e dot dot dot
a mostly about the Internet blog by

April 2021
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
       
 


The EPIC Effect: Microsoft Changes Revenue Split To Match EPIC Store, Steam Holds Firm

Furnished content.


Way back when Epic released its Epic Store PC game storefront, the release of this new competitor to Steam focused on two major selling points. The first was timed exclusives that it shelled out tons of money for, allowing it to sell games the public couldn't get anywhere else for a certain period of time. This pissed off lots of people, as the public generally doesn't like exclusives. That said, Epic did mention that it would end its exclusivity practices if the rest of the gaming storefront world, especially Steam, mirrored the Epic Store's second key selling point, which was a far more favorable split offered to game developers than the "industry standard" 70/30 split that sees places like Steam getting nearly a third of game revenue just for hosting the game on its platform. Instead, Epic's store has a 88/12 split, meaning the platform is willing to take less than half of the revenue Steam extracts from gamemakers.In other words, Epic positioned its exclusivity program as merely a method to get the other storefronts to take less money away from game developers, which softened the blow with the public and surely made it a great many fans in the gaming industry.Well, Steam hasn't caved yet. But Microsoft did just announce that it is moving to match the splits offered by the Epic Store, marking some movement in the industry and perhaps an indication of things to come.

“As part of our commitment to empower every PC game creator to achieve more, starting on August 1 the developer share of Microsoft Store PC games sales net revenue will increase to 88%, from 70%,” Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty wrote on the Xbox blog. “A clear, no-strings-attached revenue share means developers can bring more games to more players and find greater commercial success from doing so.”The move is the latest in a bit of a sea change for game revenues. In a survey released yesterday by the Game Developers Conference, only 3% of respondents thought the once-standard 30% take by a platform was justified. The Epic Games Store broke onto the scene by notably only taking 12% of the revenue. Over the last year, both Apple and Google have lessened their cuts for games making under $1 million. Steam, meanwhile, has held more or less firm on its 30% take, with the cut lessening the more money a game makes, a system that makes more money for larger, richer publishers, while penalizing smaller indies.
Funny what a little bit of competition can do. While it is certainly notable that Steam is watching all of these changes with its proverbial arms folded, doing no sort of splits-changing of its own, maybe that's okay and maybe there's a place for that. Or maybe the pressure continues to build and the Epic Store does end up being the preferred storefront for smaller titles and indie developers and Steam eventually does have to come down from the 70/30 split.All I know for sure is that without Epic entering this arena and pushing the envelope, be it for altruistic reasons or otherwise, it seems unlikely that even Apple, Google, and Microsoft would have made any of these changes. That's why, whatever you think of the Epic Store, the added competition certainly is nice.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 30-Apr-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



Basecamp Bans Politics, An Act That Itself Is Political

Furnished content.


On Monday, Basecamp CEO Jason Fried came out with a blog post announcing not only a cutback in employee benefits, but that it would be banning social and political conversations on the company's platforms as well:

