The Steam vs Epic Store fiasco is in the tip of everyone and their mother’s tongue these days. With each passing day, we see Epic snatch both AAA titles as well as indie projects as an exclusive to their store from beneath Valve’s nose. The fact that Epic only takes 12% of the cut from sales along with other alluring propositions makes Epic the go-to place for publishers as well as up and coming indie studios. However, making PC games exclusives to any platform hasn’t sat well with gamers and there’s a lot of bad blood towards Epic right now.
However, Epic Games’ CEO, Tim Sweeney, has stated that if Steam commits to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached, Epic Games will withdraw from grabbing exclusives and consider putting its own games on Steam.
Sweeney sticks to his belief that 30% store dominance is the number 1 problem for PC developers, publishers, and everyone who relies on those businesses for their livelihood, and that Epic Games is trying to address this issues with its own store.
According to Sweeney, If Valve were to cut down on their revenue shares, “such a move would be a glorious moment in the history of PC gaming, and would have a sweeping impact on other platforms for generations to come. Then stores could go back to just being nice places to buy stuff, rather than the Game Developer IRS.”
Although we don’t expect Valve to cut down their revenue shares from 30% to 12% just like that, it would make it a lot easier on developers and we can all have this pointless back and forth stabs out of the way. But Valve’s long-term plan remains to be seen and we don’t expect Sweeney to hold up to this deal just based on what he said on Twitter. But that is a story for another day. Til then, it’s an open battlefield.