My experience of Epic exclusives is that most become things that are never on my radar again, even after the exclusive period.
I take it from this increase in rates that I’m far from alone in that regard.
All signs point to that program being a failure for them, which is why the exclusivity offers and announcements started drying up, but I guess this is them trying a revised strategy.
Not a failure at all. Operating at a loss for years to start up is not uncommon, and this was the case for Amazon, Netflix, Uber, Spotify and many others. Eventually they have to wind down their investments as they move towards breaking even and becoming profitable. In 2019, Epic had a specific roadmap on dropping the aggressive pursuit of exclusives and estimated that it would take them 5 years to reach profitability.
Your examples of companies operating at a loss for years are all examples of the hockey stick graph of exponential, self-sustaining growth, but I don't see any indication that that's happening for Epic. Anecdotally, do you know anyone who's stuck with EGS over other options without Epic's thumb staying on the scales (exclusives, freebies, or discount coupons where Epic eats the cost)? Because I know I don't. And their own infographics that they can cherry-pick to make them look as good as possible don't back up exponential growth either.
Epic tends to have better regional prices and supports more currencies than Steam, so I do know of people who go for it just by virtue of this. Also, I wouldn't completely disregard the freebies, because some of them probably cost them nothing, like the offers of Fortnite items for buying games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla. The Ubisoft games on Epic are activated on Ubisoft Connect and do not require Epic, so in that case there's no downside even to those who dislike the launcher.
I would guess they were assuming the failure is that it's not attracting customers. Nothing wrong with operating at a loss, but you need something to show for it (en excelent product, a healthily growing userbase) -- it's hard to imagine EGS ticking any box with the exclusivity deals they've been getting. Personally I can't recall a single exclusive that they have, other than Fortnite and Ubisoft (which seems to have ended).
Going by their annual reports, the total revenue from third-party sales increased every year. That being the case even past the decrease in exclusive offers may suggest that their winding down strategy is working.
Exclusives are a cancer. At least if you made them, i could somewhat understand. But paying third party developers to not sell their game on certain platforms is stupid.
Good for the devs who need the money but as a customer Steam just provides more, and if not Steam, GOG is DRM-free and ItchIO enables smallers indies to get their games out there. Epic isn't even on my list of places to buy. The only thing I bought in Epic, funny enough, was Fortnite Save the World, and I didn't get much out of that.
I know Epic isn't going anywhere anytime soon because they have loads of money, but I will never buy a game or even take a free game from them. Fuck them and their exclusivity bullshit. Any publisher that decides to cash in on that crap is simply delaying the release of their game by another year, as far as I'm concerned.
So instead praise steam and their exclusivity shit?
There are no games required to be exclusive on Steam, unless you count Valve's own games and put an asterisk next to Firewatch.
Wait what's up with Firewatch? I couldn't find anything obvious with a search
Valve bought the developer of Firewatch, and they ended up working on Half-Life: Alyx. Firewatch is still available on all storefronts it was available on before the acquisition, and other Valve games are not.
No, because they don't need to be explicit like that since competition is far behind. Steam gets to enjoy the pleasures of complete market dominance which makes them appear more friendly than they actually are. If Epic gets close and be starts really eating Steams marketshare, you can bet your ass they'll start pulling strings like exclusives.
You can't blame everyone else being shit on Valve.
Steam started losing business to Epic and revised the terms of their revenue split. Competition is far behind in more ways than one: this deal is good for people selling games, but they're not offering me reasons to buy from them. Going all the way back to traditional retail, if there were exclusives at Best Buy, Gamestop, and EB Games, I'd buy the game from just about anywhere else, because I hate the practice. A carrot works better than a stick, IMO. They've got Epic Online Services providing much-needed third party cross play services, which is great. They could start making generic, open standards for other things that Valve has incentivized for tying games to their platform and that would work better than making me wait 6 months to play a game on Steam, where I've got a plethora of features that I use and enjoy.
Steam exclusives aren't because Valve forces or even pressures developers into avoiding other platforms. They're because there are no storefronts that aren't a huge fucking downgrade not worth supporting.
Why is it valve's problem so many game developers and publishers don't bother put their games on other stores?
This does not drive me to want to install the Epic launcher. At all.
I will never understand the animosity for the epic game store. A "launcher exclusive " means nothing, it's not like back when you'd have to choose between Mario or Sonic.
Those platforms do more than launch games, and one store works on my operating system while another does not.
Epic has failed so greatly with their launcher that this just seems desperate now. It’s no wonder they attempted their nonsense with Apple. They must need these exclusives and the lock-in pretty badly.
Even then, as long as sales on Epic keep sucking, no revenue split will make the devs more money than just releasing on multiple platforms. Certainly 70% times $60 times however many steam copies sell is a higher number than 100% times $60 times their epic exclusive sales.
The old Epic system would subsidize the "fewer people buy your game at all if it's on Epic" factor by just paying the devs up front with a big chunk of cash. Basically ensuring a "successful launch" even if nobody buys the game. This new system is probably less enticing for developers who know how many more people are willing to buy on Steam than Epic (and also if they want to release on non-Steam platforms there are always the indie friendly Itch and the DRM-free GOG)
Nah I'll stick with Steam thanks.
Maybe GOG for an older game but that's rare these days.
Epic already has a stranglehold on the dev side of the gaming industry, watching them flounder on the retail side is hilarious.
Yeah, not a developer or otherwise someone who works in the gaming industry at all, but a deal like that would definitely remind me about what mom always said about deals that sound too good to be true.
@ampersandrew Just use Heroic Launcher, you get to enjoy whatever Epic games you have, without having to use their launcher. Plus it works with GOG games as well.
I'll use that for things I already have in my library, either from my Windows days or from giveaways, but I'm not going to spend money in their stores when they don't officially support me as a customer. Unofficial launchers like this could be broken by those storefronts at any time, and they were never guaranteed to work for me. GOG fares better than Epic in this regard, since they do sell Linux games, but I want official cloud saves and automatic updates as well.