Epic Games Store Announced

Launching as a competitor to Steam, Epic Games announced to start their own digital storefront Epic Games Store.

Whether you have been indulged into the Battle Royale mania with free-to-play title Fortnite or not you probably must have heard of developer/publisher Epic Games. Amassing a staggering number of 125 million worldwide in less than a year, they have scored big time!

After winning over the gaming world with a phenomenon game lately, Epic Games is currently focusing on a major online game distribution platform of their own, which would be a competitor to Steam, a prominent digital storefront of Valve Corporation.

epic games store launch
Epic Games Store Announced

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This is not something that Epic has jump on board with and in fact, they have been developing launcher for their own game compatible for Mac and PC that supports a digital commerce worldwide by handling several different payment methods.

So, to get into a direct relationship with players and help all developers, Epic Games Store will be launched soon. Though their initial plan only includes platforms like Mac and PC, there are plans for expanding to Android and other open platforms for a broader reach by 2019.

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Epic will open up with a hand full of curated games and then will expand their collection as they progress. People can either purchase the game from the store or just access it with Epic Games launcher but everything else will be handled through the application.

Current Fortnite players are already considered as users of their launcher and Epic Games decided to make their game exclusively available to their digital store. This is a practice that would be continued for the foreseeable future.

epic games store revenue infographic
Epic Games Store Revenue Split

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The biggest perk of the platform is that it offers a more flattering revenue split with developers than Steam or any other. Moving aside from the standard 70/30 revenue split, Epic Games Store is considering giving developers 88 percent of the revenue for the games.

It that is not sounding crazy enough, developers won't have to pay up the 5 percent engine royalty for using Unreal Engine to create the game. Epic will cover for that 5% of extra charge from their small margin on a total of 12%.

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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney believes that business for digital storefronts have grown quite exponentially over the decade but the economies revolving around it has not benefited the developers much for years; especially indie developers.

Aside from that, Epic also launched Support-A-Creator program recently that will hook up content creators from YouTube, streamers on Twitch, video game Bloggers and such with developers to help them share revenue for affiliate marketing. That's so EPIC!

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Consumers of the store will be handed out at least one free game after every two weeks throughout 2019 and they will cover the fees of those releases on behalf of the developers, so they don't miss out or lose money over this.

Epic Games can easily become a digital distribution platform giant in no time if they stay true to their plan of incentives and promises to share more details about their plans regarding the store this Thursday, on December 6 at The Game Awards 2018.
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