Epic detail plans for Epic Games Store improvements – and how they’re going to tempt more devs from Steam

Epic have dropped a bunch of details as to planned improvements for the Epic Games Store in the on-going race to out-Steam Steam – the Coca-Cola to Epic’s Pepsi Max. Amongst other things, we can expect more robust search features, support for third-party subscriptions, better EGS launcher performance, a download manager with improved controls, and a new “for you” personalisation tab – all of that rolling out across 2024 and 2025.

Naturally, Epic will be continuing with their free games program through “2023 and beyond”, and they’ve also put together a couple of special publishing offers for developers, Epic First Run and Now on Epic, which are designed to lure more studios from the amoeba-like embrace of Valve’s gaming empire.

Originally announced at Gamescom, and live as of last night, the Epic First Run program allows developers who release their games exclusively on the Epic Games Store to receive 100% of their revenue from sales for the first six months. After that, Epic will take its 12% cut of revenues.

Now on Epic is the same deal, but for developers who launch their older games on the Epic Game Store. To be eligible, developers must bring either their entire catalogue to Epic or at least three older games – “older games”, in this case, means games that were released prior to 31st October 2023 and are “currently live” on another store or subscription service. Now on Epic extends to early access titles, too. Participants need to enrol by 31st December 2024, and they’ll need to release the games in question on EGS by 30th June 2025.

Epic are very keen to get more third-party developers involved with their store, which continues to be dominated by Fortnite players. Director of product and content strategy Kyle Billings offered some fighting talk in a livestream from Unreal Fest 2023, uploaded last week.

“Currently 67% of our player base is playing third party games,” he said. “And 50% of them are exclusively playing third party games. These numbers, for me, highlight the significance of the third party games ecosystem and the importance of fostering that growth.”

You can watch the full video here – 48 minutes of graphs, bullet points and magical phrases like “expanded merchandising surfaces”. Don’t say I never treat you to anything.

All of this follows in the wake of Epic laying off around 800-900 people, totalling 16 per cent of their workforce, after a period of heavy investment. Announcing the job losses, Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney (who hasn’t been laid off) noted that Fortnite isn’t quite the cash cow it used to be, which I guess is why Epic are especially keen at present to get more people playing a wider selection of games on the Epic Games Store.

“While Fortnite is starting to grow again, the growth is driven primarily by creator content with significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began funding our expansion,” he said. “Success with the creator ecosystem is a great achievement, but it means a major structural change to our economics.”