Epic Throws Shade at Steam, Launches Self-Publishing Tool

gamerant.com:

The Epic Games Store has opened game submissions for independent developers. Amid this announcement, Epic also took some time to criticize its main competitor Steam for building services that lock people in its store and vowed to avoid these anti-consumer practices.

This fierce competition between Epic and Steam has been going on since 2018 when the Epic Games Store was first launched. By offering a comprehensive list of free games, Epic paid its way into popularity, also offering money to several developers to keep a few titles as exclusives. However, not even free games every week were enough to top Steam’s dominance, and Epic continues to be second to Valve’s gaming platform.

Tchia Is An Epic Games Store Exclusive On PC

According to the official announcement, Epic’s new move to rival Steam is to allow indie and mid-sized publishers to self-publish on the store. Independent publishers can pay $100, the same fee as Steam, to submit games for the platform’s library. Most rules are not surprising, such as not scamming users or having inaccurate descriptions, but there are also a few unique ones. One of them is to allow crossplay with any other game stores that the developer offers games for. In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Epic SEO Tim Sweeney threw shade on Steam’s crossplay policies, saying they were bad for the industry. He complained that many Steam services such as its API Steamworks do not work with other platforms, and vowed to do differently.

The main difference between Steam and Epic’s policies, however, is about games with sexual content. Epic will not allow any kind of game that has an “Adults Only” rating. This has been the company’s stance on the subject since 2019. However, the guidelines are not very