Four years against Steam
On December 6, the Epic Games Store celebrated four years of life. 48 months of trying to undermine Steam’s supremacy in the PC market by enticing gamers with what the company thinks it can compete with: weekly giveaways of sometimes good titles and others don’t give us exactly the same thing ; and an exclusivity policy based on really advantageous conditions for editors.
You must not forget that Epic has become the jackhammer that wants to eliminate these abusive percentages of the stores Digital companies that charge a toll for the use of their infrastructure. Apple, Google or Valve itself take on average 30% of each transaction and the idea from the start of Tim Sweeney was to tempt the developers by reducing these amounts to 12% and even 5% if the titles used his already famous Unreal Engine. This policy served to cajole editors mid-tier, with little impact or relevance in the face of a global market that in 2018 controlled Steam and, four years later, remains virtually the same.
These commission percentages are very good to reduce, but they only affect the companies, not the players. For them, Epic believed that a system of temporary, six-month or one-year giveaways and exclusives would be enough to shift the balance in their favor in record time, but that clearly has not been the case, though its millions of players hit 35 while Steam’s were around 70.
Metro Exodus oh Assassin’s Creed Valhalla There were two titles that we couldn’t find on Steam: one because Epic forced itself to have it alone and the second because Ubisoft preferred to seek its fortune in its own store, Stadia or n any other. Now seeing he come back with his tail between his legs We already have it available also in the Valve storeso the Epic Games Store effect obviously does not exist.
It may outperform Steam, but not now
Epic Games Store skips the steps that are supposed to be a project of these characteristics where the money is not just about convincing us all to make the leap from a store that will soon be 20 years old to one that has a duty to consolidate . Users accept gifts and add them to their libraries because it costs them nothing, but it’s another thing to decide that your whole library goes from one that we know lasts to another that we don’t know if it’s a passing whim of the rich who lined up with a game like Fortnite. It will be when the glory of battle royale decrease, while your income, when Let’s see if the commitment to the Epic Games Store remains intact and with the same premises that sometimes it does not look at the business and launches innovations practically at a loss.
As happened to Valve in its early days, when many believed that although sales of Half Life 2 argue that Steam would still be open. He passed the test and today we can say that if we continue to have video game on PC is thanks to the creation of Gabe Newell, who saved it from piracy and made viable many projects that otherwise would have lost a lot of money due to illegal copies.
Epic Games Store is still in its staging phase. Learn from the market, companies and users and, above all, to demonstrate that everything we spend on it does not risk being lost in the sewers when things go wrong.
It’s unclear whether it will be able to surpass Steam in one, ten, or 20 years, but it’s not on the wrong track. It’s one more player, like GoG or Microsoft itself, so Hopefully next year he will be five And so on, Eternal. It would, without a doubt, be his biggest hit…yet.
