epic
Epic has made it easy for small developers and individuals to get their titles on the Epic Games Store. The company’s self-promotional tool, which is out of the blue closed Thursday, will allow any developer to submit their game to the Epic platform for a fee of $100 per game.
Since launching in late 2018 with a small but fruitful selection of games, the Epic Games Store has slowly expanded to include nearly 2,000 titles. But those games were chosen by Epic to include based on a “high level of quality,” Epic’s Tim Sweeney told Ars in 2019, which led to a publicity stunt for a number of “how to publish to the Epic Games Store” guides.
“We wouldn’t be from that kind of place [that accepts everything] Because we don’t think we can help these games reach users,” Sweeney told Ars in 2019. So it will be quality driven.”
However, Epic has been heading towards a more open store for some time, launching self-publishing as a limited closed beta in mid-2021 and barely aiming in 2022 to open the system up for everyone.
Here they all come
The expansion of self-publishing today is likely to result in a plethora of new titles appearing on the Epic Games Store, just as Steam’s 2017 launch of “Steam Direct” publishing has resulted in an exponential increase in the number of annual releases on that platform. It would also allow more developers to take advantage of Epic’s massive 12 percent cut in sales revenue, versus Steam’s standard 30 percent.
The Epic Games Store allows developers to use third-party or developer-controlled payment tools for in-app purchases, allowing those publishers to “receive 100 percent of the revenue” from such purchases, if they choose. This is in line with the position Epic has taken in its long-running battle with Apple over allowing such third-party payments on iOS. Epic will also pay for free age-rating services for EGS games through the International Age Ratings Consortium and provide free translation of game description pages on its storefront.
But while Steam says it allows everything but illegal content and phishing on its store (at least it seems), Epic sets out some basic content requirements for games it wants to include on EGS. The platform will ban games rated for adults only, as well as those with “hateful or discriminatory content; pornographic materials; illegal content; [or] Content that infringes intellectual property rights that you do not own or have rights to use.”
Titles that include “scams, scams, or deceptive practices, such as fake games or malware” are also not allowed on the Epic Games Store. EGS toys must meet a minimum “quality and functionality” that matches all descriptions on the store page.
Other requirements to register with the EGS include:
- PC Cross (for multiplayer games): Allows players to communicate with others “regardless of where the game was purchased”
- Epic Games Store Achievements: Must be available “if the game has achievements on other PC stores”
- Game Ratings: Optional in many regions (and provided “at no cost to you” by Epic themselves) but required if you’re distributor in Australia, Brazil, Russia, or South Korea
Elsewhere, in its recently published 2022 “Review of the Year,” Epic revealed that it provided more than 700 million free copies of 99 different games to more than 230 million customers last year. The free-to-play program will run through 2023, which shows that Epic is willing to keep throwing money at the platform in an effort to carve out more market share from Steam.
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