Head to http://joinhoney.com/techlinked and activate Honey for free to start saving today! Thanks to Honey for sponsoring this video. GET MERCH: http://www.LTTStore.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/TechLinkedYT Instagram: http://instagram.com/TechLinkedYT Facebook: http://facebook.com/TechLinked NEWS SOURCES: In December, Epic Games launched EGS, announced 88/12 percent dev/store revenue share - https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/12/03/epic-launches-digital-games-store-with-88-percent-revenue-going-to-developers - Shortly after, Valve changed their revenue share to take 25 percent from games that make over 10 million and 20 percent from games that make over 50 million o https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/valve-announces-changes-to-steams-revenue-cut/ Then, EGS started grabbing exclusive games – started with some indie games, but then grabbed Metro Exodus – and made it CHEAPER on EGS - https://www.pcgamer.com/metro-exodus-will-only-release-on-the-epic-store-but-steam-preorders-will-be-honoured/ - Steam pre-orders honoured https://www.pcgamer.com/metro-exodus-will-only-release-on-the-epic-store-but-steam-preorders-will-be-honoured/ Borderlands 3 - https://www.gamespot.com/articles/borderlands-3-pc-is-an-epic-games-store-exclusive-/1100-6466007/ Control from Remedy Games, Most Ubisoft PC titles, and a bunch of indies - https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/every-exclusive-game-in-the-epic-games-store/ These are mostly timed exclusives - https://www.pcgamesn.com/metro-exodus/metro-exodus-epic-games-store-timed-exclusive Adding insult to injury, Epic Games started buying games that had already existed for a while on other platforms, like Rocket League (they actually bought the developer, Psyonix) - https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/1/18525842/epic-games-psyonix-acquisition-rocket-league-fortnite-unreal-deal And buying games that had crowdfunding campaigns promising a Steam release, like Outer Wilds https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-05-12-outer-wilds-becomes-another-epic-games-store-pc-exclusive-and-some-backers-are-not-happy PROS Now, one COULD argue this is all in service of adding competition to the market. Tim Sweeney believes exclusives are “the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo” of the game insdustry - https://www.pcgamesn.com/epic-store-tim-sweeney - https://www.polygon.com/2019/1/29/18200893/epic-games-store-steam-metro-exclusives Major Developers have expressed support for Epic's revenue split - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-07-01-paradox-the-70-30-revenue-split-is-outrageous Interestingly, Epic doesn't want EVERY game - Skatebird https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ck99rh/skatebird_developer_denied_for_launch_on_epic/ And some games / devs have publicly declined - Rise of Industry, Factorio, DARQ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/why-one-pc-developer-turned-down-the-security-of-epics-exclusivity-offer/ - In some cases, Epic won’t let some developers list on Steam AND EGS – not the case for large multiplatform games like Cyberpunk 2077 CONS But Gamers take issue with EGS for a number of reasons: - People don’t want to download YET ANOTHER game launcher - There have been some concerns about data collection because Chinese gaming giant Tencent has a stake in the company - EGS has waaaay less features than Steam - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/01/28/its-great-that-epic-is-trying-to-compete-with-steam-but-theyre-going-about-it-in-the-worst-way/ EGS has a roadmap for features - Epic Games Store Roadmap But they’ve already missed a bunch of deadlines – because roadmaps are not set in stone - https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/bjdze8/out_of_the_6_new_featuresimprovements_targeted_to/ And the whole conversation has become pretty toxic, on the part of both gamers and devs CONCLUSION What does Epic do well? - Revenue Share - Influencer marketing program o https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/14/how-epic-is-empowering-smaller-studios-to-harness-influencer-marketing/ - Supporting Cross-play o https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/damien-cox/epic-games-announces-plans-to-bolster-cross-platform-services-in-2019/ But they seem to largely be trying to gobble up users without much regard for what those USERS want - They say they have the market’s best interests in mind, but if that’s true, they’d offer some features that gamers can’t find anywhere else What about Discord? They give 90 percent of revenue to developers on their store - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/discord-store-to-offers-developers-90-percent-of-game-revenues/ - They’re an example of a company that offered a solution that the gaming industry needed, they got a ton of users, and THEN they started a store