The makers of Fortnite, Unreal Tournament and the Unreal Engine have announced the launch of the Epic Games Store, a marketplace designed to compete with Valve that offers a fairer revenue share to creators and developers.
The Epic Games Store will feature a mix of Unity and Unreal Engine-based games, with developers offered 88% of revenue (sans any licensing fees taken out by Unity).
Announcing the Epic Games store for PC and Mac! We’re bringing developers an 88% revenue share and a direct relationship with players and creators.https://t.co/QbQKKHFiMA pic.twitter.com/9wN1j7BEzN
— Epic Games (@EpicGames) December 4, 2018
With Steam traditionally taking a 30% cut of revenue (which narrows down as games earn more than $US10 and $US50 million in revenue), it’s an obvious pitch.
Epic notes in a blog post that the store will launch with “a hand-curated set of games on PC and Mac”. More games will be added to the store next year, launching on Android and “other open platforms” as well.
The store will also have an affiliate marketing play, with Epic’s Support-A-Creator program being directly integrated into the new Epic Games Store:
If you opt to participate, creators who refer players to buy your game will receive a share of the revenue that you set (tracked by code or affiliate marketing link). To jumpstart the creator economy, Epic will cover the first 5% of creator revenue-sharing for the first 24 months.
Epic’s blog post says that more upcoming titles for the marketplace will be revealed at The Game Awards later this week.
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