Epic to launch Steam contender Epic Games Store

Epic Games announced yesterday that they're launching their own online store for games, simply called Epic Games Store. They are not the first to want to compete with the titan Steam as Discord, for example, has also recently launched its own online store.

But Epic has something up their sleeve to draw developers, and their games, to Epic Games Store, and that thing is money... or more accurately, they can offer a nicer revenue percentage to developers. Where other marketplaces and stores typically have a 30/70 revenue sharing model, Epic offers a 12/88 split, which means more money will go directly to the developers and publishers. Definitely a great initiative that wil help a lot of indie developers. Epic owes much of their generosity to the absurd amounts of money they're making off of Fortnite, and they're not shy about disclosing it either. The revenue sharing model is the same as they use for the Unreal Engine store where asset creator has been enjoying a larger cut than what is usually the case.

When GameInformer asked Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games, why they've decided to launch a store, when there's already so many to choose from, he said:

"The 70/30 percent split was a breakthrough more than a decade ago with the advent of Steam, the Apple App Store, and Google Play. But today, digital software stores have grown into a $25,000,000,000+ business worldwide across all platforms, yet the economies of scale have not benefited developers. In our analysis, stores are marking up their costs 300 percent to 400 percent. We simply aim to give developers a better deal."

The news has already made its way around social media, and several developers have chimed in with what they think about Epic's initiative

Philip Tibitoski, one of the creators of Octodad, said this on Twitter: "The @EpicGames store sounds excellent from a developer point of view. Excited to check it out when it launches and maybe put a game on it some day."

The game industry veteran Rami Ismail, co-founder of Vlambeer and creator of presskit (), chimed in with the following after having read the interview mentioned above: "BREAKING NEWS: I read an interview with @TimSweeneyEpic and I nodded along throughout the entire thing."

And Davey Wreden, the brain behind the ingenious Stanley Parable, tweeted this about the Epic Game Store announcement:"Incredible that valve announces beneficial revenue share only for the most successful games the same week that Epic announces an even BETTER revenue share for literally everyone. It's making Epic look like a saint."

Executive chairman and former CEO of Paradox Interactive, Fredrik Wester, had this to say on Twitter: "Interesting. Epic definitely have the player base to make an impact in the market."

This move is sure to shake things up, as Steam recently altered their revenue share model and others are likely to follow. With the weight of Fortnite and the fact that developers will most likely push players to buy their game on Epic Games Store in the future the PC gaming landscape could be about to change dramatically.

Would you be more inclined to buy your game on a store that sends more of the revenue through to the developer and/or publisher of a game?