Epic Vs Steam and Regional Pricing

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Heh, sigh Steam. I had a talk with customer service lately, that I won’t go into, but finally I stopped getting generic Mail Merge responses, from a human that said: they’d look into the issue, whatever that means, lol.

I don’t consider a 300% markup profit when not paying even paying import taxes, etc, to be anything other than greedy price gouging. The point of a business is to make profit. Yes. Basic. Bleeding people dry, or invoking classicism so that only certain people can obtain x-items, that’s nothing to do with being a business. It’s something else entirely.

I don’t think companies owe me anything. Don’t care if I can’t buy President Choice cookies in the higher brackets supermarkets, but even the regular businesses apply the same principles on what the Financial Minister would call the “Basic basket of goods”. Case in point, the price of Flour is going up next year. Do you know how much more a whole slew of things are going to cost?

I dunno. I thought businesses, though entities in their own right, were owned by human beings. You know, those creatures that are supposed to be above other animals because of such things like conscience, maybe even caring about their fellow man. Stupid me. (Note, lots of sarcasm there)

I hate being misquoted. I never said that. At any point in anything I wrote. You can interpret my post as you like, but please do not misquote me. I super hate it.

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12% is perfectly sustainable. Just look at Xsolla: they only charge 5%, and they don’t even have any of that Fortnite money.

Steam definitely and obviously wants to be a monopoly. Not just because that’s the optimal market for any for-profit firm—their actions in response to Epic prove it.

Not on every transaction, just the transactions from one specific payment provider.

Corporations are not people.

Again, that’s an outlier percentage.

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No no no, the 12% was not on the charges from all the payment methods. Epic was saying it was up to 25% on every transaction purchase made if they continue to add even more options. The 12% mentioned was a cut is a store cut. Meaning, they take only 12% revenue from its clients. This 12% cut makes them super competitive against others because they net about 5% and have (had) a chance to grow it to 6-7%. Leaving the rest (88%) for those who created the games.

Xsolla may only charge 5%, but others charge far, far more. As Epic learned. :sweat_smile:

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Xsolla is a platform, not a payment provider. Their 5% is equivalent to Epic’s 12%. That’s while supporting 77 payment methods (and regional pricing) in 242 countries.

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But they do consider a 300% markup profit. A major one. We consider it evil, but they see big green. S businesses would argue differently. That’s why they do the things they do. Maximizing everything to, well, the max, even if they could sell it for half the price and make a profit. They know they could sell you a 25hr game for $39.99 but force you to pay $59.99 for it instead because they can get even more from you because you want it/there is demand. Because making more $ at the end is always better.

It is just harsh business.

But isn’t the idea that they should be selling at so and so or they should be fair to people is the idea that they owe someone something? Should they be decent people and not do things they shouldn’t have to? Yea, I’m of the mind that they should, but they won’t.

And no, I don’t know, but I suspect it isn’t going to be good. :frowning:

I’m noting the sarcasm, but still replying.

They are human, but are they usually owned by decent human beings? No. Smaller businesses? Sometimes. But even smaller businesses have to consider a profit, because they have people to pay and other such things to worry about. Sadly the world revolves around money.

It wasn’t with the intent of misquoting you (I even directly quoted you so that you would not think this), it is paraphrasing, for clarity of my point. Your intent is that they can afford to do this, yes? Is that not what you meant? If it is, my point is that they see that you can afford you just as you see they can afford it.

Oh, I never heard of Xsolla before. Could you tell me more? Is this a digital game store like Epic, or some other sort of platform? That is quite a crazy success story.

EDIT

Oh, a quick google search tells me Xsolla is a payment service company. I don’t really think that compares, but I’ll wait for your reply.

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Oh and here I thought you had decided you didn’t want to embarrass yourself when you deleted your first post. They’ve clearly chosen to not pursue the option of being a monopoly by the simple notion that they allow other businesses to sell their keys. They are not a monopoly, has never been one and by every notion has made no moves towards becoming one. Otherwise 3rd party stores would not be able to sell steam keys it’s really very simple, you’re able to buy steam keys where none of the money goes to valve.

What actions in response to epic are you talking about? Steam has done damn near nothing. Epic demanded steam cut their share down to the same as epic, steam didn’t respond. Epic kept pulling exclusives OUT of the steam store, steam did nothing, didn’t try to pay devs to make games steam exclusive. Hell steam even probably had decent grounds for suing both epic and some devs for breach of contract and potentially interfering with contracts but they have not. Steam has just kept on trucking as usual, though it’s possibly I’ve missed something they’ve done in this regard so feel free to make some sort of specific claims.

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Take a look at their website and GDC 2019 talks for more info.

