Epic, which is known for making the ever-popular Fortnite online game has today announced that it is launching its own Epic Games store on Mac and PC, soon.
The store, which will be competing not only against Valve’s Steam Store, but also Apple’s Mac App Store, will have a considerably higher 88% of revenue going to developers, versus 70% on both Steam and the Mac App Store.
As reported by TechCrunch, the new store is meant to be “a platform with great economics that connects us directly with our players,” Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney said in an email. Sweeney says Fortnite’s success is one of the main reasons it will be opening up its own digital store.
While the Mac App Store is still struggling to take off, Valve’s Steam Store has become the go-to place for purchasing and downloading games on both PC and Mac. Valve recently announced that it will take an App Store-esque approach, doing a 70/30 split for the initial $10 million made in revenue from developers, dropping to 25 percent until $50 million in revenue. Valve hopes to keep developers on its platform.
Valve’s formula obviously aims to have greater benefits for larger titles versus indie developers. Epic has a slight edge in that it is already working closely with many developers due to its Unreal Engine.
In many ways, Valve is in a similar situation as Apple, trying to get more developers on board to its Mac App Store. The company recently revamped the store in hopes that it can bring in more developers for not only games, but apps on macOS as well.
