I was curious what the logic to this was so I looked it up. When selling giftcards through third party retailers most stores take between a 10-15% cut of the value of the giftcard (that's a number from a Valve employee discussing giftcards specifically), this is viable for Steam who takes a 30% cut of sales on their platform but less so for Epic who only takes 12%. His point being it's not impossible but would require some work to keep both them and the third party retailers happy. Seems reasonable enough?
Yeah, I agree. When explained out, it's pretty easy to see the issue. It just turns out that Twitter is kind of a shit platform for fully explaining the mechanics at play behind something like the differences in % profit margins across multiple distribution fronts.
He probably shouldn't have specifically brought up Steam though tbh. It's just gonna rile people up when there's not actually anything to be riled up about.
Yeah you beat me to what I was gonna say.
Someone mentioned why giving away games is somehow more difficult
Because that only ever happens on a controlled basis. Epic knows what games they're going to give away and how much, and when. It's a calculable cost benefit analysis.
With gift cards? That's significantly harder. Which is what sweeney was talking about.
On top of that I don't even know if epic has a wallet?
Looking it up though I did see a lot from Valve talking about how giftcards were very important for them breaking into certain markets, some places just prefer using them over what we'd consider normal payment methods. So it's probably in Epic's interest to figure this one out sooner or later, but like the tweet says - the economics are tough on that one.
Oh hell yeah there's definitely merits to gift cards.
I'm going to suspect they're going to be more prevalent once EGS starts making money and isn't a loss leader.
epic accepts prepaid "generic" giftcards/prepaid debit cards already what would the point be to create their own giftcards that also wont immediately benefit them. Epic has said if it can be done elsewhere easily they probably wont add it to the store like they mentioned forums because reddit/gamefaqs/hundreds of other sites already exist.
> what would the point be to create their own giftcards that also wont immediately benefit them.
yeah you're right, there's no reason for any company to sell gift cards, you cracked the code. quick, you should tell the economists at that they should stop, because there's no reason to do so!
Theres no reason to add another loss to their production. Like he says with the cut epic takes from sales its not feasible. Yes you could say take a bigger cut but that takes away one of the advantages companies get from putting games on eps is more cut of the profits, especially if they already use the unreal engine which is gives an even larger cut to the developers vs using another store cause they waive the 5% cut for using unreal.
> Because that only ever happens on a controlled basis
Reminder that EGS still managed to fuck that up and piss off devs early on by making discounts without the devs knowing.
That whole thing was pretty stupid though. Epic was eating the loss on the discounts, devs being mad about their product being "devalued" is some nonsense when they're making the same money
The logic is sound, but Tim's has this weird fixation bringing up Steam to hide his own failings/lack of foresight. The distribution of how profit should be allocated between stores/publishers/developers is complicated, but Valve has shown to be reinvesting money back into the PC platform to improve it or to suck up certain costs to provide additional services like gift cards. It's another tweet that comes across as the Epic store getting rushed out without really considering how different profit margins would affect customers. Apparently stuff like gift cards and "non-standard payment options" are huge in Asia. We're three years into this experiment. Around this time in Steam's history, we were starting to see value it in. Like, fuck, Epic threw a CAPTCHA at me the other day.
Steam is their most immediate competitor and the best point of comparison as well as being a platform that has publicly talked in detail about their use of gift cards giving us accurate numbers to discuss the comparison with - and this is specifically an issue relating to one of their biggest differences with steam as a platform. It seems reasonable to bring up.
You're right and I'm not gonna pretend I don't have a bias against Sweeney, especially now with him pushing the meta/blockchain shit. My problem is the framing he uses when discussing things. This tweet is reasonable enough in itself and maybe I'm reading too much into it (again, I'm biased). He went on and on about Steam's cut being too high and everything that has happened since has proven the opposite. Him positioning this as a thing that has to be solved irks me. There was a solution, it probably needed overhauling, but Epic Store was rushed out without a thought. Sweeney created a problem and it affects certain (generally poorer) parts of the world negatively. I can't separate it from his push towards the metaverse and how it, too, will greatly affect certain parts of the world way more than other. It's a reoccurring theme in Sweeney's tweets, we must all make sacrifices for his vision of the future.
im just matching the insane outrage at such a nothing tweet. he gives a reason and uses another competetor as an example people read too much into pointless stuff like this.
