Emails Between Epic & Gabe Have Leaked

Sources:

[Zentari]

The problem with Epic's 'gameplan' with their store lunch was trying to present championing the issue as 'for the gamers' while also, at the same time, taking AGGRESSIVE decisions left and right which were decidedly NOT to the consumer's benefit.

[Pulmonox]

I greatly fear the day of Gabe's passing. He's not perfect, and neither is Valve, but Steam has the potential to be SO MUCH WORSE than it currently is... and I believe we will discover this fact once Gabe's vision is no longer at the head.

[MrNateM]

The Epic Store is sort of exhibit A for Valve. They've been around for years, spending a fortune giving away games, and consumers still go to Steam to shop and to buy. Why is it that the Company that made $20 billion off of Fortnite can't manage to build a store/launcher with simple consumer-friendly features over the course of several years?
Looking at Skull & Bones on their shop, I can see it has 4.1/5 stars. That's sort of surprising, given how poorly it has reviewed elsewhere. Maybe the written reviews can provide some insight -- oh. No written reviews. Well how many people reviewed it on Epic for it to get that score? Oh. The number of reviews is hidden. Why would I look to Epic when I'm shopping if they won't tell me that stuff?
That lack of transparency is magnified by the fact that Epic doesn't exclude scammy NFT games. They've designed a store that lowers my trust compared to virtually every other online retailer.

There are lots of things beyond Epic's control about why people don't shop there -- for example, with Steam's price protection, I can assume that the price on Epic won't be better. My friends are all on Steam too (and they don't play Fortnite), so any social features are worthless.

Epic seems to have privileged the developers over the consumers to the point where their only tactic is to get locked-down exclusives. I imagine I'm not alone in deciding that I'd just play Sifu and FFVII Remake on console or wait a year. (I actually bought Alan Wake II from them though.)

[wmvmetalsmithing]

I'm not saying Valve is in the right here, but the C.O.O sending an email to Tim Sweeny with just the words "u mad bro?" is *objectively* funny.

[TheBlargMarg]

It's hard to side with Epic when they keep on letting go their employees, but the higher ups still get raises.

[soundrogue]

Knowing this lawsuit; it's going to be cheaper dealing with this lawsuit than changing their policies.

[patchgatsby]

I was excited about the Epic Games Store when it was announced. I thought competition would be good in this space. I bought a couple of games on the Epic Store to support them, but let's face it, they have never competed with Steam. The Epic Store is a joke. While 30% may be a little much for what Valve offers, 12% is 12% too much for what the Epic Store offers, which is basically nothing.

[mud]

Little Timmy has to learn that in order to compete with Valve and earn customers trust and money, he needs to provide a better service.

[twilightgryphon]

I really wish Sweeney Tim would go away. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Valve are angels, but Sweeney's behavior, every time I hear about him, just drives me further and further away from ever wanting to touch anything that Epic has a hand in. The man is just such a two-faced lying bastard where he wants to present himself as a champion for consumers and small indie devs when really he just wants to *become* Valve or Apple in terms of dominating the market.

[YuJay]

My understanding, if you compare Steam to Epic Store, Steam offers a tone more features and backend hosting over Epic. Even if you choose to put your game on Epic (without an exclusive deal), it's very unlikely many people will even know your game exists due to Epic Store's very poor discovery system. Strangers of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin was on Epic Store as a timed exclusive and huge number of people didn't have a clue it existed on PC or on the Epic Store and that's a Square Enix game!

[captainthunderbolt]

Valve's price parity clause is only for when Devs are selling Steam keys of their games - like, no shit Valve doesn't want devs to use Steam keys in order to under-cut them!

I am also perfectly happy with the amount of my money that ends up in Valve's hands. They have used it to make a wonderful storefront - and no one else is even attempting to do what they do. I think 30% is just fine.

[EmberQuill]

One thing to consider with the whole "cost per GB" price breakdown at 11:50 is that $0.0002/GB sounds a LOT lower than it actually is due to the sheer volume of data Valve serves. Steam's bandwidth usage for game downloads averages around 19-20 Tbps. Maybe a bit higher because new game releases can often spike that up pretty high. Yesterday they had a spike up to around 73 Tbps for around an hour.

