Epic Games are once again trying to entice more game developers to not only ship same-day on the Epic Games Store, but to use Unreal Engine too.
Announced during Unreal Fest Seattle 2024 is the new "Launch Everywhere with Epic" program. A deal for game developers and publishers that use Unreal Engine, to get a reduced royalty cut from 5% to 3.5%. This reduced cut will apply to all platforms and all stores (including Steam and consoles), as long as they ship their games at least same-day on the Epic Games Store. This new royalty model will begin January 1st, 2025.
This is on top of previous exclusive deals like Epic First Run, that can give developers 100% of the revenue for 6 months before going back to their standard 88%/12% split.
No doubt something that will entice more developers to get their games shipped on the Epic Store, and likely Unreal Engine too since the royalty fee is quite low. It's also another way for them to get more developers to release on their new mobile stores too, since developers also get 100% of net revenue if they use their own in-app payment solution (or 88% using Epic's).
The Epic Games Store still has no official Linux desktop or Steam Deck support, so you'll need community-built software like Heroic Games and Lutris to work with it.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Desperate.
I'm not about to mess with running the Epic store stuff through an unsupported setup - no shade at the Lutris, Heroic, etc. teams, but you shouldn't *have* to do this. Steam is right there and honestly works nigh-flawlessly these days. I can even run VR now! Quite literally never bothered setting up a Windows install to dual boot with with this new PC build, it's been months and I haven't missed it one bit.
I'll echo the sentiment here though: good news for publishers, but they're doing *nothing* for consumers, so why should we care?
Quoting: EhvisSo basically Epic is still trying to please the publishers instead of the customers while the latter is the only potential source of income.
They've been this way from the start and it's taken them nowhere so far.
Schattenspiegel Oct 1
Cool, never noticed. Once I played through the 450 or so Windows only titles they gave me for free, that I did not have time to touch, yet, I might give it a try. Do they offer proton integration, controller remapping and native Linux support for the games they actually sell like other stores do?
Linux_Rocks Oct 1
Epic should have come up with something like the Steam Deck or something new in 2018 to attack Valve. But instead they just deliver a much worse service at the same price. Now already in its 6th year. How is that supposed to work? They will have to subsidize the EGS forever. From my humble point of view (I'm not a businessman), it just doesn't make sense.
Last edited by finaldest on 1 October 2024 at 9:51 pm UTC
Quoting: finaldestNever ever have I visited the Epic games store and never ever will. I resented them when they took away Rocket league but when they started blackmailing publishers to rip games away from steam store foe exclusivity I vowed to never, ever touch that tripe of a company for as long as they are doing business.Now now, let's not be silly about it. Using words like blackmail like this does nothing to help, because it's completely absurd. They offered exclusive deals for developers, and for a lot of developers that can mean keeping the lights on. If you're offered guaranteed money, you take it.
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