Epic Games Store Update Brings New Features
Gifford Brickley
It's no secret that the Epic Games Store is earning an unsavory reputation among consumers. Minor complaints about the platform came first, such as a lack of basic social features and offline functionality. Then accusations got serious, with some even going as far as to say the store is secretly collecting user information to sell. Even so, more and more developers are flocking to the platform, meaning gamers will have to deal with it eventually. Epic Games is finally extending the olive branch to these wary potential customers in the form of a roadmap that addresses several key issues, although its plans are oddly lacking in the security department.
While these are all well and good (although probably too late for some gamers' tastes), the roadmap says nothing of a fix for the Epic Store's most recent "spyware" scandal. Reddit users posted a few days ago that they found the Epic Store poking into directories on their computers, places that a games store launcher has no business accessing. Most suspicious was that the Epic Store seemed very intent to delve into users' Steam history.
Sergio is the Lead News Editor for TheGamer. But usually he asks people to call him "Serg" because he wants to sound cool like the guy from System of a Down. He began as a convention reporter for FLiP Magazine and Albany Radio's The Shaw Report to get free badges to Comic-Con. Eventually he realized he liked talking to game developers and discovering weird new indie games. Now he brings that love of weird games to TheGamer, where he tries to talk about them in clickable ways so you grow to love them too. When he's not stressing over how to do that, he's a DM, Cleric of Bahamut, cosplay boyfriend, and occasional actor.
We have started removing games that were still available from all digital storefronts and are disabling any in-game DLC purchasing as of today. We also removed the Mac and Linux versions of Hatoful Boyfriend and Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star from storefronts today, as well as the mobile title DropMix. Players who already own these titles will still be able to play.
Battle Breakers will shut down and no longer be accessible to players on December 30. We will automatically refund players for any in-game purchases made via Epic direct payment 180 days prior to today. Unreal Tournament (Alpha), Rock Band Blitz, Rock Band Companion app and SingSpace will be shut down and no longer accessible to players on January 24.
Thank you to all of the players and communities who have enjoyed these titles over the years.
I tried to clone and epic and only had the option to clone links. It did not give me an option to clone the aligned issues (stories and sub-tasks). Is that normal? Do I need to contact my administrator to have them turn a function on? Or, does JIRA not allow the cloning of aligned stories and subtasks (when cloning an Epic)?
Regarding the inline pictures, it's successfully cloned into the new epic (if you check the attachments button), but not into the new issues. But I can live with that, and yes JSON could be the solution, but it's to much overhead for this minor feature.
The Epic Games Store is a video game digital distribution service and storefront operated by Epic Games. It launched in December 2018 as a software client, for Microsoft Windows and macOS, and online storefront. The service provides friends list management, game matchmaking, and other features. Epic Games has further plans to expand the feature set of the storefront but it does not plan to add as many features as other digital distribution platforms, such as discussion boards or user reviews, instead using existing social media platforms to support these.
Epic began offering digital distribution for game publishers after the success of Fortnite, released in 2017, which Epic distributed using their own software channels to players on Windows and macOS systems. Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, stated in August 2017 that the revenue cut of Steam, the dominant game storefront from Valve, was unreasonably high at 30%, and suggested that they could run a profitable store with as little as an 8% cut. By launch, Epic Games had settled on a 12% revenue cut for titles published through the store, as well as dropping the licensing fees for games built on their Unreal Engine, normally 5% of the revenue.
Epic Games enticed developers and publishers to the service by offering them time-exclusivity agreements to publish on the storefront, in exchange for guaranteed minimum revenue. Epic also offered users one or two free games each week for the first five years of its operation to help draw users. Criticism from users has been drawn to Epic Games and those developers and publishers opting for exclusivity deals, asserting that these are segmenting the market.
The Epic Games Store is a storefront for games available via the web and built into Epic Games' launcher application. Both web and application allow players to purchase games, while through the launcher the player can install and keep their games up to date.
