Epic Games has been no stranger to controversy over this past year in its bid to dethrone Steam from its position as the top digital storefront. CEO Tim Sweeney has stated that the strategy of acquiring PC exclusive games for its own platform has been both necessary and successful.
Sweeney took to Twitter to make the statement and to elaborate on the message. At the core of everything, he believes exclusives serve a purpose to disrupt a stagnant industry.
As has been stated before by the company, the Epic Games store provides developers a greater share of the revenue brought in by their games, split 88% for them and the remaining 12% to Epic, meanwhile Steam has long since taken 30% for themselves.
The difference has certainly been sufficient to lure certain PC games exclusively onto their platform, most notably Borderlands 3 and Metro: Exodus. This should come as no surprise to anyone, for while Steam has for long been the best place to front a game in order to reach a large audience, now developers have a choice, and that is what matters.
This writer believes that we as consumers are only affected positively by the active contest between Steam and Epic Games. At most, there is the inconvenience of having more than one launcher to load, but that must be the greatest description of a first-world problem that can exist.
Since Epic has moved to up their competitive offerings, we have had great discounts on games, a generous summer sale with $10 off games prices $14.99 and over, and recently, a commitment to continue giving players one free game per week for the rest of 2019. If Epic had not come into the scene, would Steam be giving us these things for free? Of course not!
In addition, while a few voices become loud over their distaste for Epic Games exclusivity deals, the numbers seem to support the idea that consumers do not mind at all if their games are on Epic. They recently stated that the new Anno 1800 and the aforementioned Metro: Exodus had their best PC launches in the history of their series.
Epic is acting as an agitator in the industry, which is exactly how consumers benefit through long-term innovation and competition. Uber and ridesharing did it to Taxi services, Airbnb has done it to hotels, and Netflix has done it to the cable industry.
And let us be honest, Steam is not going anywhere, but they may decide to be more consumer or developer friendly to maintain their consumers, which is something that would not otherwise have occurred.