After going to war with Steam, Epic now challenges game publishers

Epic just announced Epic Games Publishing, becoming a cross-platform publisher. Like what it did before, Epic promises to do things differently to attract developers.

Under the new publishing brand, Epic Games plans to release games from the developers of The Last Guardian, Limbo, and Control games. Remedy has worked with Epic, with Control being the exclusive title on their store until this August. But not only that, the publisher also takes on many more responsibilities, not just selling games.

According to Epic, they will bear up to 100 percent of the development costs, including salaries, QA, localization, and advertising, but the developer doesn’t have to give Epic ownership of the game or limit its creativity. . As for the profit sharing, the developer will receive at least 50% after Epic has recovered the capital.

Game release terms vary widely, especially given the presence of “indie publishers,” but Epic’s terms are broad: Promises full creative control, along with staking keep the intellectual property, and potentially bear all development and release costs.

“We are building the publishing model that the team has always wanted when working with publishers,” said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney.

However, similar to Epic’s strategy with their store, people question its longevity. Epic continuously invests money to win the right to launch exclusive games, as well as give away free games every week to attract new users. Last April, Sweeney predicted investment in free games and game exclusivity to surpass the company’s profits for the year.

That seems to be true, in January, Epic announced that it had spent $680 million on the store, but when you factor in the profit split, Epic only received 12%, while the cost of exclusivity for the game, including fees. more than $10 million in service for Control, showing that they are non-verbal.

Since Epic will recoup capital before distributing profits to developers, it may not be as risky as investing in a store with huge costs. It will take quite a while before Epic gets its money back, depending on how long it’s been in development. Fortunately, Fortnite is their money-making chicken.

Opening up the publishing brand may not have much impact on rival Steam, but has the potential to shake up the market. Epic is now bragging about a lot of terms, putting developers first. Surely Epic Games will attract attention.

Remedy also shared a few details about what they’re developing with Epic. Although the process only consisted of two games, the first game was a “cross-platform AAA game” that Remedy started ‘pre-production’ on. The second game takes place in the same world but will be on a smaller scale. Both use Remedy’s Northlight engine.

In the coming months, we’ll have more information about this publisher, as well as its game and development partners. An interesting question is how Epic handles PC platforms. Will Epic’s games be exclusive to their store, or will they appear on Steam, GOG, etc.?