At a constant 20 Tbps, assuming the $0.0002/GB price is accurate, over a billion dollars per year is spent solely on providing game downloads. Not including any website content including the storefront and its huge volume of videos and screenshots, or any of the user-uploaded content, discussion forums, steamworks backend infrastructure, etc. Just game content downloads.

[WillHuizenga]

I'll be shocked if that developer wins.

[daytonstrength]

Valve does refunds and they are easy, and almost every other company tells you to fuck off. Valve has done well by me over the years, more so than most comapnies.

[penix]

"Generally, the economics of these 30% platform fees are no longer justifiable"
Oh, that's why Epic is only targeting Steam and Mobile where they are confident of creating their own stores, on PC with EGS, an absolutely unsustainable service where they just pay, pay, pay, pay into it, directly paying devs and users to use it just so they don't use their competitors, so just paying to hurt the competitors instead of offering an actual alternative that has any value that would make it competitive itself. And that's why they haven't ever said a single word against Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo about them taking 30 % too AND AN ADDITIONAL MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION TO PAY FOR "ONLINE SERVICES" which is integrated in the 30 % of Steam, and being direct partners of those three companies, being on absolutely best terms.

I don't understand the calculation of the percentages in the next paragraph. It seems to be about the revenue split per game. But why is there 30 % marketing fee PER GAME SOLD then? Doesn't really seem to make any sense to me but whatever. Maybe I just don't get this.

And then they compare what they did with Fortnite and Paragon to running Steam. They offered simple download servers of games and updates of Fortnite and Paragon. That's it. That's completely it. How is this comparable to the full feature pack of Steam? E. g. we can download any version ever released of any game we have on Steam any time. We can repair our game files which wasn't possible even on the wider EGS for a very long time and is still shit compared to Steam's implementation. Workshop, sharing artworks and screenshots (without any ads to finance this compared to other services online), the [unneccessary] video streaming, offering download servers in every single region of the world where Steam is (compared to only North America and Western Europe like Sweeney said in this statement) to every single game on Steam with every single version ever released, doesn't matter how little the game sold, how little revenue the game made to Valve. Workshops with highspeed downloads without any fees, nowadays even game streaming over the internet yourself and with friends. Reviews, that don't have strange artificial points that just don't work if you ever try to compare games based on reviews. A review system that nowadays even counter review bombing. A review system directly on the store, making it easy to see if a game might have a problem and even easier (simple scroll to the end of the store site) to find out what the problem is for most users and making pc gaming a little less horrible nowadays if you are interested in AAA games where it would be an even higher gamble to buy a game every single time without those reviews. The Steam forums, an official and directy way for the publishers to talk to their users and help them with problems, so the users can resolve issues and give a good review instead of refunding the game after bugs, crashes and a negative review. Forums that can be found via search engines and help other people, unlike Discord which is so horrible for resolving technical issues simply because it's just takes away the "one time solve"-"long time help to others" advantage pretty much ever online forum ever had before (I love Discord and the amount of features they're adding and they overall exceptional quality of service is just phenomenal, but as such a "forum" it hurts everyone). Also, again, the forums are ad-free too and nicely linked to each specific game (with the current Call of Duties seemingly being the exception where the last few games somehow got one forum which makes it impossible to use apparently).
All of this, within the 30 %.

Are the 30 % necessary for poor Valve to make a profit? Surely not, they could definitely take less and still run Steam (mostly) as it is. But is it absolutely bullshit to talk shit about bad, evil Valve taking so 30 % for Steam as a whole service while being best buddy with the console platform holders that cost more (even if the costs is outsourced to the consumer directly) and offer less, never ever daring to speak a word against their 30 %? Yes, absolutely. And is it stupid to complain about Steam taking 30 % with the argument of taking only 12 % themselves even if they offer a tiny fraction of the features, comparable about a 2-star hotel crying about a 4-star hotel being more expensive. Well, no shit, the all-inclusive hotel with 3 all-you-can-eat buffets, multiple pools, gym, sport fields and sauna is more expensive than the rat infested shack next door that has as beautiful doors as the 4-star hotel but is shit in every other way compared to it? The 4-star hotel should be cancelled!!!


