> I'm really not sure what deal ensured it wouldn't be on Steam.

The simple fact that Epic offers a much better deal in terms of cost to be on the store. Half of what Valve demands per sale.

I would be willing to bet there was a large cash payment from Epic for exclusivity, in addition to the smaller cut.

I think that a lot of these are all coming to steam a year after launch - I'll wait until then. I've been finding it very rare that I need to play a game day one these days.

I haven't bought a game this close to launch in years. A bunch of my friends bought Outer Worlds and vouched for how awesome it is, so I caved and bought it. IMO it's really great so far, the dialog choices are quite entertaining. I think this game might be an instant classic.

You could've gotten TOW for $1 on the Microsoft store through gamepass.

I don't use gamepass, I don't have an xbox account and my desktop that I only use for casual gaming is still running Windows 7.

If you can sell through one storefront for 70% and another for 85%, it's kind of obvious.

Yes, choose the 70% ... apparently (latest figures I could find) Epic has 85M registrations vs. 1000M (yes, a billion) for Steam.

Steam are claimed to have 90M active monthly users, I can't find a figure for Epic; it stands to reason it's less though, maybe half their registered users (now Fortnite lost its shine??) would be a reasonable guess?

It probably depends on your demographic considerably; basically if Epic have less than 79M active and the demographics are the same then revenue from Steam will be greater, across a wider user base (which might improve ongoing prospects?).

I'm not sure those numbers are that relevant. People don't choose gamestores, they choose games. I personally will register on any gamestore if it has the game I'm interested in. I'm not on Steam because I'm loyal to it, I'm on Steam because it sells games I want. The moment a game is available on both Steam and EGS, I'm buying it on EGS.

You're possibly right about the relevancy, the figures aren't accurate either.

Your final sentence seems to contradict the rest of the paragraph. If the games are the same price, why are you choosing EGS (to contribute more to the company? but that would be choosing a game store).

I guess I was trying to illustrate to point that I don't choose the store, but games. Choosing stores only kicks in when multiple stores are available for the same game, which rarely happens.

Thanks for the clarification.

Why not both?

Because every sale on the storefront that charges more is less margin? Unless the more expensive storefront is doing some sort of marketing for you, what's the point losing that 15%?

Steam's discoverability is pretty piss-poor, and most of the marketing is sales that have convinced your customer base to never buy anything new, just wait for the sale (which cuts into your income with 50%+ discounts).

I'm more bemused by the fanatical loyalty to Steam.

> Because every sale on the storefront that charges more is less margin?

There's a simple solution to that. Just charge more for the game on Steam et al.

For example. Untitled Goose Game is £15.99 on the Epic Game Store, so charge at least £18.39 on Steam.