Epic Games Is Opening Digital Store That Will Compete With Steam

Epic Games has announced that it’s launching its own games store that will directly compete with Valve Corporation’s Steam. Simply called the Epic Games Store, the upcoming digital distribution platform will have a standard revenue split of 88 percent for developers.

“As developers ourselves, we wanted two things: a store with fair economics, and a direct relationship with players. And we've heard that many of you want this too,” Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said in a blog post. “Soon we'll launch the Epic Games store, and begin a long journey to advance the cause of all developers. The store will launch with a hand-curated set of games on PC and Mac, then it will open up more broadly to other games and to Android and other open platforms throughout 2019.”

The most intriguing part about the Epic Games Store is that developers on the platform will receive 88 percent of the revenue from the total earnings of their games and Epic Games will only take 12 percent of the cut. Developers who are using Unreal Engine will also get the added benefit of Epic Games covering the 5 percent engine royalty out of its own 12 percent cut.

“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,” Sweeney said. “The Epic Games store is open to games built with any engine, and the first releases span Unreal, Unity and internal engines.”

The announcement of the Epic Games Store comes hot on the heels of Valve’s revenue sharing policy change on Steam. Valve announced last week that developers would from now on only have to share 25 percent of their earnings if their game earns more than $10 million. The percentage goes all the way down to just 20 percent if the game earns $50 million. The standard revenue split is 30 percent for the developers and 70 percent for Valve. For the Epic Games Store, no such caps or tiers will be enforced. All developers will earn 88 percent of revenue and Epic Games will only get 12 percent.

“In our analysis, stores charging 30 percent are marking up their costs by 300 percent to 400 percent. But with developers receiving 88 percent of revenue and Epic receiving 12 percent, this store will be a profitable business for us,” Sweeney told GameIndustry.biz in an interview.

In addition to the remarkable revenue sharing policy, the Epic Games Store will also adopt the Support-A-Creator program that was recently made permanent in “Fortnite.” The program in the store will allow developers to connect with creators from YouTube, Twitch and other platforms.

Epic Games has not announced when exactly its store will launch, but the company is already in the process of selecting games that will be sold through the marketplace. The store will support free-to-play games, non-commercial titles and mods. Lastly, the the Epic Games Store will feature one free game every two weeks all throughout 2019. Epic Games is expected to share even more details about its upcoming store at The Game Awards on Thursday.