Anno 1800 to be pulled from Steam for Epic Games Store
Ubisoft's new supply chain strategy title is the next big release to get yanked from Steam and become exclusive to the Epic Games Store.
Following other large releases like Metro: Exodus and Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, Ubisoft’s Anno 1800 will become the next major PC release to be pulled from Steam in favor of Epic Games Store exclusivity.
Epic Games had intentions of shaking up the status quo for digital PC game sales when they launched their own store this past December. The company touted their 88/12 revenue split for developers as the path to more and better games for consumers. This split offers more revenue per sale than the 70/30 split offered by Valve’s Steam service. It was expected that publishers and indie developers would offer up their games on Epic’s store for a chance at more revenue, but the majority of the titles currently available on the service are available nowhere else online.
This Epic Games Store exclusivity is due to agreements made with Epic, some of which have involved upfront cash payments. Many of these agreements keep the games exclusive to the Epic Store for at least one year, after which the titles can be sold on Steam or other digital storefronts.
Many PC game consumers and developers have asked for more competition and options in the face of the near-monopoly that Steam has for most PC game releases. Some online pushback to the exclusivity agreements has arisen. The Epic Game Store service and client currently lack many of the features and benefits that customers and publishers get with Steam, such as achievements, matchmaking, forums, and more.
Many customers outside of North America have noticed that purchases made on the Epic Games Store requires the buy to pay for credit card processing and similar fees relating to currency exchange and taxes. Steam does not charge the same fees and offers region-specific pricing to countless countries and territories, absorbing the costs associated with these services into the 30 percent split.
Undoubtedly, some users may have assumed that most games would be available on either service, allowing the customer to choose the storefront, but Epic’s exclusivity agreements mean that lots of games will be locked to a single option. Since early 2019, many games that had been listed and sold on Steam have been pulled from sale and re-launched exclusively on Epic Game Store, angering some customers. Anno 1800 is the latest example of this trend.
Anno fans who would prefer to own the game on Steam still have the option to pre-order on Valve’s service until April 16, at which time it will be delisted and sold exclusively on Epic Games Store and Ubisoft’s own Uplay client. Ubisoft assures Steam customers that the game will receive all the same updates and content as the Epic Store and Uplay versions.
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replyChris Jarrard posted a new article, Anno 1800 to be pulled from Steam for Epic Games Store
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Should have noted that the Epic game client has a lot of those features in their to do list they shared publicly and on their time line of near, mid, and long term. Someone linked it here a few weeks ago.
I imagine there's debate going on within Valve about changing their model sooner or later. They already showed they're willing to change but only to appease big publishers.-
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I buy from GMG which by default gives UPlay keys.
I only commented on the statement in the article that they're lacking features which they've acknowledged. It's not like they're not working on it.
Discord does a 90/10 split but no one is flocking to them. Still EGS seems like the better option for indies but it has become easier to sell and self distribute so in the future all game clients are at risk. I already said Steam is facing more competition as publishers started their own stores and the writing has been on the wall for some time.
In general I try to look at the big picture and in the end even with these separate game clients, they all still play games in one place on my PC instead of separate consoles which can also separated by different generations. It's not like they're outright preventing you from playing a PC game. It's nice that MSFT is trying to make everything cross platform and can play on future systems with more backwards compatibility.
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Well Steam makes you use UPlay too so it's not a plus or a minus. You can cut out the middleman and just get UPlay (buying from GMG gives you only a UPlay key which is an interesting form of price discrimination. If people buy from UPlay they get all the revenue without splitting it where as on GMG they discount it 10-15% on average and GMG keeps a smaller cut but it's nowhere near the same split as Steam so they still get more money and capture the part of the market that bothers price shop.
Even if you have both EGS and Steam it makes you log in to the same UPlay account anyways where your game is tied.
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I actually really like what Ubisoft has been doing lately, so I bought my last two Ubisoft games on the Ubi Store so they'd get more of a cut...