Epic planned to offer one free game every two weeks through 2019;[4] this was increased to one free game every week in June 2019,[5] and on weeks where the free game had a mature content rating and thus locked out if parental controls are enabled, Epic offered a second free game not so rated.[6] Epic since affirmed that they planned to continue the free game program through 2021.[7][8] Through the first eighteen months of this program, Epic had given out over two thousand dollars of games, as estimated by PCGamesN.[9] Certain free game offerings had been highly popular; in its giveaway for Grand Theft Auto V in May 2020, more than seven millions new users claimed the giveaway in addition to existing ones, and temporarily crashed Epic's servers,[10][11] and later, over 19 million users obtained a free copy of Star Wars Battlefront II offered in January 2021, with the new influx of players crashing the game's servers briefly.[12] Documents unveiled during the Epic Games v. Apple trial in 2021 showed that in the store's giveaways prior to 2020, Epic paid buyouts to the developers of the free game ranging typically from $100,000 to $1 million, and measured this performance in new users drawn to the storefront on the order of 100,000 new users, with that buyout averaging from $0.50 to 5.00 per new user.[13] Epic Games also has offered sales, in which Epic absorbs the discount from the sale. For example, its first store-wide sale in May 2019 offered a discount of US$10 off any game valued at US$15 or more.[14]
The store at launch had barebones set of features, but Epic plans to develop feature subsets comparable to other digital storefronts. Eventually, the storefront will offer user reviews, but this feature will be opt-in by developers to avoid misuse by activities like review bombing.[2] Cloud saving was added in August 2019,[15] while preliminary support for achievements and user modifications were added in July 2020.[16] Full support for achievements were rolled out in October 2021.[17] There are no plans to include internal user forums. The storefront will include a ticket-based support system for users to report bugs and technical problems for games to developers, while developers will be encouraged to link to external forums and social channels of their choosing, like Reddit and Discord, in lieu of storefront-tied forums.[18] However, a party chat system, similar to features of Discord, will be implemented in 2021 to allow friends to chat while in games supported by the store.[19] Information taken from OpenCritic was added to product Store pages in January 2020 to provide users with critical review information.[20] The store added a review system in June 2022, and as to fight review bombing, the system is based on randomized polling of users, and with presentation of random subsets of these reviews to storefront pages.[21]
Cloud saving was introduced on a very limited, game-by-game basis in July 2019, though Epic plans to expand this out after validating the feature.[23] In December 2019, Epic gave developers and publishers the option to implement their own in-game storefront for microtransactions and other purchases for a game, while still retaining the option to use the Epic storefront instead.[24]
Where possible, Epic plans to extend its "Support a Creator" program that it had launched in Fortnite Battle Royale to other games offered on the store. With the Support a Creator program, players can opt to indicate a streamer or content creator, selected by Epic based on submitted applications, to support. Supported streamers then receive revenue from Epic Games on microtransactions made through the Epic Games Store from the players that supported them, incentivizing these content creators; within Fortnite, creators had received about 5% of the cash value of the microtransactions.[22]
Digital distribution of games for personal computers prior to the introduction of the Epic Games Store was through digital storefronts like Steam and GOG.com, with Steam being the dominant channel with an estimated 75% of all digital distribution in 2013.[26] Valve, which operated Steam, took a 30% revenue cut of all games sold through their services, a figure matched by the other services like GOG.com, and console and mobile storefronts.[27] In August 2017, Epic's Tim Sweeney suggested that 30% was no longer a reasonable cut, and that Valve could still profit if they cut their revenue share to 8%.[28]
In early December 2018, Epic Games announced that it would open a digital storefront to challenge Steam by using a 12% revenue split rather than Steam's 30%.[29] Epic also said that it would not impose digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on games sold through its platform.[29] The store opened days later, on December 6, 2018, as part of the Game Awards, with a handful of games and a short list of upcoming titles.[30][31] The store was open for macOS and Windows platforms before expanding to Android and other platforms.[29] Epic aims to release a storefront for Android devices, bypassing the Google Play Store, where it will similarly only take a 12% cut compared to Google's 30%. While Apple, Inc.'s monopoly on iOS currently makes it impossible for Epic to release an App Store there, analysts believe that if Google reacts to Epic's App Store by reducing their cut, Apple will be pressured to follow suit.[32] Epic has tried to ask Google for an exemption to bypass Google's payment systems for in-app purchases for the Fortnite Battle Royale app, but Google has refused to allow this.[33]
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