The Great Video Game Business and Financial (In)Stability Thread

MeatMan wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I probably shouldn't be, but I'm surprised that people really believe that Fortnite's massive player base and revenue stream is made up primarily of junior high kids.

Yeah, I don't get that either. Just because a game is very popular, that automatically means that the majority of its players are 13-15 years old?

Fortnite has a much broader appeal across the zeitgeist than you all are giving it. No one would bat an eye if you said Minecraft's community skews younger. Clearly older people are playing it too, but Fortnite has tapped into the same sort of young and old gamer age that not every game does.

Competition is good. I will now update my Epic Games launcher for the first time in several months. Maybe I'll update my ActivisionBlizzard launcher next as well.

No, seriously, competition is good. Epic seems better placed to take on Steam than almost any other option out there. Not thrilled by Epic being owned by Tencent though. If this forces Valve to lower their rates and make indie game dev more profitable for the indie and mid-tier developers, that's a good thing. Maybe it will also force Valve to get back in the business of making stuff I want to buy again.

It's only been about 10 years since Valve disrupted the PC game publishing business. I wonder what things will look like 10 years from now.

This probably ends with Valve giving everyone a 95/5 split.

Another prediction: companies that get their products on Epic's storefront RIGHT NOW will have some moderate success. The companies that start selling their libraries through Epic's storefront after the first wave will see very little revenue, and that will mostly be eaten up by the costs of maintaining yet another configuration/version.

Epic's new updating UI is hella cool. It reminds me of the bizarre, anti-entropic joy of watching the old Microsoft disk defragmenter.

People are nearly always wrong when they expect very narrow groups are making up most players for a popular game.
But it is probably more about it being free to play than it being popular. Certainly makes it more accessible to kids.
I wonder how the split is between platforms though. Do younger kids even know what a PC is anymore?

BadKen wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
BadKen wrote:

It really should be a system function, but Microsoft can't get off the "Xbox is for games" position.

I don't think that's really true anymore. All of their first-party games are now not only released on both PC and Xbox but are cross-buy. They've talked openly about their plans to bolster PC gaming and bridge that gap between Windows and Xbox, including likely soon rolling out Game Pass for Windows.

However, since they've been using the Windows Store for this, it might as well not be happening as far as some are concerned.

Well, yeah, they *say* all that stuff, but are they going to bother to work with Activision and Bethesda and EA and Ubisoft to integrate their stuff and make it easy for players? I ain't holding my breath.

As you say, the UWP requirement is obnoxious.

The UWP requirement is what makes the cross platform support possible. It's the underlying software framework that allows applications to be developed for the XBone and PC with a single codebase. Without that, you're doing what Sony did with the Vita cross-play, forcing developers to create two different versions of the game for one sale.

The Windows Store is the problem, but I have a feeling that it's basically there for license management.

polq37 wrote:

Not thrilled by Epic being owned by Tencent though.

To be clear: Tencent has a large stake in Epic (40+%) but does not have a controlling stake and does not wholly own them.

Shadout wrote:

People are nearly always wrong when they expect very narrow groups are making up most players for a popular game.
But it is probably more about it being free to play than it being popular. Certainly makes it more accessible to kids.
I wonder how the split is between platforms though. Do younger kids even know what a PC is anymore? :D

Yeah, free and on phones which is why Minecraft had such a reach.

This is old data: https://www.vertoanalytics.com/chart...

Also old: https://newzoo.com/insights/articles...

Can't find any good info on which platforms things are played on.

Devs will follow that percentage. The effort out of a dev to get a game on their store (once its not 100% curated the way it will be for a bit) is going to be minimal, so it's going to be a 'why not'

When Devs with their game on both Epic and Steam communicate with players, they're going to be pushing the Epic route first.

So the store will not be lacking for content unless Valve undercuts them somehow. Some Devs may even voluntarily go exclusive on Epic without needing to be paid, AND Epic will be paying for some exclusives.

So the only question is the customers. Fortnite players have easy access. The content will probably pull in plenty of others.

Steam should just respond back and cut all fees to 10% and like $500 to get listed. They can afford it, they'd still be profitable, the big publishers would flock back, and the small barrier might stop some of the garbage games from getting listed.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Steam should just respond back and cut all fees to 10% and like $500 to get listed. They can afford it, they'd still be profitable, the big publishers would flock back, and the small barrier might stop some of the garbage games from getting listed.

From Valve's actions and inactions, it seems that they want those garbage games on Steam.

Tangent, but I personally think that the common complaint about garbage games on Steam being a problem is somewhat off-base: yes, there's a lot of chaff, but that's the kind of thing that could be handled with better discoverability, curation, and so forth within the platform. You don't see people going around complaining that Amazon has too much junk, though it absolutely does.

