World War Z sells 250k on Epic Games Store, Tim Sweeney throws down the gauntlet at Valve.

World War Z, the new co-op shooter from Focus Home Interactive, has sold 1 million copies since its April 16 release, more than a quarter of which came from PC, where it is an Epic Games Store exclusive. Developer Saber Interactive has described the PC sales in particular to be "way above expectations:"

"Saber is extremely thrilled by the performance of the game on all platforms. On the PC specifically, we are performing way above expectations thanks to the support we have received from the Epic Games Store”

- Matthew Karch, CEO of Saber Interactive

Sources: VentureBeat, Gamasutra, figure confirmed on Twitter by Epic Games:

Seemingly bolstered by this apparent continuing momentum, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has issued a challenge to Valve in a Tweet:

So, do you think Valve will go for it? Personally, with the latest World War Z figures showing that the EGS train is not stopping any time soon, I think Valve have to respond at some stage. If EGS keeps growing the way it seems to be doing, and if Epic stick to their roadmap to improve their store, Valve's current superior feature set and market size will mean nothing in a year or two, and more AAA publishers and developers will follow the money to the EGS.

As for Tim Sweeney's promise to stop snapping up exclusives and put Epic games on Steam; yeah, we've heard that one before. Valve's eventual response would probably benefit the game industry, but I'll believe Tim Sweeney will keep his promise when I see it.

Holy moly, the PC civil war continues!

Zombie games still sell? Really? Ugh...

Competition is good for the consumer.

From what I've seen, the game's basically Left 4 Dead 3. Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 were quite popular, if I recall. I suppose the audience is still very much there.

Epic reaping the rewards of Valve refusing to count to 3.

@Stevo_the_gamer: That's true, fair play to Epic. Hopefully with the recent success they can continue to develop their online store and add more features.

How sweet of him, such a good guy Tim. Looking after the developers because of the goodness of his heart. Nah, he's just about to throw in the towel. Valve shouldn't respond in order to call his bluff.

He is only saying that because Tencent-Epic paid him to say it :D

Epic store getting more competitive is better for the industry, as much as i like steam its flaws have become more and more apparent and Valve will only act if they are threatened.

Exactly, and of course provide consumers with better priced games; Steam sales just haven't cut it these past few years.

Basically trying to circumvent his bad publicity.

Which doesn't seem to be hurting EGS one bit. Games are selling, and the train rolls on, right over the bad PR.

@Stevo_the_gamer: Mhm, you're not wromg there!

@madrocketeer:

FUD/Fake News from EPIC.

"Steam keys are meant to be a convenient tool for game developers to sell their game on other stores and at retail. Steam keys are free and can be activated by customers on Steam to grant a license to a product.

Valve provides the same free bandwidth and services to customers activating a Steam key that it provides to customers buying a license on Steam. We ask you to treat Steam customers no worse than customers buying Steam keys outside of Steam. While there is no fee to generate keys on Steam, we ask that partners use the service judiciously.

For more information on how keys work for customers, visit the customer facing support site here."

Source: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

They literally have 0% cut on every key sold outside of Steam.

@madrocketeer:

Influenced Chinese "belt and road" Tencent money with Ubisoft

On 20 March 2018, Ubisoft and Vivendi struck a deal ending any potential takeover, with Vivendi agreeing to sell all of its shares, over 30 million, to other parties and agreeing to not buy any Ubisoft shares for five years. Some of those shares were sold to Tencent, which after the transaction held about 5.6 million shares of Ubisoft (approximately 5% of all shares).[50] the same day, Ubisoft announced a partnership with Tencent to help bring their games into the Chinese market.[51] Vivendi completely divested its shares in Ubisoft by March 2019.[52][53]

https://supchina.com/2018/03/23/why-chinese-companies-crush-western-tech-giants-in-china/

For example, Bloomberg published an article earlier this month titled “China protectionism creates tech billionaires who protect Xi,” with the author stating, “That’s helped create thriving domestic giants, including Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.” Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting, was quoted as saying, “As long as they remain protected in the China market, they’ll dominate and use that money to fund their global expansion.”

Epic's silent partner claim is BS. Epic's Chinese "belt and road" linkage is hardly normal private capitalist operation.

Tim blah-blah said they'd stop buying exclusives if Steam came down to Epic's cut? Yeah... Fucking... Right. Stop preaching, and stop buying your exclusives. If the cut were the only attraction, why offer that big money-money for exclusivity? The guy's a big walking contradiction.

You know if Steam ends up switching to 88% then Epic may have earned my respect. I’m shocked he tweeted that.

Yup, but not this kind of competition

This competition only helps the developer and screws the consumer since Epic does not have keys the same way Steam does and by that eliminates bundle and key selling sites.

That is probably why developers love them so much.

But 250k is decent, but I am willing to bet that it could have been at least twice that if they had released it on steam instead.

I'll believe it when I see it. Glad to hear the developers are happy, but it doesn't change my opinion on Epic's policies or actions.

its ok Ron. people are just too apathetic to care. It'll hit them one day.

