Epic Games - Storefront and software

The Epic Games Store is a storefront for games available via the web and built into Epic Games' launcher application. Both web and application allow players to purchase games, while through the launcher the player can install and keep their games up to date. Epic's newer games will be exclusively available through its store and the company plans to fund developers to release exclusively through their store, using revenue guarantees to developers that opt for this, with Epic paying the difference should a game underperform.For other developers, Epic takes a 12% share of revenue, the rest going to the developer, and for any games developed using the Unreal Engine, Epic forgoes the 5% revenue-based fee for those games sold through their storefront. After paying for content delivery and other services, Epic's profit is about 5% of gross revenue, though with economies of scale, this could increase to 6–7%. By Epic's calculations, the storefront's commission was sufficient to be profitable. Epic planned to offer one free game every two weeks through 2019;this was increased to one free game every week in June 2019, and on weeks where the free game had a mature content rating and thus locked out if parental controls are enabled, Epic offered a second free game not so rated. Epic since affirmed that they planned to continue the free game program through 2020.Through the first eighteen months of this program, Epic had given out over two thousand dollars of games, as estimated by PCGamesN. Epic Games also has offered sales, in which Epic absorbs the discount from the sale. For example, its first store-wide sale in May 2019 offered a discount of US$10 off any game valued at US$15 or more. The store at launch had a barebones set of features, but Epic plans to develop feature subsets comparable to other digital storefronts. Eventually the storefront will offer user reviews, but this feature will be opt-in by developers to avoid misuse by activities like review bombing. Cloud saving was added in August 2019, while preliminary support for achievements and user modifications were added in July 2020.There are no plans to include internal user forums. The storefront will include a ticket-based support system for users to report bugs and technical problems for games to developers, while developers will be encouraged to link to external forums and social channels of their choosing, like Reddit and Discord, in lieu of storefront-tied forums. Information taken from OpenCritic was added to product Store pages in January 2020 to provide users with critical review information. The store does not have features such as virtual reality headset support, nor expected to have any "game-shaped features" similar to Steam's trading cards designed to drive sales. Cloud saving was introduced on a very limited, game-by-game basis in July 2019, though Epic plans to expand this out after validating the feature.In December 2019, Epic gave developers and publishers the option to implement their own in-game storefront for microtransactions and other purchases for a game, while still retaining the option to use the Epic storefront instead.

Where possible, Epic plans to extend its "Support a Creator" program that it had launched in Fortnite Battle Royale to other games offered on the store. With the Support a Creator program, players can opt to indicate a streamer or content creator, selected by Epic based on submitted applications, to support. Supported streamers then receive revenue from Epic Games on microtransactions made through the Epic Games Store from the players that supported them, incentivizing these content creators; within Fortnite, creators had received about 5% of the cash value of the microtransactions.