Epic Games Store - 88% split goes to devs

Games
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Concerns with the Epic Store

Original Post:

PR:

Epic Games, developer of titles like Fortnite, the first Gears of War trilogy, and Unreal Tournament, has announced the creation of a new digital PC store that hopes to compete with Steam by offering an unprecedented revenue split for developers.

The Epic Games Store is launching as a full-fledged game marketplace supporting all sorts of titles. The Fortnite developer hopes to incentivize developers to come over to the Epic Games Store by pushing the revenue split for software further than any platform holder has before, giving developers 88 percent of the revenues while keeping 12 percent for overhead. This is a big change considering the traditional industry standard for digital revenue split usually gives 30 percent to the store owner, whether it be Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Apple, Android, or Valve. Perhaps anticipating this move, Valve recently made adjustments to Steam’s revenue model, but only above certain thresholds that most games won’t hit.

“As a developer ourselves, we have always wanted a platform with great economics that connects us directly with our players,” Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said in a press statement. “Thanks to the success of Fortnite, we now have this and are ready to share it with other developers.”

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That’s very cool. Sweeney is one guy who seems to put his money where his mouth is when it comes to development and working to make creators successful.

Cue the replies from people who think they “stole” Fortnite from PUBG…

Anyway, this is good news for people making games IMO unless there’s some catch that I’m not seeing.

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They also get rid of Unreal Engine 4 fees if you go through their store, so that’s smart.

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Sweet, another storefront! I was looking for ways to own more copies of Plants vs Zombies.

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This is the first thing I’ve seen that may actually pose a threat to steam, because they have the money to throw at it, and a good sense of the industry.

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Oh.

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.

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Well, real competition with Steam. If not in features, at least in price.

I like it. Let them fight, and all that.

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What @TurinTur says is true. Let them fight is right. I already have games spread across at least five services between Steam, Ubi, Origin, GoG, Epic, and god knows what else… that doesn’t even take into account the consoles.

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Is this what Epic raised a bunch of money for recently, I’m guessing?

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I’m sure it was part of it.

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The first time you open a ‘secondary account’ is the hardest one. Once you have already four or five gaming accounts… it matters little to have a fifth or sixth one.

:D

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Especially if they occasionally give you free games like Uplay and Origin do. If Epic wants to do that, I’ll be their best friend.

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I think this sounds like a great deal to content creators, which is good news. As a consumer of games, I’m not sure what it offers as of yet. Maybe devs will sell games at a lower price on this platform?

Steam has some nice utility around games that I get a lot of mileage out of, like the Steam Workshop as a place to find and install mods and have them automatically kept up to date.

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And yet I get emails every day about “Protecting my Epic Games account” because people are trying to hack it and Epic can’t properly protect it.

The best part?

After I recovered the password I realized it wasn’t even my account. Some idiot created an Epic Games account a decade ago and used my email address.

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Ohh I can relate. Some guy from… Colombia? Venezuela? has the same name as me, and he has registered in several places with my gmail name. Included bank account…

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You guys wouldn’t believe the amount of emails and such I get for other Brian Rubins.

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I was doing okay until the Penblades of Vermont had a kid and named him Armando. And even then it wasn’t so bad till he became a teenager and started signing up for a bunch of social media accounts under my name.

Tbh we haven’t talked to the Vermont side of the family in decades, but I think the kid might be a furry and I want his parents to talk to him about the dangers of yiffing with strangers, so I’m thinking of reaching out.

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Seriously. I fought Steam for quite awhile because I wanted to own the game (buying physical). They finally snagged me with The Orange Box and the service was mature enough by then to continue buying games there as physical copies (and patches that invalidated them entirely) became less and less viable.

For a bit there I fought against using other stores and then Origin was forced on me for a Mass Effect review and the rest is history. Now I have games everywhere.

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Yeah, I hear you, but I think there are a lot more Dave Longs.

That said, there’s only one I’ve had some crossover with. He’s apparently in Texas and bleeds elephant red.

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I dunno, there are half a dozen Brian Rubins in Los Angeles alone.

I got a court summons for another one once. They had a hit and run. It was hilarious.