Op-ed: Epic Game Store, Rising Contender?

It has also given itself a lot of major talking points, while creating waves in the industry and communities through its new business practices. The first, and perhaps more notorious, is their pioneering of temporary store exclusives on PC, a practice once relegated predominantly to console. Putting their Fortnite money to good use the EGS pays up-front a fee based off the predicated sales a game would make early on in exchange of temporary exclusivity for up to a year, while overall this practice has been very divisive it has also been beneficial to Indie devs who can use the cash injection to further polish their projects in safety.

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Another major talking point, and one mentioned many times by CEO Tim Sweeny, is that the store has higher standards for both itself and the developers that use it. Where steam takes a whopping 30% cut from the profits of sales on their store, EGS only takes 12% which is hugely beneficial for the developers and indie developers who make sales on their store. Furthermore, Sweeny has stated that the EGS will be a better curated and ‘porn-free’ store that is more appropriate and professional for their target audience.

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Perhaps most influential of all is the fact that the store on a rotating basis offers completely free games, both indie and triple A titles. The rhetoric from the start has surrounded competing with and surpassing the Steam Store, the real question is whether it has?

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Frankly it did seem like there was a sizeable following for the EGS and for over a year it was constantly headlining and drawing in attention with its new practices and expressive CEO. However short of the media attention it seems like it has established its place solidly within the PC gaming market but done little else to surpass the all-to-dominant Steam store, its own store-front launcher came without even a quarter of the functional features that thousands of players have found to be the norm through the Steam store. Such as user reviews, functioning forums and even basics such as a basket for the store page.

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Despite months of promises and roadmaps it took far too long for only a handful of these problems to be rectified in any way, demonstrating what may be an overreliance on buying consumers through free-games and exclusives than any real interest in user-experience. In fact, due to the lack of forums EGS consumers were using Steam forums to create communities, driving foot-traffic back towards steam. Despite the rocky start and lacklustre performance of the store itself, a performance that is inexcusable given the clear-cut examples given by a wide range of competing stores such as EA’s Origin that started with these features, it is clear that the EGS is going nowhere anytime soon.

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The reality however is that the rise of the EGS seems much less David and Goliath and a lot more ‘new-guy on the block’, the foundations for a solid storefront with good developer practices and a long future ahead could lead to the future that Tim Sweeny has pitched for EGS. It is clear however that Steam remains the hegemon of online retail gaming stores and has no intention of being dethroned.