One of the biggest storylines in the gaming industry over the past year is how Epic is going after Steam with its own store and paying for exclusives. Now, Epic founder Tim Sweeney has offered some insight into why the company is pushing so hard. In a Twitter thread, Sweeney spoke about how Epic believes pursuing exclusives is the `only strategy` to change the current 70/30 revenue split between publishers and storefronts. The 70/30 model is considered to be the industry standard, with 70 percent of revenue going to developers/publishers and 30 percent to the storefront.However, Epic`s new Epic Games Store only takes 12 percent, giving 88 percent to publishers/developers. This makes the story theoretically more attractive, and on top of that, Epic is paying some studios to release their games as timed-exclusives.`We believe exclusives are the only strategy that will change the 70/30 status quo at a large enough scale to permanently affect the whole game industry,` Sweeney said.Sweeney went on to say that other independent games retailers have done `great work` in recent years, but none of them have been able to even hit 5 percent of Steam`s scale (outside of the stores run by huge gaming publishers). While Epic`s pursuit of exclusives might make the company unpopular with some subset of Steam users, the strategy of pursuing exclusives does work, Sweeney maintains. Sweeney went on to say that the 30 percent `store tax` can erase any profits a developer might see, which creates a `disastrous situation.` If the Epic Games Store can become No. 2 behind Steam, or if it can spur change on Steam with regards to its revenue split, the result would be a `major wave of reinvestment in game development and a lowering of costs,` he said.Ultimately, pursuing exclusives as Epic has done is a benefit to gamers in the long-run, according to Sweeney. It may not be easy to get to a new, better place, however. `There are LOTS of challenges along the way,` Sweeney admitted. You ca ...
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