THE TOP STORY
The Fortnite creator launches an enticing alternative to Steam
Epic launches a game store...
Epic Games, riding on the success of Fortnite, is taking a shot at Valve with its very own digital distribution platform. The Epic Games Store differs from Steam in a number of ways, but mainly in the fact that developers who sell their games on it receive a much bigger cut of the profits. It’s an alluring prospect in the financially uncertain world of game development, and a shrewd move by Epic. Compared to Steam, which offers developers a 70/30 split for games that earn less than $10 million, the Epic Games Store offers an 88/12 split. Devs who use Epic’s own Unreal Engine 4 will even have their 5% engine royalty waived for sales on the Epic store. “In our analysis, stores charging 30% are marking up their costs by 300% to 400%,” Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney told gamesindustry.biz. “But with developers receiving 88% of revenue and Epic receiving 12%, this store will be a profitable business for us.”
To further entice gamers away from Steam, the Epic Games Store is also offering a free game every two weeks during 2019. “Epic is funding these free releases so players can experience the wide range of creative works that will be available,” says Sweeney. And, interestingly, besides “adult-only content”, Epic promises the games on its platform won’t be curated “based on developers’ creative or artistic expression”.
One thing the Epic Games Store doesn’t have is forums. This could be
“developers are responsible for the industry’s enormous growth”