valve for its reluctance to raise Steam out of the muck even slightly, or use any of its power to improve gaming culture, but that's a separate issue to the general idea of openness.) Yeah, the flood of games made all games on the platform harder to discover if you're not pulling the levers within Steam that personalize recommendations, but a great indie game might not have had a chance on Steam at all without an easy way to get there, and there was no alternative store as big. Epic and Steam in harmony?Īt this point I think Valve did the right thing by creating Steam Direct and opening the platform to adult games. When that happens, I wonder what PC gaming will look like. Even Valve's own Artifact flopped, and Breach only lasted a few months.Įpic has said it's going to relax on the exclusives at some point, though. The past few years of layoffs, studio closures, and flops explain why. Games are more and more expensive to develop and the market is more saturated than ever, so it's no surprise that developers and publishers are keen to mitigate risk with Epic's help, especially since they can still release on Steam later. We'll see more of this drama play out throughout the year, including more high-profile Epic exclusives.
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