When it comes to buying videogames online Valve’s Steam platform has the market pretty sown up. There are alternatives, and now Unreal Engine and Fortnite developer Epic Games is entering the mix with its own digital marketplace, the Epic Games Store.
Epic Games is looking to shake up the industry – and possibly loosen Steam’s control – by offering developers a much better deal than they’d get elsewhere. Currently, on Steam the platform takes a 30 percent cut of sales revenues from each title sold. On the Epic Games Store however, Epic will only take a 12 percent cut of sales, leaving developers with a much healthier 88 percent share of the revenue.
And the videogames don’t specifically need to be made using Unreal Engine. Studios working with Unity or other engines can still put their titles on the store. If you do happen to be using Unreal Engine Epic Games will cover the 5 percent engine royalty for sales out of its own 12 percent.
To help further connect developers with YouTube content creators, Twitch streamers and bloggers with their fans, there’s the Epic Games Support-A-Creator programme. If studios opt into the programme creators who refer players to buy a videogame will receive a share of the revenue that the studio sets. To start this process off, Epic Games will cover the first 5% of creator revenue-sharing for the first 24 months.
The Epic Games Store is due to launch by the end of 2018 for PC and Mac, with plans for Android support to arrive in 2019, aiming for as open a store as possible. In an interview with Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeny, Game Informer found that while the company would like to add support for iOS this doesn’t look likely due to Apple’s current policy’s. Additionally, the store won’t support consoles either.
When it comes to virtual reality (VR) the news is much better. VR compatible titles can be sold through the store if developers wish to, but the store itself won’t have a VR interface of any kind.
When the Epic Games Store arrives VRFocus will let you know, hopefully, filled with juicy VR experiences.