This article is from WeChat official account:Touch Music (ID: chuappgame)< span class="text-remarks">, author: Zhu Siqi, title picture from: Visual China
At present, the lawsuit of Epic Games v. Apple’s monopoly is still going on, and this drama is not yet over. Touch Le has also written several related reports. Regardless of the major stakeholders involved in these reports, or the people who are eagerly discussing on the Internet, the perspectives adopted are quite broad. At least, a considerable number of people believe that for various reasons, major platforms have to lower their percentages like Epic, which will be a good thing in the long run. However, what do developers who will really be affected, especially small and medium-sized developers, think about this matter?
In the message received in the background, a small developer mentioned, “Epic is not as open as they claim to be in actual operation.” This is in contrast to Steam, which is also a PC platform. For them, it’s a good idea to lower the platform’s rake rate, but it is the most important thing to make the game available on the shelves.
The audited Epic and the low-threshold Steam
The Epic game mall has been opened to the country in May 2019, but after understanding, we found that we do not know whether it is related to the openness of operations. Currently, the number of domestic indie games on Epic is scarce. After a long search, I only found 3 models, including “Portia Time”, “Mist Detective” and “Endless Journey”.
The business game “Portia Time” developed by Pasiya Technology is the first domestic game successfully launched on Epic. Although the game is produced by the Unity engine, it is still the icon of the Epic Mall in the Chinese market. It was promoted by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney at the 2019 “Unreal” Engine Technology Open Day.
“Portia Time” is the first domestically produced indie game to be listed on Epic. It will be launched at the same time as the Steam version in January 2019
The Epic Game Mall currently adopts an editorial review system. “You submit your game through their channels and let them choose. If they think the game is good, they will give it to you, and match the corresponding resources, if it is not good, it will not.” Vice President Deng Yongjin told Touchle. After the developers submit the application form on Epic, all they can do is wait.
Furthermore, Epic’s review criteria are not expressly stipulated, and often rely on the editor’s subjective intentions. At this point, it is not like Steam, but more like the Apple App Store. “The review time is also uncertain,” Deng Yongjin added, “If it is given to publishers they are familiar with, or if the developer has already released works on the platform, it will be faster. But overall it will not be too fast, because they will pass the game. Again.”
You can find suggestions for publishing games on Epic on many foreign media and social networking sites, including various possible measures to increase the success rate of listings. Among them, most of the posters mentioned that for independent developers, if they have achieved certain commercial results, they will be more favored by Epic, but there are some cases. Australian studio House House won Epic’s support when the financial situation was extremely difficult, so their game “Trick or Treat Goose”(Untitled Goose Game) Released in the form of Epic exclusive in the early days.
Steam also adopted a similar manual selection system in the early days, and the review criteria were also vague. In 2012, they launched the “Light of Favor” (Greenlight) program, allowing players to vote for the games that are expected to be released, and games with more votes can go smoothly Shelves.
However, player voting has greater uncertainty than official screening, and many developers simply cannot predict whether their games will be available on the shelves. During the voting process, it is also easy to give birth to canvassing or gray trading, which damages the interests of developers or players. Touch music once wrote a domestic independent developmentThe author tried to put his work on the shelves through the “Light of Favor”. During the long wait, he encountered many merchants who specialize in canvassing business. At the same time, some games that are “upper” through deceptive marketing not only waste players’ money and time, but also squeeze out the living space of developers who really work hard to make games.
The puzzle game “Journey of the Light” is regarded by many as a typical “fraud” put on the shelves through “Favorite Light”. The game claims to have 7 levels, but the difficulty is so great that many people cannot pass the first level. Later, someone found through the source code that the entire game only had the first level, and there was no solution to the level. Faced with a large number of complaints, Steam refunded players for no reason
Faced with the various problems of the voting model, in 2017, Steam officially closed the “Light of Favor”, using the current “direct release” (Steam Direct ) Instead-developers only need to fill out a simple electronic form, and then pay a fee of 100 US dollars, you can list the game. Although there are also review steps, the current review is mainly for overly explicit pornographic content or hateful content. In addition to this, no more investigation will be conducted on the game itself.
Rather than entangled in the division, it is better to strive for a larger user base
Based on the above situation, for developers, Steam is now far more open than Epic, and there are basically no restrictions on games on the shelves. According to data officially released by Epic, there are 190 games on the platform in 2019; in 2020, this number has increased to 471. The number of users on their platform reached 160 million, an increase of 48% over 2019. However, the soaring number of users did not bring about an increase in revenue. In 2020, players’ spending on third-party games on Epic has only increased by 5.5% over 2019. It can be seen that most ofThe new users are all for free games.
In contrast, Steam already has 10,263 games in 2020, and more than 2,000 new games were released that year. Moreover, Steam has more than 100 million monthly active users in 2020.
