It’s not people taking free games, it’s that the free games aren’t working. People have told me for years about all the free games they give away and I and everyone else I know still refuse to even download the app much less download free games because of their bullshit.

They did that years after it was released. I’m pretty sure they’ve been unprofitable for longer than that and it’s more likely that it’s because they’re forcing their bullshit on users.

I have zero paid games on Epic. Only a huge collection of free games. I’ve never even played many of them.

I wanted to play Untitled Goose Game but it was an Epic exclusive. I waited for it to come out on Steam and then I bought it there :)

As a game developer, Epic gives more profits than Steam can to developers. That said from a consumer standpoint, the store is slow, laggy, unintuitively laid out, and overall, I don’t think most consumers enjoy their time on the Epic store. I can say the opposite about Steam and Itch. I have many memories of browsing Steam before it got far too big to browse nicely. Steam’s system now makes it harder to just dig in and find gems. They have created tools that attempt to do it for you but it’s not worth it in my opinion.

Itch is much nicer to browse and everything you find is likely some small gem and it just depends on the level of polish to that gem.

I am willing to go through the trouble because it gives the developer more money. Especially if the game is developed with Unreal Engine. Many player don’t give a fuck and don’t know that any game developed with Unreal engine Epic gets some money even if you buy on steam. For anyone that has this “Fuck Epic” mentality and are willing to go to extend to boycott or not buying games from their “favorite” developer, sorry, you also don’t give a fuck about said developer nor their games. You can stand on principle and against that platform exclusivity behavior and I hope you stick to your principle across platforms as well. As in, you never buy games that don’t do simultaneous release due to an exclusivity deal. (Aka, you can’t buy SpiderMan or God of War on PC cause they aren’t released on Xbox platform.)

The reason for my decision is very simple, if your game is developed with UE:

• steam takes 30% cut and Unreal Engine has that 5% royalty past liftetime and then quarterly revenue threshold. Once you game go beyond that threshold, all sales on steam you only see 65% back. (steam have special per project deal if your sales volume exceed certain number, and I guess good luck negotiate with them without some big publisher on your back. steam only back down on this cause Epic’s exclusive deals. )
• Epic takes 12% cut and waive Unreal Engine royalty, in same case like above, you see “all sales”(before and after UE revenue threshold) gives you 88% back.

Even if you wrote your own engine, Steam vs EGS is 18% revenue difference from the get go, if ANY gamer claim that they loved the games developer, and willing to support them(if they don’t have their own store front), buying on EGS supports them 18% more. I will take the bad store interface anytime, even if it means I have to download update and patch myself.(which we all did before steam is a thing.)

Say, what happen if a game is released by publisher that have their own launcher. How do you “support” developer more.

• If they are not using Unreal engine, buy on the publisher launcher.
• If they are using Unreal Engine, during launch window buy on the publisher launcher, dev have to pay the 5% royalty.
• If they are using Unreal Engine, not direct subsidiary, post launch window( 6 month+ after launch) buy on EGS if you know their revenue split agreement with the publisher. (this is highly NDA stuff so you can only “guess” or if you have some industry hush hush info.) If you are not certain, still buy on the publisher launcher.

There are a couple types of revenue split with publisher if you are not direct subsidiary, this highly depends on the contract negotiated and for independent studios that wish to remain independent and still wants to get publisher money for the push to ship a game it might be one of the following variation.(note this excludes some shady publisher stuff you see on internet from smaller ones.)

• If publisher is confident, they will take higher split all the way until all cost is recovered, dev will get enough money to maintain their operation with sale flux. If your sell are better than expected, win/win. (they usually have first say to sequel/derived works to decide if they want to remain the publisher for that IP.)
• Another type is publisher takes all the sales until the cost is recovered, but they have to sustain your core operation during this period(this is also cost). After that it’s the split agreed upon.

The above are the “templates”, all details are in fine print. So as you can see, the decision to buy after lunch window highly depends on the “split” method and how much the publisher charge the dev for their store front. Before EGS, the publisher can simply charge the developers 30% cause everyone else(Steam/Google/Apple) is doing the same. It is rare but there are some devs once they are out of their contract they become their own publisher on steam/egs. Or, they are their own publisher on non-exclusive platform. example would be say a game is PlayStation exclusive for 6m/1y, allowed simultaneous release on PC, more than likely the publisher on PC is the dev themselves. (sony allows that type of deals)

So why don’t publisher just work with Steam and not Epic or why do the publisher/developer take the Epic exclusive deals even though they know the “angry fuck epic exclusive” gamer will be all over them on [insert social media platform]?

BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE THE NUMBERS, YOU ARE PART OF THE NUMBERS.

Everything is market statistics, they are in the business to make money, for every party involved. They are not there to make you and only you happy. They want to make enough in sales to cover their bills, pay the stock holders, make some banks if they are lucky and there are decision making with different risk factors. They make the best decision to keep going and not flopping and lose their hard work up for the chopping block sales. The internet noise are just noise on the statistics.

Also that they make the free game a “Purchase”. In Steam and GoG you just add free games to your library with a click and get a confirmation. In Epic’s Store you have to confirm to not being able to return the free game within 14 days and go through that slow confirmation dialog.

I support gaben simply because of what he has done for linux gaming. Epic CEO is openly hostile to whole ecosystem and that’s why his company wont get a penny from me. And thats the joy of the whole PC gaming industry - we have a choice of who we want to support and how we want to support, and in the end we, as a consumers, will win, because of competition.

You mean publishers, not developers.