Epic CEO harshly criticizes Steam leaders for taking too high a commission

According to VGC , Epic CEO emails have just been made public in Valve's antitrust lawsuit. Accordingly, ahead of the launch of the Epic Games Store in 2018, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called Valve executives 'idiots' in a harshly critical email regarding platform fees.

Steam is known as the world's largest PC game distribution platform, and has long taken a 30% cut of game sales. Although Valve introduced a tiered revenue sharing system in October 2018, offering higher percentages to developers who hit certain revenue thresholds, this appears to have upset Epic's CEO.

CEO Epic chỉ trích gay gắt các lãnh đạo của Steam vì 'ăn' hoa hồng quá cao- Ảnh 1. — Steam takes 30% of developer game sales

“Right now, you ‘idiots’ are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special terms, while the weaker ones are being slapped with revenue sharing fees of up to 30%,” Sweeney wrote in an email to Valve CEO Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson, one of the company’s directors of business development.

Meanwhile, the Epic Games Store offers developers a much more lucrative revenue share, with 88% going to the developer and 12% going to Epic. The controversial email was revealed during the investigation into the antitrust lawsuit that developer Wolfire is filing against Valve.

Epic and Apple also later entered a protracted antitrust legal battle after Epic attempted to circumvent Apple's 30% commission fee by adding a new direct payment option to its hit game Fortnite . This resulted in Fortnite being removed from the App Store and Epic's developer account being suspended.

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