News Epic Games Store
- Thread starter Blizniak
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Epic really are motherfuckers.
Ooh, Tim is mad about monopolies again. I'm bored, I'm going to go poke him a bit.
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Google will let European Play Store users pay with alternate billing systems
Google will still charge a 12 percent or less processing fee.
I don't know why he's so upset. He got the alternate payment option he so desperately wanted!
tim is just mad that he isn’t the monopoly
He wants to be listed in Google Play and have access to the millions (billions?) of users in Google's marketplace but doesn't want to pay any fees for this access.Google will let European Play Store users pay with alternate billing systems
Google will still charge a 12 percent or less processing fee.www.theverge.com
I don't know why he's so upset. He got the alternate payment option he so desperately wanted!
Basically, he always wanted a free lunch on other companies' dime, so for these companies to charge their cut (minus payment processing) is exactly what he doesn't want.
On this issue Tim can punch sand. There's things to be said about how Google put pressure on device manufacturers to not pre-install EGS on their devices, and that sucks, but I don't see why Epic should have access to Google Play or their users for nowt.
Likewise on iOS, if you use the App Store you need to play by Apple's rules. But there's definitely an argument to be had about opening up the iOS platform to competing stores, and if users want to install EGS (or any other store) on their iPhone then they should be within their rights to do so.
But once again, Tim didn't want that. He just wanted to be visible in the App Store, have access to all those customers, and pay Apple nothing for it.
Google will let European Play Store users pay with alternate billing systems
Google will still charge a 12 percent or less processing fee.
I don't know why he's so upset. He got the alternate payment option he so desperately wanted!
Ok, so this might sound weird but there's this argument about how consoles are specialized gaming devices or something like that (that to be fair I find it weird and in an era where you can install non gaming apps in your console it kind of proves that is a weak argument), so the mythical 30% is fine.
What i want to say is if we accept this argument, that Tim has made, why should games (and only games) in the App store or google play pay less when some games are just the same in console and mobile.
Did it make sense ? It's getting late and I might not have worded this great but I hope my point got across.
The specialised game device argument is basically Tim trying not to piss off Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, whose stores provide the vast majority of Fortnite's revenue. Can't rock that boat.
But if he'd managed to get what he wanted out of Google and Apple, you can bet your ass he'd drop that whole argument and try to get the same deal on those platforms too.
I probably would've bought this day 1 if it weren't an EGS-exclusive. I have a feeling it would've been a mistake, but I guess we'll see?
While I think the game will do "fine" unless it launches next to a bigger game (let's not forget that it was going to "release" the same day as Elden ring)
But as with all these games, those deals were made in the early days of the store, it was free money.
But as with all these games, those deals were made in the early days of the store, it was free money.
I think this will do okay, but way lower returns than any previous entry
Isn't Epic forcing their views onto others by not allowing adult games? 
Totally different thing...!Isn't Epic forcing their views onto others by not allowing adult games?
What about people who like crappy games?
If you Google the EGS version of a game, it will (sometimes) show you how many votes it has. Fall Guys has a bit over 750k votes. The voting system is so vastly different from Steam's reviews that you cannot make any sort of direct comparisons (there will likely be more votes than reviews, even though the EGS userbase is smaller), but I thought it was a neat tidbit of information.
Releasing a porn game without the porn included, House Party, is peak Epic nonsense.Isn't Epic forcing their views onto others by not allowing adult games?
A store without buyers, reviews without genuine reviewers etc... It's a pattern.
Seems like API also added number of votes, so did a crawler
GitHub - nikop/epic-games-ratings: Ratings for all games in Epic Games Store (Until it broke Github)
Ratings for all games in Epic Games Store (Until it broke Github) - nikop/epic-games-ratings
github.com
I know it's hard to map that and all but I found this one funny
Still, looking at the list sorted by votes only 1 of the games with more than 100k votes wasn't either a F2P or given away for free at some point.
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I'll be honest that game wasn't gonna do great anywhere
Still, looking at the list sorted by votes only 1 of the games with more than 100k votes wasn't either a F2P or given away for free at some point.
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I'll be honest that game wasn't gonna do great anywhere
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Naraka Bladepoint has 96,062 votes right now. I think that's the highest B2P game. It has 98,861 reviews on Steam right now. The fact it has nearly as many EGS votes as Steam reviews, despite coming out on EGS 4 months later, is a pretty clear sign votes will outpace reviews.I know it's hard to map that and all but I found this one funny
Still, looking at the list sorted by votes only 1 of the games with more than 100k votes wasn't either a F2P or given away for free at some point.
