'Fortnite' Is So Popular It Could End Steam's Decade-Long Dominance

Epic's new store and a growing number of big publishers that are pulling out of Steam are finally putting Valve in a position where it has to make some changes.

[kevnb]

no its not that popular.
However if they make it super easy to get unreal engine projects on to the store many small devs may love it.

[porkChop]

If you release your Unreal Engine game on the EGS Epic covers your engine royalties with their 12% cut of the game. Basically you don't even pay the engine royalty that way. That's huge for indie devs, that gives another 5% revenue back to the dev on top of the low EGS cut of 12% vs Steam's 30%.

[kevnb]

Well then I expect a lot of indies to pop up on the store.

[Christopher]

It will be immensely popular for offline games. I doubt it will be as such for MP games.

[kevnb]

@Christopher You're probably right since multiplayer is more expensive to make and riskier, especially for small devs.

[YOUDIEMOFO]

Boom Baby!!!! That's what's up!

[roadkillers]

Good scare Valve into releasing all the games we want them to. Portal 3, half life 3, left 4 dead 3, Dota 3 (three'd it in there for the laugh)

[Cikatriz_ESP]

This is the first thing I thought of as well. They can’t afford to be complacent anymore, their platform will need a killer exclusive.

[YOUDIEMOFO]

"Three it up!!"

[rainslacker]

I'm sure they will. But with indie devs, putting it in as many places as possible is usually the best way to return a profit. The good thing about PC gaming store fronts is that they're all fairly easy to get onto. It costs nothing to list on the stores, although you have to follow individual store front policies. There is no reason for them to really leave Steam other than Steam's cut of the sale, which is more attractive with Epic. But I'm curious if that will be maintained. Steam just kind of charges industry standard for such things, and Epic may end up doing the same thing.

It may mean that Steam would have higher prices by these devs though, as they would want to maintain a level profit margin on each sale. That could make people leave Steam and try other services. It wouldn't be a mass exodus, just attrition over time. But I doubt Fortnite alone will cause that, and its not likely to ever really be that dire for Steam since they pretty much set the standard, and continue to do so for too long now. They're entrenched. Same way Ebay won't go down because of better auction sites for sellers. You sell where the customers are....the customers don't usually just come to you.

[opc]

you're exactly right about customers.

Years from now I think Amazon will be the one to topple steam. They already have Twitch, they've already been giving away dozens and dozens of games building up people's libraries. I think it's the most watched platform in the world.

If they start adding more features and open up a robust store inside of their client and app backed by amazon... they'll be in a strong position.

However Steam has a huge head start when it comes to features

[Aaroncls7]

haha ok

[SegaGamer]

People are getting carried away with Epic's store, there really is nothing about it that would make me pick it over Steam.

[Mystogan]

It's just a damn store... You download the game and never open it again until you buy another game.

I don't get why people are so obsessed with steam it looks terribly outdated. I prefer the windows store any day. You get play anywhere titles and some gamepass titles(not a focus right now but it works) What benefit does steam have? Nothing...

[BehindTheRows]

What benefit does Steam have?

Let's see..... Games that actually work and don't have tons of installation issues on Day 1. Updates that don't take a year to complete. A FAR bigger library, etc, etc... Of all the stores to compare Steam to, the Windows Store is, without a doubt, the worst.

@SegaGamer: Exactly.

[Amplitude]

Achievements, big picture mode, ridiculous sales, a good way of organizing all your games, screenshots and forums, super easy to re-download, feature lists, cross-game chat (voice and text), cloud saves... i could go on for hours. Its not just a place to buy games its a place to play games and manage games as well.

I don't play any PC games unless they're on Steam tbh, and i never play games unless i launch them from Steam. Even just the ability to track my play time in Steam is pretty sweet. I love me some stats.

[SegaGamer]

All of the things BehindTheRows and Axecution have mentioned. Also, the best of lot, the deals. Nothing beats Steam sales. I'm not just talking about on Steam itself, Humble Bundle and Fanatical offer the best deals for Steam keys. Nothing comes close to being as good as it.

If I want, I can get Steam Keys on Ebay too, it's a bit more risky because they may be sold by people that can't be trusted, but at least the option is there.

Steam is pretty much everything it needs to be for a PC gamer. Some people say Steam needs to be taken down a peg or two and needs a kick up the ass, but they never give clear reasons why.

I'm pretty much perfectly happy with it.

