Epic Games has entered the highly competitive webshop business.
The Fortnite maker’s direct to consumer initiative launches today, and offers developers using its webshop 100% of the first $1m in net revenue per title, per year. Game players can also earn Epic Rewards on every webshop purchase, and can apply them to future transactions.
Epic originally announced it would be moving into the webshop space back in May, and promised to launch by June. The firm says its webshop tech is available worldwide and is “governed by Apple and Google’s store steering rules in each territory.”
This is notable for US developers, as there are currently no steering restrictions at all on Apple’s App Store in that market. On Android, a court injunction forcing the Google Play store to allow steering (webshops, basically) goes into effect on October 22nd.
Epic has partnered with Codename Entertainment to roll out a webshop in Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms to show its webshops’ cross-platform functionality. Purchases made through the game’s webshop will work across the Epic Games Store versions in the US on PC, iOS and Android. Webshop purchases are also available in the versions distributed through Google Play and the App Store.
“Webshops are built to give developers freedom and control over how and where they monetize, and are open to all games on all stores – there is no requirement to distribute the game through the Epic Games Store,” added Epic.
“These shops use Epic’s payment system and integrate seamlessly with Epic account services like Epic Rewards and Epic account balance.”