Edit: I just remembered the votes system has only been live for a month so that's even further proof.
It's quite shocking to see the late release of a non-exclusive game selling over 100k on EGS.
Either this number is fake, or else our theory that no one buys games on EGS is false or outdated.
People have always bought games on EGS. Just look at how Borderlands 3 sold 1.5 million units in two weeks at its release. When you refer to "no one buys games", you're most likely thinking about lower profile games that do fairly well on Steam and are mostly ignored on EGS (i.e. Let's Build a Zoo). It seems that bigger exclusives and sim-ships for high profile games do well enough, but just not at Steam's volume.
Naraka is certainly an outlier though and I can't explain why it is heads and shoulders above every other B2P game. It has nearly twice as many votes as Red Dead Redemption 2 which is at 55k.
Naraka is certainly an outlier though and I can't explain why it is heads and shoulders above every other B2P game. It has nearly twice as many votes as Red Dead Redemption 2 which is at 55k.
I still have a lotttt of questions about how Epic's review system works since I do not use it at all or even know anyone that uses it. It makes me wonder if it would explain any of the discrepancies or wide swings in votes.
We know it only prompts user to vote once they have played >2 hours of a game. Though does this notification only appear when you exit that exact game OR does it appear on any game you have played >2 hours. In other words, will EGS periodically prompt users to review games they played a while ago?
Does the notification reappear if you ignore it?
If you rate a game low <4 stars, does the system ever prompt you to re-vote at some other point?
Can you rate a game during a "free play" weekend?
Does the vote autofill 5 out of 5 stars with the user having to manually lower the stars or does it start 0 out of 5, or even, blank out of 5 stars?
Lotssss of other questions than this, but I feel like these would help contextualize the results.
We know it only prompts user to vote once they have played >2 hours of a game. Though does this notification only appear when you exit that exact game OR does it appear on any game you have played >2 hours. In other words, will EGS periodically prompt users to review games they played a while ago?
Does the notification reappear if you ignore it?
If you rate a game low <4 stars, does the system ever prompt you to re-vote at some other point?
Can you rate a game during a "free play" weekend?
Does the vote autofill 5 out of 5 stars with the user having to manually lower the stars or does it start 0 out of 5, or even, blank out of 5 stars?
Lotssss of other questions than this, but I feel like these would help contextualize the results.
Or we can just ignore the numbers of ratings considering, it's weird as hell, just like the top seller list.
Darkest Dungeon 2 has at least sold 100k, but has 4k reviews.
Not sure about that, big sim ship games like Days Gone, Horizon and Gow has like 1-4k votes.
Darkest Dungeon 2 has at least sold 100k, but has 4k reviews.
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I wouldn't say they are fake but we don't really understand how it is counted.
We discussed this yesterday and we think it's mixing emojis with stars at the same time (or something like that), if you count the individual emojis for FF7R for example, it won't give you 11k but 6,4k so it seems to follow a different SUM process, but yeah, I don't think they are fake per say, just not exactly a binary result.
I don't think there is any point in trying to calculcate anything from the ratings.
Naraka having over 90k is weird considering Satisfactory is one of the store's few successes , sold at least 95ok and has 17k votes. And before anyone goes, "well Satisfactory is an old game", Satisfactory is a never-ending and constantly updated game that people keep coming back to playing.
Naraka having over 90k is weird considering Satisfactory is one of the store's few successes , sold at least 95ok and has 17k votes. And before anyone goes, "well Satisfactory is an old game", Satisfactory is a never-ending and constantly updated game that people keep coming back to playing.
Just to clarify, you're theorizing that the vote count which shows up on Google is a combination of both star votes and poll results?
I believe the numbers are legitimate, but I also believe we have no solid methodology as to how the numbers are calculated. I still contest it votes will be easier to accumulate than reviews as there is less friction. I know this is the mother of all stretches, but you can go to IMDb and see there are many more votes for movies compared to reviews. Just look at how Nope has 7500 votes and 258 reviews. At the same time, since EGS votes are randomly sampled, I concede that this point of reference isn't very good.