In the face of such a huge gap in user volume, the difference in rake is relatively unimportant for developers. “For small and medium-sized developers, what we care about is not which platform has to divide me how much money. What we care about is which platform has a large user base that can help me sell more games.” Deng Yongjin said, ” What we want most is users. As long as there are more users, even if the platform charges more money, we think it’s a good deal.”
However, the team of “Portia Time”, like many domestic game developers, has seen the chaotic domestic channels and their exaggerated proportions. “Some are really too exaggerated, so I came out and came into contact with Apple and Steam, and found that they only charge 30%. We think it’s pretty good.” Deng Yongjin told us with a smile.
Pasya Technology still hopes to publish the game to as many platforms as possible, because more platforms mean more users. Currently, they are waiting for the version number for the Apple Store in the mainland area. In addition to Steam and Epic, the game is also on WeGame. “WeGame’s rake is also 30%, and they had a measure for domestic games last year,” said Deng Yongjin. “As long as the game is on WeGame and Steam at the same time, the developers will get the revenue. The 10 million part is divided into. We think this is quite good.”
The development team of another domestic indie game “Forgotten Engineers” is smaller, with only two people. One month after the game was launched on Steam, they are in contact with Epic, but have not received a response for the time being. “Epic is a bit like an invitation system. After we submit the application form, we wait for them to select, and then contact us.” One of the developers, Yang Jing, said, “I feel that Epic will prefer games developed by the’Unreal’ engine. We do it with Unity. So there are fewer opportunities.” However, from the experience of “Portia Time”, the engine problem is not absolute.
For them, because the project does not take profit as the primary purpose, they have adopted a low-price strategy, and the Steam commission is acceptable. However, “If you want to pay back, you really have to sell a huge amount.”
Like Pasiya Technology, Yang Jing and her partners pay more attention to the value of the platform in terms of scale: “As ultra-small developers, what we value is exposure and guidance. II know a few friends who are doing Steam tagging tools at Valve, and I feel that their classification and guidance are quite attentive. “In contrast, Epic’s label classification is quite general, and cross-matching seems to be inadequate, resulting in a poor search experience for users. For example, some independent manufacturers’ games only have gameplay labels such as “puzzle solving” and “adventure”. , There is no “independent” label, which makes it easy for players to miss content that may be of interest.
There are often two sides to things, and so is the openness of Steam. The low threshold makes the platform flooded with a lot of games of worrisome quality. Tactler also wrote an article on Steam’s struggle with “junk games”. At present, this problem has not been properly resolved.
The number of games on the Steam platform means more competition. There are also some problems with the exposure rate that small and medium-sized developers pay more attention to, such as the imperfect recommendation mechanism. According to a survey conducted at the 2019 Game Developers Conference (GDC), Among the 4000 developers interviewed, 17% believe that Steam does not One of the reasons behind doing the 30% rake is that there is no guarantee that a good game can smoothly enter the player’s field of vision. Some players even made a ranking website for Steam games, ranking and recommending games from various angles to make up for the lack of Steam’s recommendation mechanism. The webmaster believes: “Steam’s algorithm is more inclined to recommend games that have good sales or high attention. Those who play are few, but highly rated games are rarely exposed.” This year, perhaps it is subject to Epic lawsuits. The percentage of developers who believe that the platform’s share is fair has dropped to 3%.
The player-made website “Steam 250” provides game reputation and popularity ranking on Steam from multiple angles
At the same time, although the number of games is small, Epic’s manual screening system includesIncluding also manual recommendations, promotions, and other resources that are difficult to purchase through money, making the works of small and medium-sized developers listed on Epic itself has become a recognized symbol. What’s more, preferential activities are often borne by Epic, with the purpose of helping the platform attract users. Therefore, if a small-scale domestic indie game can be listed on Epic and participate in promotion, it can become a piece of news in itself and be used for publicity. At the beginning of April this year, the pixel-style puzzle game “Mist Detective” developed by Handled Technology was free for a limited time at Epic, which increased the popularity of the work to a certain extent. The release team of “Detective Mist” is currently intensively preparing to launch the mobile version-although the game was first released two years ago, the original production team has been disbanded.
As for the ongoing litigation between Epic and Apple, and the changes that this litigation may bring to the industry, at least, the developers and publishers we contacted did not show their enthusiasm for the trend of the event. , I haven’t complained too much about the 30% rake-although partly because I have seen something worse, partly because I have no choice. An independent game publisher expressed inconvenience to comment on this, and did not discuss this issue with the developers.
“In fact, we didn’t pay much attention to this matter. The main concern was users.” Deng Yongjin repeated. Yang Jing doesn’t know much about the two platforms of the whirlpool center, but hopes that “competition will make them more open.” Before thinking about earning more and earning less, developers must first strive to be seen by users.
It seems that Epic Mall’s lower rake is not their biggest advantage after all. If they succeed in getting platforms such as Apple, Google, and even Steam to give up the 30% interest in their hands, where is their attraction to developers? This may be the next issue they need to consider.
This article is from WeChat official account:Touch Music (ID: chuappgame)< span class="text-remarks">, author: Zhu Siqi