Epic Games Store takes aim at Steam with an 88:12 revenue split

[Ross1]

While I dislike the steam 'monopoly' the reason it sticks is down to the fact you don't need to buy from steam. The thriving third party key market is what works (For example Green Man Gaming or Humble bundle) so I don't see myself moving (I've stuck to Steam and GOG for a while now). Hopefully this will cause some of fortnight 'gamers' to leave steam however...

Not a fan of fortnight but that last sentence seems very unnecessary. You do however have a point about the 3rd party keys.

Ive always been curious though, about how the money is distributed for them. I assume for it to be a steam key, valve still demand a cut of the revenue. Is it still 30%? Is it 30% of a lesser amount, and then the key seller adds their fee "on top"?

Or do steam generate a whole bunch of keys for the dev at a flat rate, and the dev sells those keys on to humble/GMG/whoever for whatever they feel they can get, and then the keyseller sells it to us for whatever?

[mtyson]

The Epic Games Store is live if you want a browse.

[lyesbkz]

Plus they'll be giving away a free game through their platform every two weeks starting with Subnautica on the 14th, which has to be one of my favourite games

[Tabbykatze]

Plus they'll be giving away a free game through their platform every two weeks starting with Subnautica on the 14th, which has to be one of my favourite games

If the reason why you're want to move to a platform is because they're giving freebies which, in my eyes, is no different to ICOs for cryptocurrencies then why aren't you staying with Steam? They regularly give away free games.

There is nothing so far about this platform that seems better, objectively, than the thing they're trying to "kill".

[spacein_vader]

The way i see it there are two tiers of game publishers in this online store world.

The biggest AAA publishers will all soon (if they don't already,) have their own storefronts that will exclusively sell their future output. It gives them total control of supply, pricing and DRM. It's a no brainer to them even if it is consumer hostile.

The rest, everyone from one-man self publishers up to the mid tiers like paradox won't have the resources or funds to do this (in the case of the smaller ones,) or the marketing clout to make their store the only option (in case of paradox et al.)

These will continue to sell on other platforms as well. At the minute the biggest is Steam, but GOG and Humble are fairly big too and both Epic and Discord have an angle that might lead to rapid expansion.

For these it benefits the consumer as there is price competition.