The Game studio, who brought the phenomenal online video game Fortnite to life, has launched an Epic games store. In a blog post on the Unreal Engine website, Epic stated that the store will have a “fair economics and a direct relationship with players”.
All players who buy a game will be subscribed to a developer’s newsfeed where they can contact them for updates and news about upcoming releases. Developers can also control their game pages and connect with YouTube content creators, Twitch streamers, and bloggers with the recently launched Support-A-Creator program.
Epic games store will also follow an 88/12 revenue split. “Developers receive 88% of revenue,” the company wrote. “There are no tiers or thresholds. Epic takes 12%. And if you’re using Unreal Engine, Epic will cover the 5% engine royalty for sales on the Epic Games store, out of Epic’s 12%.”
Source: Unreal Engine
Epic’s inspiration for the 88/12 split may have possibly been taken from Valve’s Steam store (a major competitor to Epic games) who have tweaked their revenue making process. “Starting from October 1, 2018, when a game makes over $10 million on Steam, the revenue share for that application will adjust to 75 percent/25 percent on earnings beyond $10 million,” Valve wrote in the official blog post. “At $50 million, the revenue share will adjust to 80 percent/20 percent on earnings beyond $50 million.
The Epic game store with launch with a few selected games on PC and Mac, then it will open up to other games and to Android and other open platforms throughout 2019.
With this move, Epic Games are looking to attract more gamers and developers to their platform. And a better revenue split will automatically do most of the work for them. Developer-favour revenue splitting will also increase the market where previously there was a lack of competition in PC-game distribution by the immovable 30/70 split. Twitteratis were fairly happy with this announcement and expressed their feelings and agreed on it to being a threat to Valve.
For months, I predicted that Epic would launch it's own game store and that Steam's 30% cut was going to look stupid and unfair. I was 100% correct. Today, Epic launched a gamestore with only a 12% take: https://t.co/l7NNTFcvnv
— Mark Kern (@Grummz) December 4, 2018
.@EpicGames is one generous company. They hand out millions of earning to competitors, support a creator codes, and now giving 88% revenue to developers that release games in their upcoming digital games store. Amazing.
— FaZe SpaceLyon (@SpaceLyon) December 4, 2018
This is going to be a big threat to Valve https://t.co/NGwIEF38nm
— Lucas Matney (@lucasmtny) December 4, 2018
Here's some news. Proud of the work being done here and excited for the future. https://t.co/Wj0FFJpMAI
— Nick “Unusual Spending” Chester (@nickchester) December 4, 2018
The Epic Games team will reveal more details on upcoming game releases at the Game Awards this Thursday. Read the blog post by Epic games to know more.
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