Developers of battle royale phenomenon Fortnite, Epic Games, are foraging in a new venture: digital games store. Epic Games has announced today that it will be launching its very own online PC and Mac games distribution platform called Epic Games Store. While Valve’s Steam store takes 20 to 30% of game revenue, the Epic Games Store will take only 12% and will grant the remaining 88% of sales revenue to the devs.

Talking to Variety about the news, founder and CEO of Epic Games Tim Sweeney had the following to say: “As a developer ourselves, we’ve always wanted access to a store with fair revenue-sharing that gives us direct access to our customers. Now that we’ve built such a store, and Fortnite has brought in a huge audience of PC gamers, we’re working to open it up to all developers.”

In a similar fashion to Steam, the Epic Games Store will be accessible via a dedicated launcher and a website and will be open to games developed on any game engine. Given that it will be just starting off, the games library will initially be limited to a curated number of titles.

“We’re starting small, with a hand-picked set of games at launch,” Sweeney further added. “We plan to grow throughout early 2019 and open the store up more widely later on. We’ll have an approval process for new developers to go through to release a title. It will mostly focus on the technical side of things and general quality. Except for adult-only content, we don’t plan to curate based on developers’ creative or artistic expression. Epic will manually curate the Epic Games storefront rather than relying on algorithms or paid ads. We believe the ultimate vector for players to discover new games will not be our storefront but creators. Viewership of creator channels has greatly outgrown any storefront.”

Together with the store, the company is also launching the Support-A-Creator program which connects developers with over 10,000 creators from online video producers to streamers. This program further rewards creators for bringing exposure to game developers.

“Epic’s Support-A-Creator program was launched as a one-time event, but it’s now permanent and is available to all creators and all developers on the Epic Games store,” Sweeney said. “Creators will earn a share of revenue from each attributable sale, either by link or by manual creator tag entry, like in Fortnite. Developers will set the rate of the revenue share and Epic will pay the first 5% for the first 24 months. Developers will have immediate access to thousands of creators who can promote their titles in fun and entertaining ways, and they can automatically give creators free access to their game if they choose to.

“We believe this will make a more direct and sustainable connection between game developers and content creators such as streamers and video makers. There are currently more than 10,000 content creators in the program, with tens of millions of supporters, and that number is growing every day.”

There is no concrete release date for the Epic Games Store but it is expected to release "soon" with more details on upcoming game releases to be revealed at The Game Awards this Thursday.

SOURCE

 

[Lazyboss]

At least they will keep the kids away from steam.

 

[Burlsol]

Yay

Another storefront for PC

We really needed that

Steam,Origin,Gog Galaxy,Uplay,Bethesda Launcher,Windows store were not enough

Forgot Twitch, and Discord... Despite them technically being both owned by Amazon.

 

[Shadowfied]

Forgot Twitch, and Discord... Despite them technically being both owned by Amazon.

Discord? Owned by Amazon? Source?

 

[FAST6191]

I am always taken aback by the fondness people have for Steam.

I was there when it started. Was the first of the online DRM things to take off. People mostly saw it as an overreaction to the source leaks of Half Life 2. At the time any number of games had launcher programs to set resolution, graphics settings and whatever else (and depending upon how far back you want to go we could also look at dos4gw* but let us not). Often they would bundle a few games into said launcher as well.

Then as now it blocked resale of games, lending of games... and offered essentially nothing for it.

"soon I will need all these programs rather than just Steam"
It is called the bloody start bar. You don't even need that.


*and while I am inducing panic attacks mscdex, himem.sys, do you have a soundblaster and what IRQ is it?

Also +1 to the "they had one successful game" thing... I know they kind of rested on their laurels and became an engine maker rather than a game maker but they are hardly upstarts. Also how many of you were praising them a few months back ( https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/03/fortnite_security_fears/ ) when they did an end run around the play store?

 

[Dr.Hacknik]

Little did anyone know... Lord Gaben is our Lord and Savior and nobody can take his throne.

 

[x65943]

Steam's cut is huge

If another platform can wittle it down that'd be great.

