Steam Loses Ghost Recon Breakpoint to Epic GamesÂ
Ghost Recon Breakpoint will be available exclusively on the Epic Games Store. Tom Clancy’s The Divison 2 also followed the same path upon release in March of this year. This move by Ubisoft might encourage other developers who distribute their games on PC to do the same. Large Ubisoft franchises like Far Cry and Assassins Creed are still currently available on Steam. But if this continues, Steam may lose those future titles as Ubisoft finds an alternative route for the next installments of their major series.
Ubisoft is not doing this to spite Steam or to help out the Epic Games Store. Like most decisions in business, it is all about money. Epic Games released its own online store last year and immediately offered a much higher amount of revenue for game developers. The Epic Games store gives 88% of the revenue to the developers while retaining only 12% for itself. Steam, on the other hand, keeps 30% of revenue while only giving back 70% to the game creators.
Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft has been very aware of the various platforms which are now available to distribute content. The Epic Games Store is expected to receive other titles from Ubisoft later this year. Guillemot has felt encouraged due to recent sales as well. Pre-orders of Ghost Recon Breakpoint are higher than that of The Division 2.
As for Steam, it is hard to see that losing this business will stop the PC giant from dominating. In 2017 alone, according to Sergey Galyonkin of Steam Spy the company made a record-breaking 4.3 billion dollars.
What do you think? Is Steam going to face serious competition? Or will they continue to reign supreme? Be sure to let us know in the comments as well as on Twitter and Instagram.