Also a recent few sim-ship releases for Steam/EGS:
Video Horror Society (2,588 Steam reviews, 134 EGS votes)
Sonic Origins (1,401 Steam reviews, 120 EGS votes)
Symphony of War (2,339 Steam reviews, 144 EGS votes)
The Caligula Effect 2 (150 Steam reviews, 28 EGS votes)
The Cycle: Frontier (27,035 Steam reviews, 11,086 EGS votes) <- This one was EGS exclusive several years ago, but I don't believe that would affect the skew in any meaningful way as it is an F2P game. Or maybe F2P games on EGS get more votes(?)
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After monitoring for few days, I don't think polls are counted. Since polls count can go up without ratings count count up.
Here are ratings for 2022 EGS exclusives and Ubisoft games (so far):
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands: 14,975
FInal Fantasy VII Remake: 11,931 (I know it came out in 2021, but it was about two weeks before 2022 so I'll let it slide)
Evil Dead: The Game: 7,809
Sifu: 4,933
Roller Champions: 4,370
Salt & Sacrifice: 1,547
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin: 1,038
Vampire The Masquerade - Swansong: 514
Pinball FX: 390
Rainbow Six: Extraction: 354 (was a Game Pass launch title which likely hurt its EGS sales)
Mythforce: 161
Tiny Tina and FF7R did great. Evil Dead and Sifu did well. Roller Champions is rumored to be shutting down in the near future.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands: 14,975
FInal Fantasy VII Remake: 11,931 (I know it came out in 2021, but it was about two weeks before 2022 so I'll let it slide)
Evil Dead: The Game: 7,809
Sifu: 4,933
Roller Champions: 4,370
Salt & Sacrifice: 1,547
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin: 1,038
Vampire The Masquerade - Swansong: 514
Pinball FX: 390
Rainbow Six: Extraction: 354 (was a Game Pass launch title which likely hurt its EGS sales)
Mythforce: 161
Tiny Tina and FF7R did great. Evil Dead and Sifu did well. Roller Champions is rumored to be shutting down in the near future.
You guys care too much about something that gives us barely anything.
We have very little info about how ratings works in regards to sales other than for example 14975 people might have played Tiny Tinas for more than 2 hours. That's the thing, it might have been that many people, there's no info in regards to refunds, if that number is in any way accurate for anything etc.
So I just don't see much of a point in speculating.
Case in point: VIIR had a higher Steam ccu peak than it has number EGS ratings, but has a lower amount of Steam reviews.
We have very little info about how ratings works in regards to sales other than for example 14975 people might have played Tiny Tinas for more than 2 hours. That's the thing, it might have been that many people, there's no info in regards to refunds, if that number is in any way accurate for anything etc.
So I just don't see much of a point in speculating.
Case in point: VIIR had a higher Steam ccu peak than it has number EGS ratings, but has a lower amount of Steam reviews.
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Multiversus just released on EGS. For half a second I thought they might skip it since the trailers had been using the Steam logo.
While raw numbers might not be too helpful, I think ratios are an good indicator of which games are the most popular on EGS. Of course the top games are Fortnite, Fall Guys and Rocket League, but seeing that Fortnite has about 6 times as many votes as Rocket League means you can possibly guesstimate information such as CCUs. Also I just like playing around with numbers.
Iirc, not everyone who plays the game over 2 hours will get the option to vote. Because of this, Epic can manipulate the amount of votes for each game as much as they can manipulate the top selling list.
In other words: Epic prevents any trustworthy indication how games are selling on EGS. Why oh why could that be?
After reading dex3108 's thread on Era about what EGS has achieved so far, I started thinking about Epic's original plan and the way they tried to compete with Steam and I formed a theory. As we know Sweeney almost exclusively tried to court developers with moneyhats, under the (hilarious) assumption that gamers would blindly follow. The thing is, even if this part of Sweeney's plan had succeded he would still lose to Steam on every sale of non-exclusive games. Even if his exclusives were selling well, sales of everything else would still heavily favor Steam. So how could he possibly break Steam's domination?
My theory is that Epic's actual plan was to use moneyhats, a public anti-Valve rhetoric and an organized media campaign to trigger a sort of 'revolt', a mass exodus of developers from Steam. I think the plan was to capitalize on the anti-Steam sentiment expressed by some developers and provide them with a lifeboat outside Steam so that they could encourage others to jump ship on a massive scale. I believe that the constant barrage of "evil Valve" tweets and the non-stop articles on multiple media outlets about how great EGS is had the goal of convincing developers that "the time to leave Steam is now", thus providing Epic with dozens, maybe hundreds more of defacto exclusives on top of their moneyhats.
