One of the big reasons developers love the Epic Games Store is that they get more of a cut of revenue from any game sales on it. Rather than losing 30% to the platform-holder, like they do with Steam (or PlayStation, or Xbox, or Nintendo, or Apple), on the Epic storefront, they lose only 12%. However, while this obviously results in a better deal for developers, the savings have not been passed on to customers, and games on the Epic Games Store cost right as much as they used to elsewhere.
That will change in coming months, according to Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic. Speaking to Ars Technica, Sweeney noted that as time goes on, developers will realize that they are likelier to sell more copies and generate more money if they pass on some of the savings to customers, leading to lower prices for games all around.
“After you go through several cycles of game developers making decisions, you’re going to see lower prices as developers pass on the savings to customers, realising they can sell more copies if they have a better price,” Sweeney said.
Ideally, this is exactly what would happen, but I am not sure it is how things will play out. Developers will obviously want to maximize their own benefits, and given that players don’t have the recourse of third party key resellers on the Epic Games Store (other than Humble), prices can be totally controlled. While I would love to see something like this happen, as of right now, I am not sure I share Sweeney’s optimism.