Epic Games Store
(or EGS for short) is a Digital Distribution platform of video games for Windows and Mac OS created by Epic Games. The Epic Games Store launched at the tail-end of 2018, where they announced that in addition to their existing repertoire of game development, publishing and technology, they would also be expanding into the realm of game distribution, similar to the likes of Steam and GOG.com. It offers both Indie and AAA games at the same prices of other storefronts, and much like Steam, also takes into account regional pricing, which can also make games cheaper by either a few pennies or several dollars, depending on circumstances.
The unique advantage of the storefront is that they will take a 12% cut of revenue from game sales, as opposed to the industry standard of 30% for digital distribution services (Microsoft's own store only takes 15%). Additionally, licensees of Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and 5 would not have to pay any additional royalties to Epic for sales on the storefront, making the store an even more attractive offer for such games as Unreal 4 is one of the most widely used engines on PC and consoles in both Indie and big budget games.
Another interesting advantage is that much like GOG, Epic currently does not enforce their own DRM scheme; instead, it's up to the developer to implement such measures themselves. This has lead to a surprising number of AAA games and Indie games alike being DRM Free on EGS and GOG, but not on Steam; for a few examples, Spider-Man Remastered, the Batman: Arkham Series, Cyberpunk 2077, Thief (2014), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Control (just to name a few) are all DRM Free on GOG and EGS, but their releases on Steam require Steamworks DRM, Denuvo, a combination of both, or some other measures. While Epic does technically have a DRM scheme; EOS (Epic Online Services), it isn't treated as such by the company and Tim Sweeney has even gone on record saying it's optional to include. Case in point, EOS's authentication can be toggled offline, making a game DRM Free after its download from the store with certain launch commands. While EOS can deter very casual piracy, it's more akin to an SDK or plugin for game developers to leverage to enable cross-play, achievements, and cross-progression between storefronts and consoles, rather than a DRM Scheme by itself.
A free game (or two, if one of them is M-rated or equivalent) are usually given away once per week on Thursdays, and are available to keep forever on the players' account. In the past, this has included some big hits like Alien: Isolation, Death Stranding, the entire Batman: Arkham Series, Prey (2017), and Grand Theft Auto V; the latter game caused so many people to visit the store to redeem the game that the entire platform's server was on its knees for 24 hours. Smaller indie titles like 20XX, Faster Than Light, both Overcooked games, Tunche, Horizon Chase Turbo and many others have also been made available for free to keep.
In early 2019, Epic drew ire from consumers for making a hard push to secure several third party games as exclusives for the storefront. The deal with Epic entailed that games had to be exclusive to the Epic Games Store for a certain period before going to other digital storefronts (most commonly a year, but six months or a few weeks are not unheard of time periods either). The controversy mostly stemmed from several of these games having already had pre-order sales on other PC stores like Steam, like Metro Exodus and Phoenix Point. Consumers were especially angry in the case of the latter game as it had been funded primarily through a Fig crowdfunding campaign and had promised its backers it would be available at launch on both Steam and GOG. The vitriol would only get worse as Epic continued to secure more and more games as Epic Store exclusives, reaching a high boiling point after August 1st, 2019 when the two-person indie development team of Ooblets announced that their game would become a timed exclusive on EGS, which swiftly led to some very heated criticism based on the tone-deaf announcement, some of the backlash was warranted while others (like death threats) not so much. At the end of the month, on August 26, 2019, Bandai Namco Entertainment publicly refused Epic Store exclusivity for their PC games despite being an almost regular adopter of Unreal Engine 4.
Later the same year the store caught more flak when indie title DARQ was denied being on the store due to not accepting an exclusivity deal with them. Sweeney responded to the dev's now-deleted tweet, saying that because of the store's early days, lots of the games were hand-picked, and thus the company didn't have the time go through the backlog.
On August 2020, Epic Games launched an update for Fortnite that bypassed Apple's payments, and got booted off the platform, and Epic filed a pre-empted lawsuit against Apple on the grounds of monopolistic behaviour in the app space, to lower the cut given to Apple versus the apps' developers, and they wanted to allow for third party app installs on their platform. Epic also hosted a twitter campaign (#FreeFortnite) to drum up support, which too gained controversy.
After several months and numerous hearings, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the US District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the case the following year, and while they admitted that Tim Sweeney had some valid points, most of Epic's charges against Apple were not followed through on, with the notable exception of one: Apple was told (or rather, "Injuncted") by the Judge to make their payment system open (as was one of the main goals of Epic's lawsuit), and it took only the day before that order was to go into effect did Apple's appeal (as well as Epic's separate appeal for their dismissed claims) go through, and delayed this injunction for the time being, which still holds true as of writing (December 30, 2022).
Amidst all this, the court case had documents leaked from both sides showing various pieces of information relating to the case and the companies involved. One enterprising Redditor took information from some of the documents from May 2021, and tried to determine the profits from the shortfall of each game from the first wave of games exclusive to the store. According to this unofficial data deep dive, only Satisfactory, Dauntless and a third blanked out entry were profitable on the store, with the rest having losses of varying degrees of severity.
Then, on March 26, 2022, something rather interesting happened; the European Union came up with the "Digital Markets Act", a proposed package of anti-competitive conduct laws aimed at Big Tech companies. The proposed laws include unifying instant messaging apps, as well as access to any data a user generates, and enforcing USB-C and replaceable batteries on all new devices to cut down on e-waste, some of which went to effect in 2023. But more pertinent to this article, the laws force Apple, Google and others to allow for third party storefronts to be installed on their devices — the very thing Epic Games rallied for in their lawsuit against Apple. This would later be properly ratified in September 2022, and December 2022 had the EU commission confirm that companies have until May 2024 to get their affairs in order, and March 6, 2024 saw the rules go into effect. Apple went on to ban Epic's own developer account after reinstating it post-lawsuit calling the company a threat, and when Tim Sweeney asked the EU commission to investigate, Apple reinstated the account 48 hours later, likely out of fear of a proper investigation.
Near the end of 2021, the concept of NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) started to enter the public consciousness as a way of making money through the blockchain, but has caused significant backlash for essentially being a Pyramid Scheme. Due to this, several storefronts (including Steam and Itch.io) issued a blanket ban on any game incorporating NFTs, and while Epic are not against games on the storefront using the blockchain in other ways, so long as the technology is being used within the confines of the lawnote , Sweeney also maintains that Epic isn't interested in NFTs due to their unstable nature (as well as the amount of scams it has caused). To wit, any game that uses the blockchain or contains NFT's have a warning enforced on their game page, which strongly discourages users from obtaining them.
The storefront also hosts desktop applications (or "Apps", as they are listed), with Krita, Discord, and Spotify being available. It even hosts rival storefront launchers, like GOG Galaxy and Itch.io. Modding tools (like the ARKEditor and Tropic 6's Mod Kit) are also free to download, as well as outright competing game engines, like Godot and RPG in A Box.
The Launcher also comes bundled with the Unreal Engine ecosystem, which hosts downloads the latest versions of Unreal Engine (4 and 5) and links to the Unreal Marketplace, allowing for the downloading of assets to use in projects
Compare and contrast with EA's Origin, Valve's Steam, and CD Projekt's GOG.com.
