Epic Games Begins Moving its Games Off Steam and on to its Own Store Platform

[btarunr]

Epic Games is moving its entire collection of digitally-sold games away from Steam, and on to its own new store+DRM platform rivaling Steam, Origin, and UPlay. The new Epic Games Store plans not only to sell games published by Epic, but also other third-party publishers, to whom Epic is promising an 88% revenue share (keeping a 12% thin margin for handing DRM, unlimited downloads, and update patch distribution). For comparison, Steam rakes in a 30% margin. Epic is offering additional incentives to third-party game studios who use Unreal Engine. Epic Games titles are being pulled out from Steam store. The move does not affect people who already own Epic titles on Steam, as future re-installs and patch updates will continue.



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[Rahnak]

Which Epic games were on Steam? Also, it seems you get a free game every two weeks, similar to what Origin had.

EDIT: Subnautica from 14th to 27th Dec, and Super Meat Boy from 28th to 10th Jan. I guess I'll signup just for these.

 

[StrayKAT]

Which Epic games were on Steam? Also, it seems you get a free game every two weeks, similar to what Origin had.

They'll probably wind that down like Origin eventually did, but that's pretty cool.

 

[drayzen]

Was looking at the store earlier, was kinda hoping they'd have the original Unreal games for cheap or free, but not listed at all...

 

[Rahnak]

Was looking at the store earlier, was kinda hoping they'd have the original Unreal games for cheap or free, but not listed at all...

Those are probably the ones in the process of being moved from Steam to the Epic Store. But they're not exactly cheap on Steam. 9,99€ for the original UT. 14,99€ for UT2k4. Hopefully they'll go down in price if they no longer have to give Steam a cut.

 

[StrayKAT]

I'm downloading Fortnite atm.. but Subnautica and Super Meatboy are the free games coming later this month.

 

[IceScreamer]

So is GOG safe from this move or? And while these free games and revenue split are nice this game launcher segmentation sucks.

 

[NC37]

Those are probably the ones in the process of being moved from Steam to the Epic Store. But they're not exactly cheap on Steam. 9,99€ for the original UT. 14,99€ for UT2k4. Hopefully they'll go down in price if they no longer have to give Steam a cut.

Go down in price...

If a company can keep prices high and people will still buy it, they'll do it.

Ah the good ole days when game devs shifted to digital and said they'd pass the savings from retail onto the customer...
Lasted about as long as the first publisher which practically said, "screw that, we can charge full price and people will still buy it!"

They are in business to make money, not pass along savings.

That said, they are too late to really offer a big impact. The market is on Steam. EA strong arming Steam did squat. It took EA years before Origin started to pick up any traction. Heck I still barely ever load it up. Same with Uplay and GOG. All the communities are established on Steam. Steam is more than a storefront because of that. As long as Valve wins in the community features, no one can really topple them with sheer sales incentives. If anything Epic's main competitor is now Origin. Which frankly isn't too hard to beat. EA has been eternally slow with updating the service and giving it any value beyond games.

 

[drayzen]

Those are probably the ones in the process of being moved from Steam to the Epic Store. But they're not exactly cheap on Steam. 9,99€ for the original UT. 14,99€ for UT2k4. Hopefully they'll go down in price if they no longer have to give Steam a cut.

Yeah, I was actually meaning what's listed on Steam as Unreal Gold, feel like some nostalgia.
It's got no price, so guess it's also on the move...

 

[Rahnak]

Unreal Gold is still marked 9,99€ here. Here's the full list:

 

[drayzen]

Unreal Gold is still marked 9,99€ here. Here's the full list:
View attachment 112091

Maybe 'cause I'm in AU, all blanks for me.

 

[ZeppMan217]

Maybe 'cause I'm in AU, all blanks for me.
View attachment 112094

That's because Epic hasn't bothered to update the prices after AUD was introduced. If they're taking their games off Steam, makes sense, I suppose.

 

[Th3pwn3r]

If a game isn't on Steam I'm a lot less likely to buy it. I have Steam and GoG and that's already annoying to me. I get why in a way but why not have your own launcher and sell on steam as well. If your launcher or gaming client is better people will use it instead of Steam .

 

[Manu_PT]

This is pc gaming biggest problem imho. Steam, battleNet, epic launcher, ubisoft, GoG, windows store, bethesda launcher and origin.

I have to use 8 freaking launchers to play games instead of a unique platform..

 

[StrayKAT]

This is pc gaming biggest problem imho. Steam, battleNet, epic launcher, ubisoft, GoG, windows store, bethesda launcher and origin.

I have to use 8 freaking launchers to play games instead of a unique platform..

Considering how boring the browser world just got, I welcome it. Bring on more stores, I say!

 

[rtwjunkie]

All the communities are established on Steam.

There are a lot more people not using Steam exclusively than you think.

For an example, I own more games on GOG than Steam. I buy and play the big Ubisoft titles on Iplay, and EA games on Origin that are only.

 

[neatfeatguy]

It's annoying enough when I go to start a game on Steam and it requires Uplay to launch, I personally don't want more launchers for games.

