Epic Games has announced the launch of its very own online store with the name ‘ The Epic Games Store’. The Epic Games store is Epic Games’ challenge to the Steam store which is notorious for its 30% cut from the developers. For Epic games, they will allow Developers to take 88% of their earnings thus providing a lucrative opportunity for developers. With the success of Fortnite, Epic games can afford to lower their cut on games sold on the online store. An 88% cut for the developers would be any developer’s dream. Ofcourse as we know, it is probably just an inaugural offer in order to lure more games and developers onto their platform.
As a developer ourselves, we have always wanted a platform with great economics that connects us directly with our players. Thanks to the success of Fortnite, we now have this and are ready to share it with other developers.
Tim Sweeney, Epic Games founder and CEO
For PC Games, steam is one of the largest stores currently available. It has a huge library of games and the ‘Valve cut’ is quite high at 30% The cut further changes depending on how well a game sells on Steam. Epic will also pay for the 5% engine royalty for sales on its platform.
Not limited to the PC platform.
The Epic Games store will not be limited only to PC games. In fact, Sweeney mentions that the store will be open to a lot more games and more platforms in 2019. This is a potential reference to the Android platform, where Fortnite has seen massive success. Epic Games has had a tough stance on Google especially when it comes to the fees involved in the Google Play Store. This diversification of the company will is a blatant attempt at further increasing their portfolio. They are taking on multiple organisations with this move such as Steam and Google Play Store. It might also mean the pull-back of Epic Games from the Google Play Store in the future.
Recently Valve reduced their cut from Games which sell more than $10 million to just 25%. In addition to this, any game which sells more than $50 million will have to pay only 20% of its sales to Valve.
We’re motivated by economic efficiency. The 30 percent store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers’ 70 percent must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games
Tim Sweeney, Epic Games founder and CEO
The Epic Games Store is a good attempt to provide competition to some established players. However, only time will tell whether we can expect the store to be sustainable with the current model. You can find more information on the Epic Games Store here.
