Good Idea / Bad Idea
I'd take it too. And I'd blame the Fortnite players but that's something I'd do anyway. :-p
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Pretty sure Control will make more than that. So in the end this is really only a guaranteed minimum, that won't cost Epic anything.
If the price is 60$ and Epic takes 12%, that's 52.8$ per copy. So after 197,917 copies they reach that threshold of 10,450,000$. Doesn't seem like that high of a number for a game like Control.
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Actually, if Epic takes 12%, it's 7,2$ / copy. They need to sell 1,451,389 copies to reach what they spent on it.
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And that's only if it's at the regular price and if the added upkeep costs wouldn't be taken into account.
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There are probably some tax laws as well which give you some money back from the original 10M$ after reselling.
Also probably upcoming DLCs are counted in as well.
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I think I'm missing something here. What do you mean by "reselling"? Which tax laws are you referring to?
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Please don't ask^^. I only know a scratch, definitely not the corresponding words in english and countries are different. Maybe I'm totally wrong.
There are different kind of taxes especially for companies.
At first I thought probably they would need even more due to taxes, then came my thought probably they can credit it against their sale tax or so.
But in the end we probably are all wrong with these thoughts, KIlling Arts totally correct.
If epic pays 10M in advance, it's an advance payment. The 88% which the company would gain anyway. No big tax cheating here.
So in the end ~190.000 paid sales is a damn nice offer, and the Epic Strategy.
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No the way these deals work is that the Control devs will see no money from sales until the 10 million threshhold is recovered. So Killingarts is correct to say they will need to sell about 200 000 copies. Then each copy after that the split will be as normal and the devs will get their 88% cut.
EDIT: So in other words the money epic pays is like a 'sales advance'
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7,2$ is what Epic gets per copy. But we are talking about what 505/Remedy get. They usually get 52,8$ per copy. With this deal they are guaranteed 10.45M$. They will reach that number after 197,917 copies. When that threshold is reached, they start to make extra money above the guaranteed 10.45M$. Epic is also in the money zone at that point, as they will have gotten 11,875,020$ from customers (at 60$).
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Oh, I'm sorry then, misunderstood. Thanks for clarifying and the explanation! =)
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I meant they got that amount of income (11,875,020$) from customers total. Of course you have to subtract 505/Remedy's share.
Anyway, isn't it 1,425,002?
197,917 copies at 60$
12% fee
197,917 60 .12 = 1,425,002.4
Where is my math wrong? ^^
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It would make more than that... on Steam.
If they had a proper fanbase by now, they wouldn't need to pay that much for exclusives anymore.
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Question is, how much more. If you read comments on forums people seem to think that they could sell like 2 or 3 times as much on Steam. I highly doubt that. The Satisfactory story proves that games can be sold in big numbers on Epic. So it's definitely not like they don't earn money on Epic. And if they get maybe 10-20% less than they would on Steam - well, they make up for that by receiving a larger cut.
Again, if Remedy/505's calculations would deliver the result that they could sell way more on Steam, then they'd probably do that. I think it's just very likely that most people who were waiting for Control just bought it. I don't think there are that many people who actually intended to buy it at full price, but refused to do it because of Epic. There are definitely some, sure. But as long as it's in the 10-20% range, they're still fine financially.
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If you read comments on forums people seem to think that they could sell like 2 or 3 times as much on Steam. I highly doubt that.
What makes you doubt it? There is literally not one shred of evidence Epic has sold much of anything since they started and the fact they still pay for games is actually evidence of the contrary.
Again, if Remedy/505's calculations would deliver the result that they could sell way more on Steam, then they'd probably do that.
Or they would just take the money they get for nothing, recoup their cost for the game, and more and then wait patiently until their exclusivity contract is over to go actually sell the game on Steam or somewhere else. They have 10 millions and they don't have to sell one game. They don't even care about anything else right now.
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What makes you doubt it? There is literally not one shred of evidence Epic has sold much of anything since they started and the fact they still pay for games is actually evidence of the contrary.
There is evidence, actually.
https://www.pcgamer.com/satisfactory-sold-over-500000-copies-on-the-epic-store-says-developer/
500k copies is really a lot for a rather niche indie title. Many AAA games don't even sell that much. So there's clearly a sizable number of paying customers on Epic.
Or they would just take the money they get for nothing, recoup their cost for the game, and more and then wait patiently until their exclusivity contract is over to go actually sell the game on Steam or somewhere else. They have 10 millions and they don't have to sell one game. They don't even care about anything else right now.
So you are saying they would sell more on Steam, meaning they would get more money than they get on Epic "for free". But they... choose not to?