"These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It's not healthy, it hasn't served us well. And we're done with it on our company Basecamp account where the work happens. People can take the conversations with willing co-workers to Signal, Whatsapp, or even a personal Basecamp account, but it can't happen where the work happens anymore."
In an accompanying post, CTO David Heinemeier Hansson added a little more context:
"There are many places to be involved, exposed, and engaged in those conversations. Basecamp shouldn't be one of those places. Basecamp should be a place where employees can come to work with colleagues of all backgrounds and political convictions without having to deal with heavy political or societal debates unconnected to that work."
While the executives' public-facing posts make it sound like the company (and all of its 60-odd employees) was somehow awash with uncontrollable off-topic partisan division, insiders are telling a different story. According to employees, the saga actually started when employees began to balk at a running, 10-year old list of customer names being consistently shared among customer service reps because some of the names "sounded funny." As a cultural reckoning over race, speech and corporate responsibility grew, employees wanted to apparently have candid conversations about mocking folks on the list:
Some of the names on the list were laughed at for harmless reasons. But given some of the names on the lists were of Asian and African decent, some employees felt uncomfortable. So in other words, the "ban on politics" was really a ban on having basic internal conversations about the company's own juvenile behavior and whether Basecamp could do better as a company.It should be obvious that it's unrealistic to believe that in an era of daily police brutality, racist violence, mass shootings, a plague (and idiotic politicization of said plague), rampant corruption, and life-threatening climate change triggered events, that "don't talk about reality on your work accounts" is a serious and effective adult position you can take. Especially in an era where governments are seemingly incapable of meeting the needs of their people, and companies are often foisted into political leadership roles (whether they like it or not).The other problem, of course, is that the assumption that politics and work are isolated, separate entities is just kind of naive:
The founders of Basecamp assume that conversations about politics and society are unrelated to work. It's a false assumption. Politics and societal issues shape the world of work in myriad ways, including both the products that Basecamp builds and the experiences that people have while working there. We know, for example, that people's racial and gendered biases get built into algorithms; that programming terms can reflect racist histories; that conversations about transgender and LGBTQ rights can apply to something as concrete as company policy surrounding pronouns; and that the #MeToo movement prompted a much-needed conversation about how sexism and sexual harassment are rampant in many workplaces."
The other, more notable problem is that banning political conversations is itself a political act, something noted by journalist Will Oremus:
Someone who has a lot of power (CEOs making significant cash) telling others with less power and wealth to "not talk about politics" is itself an act of politics. It's also an act of wishful thinking that protects and defends the status quo, whether the folks making the restrictions understand that or not. It's an act that prioritizes the comfort of those who think politics is a gross distraction. Folks who don't understand "politics" can often mean "I'd simply like to not be murdered for being black" or "I'd simply like to have clean drinking water" and that muzzling those worries at work is an additional kick to the groin.If the status quo is a broken system that largely benefits wealthy white executives, then of course said executives would just prefer to see politics as this superfluous annoyance that should be muzzled and locked in the basement. But it's a foolish distinction that's not only not going to work, it's only going to net you bad PR for not understanding how the world works.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 30-Apr-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



April 2021
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
       
 







RSS (site)  RSS (path)

ATOM (site)  ATOM (path)

Categories
 - blog home

 - Announcements  (0)
 - Annoyances  (0)
 - Career_Advice  (0)
 - Domains  (0)
 - Downloads  (3)
 - Ecommerce  (0)
 - Fitness  (0)
 - Home_and_Garden  (0)
     - Cooking  (0)
     - Tools  (0)
 - Humor  (0)
 - Notices  (0)
 - Observations  (1)
 - Oddities  (2)
 - Online_Marketing  (0)
     - Affiliates  (1)
     - Merchants  (1)
 - Policy  (3743)
 - Programming  (0)
     - Bookmarklets  (1)
     - Browsers  (1)
     - DHTML  (0)
     - Javascript  (3)
     - PHP  (0)
     - PayPal  (1)
     - Perl  (37)
          - blosxom  (0)
     - Unidata_Universe  (22)
 - Random_Advice  (1)
 - Reading  (0)
     - Books  (0)
     - Ebooks  (0)
     - Magazines  (0)
     - Online_Articles  (5)
 - Resume_or_CV  (1)
 - Reviews  (2)
 - Rhode_Island_USA  (0)
     - Providence  (1)
 - Shop  (0)
 - Sports  (0)
     - Football  (0)
          - Cowboys  (0)
          - Patriots  (0)
     - Futbol  (0)
          - The_Rest  (0)
          - USA  (0)
 - Technology  (1055)
 - Windows  (1)
 - Woodworking  (0)


Archives
 -2024  March  (170)
 -2024  February  (168)
 -2024  January  (146)
 -2023  December  (140)
 -2023  November  (174)
 -2023  October  (156)
 -2023  September  (161)
 -2023  August  (49)
 -2023  July  (40)
 -2023  June  (44)
 -2023  May  (45)
 -2023  April  (45)
 -2023  March  (53)
 -2023  February  (40)


My Sites

 - Millennium3Publishing.com

 - SponsorWorks.net

 - ListBug.com

 - TextEx.net

 - FindAdsHere.com

 - VisitLater.com