Prospects Improve for Indie Developers
Without any explicit declaration, the Epic Games Store launched last week as a director competitor to the Steam platform. Consumers now have another avenue of access to PC games, but the store offers a more profound change for devs and publishers.
Last month, Valve announced a new 25% cut of all game revenue (as opposed to 30%). Their percentage scales lower for games that meet a certain threshold in sales, which means indies lie at a disadvantage. Therefore, it’s no wonder studios have moved their upcoming game launches to the Epic Games store, or have deleted their Steam pages altogether. Satisfactory, the first-person factory builder from Coffee Stain Studios, marks one flag that’s set sail from Valve. In other cases, like with space disaster sim Genesis Alpha One, games will exclusively launch on the Epic Games Store before making their way to other retail fronts. The trade of storefronts may indicate the start of a trend; competition between Valve and Epic has carried us from console wars to digital distribution wars, at least on the PC front.
Developer Double Damage, too, will forego a Steam launch with their upcoming title, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. The space combat stim will remain exclusive to the Epic Games store for 12 months. The decision boils down to the 88/12 split in-game revenue, which leaves much more profit in the hands of game creators. The shift, the dev hopes, will lead to better revenue shares across all PC distribution platforms.
“We hope this is the start of establishing a new standard,” they said in a blog post. “Before Valve and the 70/30 split it was pretty darn rough to be an indie, both in terms of royalty share and in terms of the ability to sell things without a publisher. We can all thank Valve for using their leverage to make that happen, and usher in the era we have now. We think it’s safe to say that a large percentage of the games made today wouldn’t exist without it.
“Epic is using their leverage to push that even farther, to 88/12. That’s another whole strata of developers who can survive. The only way this gets any traction is with some exclusive content and we’re willing to be one of the canaries in the mineshaft.”
Over time, we’re likely to see more indie studios make the conversion from one PC platform to another. Whether or not a mass exodus will ensue may depend on AAA developers. If big-budget games launch exclusively on the Epic Games store, Valve may have to rework its infrastructure.