Of course Steam can just lower their cut as well at that point to keep up with competition - but "more competition more better"

All monopolies ever do is price fix and screw the consumer.

 

[Supster131]

Y'all really complaining about "too many options" when you probably don't even use half of them. I am all for competition. No other company has been able to dethrone Steam, so I am fine with more options. I personally am not a huge fan of Steam. They haven't really done anything to improve and their customer support is still ass. Hopefully Epic can do something right to put the pressure on Valve.

 

[PrincessLillie]

Forgot Twitch, and Discord... Despite them technically being both owned by Amazon.

Discord... isn't owned by Amazon. If I recall correctly, they're an independent service.

 

[KingVamp]

I'm surprised no one posted this.

https://xkcd.com/927/

 

[raxadian]

The store is so Epic it only has one game people care to buy!

Yeah I am sure everything will work out.

 

[sansnumen]

Epic is late to the party. The gravy train has left the station. Steam's scale is an example of something called the network effect. It's why almost everyone the world over uses Windows. This storefront won't work unless consumers see a benefit to leave Steam's network. What that could be I have no clue.

 

[raxadian]

Epic is late to the party. The gravy train has left the station. Steam's scale is an example of something called the network effect. It's why almost everyone the world over uses Windows. This storefront won't work unless consumers see a benefit to leave Steam's network. What that could be I have no clue.

The Epic store charges 12% while Steam charges 30%. But unless that translates to games on the Epic store being at least 10% cheaper, why bother?

 

[HEADBOY]

Yay

Another storefront for PC

We really needed that

Steam,Origin,Gog Galaxy,Uplay,Bethesda Launcher,Windows store were not enough

Don't forget Facebook GameRoom...

 

[Rahkeesh]

A ton of people are going to have this launcher on their system already because they have Fortnite. Many of those people have hardly even played other games and this service will introduce them to the idea, especially if they are keeping it highly curated and limiting the deluge of new titles. It doesn't really matter if you personally aren't a part of that huge demographic. This service doesn't have to dethrone steam either to take a significant chunk out of their sales and breed some healthy competition.

 

[raxadian]

Don't forget Facebook GameRoom...

The fun thing is, the Gaming PC market is still not threated well by developers. Most of them want the honeypot that's making console games. And don't tend to make decent PC versions of their games.

And people owns and buys less PCs that a decade ago.

So in a way it feels like they are fighting for scraps even if the PC market is nowhere that bad.

 

[kb7cxWMSrPwL]

The cure to client and storefront overload is federation. Think email: any user with any client you want on any server you choose talking to any other server you need. A more recent example is Mastodon, which saw a surge recently due to the upcoming tumblr exodus.
If money wasn't the issue then we could have had this already, but of course it is the problem because Valve and consoles made their fortunes on third party wares.

 

[Shadowfied]

Y'all really complaining about "too many options" when you probably don't even use half of them.

What does this statement even mean? Of course we don't use them. We don't want them. Having one client and storefront to manage and go to is what most of us want. Steam provides way more features than any of these half assed hack fuck clients.

I personally am not a huge fan of Steam. They haven't really done anything to improve and their customer support is still ass. Hopefully Epic can do something right to put the pressure on Valve.

>They haven't really done anything to improve
Holy shit this is a fucking disrespectful statement to everyone who works on Steam.

Let's just see of the top of my head what they've done since I started using the fucking thing since 2003 when I was still on dial up..

- Cloud saving for free for users (not sure if devs have to pay for this, still, free for users)
- Community features and forums for users to discuss each game, and developers to manage it and post news to it
- Community guides written by users
- Built in mod support with Steam Workshop that any game can implement
- Customizable profiles - more so than any competition as far as I know
- Letting devs provide beta versions for games, even password protected ones
- Ability to stream games to other computers in your home (I think there's an Android client too)
- Ability to stream for your friends, and let friends request to watch you play
- Actual user reviews on game pages. People can actually write their thoughts on games to be displayed on the games page. You hear that M$, $ony and Ninty?
- Their controller initiative, letting basically any DInput device be properly used and remapped for any game
- Proton - getting basically every game on Steam playable on Linux in order to push for perhaps the biggest change in PC gaming, a stop to Microsofts strangehold with DirectX, and it's open source
- Investing money in letting employees contribute to open source projects such as Proton and more

That's just of the top of my head. Now I don't know what you consider "improving" but holy fuck, I am impressed with Steam. I've never seen any proprietary software with such a focus on community.

