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from the Microsoft's-store-cries-quietly-in-the-corner dept.
Following an announcement by Fortnite developer Epic Games that it would create its own PC games store, giving 88% of revenue to developers, Discord has announced that it will give 90% of revenue to developers who sell games on its own store:
Discord is looking to make its fledgling game store the most developer-friendly option around. Today, the company announced that it will offer developers a 90 percent share of revenue when its PC game store opens up to all creators starting next year. The store first launched in October with a heavily curated selection of indie games, including Into the Breach and Dead Cells as well as a handful of timed exclusives. Currently, it operates under a fairly standard 70 / 30 revenue split.
"Turns out, it does not cost 30 percent to distribute games in 2018," Discord CEO Jason Citron explained in a blog post. "After doing some research, we discovered that we can build amazing developer tools, run them, and give developers the majority of the revenue share."
Last week, Fortnite developer Epic launched its own PC games store, which similarly offered a more developer-friendly revenue split, taking just a 12 percent cut of all game sales. Both Epic and Discord are looking to make their digital shops more appealing to developers by offering better terms than the current dominant platform Steam.
Also at TechCrunch, Polygon, and Wccftech.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Sunday December 16 2018, @03:53PM (7 children)
I've read about this in a couple of different places, and I find the reactions rather odd. You'd think people would be glad to see competition. It would motivate Steam to improve (and reduce their rates). It would provide all of us with more options.
Instead, most of the comments are complaints. For example, poor Joe Gamer will have to keep track of which service contains which game. Oh, how my heart bleeds, and anyway, installed games generally leave a start icon directly on the desktop.
Steam has done good stuff, not least of which is allowing most games to play on Linux. But competition is good: Steam can improve more, or maybe one of the new competitors will have some great new ideas.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Murdoc on Monday December 17 2018, @01:50AM
Why does it have to be one or the other? Competition has both its upsides and its downsides. Yes it can provide more choice (in some ways) to the consumer and often (but not always) help keep prices down, but that doesn't mean that these people's complaints aren't legitimate. For an example look at video game consoles; keeping prices down doesn't really help when I have to buy all three expensive consoles just to get all the games I want. Competition is also inefficient, and wasteful of resources. So really while it may sometimes be better for the consumer in the short-term, it brings with it many disadvantages and is an expensive way to mitigate what is really a fundamental flaw in free-markets.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Monday December 17 2018, @01:03PM (3 children)
Yet once they're purchased, they all run on the same machine. It's not like having to keep track of, say, that Super Mario series is exclusive to Nintendo consoles and Halo series is exclusive to Xbox.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday December 17 2018, @04:22PM (2 children)
The game services I care about are GOG and Steam, any others are annoying oddities that I'm likely to forget about. While, you'd have to "keep track" of what series goes to what hardware, at least your generally limited to 3 companies. As opposed to the online storefront thing could splinter into tens, hundreds, or even thousands of separate entities.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday December 20 2018, @01:51PM (1 child)
Purchases from Itch.io, GOG, Humble Store, or directly from the indie developer's website are more likely to ship without digital restrictions management (DRM). This means you need not care where the DRM-free installer came from; you can just restore from your own backups without needing to activate your purchase over the Internet. The same is true of video games distributed as free software and delivered through something like GitHub releases, such as Libbet and the Magic Floor for Game Boy [github.com] or Thwaite for NES [github.com].
As for "annoying oddities" and "splintering", let's draw an analogy to the grocery market. In an area with Walmart, Target, Kroger/Harris Teeter, ALDI, Save a Lot, and other grocery stores (substitute your own area's counterparts), do you consider those other than your favorite to be "annoying oddities" and a "splintered" market?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday December 20 2018, @04:28PM
The main difference between GOG and Humble Store is that GOG really pushes the No DRM ideal. Whereas with Humble Bundle / Store it's more of a nice thing on the side for some things. Can't say I'd heard about those two games, but I assume they were developed for emulators or released as open source after quite some time?
It's quite a bit different with the grocery store analogy as they have differences in target audience. While Walmart, ALDI, and Save a Lot are generally competitors in the same demographic, Target and Kroger are usually for people who have enough money not to care that everything is marked up 10% or more.
It's also much harder to setup a grocery store chain and the analogy breaks down further the more you look at it.
Better scenario with grocery stores:
Green Giant has the only supply of Green Beans.
Heinz has the only supply of Ketchup.
Hormel has the only supply of Chili.
Kraft has the only supply of Macaroni and Cheese.
Green Giant only supplies Walmart, Target, and ALDI, because they were able to get the grocery stores to only take a 10% cut.
Heniz is fed up with the grocery stores taking a 30% cut, so they decide to make their own Store. But, since they can't just sell Ketchup, they also convince Hormel to be an exclusive to the Heinz Store.
While Kraft continues to let everyone have their product in their stores.
Now, multiply that scenario by however many products in a "grocery store" that have different suppliers.
I hope you now enjoy your store hopping to get your weekly supply of goods.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Touché) by nobu_the_bard on Monday December 17 2018, @01:43PM (1 child)
There's only two things all gamers hate:
* Change
* The Way Things Are Right Now
If either of those comes up in a conversation they find complaints.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday December 20 2018, @04:31PM
I would love it, if all the studios suddenly decided to stop using DRM and adopted other customer friendly stances.
What I hate is change, because change.
I love the current state of the GOG store. Yes, I would like them to do more and acquire more titles for their store, but their Power is over 9000.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"