Epic Games - Store announced

Epic Games announced a game store to rival Steam and others:

Announcing the Epic Games Store

For the past five years, we've been building tools enabling Epic to bring our games directly to players. We built the Epic Games launcher on PC and Mac featuring Fortnite and Unreal Engine; we built a worldwide digital commerce ecosystem supporting dozens of payment methods; and we gained great economies of scale thanks to Fortnite's growth.

As developers ourselves, we wanted two things: a store with fair economics, and a direct relationship with players. And we've heard that many of you want this too!

Soon we'll launch the Epic Games store, and begin a long journey to advance the cause of all developers. The store will launch with a hand-curated set of games on PC and Mac, then it will open up more broadly to other games and to Android and other open platforms throughout 2019.


The Epic Games store will operate on the following principles:

All Developers Earn 88%
Developers receive 88% of revenue. There are no tiers or thresholds. Epic takes 12%. And if you're using Unreal Engine, Epic will cover the 5% engine royalty for sales on the Epic Games store, out of Epic's 12%.

Have a Direct Relationship With Players
People who buy your games automatically subscribe to your newsfeed so you can reach them with game updates and news about upcoming releases. The newsfeed is front-and-center. You'll also be able to reach your players through email, if they choose to share it.

Connect with Creators
YouTube content creators, Twitch streamers, bloggers, and others are at the leading edge of game discovery. The 10,000-strong Epic Games Support-A-Creator program helps you reach creators, so they can help you reach players. If you opt to participate, creators who refer players to buy your game will receive a share of the revenue that you set (tracked by code or affiliate marketing link). To jumpstart the creator economy, Epic will cover the first 5% of creator revenue-sharing for the first 24 months.

Developers Control Their Game Pages
As a developer, you control your game page and your newsfeed. There will be no store-placed ads or cross-marketing of competing games on your page, and no paid ads in search results.

All Engines Are Welcome
The Epic Games store is open to games built with any engine, and the first releases span Unreal, Unity and internal engines.

When You Succeed, We Succeed
We've built this store and its economic model so that Epic's interests are aligned with your interests. Because of the high volume of Fortnite transactions, we can process store payments, serve bandwidth, and support customers very efficiently. From Epic's 12% store fee, we'll have a profitable business we'll grow and reinvest in for years to come!

Thanks henriquejr!

More information.

Hopefully this turns out good and also popular enough to succeed. I know people will say they don't need another platform, and I would agree, but Steam sucks ass and the only thing that will make Valve do something to fix it is competition, which is lacking right now. Or not, but if this is good, I'm willing to switch.

Yeah, this is much closer to the sort of price that I think is sensible for outsourcing digital distribution. Valve are free to charge what they like, and some people might deem it good value, but I think we'll see that the other players in the market disagree. For those that don't like more distribution clients, I'm afraid we're going to see more pop up, as companies try to get away from Valve's dominance and ludicrous cut.

As good as some competition for Steam sounds, I dread the time when I have 12 clients installed and have to open 6 of them to find the game I wanted to play…

My thoughts exactly, Darkheart.

The time is coming when we will have to catalog the games we own in a Excel file, with one sheet for every game client and inside each sheet, the games listed in order alphabetical. We can even add a column with a boolean value showing if the game is/isn't already installed and paint the cells for the games we've finished… wait, that sounds like a good idea indeed!

I have desktop icons for each of the games I am currently playing so I don't need to worry about whether to open Steam, Origin, or whatever.

What I don't like is not having some games available on some stores, because not only would it mean having to shop around just to find a game but also it might mean missing games altogether.

For example, I didn't even realize until recently that Mirror's Edge Catalyst was available on PC at all since it is not on Steam (even though the first Mirror's Edge is on Steam) and I had thought it had not been ported from console to PC. It's not an important game to me but I can imagine missing out on what I might consider important, due to not having a central store to visit.

Well seems my prediction is coming true. Wonder who will be next?

Originally Posted by Ivanwah
Hopefully this turns out good and also popular enough to succeed. I know people will say they don't need another platform, and I would agree, but Steam sucks ass and the only thing that will make Valve do something to fix it is competition, which is lacking right now. Or not, but if this is good, I'm willing to switch.

What do you find bad about Steam? I play a ton of games through Steam and never have issues.

Well, I didn't see this coming at all. Like others, I really don't want fifty different platforms sitting on my hard drive, but assuming they plan on confronting steam directly, it should be quite an epic battle.

As a consumer I say: hurray for competition. It should be good for the developers as well, I would think. Hopefully they will allow PayPal.

While I do like Steam as a user I think their 30% take is ridiculous. I do not like the idea of having several different launchers, but on the other hand that's still more convenient than having a shelf full of boxes with discs or CD's…

Another game client? Eff that

Originally Posted by TomRon
While I do like Steam as a user I think their 30% take is ridiculous. I do not like the idea of having several different launchers, but on the other hand that's still more convenient than having a shelf full of boxes with discs or CD's…

It was a shock for me that they take 30% I had no idea.
As much as I agree not having shelf room, I do miss unwrapping and opening the boxes, I miss the lovely manuals that I used to sit and read for hours, I miss that excitement.

OhYea tough call as competition is good. Maybe two or three major ones is the sweet spot to keep them all honest.

Reminds me of TV. Now there is YouTube tv, sling, Vue etc…

I dunno, I think Epic Games might not make much of a splash as some may think.

1. Many steam users will stay loyal to steam. Despite the odd complaint here and there, steam is very popular among many (if not most) gamers. It's very convenient to have your games all centralized and collected in one place. Plus, steam is very good in "community" aspects, which Epic Games is not going to provide - see next point.

2. Epic Games has drawbacks. They will have no game forums at all for their games. None! So if you want to get help or have a question about a game, like you can on steam, nope, sorry, you are out of luck. What a great service model by Epic Games! (sarcasm)

3. Epic Games is all about "games as a service" model. Yep, the model most old school gamers seem to really hate. So, keep in mind if you decide to become a customer you will be supporting that business model full force. I think some gamers will refuse to support Epic Games just based on this philosophy.

4. Epic Games is owned by a Chinese company. By the name of Tencent. So if number 3 isn't enough to put some gamers off, then this may do the trick. I know its not popular to talk about in the mass media these days, *cough* (I wonder why…) but China is a Communist controlled country. Many Americans will have a problem supporting that, in my opinion anyway. (though, that said, some on the left will have no problems and even be eager to support them)

There is some tension between "I want Steam to have more competition" and "I don't want more than one digital storefront/game client". If you insist on only have one client, then you've given that client a monopoly on your business. If you want to support a Steam competitor, you have to actually use something other than Steam.

Or I suppose you could try the free rider strategy, encouraging other people to use Steam competitors so you can benefit from Steam's improved behaviour without putting your time and money where your mouth is.

LOL. Remember kids: buy an Unreal Engine game, support the forces of communism.

Also stay away from AMC, GE appliances, and the Chicago stock exchange - all Chinese owned.

The competition is good, but I don't like the idea of another bloatware hanging around on my pc..

Coming soon: "The Overseer" is a software management program that knows all of the digital games you own and which client/storefront they're on. With just a few clicks you can find the game you're looking for and launch it without having to sift through a dozen different clients and platforms.

Originally Posted by gabrielarantest
The competition is good, but I don't like the idea of another bloatware hanging around on my pc..

Exactly…I see what is in the deal for the game developer, but what's in it for me, the pc gamer??

Not seeing any good answers to that question. Why would I abandon Steam, to go to Epic Games?

(besides helping a Chinese company, which is good enough reason for some America hating lefties, of course )