Fortnite Dev Launches Epic Games Store That Takes Just 12% of Revenue (venturebeat.com)

The 30/70 revenue-sharing split that turned into something of an industry standard is on the ropes. From a report: Epic Games, the developer responsible for the Fortnite phenomenon, is launching its own game store. And like with its asset store for developers, Epic is planning to take a 12-percent cut of revenues. This will leave 88 percent for the people who actually make the games. "As a developer ourselves, we have always wanted a platform with great economics that connects us directly with our players," Sweeney explained in a statement. "Thanks to the success of Fortnite, we now have this and are ready to share it with other developers."

Comments

Well shit

[DarkRookie2]

This better not become a thing.
The gaming industry is getting a bad as the movie industry. Each own company want to launch their own client. With shitty interfaces.
Steam is tolerable because of the details view.

Re:Well shit

[cascadingstylesheet]

Capitalism in a nutshell. If you want competition you have to accept egregious amounts of redundancy.

Redundancy which, frustrating though this may be to some, makes things better, not worse.

See Soviet era stores vs. American stores of the same era.

Re:Well shit

[Luckyo]

It would be great if this becomes even more of a thing. Competition drives prices down and cracks down on oppressive policies of the monopolist, such as steam's recent moral panic issues that had it ban and unban developers with ebb and flow of pressure.

Re:Well shit

[grumbel]

This will continue to get worse until we get transferable licenses. The music industry has it figured out more or less and many music services allow you to import your existing library. For games this only exists in very limited cases (e.g. GOG allows import of a limited number of games from Steam).

Re:Well shit

[eth1]

This better not become a thing.

The gaming industry is getting a bad as the movie industry. Each own company want to launch their own client. With shitty interfaces.

It's nowhere near as bad... e.g. Steam (and I assume this new Epic store) doesn't try to charge you a monthly fee for the privilege of shopping there, so there's no problem with having several different channels to buy things.

Re:Well shit

[tlhIngan]

It already is a thing. Stardew Valley just announced that they will be starting their own launcher and leaving steam, and that is a 'small' developer. Its apparent the costs of running a storefront have dropped to the point where any dev with decent sales can pop one up. Elite Dangerous has been doing it for a while, and we saw Bethesda put Fallout 76 only on its store.

You could always run your own storefront. Just it usually involves having to hire people to maintain it, people to secure it, etc.

Payment processing is quite easy if you use something like Amazon, Google or Paypal as your backend.

The problem is the ongoing expense of securing the site - after all, you're only one data breech away from spilling your customer table.

It's usually the latter aspect that you run into a hosted service like Steam, App Stores or even services like Shopify and Big Cartel. Instead of paying to maintain and update the software stack, you just maintain the product list and those stores handle all the billing and taxes and other details

And yes, sometimes it's actually better to leave it to the pros like Big Cartel and Shopify - let them handle the mess of user IDs and passwords, payments, etc instead of having to harden your systems and worry about data breeches.

Re:Oh joy

[Actually, I do RTFA]

This one only charge 12% for third-party developers. The others charge 30%. This is a huge motion. I only hope Steam, Apple, etc. follow them down to 12%, and Epic doesn't drift up to 30% after they get some market share.

Re:Fortnite limited scope

[darkain]

It isn't just Fortnite. This is Epic Games, who creates the Unreal engine, one of the most popular game engines in the entire industry (and thus the engine's market place as well). They also make the Unreal series of games and Gears series of games. They have a long history in the industry, not just Fortnite. I think ~20 year success is enough establishment to take them seriously on what they know and what they do.

GOG is a little different

[RoloDMonkey]

GOG Galaxy is entirely optional. Their core business model has always been games that are DRM free. You can download the games directly from the website and install them on as many devices as you want. The Galaxy "app" is just a convenience for most people.

Re:Oh joy

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Well, I'm a little scared of them using the store to force the UE4 engine down people's throat. If big enough, it'd be a clever way to get 5% of Steam, etc. sales too.