Sure, their customer support is ass, but at the same time, it's not like Origin where you actually need their support. In my 15 years of using the service, I've needed their support once, and that was to refund a game, which was solved in under an hour.

 

[FAST6191]

I'm surprised no one posted this.

https://xkcd.com/927/

Where something like USB charging is a useful thing to have just one standard for I do have to ask if it is useful to have just one monopoly on game sales and launching.

 

[sansnumen]

Where something like USB charging is a useful thing to have just one standard for I do have to ask if it is useful to have just one monopoly on game sales and launching.

Of course not. Monopolies are bad news. Have you dealt with the local cable company lately?

 

[FAST6191]

Holy shit this is a fucking disrespectful statement to everyone who works on Steam.

Statements like that and "I feel sorry for those losing their jobs" always confuse me when people make them. I almost wonder if it is some kind of virtue signalling.

Let's just see of the top of my head what they've done since I started using the fucking thing since 2003 when I was still on dial up..

- Cloud saving for free for users (not sure if devs have to pay for this, still, free for users)
- Community features and forums for users to discuss each game, and developers to manage it and post news to it
- Community guides written by users
- Built in mod support with Steam Workshop that any game can implement
- Customizable profiles - more so than any competition as far as I know
- Letting devs provide beta versions for games, even password protected ones
- Ability to stream games to other computers in your home (I think there's an Android client too)
- Ability to stream for your friends, and let friends request to watch you play
- Actual user reviews on game pages. People can actually write their thoughts on games to be displayed on the games page. You hear that M$, $ony and Ninty?
- Their controller initiative, letting basically any DInput device be properly used and remapped for any game
- Proton - getting basically every game on Steam playable on Linux in order to push for perhaps the biggest change in PC gaming, a stop to Microsofts strangehold with DirectX, and it's open source
- Investing money in letting employees contribute to open source projects such as Proton and more

That's just of the top of my head. Now I don't know what you consider "improving" but holy fuck, I am impressed with Steam. I've never seen any proprietary software with such a focus on community.

Sure, their customer support is ass, but at the same time, it's not like Origin where you actually need their support. In my 15 years of using the service, I've needed their support once, and that was to refund a game, which was solved in under an hour.

Because pointing a dropbox account at your saves folder is so difficult? Indeed some years ago I had backup scripts, a briefcase and more to sort this sort of thing out.
As awful as the forums were gamefaqs seemed to provide such a thing well enough, give or take developer input so much (not like indy game devs have shown themselves to be above board here).
A mod frontend is not a new concept but they do seem to have a reasonable version of it. Still https://www.moddb.com/ and the things that predate it do fairly well here for the tiniest bit of effort.
Simple things I suppose.
There were login gates betas before but I will not begrudge them giving devs an API.
I used RDP for such things for a while, and stuff like Kaillera. But I have to wonder if it is more of a "technology finally caught up"

User reviews are frequently useful, not like they are hard to find otherwise though.
While I am more than happy to see someone try to oust MS after opengl fluffed it for games and chased the engineering and 3d graphics design world instead I am going to await the final results there. There have been any number of previous efforts and (be it porting houses or things like cedega), including Valve previously grumbling about things, so this is a "I deal in results" thing.
Most programming companies of any quality will allow their devs a bit of fun within their field. It is far from a revolutionary concept, indeed here is joelonsoftware (the prototypical tech insider blogger type in 2006 on the matter https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/07/a-field-guide-to-developers-2/ )

And all they ask if the ability for me to not resell my games, lend them to friends on my own terms, give them to friends when I am done. Nice trade that.