Epic Games is launching their own digital game storefront

Epic Games, most well known for the incredibly popular Fortnite as well as the Unreal Tornament and Gears of War franchises, has revealed their plan to launch a digital storefront for video games. The storefront will rival other platforms such as Steam, Humble or GOG. What sets Epic’s launcher apart however is their unprecedented revenue split that seems very generous for developers.

The Epic Games storefront will adhere to a revenue split where 88% of all purchases go straight to the developer. Epic Games also owns the Unreal Engine which would typically cost developers 5% of their revenue to utilise. However, if they publish on Epic’s storefront, that 5% will be covered in the standard 88% split.  Considering most storefronts offer a mere 70% to the developer, this seems unbelievably good and should incentivise a lot of devs to jump on board.

In an interview with Game Informer, Epic founder, Tim Sweeney, answered a few additional questions. The Epic storefront will launch first for PC and MAC this year, but will expand to mobile platforms in 2019. The store will be accessible through the already existing Epic Games launcher with Epic’s own games remaining exclusive to this launcher. Tim also revealed that Epic plan to occasionally fund developers to release their games exclusively through their store and that features such as achievement support will arrive at a later date.

“As a developer ourselves, we have always wanted a platform with great economics that connects us directly with our players. Thanks to the success of Fortnite, we now have this and are ready to share it with other developers.”

Epic’s plan to host their own gaming storefront sounds fantastic at the moment, especially with a revenue split system that is so generous for developers. As for how feature complete the store will be on launch, only time will tell. But I’m personally excited to see if Epic can shake up the digital storefront space and make things better for developers.