I was under the impression, from your own videos, that Unreal would not be charging anything to sell thru the Marketplace. Under this impression, I bragged about UE to my other fellow creators, talking about how smart UE was to do this. Now, I have egg on my face. I can understand that there is a cost to running a marketplace. Heck, I run my own. That said, the cost is not 30%. 15% would be much more reasonable.
Besides creating 3d assets, I spend a good amount of my time studying economics. This helps me tremendously in my business. Many times, we don’t understand how our actions are counter productive. I really do see Epic as an intelligent company, so I’ll try to make a good argument for lowering this revenue split. Personally, it really doesn’t matter to me, as I’ll just sell my content for UE on my own site. The main reason I want to make the argument is to see UE grow as fast as possible. See, by charging us 30% you are limiting how many content creators will sell on your site. That 30% is not really paid by us, the content creators. It is really paid by your users. So, the reality is, you are charging your users 30%, not the content creators. Essentially, it is a tax on consumers, which will always lower economic activity. With less people selling directly on the Marketplace, you’ll also have less competition, meaning the consumers are, again, paying more then the real market price. That 30% also means that someone like myself can sell an item at a massive perceived discount on my own site, because I’ll have 30% less cost to selling it on my own site. I understand that many people think 30% works out great in the bellcurve and maximizes profits, but you are also slowing growth. So, I guess it depends on what you are after. Are you after growth, or profits?
My whole point is, that the 30% extra cost is counter productive.