Epic Games are trying to pull over more developer to the Epic Games Store, with the launch of two new incentives with the previously announced First Run and the newly announced Now On Epic deals for developers.
The First Run program was announced back in August, which is where developers can launch on the Epic Store as an exclusive for 6 months and get a 100% revenue share instead of their usual 88%/12% split, which it reverts to after the 6 months are up. Developers can still sell directly and use third-party key stores, so this is clearly aimed at getting developers away from the likes of Steam.
Newly announced today though is the Now On Epic deal, where Epic want developers to bring their older games to the Epic Games Store. Similar deal here, with Epic offering six months of 100% revenue and after that it drops back to the 88%/12% split. Developers can opt in on this if their game launched elsewhere before October 31, 2023.
Full announcement here.
You can use the Heroic Games Launcher or Lutris for easy installs from the Epic Store, since Epic Games don't support Linux or Steam Deck officially in any way with their own store.
Also, while we have you here, you can currently get both Blazing Sails and Q.U.B.E. ULTIMATE BUNDLE free until October 19th.
ICYMI: Epic Games also announced in September they let go over 800 people.
I know, because they were losing a lot of money. Yet they continue to use exclusivity deals (That cost them money) to get games on their store, so if they continue at the same rate, it will be back in the news at some point...I couldn't help but remember Order of the Stick's Episode 135 "Potionomics"
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0135.html
I've only read it once years ago yet I vividly remembered it and found the correct episode in seconds... i guess one story matches the other quite closely, lol
Last edited by Marlock on 16 October 2023 at 10:50 pm UTC
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I know, because they were losing a lot of money. Yet they continue to use exclusivity deals (That cost them money) to get games on their store, so if they continue at the same rate, it will be back in the news at some point...
I suspect that we will see less of the "old-style" exclusivity deals, where epic gives a bag of money for exclusivity. In that case this new deal could be a cost-cutting measure compared to the old situation.
Of course, that still doesn't solve the problem of epic somehow managing to forget that they need to retain all those grumbling customers.
Last edited by emphy on 17 October 2023 at 4:42 am UTC
I work at a company that has done layoffs before, and the work objectives and the people + time resources no longer match up for a while. The company has to do less. Simple as that.
They don't need to attract devs, they need to attract players. If better devs conditions doesn't translate in to better conditions for costumers, like cheaper games, why should I care about a half cooked launcher?The only game I bought on the Epic Store was Mechwarrior 5... then I refunded it after about 10m, and decided I had enough games, I'd just wait until it was out on Steam. I'm already tired of having two main places (GOG / Steam) for my digital library of games to be.
Besides, with all the games I currently own on Steam / Gog, with even a lot of the the old 'I'll beat this eventually' ones on my list, and the fact that I realize it's usually funner trying to get the game to run in Linux than it is playing most of them... I never saw a reason to really use the epic game launcher.
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