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There is evidence, actually.
Well I read that too. Second hand report from studios that are paid by Epic, especially small indies that had previously been saying everywhere they were not selling anything on Epic but now feel the need to "set the record straight", are not that credible to me but sure.
So you are saying they would sell more on Steam, meaning they would get more money than they get on Epic "for free". But they... choose not to?
Of course. To stick it to Steam. Let's be honest. Valve has been swinging their dick around for years telling devs and publishers it was their way or the highway so they are reaping what they sow. Then they announced their new system and they pissed off everyone who wanted to sell games with them. Then Epic shows up. I think studios are using Epic to show Steam they have other choices now. The point is to get some weight in the balance on their side again. And if Epic is willing to pay to get used, why wouldn't they?
They are making enough to pay for their costs developing the game, and more on top of that. They'll take the money, hope to sell a few games and wait until Steam comes groveling back.
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Aaalright then... ^^
Second hand report from studios that are paid by Epic, especially small indies that had previously been saying everywhere they were not selling anything on Epic but now feel the need to "set the record straight", are not that credible to me but sure.
In this first paragraph there is so much wrong that I have to dissect it into little pieces.
Second hand report
How is that second hand? The developers themseves gave us their sales figures. This is the very definition of first hand.
that are paid by Epic
Come on. They sell their game on Epic. Yes, they have a contract with a guaranteed minimum sales number. That does not mean they work for Epic or anything like that. With that argumentation you could say for every dev on Steam that they are "paid by Valve", as they all sell their games there and have a contract with Valve. I get that it's a convenient way to basically discredit all devs who are on Epic and invalidate everything they say. But that really doesn't feel honest to me.
that had previously been saying everywhere they were not selling anything on Epic but now feel the need to "set the record straight"
I am sure you know very well that the previous statements were jokes. Obvious jokes. They were tweeting stuff like this. Everyone knows those were jokes and therefore nobody needs to "set the record straight". This was the first time they actually released their sales numbers, and I really don't see any reason to believe them any less than everybody else in the business.
Of course. To stick it to Steam. Let's be honest. Valve has been swinging their dick around for years telling devs and publishers it was their way or the highway so they are reaping what they sow. Then they announced their new system and they pissed off everyone who wanted to sell games with them. Then Epic shows up. I think studios are using Epic to show Steam they have other choices now. The point is to get some weight in the balance on their side again. And if Epic is willing to pay to get used, why wouldn't they?
Again, I find it extremely hard to believe that a publisher would waive millions of dollars for any reason, let alone "sending a message". This is not our experience with publishers. Not at all.
What new system do you mean?
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The money is necessarily for exclusivity, part of it it could be up front money of copies sold in future.
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Control seems like the kind of game that would make that amount from full price copies.
In fact, it might not even be enough to break even, with the development and marketing costs of the game
Good cheap deal for Epic, i would say
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Less than half what the game cost to develop.
I don't think this 10 million had much influence in the decision to take the exclusivity deal.
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Idk what else is there to gain from the deal, they don't even use Unreal engine
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They get to keep 88% of the sale price, instead of 70%.
At $60, that's an extra $10 per copy sold
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I believe its 75% for Remedy games on steam.
Plus, expecting the consumer to follow you, rather than releasing it around between multiple stores, means less sales.
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A lot of people who won't follow to the Epic store are willing to just wait out exclusivity.
Me, I rarely buy games before they hit a 75% sale and the games that hit it in their first year are usually crap.
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Then why do all those companies do it? Do they all just horribly misjudge the market, and we here in the forum know it better than them? I think if they didn't profit from it, they wouldn't do it. They've probably been shown sales figures of other games to make an informed decision and came to the conclusion that they will earn at least as much money as on Steam, if not more.
I assume the number of people who actually wanted to buy the game but do not because of the EGS is rather small. Most people probably don't care if they have to install an additional launcher. They just want to buy and play the game, no matter if it's on Stean, Epic or any of the other launchers.
Also, the production cost of Control was reportedly 20-30 million. Let's say 30 million. Now they got 10 million guaranteed for just the PC version. Seems reasonable to me.
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The way the deal works, is that Epic gets the sales money up to the invested ammount. Which, better happen by the end of the year.
otherwise, i dont know how long it will take them to actually turn a profit.
My point is that, Epic presented a low, safe offer. And That 505 was interested in money upfront, but likely not the higher cut, because it sort of balances itself with less consumers
It's strange that 505 even needed that guaranteed amount, like they were taking a risk publishing Control.
