Through the first eighteen months of this program, Epic had given out over two thousand dollars of games, as estimated by PCGamesN. Epic since affirmed that they planned to continue the free game program through 2021. Įpic planned to offer one free game every two weeks through 2019 this was increased to one free game every week in June 2019, and on weeks where the free game had a mature content rating and thus locked out if parental controls are enabled, Epic offered a second free game not so rated. By Epic's calculations, the storefront's commission was sufficient to be profitable. After paying for content delivery and other services, Epic's profit is about 5% of gross revenue, though, with economies of scale, this could increase to 6–7%. For other developers, Epic takes a 12% share of revenue, the rest going to the developer, and for any games developed using the Unreal Engine, Epic forgoes the 5% revenue-based fee for those games sold through their storefront. Both web and application allow players to purchase games, while through the launcher the player can install and keep their games up to date.Įpic's newer games will be exclusively available through its store and the company plans to fund developers to release exclusively through their store, using revenue guarantees to developers that opt for this, with Epic paying the difference should a game underperform. The Epic Games Store is a storefront for games available via the web and built into Epic Games' launcher application. Criticism from users has been drawn to Epic Games and those developers and publishers opting for exclusivity deals, asserting that these are segmenting the market. Epic also offered users one or two free games each week for the first five years of its operation to help draw users. By launch, Epic Games had settled on a 12% revenue cut for titles published through the store, as well as dropping the licensing fees for games built on their Unreal Engine, normally 5% of the revenue.Įpic Games enticed developers and publishers to the service by offering them time-exclusivity agreements to publish on the storefront, in exchange for guaranteed minimum revenue. Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, stated in August 2017 that the revenue cut of Steam, the dominant game storefront from Valve, was unreasonably high at 30%, and suggested that they could run a profitable store with as little as an 8% cut. Epic Games has further plans to expand the feature set of the storefront but it does not plan to add as many features as other digital distribution platforms, such as discussion boards or user reviews, instead using existing social media platforms to support these.Įpic began offering digital distribution for game publishers after the success of Fortnite, released in 2017, which Epic distributed using their own software channels to players on Windows and macOS systems. The service provides digital rights management (DRM), friends list management, game matchmaking, and other features. It launched in December 2018 as a software client, for Microsoft Windows and macOS, and online storefront. The Epic Games Store is a video game digital distribution service and storefront operated by Epic Games.
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