Epic Games has announced a new exclusivity scheme that will see developers getting a 100% revenue share for the first six months.

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.

Epic says all new games and apps are eligible for the programme, as long as they are released on or after October 16, and haven’t been previously released on another third-party PC store.

Publishers and developers will still be able to release products on their own stores or launchers, and can use the Epic Games Store’s keyless redemption programme to sell the Epic Games Store version on other stores like Green Man Gaming and Humble Store.

The announcement is seemingly designed to make more games exclusive to the Epic Games Store and make them unavailable on competitors’ platforms, most notably Valve‘s Steam.

“Participating products in the Epic First Run program will be presented to those users on-store with new exclusive badging, homepage placements, and dedicated collections,” Epic says.

“In addition, products will be featured in relevant store campaigns including sales, events, and editorial as applicable. Once a product joins the program, it will benefit from continued exposure throughout its Epic First Run.”

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said in March that players should expect to see further high-profile Epic Games Store exclusives in the future.

“We’re really honing our strategy based on what we observed worked really well in previous launches, and what didn’t work really well,” he told PC Gamer.

“A handful of major exclusives really moved the needle … and the smaller games, especially games that had a smaller audience that was typically on Steam, we found that a lot of those players weren’t willing to move over.”

Posted: Aug 27, 2023 12:20 am
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/epic-games-store-is-offering-developers-100-of-revenue-for-six-months-of-exclusivity/