Over the past 10 years, PC gaming has grown exponentially, and much of that is due to the Steam platform. Steam is an online store with thousands (if not millions) of games, programs, and movies. But its competitors are growing.
Yesterday, Epic Games announced that the Fortnite Launcher will be transformed into an online store, identical to Steam. With this move, Epic Games joins the list of popular stores such as GOG, Origin, Discord, Xbox and Battle.net. However, there is a reason that Epic Games is trying to enter the online marketplace space, and that is to provide Developers with better contracts than the services that exist to date.
A few days ago, Steam took a cut in the commission it takes from every game purchased after a developer exceeds 10 million in sales. Many indie developers commented on the move, stating that Steam is separating large developers, such as Activision, from smaller indie developers.
On the other hand, there are developers who characterize Steam's move as welcome. Online marketplaces are a trend that didn't exist 20 years ago, and they have changed a lot of things. One of them is that 10-15 years ago, when you had to go to physical stores to buy video games, developers kept at best 30% of the selling price. Now, with online marketplaces, developers can keep up to 80% of the selling price.
