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Epic Store welcomes developers to publish video games independently

Future. Epic is helping indie game developers publish their games independently on the Epic Games Store, removing typically long wait times and helping overworked app store gatekeepers. Epic is providing a generous revenue share for developers who publish on its store, but that could decrease if Epic loses its battles with Apple and Google.

Expand the world
As of last week, Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, is allowing game developers to self-publish their creations in the Epic Games Store.

• The feature is still in closed-beta, but comes with tools for developers to oversee the entire process of publishing their games, including setting up product pages, achievements, pricing, offers, and uploading builds and updates.
• For multiplayer games, the titles need to be compatible with the PC versions that would typically be downloadable on Steam or Itch.io.

There is, of course, a logical catch: you can’t upload games that are discriminatory, pornographic, illegal, or stolen. Probably a good thing.

Currently, the Epic Games Store has 58 million monthly active users.

Toll discount
Epic is hoping that the new feature will draw more attention to its digital storefront, which has reportedly been slow to grow due to long publishing processes. As an added bonus, Epic’s revenue split is a better deal than its top competitor, Steam. Epic will take 12% of revenue, compared to Steam’s 30%.

Of course, another major factor is Epic’s highly-publicized battle with Apple and Google over their practice of boxing out third-party app stores and collecting 30% fees from in-app purchases. As those lawsuits play out, Epic may be hoping that the 12% revenue-share pays bigger dividends in the future.