- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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TIL that Tim Fortnite does not consider Sony or Nintendo to be ‘major stores’.
TIL that the video game industry has never had nor currently has titles that are priced exclusively on certain platforms.
(Where ‘its only available for purchase on one platform’ is an effective price of infinity)
Just… from the article:
“Steam’s rules do explicitly prohibit games from steering players to competing purchase methods, forcing everyone to pay 30% to Valve,” he [Sweeney] recently tweeted. “Apple and Google did the same until the court explicitly found this practice to be unlawful. Now they don’t!”
It’s not clear exactly what rule Sweeney’s referring to here, but Steam’s own guidelines state that “it’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.” Though Valve would also prefer that developers “don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam key purchasers.”
It’s almost like this guy is malding, crashing out even, and has just… departed from the realm of even trying to make sense.
What is happening here is that Tim is losing his mind because Unreal Engine 5 only runs on GPUs (mostly from Nvidia) that cost as much as an entire PC did 2 or 3 years ago, and so many AAA studios that used UE 5 to make a pretty but hollow and buggy game are now collapsing or seeing a dramatic consumer pullback.
See how this is all connected, and these idiots did this to themselves?
Nvidia decides that Real Time Ray Tracing is the new paradigm for gaming graphics, and Unreal is the primary way people will experience this, by having all the lighting be done ‘auto-magically’ by UE 5, from the perspective of game devs.
Fastforward 5 or so years, half of everything computer hardware is too expensive now, hugely funded AAA games are routinely failing and causing financial disasters for publishers, Unreal Engine 5 is a hugely stigmatized joke because its not any kind of optimized for hardware people actually have, and outside of AAA games, is notorious for low quality UE asset store flips and actual scam games…
…this paradigm doesn’t work.
Compare that to Valve pretty close to singlehandedly developing its own VR hardware, and showcase AAA tier game for it… and well hey shucks, yeah, its too expensive for wide adoption, but that didn’t ruin their entire business’s financials.
They just actually properly accounted for the costs of trying that paradigm shift, and are today still iterating on and improving it, ala the upcoming SteamFrame and new software layer for translating ARM to x86 calls.
Tim Sweeney supports a lawsuit against Valve?!?!
I’m shocked.
In other news, Pepsi agrees with the claims against coca cola
If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it. You got your own store, Timmy.
Not how market dominance and unfair competition laws work though.
Name 2 anti-competitive actions steam has done.
Simply having a better product than your competiton does not make you anti-competitive.
Using your dominance in one market to gain advantage in another market is anti-competitive. I don’t think it’s cut-and-dry but I think there’s a good argument that they’re using their dominance in games distribution to gain an advantage in microtransaction handling.
I think Google (and Apple) using their app-delivery dominance to force app-makers to pay them a fee for in-app purchases is definitely bullshit. Consumers’ options are more limited there, but that just means the market dominance is greater: the same argument applies in the case of Steam and the question is just how dominant something has to be for this to be a problem.
I’d argue selling games and selling content in those games is the same market though.
And the problem with Google/Apple wasn’t “dominance”, but more “absolute control”, Apple blocked third party stores completely on their hardware, and Google had secret deals with phone manufacturers where they had to include all the Google apps and couldn’t include alternate app stores, and made using third party stores difficult. As long as Valve aren’t blocking third party stores on their OS and not being pre-shipped on the OS of most of Steam’s customers, there’s probably not much of a case.
Maybe Timmy could try making a store people wanna use instead of whatever epic is
Sure, they can do that. Doesn’t prevent abuse of market dominance ok.
Fair
But I wanna riff on Timmy!
Heh :p
It isn’t fair that their store is vastly superior to mine and don’t pay developers to use it exclusively like we do! - little timmy wah wah boo hoo
Says who, the guy who is all-in on AI and is probably a TESCREAL-believing dipshit?
