Epic Games just announced that it will allow its users to create games for the Epic Games Store. Valve also currently allows users to create their own games, but Epic’s self-publishing requirements are slightly different.
For the most part, Epic allows users to make what they want, with two exceptions. The first rule is that no pornography is allowed in the game, and second, if you’re making a multiplayer game, it must be playable on other PC stores.
On the other hand, Valve doesn’t require multiplayer to play on other PC platforms, and Steamworks, the free Steam multiplayer API, is only available on Valve’s digital storefront.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney sharply criticized the decision PC Gamerexplain “Steam is causing real problems for Steamworks’ industry”.
“They have a classic lock-in strategy where they build these services that only work on their store, and they use the fact that they have a majority of the market share to encourage everyone to release games that don’t work well on other stores,” he explained. “We were plagued by a lot of multiplayer games in the Epic Games store very early on. Steamworks didn’t work on our store, so they either had a reduced set of multiplayer features, didn’t have them, or when the Epic Games store launched Restricted to a much smaller audience, so you have a lot of multiplayer games that really feel like they’re broken.
Despite these criticisms, Steam is still very popular, but with Epic now offering self-publishing tools, perhaps there will be some migration.