As if the console wars weren’t enough of a headache already, big publishers on the PC are now ramping up what looks like an upcoming digital store war. Epic from Fortnite fame has just launched their own digital games store on PC. The Epic Store not only promises higher profit margins for game companies but also aims to offer several high-profile games exclusive to their store.
Steam is no doubt the biggest player on the market when it comes to digital game stores on the PC. It’s understandable since the company behind it, Valve, was the first with the foresight and anticipated digital supremacy way back in the early 2000s. After a huge backlash when their then highly-anticipated Half-Life 2 would be exclusively available through Steam, PC players quickly accepted the digital platform.
Fast-forward more than a decade and today only a few select juggernaut IPs can afford not to release their games on Steam. Many other big publishers have tried their hands at creating their own digital store, EA has Origin, Ubisoft has Uplay but for the most part these stores’ allure were the publishers own exclusives there. Like the Battlefield games on Origin.
It looks very much like after more than a decade of Steam’s undisputed dominance, a new player has entered the ring, and this time things could go different. None other than Epic, the company behind the most popular game at the moment, Fortnite, has announced and launched their own digital store this week on the PC.
Uniquely to Origin, Uplay and co., the Epic Store is acting more like we are used from platform holders on consoles however. The aggressiveness of Epic leaves little doubt that the company is taking on Steam head on. In a surprise move, Epic announced that third-party publishers who release their games on the Epic Store will only need to give 12% of their games revenue to Epic. The common platform tax across consoles and digital storefronts like Steam is a whopping 30%. No doubt a strategic move to quickly bolster the Epic Store’s lineup.
Epic isn’t done here however. Starting next Friday with Subnautica, users on the Epic Store will receive a free game every two weeks. A bold tactic to get the user counts up. Another, more crass move, the company also managed to secure several third-party exclusives to their digital store. Namely, Ashen, Hades, Satisfactory and Journey. The last doesn’t really need an introduction as it still is one of the most-beloved indie games on the PS3 and PS4. For the first time, PC players will get the chance to experience Journey, exclusively on the Epic Store.
Ashen on the other hand is a more controversial matter. As a game which has been announced for several years as being multi-platform on the Xbox One and Steam, Epic snagged the title and it’s only available on the Epic Store for now.
Similarly, Hades, from the creators of Bastion and Transistor will come out first on the Epic Store. The first-person factory-builder Satisfactory entirely scrapped their plans for a Steam release.
As is noticeable, most of these Epic Store exclusives are timed exclusives which means that after a period of time, the games will be available on Steam. Will these kinds of practices help the Epic Store become a worthwhile competitor is left to be seen. What’s already clear however, Steam has gotten its first true competitor in a long while.
