Monopolies for me but not for thee.
During the initial day of the Epic v. Google legal dispute concerning app store fees, both companies presented their opening statements and initiated probing of each other’s witnesses.
Throughout the proceedings, Epic acknowledged that its digital PC game store is still operating at a substantial financial loss.
This might have something to do with the fact that Epic Games continually try and weaponize PC gaming in a desperate attempt to steal market share from Valve’s Steam platform by bribing developers, sometimes purchasing developers outright for exclusive limited time release on their Epic Games Storefront.
Such as how Epic Games bought Mediatonic, the developers behind Fall Guys and then immediately pulled the game from purchase on the Steam Store, arbitrarily locking it exclusively on their own storefront instead, naturally, Fall Guys fell from grace and eventually shriveled up and died as consumers lost interest.
I’ve always held resentment towards what Valve’s Steam store has become, Steam is so unanimous now it may as well be described as PC gaming as a whole, Gabe Newell initially pitched the concept of Steam as a means of helping the PC gaming industry grow, allowing ease of access to a larger variety of games, effectively as a localization hub.
Gabe was right in that sense, we needed a singular large scale storefront entity, but Steam wasn’t the solution. Over the years Steam has essentially brought PC gaming down to the same level as the consoles, Valve freely gets to bully developers, particularly Japanese developers from releasing their games on the platform regardless of if they contain sexual content or not.
Gabe Newell asserted the necessity for a unified large-scale storefront was entirely true but Steam wasn’t the answer. With time, Steam has notably diminished PC gaming to a level akin to consoles. Valve wields the freedom to restrict developers, especially Japanese ones, from releasing their games on the platform, whether or not they contain explicit content.
Valve’s standards are fucking ridiculous, they’ll freely bully low level developers yet will gladly allow other forms of smut on their platform so long as they come from prominent labels such as Kagura Games or happen to be western developed titles, such as the “Sex with Hitler” franchise.
Remember when Valve said they wouldn’t ban any games unless they were trolling?
And now everything on the PC is DRM locked to Steam and your Steam account, step out of line and you can say goodbye to your modern video game collection, the all digital storefront turned out to be nothing but a detriment to genuine PC enthusiasts, piracy be damned.
But what’s even worse than Steam would without a doubt be Epic Games and their Epic Game Store, but we absolutely have a “free market” in the PC gaming landscape which is why we have effectively two monopolies where one is desperately trying to fuck over the other with manipulative exclusivity contracts.
Tim Sweeney continually throws their Tencent dollars to game developers to exclusively tie their PC release onto the Epic Game Store for an undisclosed amount of time, Epic Games also continually pays developers to give away free games on a monthly basis, but over the past several years they’ve downsized this particular tactic to rubbish indie titles mostly, many free games that Epic Games offers now are repeats of previous freebies.
The Epic Game Store was never profitable, how could it be when they’re throwing hundreds of millions away in free game giveaways, exclusivity contracts and god knows whatever else, all under the pretext of demolishing Steam’s monopoly on the PC gaming industry by enacting a more invasive monopoly of their own.
For instance, Epic games lost $181 million in 2019, $273 million in 2020, a further $139 million in 2021, followed by two instances of the company breaching the COPPA act costing them $275 million for harvesting the data of children alongside deploying “dark patterns” to fleece them with in-game microtransactions which resulted in a further $245 million dollar fine.
These were the largest years for the platform in terms of high profile freebies and exclusivity dealings, their latest exclusivity contract being with Remedy regarding Alan Wake 2, a disappointing cinematic slog fest that faded into obscurity mere weeks after it had released, perhaps handling off the writing to Sweet Baby, an ESG firm had something to do with its failure?
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Remedy had race swapped the character of Saga Anderson to be portrayed as black.
Anyways, five years after the Epic Game Store has launched it still continues to bleed money, which might be why Epic Games themselves recently sacked over 800 employees and offloaded failures such as Bandcamp to Songtradr.
Epic Games Store boss, Steve Allison, mentioned during testimony that although the store is not yet profitable, the primary objective for Epic remains focused on “growth”. Hence why Epic employs underhanded tricks as free game giveaways, exclusivity dealings and aggressive revenue terms for publishers and developers in a bid to fast track users onto their loss leading platform.
The Epic Game Store has a much more loose interpretation in terms of quality control, with the storefront obviously shunning Japanese developers in favor of the new hip trend of NFT gaming.
If you want to pay your respects to Tim Sweeny and his Tencent platform you can do your part by making an Epic Games account, installing their storefront onto your PC and periodically claiming your monthly free game before promptly closing down the invasive application never to be opened again until the next round of giveaways.
Alternatively, you’re free to pirate games exclusively tied to the platform, such as Alan Wake 2 and previous games such as Metro Exodus, Final Fantasy 7’s “Remake”, Borderlands 3, World War Z and many more.
Because Epic Games have already paid the developers for you, so what’s the harm in pirating games from developers happy to take their bribe?
The Epic Games Store provides an 88/12 revenue split to publishers and developers, a notable difference from Valve who take a 30% revenue cut from Steam sales.
In addition, Epic initiated the First Run program, where developers opt for six months of PC exclusivity in exchange for 100% revenue. Moreover, in March, the company introduced a set of self-publishing tools aimed at aiding creators and publishers in releasing their games more effectively on their own digital store.
And yet their desperate monopoly tactics continue to cause hundreds of millions in annual losses, as the monopolistic Steam continues to grow even more dominate having reached a new record of ten million concurrent players back in January, with 32 million active accounts on at the time.
It’s hilarious actually, how all of this rampant anti-consumer bullshit stems entirely from the financial fortitude of Fortnite, if not for Fortnite’s immense profitability and relevancy I highly doubt Epic Games would be able to stomach the immense losses they suffer on a yearly basis.
And yet hilariously Epic Games believes they can amass over 50% of the PC gaming revenue market share through these underhanded tactics.
Attempting to battle Steam’s monopoly by resorting to a more scandalous monopolistic approach of their own, enticing and coercing developers to exclusively sell products solely on their own platform, is entirely counterproductive, backed up by the continual failings of the Epic Game Store which holds but a fraction of the actual userbase as Steam which will forever hold the real monopoly amongst PC gaming as the video game industry as a whole does away with physical media and pushing all digital services.
