Ubisoft is calling Steam’s business model “unrealistic” in 2019.
For the past decade, if you wanted to play a PC game, you downloaded Steam. Valve’s digital storefront has a virtual monopoly on PC gaming, with almost every new game on the market being sold on Steam.
At least until very recently. The Epic Games Store opened last December, and while it has attracted a ton of controversy, one good thing that Epic is doing is disrupting the PC gaming market--a market that was in desperate need of disruption.
Steam has been criticized for taking a 30% share of the revenue for every game sold on its platform, making it difficult for smaller developers to get ahead. Worse, with so many games releasing on Steam, getting anyone to even know about your game is incredibly difficult. You might spend a day or two on the new releases page but then get bumped off as more games come streaming in.
For larger players such as Ubisoft, Steam is an equally unattractive option for these same reasons. “It’s unrealistic, the current business model that they have,” said Chris Early, Ubisoft VP of partnership and revenue, in an interview with The New York Times. “It doesn’t reflect where the world is today in terms of game distribution.”
Ubisoft decided to skip Steam for the sequel to The Division 2 despite selling the original on the storefront. Instead, The Division 2 can be found on Epic’s store or on Ubisoft’s own digital storefront. On Epic, Ubisoft keeps 88% of the revenue, while games purchased via Ubisoft’s launcher provide the French game publisher with 100% of the revenue.
While Epic might be attracting more publishers and developers with its attractive layout and carefully curated selection of games, lifelong PC gamers have criticized the store for its habit of acquiring exclusive titles even after they’d started selling pre-orders on Steam.
So far, Steam hasn’t responded to the new competitor by adjustment their revenue sharing, but one has to wonder how long Valve will keep the old 70/30 split with Epic around offering a better deal.