Unreal engine developer Epic Games has revealed that it’s setting up its own online store for selling games. The Epic Games Store will initially be released for titles meant for the PC and Mac but the company has confirmed that the store will be released for Android as well in 2019.
Epic is promising a fairer system for developers whereby they will be able to retain 88 percent of their revenues from the games that they sell on its platform. That’s a significant difference compared to the 30 percent cut that Steam takes from developers.
It’s not all that different for Android games on the Google Play Store. The internet search giant also takes a 30 percent cut so with Epic Games Store only keeping 12 percent, developers will likely prefer it more.
This isn’t the first time that Epic has bypassed the Google Play Store. Fortnite, the most highly anticipated game launch for Android this year, wasn’t distributed through Google’s Play Store. Epic released the Android version of this popular game on its website first. Even at that time it felt like a decision which was out of the ordinary since Fortnite was being distributed through Apple’s App Store on iOS but not through the Google Play Store on Android.
The Epic Games Store will arrive for Android at some point in 2019.