"This is great news for indies who Steam seems to be ignoring[1]"
Your citation suggests that in this context, ignoring means "potentially offering them fewer page referrals from advertising slots, relying on them to generate organic traffic".
I mention this, because the interview with Tim Sweeney posted in response to your comment says: "Generally, we want to enable a more direct relationship between developers and gamers, and more efficient economics and discovery. Developers will control their product pages, free of advertising for competing games."
The reduced margin will definitely benefit all developers, but the Grey Alien guy recently tweeted that margin wasn't the problem because 30% of nothing is nothing, and his issue is no one discovering his games.
I would say who the Epic approach benefits is sort of "Big Indie" -- developers large enough to self-generate momentum but small enough not to benefit from the improved revenue split. Thinking of teams like Double Fine and games like Stardew Valley here.
> ... margin wasn't the problem because 30% of nothing is nothing, and his issue is no one discovering his games.
Doesn't that make the 30% all the more problematic? If you have to bring eyes to your Steam page anyway, you might as well just sell direct.
From Grey Alien, "In the past I have felt positive about Steam, but these discovery changes and the recent revenue share changes that are only relevant to hugely successful games don’t make me feel particularly positive about the future of selling games on Steam."
I can say with confidence that I am much more willing to drop $5 on a game via Steam than <random 3rd party site>. Aside from the obvious "is this a scam" aspects, Steam means that I will have the game even when the dev goes under in 5 years, that my save states will be backed up, and that at least some of the reviews might not be faked.
That 30% might be painful, but at the same time Steam provides a LOT of utility to the buyer.
Steam also has the bonus of supporting linux releases and I can go into just about any store and buy a $20 or $50 steam card I can use to add money to my account without using PayPal or linking a bank account or credit card.
Thesemuch the only reasons I use steam. Though I have to admit, their refund policy has been pretty great so far.
I've heard of the horror stories of steam but I don't play a lot of multiplayer games and don't interact on the community or anything so I think it should be ok. I am kind of leery of the idea of not really owning any of the games I buy and the possibility of them being taken away. But i'm guessing epic's store may work like this also.
How is the Epic launcher 'a random third party site' ? Especially someone that already has Fortnite or has heard of it enough to know its maker is not going to be a credit card skimmer.
Way more people use Steam than Epic Launcher. The oldest Steam accounts are 15 years old now, people have been using it for a long time when it was largely the only game in town. People may use another company's platform because they have to to play a certain game. But a lot of times it's just that other platform trying to be Steam, but not in the same league.
Steam[1] still has more peak concurrent users than Fortnite at 14 million if you add the games up, while Fortnite is over 8 million[2]. Fortnite does have a huge install base, but I imagine most of them that need a store (i.e. not consoles, so basically PCs) already have Steam, and at least one game in it.
For new users that don't have steam, there might be an inventive to use the Epic games launcher, especially if there's a discount, but having games split across two systems is really annoying (but it's not too bad for one game), so I imagine without an incentive most existing Steam users will opt out, thus preserving Steam's dominance.
Not saying what's right and what's wrong but I heard these kind of numbers reported after the announcement. I see a lot of different numbers being thrown around and I'm not sure what to believe anymore.
Steamcharts consistently surprises me at how few people play the popular games I like, so I'm beginning to think Steam isn't as big.
Here's a more recent source[1] (unfortunately poorly sourced, but it does have a timestamp for each item). It shows 200 million installs (11/11), but 74.2 million iOS installs (11/7), 11.5 million downloads on the switch (10/30).
Android usage is complex, because it's still only available officially to Samsung Galaxy devices, but the amount of players looks like it might be similar to iOS (there are usage numbers from the link, but for different times).
So, just from the total installs number and the somewhat recent iOS and Nintendo Switch numbers, we can put the maximum number of PC installs at around 114 million, before we account for Xbox (released mid 2017), PS4 (released mid-2017) and Android (Samsung Galaxy only but I think it may well be in the tens of millions anyway, especially since there are tutorials on how to get it on other devices).
I think that will leave us well within the territory where Steam and Fortnite have a largely overlapping PC user base.
> Steamcharts consistently surprises me at how few people play the popular games I like, so I'm beginning to think Steam isn't as big.
I think most people just don't game on PC as much anymore. Most PC games are available for consoles now too, and it's much cheaper to buy a new console every few years than to keep a gaming PC updated. My brother bought a keyboard and mouse for his PS4, and played Overwatch with that. Probably just as good an experience as the PC version for much cheaper total platform cost over time.
Your citation suggests that in this context, ignoring means "potentially offering them fewer page referrals from advertising slots, relying on them to generate organic traffic".
I mention this, because the interview with Tim Sweeney posted in response to your comment says: "Generally, we want to enable a more direct relationship between developers and gamers, and more efficient economics and discovery. Developers will control their product pages, free of advertising for competing games."
The reduced margin will definitely benefit all developers, but the Grey Alien guy recently tweeted that margin wasn't the problem because 30% of nothing is nothing, and his issue is no one discovering his games.
I would say who the Epic approach benefits is sort of "Big Indie" -- developers large enough to self-generate momentum but small enough not to benefit from the improved revenue split. Thinking of teams like Double Fine and games like Stardew Valley here.