Epic has said it will give developers a 100 percent revenue share if they make their old games exclusive to the Epic Games Store.
Epic Games has unveiled a new initiative to lure developers over to the Epic Games Store, promising that they can keep all of the revenue for sales of their games for a limited time.
Epic already offers a more generous revenue share split than its rivals, where developers keep 88 percent of the sale price of their games, while Epic takes a 12 percent cut. That compares with the 30 percent cut that Valve takes in most cases for games sold on Steam.
However, back in August, Epic announced the First Run program, which promises to give developers 100 percent of sales revenue from new games for the first six months, if they are made exclusive to the Epic Games Store.
The First Run program launched yesterday, and now Epic has revealed a complementary program to run alongside it, called Now On Epic. Like First Run, Now On Epic promises to give 100 percent of the revenue to developers for the first six months, but in this case for old games rather than new ones.
To be eligible for the program, a developer must make at least three of its back catalogue games exclusive to the Epic Games Store, all of which must have been released before 31 October 2023. If a developer has fewer than three games in its back catalogue, all of them must be made exclusive to the store. After the initial six months, the revenue split will revert back to the usual 88/12 percent.
Epic recently laid off around 16 percent of its staff, after CEO Tim Sweeney admitted, “we’ve been spending way more money than we earn”. Shortly afterwards, the company’s director of publishing announced his departure, saying he wasn’t a good fit for the transition of the firm from “a game developer, engine creator, and publisher into a platform”.
Read more: Epic lays off 830 employees – 16% of its staff
