Caltrops - Fortnite - The bigger picture

Forum Overview :: Fortnite

by blackwater 04/07/2019, 11:37pm PDT

Epic raised 1.6 billion dollars last October, back when Fortnight still was growing like crazy. That kind of money always comes with strings, but you take that it in order to grow. But Fortnite can't keep growing forever -- Epic knows that. So they need a new source of revenue -- a more stable one, hopefully. That's why they're rolling out this Steam competitor.

The problem is, even if they eat Steam's lunch, it's not that tasty. Consoles and cell phones already have their own built-in stores, and Steam will never displace those. MacOS and Linux are too small to really be worth spending a lot of time on. The Steam console flopped. That leaves Steam as a wart on Windows' ass.

Microsoft would gladly cut Valve out of the picture in favor of the Windows Store. They already would have, if it weren't for the antitrust issues. So Microsoft's strategy is to let Valve continue to operate for now, but lock them out of new ARM devices, which will be forced to use the Windows store.

So, yes, (imagine Morgan Freeman speaking this line) that is how competition works. Even when you're eating out of the dumpster, there's always someone else who wants in. And they can get kind of stabby sometimes.

wikipedia says:

Differing from Valve's Steam storefront, which takes 30% of revenues (30/70 revenue-sharing agreement) from the sale of a game, the Epic Game Store will take 12%, as well as foregoing the 5% for games developed in the Unreal Engine, anticipating that these lower revenue-sharing agreements will draw developers to it