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Fortnite Dev Launches Epic Games Store That Takes Just 12% of Revenue (venturebeat.com) 177

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
The 30/70 revenue-sharing split that turned into something of an industry standard is on the ropes. From a report: Epic Games, the developer responsible for the Fortnite phenomenon, is launching its own game store. And like with its asset store for developers, Epic is planning to take a 12-percent cut of revenues. This will leave 88 percent for the people who actually make the games. "As a developer ourselves, we have always wanted a platform with great economics that connects us directly with our players," Sweeney explained in a statement. "Thanks to the success of Fortnite, we now have this and are ready to share it with other developers."
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Fortnite Dev Launches Epic Games Store That Takes Just 12% of Revenue More

Fortnite Dev Launches Epic Games Store That Takes Just 12% of Revenue

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  • Well shit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @10:21AM (#57747146)
    This better not become a thing.
    The gaming industry is getting a bad as the movie industry. Each own company want to launch their own client. With shitty interfaces.
    Steam is tolerable because of the details view.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DavenH ( 1065780 )
      Capitalism in a nutshell. If you want competition you have to accept egregious amounts of redundancy.

      • Re:Well shit (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @10:26AM (#57747182) Journal

        Capitalism in a nutshell. If you want competition you have to accept egregious amounts of redundancy.

        Redundancy which, frustrating though this may be to some, makes things better, not worse.

        See Soviet era stores vs. American stores of the same era.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          How does it benefit consumers? It simply raises prices. Especially when each service use exclusivities in an attempt to wall-off content to only their service. For example, no consumers are going to benefit from Disney's fracturing of the streaming service which will likely lead to them removing all content from Netflix and Hulu.

        • Redundancy which, frustrating though this may be to some, makes things better, not worse.

          See Soviet era stores vs. American stores of the same era.

          Whoever voted this insightful was clueless, the reality is there is no competition in the games market because gamers are grade A fucking stupid about how computers work. As someone who grew up playing Warcraft 2 and descent over Kali/Kahn, you have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

          The reality is the modern videogame industry is not a market, its a god damn shit show if idiot kids being raped and games having been literally stolen and destroyed because the average gamer is ill educated and dumb a

        • Redundancy is good. What concerns people is exclusivity, which is what runs rampant in today's software store market.

        • The USSR was destroyed by WWII. The US of A got away largely unmolested. We lost some soldiers, but they were really just surplus population (yes, that's a horrifying thing to say from a moral standpoint, but capitalism doesn't care about your morality and supply and demand means that if there's an oversupply of labor wages plummet).

          Still, video games are definitely something that can and should be left in the hands of the free market. They're relatively harmless and not at all essential.

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by lucasnate1 ( 4682951 )

        Capitalism in a nutshell. If you want competition you have to accept egregious amounts of redundancy.

        Capitalism also gave us the Microsoft monopoly, while "communist" open source gave us 100 linux distros.

        • Microsoft is a monopoly now. Apple doesn't exist. Sure. Microsoft just has the majority share because they are cheap compared to Apple.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by reanjr ( 588767 )

          Open source is no more "communist" than charity is. And charity is very much a "capitalist" ideal as it is predicated on wealth stratification. Some people have some form of capital and share it.

          • Open source is a joint-development license where everybody can join at any time. It relies on copyright and freedom to participate (or not) and other fine capitalist ideals.

        • Free linux distros isn't communism, it's volunteer work. Like how if you volunteer to tutor a neighborhood kid in math for free, because you feel like doing something decent.

          Communism Linux would be, if the state forcefully took possession of Red Hat and SuSe and all other money-generating Linux-related entities, and redistributed the funds to everyone involved.

    • Re:Well shit (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @10:27AM (#57747206)

      It would be great if this becomes even more of a thing. Competition drives prices down and cracks down on oppressive policies of the monopolist, such as steam's recent moral panic issues that had it ban and unban developers with ebb and flow of pressure.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Desler ( 1608317 )

        Bullshit. There are multiple video streaming services and despite this all of them have raised their prices on multiple occasions. Both Netflix and Hulu, as examples, are more expensive now than when there were fewer options.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )

          Bullshit. There are multiple video streaming services and despite this all of them have raised their prices on multiple occasions. Both Netflix and Hulu, as examples, are more expensive now than when there were fewer options.

