Bottom line: Epic Games is launching an open beta for new publishing tools that allow developers to self-publish games on their store, similar to what Steam Direct offers on the competitor’s platform. Epic wants to speed up the pace of new games coming out under its wing, but it’s unclear by how much.
Until now, developers who wanted to publish games on the Epic store had to rely on an approval process every step of the way. With the new beta version, registered game companies will be able to create project, achievement and award pages themselves, as well as download versions and updates. Any developer or publisher can sign up for the beta, but the final entrants will be selected by Epic.
There don’t seem to be any specific restrictions on the type of games that developers can publish themselves outside of the standard rules against things like copyright infringement, hateful content, and pornography. Games with a multiplayer component should have cross-play with PC games from other showcases.
One of the main selling points of the Epic Games Store has been the emergence of a more organized store compared to Steam: a store where games are not buried under a constant and massive stream of new content every day.
This became even more controversial when Valve released the Steam Direct, whereby developers can publish games on Steam with very little involvement from the store. Since then, he has enabled almost everything on Steam. This year, the number of games on Steam reached 50,000, while there are currently less than 700 games on the Epic store.
It remains to be seen how rigorous Epic will be when it comes to releasing new games.
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