Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney has revealed how the company is securing exclusive titles on the Epic Games Store.
According to Sweeney, the company is using a combination of “marketing commitments, development funding, or revenue guarantees” to make sure that exclusives land on the Epic Store. Replying to a thread on Reddit about the Epic Store being “anti-consumer”, the Epic CEO said that the store stimulates “healthy competition” and “innovation”.
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“It’s up to you guys to decide what’s anti-consumer, but our aim with the Epic Games store is to be very pro-competitive”, Sweeney wrote. “In other words, to compete as a store and encourage healthy competition between stores.”
He continued, “when lots of stores compete, the result is a combination of better prices for you, better deals for developers, and more investment in new content and innovation. These exclusives don’t come to stores for free; they’re a result of some combination of marketing commitments, development funding, or revenue guarantees. This all helps developers.”
In his reply, Sweeney then went on to point out the difference in revenue cut between Epic and other stores, including Valve’s Steam.
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“Multiple stores are necessary for the health of an ecosystem. When there’s only one, their natural tendency is to siphon off more and more of the revenue, which then go to monopoly profits rather than CREATORS!”
“All developers recognize this because their business are being crushed under the weight of these increasing store taxes. This is why devs have been super enthusiastic about the Epic store. For users, I get that it’s yet another launcher and if you have Steam installed you’d prefer to just use it. But if you want way better games to be built in the future, then please recognize what good this store can do. Steam takes 30% and Epic takes 12%. That’s an 18% difference, and most devs make WAY less than an 18% profit margin – so this can be the difference between being able to fund a new game and going bankrupt!”
Epic announced its game store earlier this month. “Soon we’ll launch the Epic Games store, and begin a long journey to advance the cause of all developers”, Epic said upon the store’s announcement. “The store will launch with a hand-curated set of games on PC and Mac, then it will open up more broadly to other games and to Android and other open platforms throughout 2019.”