          So your logic is that if Netflix had a monopoly on streaming it would be cheaper than it is now?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Desler ( 1608317 )

            No that's not my logic at all and thanks for failing to actually address my rebuttal. If "more competition" means lower prices then please feel free to explain how every streaming service is more expensive than it used to be despite more supposed "competition." It's almost as if corporations don't actually work that way...

            • No that's not my logic at all

              Well you are right that there is no logic in it, but it was in fact your argument.

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by Desler ( 1608317 )

                Oh really? So where are the lowered prices in video streaming? All I see are price increases. I'll concede I'm wrong when you show me where either of Amazon, Hulu or Netflix has lowered their prices due to more "competition."

                • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

                  by EvilSS ( 557649 )

                  Oh really? So where are the lowered prices in video streaming? All I see are price increases. I'll concede I'm wrong when you show me where either of Amazon, Hulu or Netflix has lowered their prices due to more "competition."

                  "Lower prices due to competition" doesn't always mean "prices must go down" it can also mean "prices will not go up as much". If Netflix had a monopoly do you really think you would be paying what you are today for it? Hell no, it would be higher. Probably way higher.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Rolgar ( 556636 )

                  I used to pay $25 per month for basic cable. Now I pay $12 for Hulu with no commercials. And after we watch the 12-15 series of programs that are interesting to us, (It would probably take about 3-5 years at our pace), then we may consider only having the service in Oct-Dec (watch new episodes from Sept-December), then again in February and April-May),and we could probably catch all of our shows for about $36-$48/yr. Not a bad deal considering the alternatives.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by d0rp ( 888607 )

              That's not a very good example, because all of the streaming services aren't really competing in the same sense. There is very little overlap of content between Netflix, Hulu, etc and each service has their own exclusive content which they view as "premium content", so they charge premium prices for it. If these streaming services were all forced to license their original content to the other services for a reasonable fee, then we could see real competition.

              This new game store will be closer to real competi

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Desler ( 1608317 )

            Also, please englighten me to the lower prices brought about by CBS All-Access. A single channel's content that costs nearly the same per month as what used to be the cost of both Hulu and Netflix combined. Yep, all that fracturing is showing great wins for consumers... NOT.

        • Bullshit. There are multiple video streaming services and despite this all of them have raised their prices on multiple occasions. Both Netflix and Hulu, as examples, are more expensive now than when there were fewer options.

          In the case of video streaming services, increased competition in the delivery service can hinder competition in the creation market, since people have less freedom to select individual shows and movies (a person would need to pay for a full subscription to a service if they wanted a single movie).

          Video game stores are different, as long as you don't have to pay for access to each store. If there's a game you want from Epic's store that isn't available on Steam, the only cost (beyond the price of the gam

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Desler ( 1608317 )

        And as a follow up, neither Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or any other service is going to lower their prices when Disney watch as they are streaming service. In fact, most will probably raise their prices within the next couple years.

    • Re:Well shit (Score:4, Interesting)

      by grumbel ( 592662 ) <grumbel+slashdot@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @10:42AM (#57747326) Homepage

      This will continue to get worse until we get transferable licenses. The music industry has it figured out more or less and many music services allow you to import your existing library. For games this only exists in very limited cases (e.g. GOG allows import of a limited number of games from Steam).

    • Market fragmentation is bad cause you need multiple clients. It's great because this is the first store to move away from Apple's 30% cut. Apple, Google, Amazon, Steam, Microsofts various stores... It's like how MS Azure, AWS and Google all have the same storage costs (and have for a while as storage has gotten cheaper.) It takes a new entrant to decide to offer lower prices to steal people for that whole "competition/free market" thing to move in an oligopoly.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Desler ( 1608317 )

        And as one can see from the video streaming market, no one comes in with lower prices and all the other players have all raised their prices. CBS All Access Pass is one such example. $10 a month for a single channel's content. Yep, the fracturing is so amazing for consumers...

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tadlon ( 5663296 )
          There are more variables in play here, inflation for one, and licensing costs from the content creators. It's not so simple, in fact you could argue the fact that the prices have not went up even higher proves that multiple services created competition and kept them low. That said i'm guessing from your posts you're not interested in logically thinking about the issue.

        • And as one can see from the video streaming market, no one comes in with lower prices

          Seems like a stupid statement, because the article we are responding to is about someone coming in with lower prices. And my comment was about that company. So, clearly, it does happen

          There is also a huge difference between cloud services (B2B) and video streaming (B2C). This feels more analogous to cloud services, because while it is fracturing the userbase, the ultimate customer is the developer. They're the ones payi

    • The gaming industry is getting a bad as the movie industry.

