There are plenty of different digital storefronts available for PC games. Several of your favorite games are readily available, but most might prefer Steam. Valve’s Steam digital marketplace has been around for years, and it’s packed with quite a few features. So, having something that’s been available for a long time, along with likely quite a packed library of games, might not persuade you to try other competitor platforms. However, Epic Games Store has been making some big moves.
It’s been a push to bring a competitive alternative to the Valve Steam digital marketplace for the folks over at Epic Games. They have used a few means to persuade consumers and developers onto their platform. For instance, they strive to have the best revenue split, with 88% going to developers while 12% is kicked back to Epic Games. Meanwhile, for consumers, it’s provided players with free weekly video games. Each week, a new free video game title or two is available for players to acquire. Best of all, it’s theirs to keep forever, and these games can range from small indie hits to past AAA releases.
However, a new move was made by the Epic Games team that looks to ramp up the amount of exclusive video game titles available in their digital marketplace. Today, we are learning about the Epic First Run program. This program was made to persuade developers to release their games exclusively on their digital marketplace by giving them 100% of the profits made. That’s a massive deal, and it would be interesting to see how many developers take up with this new deal.
With Epic’s First Run program, developers would get 100% of the profits made from each sale. This would last for a total of six months of the game being made available on the Epic Games Store. From there, you would see the return to Epic Games’ standard revenue split, which we mentioned earlier in the article. Furthermore, this new program would also allow the games to be sold through the developer’s own first-party launcher.
According to the Epic Games Store post, it looks like all games are eligible as long as they are launching on or after October 16, 2023. Furthermore, these games can not be available on another third-party PC store or in an included subscription service. Furthermore, games or applications with pre-existing exclusivity deals with the Epic Games Store are not eligible for the program.