[rainslacker]

The benefit is that they don't have to offer up all these incentives to have the customers come to them. That's what a developer will look at. To someone selling something, you go where the customers are. As an ebay seller, I don't go to smaller auction sites as much to list, because there are fewer bidders or buyers. This means more work, for usually less sales. The cuts may be less from those sites, but they offer up less of the back end, such as payment processing or selling management tools.

Same with these stores. While on PC, its easy enough to have multiple clients that people will use, the non-publisher sponsored storefronts can't compete with the customer base of Steam. It's possible to be successful on them, but realistically, while Steam may take more of a cut, the sheer number of entrenched users makes it hard to just pass up completely.

Store fronts like Origin or UPlay are a bit different, because they have significant content that people may want, so people will go there for that. More often than not, people aren't going to be exploring other options for smaller games, or a specific feature.

Steam doesn't have to offer up those features to their users for right now.

I'm not saying Steam shouldn't consider changes, just laying out a dose of reality.

For the criticisms I've seen of Steam though, they do not just sit around raking in money. They do make a client, they do offer up an infrastructure to keep people invested in it, they do have the mind share. They have a community of users which dwarfs most all other internet forums. They have standards for the games released on the system....which I admit change often and sometimes without warning and sometimes not to the benefit of the devs. They can help promote games, and offer up discoverability options both at random, or through incentives that developers can buy into.

Epic has more of a chance to compete with Valve because of their presence in the industry, couple with their own content. Microsoft has a better chance to compete with Steam because of it's integration into several popular products....namely Windows and Xbox, plus, having their own content. But even they are looking at ways to attract the consumer to them, because they know that to be successful, they have to get people to use them. If they can't offer more benefit to the consumer, that the consumer at large actually cares about, then they won't do that. MS can't just make a store and hope people will go to them....but they can offer up play anywhere, or XBL linking, or things of that nature. While those are natural things to offer, if people aren't interested in using the MS store, or worse, really dislike MS enough to not give them a look, then Steam is still going to beat them.

The reality of the situation is that while these services may make money for these companies, chances are, they aren't going to topple Steam anytime soon. Steam won't lose users in the short term because they have significantly more content. They may lose some users to other services over the long term through natural attrition, and newer gamers may get used to other store fronts before becoming enamored with Steam. But that is a long road.

[opc]

It may be outdated but currently no other PC client offers a big picture mode. So....outdated is better than nothing. In-home streaming. Family sharing. Their controller support is far and away the best in the entire industry. These are all areas were it seems like no one else is even attempting to make moves.

[CaptainCook]

@Axecution

Microsoft offers unlimited cloud saves, Achievements, cross-play, Cross-save, no extra clients, screenshots, record, voice and text chat, groups, etc..

[Amplitude]

@CaptainCook

yeah i grab games on the MS Store too but only the exclusives and sometimes the Play Anywhere stuff aha. Forza <3
Their store is a little different in the sense that it's like i'm buying a console game that i can also play on PC. I'm totally cool with that but even it has quite a few issues. Like any sort of modding is impossible and it still lacks all the steam features

(Actually nobody has even mentioned Steamworks for mods and updates but that's another enormous selling feature of Steam)

[porkChop]

This is good for gamers and devs. Valve needs pressure, that's what keeps them on top of their stuff.

[Imalwaysright]

I agree. If Valve feels the pressure then maybe they'll haul ass and finally give us Half Life 3.

[Sgt_Slaughter]

They're working on VR titles, that's what is taking up their time for now.

Now is one a Half-Life title? Who knows. Could be existing IPs or new ones.

[Elwenil]

I don't mind Valve having a bit more competition, but really there already is a lot of competition out there, just none to match Steam one on one. I don't like monopolies anymore than the next guy, but I am tired of having a dozen launchers on my computer. I have games through Steam, Origin, Twitch, as well as other services I have to keep up with to download games like GoG, GamersGate, GreenMan, D2D, and the list goes on. I've been buying games online for almost two decades. I'm positive I own games out there somewhere that I don't even remember the login and password to the site that I bought them from, much less remember what games they were. This nonsense of having exclusive sales rights to various games is only going to make all of this worse.

[SegaGamer]

The exclusive rights stuff worries me, it could go the way of movie streaming. People keep saying competition is good, but if it means me giving out more money than usual, then it's not good business from my point of view.