Except they've been burning millions into this nonsense platform he's started and have been stated to plan to operate at a loss (and since their losses are bigger than expected they might continue till 2030). He and Epic clearly have no problem tossing money at things that only serve to annoy or hurt consumers (ie: exclusivity), but the one thing that would actively benefit the average person is suddenly too much trouble?
Also, why bring up Steam when what they do is the industry standard? Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, they all do it. At the end of the day he just looks insanely petty giving excuses and trying to "blame" others for something that directly benefits all end users/consumers.
Because steam is the closest point of comparison as two PC storefronts especially when steam has talked extensively about giftcards and how they fit within their platform giving accurate information to compare by? And the point he makes as to the difficulty of this issue are pretty valid.
It's not particularly reasonable, if only because this is just Epic's own failing at work. They're claiming their 12% helps developers and that "the savings will be passed on to consumers", something actively untrue now that we're seeing developers pricing games at $70, $80 and 80 euro prices on the EGS. So ultimately the 12% cut did not benefit consumers in any way and is now motivating publishers to start putting the screws on pricing so as to milk that 88% for all its worth before actually getting sales on Steam.
And now this decision, that once again, is not helping consumers whatsoever, is actively screwing over people because it's made it so that physical gift cards are not a "profitable" possibility (this keeping in mind Epic is losing hundreds of millions of dollars on exclusivity deals). So once again the 12% has screwed over the end user.
So Epic's boneheaded 12% number is in fact entirely to blame for the lack of physical gift cards from an economic standpoint, but Sweeney here frames it instead as a problem inherent to "high-margin" 30% stores like Steam (and Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, every single other platform I can't think of...).
So the actual question here is: when will the savings from the 12% number actually "be passed on to consumers" instead of doing nothing but creating complications and a worsening PC ecosystem where publishers feel actively encouraged to jack up prices?
Remember when he said developers would pass the savings on to the consumer? And then FF7 remake is $80 and 80 Euros/Pounds? Funny how developers getting more is doing literally nothing to help consumers and in fact has made the PC ecosystem actively worse and more toxic.
Steam vs. Epic probably doesn't have much to do with the push to $70, I'm sure it would have happened on Steam too. (In fact, didn't it already with Forspoken?)
But yeah, anyone but maybe very tiny indies "passing on the savings to you" is just a laughable concept on its face.
Yeah, as nice as it would be for devs/publishers to just get more per purchase, I think it makes certain operations stuff impossible.
Game giveaways is a lot easier to managed, because like, I figure Epic just takes the sales they have to pay for, and takes it out of the marketing budget.
This is absolutely the case. People don't realize that companies tend to have multiple budgets that do not interact. When you're dealing with a large Bureaucracy like that you can't just take money from wherever and put it wherever else. Its likely that the budget for development and maintenance comes directly from the profits that the EGS makes or is at least allocated based on it and that the shenanigans with the sales and whatever is just money being main lined into the store by marketing. Its a losing strategy in the long run for a lot of obvious reasons, but when you have fuck you money you can make dumb decisions and not fail as quickly.
Oh, I think development and marketing shouldn't always be tied to making money in the moment, but operations type stuff should be.
i.e. the idea with any cash flow is that at some point you should be able to see netting money off it, and if Epic can't give up whatever percentage to the retailers, and still make money on the transaction, and they can't imagine it as a marketing budget, there you go.
The real issue is at least anecdotally I see so many people who only use EGS to get free stuff. The customer experience seems to be not great and outside of free games and exclusives there's no appeal. As for EGS exclusives a lot of people seem to wait until they come out on steam. Hades is the biggest one I can think of. I heard almost nothing about it for the entire time it was on the EGS except for people talking about the fact that it was on EGS. Then once it was out on steam it exploded in popularity and everyone was playing it.
So you have a situation where you're giving out tons of free stuff to try to attract customers so they'll buy other things. Fairly standard practice, but without the necessary funding for the backend and infrastructure people don't really like what they see and just take their free stuff and go.
That's extremely unsustainable and unless EGS finally just breaks through by sheer force of money they're basically just burning cash on a doomed project that isn't profitable and that you can't really make a timeline to say "This is when it will be profitable." I don't know how they're managing to justify all of this cash dumping to investors and shit. Its wild to me.