I’m not super familiar with Discourse and I’m still figuring out how to use it courteously.

Steam keys actually support Steam’s monopoly—it’s how they get people on the platform. It’s basic free-to-play economy design.

Valve’s statement on the Metro: Exodus page in particular was designed to sic Gamers :tm: on Epic. And it worked.

Please cite some relevant legislation or case law.

‘As usual’ has always been good for Valve and bad for most everyone else. That’s why the Epic Store is a good thing for the industry.

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You clearly do not understand what the word monopoly means so I wont bother repeating myself when you have made no arguments to respond with.

Notice: Sales of Metro Exodus have been discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store.

The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam.

We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know.

Yeah can really see the vitriol dripping there. The metro pull was a huge dick move and steam only laid out the basics of what had happened in order to pass on the little information they had to their customers. What would you prefer they did? Not tell anyone and let everyone wonder why their pre-orders never got filled?

You want case law and cited legislation? no. In most countries breaking a contract is illegal, otherwise having contracts is pointless. The metro pull most likely broke contracts the publisher had with steam as steam had already been selling pre-orders for them. I have no doubt steam would have grounds to take that to court had they desired to do it. The only way I can see that not being the case is if their contract, or indeed the sales contract the publisher formed with their customers never specified a release date so that they can say the contract is still fulfilled a year later. This of course neither of us have means to verify.

Just plain no. Steam working as usual is great, they’ve had to change a few things because of new laws forcing them to be even better. Epic has done nothing but throw the state of gaming back 15 years to the height of the console war era. They’re using money to buy a share on the market they don’t deserve and helping to spread China’s interest in controlling the games industry.

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I figured it out. It is a payment method company (a payment processor to accept a variety of payment methods), which also has it own payment fees on top of its cuts. It isn’t a fair comparison to pit a payment company against a game store front. Especially since they tip themselves on every purchase on top of that cut they make.

It is actually quite bad that a payment processor takes 5% cut from all of these methods (on top of what they themselves [the payment option being processed] may push on the customer) every purchase. They handle hundreds of thousands of purchases a day. Plus, there are still the conversation fees and there are dozens of banks and people reporting it back as a fraudulent company. :no_mouth:

And if you don’t believe me, I was quite surprised by what I saw when I googled the company. Pages and pages of it, upon pages and pages.

And since EGS is using Xsolla to process its payment methods and they’re still complaining about the jacky prices per transaction, you know it ain’t good for em. :laughing:

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I think you’re unintentionally mixing up a few things. I paraphrased or quoted M00’s earlier post, but at no point did i say the companies can afford to lose money - because that would be unreasonable of me. That’s not the point of a business - even a small one.

Whether a company can afford to lose money or not is not in my purvey - idk and idc. I said that they can gain less profit. Gaining less is still a gain - not a loss. Even 100& profit is a nice, then you can bump up to 150% or w.e. number is good for you to keep the lights on, not starve, put money back into your business and even pay yourself/save a bit. Again, my bestie is the budgeter, not I, but if you can do those things, that’s a steady, healthy profit.

When you overprice so much that you can buy a Hummer, private jet, etc etc. While that’s nice for you but definitely doesn’t qualify you as a decent human being, lol. Mind, if I’m thinking of Bimshire esp, where you would not want to drive your Hummer on these roads in the first place, lol.

For reference, 100% profit, for instance, is if you get an item for free and sell it.

Here’s another thing. Price Smart is an US firm that opened here. When they first opened, the prices were much closer to what is reasonable for the comparable cost of living here. People were flocking there and ignoring the overpriced, locally owned oligopolies. So then, one of the local dudes, who happens to be a Senator in the government, complained. Price Smart was forced to raise their prices.

That’s what I mean about gaining less. The other supermarkets could have lowered their prices (and truly still been making good profit, but they were accustomed to making SUPER profit),

That is it in a nutshell. Even when Regional Pricing is feasible, reasonable and not difficult to implement, like Geeky said, companies just… don’t.

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Okay, maybe I was misunderstanding. If I was, what did you mean here then?

Like M00, I simply don’t’ buy that “they can’t afford to keep up regional pricing”.

What is the intent of “I simply don’t’ buy that “they can’t afford to keep up regional pricing”.”? Is it not to say that they can’t afford to keep up the costs of regional pricing and alternative payment method’s transaction fees/charges to offer the customer these benefits? Isn’t that the same thing as saying they can afford to lose money to offer these benefits?

Saying that they can afford “to gain less” is just the same as saying they can afford to lose some somewhere else. You’re just using a different word for to express the same thing.

We can agree on this. :+1: If somehow a gaming store front can figure it out, and sustain it, and publishers choose to do it, it would be great.