My theory is that Epic's actual plan was to use moneyhats, a public anti-Valve rhetoric and an organized media campaign to trigger a sort of 'revolt', a mass exodus of developers from Steam. I think the plan was to capitalize on the anti-Steam sentiment expressed by some developers and provide them with a lifeboat outside Steam so that they could encourage others to jump ship on a massive scale. I believe that the constant barrage of "evil Valve" tweets and the non-stop articles on multiple media outlets about how great EGS is had the goal of convincing developers that "the time to leave Steam is now", thus providing Epic with dozens, maybe hundreds more of defacto exclusives on top of their moneyhats.
At the end of the day, he's not some sort of silicon valley hero, but another rich man wanting to have his cake and eat it too.
I've said it once and I'll say it again, the only way that anyone is getting me off Steam is if they can match my library of 900 games. But now that I have a deck, that ship has also sailed.
Imagine Epic doesn't abandon PC during the Xbox/360 era and how different this thread might be.
I feel there is also one more thing he hoped for, and probably Ubisoft did it too: The release of a new console generation
Of course this has nothing to do with PCs, but it should have worked great as an emergency "lifeboat" in case the EGS didn't work that well in the first years. New console gen means lots of new customers buying new games for their shiny new toys. Think about it, most early releases do good because there isn't much to play on a console even if they're crap (I'm looking at you Thi4f). Ubisoft was there since day one, they always are, many devs try to jump in the first months of a new console generation. It was a perfect plan
Unfortunately it seems this gen things didn't really go that well. Scalping was rampant and console prices reached insane numbers. And that's my theory but most console buyers most likely didn't buy too many titles specifically because they were forced to pay insane prices for a PS5. That's the only explanation on why software sales is apparently so low compared to past generations (at least according to the data we can see, like Media Create for Japan or all those "new game in series sold less than past game in series" articles). Things will probably get better but missing that early launch period sales can hurt really bad, just look at Watchdog Legions
So PS5 software sales were lower than anticipated, EGS software sales were way lower than expected. But would you look at that Steam software sales were the best they ever was. Hell for all we know the "scalper+covid" combo benefitted Steam in ways no one could ever imagine. That's the specific moment were the EGS plan failed. If you wanted your game to be succesfull you needed to get on the platform with the highest amount of actual buyers. And that platform is Steam. And no, I'm not kidding nor am I deluded. Why do you thing Activision came back? EA? Microsoft? Why do you thing so many games release on Steam no question asked? Why do you think we're seeing Japanese devs bypassing localization publishers completely and simply adding an english translation to the JP release after putting it on Steam. Look no further than the upcoming Monochrome Mobius: no one is willing to publish it on consoles, but no worries since the Steam release will also be in english. Or look at the unexpected and weird rerelease of Warriors Orochi 3 on Steam last week, but still not out on consoles. And yes of course I'm going to talk about Super Robot Wars 30, a game everyone was convinced to be impossible, but guess what: I can play it on Steam. And do you think it's random that so many games are exclusive to one console but still release on Steam as soon as they can (in most cases day one)? This is the part Sweeney and Ubisoft couldn't predict: you are literally sabotaging your game if it's not available on Steam, and at one point mo amount of money can justify this sabotage
tl;dr if they couldn't make the EGS succesfull, the back-up plan was to simply "damage" the pc ecosystem in favor of the console one
The revival of this thread got me lurking on the other forum:
In hindsight, not unlike Musk's "Twitter has potential. I will unlock it" megalomania.
It's incredible to me that shareholders haven't called for this man's neck yet!
This is from a verified user, so I'm not sure if they're in epic developer, someone who uses Epic's tools in development, or last of the fanboys, but I don't see how any of this benefits anyone besides Epic, when the initial goal was supposed to be Sweeney's crusade to open the PC market.
In hindsight, not unlike Musk's "Twitter has potential. I will unlock it" megalomania.
The next user explains why.
It seems like EGS is another expensive lesson for a billionaire who doesn't stay in his lane. For Sweeney, he should have just stuck to games development, rather than pick fights with sales and marketing divisions of companies like Apple, Android, and Valve.
It's incredible to me that shareholders haven't called for this man's neck yet!
It's just not sustainable. Sweeney may go down swinging, but the key is he will go down.
