Thanks so much for bringing this down. We get deals here on Chrono, Humble, Fanatical, Indiegala - wherever to activate on drum roll please!: Steam.
That’s why I never got the baseline hatred for exclusives as a concept. Mind, it sucks when a Kickstarted game goes the exclusive route to X-publisher, but that’s nothing to do with using exclusivity as a reasonable business model.
Like buying a game on Humble that you still have to activate via UPlay. coughMUCHcough
Meh, idc much, as every company is watching out for its own bottomline - no matter which business model they use to do it. I’m not in Valve’s inner sanctum, no idea what things they do that I don’t know about, so I’m not judging any of them.
In any case, Epic as competition or not for Steam, this is the first time that Steam hasn’t broken when a sale started, lol. Whatever is the cause of that, it’s a good surprise.
exactly my thoughts, I can’t express how surprised I was when the page actually loaded for me, the first day! The first 2 hours of the sale! What!? I personally can’t remember the last time that has happened. Usually it would take at least 5 or 6 hours or so, and last time it wouldn’t work several days for me. I even came and asked ppl about it here.
Someone has to absorb the fees if they do this–either the client in question (Steam), the devs or, sadly, the customer. Once it doesn’t become viable for them (turn a profit) they axe it. GOG had it for a long time, but it couldn’t be maintained, and they had to get rid of it. The same thing will happen with Epic. That 12% cut is not and never was sustainable and it was proven on twitter when Sergey Galyonkin started talking about how adding more payment methods was too costly for them and they would have to start charging you, the customer, to sustain everything. Makes you realize that price cut on their games wasn’t the straight up fairy magic they tried to make out to be.
(also, don’t want it to come off that I don’t agree with you that it isn’t fair for other countries in this situation, just trying to put it out there why these companies don’t offer these options (at least for long) and whatnot)
say you made a game, so you invested in it, and you went through the whole development and paid all salaries and your rent and electricity and all that, and now you start selling that game
say it’s a great game, everyone wants to buy it
it sells great in the developed countries, and you (and the stores) make lots of money selling it there at $60
how does it benefit you to only sell 1,000 copies in a poor country at $60 vs 50,000 at $20, for example?
the same goes for the store, exactly the same, how is missing out on money ever a positive? It’s purely lost revenue.
and this has nothing to do with the 12% btw. do you know who published this Star Wars game? frikkin EA
it’s not like Epic games is selling this game at $28 only in Egypt without EA’s approval, right? And it surely isn’t cuz Epic only takes 12% vs 30% that this is possible either. You can’t sell a game at 47% (or whatever) of its price cuz the store only takes 12% vs 30%. And it’s not as if EA is going to do that if they’re losing money on it, is it? The only reason EA is doing that is cuz of the considerations i expressed above: obtaining more revenue by selling incrementally more copies at lower prices is far better than not selling (or hardly) any at full price; that’s also the only reason there are sales in the first place
Because people buy 49k copies in a poor country then move them to the rich countries and sell them for $30 which means you’re losing out on $40 from people who would otherwise have had to buy it for $60.
For the core of your question; it becomes too expensive for the store to start selling to multiple countries and maintain a profit. It becomes impossible. Once it stops losing their interest, that’s it. The dev can try something, I don’t know the full intricate details of their authority in this matter. Perhaps I’m not explaining it very well, but the bottom line is they generally don’t offer these options because giving the customers the option in the long run starts to run them down cost wise, and they have to either charge the customer more or drop it entirely. And since charging the customer to make up the difference would be the same thing as the other, they usually just drop it.
What Fraggles mentioned is also a big issue. And not all stores function like this. And they shouldn’t. I should reserve the right to purchase a key–not an automatic link. What if I’m buying a key gift?
There are tons of issues with it, and tons of reasons why the stores avoid it or end up stopping support. They have too many things to debate or lose out on, especially the dev.
I’m sorry, but i cant agree with that at all. Low percentages of revenue are always better than no revenue. And you have to carry the cost of running your store regardless. So unless you can explain how exactly selling this game at $28 is costing Epic money instead of making them money, there’s just no way i can accept “just because” as a reason
Well steam in their benevolence and desire to specifically NOT be a monopoly does not do that, since that apparently needs to be mentioned again. And that is precisely what did and has happened and why steam had to cut back on regional pricing, they used to have 2 EU regions with lower prices for the east. This even used to happen with physical copies of games, so I’m just telling you why publishers are hesitant to do it.
If Epic’s control over their market is such that it’s impossible to even gift games to someone else then sure they have no reason not to offer regional prices. But I kind of like being able to give people games.
Okay, but it doesn’t matter if you agree with it, it is just how it is sadly. It costs too much. They lose profits with it because devs branch their work out through companies like Epic and Steam, who would then need to take on the massive costs of regional pricing and accepting extra payment methods (There is a country (I think it was Sweden? Maybe Denmark), where they use Payvolla or something like that, and Steam has to absorb the cost, losing them money*). And if they lose money selling things cheaper, why in the world would they keep that going? It makes no sense for them. GOG did, Epic started to and even admitted on Twitter that if they started adding payment methods they’d have to charge you to make up the difference in where they were losing the money.
And I thought I already did tell you? They’re being charged providing you and all these countries these benefits. It costs them a lot of money to keep it up. They aren’t making a profit. Look, if you don’t believe me, just google it up. You’ll see countless people talking about, discussions even, and you can branch into the topic further as to why it costs them if you still doubt that it costs them money to bring these benefits to people of all these countries. I mean, if the guy from Epic himself stating it on Twitter isn’t enough and GOG having to revert from regional pricing isn’t enough, then I honestly have nothing else to say.
*or something Scandinavian
EDIT
Epic is just luring people into a hideous van by leaving a trail of candies straight to it. When the candy is gone and you look up, you’re already trapped.
Yeah the UK for example lol but I don’t consider brits to be european I guess cos isolation. Plus when I think of europe it is usually only western europe.
Welcome, welcome. I’m not sure from which part of the Europe you are but me being from one of the poorer countries in the union 60$ is still a freaking lot.
Someone in South America for example would have easier time paying 10 or 15 $ bucks for game than i have paying 60.
making less money per purchase is not the same as losing money; profit is still profit (as for your argument regarding alternative paying methods costing money: see 3)
chrono.gg sells at heavily reduced prices, which is comparable to regional pricing (the price they actually sell at), exclusively, so they prove that you can turn a profit selling at these prices (and you’re gonna say they have a very limited staff, but that doesn’t change anything, those other companies already have their fixed costs of running everything, just like i said, they have to spend those costs regardless of whether they implement regional pricing [and make extra money on all those extra sales] or not; it’s just that some companies understand that and some don’t)
i never spoke of alternative paying methods, only regional pricing. all these countries have paypal. I can’t use paypal cuz im a foreigner here and that comes with certain restrictions. I need a credit card to use paypal and obtaining a credit card as a foreigner here is very, very hard; in my bank it’s impossible. I myself use Payoneer, something which humble, chrono, and now also Epic accept, so that’s one example of an alternative payment method that is doable (which is besides the point, cause im not even talking about that, but then the solution would be to simply not implement those options which are too costly, which is what they are doing already, so this is a non-discussion)