[Zenbaby369]

Lol.. Valve.. Pressure

[WitcheRivia]

I'm not going to download the Fortnite Launcher to give money to the Chinese.

America First. Steam First.

[Christopher]

Uh...??

Tencent is a publicly traded company that is owned primarily by Naspers, also a publicly traded company out of South Africa.

Just because a business is based out of China, doesn't mean that money goes to "the Chinese" or their government/people. Most of the money Tencent makes from its subsidiaries goes to people across 130 countries.

And this "America First" crap is just saying "I'll stick by these people who haven't evolved things and take money from the same people I apparently have a problem with rather than look towards competition in the market that will force them and others to evolve."

[anonymousfan]

Yeah... I don't think we should be taking WitcheRivia's comment too seriously but damn reading stuff like that is depressing lol. SMH

[Sophisticated_Chap]

Most executives in China's largest corporations are members of the Chinese Communist Party, so publicly traded or not, the Chinese government has a hand in almost all large Chinese corporations.

[Christopher]

***Most executives in China's largest corporations ***

Well, that's a horrible exaggeration. Some are, such as Tencent's CEO. But, it's still a publicly traded company and most involved aren't a part of the government. They do have to adhere to China's laws, but that doesn't mean they are complicit with them or funding them. Let alone that I already told you the majority holder of the company isn't even from China at all.

And, China has such a hand in these corporations that this was the news just a few days ago https://n4g.com/news/222531...

[opc]

"I'll stick by these people who haven't evolved things..."

What other company is evolving PC gaming as much as Valve? They are the only company trying to make PC gaming accessible from the couch with a big picture mode, their controller support in the past two years has been incredible, they are making moves with Steam Play so that windows games can be played on linux machines. Steam workshop.

[Christopher]

***What other company is evolving PC gaming as much as Valve? ***

CDPR has GOG and sells DRM-free games.
Microsoft is bringing console games to PC, some even to Steam.
Microsoft just put out a multiplatform accessible controller and their controllers have been standard on PCs for over a decade (not sure why you promote Steam for this as their controller is still rarely used in games).
Microsoft has buy 1 play on both console and PC.
With all of the 'things' Valve does, Indies still lose out to their horrible algorithm that doesn't actually promote new games well unless they are popular to begin with.

The only real thing Steam has done recently is Linux, and that's more niche than VR.

[rainslacker]

Tencent doesn't even own a controlling interest in Epic. It's something like 40%. While that's a significant amount, Epic is still independent.

But if you really think about your statement, you must not buy much at all. There are very few companies in the US that don't have Chinese investors. Sony, MS, Nintendo, every mobile phone maker, pretty much every electronics maker, the companies that make your appliances, the people who make your furniture or clothing, the banks which have the mortgages on your house, or the mortgages on the apartment you rent. Every car company. The ISP's which you access the internet with especially.

Any major publicly traded company worldwide has Chinese investment. You might as well go and live in the woods and live off the land, with nothing brought.

[tinchotin]

Witcher is 100% polish

[Redemption-64]

Don’t think he/she knows

[opc]

maybe he didn't buy it on gog?

[timotim]

Don't really care if Steam falls or not, but why that one store doing good must mean another is doing bad??? Cant both stores have gamers buying games from it?

[gangsta_red]

One shall stand, one shall fall

[timotim]

Right! Always have to be some competition thing. Cant just be another store we gamers get games from...the more options the better...

[Ricegum]

timotim

"Steam can suck a big one for all I care."

This was you literally the other day. Contradict much?

[Count_Bakula]

Why throw away your life so recklessly?

[timotim]

@Unreal

Exactly...and I'm saying the same thing here haha. If they fall or not, it will be there own doing...that's neither here nor there to me because options for gamers will always be prevalent, especially on PC.

But this notion that in order for one to be good, that means all others must stink or be boycotted just because they are new, is not something i buy into. I didn't say the could suck a big one because I want them to fail and Epic "win"...I said that because the industry keeps trying to produce competition anywhere it can and it's causing gamers to look at it as factions, when we are are gamers and these stores are just more options for devs to get us games which is ultimately what we want.

I guess in that same respect, i don't care if Epic's store falls or not haha...but stop pitting everything against each other like its the WWE, when they are all here for our benefit...

[Christopher]

I think the only item of note is the lower fees Epic is taking. Otherwise, it's nothing special as we already have things like GOG, UPlay, and Blizzard competing with them.

