The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.
After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.
EGS is a platform, Steam is a platform. They are both stores and their own ecosystems.
They are paying for forced exclusives to their platform. I’m not going to use a different platform even on my same device because it’s anti-competitive for pc gaming.
You aren’t going to promote competition because it’s anti competitive
If a game was offered on both platforms do you think people are more likely to get it on Epic than Steam? If not then they have to be exclusive to their store
That’s not my problem. That’s still being anti-competitive. If one platform is significantly better (eg steam) then the competition needs to offer a reason to buy from them. The problem is that EGS has decided that the only way to give users a reason to use their store has been to make sure the game isn’t available anywhere else.
The users are able to make the choice to not support poor business tactics and they have. People do not buy from EGS, due to a plethora of reasons, one of which is likely that they are extremely anti-competitive and buy out games.
They’ve also been acquiring successful games and forcing a bunch of Epic exposure and “features” on the users.
A store doesn’t have the right to my business just because it exists. If I started a PC game store and charged twice as much as Steam or Epic would you purchase from me just to support competition?
A business needs to give me a reason to purchase from them. If the best reason to purchase from Epic is to give them a participation award then no thank you.