Which, Perhaps is the case, Remedy carries uncertainty over new properties.
After QB failure, the production costs seem too high, its not worth the risk. So they settled.
And If i remember correctly, Quantum Break also came first on Microsoft store for PC, and continued to experience weak sales. Sure, the game wasn't a hit to begin with, but the store certainly didn't help increasing those numbers.
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So? If they sell on Epic for 88%, they may as well sell on their own site for 100% at that point.
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If I were a developer I wouldn't hesitate, it's a tough business. As usual Valve won't move until it becomes a platform for indie games only.
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If you were a developer at Remedy, you wouldnt get to make those decisions.
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tbh i wouldnt mind steam being only for indie titles as most AAA Games arent what i enjoy anymore :D
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And if you were Valve, what would your "move" be? Start paying studios hundreds of millions to sell their games? You understand how a money-making business works? Because it doesn't seem like Epic does. Or maybe they're just laundering dirty money. At this point I really just don't know anymore.
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Or maybe they're just laundering dirty money
lol, You should get informed on how these exclusivity deals work.
in any case, he is likely pointing towards increasing the percentage cut for AAA developers on the steam store.
yet Valve is in a position, where it can just sit and analyze the current situation
especially, because Sweeney presented them with a temporary confrontation. As he said himself, it wont last forever. Unless it is gonna last forever, and he is banking on fooling valve into being lazy, which doesnt take much.
On the other side, valve is going to wait. They would rather lose the fight, than to increase the cut.
Because they know when it's all over, publishers are just gonna drop the same game in as many stores as they can find. Which gives the consumer the final decision.
Building a player base, ain't easy in a market dominated by steam. So it doesn't surprise me the fight went the way it did
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Seems like now that profitable AAA-industry is more about pure hype than ever.
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What Epic offers is that they take a smaller cut than other stores. So, if the publisher thinks that their marketing is going to be enough, they want onto the Epic store.
Meanwhile, Valve seems focused on trying to have their store provide free, automatic or crowd-sourced, marketing for games on Steam. Which is good for games that have spent their marketing budget.
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That article states that it is still charting full price for the first 10 million dollars in sale. Any discounts apply after the 10 million point.
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What I am trying to say is that it isn't for the first 10 million dollars.
The reason Control went to Epic is for the upfront cash. So either they were desperate for cash flow or they were not sure if they will hit the 10 million mark on their own. If they were not going to hit the 10 million mark, then steam's cut remains the same. The reduced cut only comes into effect after they hit the mark, and then too its only from then on.
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Well Epic offers free games right now. Pretty great games if you ask me.
They also take less, meaning devs earn more here than on Steam.
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I have to disagree there, most of the games they give away were not given away before. Some have, but I'd say about 75% were never free.
Also indie or smaller, AA and A games don't usually reach 30 million in sales let alone 50 on one single platform, so the cut Steam takes is quite significant compared to Epic.
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GOG is like this. They give more to devs, they have less features than Steam (but significantly more than Epic), and still, without CDPR games they would be in a pretty bad situation financially, they were laying off people before Cyberpunk. (CDPR owns gog.com)
The type of competition you are describing clearly doesn't work, seeing that - even though it has been active for years - GOG has far less users than Steam and apparently was almost bankrupt early this year.
I assume that's why Epic is doing their exclusivity deals and freebies. People just don't care, unless there is an incentive.
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GOG takes 30% just like everybody else. Until Epic.
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They took anything between 12 and 30% before early this year depending on the dev , likely that's why they almost went bankrupt. As of now, they changed their plans, so I am not sure, didn't find any trustworthy data.
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I believe that is inaccurate. GOG's cut has always been 30%. Only since Epic showed up last year has GOG been considering alternative deals.
And they did not almost go bankrupt. That is a mischaracterization of a low-profit year for GOG last year.
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Oh yes, you are right, it was always 30%, I misread an article.
According to Kotaku an employee told them that the company went dangeroously close to red. I assume that's not just a low-profit year.
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Well, your assumption is not correct. "Dangerously close to red" does not mean "almost bankrupt." Most businesses have years when they are in the red.
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Thing is, steam is the big player in the room thanks to the network effect. It's the same reason that no matter how much competition there might be, Facebook is the biggest social media platform and Amazon is the biggest retailer. Everyone is on Facebook, so everyone has to be on Facebook. Amazon has the most customers, so most retailers go there to reach the most customers, and because most retailers are there, that's where the customers go.
Steam has the most gamers, so most games will be released on steam, and because most games are released on steam, most gamers will use steam.
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Nobody spends years developing a game client secretly somewhere offline in a closet.
