The Epic First Run programme allows developers of any size to claim 100% of revenue if they agree to make their game exclusive on the Epic Games Store for six months.
After the six months are up, the game will revert to the standard Epic Games Store revenue split of 88% for the developer and 12% for Epic Games.
The first few months of a game release are absolutely critical, no matter the size of the studio. I won’t buy anything on Epic just out of principle, and I’m sure there are countless other people who share the mindset. A 100% share, vs a 70% one, is definitely appealing at first glance, but it’ll butcher your numbers for short-term gain
It’s that upfront money they give that’s the big thing for some of these devs I can’t blame them for taking that upfront influx of development capital.
Still not buying it from Epic, I hate console exclusivity, including Nintendo, and I’m not going to support it on PC.
Yeah same, but I also won’t touch anything that goes Epic Games exclusive even when it comes to Steam.
As a gamer living in eastern Asia, Epic’s exclusives that could only be bought in certain countries due to payment processors pissed me off enough to boycott. I generally don’t touch any games that started as exclusives there, either. The couple of exceptions I have, I waited until they were a couple of years old and > 50% off on Steam or GoG
A game that sells 10,000 copies on Epic may sell 20,000 or more on Steam since Steam is so popular. If the game sold for $20 they would get $200,000 from Epic or $280,000 from Steam in that scenario.
That’s an awfully generous ratio. I don’t recall all the specifics, but a year or so ago an indie game dev posted the sales stats of his game and left out the Epic Store numbers. When asked, he said that EGS accounted for less than 1% of his sales. Now, I’m not saying that’s going to be the case for all games, but considering EGS’s status as the “black hole of videogame marketing” I would say a 10-1 Steam/EGS ratio wouldn’t be surprising.