      What do you mean "is" getting? Every idiot launching their own store has been par for the course since Steam became a profit centre for Valve. Origin? Battle.net? These have all been around for ages.

      • Battle.net is older than Steam. Which is the reason I still have the account.
        And the problem with Origin and uPlay is that it is not a complete collection of all their work. If it was, I would have a lot less to complain about in regards to their services.

        • Yes Battle.net is older than steam but it developed into an online store after if I remember my history. It used to be a glorified multiplayer system back in the day. Or maybe my memory is fading in my old age. They did say it was down hill from 30 :)

    • This better not become a thing.

      The gaming industry is getting a bad as the movie industry. Each own company want to launch their own client. With shitty interfaces.

      Steam is tolerable because of the details view.

      I mean, it kinda already is. EA has Origin. Activision/Blizzard has Battle.net. Epic has EGL. Valve (and basically everyone else) has Steam.

      The core difference between the movie industry and the games industry with the 101 client situation is that the movie industry is trying to get everyone to see movies as opex, while games are still capex. I have all four of those download clients installed on my laptop, and I load up the one that, in turn, launches the game I want to play. If I want to buy a new game, I

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by reanjr ( 588767 )

      Don't support this shit. Not only should you not buy games through this travesty of an app store, but you should stop buying anything from Epic.

    • It already is a thing. Stardew Valley just announced that they will be starting their own launcher and leaving steam, and that is a 'small' developer. Its apparent the costs of running a storefront have dropped to the point where any dev with decent sales can pop one up. Elite Dangerous has been doing it for a while, and we saw Bethesda put Fallout 76 only on its store.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        It already is a thing. Stardew Valley just announced that they will be starting their own launcher and leaving steam, and that is a 'small' developer. Its apparent the costs of running a storefront have dropped to the point where any dev with decent sales can pop one up. Elite Dangerous has been doing it for a while, and we saw Bethesda put Fallout 76 only on its store.

        You could always run your own storefront. Just it usually involves having to hire people to maintain it, people to secure it, etc.

        Payment pr

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by eth1 ( 94901 )

      This better not become a thing.

      The gaming industry is getting a bad as the movie industry. Each own company want to launch their own client. With shitty interfaces.

      It's nowhere near as bad... e.g. Steam (and I assume this new Epic store) doesn't try to charge you a monthly fee for the privilege of shopping there, so there's no problem with having several different channels to buy things.

    • Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth here: this is great. Taking a 30% cut is exploitative, 12% is quite reasonable. Fragmentation is a solvable problem, and is the problem we can only hope to have under the present circumstances.

    • Steam is tolerable because of the details view.

      Man gamers today are dumb, the reason everyone is going with clients is they want that microtransaction money, as soon as everyone fell for the mmo scam 20 years ago setup by CEO's and game devs, I watched as regular PC rpg's in development were reballebed mmo's and given a server lock and a subscription. As soon as gamers were dumb enough to pay for games they didn't own and ran from someone elses computer, you all encouraged all this by falling all over yourselfs to give money to games you didn't own.

      Of

  • Valve = screwed (Score:1, Interesting)

    by noodler ( 724788 )

    Valve. They are screwed. Finally.

  • While people may have sought out Fortnite outside of the Play store, I can't imagine enough people willing to do that for other games that it it would be worth abandoning the default store already resent on users devices. Any game big enough to a large audience outside of Google Play would be better off creating their own launcher instead of sharing revenue with Epic.

  • Hopefully I beat the racebaiters to "they used 88 that's a racist dog whistle!!!"

    For the lulz

  • Oh joy (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DrXym ( 126579 )
    Yet another company with a fat monolithic, app store that wants to sit on my PC and devices. Steam/Valve, Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, GOG, Blizzard etc.

    I know this is a wild and crazy concept, but how about building a federated system where people are free to buy their games from multiple sources without being trapped in a vertical slice? Games for Windows was more or less that concept, but it seems to have been forgotten about and really it needs to be revisited.