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Let’s stick with that. :sunny:

On a personal note, I’ve been involved with many small businesses. I know what they go through compared to companies who have Senators in the Cabinet of Government. A normal citizen versus a guy who’s there firsthand when they budget meetings start, no hearsay.

I know that hotels here owe millions to Light & Power and the Water Authority - they don’t pay. Conversely, if Joe Public misses one bill payment, your service can be cut off. Then you have to pay your bill AND pay a reconnection fee. The local dude is held hostage, while the big boys, count their coins and make Super Profit on every unit of stock they market.

That’s why I don’t believe, generally, that stores can’t afford to do regional pricing. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t default to believing that. That’d be like thinking Valve can’t manage to host a sale without the server/system going down. Apparently they can; they did it this year. It makes one wonder.

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I’d prefer a pot as black as Steam didn’t go around calling kettles ‘unfair’. It is Valve’s responsibility to make games available on Steam, not developers.

Everyone who had purchased the game on Steam got it on Steam. Suspending future sales on Steam, while not a decision I’m a fan of, is hardly a ‘dick move’.

Again, all of those pre-orders were fulfilled through Steam.

I have doubt until you cite some grounds.

‘Steam working as usual’ means DRM. It means screwing over indie devs time and time again and then hiding behind ‘the market’ instead of fixing the problems. It means serving as a haven for Nazis and other hate groups. I could go on, but you get the idea.

EGS is not a console. It’s free.
You think Steam deserves their market share? I’m not even sure ‘deserve’ has any useful meaning in this conversation.

40% is not a controlling interest. Why is the U.S. better than China? Why is your beef with Epic, and not with any of Tencent’s other investments?

Where are you seeing that they pass along the payment processing fees, rather than covering them with their 5% cut?
Where are you seeing that EGS process payments with Xsolla?
Where are you seeing credible reports of fraudulent activity?
If you’re going to make claims like these, you should back them up somehow.

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Me trying to navigate this topic:

image

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LOL. Yup. Time to get back to business. I’ll go peer at today’s free game on Epic: Little Inferno.

Also, yup.

@M00 Btw, Congrats on the awesome new game haul. I want to take another peek at Control myself.

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I don’t understand the first question. You think they only take 5% cut and absorb all other payment fees like VAT? :thinking:

The second…is on their website? As well as their wikipedia. They handle Aeria, Steam, EGS and many others. I mean, if you know about Xsolla, how did you not see that they cover EGS, Steam etc?

Third, you can google Xsolla fraud/issue and find google pages of people complaining about it (especially on Reddit) charging them multiple times and being reported back tot hem by their banks/crads as fraudulent. If banks are blocking it for fraudulent reasons and so many people are experiencing these issues, that should worry people.

Tons more. You just have to google it. Many U.S banks themselves have Xsolla on automatic flag list and you have to call ahead of time to warn them, because of how sketchy they are and how many issues have been reported.

But okay…

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This isn’t something I would normally call for, but can this discussion either be moved and carried on in a different topic, or can people take any further posts elsewhere so the focus be reset on discussion of the games being featured here? This has gone far beyond any discussion of free games or games on the epic store to a discussion on Epic Vs Steam and regional pricing, and it’s clogging any relevant discussion on the original topic.

I think the conversation is 100% worth having, and people clearly feel strongly on it. But I’m not sure this topic is the best place to do so. We already have topics on Epic themselves that would suit this better.

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I agree…Let me know where to move it

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Alright alright alright. Rhy, I’m with you 100% up until this point. That’s their narrative. Consumers still have to pay for it, poor consumers, by the absence of regional pricing. Wealthy consumers or those who get pricing more fitting to their economy keep paying what they usually paid, because Wall Street runs in dollars and not Pesos, sí?

Now, politically, why you think that is?

You don’t have to answer, it’s a rhetoric question. And as I’m about to say to @DontBeSilly themselves:

Honey I’m NOT going down the path of explaining Brazilian politics here. There’s a reason why we collectively have an unspoken agreement to try to get explicit political discussions out of these forums. Your affirmation is a historical rabbit hole neither of us wants to fall into because, frankly, it’s a huge fucking trap.

So let’s leave it at: I’m sorry our countries are both sinking, maybe we’ll float, maybe we’ll drown. Best of luck to us. Perhaps we should be discussing things that are more important than the price of acquiring virtual goods which we keep pilling up and don’t play.

So yeah, I’m out of the discussion. Thanks for the chat everyone and have a bright Sunday! :blush:

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I really tried to not miss anything…and now I can’t get @coralinecastell’s post to go where it needs to go…GRRR! Because i missed it in the move.

@coralinecastell always drums to a different beat so maybe no one will notice…:joy:

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