Also, itch.io is still the best place to buy games.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Most of those Fortnite players, I would wager, are already PC gamers, however you're wanting to define that. I'd wager that most of them also have Steam installed on their systems and play games other than Fortnite.

I can't find the figures now, but my impression was that the median Steam library size was fairly small. So Epic doesn't need to have people buying huge numbers of games to make it big. Remember: unlike Valve, Epic has many other revenue steams and can get by with smaller margins on the store.

Yeah, I had the same impression: the people here with the 100+ (+++) game libraries are the outliers so far as the larger Steam community goes. We are very much a community of alpha gamers.

Gremlin, I agree with most of what you said, but people do complain about crap on Amazon all the time. I probably peaked 2-3 years ago since these days everyone is just used to it and their search algorithms improved, but yeah it is a problem.

garion333 wrote:
Shadout wrote:

People are nearly always wrong when they expect very narrow groups are making up most players for a popular game.
But it is probably more about it being free to play than it being popular. Certainly makes it more accessible to kids.
I wonder how the split is between platforms though. Do younger kids even know what a PC is anymore? :D

Yeah, free and on phones which is why Minecraft had such a reach.

This is old data: https://www.vertoanalytics.com/chart...

Also old: https://newzoo.com/insights/articles...

Can't find any good info on which platforms things are played on.

One important bit in the vertoanalytics article is the link that shows gamers under the age of 18 account for 28% of all gamers in the US. I really think that number has gotten bigger not smaller over time.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Yeah, I had the same impression: the people here with the 100+ (+++) game libraries are the outliers so far as the larger Steam community goes. We are very much a community of alpha gamers.

More like alpha game buyers.

Gremlin wrote:

Tangent, but I personally think that the common complaint about garbage games on Steam being a problem is somewhat off-base: yes, there's a lot of chaff, but that's the kind of thing that could be handled with better discoverability, curation, and so forth within the platform. You don't see people going around complaining that Amazon has too much junk, though it absolutely does.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Gremlin, I agree with most of what you said, but people do complain about crap on Amazon all the time. I probably peaked 2-3 years ago since these days everyone is just used to it and their search algorithms improved, but yeah it is a problem.

Amazon is becoming more troublesome to buy from around the holidays. Their policy of not showing MSRP when someone has priced above MSRP is bad policy. Supposedly they've even discussed not showing MSRP at all, but that's a huge no because the drive to buy when something is on sale is too strong a motivation, in general.

Anyway, come holiday season I have to remind family members who are buying off my kids' lists to check MSRP if it isn't listed or I haven't listed it when you buy something. This year my stepmother purchased a $15 item for $50 before I told her to cancel that.

Amazon definitely has a bit of the Steam problem if you're looking at discovery. Have you ever used Amazon to just browse a category? It's horrible. We may end up buying from Amazon, but my guess would be we all use other outlets for reviews and the like before heading to Amazon to purchase something. (Or we're buying more of something we already know, like, use, etc. like toilet paper and OTC medicines.) To sit down and try and decide what baby toys to buy on Amazon is nuts. There's simply too many items spread out over too many categories and none of it tells you what's actually good. It's a mess.

But they have everything and they ship quick. I'm fine using sites, blogs, forums, videos, etc., to discover and then purchase from Amazon. Much like I am with Steam. I definitely miss when Steam was a good place to browse new releases, but that time is in the past. It should be too for indie devs. Time to get back to working on word of mouth and other ways of getting your game out there. Sorry, putting a good game on Steam is no longer the easy way to being popular. Sucks for the little guys, but it's where we are.

Regarding the new Unreal Store, I welcome as much competition as possible. Partially so I can distribute my collection across as many services as possible. Steam Family Sharing is so horrible. Why can't I play Divinity Original Sin while my son plays Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 just because both are from *MY* Library. He's my family member, why does it kick him off his single player game if I want to play my own? I get not being able to play the same multiplayer game, but we're both coming from the same IP address. Now I check Steam, is the kid using it? if so, play something off the Blizzard Launcher, GoG launcher, something off Twitch or Discord, and soon the Unreal launcher. (I hear there are other services, but they are from companies that are dead to me)

Yeah it's annoying to have so many, but it lets us both play our own single player experiences simultaneously. The family sharing has turned me to GoG for most of my recent purchases, and as more companies compete and innovate, maybe it'll get Steam to stop being so complacent. It sure looks as if Unreal's store will be pretty developer friendly, hopefully it'll be customer friendly as well, and push for more conveniences that'll force Steam to catch up and modernize their platform and practices.

garion333 wrote:

Amazon definitely has a bit of the Steam problem if you're looking at discovery. Have you ever used Amazon to just browse a category? It's horrible. We may end up buying from Amazon, but my guess would be we all use other outlets for reviews and the like before heading to Amazon to purchase something. (Or we're buying more of something we already know, like, use, etc. like toilet paper and OTC medicines.) To sit down and try and decide what baby toys to buy on Amazon is nuts. There's simply too many items spread out over too many categories and none of it tells you what's actually good. It's a mess.