You build software like that by releasing it into the wild and working on it with and in response to users and usage.
And exclusives have been part of retail competition from forever.
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Exclusives aren't universally bad either.
I have wanted to play Heavy Rain for years. I don't own a console, so I couldn't. Epic came along, and now I own and have played Heavy Rain on my pc. Epic competed by delivering what I wanted.
Now I own some games on their client. Eventually the free games will end. The exclusives will settle down, or stop altogether, or Steam and GOG and maybe even Humble will get in on the game and we'll have a constant rotating crop of exclusives. But, whatever happens with exclusives, Epic will now have customers who keep running their client, therefore their store, because they own games there.
There's nothing inherently evil about that business plan.
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One way to compete is to offer something strikingly different than the current top dog. There are plenty of gamers out there who still think Steam's trading cards and friends list and chat and screenshot galleries, etc., are stupid and annoying.
Epic is competing with Steam by building something very different than Steam.
That's not to say it will work. Nobody knows yet if it's going to work.
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It is an incentive. You can either choose to play it early or not, that's the choice here. Clearly if the choice were, "you can play it one Epic or on Steam" most people would play it on Steam. Are we disagreeing about the definition of incentive?:) Not to mention, it's not like Steam didn't have exclusives before. That was also an incentive.
Software development doesn't work like that, you need user feedback and years of data to perfect an online store. It's not just something you develop for a half a year and release.
By the time exclusives are over, it's likely Epic will have enough features to make customers stay....and it's easier to start with 100 million users than gradually building your store and gathering data while not offering any incentive to visit their market. It's a business plan. Otherwise agreed.
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The exclusives and the freebies are the reason people stay with Epic, yes, but just because that isn't a big enough incentive for you, it doesn't mean others will stop using it. I think we are arguing semantics more than anything else.
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They should work on features that benefit the people who play the games first, rather than just holding games hostage for millions of dollars.
This. The customer comes off as a total afterthought. They're like the new rich kid in school, tossing money about and buying up as many friends as they can, and not realizing that they're going about making friends the wrong way -- and as soon as the money goes away, so do the friends.
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That's true. I completely sympathize and agree with Epic-has-pissed-me-off as a great reason not to buy from them. "Epic pissed me off by stealing Metro Exodus, when I was planning on getting it on Steam where all my gaming friends are." - Great reason to not buy from Epic. And similar.
I'm not saying Epic is doing a bang up job here. I'm just saying that it doesn't make any sense to extend the arguments from Epic-pissed-me-off to uneducated and ignorant statements about exclusives and competition. And it doesn't make any sense to come at a customer like me - who doesn't care for the features of the Steam Client and who doesn't care where I get my games from - and tell me that I am somehow being anti-consumer by buying the products I want to buy at a price I want to pay.
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The payment is an advance on sales. So, if the game's revenue at least hits 10.43 million dollars, then Epic got an exclusive and it didn't cost them anything. That's the gamble Epic is making.
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That's how I see as well. And if I were a dev I'd also take the deal.
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I believe the idea is not to hit 10,50 with the game, but to catch consumers/customers for the future.
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So, if the game's revenue at least hits 10.43 million dollars
On Steam that would be a given. On Epic, it's a big IF. And we know that mostly because they're still paying for games.
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I never heard anything about Control before it came out. I thought it was an indie title. And they still got that much money for exclusive. I can only imagine how much Borderlands 3 got.
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It's developed by Remedy, the guys that did Quantum Break, so not exactly indie..... And it's a pretty great game!
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Yea I never heard any hype about this game. That's why I thought it was some indie title.
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roughly £8.43 million, or almost twenty train tickets
Train tickets cost more than £421,500 each? Yikes.
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Well, Remedy got around a third of the development costs to give it to a single store for a year. Pretty good deal for them.
As for Epic, at least they are giving some of their massive amounts of lootbox gambling and texture file sale money to developers. Unlike some other companies getting most of their revenue from lootbox gambling… coughValvecough
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I wonder how much Epic will contniued paying this huge amount of money, im sure they have plenty, but i doub that the sales from EPIC STORE (aside from Fornite) allow Tim Sweeny to keep trowing their money into exclusivities (some temporal) contracts. After all their bussness is making money, i wonder if with enough time Epic will start to suffer negative balance due to this kind of practices (maybe im naive and the are making so so so much money from Forntine, i dont know).
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That really depends on Tencent. If/when they lose patience, they'll put a stop to it.
From a business point of view, Epic is investing their earnings in a new, and potentially very lucrative, business. If all their deals are structured like this, it might not even be that large an investment, relative to the potential payoff. So as long as there's sufficient progress, they may as well continue.
