ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

Epic’s Tim Sweeney believes creators, not consumers, are the key to the next generation of stores

Epic’s Tim Sweeney believes creators, not consumers, are the key to the next generation of stores

Epic Games' Tim Sweeney believes it’ll win the storefront war by pushing for developers ahead of consumers.

That’s not to say that building a userbase isn’t important. But in an interview with MCV, Sweeney argued that making a marginally better user experience won’t win over audiences as much as a well-stocked library. For users, the existing storefront standard has been perfected.

“It’s nearly perfect for consumers already,” said Sweeney. “There is no hope of displacing a dominant storefront solely by adding marginally more store features or a marginally better install experience. These battles will be won on the basis of game supply, consumer prices, and developer revenue sharing,”

It’s an odd quote considering the Epic store’s lack of social features in its current state, and only included a search function in its client this week. But it does explain a heavy developer-first strategy that has seen the Epic Store snag some key exclusives.

“We’ve worked to ensure it’s genuinely worthwhile for developers to move to the Epic Games store," said Sweeney.

"We’re giving game developers and publishers the store business model that we’ve always wanted as developers ourselves.”

Shaking up stores isn't Sweeney's only interest in 2019. As Microsoft unveiled its HoloLens 2 augmented reality efforts, the Epic boss praised the company for its open approach to development on the new technology.

Epic will be at PC Connects Seattle, which takes place on May 13th to 14th.


Staff Writer

Natalie Clayton is an Edinburgh-based freelance writer and game developer. Besides PCGamesInsider and Pocketgamer.biz, she's written across the games media landscape and was named in the 2018 GamesIndustry.biz 100 Rising Star list.