Gadgetory

valve a company that was founded by Gabe Newell August 24 1996 is famous for its popular online distribution gaming platform known as steam and in 2017 amassed an estimated 4.3 billion dollars in game sales on Steam alone which would make gaben who owns over 50% of the company worth billions of dollars though where do these billions come from well just like online distribution platforms and marketplaces it comes from taking a percentage of those that choose to host their products or in this case video games on the steam platform those being the game developers that you either love or hate for example Bethesda IO Interactive Square Enix blue hold and for a games well actually scratch that last one because recently the developers of the popular title Metro Exodus and their publisher Deep Silver who previously made Metro 2033 Metro last light and Redux packages available on Steam have recently made a controversial move to pull their game completely from the steam platform so why is this and why are people so angry about it let's discuss so two weeks before the release of Metro Exodus which was February 15th of this year for a games made the decision to go exclusively with Epic Games to distribute that PC title this caused a lot of uproar in the PC gaming community where most people have a lot of their current games library on Steam and since gamers were originally promised the title on Steam and having even had the original Steam logos printed on the box copies of Metro Exodus the frustration was understandable as changing to a new platform would mean that one would have to install yet another one of many game launches to a popular PC title and if you guys didn't know there are currently a heap of these around already like ubisoft's you play launcher EA's origin games GOG blizzard steam and now epic and the thing is these platforms usually on popular titles like to go with exclusivity especially blizzard for example so if you're an avid PC gamer you most likely have more than just one of these platforms currently installed on your computer honestly though it gets even worse when you have to benchmark many different PC titles for new graphics card releases for example though frustrations aside epic games however is very interesting to me personally because they are changing the game and charging the game developers only 12% to distribute their games on their platform this is a massive saving in the incentive to the game developers themselves versus steams current model which has been recently rare mended to where steam currently takes a 30% cut on the first 10 million dollars of sales which then drops to 25% for the next 40 million and then after that 50 million dollars in sales it drops to 20 percent basically the argument is twofold with steams current model having both foreign against which is generally considered an industry standard the 30% cut that is though others consider it a license to print money off of trees though in steams defense they do provide game developers various tools like for instance key code generation anti-cheat services cloud saves developer tools online service support for multiplayer gaming and also of course access to their popular platform with over 150 million registered users that could readily purchase and install the game with ease though here's the crux and why I'm honestly surprised people are at the worst threatening to boycott for a games I feel it's a little too much especially since it is a single-player focus title and for a won't really get the full benefits out of the same subscription just because steam have garnered themselves as being the most popular platform on PC and everyone likes to have all their games neatly tucked into one folder I think it does not mean that they can get away with the industry standards forever by charging game developers 30% all the time to sell their games some could say that it makes the online video games marketplace less competitive especially when game developers can get more out of the deal with Steam than others may get though a 30% cut also means that we can in turn expect to basically end up paying more for our video games I mean honestly who hasn't gone to some cd-key site or some third-party online marketplace to buy a CD keycode cheaper than what they otherwise could have paid retail so charging game developers 30% ultimately means that we will just end up paying more for these titles all other things equal hey I love paying 80% more money than I have to just so I can keep my library of games neat and tidy games that I don't even actually own that is something I have heard no one say ever period so personally as an avid PC gamer I welcome the rise of epic games and their 12% take first steams initial 30% regardless of what the industry standard is competition is always a good thing in my eyes an enthusiast tech for example people constantly complain about companies like Nvidia charging more for graphics cards as the years go on simply because of decreased competition from the competitor in this case AMD's Radeon graphics well at least with the RTS grabs cards you get a larger piece of silicon on your gravis card with near worthless features on your card like ray tracing and DL SS for example in relation to having Metro Exodus on Steam verse epic it just means for a games loses 18 percent per sale extra to Steam versus epic games and to be frank as steams economy of scales grows and grows the rates they charge per se retaining to the theory of economies of scale should decrease yet it doesn't and as the PC gaming community only grows and grows itself and with it the potential money to be made does so should competition and that is exactly what is now happening with the sudden sway of Epic Games though I do wonder with all that money being made in recent years on Valve's behalf where is half-life 3 I mean the rumor has it that the script is locked away somewhere in a vault and some Boggan got