The PC Gaming Hellscape Is Only Getting Hotter
It’s only been a little over three months since Epic Games established their own store, a competitor to popular stores like Steam, GoG, uPlay, Origin, and others. It’s wasted no time making an impact in good and bad ways. The PC gaming realm needed another competitor to Steam that didn’t overwhelmingly focus on titles from the publishers that established them (uPlay and Origin) or feature a deal-breaker for publishers in offering DRM-free titles (GoG). But the question of whether the Epic Games Store is the best answer is the subject of fierce debate thanks to how they’re conducting business.
Instead of simply offering the option to purchase a bunch of games on another online platform, Epic is offering precisely what several in the PC gaming audience feared would eventually happen: Timed exclusives. This goes beyond their own games like Fortnite, but several indie games like Supergiant Games’ Hades and Dark Souls-style title Ashen, along with AAA games like Metro Exodus and Friday’s release of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. It’s clearly a working strategy in attracting eyes to the store, as they’ve only continued gobbling up exclusives. I said the PC gaming landscape was becoming a hellhole in a prior post when this process didn’t stop around a month after the store was established, and recent developments have shown that it’s only getting hotter.
Epic Games President and CEO Tim Sweeney was recently profiled by MCVUK, who gave plenty of answers that were both peculiar and hilariously overdramatic. It’s actually believable when he says the store is “giving game developers and publishers the store business model that [they’ve] always wanted as developers [themselves],” given the return on investment they’re getting for every game sold compared to Steam. Developers/publishers receive 88 percent of the cut on the EGS, compared to the 70 percent from Steam. The combination of exclusivity and this extra profit is easily enough to attract attention, especially for smaller developers whose titles could use more exposure from Epic.
But it’s easy to imagine why several PC game players don’t want the storefront wars to become a battle over third-party exclusives, which Epic has done to compete and distinguish themselves. It was bad enough when several publishers were only releasing their games on their own stores, like EA with Origin and Bethesda with the Bethesda Game Launcher, especially when the quality of those storefront launchers can heavily vary compared to Steam.
Sweeney gave quite an answer to address why they’re taking this business approach. “There is no hope of displacing a dominant storefront solely by adding marginally more store features or a marginally better install experience,” Sweeney said. This is sadly true upon seeing what’s happened to the now-defunct Twitch store, but it won’t impress anyone unhappy about the process of gathering exclusives. But here’s where it gets melodramatic: “These battles will be won on the basis of game supply, consumer prices, and developer revenue sharing.” It’s like Sweeney’s talking about a war here, though that’s admittedly how your average online gamer would describe it.
Epic still has interface issues in their storefront launcher they need to fix if they want to reach Steam’s level to make it more user friendly, but other glitches are attracting the attention of users at the moment — if you want to call them “glitches.” Users in a Reddit thread confirmed that the launcher also installs spyware on the computer, which gathers data from their Steam Friends List without direct permission. In response, Sweeney claimed the company isn’t misusing their data, and Epic VP of Engineering Daniel Vogel acknowledged that it’s simply finding matches between the Epic Store and Steam. It’s nonetheless an invasion of privacy fans don’t like, so Sweeney claimed they’ll fix it.
The Epic Games Store is still in its infancy, so early issues should have been expected. No one should have expected its interface and the user friendliness of its launcher to be anywhere near on par with Steam right out of the gate. But the entire process is being viewed with further scrutiny thanks to the period coinciding with Epic gathering timed-exclusives for games people were looking forward to playing on Steam. This process appears to be working out well for Epic, so it won’t stop unless publishers feel their games are receiving less sales as a result, and if it’s no longer worth receiving a bigger cut from sales.
Valve absolutely needed competition with Steam, something they demonstrate with their frequent ineptitude. See the whole fiasco with initially allowing a game called Rape Day to be displayed on the store, and their pitiful statement after pulling it off the service. But turning the PC storefront landscape into a potential hellscape where services vie for temporary third-party exclusives was a good way to piss off PC gamers, especially if they fear Valve could start doing it with steam. It’s a slippery slope, and it could end with a tumble down the mountain into the hell that awaits below if it becomes such a battle.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
