For years Valve’s Steam digital marketplace was the go-to place for PC games. There are competitors out there, but for the most part, if you wanted a PC game, then you typically gravitate toward Steam. It’s a solid marketplace, and again for years, there wasn’t much of a strong competitor for Valve. That changed when Epic Games Store popped up. With some funding to back up certain strategies, there is now a strong competitor to sway some players to seek game purchases from their marketplace over Steam.
One of the popular means of securing consumers onto the Epic Games Store was the free weekly video game offers. Each week Epic Games Store provided players with free games to claim forever. Players would receive anything from AAA hits to small indie titles that suddenly gained massive attention. While this brought players over willingly, another move might have been a bit unpopular with some gamers. Previously Epic Games Store was able to secure several exclusive deals, which prompted players to use their digital client to enjoy some of the more anticipated games.
That seemed to have dwindled down a bit, but now we’re finding out that this strategy is not going anywhere for Epic Games. Recently, PC Gamer managed to speak with CEO Tim Sweeny and Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison. During their conversation, the company is still seeking exclusive deals for the Epic Games Store, but they are only focusing on big game releases right now. It seems that the company found some momentum from newcomers to the Epic Games Store when there was a new major release coming exclusively for the digital marketplace. Meanwhile, the smaller releases tended not to sway players to move from the Steam marketplace.
So if it doesn’t look like there are too many Epic Games Store exclusives being unveiled, it’s not because the company is dropping this strategy. Instead, you’ll have to keep an eye out for some of the larger games coming into the marketplace, as deals could be made to keep these games from appearing on competitor platforms like Steam for a considerable amount of time. Although, we might see some games head to Epic Games Store without a deal simply because of the better revenue cut that Epic Games Store offers compared to Valve’s Steam marketplace.