Epic Games announce the launch of their official store today for digital games distribution. The new store plans to create a level playing field for all developers without any form of ‘discrimination’. The store will launch with a number of hand curated games for the PC and Mac, and will reach out to Android and beyond throughout 2019.
88% of the revenue is shared with the developers, and Epic Games will cover the 5% royalty for sales on the Epic store, out of Epic’s 12% share. Epic plans to promote games made using all different engines,including Unreal,Unity and all others. Epic also promises to cover marketing by giving developers access to a 10000 strong pool of content creators as well as covering 5% of the expenses incurred from revenue sharing with creators. The store also allows developers to reach out to customers directly via email and inform about updates and news about upcoming releases.
The store’s announcement seems to come directly after the controversial revenue sharing update by Steam which lowers Valve’s cut for all games getting above 10 million dollars in sales, which many indie developers claimed to highly discriminatory towards smaller developers and publishers.
With the money coming in from Fortnite’s growth,and with a large visibility granted thanks to the popularity of Fortnite,Epic Games can attempt to take on Valve directly. With the improved revenue sharing program as well as other facilities offered, the Epic store might become a worthy competitor for Steam in the days to come.