But yeah, the most important thing for me is: Epic Games and Sweeney is not doing all of this for the devs and consumers. They aren't doing it for the "good of the industry". They are doing it for themselves, for their own profit. When they dared to open their mouth against Playstation regarding crossplay, they had a crossplay platform service inside their Epic Games Online Services ready. They didn't speak out pro Crossplay to better the industry, but to sell their crossplay service and get their own engine closer to a monopoly thanks to the selling point of that services being easily integrateable inside UE. They tried to weaponized their Fornite costumers which are to a big part [manipulatable] children, and literally trying to make themselves look like saints to force Apple to open their platform, not because it's best for everyone but because it's best for themselves. They even said themselves, Apple opening up IOS would be the best course of action, not Apple lowering the revenue share as low as possible. Because in the end, they releasing the EGS on IOS would get them 100 % revenue of Fortnite and 12 % revenue of their hopeful 35-50 % percentage of IOS app sales (if we take take over their expectations of PC) with a (in relation to other stores) very cheap store that takes less money to maintain and therefore can get more profit out of a 12 % cut. They shut their mouths regarding console 30 % because they simply expect more profits from their partnerships with the console manufacturers than by trying to force them to let their EGS into the respective ecosystems. A cheap pc store that takes away so many features from consumers that still is completely unsustainable in its current state is not a healthy addition to the industry, let alone "the best for the industry". Them not offering an actual alternative that can compete and rather paying anyone to use their store as their one and only selling point next to "the store is cheaper to maintain and therefore has less revenue cut" is not "the best for the industry". I would really like to see EGS actually trying to compete with Steam, mimicking most of their features (no, I don't expect EG to make a broadcast/streaming service inside EGS), and still offering all of this for 12 %. But as long as they are seemingly even higher on a price-service-ratio perspective than Steam and only criticise where they see themselves being able to make huge profit streams, while acting like saints and underdogs and constantly claiming they fought for the industry, I just despise Epic Games more than any other company, to an extend where I really don't know if I want Apple to lose even on one point of their case simply because it would mean a win for Epic Games.

[BUCKET_BOY]

i saw a comment on someone else video that makes sense ''70% of a watermelon is a lot more than 88% of a grape.'' steam has built trust and its brand over years and has the gamers wanting to use steam, the buyers hate epic because its not user friendly, it doesn't have the features of steam like profile pages, workshops and community tabs. whilst the 30% take is big, its worth it more than epic because of the access to the players because they wont use epic

[veronikakuznetov]

Steam's upkeep is higher than you can imagine, I can understand a bigger cut to the store that actually looks after customers rights than to get a cheap chinese alley copy where I get kicked away as soon as I hand over the money

[Shinius]

I like Tim saying "Valve, your business should not charge 30%, so stop it." Like, who the hell are you to tell a different company what to do. Especially one that DIDN'T need to do mass layoffs during this time, from one who did.

[joshhastings]

The fact tim Sweeney called someone else an asshole for making money legitimately, is hypocritical considering the way they backstabbed pubg. Besides their store is a joke.

[neotagatg]

So what Bellular fails to mention is this is common in retail many companies have clauses with timed or permanent price requirements. It's seen as a way to prevent devaluation of their products and prevent abuse of wholesale prices. This is one of the reasons why sometime instead of being sold or donated you'll see perfectly good goods destroyed.

Bell also here claims he's not mad at valve when he's always been mad at them. He is and has been a epic fanboy for years now always giving epic the benefit of the doubt while using any chance he can to slam steam. You see it here at 10:00 where he highlight a section adds wording that was not part of the statement, and doesn't actually say the whole statement in it's original context. Instead painting a harsher picture then what the steam employee stated. He then after a soft backstep ofd it then uses the harsher wording he created in the next section of talks again pushing his out of context statement not the original. He then continues to use his made up harsher wording for the rest of the argument. This is dishonest and comes from a place of anger by bellular against steam.

Basically this is another epic shot at the wall hoping it sticks in taking steam down. Steam does not force you to use it being the biggest does not equal force use. There must be actions that require steam use and prevent you from using other. Steam keys does not fulfill this as there platform items neither does price matching as this is common in the world of business. This functionality is another shot at rewriting a series of business laws to harm steam. Yet if successful and what epic ignores is it will effect everyone many in negative ways.