Epic Games have announced their new Epic First Run program, to entice more developers to release on their store exclusively and give developers a boost. With this we can expect to see many more developers opt to go Epic exclusive.
The Epic First Run program will give developers 100% of the revenue, so Epic Games will not take a cut from sales on the Epic Games Store for the first 6 exclusive months. It's opt-in for developers and does not prevent them from selling it directly and selling it using keys via the likes of Green Man Gaming, Humble Store and other stores that sell keys. Naturally, this rules out Steam and GOG, which is largely the point of it to get more people to shop on the Epic Store and not Steam.
After the 6 month exclusive period is up, developers can then release elsewhere and the revenue split goes back to 88% for developers and 12% to Epic Games.
Epic also mention that they now have over 68 million monthly active users with over 230 million players. To help get word out, developers who opt into the Epic First Run program will get "new exclusive badging, homepage placements, and dedicated collections" along with features in "elevant store campaigns including sales, events, and editorial as applicable".
See Epic's announcement here.
What do you think to this news?
On Linux and Steam Deck, you can use the likes of the Heroic Games Launcher to really simplify getting games from Epic since they still do not officially support either with the Epic Store.
In related news Denuvo are rolling out some special protection for Unreal Engine games.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
On the other hand I hope that Epic is working on improvements on their systems. The level of comfort steam provides is hard to beat.
The exclusivity is also bad thing, but good move to give more to devs for some time. I wonder if the exclusivity is for 6 months or more.
Mohandevir Aug 23, 2023
Last edited by Mohandevir on 23 August 2023 at 3:14 pm UTC
Linux_Rocks Aug 23, 2023
There's plenty of criticism to be had at Epic Games, but (to be blunt) the stupid rednecks and their fake criticisms of them are worse.
Last edited by Linux_Rocks on 23 August 2023 at 3:26 pm UTC
Quoting: ZlopezI don't like Epic for how they view Linux and give no support (actually they do opposite). So I will not support them till they change this behavior (I already have plenty of games from GOG or Steam and not enough time to play them).
The exclusivity is also bad thing, but good move to give more to devs for some time. I wonder if the exclusivity is for 6 months or more.
Indeed, how can we put competition and exclusivity in the same sentence?
What are you competing with a monopoly even for a limited time?
Epic will never see a cent from me, what exactly are they bringing to the table except frustration and bad software?
* For Epic? Sure they have run the numbers and they would not be doing it if it wasn't.
* For the users? I don't think so. Exclusivity is never good for users. In this case they might be forcing you to play in a platform you do not like.
* For the devs? Looks like it is. They get every buck of the game for the first 6 months, that for many many games is when most of the sales are, and then you can release the game on other platforms, so if anyone didn't buy it on Epic, they can buy it anywhere else. But will it work like this? In these 6 months you are restricting the reach to a much lower audience. And I don't know how many of them are, but some users will not get the game on the Epic store even if you give it for free (yes, I know because I am one of them). Will these people buy the game 6 months after release on other stores like Steam? Maybe, but maybe not: the exclusivity can cause rejection for the title on some users, or maybe 6 months after release, your game is not the next big thing anymore.
So, I'm not that sure anyone other than Epic will benefit that much from this. Consider that the usual way to get 6 month exclusives before was paying big bucks upfront... to me this does not look like a better deal for devs.
Last edited by doragasu on 23 August 2023 at 4:44 pm UTC
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