But delivery is only half the deal, so is Epic offering financial incentives, above and beyond the superior revenue split, to games which move exclusively to the store?
“Yes, we’ve worked to ensure it’s genuinely worthwhile for developers to move to the Epic Games store,” Sweeney replies openly. That’s because Battle Pass has given the company one hell of a war chest, or as Sweeney puts it: “Fortnite’s success has given Epic significant latitude to help developers.”
And it’s helping developers that’s the driving thought behind the launch of the store. A goal that tallies well with the company’s engine business, and a rare example of developer-centric thinking, as opposed to the pure consumer-centric thinking of most publishers and platform holders in today’s games industry.
“We’re giving game developers and publishers the store business model that we’ve always wanted as developers ourselves,” says Sweeney.
That makes good business sense, as it’s with developers, on the supply side, that the opportunities lie to shake-up the status quo.
“It’s nearly perfect for consumers already… There is no hope of displacing a dominant storefront solely by adding marginally more store features or a marginally better install experience. These battles will be won on the basis of game supply, consumer prices, and developer revenue sharing,” Sweeney reckons.
Give developers a bigger share of the pie and they can be more profitable, invest more in their titles, cut prices for consumers, or all of the above.
Matthew Karch, CEO of Saber Interactive, developer of World War Z, recently made a public statement to this effect: “We chose the Epic Games Store because we believe it’s the best deal for players and developers… Building games is costly, and so to receive 88 per cent instead of 70 per cent means we can invest more into making World War Z,” he revealed as well as announcing a price drop from $40 to $35. “We are thrilled to be able to share the developer-friendly benefits of the Epic Games store with you all.”
It all sounds great, so now the store just needs to open its doors to more developers.
“The Epic Games Store team has been working with developers around the industry to identify prospective titles. In this early phase, we are starting with a small number of carefully selected games based on consistent quality across a wide variety of scopes. Throughout 2019, the store will open up more widely,” Sweeney tells us.
He goes on to explain that what we’re seeing presently is the “50-game version of the Epic Games Store” and that the “250-game version” will be “significantly evolved.” Not only will it integrate the social and matchmaking systems that the company has built for Fortnite but Epic is also thinking more radically. The store is also already looking to the future in one respect, forwarding creators and influencers as the answers to discovery problems.
“We believe the ultimate vector for players to discover new games will not be our storefront but creators, which is why Epic’s ‘Support a Creator’ program is integrated into store operations,” says Sweeney, adding: “Viewership of creator channels has greatly outgrown any storefront. In Korea and China, the primary game distribution vectors are social: WeChat, KakaoTalk and QQ, rather than storefronts. As with the twists in Fortnite’s evolution, one shouldn’t necessarily project the Steam or App Store paradigm onto its final form,” he cautions.