This is about micro-transactions specifically. Tim Fortnite is arguing that games sold on Steam should be able to offer in-game purchases with payment options outside of Steam.
It’s very similar to Epic Games v. Apple, where Apple had required in-app purchases for iOS apps, notably Fortnite, to be handled through their app-store so they get a cut.
One big difference that I see here: On PC, a developer isn’t required to use Steam to distribute software. Players often prefer Steam because Valve has made Steam a great option and has lots of good-will with players. Still, Steam does dominate a massive portion of the PC market.
And a 30% cut is high. Especially for smaller games with less financial resources. As a developer, that’s a trade-off you’d have to choose. I think it’d be best to offer the game on multiple platforms.
For Steam-bought games, I think having an option to pay off-platform would be fair, but I think the option needs to remain available through Steam too. For many games, I don’t want to give my payment details to yet another developer, company or third-party.
Hmm, so is Tim Fortnite willing to let me purchase DLC from a third party store to go with that free game that I got on Epic?
Still, Steam does dominate a massive portion of the PC market.
Steam revenue in 2023: USD 8.5 bn.
Overall PC gaming revenue that year: 45 bn.
Steam is big but the biggest cash cows are Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. Neither is on Steam.
Also, Microsoft uses their Windows monopoly to ship the Xbox Games store to almost every PC user.
If Steam had a dominating market position, the EU would have classified it as a gate keeper under the Digital Markets Act.
Microsoft also owns Battlenet now
Do people actually consider that a competitor?
I think we’d be foolish to not. From what I can find Blizzard gets over 25 million monthly users really consistently and that’s not including the rest of the store. Toss in Minecraft and Microsoft Store and I honestly would be shocked if Microsoft doesn’t hold more monthly users than Epic Game Store.
If Steam was as monopolistic as it is claimed by Sweeny, having exclusivity away from Steam would be a death sentence for a game.
And a 30% cut is high.
Is it? It’s my understanding that it’s comparable to what brick and mortar stores would charge to have a game on their shelves.
Also, anyone who thinks EGS will keep developer fees low if they had a higher marketshare is incredibly naive.
By what definition is the 30% cut high? It’s the same percentage for Apple, Google, and Steam. Brick and mortar is generally around 50%. Amazon is a large range, but 30% is roughly average or even low. eBay charges less, but doesn’t do anything other than facilitate the transaction. Epic charges less to small developers, but that’s also mostly marketing.
It’s not about the “cut” you’re thinking; it refer to in-app purchases.
Once you bought a game, Valve keep demand a 30% cuts on anything you sell once the customer launch your executable (.exe, binary file/game engine).
hypothetical scenario to help visualize (it won’t go like that most of the time, but useful to understand the concept):
- customer Install and Launch Steam
- customer buy (Valve earn 30% cutshare) and install game on Steam
- customer uninstall Steam, keep installed game
- customer launch game (if is made in a way don’t need Steam dependencies).
- Anything sold while game engine is running must give 30%,of further earning, to Valve.
If a developer doesn’t like those terms, can’t they just remove their game from Steam or never release it there to begin with?
If a user doesn’t like those terms, they don’t have to buy the game.
Developers and users are voting with their wallets every day and the votes say Steam is worth the cost.
Tim Fortnite is arguing that games sold on Steam should be able to offer in-game purchases with payment options outside of Steam.
But they already can and already do. For example If I wanted to buy ARX for Elite Dangerous, you have to go through Frontier’s website to purchase it. Same for Daybreak cash for Planetside 2. And isn’t Maplestoy also on Steam? You most certainly have to kiss the Nexxon ring before purchasing NX.
War thunder I can pay either through steam (I prefer that personally) or you can just buy the stuff from their site and ignore the steam part entirely.
But they already can and already do. For example If I wanted to buy ARX for Elite Dangerous, you have to go through Frontier’s website to purchase it.
You can buy ARX on Steam now, but you don’t have to.