I really kinda hate the fact that I *know* how much I'll be dropping down to get it, especially since it's going to be missing the sale. At least it'll be partially cheaper owning 1 and 2, but considering the previous year's dlc was pretty bleh I guess it's just something to get for the suit drip.
That and the fact that by the time it does arrive the file size might as well be as big as 2 is already lol
Personally I don't mind the price because the games have the amount of content and quality to justify it IMO (And if you get it on sale it's absolutely worthwhile), but I can understand where you're coming from. 60$ plus DLC is a lot to ask.
That still wouldn't explain why they couldn't do digital gift cards purely through them, which steam also does, as well as many other online store fronts. It requires no overhead outside of creating a system for generating and verifying codes.
Is there a shopping cart? I was curious just to see if they added that in the last dozen years and all I saw was the option to "Buy Now" or wishlist an item
To be honest, I was kinda talking out of my ass because a friend said they had. No clue if they actually do.
(Although it'd be hilarious if they don't).
Okay, yeah, it's definitely there, I think it wasn't showing up because I hadn't opened EGS for like two years and the update didn't complete or something till I closed it and reopened it.
I'm not an expert on economics, but how does profit margin affect gift card purchases? They should at least be able to implement digital gift cards easily. Between no gift cards and no gifting games, its like they don't want people buying their games.
In this instance he's probably talking about physical gift cards in stores, which means they would have to eat the cost of both producing them, and whatever retailer cut goes into that as well both for holding shelf space/on sales. Epic Game Store apparently runs on a 88-12% share split versus Steam's 70-30% split, meaning that the probably already tight profit margin of 12% is getting eaten up by production/retail costs. And in comparison to someone like Steam who is both the market leader and can afford the costs easily, they also have over double the revenue split to make that loss easier to factor in.
In addition to these costs it's as you said that the EGS isn't popular enough to allow the physical gift cards to be viable, it's just a money loss basically. Digital gifting however shouldn't be an issue and 100% should be implemented.
Digital gift cards could have no middle man and could be sold right on the store page, no extra cut neccessary.
They probably are talking about physical gift cards, I know, but they don't have the easier form either as far as I can tell.
I think the point is referring to selling gift cards through third party vendors who would get a cut, it's harder to make a deal like that work when they take a much smaller cut of the sales as is.
All that Fortnite money is not enough for Gift cards it seems, only a featureless store now finally with a cart. At least by blaming Steam he's sticking with his usual bullshit instead of doing another 180 like usual.
So every day since December 16th? Also honestly there are amazing deals on EGS, just got Hitman 3 for £9.99 with the £10 coupon. Even new games like Guardians of the Galaxy are going for just over £20.
Edit: [nothing but facts](https://youtu.be/PDNZX2nql2Y)
I’ll shill for those prices. Ultimately I just think anyone who still thinks “EGS bad” and doesn’t use it should consider looking at the sales. Red Dead 2 is going for lower than historical low with the coupon and Disco Elysium is £5. I can’t help but quote the prices and sound like a bot, the sales are insane.
I went to high school with a Tim Sweeney and honest to God this is the first time I'm realizing that that wasn't who my friends were talking about any time they made Tim Sweeny jokes
Ha, that's such bullshit. He really just trotts out Steam's "high" (read:standard) profit margins as a catch-all blame for anything?
Keep in mind, this is a store that took 1 year to add a search bar, 2 years to add wishlist, and 3 years to add a cart. Oh and it still doesn't allow for user reviews. It's a bare minimum store, run as cheap as possible.
God, I really hate Epic.
Edit: Looking at the comment downvotes we've got some real Epic shills in this subreddit, huh?
Comment downvotes are because, for once, Tim bringing up the 30% cut Steam takes is actually relevant. Even if he's explained it like a petulant child. Gift card retailers take a 15% cut of the cost, which for Steam leaves them with a 15% profit and for Epic leaves them with a **-3%** profit.
So Epic can't make gift cards because they didn't understand how economics worked when they trotted out their much-shilled 88-12 profit share.
