Epic Games has announced the Epic Games Store. It’s the company’s attempt to take on Steam, the world’s largest PC game digital storefront head on. And while Steam offers developers a 30 percent revenue share that reduces depending on how well a game sells, Epic is giving all developers on the Epic Games Store an 88 percent share of the revenue. A part of this is due to how well Fortnite is doing and Epic seems hellbent on sharing its good fortune.
“As a developer ourselves, we have always wanted a platform with great economics that connects us directly with our players,” said Epic Games founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney in a prepared statement. “Thanks to the success of Fortnite, we now have this and are ready to share it with other developers.”
The Epic Games Store is set to launch at a nebulous date of “soon” and will feature a handful of curated games for Windows PC and macOS. What’s more is, it will be available to “additional games and other open platforms throughout 2019.”
Safe to say, the company is referring to side loading the Epic Games Store on Android just like how Fortnite is playable on Google’s OS.
How Epic manages developer expectations will be a point of concern. With the company taking all of 12 percent, how much effort it puts into curating, discoverability, and sustaining an active user base in its first few months will be telling of its longterm strategy. It also begs the question: what if Fortnite stops being popular? Will it still offer the save revenue share? Either way, the PC games space just got a bit more interesting.
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