    • Re:Oh joy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @11:16AM (#57747582)

      This one only charge 12% for third-party developers. The others charge 30%. This is a huge motion. I only hope Steam, Apple, etc. follow them down to 12%, and Epic doesn't drift up to 30% after they get some market share.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        That's great, but if devs now have 2, 3, 4 different platforms just on the PC to maximize their footprint, then that still sucks and costs a lot of money. My point is why is this even necessary when all these platforms share essentially the same core services. It should be possible for a game to run without modification regardless where it is sold.
        • Without modification except for DRM (except GOG) and online services. Online services by the storefront may include hooks to your profile, manage friends and invites, provide voice and text chat. All of these are split the same as IM is at the moment: Facetime, Skype, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Telegram and so on. Cross-platform gaming is also discouraged by company owners, at least on the consoles.

          Online is important these days. Most people will not appreciate using basic services like Kali, IP

    • Yet another company with a fat monolithic, app store that wants to sit on my PC and devices. Steam/Valve, Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, GOG, Blizzard etc.

      You are not supposed to use all the services. You are supposed to pick the one or two that work best for you. If a game is only available on a service you do not use, then learn to live without. Maybe even apply a little pressure on the developer/publisher to branch out. Be a responsible consumer.

      I know this is a wild and crazy concept, but how about building a federated system where people are free to buy their games from multiple sources without being trapped in a vertical slice?

      How are you trapped in a vertical slice? What does "federated" mean in this context? What is stopping you from purchasing a game on GOG and joining a game with your friend who purchased it on Steam? Do you just wan

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )

        How are you trapped in a vertical slice? What does "federated" mean in this context? What is stopping you from purchasing a game on GOG and joining a game with your friend who purchased it on Steam? Do you just want universal chat/grouping functions? Isn't that called Dischord (or any number of clients/services before it)?

        Trapped means exactly that. Every service comes with a massive set of terms & conditions. My games are locked into that service and those terms. I buy my game subject to those terms, I can't move my games, I can't connect to games running across different services, or talk to my friends across those services, or play people on those services. I can't choose which store to buy a game from and then choose the service I choose to run it over. It's all linked together.

        This is a completely solvable issue,

    • GOG is a little different (Score:4, Informative)

      by RoloDMonkey ( 605266 ) on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @12:53PM (#57748234) Homepage Journal

      GOG Galaxy is entirely optional. Their core business model has always been games that are DRM free. You can download the games directly from the website and install them on as many devices as you want. The Galaxy "app" is just a convenience for most people.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      I know this is a wild and crazy concept, but how about building a federated system where people are free to buy their games from multiple sources without being trapped in a vertical slice?

      A younger and more idealistic version of myself thought that many groups would cease control over their own distribution through a broad non-profit organization or foundation because the Internet got near infinite space for the long tail. Like instead of the market being dominated by a few for-profit giants hundreds of indie game companies would band together to create a open service that by statute only takes a flat cut of the gross to break even, like a basic shared service on top of a hosting/payment sol

  • DRM free (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I prefer GOG. Once I buy a game there and download it, the store I bought it from no longer matters. I can reinstall the game whenever I want, and play it whenever I want. I also buy DRM free from other sources. I don't want to have to install a dozen clients to be able to play the games I want. Steam was enough. I got stuck with Origin for some RPGs. I do have Uplay for some of the free games they offered. Battle.net for Diablo 3 and recently Overwatch. Epic for Fortnite, which I only got into to play with

  • Why 12%? Why not even less? Still seems like an arbitrary and painful tax between the buyer and the seller.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They have to pay for credit card processing, handle taxes where applicable, pay for bandwidth to distribute sold games, servers to host games for sale, development on their store front, salaries for sysadmins, accountants, developers of the store application, game launcher and any related in-game network services, managers of employees, support personnel for consumers and support personnel for game developers.

      When everyone else is charging 30% to do this and Epic is only charging 12%, what do you think they

    • It only seems painful until you realise the standard tax rate is 30%. Then it feels like a bargain.

  • Why should the app store need to take a percentage? The only pricing model I would be happy with is a flat fee model, where you pay a fixed amount to be listed. Whether it's 30% or 12%, they are still gouging you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tacroy ( 813477 )
      While that would be neat, I don't think it's realistic. Since the app store has ongoing costs since they host the content, provide the bandwidth, and provide significant numbers of api's and services that app creators tie into.

      • I get your point. So I'd be OK with a per-user charge, but a flat fee per user, not one based on your sales price. Not all apps are created equal, some deserve a higher price, and that does not necessarily justify a higher fee to the store.

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