[anonymousfan]

Lower fees could go a long way though... And personally I like steam but I'm happy if more of my money goes to the devs.

Edit: I wonder how easy it would be for Steam to undercut Epic and lower their own fees? Probably not worth it yet but interesting all the same.

[rainslacker]

"There can be only one"

[opc]

PC gaming already has a ton of stores. People just like to rag on the big guy.

On PC you can buy games on origin, uplay, battlenet, bethesda, GMG, GoG, humble, itch.io, Twitch, PSnow, MS Store, indie gala, and now epic

and yet everyone likes to act like Steam is a monopoly that hates the idea of competition...

[StormSnooper]

It’s just one game.

[anonymousfan]

And not a particularly great one at that albeit insanely popular lol.

[ChasingTheSun]

i love fortnite

[blackblades]

Never played it and never will, people are so blinded.

[timotim]

I've never played it either, but I'm not going to sit here and talk smack on the game. Its not my cup of tea with the building aspect of it...but how can your opinion o this matter be valid that millions of gamers are "blinded"???

[blackblades]

@timotim your right, but I wasnt talking smack about it. The craze to this game and minecraft is riduculus. My sister kids went from Minecraft to fortnite. Doesnt even touch the switch or other games just play that one game all the time and when they are away from the game I watch you tube video of the game the entire time.

[Snakefist30]

Soyboy!

[NarutoFox]

Where is GOG in all this? I keep hearing Epic store vs Steam

[Elwenil]

There are a lot of them out there. GamersGate, Direct2Drive still exists somewhat under GameFly, GreenMan Gaming, and probably more I can't remember or am not aware of.

[Skuletor]

How many of Fortnite's users are actually spending money on the game? One of the reasons it has such a large user-base is because it's free to play.

[badz149]

lol. look it up, Fortnite players are among the biggest spending crowd this year.

[DVAcme]

Indeed. I'm not a fan of the game or anything, but I think Fortnite's monetization model is on point. Microtransactions can be pretty painless if you make the free experience good enough. Warframe is doing gangbusters this way too. It's when put in pay2win, especially on a game that you've already paid $60 for, that it starts to taste like bullshit, and is COMPLETELY INEXCUSABLE in a single-player game, like the goddamn auction house in Diablo 3 or the initial horridness Shafow of War was. I just bought Shadow of War Definitive Edition on the latest PS4 flash sale, and that game's fantastic now that they eliminated the store and rebalanced it as a full single-player experience. Could have been a GOTY contender past year if they didn't pull that shit in the beginning.

[Soybetaboy]

Good

[Movefasta1993]

As long as steam has CS and Dota the majority of pc gamers will stay there.

[MWH]

Fortnite player base are not garanteed to use EGS, they're mostly there to play Fortnite and that's it. The potential is there but it seems it's still in the air. it's a risky business and we will see how it goes. Win win for gamers anyway.

[Tross]

And what, pray tell, does Epic have to fall back on when this whole Fortnite fad inevitably dies down? Epic's service may have a game Steam doesn't, but Steam has many, many titles under its banner, many of which are truly exclusive to it. Epic really can't compete with Valve in the long run so they had best milk Fortnite for all its worth while they can.

[Baza]

Steam is definitely loosing its dominance. And not just bc Fortnite. Valve even said themselves they are re-evaluating their business model.

[rainslacker]

Epic is known for making rather popular games. Fortnite is certainly one of their biggest success stories, but they really aren't in danger, and can weather storms. Fortnite isn't likely to die down any time soon. Even though it may end up getting less press, big player bases like this don't usually just drop off the map quickly. Even PUBG still gets a lot of players.

[NotanotherReboot]

But Steam has CS GO and DOTA 2

[CJQNSNYC]

Fortnite is extremely popular, sure. Will it bring down Steam? I seriously doubt it. As popular as it may be, it isn't a game for everyone and it doesn't need to be. A single game isn't going to encourage people to abandon Steam for Epic. I myself have never played Fornite nor do I ever plan to as it isn't my style of gaming. World Of Warcraft has been immensely successful yet it hasn't caused every other game like it to fail. In gaming there doesn't have to be only one, no matter how much the media would like to push the idea...to gain clicks.

[Tross]

Not to mention Fortnite is available on multiple devices through their respective services, so it's not even an exclusive to Epic's service unless someone is only interested in playing that game on PC.

