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Ubisoft partnerships boss says Steam's business model is "unrealistic"

Ubisoft partnerships boss says Steam's business model is "unrealistic"

Ubisoft's VP of partnerships and revenue Chris Early (pictured) has criticised Steam's business model as being "unrealistic".

That's according to a piece from The New York Times which asked Early why the French publishing giant had opted to partner with Epic's new Games Store for The Division 2 rather than launching on Valve's platform.

The exec said that Steam is offering isn't in line with the realities of shifting games in 2019.

“It’s unrealistic, the current business model that they have,” he said. “It doesn’t reflect where the world is today in terms of game distribution."

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney added: “Stores extract an enormous portion of game industry profits and are ripe for disruption," being asked about Valve's 30 per cent revenue share terms.

Meanwhile, SuperData's Joost Van Dreunen says that there are enough differences between Steam and Epic Games Store for both to exist.

“They’re going to be this social platform where there are going to be cool games but you are also going to be hanging out with your friends," he said.

“It panders to a very different audience segment. Most likely Epic will be the more mainstream version of Steam.”


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.