It had been a while since a new online game store had made so much noise. Announced on December 4th on Unreal Engine's blog, the Epic Games Store had already made a bit of noise in the gaming community, but it's two days later at The Game Awards that Epic Games, mainly known for having created Fortnite and the Unreal Engine, surprised everybody by officially releasing the Epic Games Store. What Epic Games is looking to offer with this new platform is a better experience for developers and gamers thanks to its numerous unique qualities. This post will go over them in depth, other online stores, and more particularly Steam, better be prepared because Epic Games is ready for war !
An enticing cut
Whereas Steam, GOG.com and Humble Bundle all take a cut of 20 to 30% on game sales, Epic Games only takes 12%. This massive difference may very well push publishers and developers to only sell their games on the Epic Games Store. Only two platforms are currently competing with Epic Games on the cut they take: itch.io and Discord. Itch.io's case is interesting because they have been taking a default cut of 10% for a very long time and even allow publishers to change that cut, going as far as making it possible to set it to 0% for the platform. As for Discord, they used to take 30% but very recently announced that they will only take 10% from now on and try to lower that cut even more in the future. The 12% cut offered by Epic Games may not be the best cut on the market but it is still enough to ridicule Steam's recent announcement, in which they were proud to announce a cut of 20% to 25% instead of 30% for games selling extremely well. It would seem that Steam is the direct competitor of the Epic Games Store since the other stores all have something that makes them unique. GOG.com sells DRM-free games, Humble Bundle gives 10% of the revenue to charity and itch.io focuses on indie games. Epic Games doesn't stop there though since they have an interesting offer for developers using Unreal Engine, their game engine. Indeed, for those of you who don't know, Unreal Engine is free to use but takes a 5% cut on the sales of games that use it. This cut simply doesn't exist on the Epic Games Store, which will undeniably encourage a lot of developers to make the switch from Steam to Epic Games.
Did someone say free games ?
Most Steam users are already familiar with the somewhat regular free weekends available on the platform. Those consist of a 2 to 3 days period during which everyone can freely download the games of the weekend and play them, those games are then removed from players' libraries if they haven't decided to buy them. Epic Games decided to do something similar to Steam but with two big twists. Whereas Steam's free periods only last a weekend and aren't always regular, the Epic Games Store's free periods last two weeks and keep coming every two weeks, this means that you can always expect a game to be free on this store. The biggest difference though is that, contrary to Steam, Epic Games allows you to keep your games once added to your library for free. This is made possible by Epic Games covering the costs of the given copies, those are basically directly bought from the developers and given away for free. A specific budget may be in place to avoid paying too much on the given games, which would result in a limited amount of copies, but Epic Games haven't mentioned anything of that sort in their FAQ. We will have to wait and see how things go with the first free game, Subnautica, which is available for one more week, the next game being Super Meat Boy.
A positive evolution for the Support-A-Creator program
If you are a content creator or have already bought Fortnite skins, chances are you already know what the Support-A-Creator program is. This program used to let you pick the creator of your choice to whom 5% of the revenue generated by your Fortnite purchases would go, it now applies to all the games available on the Epic Games Store. This program can be switched off by game publishers if they so choose, they can also set a different percentage to the default 5% one. For the two next years, Epic Games will cover the first 5% of the cut taken by the Support-A-Creator program so you can expect to see it switched on for all the games sold on the Epic Games Store. After that, it will be interesting to see what publishers decide to do with that feature since switching it off may be detrimental to their reputation.
A store full of exclusive games
Exclusivity in gaming is a sensitive topic, it comes with its advantages but also has lots of disadvantages for consumers. Judging by the games available on the Epic Games Store, Epic Games seems to like exclusivity a lot. The store already contains many games that are, just like for the Origin store, only available there and on consoles. Most of those games are only temporary exclusives but some seem to be pure exclusives based on their developers words on the matter. It's the case of Satisfactory (confirmed in the video below) which recently closed its Steam page to comit entirely to the Epic Games Store. It also is the case of Journey (confirmed) which had been critically acclaimed following its release on the PlayStation 3 and surprised many gamers by appearing on the Epic Games Store trailer. The other exclusivities currently on sale on the platform are Ashen (confirmed), Super Meat Boy Forever (confirmed), Outer Wilds (confirmed), Hades (confirmed), Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek (confirmed), Maneater (confirmed), Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (confirmed), World War Z (confirmed) and Genesis Alpha One (confirmed). Epic Games currently outshines Steam with its exclusives, its competitor only having Valve games and shovel wares as exclusives.
Some big missteps
It's not all roses though. The Epic Games Store is really barebone and far from being as good as Steam. No basket, no search bar, no wishlist, no filters, no buyable gifts, no game keys... only the possibility to buy games one by one ! Let's keep in mind though that this store is brand new and that the basic features it lacks will probably be released in the coming months when it won't be possible anymore to put all the available games on the store's front page.
Something that's more worrying though is that there isn't any support for Linux currently, only a vague announce that other open platforms will be supported later. Not supporting Linux out of the box is a weird choice considering their biggest competitor, Steam, is really open to this operating system and even recently made it possible for Linux users to play any Windows game on their system through Steam Play.
Conclusion
With all those efforts, will Epic Games manage to beat the unbeatable Steam ? It's hard to say, especially with so many gamers already having most of their games on Steam. Although, I can definitely see it becoming a reality if they play their cards right. The competition this platform brings can only be good for the market anyway. Let's not forget that Epic Games aren't afraid to change the game. They had already made a lot of noise more than a year ago by forcing Android gamers to download Fortnite on their website instead of Google Play, making them avoid Google's 30% cut on in-app purchases and proving that it was possible to release successful Android games without the help of Google Play. Does it ring any bell ?