This hasn't been my experience. I browse Amazon all the time because it IS the largest storefront, and I can use volume of user reviews as a proxy for deep diving on the consumer research. I've got zero time to investigate non-major purchases (think durable goods) and Amazon fits the bill quite nicely.

garion333 wrote:

Can't find any good info on which platforms things are played on.

For Minecraft and Fortnite, the answer is: "Yes."

Shadout wrote:

I'll stupidly give all my personal information to anyone giving out games for free, no matter how little I need those games. A perfect plan from Epic.

In Epic's case, I'm pretty sure that I already did... and then not only never played the free game, but eventually forgot what it even was.

not sure where to post this so i'll drop this here:

Beginning April 1, 2019, Club Units you earn as a Ubisoft player, either through your gaming experience or through purchases on the Ubisoft Store, will expire 2 years from the date of acquisition.

Any unused Club Units acquired 2 or more years from such date will expire.

So, like Nintendo's gold coins, eh?

garion333 wrote:

So, like Nintendo's gold coins, eh?

Maybe? But if people are like me they have a stash of these squirreled away for awhile now. I spend a little for each game, but never all of them. Thinking there's something cooler coming down the road.

polq37 wrote:

Not thrilled by Epic being owned by Tencent though.

40% or no, I feel the same.

garion333 wrote:

So, like Nintendo's gold coins, eh?

If you mean, "can only be redeemed for garbage", then yes.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Gremlin, I agree with most of what you said, but people do complain about crap on Amazon all the time. I probably peaked 2-3 years ago since these days everyone is just used to it and their search algorithms improved, but yeah it is a problem.

I may have underestimated how much random crap people are encountering on Amazon. There's definitely some algorithmic gaming going on there, with machine-generated books and cheap self-published stuff and so on.

Also, side note, I have noticed that Amazon's offerings in some narrow categories are...lacking. There's a few areas where there are a bunch of cheap knockoffs and only a handful of name-brand things. And if I really wanted factory-direct I'd be on Alibaba, so there's some categories where I intentionally seek out specialty sites instead.

All that aside, I still feel like discoverability is vastly better on Amazon versus Steam. For starters, the frequently bought with/instead of recommendations actually work. Steam could probably do a much better job of spreading the attention around.

misplacedbravado wrote:

In Epic's case, I'm pretty sure that I already did... and then not only never played the free game, but eventually forgot what it even was.

I don’t think I have ever signed up for anything with Epic. But now it will surely happen.

We interrupt this thread for a picture of Sakurai visiting Kojima at his studio:

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DtpZSZRU4AE_dfI.jpg:large)

Gremlin wrote:

Also, side note, I have noticed that Amazon's offerings in some narrow categories are...lacking. There's a few areas where there are a bunch of cheap knockoffs and only a handful of name-brand things.

To continue the Amazon tangent a little:

My wife tried buying clothes off of Amazon for a while but gave up because what she got usually differed from the listing in some crucial way. I've repeatedly had the experience of looking for some cable or gadget on Amazon and leaving frustrated because I can't tell which if any of the search results came from a factory with quality controls.

And I'm not at all sure they've done anything about their counterfeit goods problem.

I'd say that both Amazon and Steam have suffered greatly from growth -- making it easier for themselves to sell more things has not made them better for their customers.

This isn't good news per se, but I personally relish it all the same

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/p0kxo79.png)

They managed to hang in there long enough to put many local game stores out of business in addition to the much superior chain, Game Crazy.

What made Game Crazy superior. Had a couple I went to here in St. Louis, and they seemed to be pretty much exactly like Gamestop. Even had one of the ridiculous anecdotal experiences where a clerk whined at me because I would not pre-order a game. He was yelling at me, telling me that not only would I not get X game, that by not pre-ordering, they would order fewer copies, other would not get the game either. It was kind of a surreal experience.

Overall, they were fine. I have some dumb Gamestop stories, too. Mostly, they offer something that is just not needed anymore. The average customer doesn't need their expertise, can find the same merchandise in other places, and when the %'s of games bought digitally began to rise, that had to begin a slide in sales at stores. Best Buy and Target can just sell other stuff and move on. Gamestores were screwed, as revenue became more scarce.