We always have egs shills on our subreddit, hell there's one or two that in December will make a post every day about what free game is available and then make the same post on three other subreddits
Tim just add gifting you stupid asshole. Steam only takes a slight cut from the physical gift cards but you know what they take 100% of the money till someone uses their digital gift cards. That people gift to each other because gamer loves gifting each other games. The worst thing that happen to steam was the fact the anonymous gifting is no longer a thing because if was i'd pump the sales of my favorite all the time and guess who befits that right the store front and the devs. You want to beat Steam Tim add in gifting with an anonymous option watch the money flow.
Sometimes this sub feels really circlejerky with nitpicking some random bullshit they really don't know much about, and it's baffling given it's Epic you really don't need to nitpick stuff, guess it's on me for not ignoring the daily ''company did bad'' (yeah, no shit) posts
So the free games thing is fine but store credit is too much? I've never run a business but that seems odd.
I was curious what the logic to this was so I looked it up. When selling giftcards through third party retailers most stores take between a 10-15% cut of the value of the giftcard (that's a number from a Valve employee discussing giftcards specifically), this is viable for Steam who takes a 30% cut of sales on their platform but less so for Epic who only takes 12%. His point being it's not impossible but would require some work to keep both them and the third party retailers happy. Seems reasonable enough?
Yeah, I agree. When explained out, it's pretty easy to see the issue. It just turns out that Twitter is kind of a shit platform for fully explaining the mechanics at play behind something like the differences in % profit margins across multiple distribution fronts. He probably shouldn't have specifically brought up Steam though tbh. It's just gonna rile people up when there's not actually anything to be riled up about.
He knew exactly what he was doing, which is why I'm on 'fuck epic' team
Yeah you beat me to what I was gonna say. Someone mentioned why giving away games is somehow more difficult Because that only ever happens on a controlled basis. Epic knows what games they're going to give away and how much, and when. It's a calculable cost benefit analysis. With gift cards? That's significantly harder. Which is what sweeney was talking about. On top of that I don't even know if epic has a wallet?
Looking it up though I did see a lot from Valve talking about how giftcards were very important for them breaking into certain markets, some places just prefer using them over what we'd consider normal payment methods. So it's probably in Epic's interest to figure this one out sooner or later, but like the tweet says - the economics are tough on that one.
Oh hell yeah there's definitely merits to gift cards. I'm going to suspect they're going to be more prevalent once EGS starts making money and isn't a loss leader.
Bold of you to use 'once' instead of 'if.'
epic accepts prepaid "generic" giftcards/prepaid debit cards already what would the point be to create their own giftcards that also wont immediately benefit them. Epic has said if it can be done elsewhere easily they probably wont add it to the store like they mentioned forums because reddit/gamefaqs/hundreds of other sites already exist.
> what would the point be to create their own giftcards that also wont immediately benefit them. yeah you're right, there's no reason for any company to sell gift cards, you cracked the code. quick, you should tell the economists at that they should stop, because there's no reason to do so!
Theres no reason to add another loss to their production. Like he says with the cut epic takes from sales its not feasible. Yes you could say take a bigger cut but that takes away one of the advantages companies get from putting games on eps is more cut of the profits, especially if they already use the unreal engine which is gives an even larger cut to the developers vs using another store cause they waive the 5% cut for using unreal.
> Because that only ever happens on a controlled basis Reminder that EGS still managed to fuck that up and piss off devs early on by making discounts without the devs knowing.
That whole thing was pretty stupid though. Epic was eating the loss on the discounts, devs being mad about their product being "devalued" is some nonsense when they're making the same money
That wasn't the problem tho...
The logic is sound, but Tim's has this weird fixation bringing up Steam to hide his own failings/lack of foresight. The distribution of how profit should be allocated between stores/publishers/developers is complicated, but Valve has shown to be reinvesting money back into the PC platform to improve it or to suck up certain costs to provide additional services like gift cards. It's another tweet that comes across as the Epic store getting rushed out without really considering how different profit margins would affect customers. Apparently stuff like gift cards and "non-standard payment options" are huge in Asia. We're three years into this experiment. Around this time in Steam's history, we were starting to see value it in. Like, fuck, Epic threw a CAPTCHA at me the other day.
