While the crux of the anger directed at the Epic Games Store has been the exclusivity aspect, especially for games that were crowdfunded, and what that means for the future of the PC platform, the criticisms levied at the Epic Games Store isn’t just about that. The storefront/launcher lacks even the most basic of features, including cloud saves, wishlists and a shopping cart (at one point there literally wasn’t even a search bar, but that has since been added). To top that off, a roadmap was released of when Epic would be adding those features, and the company has consistently missed those goals. Tim Sweeney says they’re still coming, though.
In a series of tweets from his official account, of which you can see below, Sweeney commented on the upcoming features to the Store. At the end of last month, two games randomly got a cloud save function, with many hoping this would be the beginning of the addition of the universal feature. Sweeney said that wider cloud save functionality would tentatively be coming, though the time frame given has passed in that original tweet, and no more have been added as of writing this.
When it comes to things like forums and wishlists, he says that they will take time, but overall doesn’t see the cost as an issue and that the 88/12 split he’s built the marketing of the Epic Games Store around will be enough to maintain them. Right now, considering the small volume of releases on the store, Sweeney doesn’t think it’s a high priority, however, which is why they’ve chosen not to tackle that just yet.
A lot of this makes sense, especially since Sweeney has already said in the past that he sees exclusive deals, not features, as the only way to compete against Steam’s PC market share. Still, even by the most basic of standards, the Epic Games Store is pretty barebones.
We’ll be making further improvements to reduce duplicate account creation. Cloud Saves are live for several games and will expand soon. Other features are coming.
And Fortnite is going strong. The most recent in-game event came close to its all-time peak concurrency record.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 27, 2019
A wider cloud save rollout is tentatively planned for next week, provided no issues are discovered with the currently enabled games.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 27, 2019
The store will be opening up more widely over time as we build in more automation for developers to submit games and maintain their product pages, and as we build more useful curation and search functionality for surfacing a larger catalog of games.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 30, 2019
We think these upcoming curation and self-service features are necessary for success with a significantly higher volume of games. That’s why we’re not opening up more broadly yet.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 30, 2019
