[onien11235]

> competing on quality, price, customer service, etc, etc, etc.

What metric are you using to define quality and how would it make people use this store over Steam? How much cheaper would you need to sell games to get people to go to the Epic store? Would developers put there games on the Epic store if the price had to be so low that they made more per sale on Steam? Good customer service being a factor requires having customers to experience it. It helps long term but won't get your first wave of customers.

[benj111]

Quality in this case could be website design, the overall quality of games, or discoverability of good games.

Price in this case would be margin. If Steam takes 10%, Epic could take 5%. Games makers could pass the savings on, or increase their own margins.

Yes good customer service requires customers. What's your point? Your first customer experiences good customer service, mentions it to their friends, who then shop with you, who then mention it to their friends. It's called word of mouth. It's a powerful marketing tool.

[onien11235]

Website design won't drive customers to a new store instead of Steam. Epic is curating their store so that should already cover quality and discoverability. Apparently they think that isn't enough.

> Price in this case would be margin. If Steam takes 10%, Epic could take 5%. Games makers could pass the savings on, or increase their own margins.

Steam takes 30% and Epic takes 12%. Very few games have chosen to reduce their price to go with the increased percentage.

For a web based store customer service only matters when things go wrong. Most customers should get a fairly standard experience of paying money and receiving their product. Do you consider Steam's customer service bad? Would a marginal improvement in customer service convince you to deal with the hassle of installing another launcher, setting up a payment method on a new store, and splitting your game library?

[benj111]

The store is 4 months old.

All of these things don't happen instantly.

You asked for a viable strategy, this is it as evidenced by the fact they're already trying it. Is it guaranteed? No. But nothing in business, or life, is.

[onien11235]

I asked for a viable alternative strategy that didn't also involve paying for exclusives to initially attract customers. Apparently Epic doesn't agree with you about this being viable by itself.