What self-publishing on the Epic Games Store means for gaming
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Epic Games announced last week it is bringing self-publishing tools for game developers and publishers to the Epic Games Store.
I talked to Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, and Steve Allison, head of the Epic Games Store, in an interview about what that means for game developers and gamers.
They positioned it as a major milestone for the store that should enable many times more game developers and publishers to reach larger markets with their independent games. The store has more than 1,500 games on it now, but that’s barely 1% of what its rival Steam has, Allison said.
What’s significant is that the Epic Games Store, at a relatively young age, still reaches an audience of 68 million monthly active users, up from 34 million in 2022. To date, the store has had 230 million players. That’s about half the reach of Steam Direct, which has been in place since 2017. After Steam enabled self-publishing, the number of games on Valve’s platform skyrocketed.
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Self-publishing on Epic should enable it to start catching up. Developers should reap some rewards from that, as Epic only charges a 12% royalty for games sold on its store compared to 30% on Steam.
But what also matters is having the right games. Epic’s store is still an investment. It’s losing money because Epic still subsidizes free games on the store in order to attract more users and to attract the right developers to its platform, which needs to become more competitive compared
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