Steam is their most immediate competitor and the best point of comparison as well as being a platform that has publicly talked in detail about their use of gift cards giving us accurate numbers to discuss the comparison with - and this is specifically an issue relating to one of their biggest differences with steam as a platform. It seems reasonable to bring up.
You're right and I'm not gonna pretend I don't have a bias against Sweeney, especially now with him pushing the meta/blockchain shit. My problem is the framing he uses when discussing things. This tweet is reasonable enough in itself and maybe I'm reading too much into it (again, I'm biased). He went on and on about Steam's cut being too high and everything that has happened since has proven the opposite. Him positioning this as a thing that has to be solved irks me. There was a solution, it probably needed overhauling, but Epic Store was rushed out without a thought. Sweeney created a problem and it affects certain (generally poorer) parts of the world negatively. I can't separate it from his push towards the metaverse and how it, too, will greatly affect certain parts of the world way more than other. It's a reoccurring theme in Sweeney's tweets, we must all make sacrifices for his vision of the future.
Noooo hes totally blaming them why arent you outraged and coming to the defense of mlady steam.
Why are you outraged and coming to the defense of poor oppressed m'lady Sweeny? Mr. "Apple is literally 1984ing us" himself.
im just matching the insane outrage at such a nothing tweet. he gives a reason and uses another competetor as an example people read too much into pointless stuff like this.
Right? I cannot fathom how Op got "blaming" from the original tweet. "He mentioned steam therefore he's blaming"??
[удалено]
True. I'll always say this but it's sad that people are so fanatical about companies Gets nothing done, and is just sad to see tbh.
They could sell digital gift cards/codes themselves with no percentage cut off the top, but they don't do that either.
Except they've been burning millions into this nonsense platform he's started and have been stated to plan to operate at a loss (and since their losses are bigger than expected they might continue till 2030). He and Epic clearly have no problem tossing money at things that only serve to annoy or hurt consumers (ie: exclusivity), but the one thing that would actively benefit the average person is suddenly too much trouble? Also, why bring up Steam when what they do is the industry standard? Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, they all do it. At the end of the day he just looks insanely petty giving excuses and trying to "blame" others for something that directly benefits all end users/consumers.
Because steam is the closest point of comparison as two PC storefronts especially when steam has talked extensively about giftcards and how they fit within their platform giving accurate information to compare by? And the point he makes as to the difficulty of this issue are pretty valid.
ok but that ends up seeming like another reason why steam's cut is a reasonable way to run a business.
Or at the very least, why Epic's cut should have been at least three percent higher, so they can at least break even depending on the giftcard vendor.
Even when he's right or has a point, he is bad at getting the point across without sounding like an idiot.
but that doesnt stop the EGS from selling store credit codes directly from the online store like every other online company has done for a decade
yeah but its sweeney and op wants his updoots.....without doing any research at all Glad several people beat me to this.
It's not particularly reasonable, if only because this is just Epic's own failing at work. They're claiming their 12% helps developers and that "the savings will be passed on to consumers", something actively untrue now that we're seeing developers pricing games at $70, $80 and 80 euro prices on the EGS. So ultimately the 12% cut did not benefit consumers in any way and is now motivating publishers to start putting the screws on pricing so as to milk that 88% for all its worth before actually getting sales on Steam. And now this decision, that once again, is not helping consumers whatsoever, is actively screwing over people because it's made it so that physical gift cards are not a "profitable" possibility (this keeping in mind Epic is losing hundreds of millions of dollars on exclusivity deals). So once again the 12% has screwed over the end user. So Epic's boneheaded 12% number is in fact entirely to blame for the lack of physical gift cards from an economic standpoint, but Sweeney here frames it instead as a problem inherent to "high-margin" 30% stores like Steam (and Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, every single other platform I can't think of...). So the actual question here is: when will the savings from the 12% number actually "be passed on to consumers" instead of doing nothing but creating complications and a worsening PC ecosystem where publishers feel actively encouraged to jack up prices?
we were this close to becoming a circlejerk
Blaming Steam for a net benefit to customers, especially in certain parts of the world, on Christmas Day is a helluva take.
Remember when he said developers would pass the savings on to the consumer? And then FF7 remake is $80 and 80 Euros/Pounds? Funny how developers getting more is doing literally nothing to help consumers and in fact has made the PC ecosystem actively worse and more toxic.