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Tencent is a minority owner. The worst they can do is try to get more shares or sell the current ones. As long as they don't try a silent or hostile takeover, I doubt they can steer the course of things. Epic is not Riot. Yet.
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as 40% owner, they can still make a big enough stink if the company is being mismanaged.
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I have it from good sources that Ubi didn't make much from Epic sales with Division 2 but then that was a game that was also selling on Ubi's platform. Still not a great sign for Epic though. If they still are paying people to sell their games through their store, it's because they haven't reached the numbers of users they were hoping for.
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Well, at the other end, Deep Silver was pleased with Metro 3 and Take Two just announced that Borderlands 3 was one of the best launches in history.
Thing is, if people want to get the current AAA flavour of the week, they will simply get it.
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problem is, the vast majority of players don't care. While all the vocal and passionate people in media, youtube, and forums might be overwhelmingly against Epic, that's just a small subset of players, and they're nowhere near as influential as they like to think. Most people just don't care.
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I would likely have never made an Epic account, if I had not gotten CONTROL for free, when I bought a new rig with a 20-series RTX NVIDIA GPU.
That said, I am glad I did make my account, and play the game. With RTX on, it looks amazing, reflections so good, you shoot at the reflections of enemies, instead of the actual enemy, because... so real. If you don;t have an RTX capable card (or turn RTX off) the game looks and feels a bit flatter. But still good. Some design choices that feel a bit "off" to me, but that is completely subjective.
I've picked up a few of the freebies Epic offered since then (ABZU, Batman AK), but not all. Free games i am not interested in playing are useless to me. And i have not spent a penny in their store. Still not sure I trust TenCent with my payment info. But, I will say... the lack of forums (and trolls and drama-prone threads) is a plus for me. WhenI go to EGS, i go there to play a game, not waste time getting caught up in silly "outrage culture" postings by others.
And from a business perspective, yeah. Remedy/505 did what was best for them. It's a business, Getting some guaranteed money up front, to be able to pay your employees, so they can feed themselves and their families, pay rent or mortgages, take care of medical bills, ect.- much more secure for the employees there, to know that paycheck is coming, instead of waiting, and hoping the game sells enough copies over time to pay you. And the game will not be Exclusive forever. It will (most likely) still come to Steam, once the exclusivity period is over, and maybe other platforms as well (it plays well on PC with a controller, maybe a bit better than with kb/m).
I have no issues with Remedy and 505 taking the up-front money. I am sure their empolyees, from devs to support staff have no complaints about getting paid either. And as a former (now retired) business owner, I see it from that perspective, easily.
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It's a timed exclusive for only one year, though? That's unless I'm mistaken?
If it's timed, I don't care, I still won't install Epic's spyware client, I'll just wait ... maybe meanwhile and with all that money they'll sort out some bugs.
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so glad epic is doing this to help indie developers!
thanks tim
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Hey maybe their next step is to pay millions to indie devs. Ok, maybe one million. Yuan. To be shared by all the indie devs.
Still...
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F*** Epic, but also this profits devs, BUT ALSO Epic said they're not gonna keep doing this (giving money upfront for exclusive) forever...
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What else are they gonna do? Release on Steam? How would that get them any sales in today's climate?
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That's before the latest algorithm "improvements".
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It was also a game that got battered in the reviews at release and sold like shit on the MS store.
(Point being, I don't believe they took the deal to get sales, I believe they took it as a safety net in case it didn't sell).
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That is possibly the case. But good lord , if you don't expect the game to sell 1/3 of its development costs, what exactly were you gaining from publishing this.
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It's a nice safety net to have and in a year you can have a relaunch on steam with some minor marketing to get another boost of sales at (most likely) full price.
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you never know if a game's gonna be a hit or a flop. This way, they get cash up front, and they're guaranteed a minimum floor. It's the same reason some movies end up being released on Netflix - take a gamble at the box office, or take the guaranteed money.
It's a good business decision.
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Eh, so I don't have to feel bad about pirating it, Remedy's already got the money, right?
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You cant rob a bank because their revenue is more than loss. What about just dont play it boycott?
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Too late, I already played it xD
I'd gladly buy the game if it still comes out on Steam. I'm just saying Remedy is already paid off. It's a victimless crime. That's the situation Epic created.
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LUL. They are so fucll of themselves cause of that Fortshite $$$$ I can't fucking WAIT until that game goes belly up and they FEEL IT
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https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/09/23/epic-games-store-paid-8-43-million-for-control-exclusive/
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