Lars Wingefors, the CEO of Embracer Grouppraised the company’s Epic First Run programEpic Games Store in a question and answer session, explaining that now the part of revenues that the group gives to the stores every year exceeds the investments in development.
The Epic First Run program offers developers and publishers 100% of revenue for six months, as long as they keep their game exclusive in the Epic Games Store throughout the period. Once the period is over, they will only have to give 12% of the revenues to the store, i.e. the standard share. Consider that SteamPlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, Google Play and App Store, to name some of the most well-known digital stores, retain 30% of revenue on sales, unless certain objectives and specific agreements are reached.
Do the shops take too much?
Do stores like Steam make too much money from sales?
“Ultimately I think it’s good that there is competition for Steam, because it forces them to work hard to always give the best experience possible,” explained Wingefors. “Naturally we would like to pay less revenue to the platforms. In truth, in a year we pay more to the platforms than what we spend on video game development. If you think about it, these numbers are crazy.”
Wingefors added that he would like to be able to spend some of the money that goes to stores to launch more products, but that he realizes that consumers like to be able to choose which platform to buy games on. However, he reiterated that he sees the competition with Steam as positive,
