Epic Games has announced a new program for third-party developers on its store. Called Epic First Run, its main attraction of that dev retain a 100% revenue share during the first six months in return for temporary exclusivity.

According to Epic Games, its Games Store, which opened for business in 2018, has an audience of over 230 million players and 68 million monthly active users. One method it has used to attract new users is to give away PC games for free. Now, with Epic First Run, is hoping to persuade game developers to give the Epic Games Store exclusive rights to their new releases launching on or after October 16, 2023. 

The main benefit for developers opting into the program is that they will receive 100% net revenue of user spending on eligible products in their first six months of exclusivity on the Epic Games Store. When the exclusivity period ends, the revenue share from user spending will revert to Epic's standard rate - which is an 88%/12% split, a much better rate than the 70%/30% split offered for apps by Apple and Google. 

Products in Epic First Run will be promoted by Epic with:

new exclusive badging, homepage placements, and dedicated collections. In addition, products will be featured in relevant store campaigns including sales, events, and editorial as applicable. 

Developers are also expected to play an active role in marketing their games with Epic stating:

developers must promote their products early and often with their target audience.

First and foremost among the tips for this are to launch a "Coming Soon page" on the Epic Store at the same time as announcing their games. Developers are also encouraged to release products for Early Access while they refine their products but in this case the six months' 100% revenue clock starts ticking at this point.

Developers can be a part of First Run and still release their products on their own stores.

 Regarding eligibility, Epic states the program will accept:

"A new release game or app which has not been previously released on another third-party PC store or included in a subscription service available on another third-party PC store".

but adds the proviso:

"Games or apps with a pre-existing exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store are not eligible for the program."

All-in-all this sounds like an attractive scenario for games developers.

Might it provide an impetus for the App Store and Google Play to be more generous towards its developers? We can but hope.  

More Information

Introducing Epic First Run

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