By: Jared Stranberg
Recently, controversy arose from several high-profile games being released on the Epic Games store for PC, instead of the older and more popular game store Steam. The newest additions to the Metro and Division series along with Obsidian’s “The Outer Worlds” have chosen Epic Games.
Many people suspect money as the primary motivator, and with good reason. According to Venturebeat, developers could lose up to 35 percent of their profits when publishing through Steam, depending on which game engine was used to develop the game. Meanwhile the Epic Games store takes only 12 percent of profits from developers. Sounds like a good deal, right?
As a part time independent game developer and supervisor of the Creative Production Lab here at UNO, Charles Fisher admits that he has been tempted to take Epic’s offer.
“We’ve been investigating what Epic has been offering the last few months and they’re making very enticing call to move over to Unreal engine as a development platform and the Epic Store as a whole. The issue with it being from a developer standpoint is that everything we make is theirs. We step into the garden, but the garden closes the doors behind us.”
Charles Fisher also said that Epic Games is offering grants up to $1 million to have indie developers create games and let Epic own them for five years.
Epic’s reach extends beyond developers, however, as we find in the terms of service agreement for the Epic Games launcher. Under the section labeled “User Generated Content” (UGC) we find that Epic lays claim to anything and everything that users generate through the game store and they reserve the right to use or profit from it however they want without any obligation to the creator. Additionally, creators are not allowed to make any content that would prevent Epic from exercising this right. One final note from this section is that Epic reserves all rights to profit from UGC using both current and future methods that haven’t been invented yet.
This is compared to Steam’s UGC agreement, which states that they can display your content as they see fit but are restricted to content uploaded to the Steam store. Epic Games, however, worded it in such a fashion that they could lay claim to something like a YouTube video or a streamer playing a game acquired through Epic’s store.
Regarding consumer-friendly design, Epic seems to be significantly behind their competition. This comparison done by PCGamer shows all the features Steam has and what Epic still lacks.
Secrecy also seems to surround Epic Game’s agreements with developers, as Fisher said, “With Epic, they haven’t released many details unless you buy into the agreement. You’d probably have to ask somebody who has already developed an Unreal Engine based game and published it through Epic to see what the actual agreements are because people that are in it are very tight-lipped. I think they’re pushing [Non-disclosure agreements] for the terms of the agreement.”
Regarding rumors that Epic Games is “Chinese spyware,” Fisher believes that the rumors are hyperbole. Fisher said: “The whole games industry right now, and capitalism as a general prospect is based on data aggregation. They are just very open and at the same time not very open about their partnership with specific Chinese firms.”
Even though most modern companies use data aggregation, I still am wary of Epic Games collecting our data. Since their parent company is Tencent, who is known to assist the Chinese government in spying on its own citizens, I can’t help but question the likelihood of American data ending up in the hands of a potentially hostile foreign government.
Whether or not we see problems with data being sold to foreign governments soon, I believe the evidence is clear that Epic is both inferior and less trustworthy compared to Steam. Epic has much to improve in both their store design and their business practices before I would even consider trusting them. If you agree, vote with your wallet and don’t purchase their products.
