Epic has paid out $2.1 Billion to developers for using EGS and they’re “just getting started” – here are all incentives
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The State of Unreal showcase went beyond the engine itself, as Epic Games covered a variety of its products and services. One of which is the status of its Epic Games store, as it expands its features, adding two things Steam’s already had for years. But that’s not the only thing that it’s doing to compete with Valve’s platform, as it goes over the benefits it offers to developers as it expands on the incentives Tim Sweeney announced.
Steve Allison, the General Manager of the Epic Games Store, detailed the range of incentives the platform has to offer and what it’s already done. Such as the immense sums of money it’s already paid out.
“Live to date, we’ve paid our developer and publishing partners over $2.1 billion dollars, and we’re just getting started.”
Steve Allison, GM of Epic Games Store
Following the insane amount of money burning, Steve goes on to outline the improvements it is bringing to the store to make people want to use it, compared to Steam. Combining these, it goes to show Epic is not giving up on trying to fight against Steam’s dominance. After all, CEO Sweeney recently admitted that the Epic Games Launcher is clunky, but they’re working on it.
Epic Games Store revenue splits
It’s not just paying developers for exclusives, though. Epic has more incentives to get more games and users on its launcher and store. It has changed its share revenue scheme for both those publishing on the store and those using Unreal Engine. Now that both Unreal Engine 5.6 is out and Epic won out against Apple, it’s making ground on trying to take more wins.
“Epic Games stores offers all developers the toolkit for maximum financial success that starts with our 88-12 rev share and just gets better from there.”
Steve Allison, GM of Epic Games Store
Steve commented on the state of the market and said Epic is trying to make it all the better for developers and studios. As just a few days ago, its 0% commission on the first $1 million initiative came into effect. Publishers can keep 100% of the revenue for the first million the game makes, and that’s per game per year. The company is also releasing self-publishing tools for mobile developers in Q4 this year.
That now affects the back catalog program as well, but for that, it’s purely time-based. If you bring your games over to the Epic Game Store, you keep 100% of the net revenue. After these milestones are hit, the revenue split goes back to 88/12, still more generous than the 70/30 that Steam takes.
For developers who use Unreal Engine, they get some price cuts too, depending on their launches. As if they use Launch Everywhere with Epic, the royalty rate is dropped from 5% to 3.5% across all platforms and stores for UE games published on the EGS.
Also, there will be no royalties paid on games on the store where Epic processes payments. If you use your own payment system in-game, you can keep 100% of the revenue, which is very likely to directly contradict Apple’s system.
All of that combined gives developers an impressive incentive to work with both Unreal Engine and the Epic Games Store. It’s definitely a strong step toward competing against Steam, and of huge benefit to the devs and publishers, so it’s no surprise to see more games coming to the EGS first for a time, at least.
State of Unreal 2025 livestream
On the user side of things, the gaming giant continues to offer free games every week, a program that was recently expanded to the mobile app as well.
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