The Epic Games store for PC and Mac [2018-12]

[BRiT]

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-epic-games-store

The Epic Games store will operate on the following principles:

All Developers Earn 88%
Developers receive 88% of revenue. 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%.

Have a Direct Relationship With Players
People who buy your games automatically subscribe to your newsfeed so you can reach them with game updates and news about upcoming releases. The newsfeed is front-and-center. You’ll also be able to reach your players through email, if they choose to share it.

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.

Developers Control Their Game Pages
As a developer, you control your game page and your newsfeed. There will be no store-placed ads or cross-marketing of competing games on your page, and no paid ads in search results.

All Engines Are Welcome
The Epic Games store is open to games built with any engine, and the first releases span Unreal, Unity and internal engines.

When You Succeed, We Succeed
We’ve built this store and its economic model so that Epic’s interests are aligned with your interests. Because of the high volume of Fortnite transactions, we can process store payments, serve bandwidth, and support customers very efficiently. From Epic’s 12% store fee, we’ll have a profitable business we’ll grow and reinvest in for years to come!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1069974287182979073

 

[milk]

As Ben Shapiro would say: Ok, this is epic.

 

[BRiT]

Remember when Tim Sweeney was furious with how Microsoft was trying to kill the Steam Store? Turns out he was only mad they might get to it first.

As Ben Shapiro would say: Ok, this is epic.

I think you mean Horatio Cane.

 

[Entropy]

There is no indication this means anything (apart from fragmentation) for consumers though.
Remains to be seen if there is an audience for yet another store.

 

[BRiT]

An extra 18% to 23% (if using UE) to developers has to be tempting. It will be interesting to see how things play out over the next year, how adaptation rates grow, and if there will be any Epic Games Store exclusives.

 

[Malo]

Yeah great. A game store under financial control by Tencent. No thanks.

 

[Entropy]

An extra 18% to 23% (if using UE) to developers has to be tempting. It will be interesting to see how things play out over the next year, how adaptation rates grow, and if there will be any Epic Games Store exclusives.

That publishers (the ones without a store of their own....) will be interested is a given. Whether consumers will be depend on a lot of things. For consumers, competition is good, but fragmentation is not. How this initiative will play out isn't clear. Unless they offer some clear benefits to the consumers over the entrenched Steam or the siren song of exclusive access from the publishers own store fronts, I can't see them having much impact.

 

[Pete]

Developers Control Their Game Pages
As a developer, you control your game page and your newsfeed. There will be no store-placed ads or cross-marketing of competing games on your page, and no paid ads in search results.

So there'll be no "similar games" links on a game's store page, like with Steam? Seems like it'd limit discovery and would mainly hurt smaller games, but I'm probably not thinking this through completely.

Is Steam's "More Like This" scrollbar on a game's store page populated with paid placement? Are their search results skewed with paid placement? They're the first store I think of with this announcement.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

So there'll be no "similar games" links on a game's store page, like with Steam? Seems like it'd limit discovery and would mainly hurt smaller games, but I'm probably not thinking this through completely.

Is Steam's "More Like This" scrollbar on a game's store page populated with paid placement? Are their search results skewed with paid placement? They're the first store I think of with this announcement.

If, so some odd, and really small, developers have a lot of money to buy placement on Steam. AFAICT, it's mostly based on what games you own, what games you look at, and what games you have on your wishlist. Perhaps also games similar to games your friends play.

Since I'm huge on Indie games, I get a lot of recommendations for indie titles in the genres that I generally buy. I've discovered a few this way that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.

Discovery for small developers has definitely improved significantly over the past couple of years.

Regards,
SB

 

[BRiT]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1070735633734238210

 

[eastmen]

The new Hades game looks interesting but I don't really want to buy a game in another store. WS , Origin , Steam , GOG and now Epic. To much.

 

[BRiT]

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/the-epic-games-store-is-now-live

The first games on the store are Hades by Supergiant Games, Ashen by Annapurna/A44, and Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek by tinyBuild, and they’re available now!
​

The store will also feature one free game every two weeks throughout 2019. Epic is funding these free releases so you always have something new to come and check out. The first free game will be Subnautica, available from Dec 14th to Dec 27th, followed by Super Meat Boy from Dec 28th to Jan 10th.