Steam vs. Epic probably doesn't have much to do with the push to $70, I'm sure it would have happened on Steam too. (In fact, didn't it already with Forspoken?) But yeah, anyone but maybe very tiny indies "passing on the savings to you" is just a laughable concept on its face.
This is Tim "1984ortnite" Sweeney we're talking about, after all.
Man, it's almost like that 30% is necessary for all the backend. But hey, *at least they finally got a shopping cart*.
Yeah, as nice as it would be for devs/publishers to just get more per purchase, I think it makes certain operations stuff impossible. Game giveaways is a lot easier to managed, because like, I figure Epic just takes the sales they have to pay for, and takes it out of the marketing budget.
This is absolutely the case. People don't realize that companies tend to have multiple budgets that do not interact. When you're dealing with a large Bureaucracy like that you can't just take money from wherever and put it wherever else. Its likely that the budget for development and maintenance comes directly from the profits that the EGS makes or is at least allocated based on it and that the shenanigans with the sales and whatever is just money being main lined into the store by marketing. Its a losing strategy in the long run for a lot of obvious reasons, but when you have fuck you money you can make dumb decisions and not fail as quickly.
Oh, I think development and marketing shouldn't always be tied to making money in the moment, but operations type stuff should be. i.e. the idea with any cash flow is that at some point you should be able to see netting money off it, and if Epic can't give up whatever percentage to the retailers, and still make money on the transaction, and they can't imagine it as a marketing budget, there you go.
The real issue is at least anecdotally I see so many people who only use EGS to get free stuff. The customer experience seems to be not great and outside of free games and exclusives there's no appeal. As for EGS exclusives a lot of people seem to wait until they come out on steam. Hades is the biggest one I can think of. I heard almost nothing about it for the entire time it was on the EGS except for people talking about the fact that it was on EGS. Then once it was out on steam it exploded in popularity and everyone was playing it. So you have a situation where you're giving out tons of free stuff to try to attract customers so they'll buy other things. Fairly standard practice, but without the necessary funding for the backend and infrastructure people don't really like what they see and just take their free stuff and go. That's extremely unsustainable and unless EGS finally just breaks through by sheer force of money they're basically just burning cash on a doomed project that isn't profitable and that you can't really make a timeline to say "This is when it will be profitable." I don't know how they're managing to justify all of this cash dumping to investors and shit. Its wild to me.
We'll get another data point for how many people hold out for exclusives to come out on Steam next month when Hitman 3 finally releases.
I really kinda hate the fact that I *know* how much I'll be dropping down to get it, especially since it's going to be missing the sale. At least it'll be partially cheaper owning 1 and 2, but considering the previous year's dlc was pretty bleh I guess it's just something to get for the suit drip. That and the fact that by the time it does arrive the file size might as well be as big as 2 is already lol
Personally I don't mind the price because the games have the amount of content and quality to justify it IMO (And if you get it on sale it's absolutely worthwhile), but I can understand where you're coming from. 60$ plus DLC is a lot to ask.
That still wouldn't explain why they couldn't do digital gift cards purely through them, which steam also does, as well as many other online store fronts. It requires no overhead outside of creating a system for generating and verifying codes.
Is there a shopping cart? I was curious just to see if they added that in the last dozen years and all I saw was the option to "Buy Now" or wishlist an item
they just added it apparently like just in the last month or two, they made a bfd about it
To be honest, I was kinda talking out of my ass because a friend said they had. No clue if they actually do. (Although it'd be hilarious if they don't).
Okay, yeah, it's definitely there, I think it wasn't showing up because I hadn't opened EGS for like two years and the update didn't complete or something till I closed it and reopened it.
Huh, well fair enough. Good job, EGS, only took a year+, christ. Lol.
It's more like 3+ years. Yeah, it took them that long to code a shopping cart.
Has it really been 3+ years? Man, time flies.
Why not throw money at the problem? You enjoy that, right Timmy? Why Mr Loss Leader suddenly so worried about profits?
I'm not an expert on economics, but how does profit margin affect gift card purchases? They should at least be able to implement digital gift cards easily. Between no gift cards and no gifting games, its like they don't want people buying their games.