"I'll stop punching consumers in the face when Valve donates 100 billion dollars to my Save the Wealthy Publisher foundation" - Tims Weeny.

Gee, thanks Tims! Always looking out for the little guy's interests.

Tim is just scared because the Fortnite money is running out and the Epic Store is not making any profits, so he's trying to spin some PR bullshit while Epic is still able to buy exclusives.

30-40% of Steam keys are sold by 3rd party stores and Valve gets 0% from those, so in total Steam's cut is already below 20%, plus Steam covers the transaction fees and offers a lot more features and has bigger expenses as a result. Going anywhere near that 88/12 split would be suicide for Valve and thus it will never happen, that is why Timmy is so brazen about suggesting this crap - he knows that without exclusivity, even if all the games would be on both stores, 90% of sales would stay on Steam.

This guy is low-key mocking Steam and he's full of over-confidence. I guess he's just trying to get that popularly dislike status with the likes of Bobby Kotick, Andrew Wilson, etc. Son-of-a-gun

250k is pretty decent for an Epic exclusive.

Now ask the devs how much more sales they would have gotten if they actually arent an Epic exclusive.

This only benefit Epic, no doubt. But if the devs think this is a good thing and crlebrating this, they are seriously retarded.

@Stevo_the_gamer: @adsparky:

How's Epic being competitive and what are the glaring flaws of Steam compared to Epic? Do tell me how's Epic looking after the consumers?

What i'm saying is that when companies have a monopoly they don't need to improve and can overlook their flaws since they have their position secured, so by having a competent rival (which epic isn't yet) Steam would take actions to be more consumer and developer friendly.

But as far as I remember Steam already had competition in the form of GoG, Humble Bundle and extremely crappy stores like Origin, Uplay etc. I also remember Steam keeps improving and keep adding features without the so called competition from Epic.

WTF is World War Z, other than a good Max Brooks novel and a mediocre Brat Pitt movie?

*huh, they made it into a video game, eh? Is it good?

I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment in principle, HOWEVER in practice the way Epic is going about this is all wrong. Might be better for the industry, but is it better for the consumer?

You make things better by adding good things to it, or changing the things that are wrong with it. Tencent-Epic is removing things from it: removing the option to buy a game where I want, while forcing us to use a barebones service to get it. They are, in a word, regressive; they are bad for the industry as a whole.

I am happy the top 1% of the staff at a game developer or publisher will get a larger bonus from saving that 5-10% or whatever it is, but how has Tencent-Epic paid that forward to the consumer? Their store is inferior in quite literally every single way to Steam, GoG, and even EA Origin and U-Play

Fortnite is a bubble. Epic knows that it's only a matter of time before the next big multiplayer game comes along, so they've been desperately trying to convert Fortnite money into a long-term competitor to Steam.

Their aggressive expansion will probably be their downfall though. They're generating nothing but bad PR amongst gamers, and while that might not hurt their bottom line, it definitely hurts the reputations of the developers who accepted the exclusivity deals. For example, Julian Gollop took a beating from his long-term fans over the Phoenix Point announcement - so he'll definitely think twice before launching another game on the Epic Store. That sort of ill-will should really hurt them in the long run.

I have like 600 hours between the two Left 4 Dead games. I'm interested. May wait for a Steam or GOG version, however.

Satisfactory doesn't seem to be doing well. Even though the developers are supposedly joking about how they only sold 9 copies it has definitely sold more than that but not much considering how well survival games sell on PC. The game on Twitch only has about 25 streamers. The devs even started calling people pirate scum on Twitter so I'm guessing the sales were really bad. Even if they really are joking, its a bad PR move since people are already pissed about the gaming being Epic Store exclusive, calling them pirate scum is just making it worse.

That is a good ratio. Console continues to dominate AAA as it should do.

They took a cheque to limit their market on PC. Don't post inane comments that fail to take into account what is going on.

Firstly, Satisfactory is not a survival game, it's a builder/management game similar to Factorio. It is therefore in a different niche.

Also, Twitch viewership is not a great indicator of general popularity. Warframe, for example, only has about 1,000-1,500 viewers on Twitch, and yet its concurrent player base is as high as ever.

Being on any store does not guarantee high sales - there are many games on Steam that don't sell well. That said, 250k sales for another game does indicate a high ceiling, and therefore at least a decent customer base.

Thus, I would prefer to deal with hard numbers - or something as close to it as possible - when discussing topics like this.

I like how they're saying it's all "thanks to Epic Games Store" that they're selling so much, and don't explain how the exclusivity is why they're selling so much. They're basically calling everyone idiots with this statement. Are we just supposed to believe that the game sold more because of the Epic exclusivity than it would have done if the game was on Steam as well?

Yeah, thanks for calling me retarded, Focus Home Interactive. I'll be sure to not buy a game from you ever.

lol

I like this post.

An old dogma that needs to die. Epic games store is good for consumers? Don't make me laugh.

Genuinely the best post in this thread. The name switch was so obvious, but I didn't see it until typed out lol.