1. I don't care for Origin - I honestly only used it to get free games. Granted, a couple of them I already had and others I still have yet to play, but they're there for me should I ever feel the need.
2. GoG - I actually like how unobtrusive GoG Galaxy is. I can run the program and launch games from there or I can simply just launch the game from a shortcut like the good old days after installing a game from a DVD/CD.
3. I don't really like Uplay. It feels clunky and slow when compared to Steam. Every now and then Uplay fails to actually launch a game when I start it. Also there seems to be constant server disconnects means some games won't save progress because the server communication is down - Assassin's Creed 3 got me here. Played for a few hours and quit the game, the game couldn't sync because the server connection was down (my internet was up and working). I had to replay a large chunk of the game because of this.

Steam, it works and I have lots of games on it. I haven't purchased any game on Steam for a good year or more, but any game I'm gifted is on Steam or tied to Steam from other places (Humblebundle.com or Fanatical.com where I pick up the odd game from time to time). Generally, these days, I stick to GoG when buying single player games and Steam for Co-Op games.

It's always good to have healthy competition, but I'm content with what I currently use. Epic doesn't have any games that I'm interested in so if they take their games from Steam, I wouldn't notice. Much like when EA started pulling games or not listing new games when Origin was being pushed hard.....never bothered me because last EA game I picked up with ME3 and I purchased an actual physical copy (which it wish was still a thing) of it a good year or more after it released.

 

[Diverge]

If a game isn't on Steam I'm a lot less likely to buy it. I have Steam and GoG and that's already annoying to me. I get why in a way but why not have your own launcher and sell on steam as well. If your launcher or gaming client is better people will use it instead of Steam .

Same here. I pretty much only buy steam games now, so I don't have to worry about a bunch of accounts, which game is where, and get them all listed in one spot. If I get bored, I just look at my steam game list to see if anything catches my interest. I've even repurchased games, like Witcher 3 (got 1st one free on GoG), just so I can have it on my steam list.

 

[rtwjunkie]

don't really like Uplay. It feels clunky and slow when compared to Steam. Every now and then Uplay fails to actually launch a game when I start it. Also there seems to be constant server disconnects means some games won't save progress because the server communication is down - Assassin's Creed 3 got me here. Played for a few hours and quit the game, the game couldn't sync because the server connection was down (my internet was up and working). I had to replay a large chunk of the game because of this.

This comes down to point 1 you made: trying to connect to Uplay through Steam.

When used by itself, my experience is that Uplay is the better platform. It’s quick, downloads come quicker, and more stable. It also stays connected more than Steam. I can’t tell you how many times Steam has offered to sign in offline for me.

 

[StrayKAT]

The only "one" store I'd like to see dominate is Microsoft's (it's their platform, after all) because they can tie things even more closely to the OS experience. But that isn't happening 1) because they are too stupid to realize Xbox is dead and Windows gaming needs the actual focus and 2) because everyone seems to hate Microsoft anyways and purposely avoid them as much as possible. Second best thing is just see different publishers do their own thing, and let Windows be a "platform of platforms".

 

[neatfeatguy]

This comes down to point 1 you made: trying to connect to Uplay through Steam.

When used by itself, my experience is that Uplay is the better platform. It’s quick, downloads come quicker, and more stable. It also stays connected more than Steam. I can’t tell you how many times Steam has offered to sign in offline for me.

Games still have issues at times launching just on Uplay for me and when they do, even if I kill every aspect of Uplay and the game using taskkill or through the taskmanager, the games will not launch until I restart my computer.
Steam and Uplay download games the same for me - usually around 9MB/s. Steam never signs me off.

Clearly it all comes down to personal experiences, such as:

My younger brother loves the Splinter Cell games. He was ecstatic when they were released on Uplay some years back so we could play them co-op. They weren't my favorite games, but he liked them. So he picked up a couple of copies of Double Agent & Conviction for us to play through on co-op. We struggled and struggled to get the co-op to link up through Uplay, it was a constant struggle for nearly 6 months until we just basically gave up. We'd try almost every weekend and if we got lucky, we'd be able to connect and play co-op for a short while before the servers would disconnect.

I know things work better now, played some of the Wildlands as co-op with friends, but Uplay still leaves a sour taste in my mouth after all the years of issues.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Clearly it all comes down to personal experiences, such as:

Yeah, clearly different experiences will give us different viewpoints.

 

[StrayKAT]

I just remembered that I have Beyond Good and Evil on Steam and Uplay alike. It's better in the Uplay version.. since they brought back gamepad controls (I wanted that because I played the original PS2 version this way). It's a shame I had to do that though.

Just pointing this out, as a case where the publisher did something better in their own version.

 

[Rahnak]

Well, there's no going back on having multiple stores now. So what we need is a one-stop launcher for all the games, that supports all the stores. Then all you do is launch your games from there. Playnite is trying to do just that. Dunno if there are others.

 

[TheOne]

Uplay works, but it feels dated, Origin has come along way, I wish they would stop trying to be cute with the change logs, and Steam still has the easiest to use UI, though somewhat old.

This kind of reminds me of Origin, though EA only removed DAII and Crysis 2.