"Fortnite's" success surpassing even the original franchise responsible for putting Epic Games on the map is surely an amazing feat that would be the envy of any other video game development studio or publisher. But it seems that Epic Games is not content just setting its sights on developing their franchises or keeping one of the most popular video game engines they have developed as their bread and butter.
According to PC Gamer, Epic Games is taking a cue from Valve - best known for being the studio behind the "Half-Life" series - and have decided to put up their own online game distribution platform similar to Valve's Steam platform. Epic Games promises to provide budding video game developers a more amenable revenue share arrangement compared to its eventual direct competitor.
The publication notes that Epic Games promises a 12 percent revenue share rate for any developers that plan to publish on their platform. The amenable revenue share numbers that Epic Games is considering comes at a time when smaller development studios are facing challenging times with Steam's recent changes to their own revenue share models.
In an interview with Game Informer, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney answers most of the questions about how the game development company plans to position its new online store in the market. Sweeney mentions that prospective customers can look forward to the Epic Games store to be accessible through both a web browser and the current Epic Games Launcher.
In addition, Sweeney emphasizes that the Epic Games online store will work with the Support-a-Creator program. The Epic Games founder emphasizes the importance of content creators in helping market the soon-to-be-available games on the online store and have already smoothened out a plan to provide Content Creators a share of revenue per attributable sale.
Regarding the Epic Games online store's selection, PC Gamer notes that the company is not requiring developers to use the Unreal Engine developed by Epic Games for any games they wish to publish in the store. In addition, Epic Games is ready to waive the license charge for any games developer who wants to publish through the online store that uses the Unreal Engine for their product.
As PC Gamer notes, any interested game developer or Epic Games fan will know more about the game development studio's plans for an online store when they officially announce the details during the upcoming Game Awards. With Epic Game's developer-friendly stance, the gaming community will have to wait and see if the players will follow their favorite non-triple A developers when they eventually make the move to the new online store.