a trolley from Woolworths and put the vault on a trolley and then that trolley is still rolling down an abandoned road to this date that's the rumor let us know down in the comments if you have heard differently they lastly regardless of what the industry standard is as an individual imagine selling something on eBay and having eBay take a 30% cut of your item sale you'd probably just sell the thing locally for half the price to avoid any hassles or in the case of a competitor look for somewhere else that simply didn't charge as much in this case 12% the alternative still having very strong market reach I can almost certainly guarantee you I know which site I'd be selling my used on so epic games coming in with a 1288 split automatically makes themselves a top choice for game developers who wish to distribute their games online epic however on the negative does mostly require title exclusivity whether it be the first 12 months or other agreements made so that means your game a lot of the time won't be available on other platforms though one might wonder since epic is a newcomer in the scene one would think they could be muscled by other companies like valve and EA for example without having as strong as an established infrastructure though this would be very inaccurate to think so fortnight used the epic games launcher and grew to be the most popular played title on PC a move that not many saw coming at all and with this epics rise to the top has come very quickly surprising all the competitors by storm also 40% of the epic games company is owned by the publicly traded Tencent holdings which is one of the fifth largest companies in the world absolutely trumping that of valve and steam in terms of capital available the other 60% is privately owned by the founders of epic games and as such with the funding available from a massive conglomerate like $0.10 they have the resources available to make the platform polish and ensure it works properly over different operating systems like Windows 10 Android Mac and Linux for example personally I've only used this platform to benchmark fortnight and now Metro Exodus though I've never had a problem with it and copping games is similar in fashion to that of origin that is it isn't that hard to use they also haven't presented any headaches for me personally however where do things go from here well this ladies and gentlemen is the nature of competition and not welcoming it would be in my opinion hypocritical especially if someone were to complain about high prices on graphics cards and games in general and then turn around and expect companies to pay valve 30 percent cut though I believe for a games in their Metro Exodus title is only a beginning of a huge trend that will take the online PC gaming world by storm epic games have already established themselves with massive market penetration and also another thing worth mentioning is that fortnight has a huge user base on smartphones to whom if they were to port to PC will probably install the epic launcher to play for tonight the moment that PC boots up so it is gaining traction very quickly a snowball mixed in with a freight train would be the best way to describe epic games at the moment and that snow train only continues to run away on the tracks with the developers of the division 2 also having recently made the decision to sign with epic partially exclusivity as well and sales are already six-fold that of the original which was on Steam other exclusives also include ashen and journey and epic also has free giveaways every two weeks and is basically going all-in against Steam even offering developers that use the Unreal Engine 4 which inherently has a 5% royalty fee cut to the developers to come off epics own 12% cut in other words game developers that use the Unreal Engine 4 and sell their PC titles with epic games still get an 88% revenue split as opposed to valve steam which would then adjust the split to allow the game developers to receive 65% 12% take versus 35% take if I had the choice to pay one tax rate over the other I certainly know which rate I would be paying but what about the boycott power of the people for me personally I don't really care what platform the game is on a good PC title will always speak for itself I've never been one who has been really interested in politics and all that other bullshit he say she say and from here I see either of two things happening the first we have a domino effect against steam one in favor of Epic Games where developers in mass with Triple A titles start to sign with epic or steam radically changed their pricing structure and start to become much more competitive either way game developers in our wallets ultimately end up winning because of this how should you call it steamy epic battle though to further complicate things another newcomer into the market also has been creating noise and that is the popular video gaming chat application called discord having a universal game launcher and now a store of its own to which they have a nitro subscription service for $10 a month giving access to currently over 60 games promises to bring its own competition to the market though in the meantime one thing for sure is is that 2019 is going to get much more competitive in terms of online PC game distribution so buckle up and enjoy the ride though speaking of enjoyment if you guys enjoyed this one - be sure to hit that like button and let us know what you think of the steam verse epic game battle is this the beginning of a big change or something else let us know down below in the comments love reading your thoughts and opinions as always and if you want to see the videos the moment they drop sub buttons down there somewhere if you click it make sure you hit that Bell notification you get the videos as soon as they drop and also if you on that inside scoop Instagram check yes City and I'll catch you in another tech video very soon peace out for now bye you