[CaptainCook]

Really? Fortnite isn't available on Android Store, you'll need to download the entire game from a third party site via Epic Games

[Casepb]

I see it being as successful as Origin. Which isn't all that big.

[AK91]

Eh Steam has issues but its support of no censorship in recent years has made me more favorable towards it I doubt Epic would do the same.

[Gatsu]

Nope lol...

[chris235]

uh huh. delusional, much @blogger?

[CDbiggen]

What do people think the difference will actually be? The games are still going to cost the same...
All I'm hearing is that the publishers will get more of a cut, woo. Still means the games are expensive for us.

[Jurat]

It's super popular because it's free. Rolling out a store platform to a huge install base doesn't mean it will be successful - many of those users will have very little purchasing power.

[TargusX]

Great to see publishers abandoning Steam. I've hated the platform for years. They should be using GOG.com instead! DRM Free bliss...

[Pro_TactX]

The Epic Store doesn’t even have a functional search bar. It has a long way to go before it can take on Steam.

[pleasuretokill]

I want all of my games in one place. I buy on Steam... end of story. All of these devs that boycott Steam and only release on Epic will never see a dime of my cash, and I'm sure there are thousands out there with the same thoughts. Origin is garbage, GoG is better than Origin, but, Steam is king. The layout, platform, amount of games everything. Next thing you know, every company associated with making a game is going to have their own "store" and you will have 1000+ games spread out to 12 different accounts. "GTA 7??? Which store did I buy that on? What was my password?" No thanks. Steam it is. Want my money? Release on Steam.

[YOUDIEMOFO]

Sure......if you enjoy playing against nine and twelve year olds this is your game. Not to mention the nonsense that is building a staircase right in front of your enemy whilst shooting at them. So damn dumb..... I prefer realistic shite as opposed to BS in game.

[KillZallthebeast]

Not sure how many console idiots will disagree but the headline alone is hilarious

[bennissimo]

Good. Maybe it'll convince Valve to get back to making the only game they have ever made that's worth playing.

[hennessey86]

:D Fortnite is one game, STEAM is a community, Fortnite like all games will eventually die along with this battle royale fad that everyone is latching onto.

[DVAcme]

Pffffft, no. Steam is a JUGGERNAUT. Yes, Fortnite is popular, but one game a service does not make. I, for one, don't and will never play it (no shallow reasons, I just dislike competitive multiplayer as a whole), so it's not a selling point for me, and I'm not the only one. And as much dumb shit as Steam has done over the years, it's still the primary platform for pretty much every publisher out there, and there's few things that make players salivate like a Steam sale.

Now don't get me wrong, the Epic store is an exciting development, competition is always healthy for the industry as a whole. But claiming it'll be a Steam killer, especially based on one game, is just ridiculous.

[ff7100]

They said the same thing for twitch and discord. People are getting carried away to easily.

[RizBiz]

These publisher-specific applications desperately need to stop. There's nothing good about splitting the player base. No good can come from this.

[Zenbaby369]

Yes everyone abandon their steam libraries... Right

[Nodoze]

Um Fortnite SUCKS as a game. It is a tween/mobile game. Let them have their fun. Let it gain more exposure for gaming in general. It will however be irrelevant soon enough.

[Orionsangel]

It's a fad. It's a flavor of the moment thing. Fortnite is like Overwatch. Eventually the public will tire of it and move on to another game.

[mearl74]

Epic better be careful and not pound its chest too hard. Don't poke the "Valve" bear...

[BondJames]

Fortnite kids don t care about other games so it will not.

[uth11]

it's a fad. When the kids are all into doing Fortnite dances, you know that in another year or so they will be rolling their eyes at this game, and the popularity will fall back to Earth

[Glak18]

I love all these articles popping up stating Epic is going to take over Steam. Will Valve "lose" some profit from some publishers trying to capitalize on it, sure, but Valve will make up that money in other ways. It's called business.

Fortnite the most popular game world wide...of course it's popular IT'S FREE. Every kid across the world is asking their mom to download it and telling them it's cool because it's free and all their friends play it. Now all of sudden people are going to go spending crazy because a game is on the same launcher as their free game? Ok, good luck with that. Now if Epic can produce multiple AAA title games that are exclusive to the launcher and under cut Steam sales then they may be able to cut into Valve, but if all they have to offer are exclusive Indie games then they are nothing more than another Window store.