For the life of me I could not find this while I was playing. It always redirects me to a browser with the Frontier store when I try to buy ARX in game. Thanks for this lol I like using my steam wallet funds for this sort of thing over actual cards.
I think one problem is that although ARX packs are pictured on the game’s Steam page, “ARX” doesn’t appear in the text, so you can’t control+f for it.
I don’t know much about in-game purchases, but as long as i can remember, it was possible to register cd keys from other stores or even the keys from hard copys of games. To me this looks like a totally different thing than what was going on with ios and android. Also a little wild for epic to complain about locking out competition when i am still waiting to purchase Allan wake 2 on any other store than epic…
I really hope Remedy can buy the publishing rights for Alan Wake 2 one day and release it on Steam / GOG. Such a great game.
I’m waiting for Alan Wake 2 to be given away since free games is all epic is good for.
More like, steam is the only major store.
I wish I didn’t know things about Tim, and could just see him as the guy who gave CliffyB his start, wrote ZZT and Jill of the Jungle, and is at war against Valve.
I loved ZZT so much as a kid. I had such a positive opinion of Tim until I learned anything about him.
I had a positive opinion of him because he gave me all three parts of Jill on floppy when I was a kid at a show.
Now I wish I knew less about him.
Fuck off, Tim. The only reason people bother using your shitty-ass launcher is free games and you know it is true.
That’s not true!
Developers are also forced to use it to manage their Unreal Engine installs for some godforsaken reason.
Funny thing is I don’t support Valve or Tim Sweeney. While by American standards, Valve are angels, that is a very low standard. Sweeney is your stereotypical American corporate degenerate:
But honestly Valve is no better. Europe (and other countries/regions) should either force Valve to have to de facto white label their store for Europe (where they are a junior partner and hold minimal control) or kick them out. And I am not saying there can’t be collaboration on common goals; e.g. investing into Linux support and open platforms, but you can’t have Americans in charge of major platforms. That ship has sailed.
There are many massive issues with Valve:
- They made a huge contribution to the rise of lootbox gambling schemes
- They initially attempted a fraudulent scheme on local consumer laws on refunds
- For most of Steam’s life their TOS had mandatory arbitration requirements which is a local corruption scheme that is not too different from Soviet kangaroo courts. In their defence they did add that “as far as your country’s laws permit”.
That will admit that the overall logic of the case doesn’t make sense.
“You can’t have Americans in charge of major platforms.” Lmao what
Apologies, in retrospective that was wrong to say.
I should have said “entities based in the US jurisdiction (or that are influenced by American-style corruption)”.
You are correct that the nationality plays no role in this.
That being said, it is fact that all major US B2C tech platforms support corruption, engage in crime, engage in spyware activities and leverage shallow pompous PR copytext about alleged belief in free speech and “government official this or that”.
That ship has really sailed.
Just realize Americans are not a homogeneous group, of course Google/Meta/MS/Oracle are all shitbag companies with leaders who support Trump, as far as I’m aware Gabe does not and has not contributed to rightwing government.
I understand the frustration and mistrust, I live here. But it’s important to realize that is a small minority of people no matter how much of an outsize influence their power and corruption has over all of us.
Israel is bad, but not all Israelis or Jews are, not supporting Israeli companies that are govt backed/ran by "ex"IDF makes sense, but companies that don’t shouldn’t be lumped in just because of that.
I apologize for the broad generalisation (in my defence, the use of demonyms in such a context doesn’t always suggets complete generalisation). That was uncalled for.
I’ve lived for several years and travelled a lot around the US (both while living there and during subsequent visits). The impression I got is that corruption is not purely a far right thing and a far larger proportion of say the centre-right voting public enable it than would think. They might not be as openly committed to crime and corruption as say the far right, but much for the centre-right voting is simply too well off to risk rocking the boat and pursuing true anti-crime measures.
Let me give you an example of the latter. Meta has been found to knowling enable and support fraud to the tune of $16 B (10% plus of revenues) in 2024 alone. They even had a playbook to enable this scheme, so there likely entent to engage in crime.
