While Epic Games entered the gaming industry as a game developer, its success with Unreal in 1998 led to the company licensing out its game engine. Now about to launch its fifth iteration, Unreal Engine is one of the most popular and technically advanced game engines available today and is available through Epic’s own game launcher.
Also featuring Epic Games’ battle royale and cultural gaming phenomenon Fortnite, Epic’s launcher gave gamers an easily accessible way to play its titles. With Fortnite rapidly gaining popularity and driving users to Epic’s software, it decided to branch into the digital distribution market as well, launching the Epic Games Store in 2018. While the store was originally released with very few features compared to other storefronts like Steam, Epic Games has steadily been improving its marketplace.
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On August 19th, 2021, the Epic Games Store updated its client to version 12.2.14. With this update came a number of features to improve its user experience. Among these are a new mini-preview carousel which allows gamers to view thumbnails of media on a games’ page, clickable genre tags that givers users a way to search the store, and a redirect notice which informs users when they click on a link that will lead them away from the store. On top of these, the Epic Games Store now also features rounded corners and shows what games users are playing to their friends list.
Store page now uses Thumbnail Carousel for Trailer/Screenshot previews from
EpicGamesPC
These new updates and changes are uploaded to the EpicGamesPC Reddit by moderators. A list of the Epic Games Store’s recently shipped changes can also be found on the Epic Games Store Roadmap on Trello. This board also indicates what features the developer is looking to add in the future.
While Steam is still the king when it comes to digital storefronts, the Epic Games Store has made considerable headway since 2018. By only taking 12% of a game’s revenue versus the higher 30% taken from Steam, Epic has brought over numerous developers looking to maximize their profits. Some developers have even chosen to launch their games exclusively on Epic’s store, bypassing Steam altogether. In order to entice players to make the switch to their marketplace, Epic has also offered an extensive number of rotating free games on the Epic Games Store.
Store page was updated to use rounded corners from
EpicGamesPC
Of course, Steam still leads when it comes to the number of games on the platform and its long list of features like video streaming, remote play capabilities, and its useful big picture mode for controller use. Steam has been around since 2003, so it makes sense that it is currently a more mature platform. Still, the Epic Game Store is steadily improving and with Fortnite’s massive player base bringing more and more users to the platform, its further growth seems inevitable at this point.
MORE: Epic Games Store: Explaining the Free Games for August 19
Source: Epic Games