In the past, it used to be that if you wanted a video game, you or your parents would have to go out to a store, find a physical copy of the game, and buy it. If the store didn’t have it, you might have been lucky enough to have a local store that could order it for you. Perhaps you might have been able to order the game from a magazine of some kind or borrow it from a friend. The point is that your options were limited back in ye olden days (the 90s), and the quality of games you could purchase was just as limited.
Valve and Steam Change Everything
Now we’ve reached the year 2003. Valve, the creators of the Half-Life franchise, Portal, and Team Fortress, have released their new and shiny online distribution platform called “Steam”. Unlike, say, Amazon or eBay, Steam was for the sole purpose of distributing games online without ever needing a physical copy, rendering store like GameStop obsolete.
Over time, Steam has become the number one way almost everyone on a PC acquires video games and has created a monopoly on the entire market. Oh sure, there are “competitors” to SQteam, such as the Microsoft Store and Origin, but since these stores only contain games from Microsoft and Origin, respectively, Steam has hardly noticed their presence from aloft its mighty throne.
Epic Games
So what’s the deal with the Epic Game Store?
Well first, in case you don’t know, who are Epic Games? Epic Games was founded by a man named Tim Sweeney, and was called Pontiac Computer Systems in those days (1991) but was later changed to Epic Games when the company moved locations (1999).
Epic Games develops the Unreal Engine, the backbone of all their current games and available for use by anyone non-commercially (commercial use has a 5% profit fee). As video game developers, Epic Games own and develops the Gears of Wars series, Unreal, Infinity Blade, and, of course, Fortnite – their current huge multi-billion dollar jackpot casino.
So what does any of this have to do with Steam?
Epic Games has been making exclusivity deals with several highly anticipated games set to be released very soon, so that they can only be purchased via the Epic Games Store (to be fair to Epic Games, most of these exclusivity deals only last a year or so).
In December 2018, Epic Games announced and then launched the Epic Games Store.
Designed to be a competitor to Steam, and built off the money made from Fortnite (plus investors), the Epic Games Store differentiates itself by trying to be more friendly to the developers.
You see, Valve takes thirty percent of every sale on Steam, so if a game sells for twelve dollars, Valve takes about four dollars of that. And if it’s sold for sixty, Valve takes about twenty- so on and so forth.
The Epic Games Store, by contrast, will only take a twelve percent cut, and if a game published on the store is built on the Unreal Engine, then that five percent fee is waived too.
A great deal for developers. So why is there so much controversy about this store?
The Not-So-Epic Game Store
The controversy about the Epic Games Store comes as a result of how the company is making its platform popular… in a way that feels more predatory than the free market at work.
Epic Games has been making exclusivity deals with several highly anticipated games set to be released very soon, so that they can only be purchased via the Epic Games Store (to be fair to Epic Games, most of these exclusivity deals only last a year or so).
And now to hold games hostage for a year as a way to draw in customers, feels like a cheap and dirty move.
Most PC customers, however, have been using Steam for over a decade now, where all their other games have been stored and bought, and to be forced over to a new platform, not because a better service is being offered, but because there is no other option to play these specific games, has not made many people happy.
Now, Epic Games freely admits that the Epic Games Store is not finished (at the time of writing). It’s in development. However, for a long time it was being pushed as a competitor to Steam, and in contrast to the latter, it just… lacks features.
And now to hold games hostage for a year as a way to draw in customers, feels like a cheap and dirty move.
Yeah, it makes sense as a business decision, and it’s a great deal for the developers, but if it screws the customers along the way, is it really worth it?