This is a more pedestrian example, there also the enablement of Rohingya genocide (I don’t support capital punishment, but I would be willing to consider exceptions for egregious crimes against humanity, but let’s go with a more clear cut case.
Am I being unreasonable in stating that the vast majority of the centre-right voting public may vaguely believe Meta’s action to be criminal, but they fundamentally oppose any actions that might address such criminal activities. Things like immediate internment of all Meta executives and senior operational staff involved in this scheme, raids on their properties to uncover evidence, asset seizures for any entities involved in crime (so Zuckerburg would lose ownership stake in Meta if his engagement was proven during criminal proceedings)
The facts are pretty clear in this case, Meta didn’t even deny it, they decided to try PR their way out of it, hoping the issue would be forgotten.
There may be structural reasons for not pursuing such crimes, but that’s a weak excuse. Every country has problems (some far more challenging than American structural issues),
I stand by what I said, tech platforms (especially B2C, but not only) run by entities either based in the US or being subject to American influence cannot be trusted.
I will happily change my stance; it brings me no joy to see any country become a bastion of negative forces such as oligarchy and global promotion of crime and corruption. But there are limits to open mindedness and a desire to emphasis the positive elements of a given culture/nation.
At some point, there has to be real world changes and impact. I do not believe a hypothetical win by the centre-right in both legislative and executive office will change anything (FWIW, I actually lived in the US under Obama). I will also note that the issues with Valve were implementing during Obama’s terms.
If the majority of developers gave a shit about the difference between Valve’s 30% and EGS’s 10 or 15% cut, you’d think they’d actually be going over there. But they’re not. If anything, they put their game out everywhere. So clearly the 30% cut thing isn’t a problem. The only devs they are coaxing over to EGS over Steam are the ones they strike up exclusivity deals with, which is anti-competitive bullshit.
Sounds like a long winded way to say you don’t understand network effects or monopolies
Complaining about Valve bootlickers while being an Epic bootlicker :D
I’m sorry you can’t understand the difference between a principled anti-monopolist like Lina Khan and a Tim Epic simp
sounds like YOU don’t know what a monopoly is
How do Tim Sweeny’s balls taste? I imagine they’re kinda sour, but I figured I might ask someone who clearly has them in their mouth.
How does it feel not grasping what it means to be an antimonopolist? I imagine it’s kind of expensive.
You’re the one defending the anti-competitive company, dumbass. So I ask again: How do Sweeny’s balls taste?
Who is defending Epic? You seem to be conflating legitimate criticism of Valve (which everyone should do) with defending the douchebag Tim Sweeney (which no one should do). But it’s a false choice to think you have to support one team or the other; both companies can be bad, and criticism of app store fees (whether Apple’s or Valve’s) has nothing to do with supporting Epic, that’s just a false equivalence.
You literally are spouting out the same nonesense Sweeny does multiple places in this post. To say you’re not defending him or his platform is a blatant lie anyone with eyeballs reading this thread can see.
Good day, sir or madam.
I think a majority of devs would jump ship if epic had the userbase, that 10-15% difference can be huge! But the store is bad and doesn’t have the consumers so it’s mostly a waste of resources
Prior to me switching to Linux, the main reason I preferred Steam over others was the Steam Workshop. Modding is typically so easy on Steam. As far as I’m aware, none of the other stores have that. I’d love to proven wrong though, because that just means more games can use mods.
But now, as far as I’m aware, Steam is the only major one that supports Linux.
Anyone else here old enough to remember old-school modding with multiplayer games? Having to make sure everyone at the LAN has the same base game with the right patches applied, the right mod versions and of course if a new version has come out since last meet there might be files that need to be changed/shifted/removed.
Ahh those were the days… that sucked. Thank god for Steam workshop! So much easier especially in games with deep support for it. ARK Survival Evolved for example. If you join a server that uses mods they automatically install from Workshop! What a time to be alive.
