Great idea! I too made a post a few days ago inviting people to join the beta. It's interesting keeping in touch with the developer and following his thinking process or having a friendly chat. I hope to see the game here as well.

Consumers don't care at all about this stuff, so Steam has no real need to respond unless developers revolt en masse which I don't really see happening.

This is more worrying for GOG than Steam, honestly.

I just remembered that games using UE4 and earning more than $1Million(gross revenue) owe royalties to Epic. Since UE4 is the most commonly used engine, especially for AA and beyond, Epic can probably afford to take a cut on sales percentage and recoup it via royalties.

The only game I own on MS Store is Minecraft, and I doubt that's gonna change any time soon.

They will continue with 70/30 because they have to stay profitable. Epic loses money. MS will lose money. Epic's and now MS's dumping practices are wholly reliant on the existence of better 70/30 alternatives. Developers should not view Epic and Steam as independent entities, but as an oligopsonic conglomerate which sets a single split value for the game.

If there's no equilibrium and the market tips toward dumpers, bankrupting profitable distributors (see: Amazon and books), it will get much worse for both customers and developers.

Got any evidence that EGS has ever had "spyware tendencies"? Or is that just baseless speculation/fabrication being misrepresented as if it's fact?

As for the MS store giving a fair cut to devs: seems a lot of people are missing the point. The point isn't to go buy games off the MS store, which I agree is a horrible idea and something that no one should ever do.

Rather, the point is that EGS is gaining ground in advancing their philosophy that distributors should stop ripping off devs by taking an extortionary 30% cut. That is a good news.

The abundance of telemetry software that Epic introduces with their launcher is absurd man, and I tell you in other comment that I don't think 30% for their service is abusive, it's even fair for all the work behind for the stores.

Epic Games was the competition the market needed. You can go along the line of less resistance, and repeat like a robot "Epic Games bad.", but in reality their impact on the gaming industry is very positive. That share ratio is something to make development studios keep going, and publishers to invest more money into the development. Of course, that doesn't mean that more games will be released in a playable state, or that they will be bug-free when the development cycle officially ends, but at least the corporate greed will be less tense and aggressive. More competition breaks the status quo of the monopoly. Look at the changes that Valve and EA made on Steam, and the games that entered the Steam store thanks to the Epic Games. Not that I care for the EA games, nor Steam. I have not made a single purchase on Epic Games, and probably never will, but the impact they have on the gaming industry is just positive.

The only change I noticed on Steam is peddit stickers. The only likely positive effect of Epic is pouring that sweet Chinese money into bribing studios, but this is unsustainable. The possible outcomes are

- investors get tired of missed growth goals, no more money
- Steam up and dies, no more point in undercutting it, no more money
- EGS becomes an ultra rich entity's pet goldfish, yes to money, yes to censorship, blacklisting, shunning, tortious interference

"Why do you need to access those files? We do everything you ever need!"
- Microsoft, probably.

You didn't understand me. Electronic Arts brought shitload of their games recently, all because of the Epic Games' exclusive deals. They have brought EA Play on Steam as well.