Epic Games Store is gaining momentum with developers and publishers but losing with the community. Thanks to Epic strong arming players into buying certain games from its platform alone, the backlash is popping its head and it may get worse for Epic Games.
The main attraction of Epic Games Store is the 12% revenue it takes from publishers and developers, much lower than Steam. However, it may change in the near future when Epic’s service grows. Tim Sweeney, in a Tweet, indicated that sustaining the store at 12% revenue split may not be possible, at least not in every region.
Epic Games is using a low revenue share policy to attract publishers to its storefront. The attraction may not last for very long though. But this doesn’t Epic Games won’t come with an alternative method to keep the storefront running on 12%. The main reason why Epic is able to do this is the lack of features its storefront has.
There are many basic features missing from Epic’s online service including user reviews and cloud saves. This allows Epic’s minimum viable product to run at 12% revenue cut. While Valve takes 30% of the game sales revenue, it uses the money to invest in services provided to the user base. Here’s a list of features Epic Store doesn’t yet have.
- Account Sharing
- Achievements
- Chi-Com Spying
- Cloud Saves
- Forums
- Gifting
- Groups
- Item Trading
- Library Sorting
- Linux and MacOS Support
- Mod Distribution
- Offline Play
- Player Count Data
- Regional Pricing
- Screenshots Capture and Share
- Streaming to Other Devices
- User Created Guides
- User Profiles
- User Reviews
- Wish List
All of these features that are missing from Epic Games Store are available on Valve’s Steam platform. Epic is using paid exclusives like The Division 2 and Metro Exodus to limit the player’s buying options.
Rather than forcing players to buy their favorite games from its platform, Epic should explain to players why it should use its platform over Valve’s Steam Store. Allow players to choose for themselves.
If the company provides a better service than Steam players would definitely come to play.