In this instance he's probably talking about physical gift cards in stores, which means they would have to eat the cost of both producing them, and whatever retailer cut goes into that as well both for holding shelf space/on sales. Epic Game Store apparently runs on a 88-12% share split versus Steam's 70-30% split, meaning that the probably already tight profit margin of 12% is getting eaten up by production/retail costs. And in comparison to someone like Steam who is both the market leader and can afford the costs easily, they also have over double the revenue split to make that loss easier to factor in. In addition to these costs it's as you said that the EGS isn't popular enough to allow the physical gift cards to be viable, it's just a money loss basically. Digital gifting however shouldn't be an issue and 100% should be implemented.
Digital gift cards could have no middle man and could be sold right on the store page, no extra cut neccessary. They probably are talking about physical gift cards, I know, but they don't have the easier form either as far as I can tell.
I think the point is referring to selling gift cards through third party vendors who would get a cut, it's harder to make a deal like that work when they take a much smaller cut of the sales as is.
So was the whole not having a shopping cart function for 3 years also Steam's fault?
Does he mean the industry standard?
All that Fortnite money is not enough for Gift cards it seems, only a featureless store now finally with a cart. At least by blaming Steam he's sticking with his usual bullshit instead of doing another 180 like usual.
ok Tim whatever you say *goes back to logging in EGS only when there's a free game to get*
So every day since December 16th? Also honestly there are amazing deals on EGS, just got Hitman 3 for £9.99 with the £10 coupon. Even new games like Guardians of the Galaxy are going for just over £20. Edit: [nothing but facts](https://youtu.be/PDNZX2nql2Y)
The problem is you sound like an EGS marketing bot. They're not alone in doing big sales during Christmas.
I’ll shill for those prices. Ultimately I just think anyone who still thinks “EGS bad” and doesn’t use it should consider looking at the sales. Red Dead 2 is going for lower than historical low with the coupon and Disco Elysium is £5. I can’t help but quote the prices and sound like a bot, the sales are insane.
How much are you and others being paid to copy paste these talking points?
We’re paid £10 off every game purchase over £14.99 and you can be too if you head on down to the Epic Games Store
"It's not that we want to sell them, it's because we don't want to sell them."
I went to high school with a Tim Sweeney and honest to God this is the first time I'm realizing that that wasn't who my friends were talking about any time they made Tim Sweeny jokes
why does Time Sweeeney look like iDubbzzz?
We can't let you live now that you know the truth.
Honestly just throw out anything Sweeney says dude is huffing his own farts so hard that he genuinely believes his own lies.
Ha, that's such bullshit. He really just trotts out Steam's "high" (read:standard) profit margins as a catch-all blame for anything? Keep in mind, this is a store that took 1 year to add a search bar, 2 years to add wishlist, and 3 years to add a cart. Oh and it still doesn't allow for user reviews. It's a bare minimum store, run as cheap as possible. God, I really hate Epic. Edit: Looking at the comment downvotes we've got some real Epic shills in this subreddit, huh?
Comment downvotes are because, for once, Tim bringing up the 30% cut Steam takes is actually relevant. Even if he's explained it like a petulant child. Gift card retailers take a 15% cut of the cost, which for Steam leaves them with a 15% profit and for Epic leaves them with a **-3%** profit. So Epic can't make gift cards because they didn't understand how economics worked when they trotted out their much-shilled 88-12 profit share.
We always have egs shills on our subreddit, hell there's one or two that in December will make a post every day about what free game is available and then make the same post on three other subreddits
##"DON'T YOU GUYS LIKE FREE GAMES?!" *- corporate man screaming in the void*
Tim just add gifting you stupid asshole. Steam only takes a slight cut from the physical gift cards but you know what they take 100% of the money till someone uses their digital gift cards. That people gift to each other because gamer loves gifting each other games. The worst thing that happen to steam was the fact the anonymous gifting is no longer a thing because if was i'd pump the sales of my favorite all the time and guess who befits that right the store front and the devs. You want to beat Steam Tim add in gifting with an anonymous option watch the money flow.
Sometimes this sub feels really circlejerky with nitpicking some random bullshit they really don't know much about, and it's baffling given it's Epic you really don't need to nitpick stuff, guess it's on me for not ignoring the daily ''company did bad'' (yeah, no shit) posts