It's raining money over at Epic Games and in a move unusual for today's world, they have decided not to hog it all for themselves. They have instead increased Unreal Engine marketplace sellers' sales cut from 70 per cent to 88 per cent.
Epic Games aren't a company to hold all the money for themselves, as they have proven this previously by shoving $100 million into Fortnite's esports in the debut year on the scene. The pay increase for the developers seems to be another step in that direction as CEO and founder, Tim Sweeney, cited Fortnite's enormous success as the reason for increasing the marketplace sellers' cut by additional 18 per cent.
This is by no means a small jump in sellers' revenue, especially considering that the previously agreed upon 70 per cent is the industry standard. On top of it, this revenue increase will apply to all marketplace sales and will even apply retroactively. How far into the past you ask? To the very beginning. All sales conducted between store's launch in 2014 will net additional 18 per cent of the product's price in any given transaction to the developer, retroactively.
According to Sweeney, Epic Games' volume of digital commerce has vastly increased thanks to both Fortnite's sky high popularity and Unreal Engine marketplace's growth. He was also rather transparent, as he didn't deny that Epic Games are still receiving hefty amounts of money, regardless of the money they are literally giving out with this move.
It is incredibly odd to write an article about a game developer or publisher actually behaving ethically or even outright generously in 2018, but there it is folks. All those $20 outfit purchases in Fortnite now seem to be money well invested, as a fair portion of it is circulating back to the community, one way or another.
Epic Games
One might still consider all of this spare change, since Fortnite in June 2018, but then again, we don't really see EA or Bluehole pulling any of these moves or even offering up such prize pools for esports.