Though I have to admit, I haven’t used EGS for a while, I bet their version of Steam Workshop is even better! Otherwise Tim would look like an absolute muppet with the constant criticisms of other platforms.
They definitely do a lot to earn that 30%, there’s a ton of dev tools for games. Workshop, leaderboards, multiplayer, etc
Yup, and this kind of stuff is why I support the lawsuits against Valve - in the sense that I do want oversight and fair judgement on the issues being raised, especially since one included an email from a Valve employee saying a developer isn’t allowed to sell their game cheaper than on steam.
I imagine if Valve isn’t doing anything wrong, it’ll just waste some time - but it could also do good for game developers and players, by reducing the cut, but also potentially by opening up Steam’s tools for networking, input, workshop to not be locked into their platform (since that can definitely keep devs on steam in cases where they might want to diversify)
People seem to forget that without courts of law, the steam refund policy wouldn’t exist. Valve fought tooth and nail to be exempt from that.
Offering servers as a service would be great, so many PC only games that rely on steam’s multiplayer would be easier to port!
Timmy, if even charging a lower fee, devs prefer steam over your shithole, I’m gonna go ahead and say that maybe there is a reason: your store sucks. Big time.
It won’t change the fact that no one wants to use your product, Tim.
How does he not know that this is obviously admitting defeat? It reeks of desperation.
This is like Drake being so humiliated by Kendrick Lamar that he sued his own record label.
It’s not about the epic store being a success. It’s about getting fortnite on steam with little to no fees being paid to steam. Just like the lawsuit against apple.
But it isn’t the same scenario. Apple is a closed system, im steams case there are many alternatives. You don’t have to put your game on steam. Alan Wake 1 is on steam and Alan Wake 2 isn’t for example. You can also buy keys separately and then activate on steam, you are not forced to use steam like apple.
It’s still the steam ecosystem when you sell steam keys. Why should a game be able to use steam to distribute their game that they sell for a free or reduced price then sell micro transactions without paying steam? If you don’t want to pay steam a cut don’t use their store or distribution.
As far as I know you can sell keys outside of steam, it is allowed and steam doesn’t take the 30% if sold outside of steam.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
You can sell keys, but it’s still part of the steam ecosystem, so you can’t sell in game purchases without using steam as the processor.
Yea, but the argument is you have to pay the 30% fee. You can sell keys outside and not pay it. Also you can also sell your game on GOG, but the customer will have to stick with were he bought the game from for the DLC.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/clair_obscur_expedition_33
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1903340/Clair_Obscur_Expedition_33/
In apple’s case you can’t even buy it outside of apple you have to use apple payment system. Steam doesn’t block you from buying the game from other store like GOG, meanwhile apple does.
https://prospect.org/2025/05/02/2025-05-02-apples-monopoly-finally-held-accountable/
The case before the court concerned Apple’s monopoly power over its iOS App Store. Apple has built a tollbooth whereby apps that offer items for purchase must pay a 30 percent tax to Apple. (A few select apps have a smaller 15 percent tax.) Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite, wanted to offer game purchases off the app through a link at a cheaper price point, but Apple barred Fortnite from the App Store for such circumvention, and denied any developer the ability to steer people to off-app purchasing. This discouraged app developers, since they would not be able to load on iPhones and would therefore lose access to a huge number of potential customers. (Google has a similar 30 percent tax for its Android phones.)
Wait…
People still play Fortnite?
Like gangbusters.
Right this minute, if Fortnite players were all on Steam it’d be the #2 most popular game there, with a 24hr peak easily hitting #1. I’m not a fan of Tim either, but the game is still massively popular.
Oh this is the same guy who said it was censorship when people said that maybe Grok shouldn’t create pictures of children in bikinis?
He’s a slimeball.
Yes.
Losers are gonna rage.
Valve please cut epic loose.
