Epic goes on the hunt for even more exclusives with a new program offering bigger payouts to smaller studios
If you thought the era of the Epic Games Store exclusive was winding down, think again. Epic announced today a new program called Epic First Run that throws open the exclusivity doors to just about anyone with a new game.
The Epic Games Store has grown into a successful, major digital storefront since its launch in 2018 in large part due to exclusive game releases: Epic has used the massive financial success of Fortnite to pay publishers in advance to launch games on its storefront, and more to the point, not launch them on Steam, at least temporarily.
It's managed to attract some big names over the years, like Borderlands 3, Control, Hitman 3, and Kingdom Hearts, but it's been a ridiculously expensive endeavor, too: We learned in May 2021 that it had already spent more than $1 billion on exclusives. Despite not making money on them, Epic said in March 2023 that it was going to continue pursuing exclusives for its storefront, but would focus more on major releases, which had proven much more effective at attracting new users to EGS than smaller games.
The new Epic First Run program is a way to augment that strategy by bringing smaller studios back into the picture. Instead of negotiating up-front deals with developers and publishers for individual games, First Run grants them 100% of all net revenues earned during the first six months of a game's release on the Epic store in exchange for those six months being mostly exclusive. It's open to any developer or publisher with a game coming out on or after October 16 (when the program goes live) that hasn't previously been released through another third-party storefront or subscription service.
It's «mostly» exclusive because developers taking part in the First Run program
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