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Fortnite developers and game company Epic Games has released their Steam-like platform, Epic Games Store. The store features many games from other developers as well, so it is not an exclusive platform for Epic Games alone, unlike Origin or Bethesda Launcher.
Epic Games Store seems to be a new competitor to Valve's Steam. When a game is purchased, Steam takes a 30% cut and gives the game developers a 70% cut. Epic Games is offering game developers an 88% cut, only taking 12% for themselves. This is pretty big and now game developers may seriously start to reconsider which platform they want to distribute their game.
To give players incentive to start using their store, Epic Games Store is offering popular games such as Subanautica and Super Meat Boy for free. Subnautica, an open world survival game which gained massive popularity, will be free from Dec 14th to Dec 27th. Super Meat Boy will be free from Dec 28th to Jan 10th. Subnautica will also be available in VR.
Epic Games has already started distributing games from developers. Some examples are Hades by Supergiant Games, Ashen by Annapurna/A44, and Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek by tinyBuild.
Whether this will outperform Steam is still too early to tell, with the Epic Games Store lacking a user review page as well as forums which Steam has had for years already. The UI and design is not nearly as engaging as Steam's is either. They also lack a Search function, which is pretty basic. Their biggest selling point is that Epic Games will be funding free releases throughout 2019 and adding new games of different genres.
It is still unclear whether these are "free weeks" temporarily or if they are giving away the games for free, forever. Steam did something similar for Portal in 2010, but we have yet to see the extent of their free giveaways.