 

[eastmen]

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/the-epic-games-store-is-now-live

The first games on the store are Hades by Supergiant Games, Ashen by Annapurna/A44, and Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek by tinyBuild, and they’re available now!
​

The store will also feature one free game every two weeks throughout 2019. Epic is funding these free releases so you always have something new to come and check out. The first free game will be Subnautica, available from Dec 14th to Dec 27th, followed by Super Meat Boy from Dec 28th to Jan 10th.

welp , I will be taking advantage of the free games. But I don't think I will purchase anything for quite awhile .

I know they are going to try and ride the fortnite fame and the fact that you need to have the store downloaded on the pc. But fortnite or at least the popular edition of fortnite is free. I don't think they will gain much traction with paid games. None of the games look that great either.

 

[Pete]

Sigh. Subnautica is a great free game.

 

[homerdog]

I wish I had a different store for every game. Need more icons in my system tray.

Thinking about it the games I currently play are all on different stores. Overwatch, BF1, Ass Creed Black Flag (this is my fav since it needs both Steam and Uplay).

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Epic Games announced earlier this week that it was entering the digital game store business, and just a few days later the Fortnite developer is ready to open its marketplace. The new Epic Games Store, which will live inside the Epic Launcher app for Windows and Mac, is now live after a surprise launch in the middle of the Game Awards in Los Angeles this evening.
...
Breaking with the industry standard 70 / 30 percent revenue split, Epic said on Tuesday that its store would offer an 88 / 12 percent, which means it will let developers keep more revenue on each sale than any other competing game store. In addition to that, Epic is waiving its 5 percent royalty fee for all games made using its Unreal Engine, which is a huge boon for indie developers who are already squeezed for cash by paying the revenue split fee.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18126139/epic-store-games-pc-ashen-hades-game-awards-2018

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I wish I had a different store for every game. Need more icons in my system tray.

Thinking about it the games I currently play are all on different stores. Overwatch, BF1, Ass Creed Black Flag (this is my fav since it needs both Steam and Uplay).

Yup, main reason I've stopped playing Blizzard games even though I love Blizzard games. Just not worth it to have yet another launcher. Same reason that even though I get UBIsoft games on Steam occasionally, I very rarely play them.

And I haven't yet and don't plan on ever installing Origin. Although Anthem is tempting, it's unlikely I'll get it just due to having to have yet another launcher.

GOG at least doesn't require a launcher.

Regards,
SB

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I think this is great news. I hope it grows and gets exclusives. With royalties that low it might tempt the other big publishers to support it and in the long term perhaps Valve would back down on their rates. Steam and their practices have been dominating too long.

 

[milk]

GOG at least doesn't require a launcher.

Now that puts the problem into focus. Different stores are not the problem. Arguably, its a good thing. More competition.
Different launchers are the actual problem. What we need is a more elegant solution to that problem, not less stores.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Now that puts the problem into focus. Different stores are not the problem. Arguably, its a good thing. More competition.
Different launchers are the actual problem. What we need is a more elegant solution to that problem, not less stores.

Different stores is definitely not the problem.

I'd absolutely love it if there were multiple storefronts and each storefronts had ALL games available from all publishers. Or multiple storefronts all sharing the same launcher accessing the same user database of owned games.

The problem I have is

1. Publishers use their own titles to drive exclusivity in their store hoping that it makes their store the defacto storefront.
   1. Kind of understandable since they get a higher share of the sale.
   2. But!!! They are a freaking publisher. Act like a publisher and not a storefront. Grrrrrr.
2. Too many freaking launchers.

This fragmentation of the gaming landscape on PC is another thing that is slowly driving me away from PC gaming despite my love for PC gaming. That and the fact that NV has almost a monopoly on performant GPU products and has driven the cost of gaming on PC to such ridiculous levels.

Hence, if a console eventually gets their act together and requires KB/M support in all games (not necessarily requiring KB/M and controller players to be in the same multiplayer instances), then I'm abandoning PC gaming for everything except the indie titles that never make it to console.

Regards,
SB