PC gamers accustomed to the literally thousands of new games that flood Steam every year may be surprised that Epic is launching its recently announced Game Store tonight with just three third-party titles. A small handful more are listed as "coming soon."
As part of tonight's Game Awards presentation, Epic announced three new games that are currently available through the Epic Games Store interface:
- Ashen (A44 and Annapurna Interactive)
- Hades (Supergiant Games)
- Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek (tinyBuild)
Three other games will be coming to the service before the end of the month, Epic said, including a couple that will be free on the service for a limited time (the store page itself says that it will offer a new free game to customers every two weeks):
- Darksiders III – coming Dec. 14 (Gunfire Games/THQ Nordic)
- Subnautica – coming Dec. 14 (Unknown Worlds – free through Dec. 27)
- Super Meat Boy coming Dec. 28 (Team Meat – free through Jan. 10)
A handful of other titles were announced as "coming soon":
- Genesis Alpha One (Radiation Blue/Team 17)
- Journey (thatgamecompany/Annapurna Interactive)
- Maneater (Tripwire Interactive)
- Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive)
- Pathless (Giant Squid Studios)
- Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (Double Damage Games)
- Satisfactory (Coffee Stain Studios)
- Super Meat Boy Forever (Team Meat)
- World War Z (Saber Interactive)
While many of these games will be (or already are) sold on Steam, the developers will get 88 percent of the total revenue when the games are purchased on the Epic Games Store rather than the standard 70 percent they get through Valve's marketplace. Developers using the Unreal Engine also don't have to pay the usual 5 percent royalty fee when selling with Epic.
Epic has said its "hand-curated" store will "start small" before opening up more broadly in 2019. Epic co-founder and CEO Tim Sweeney told Ars the approval process for the store will "mostly focus on the technical side of things and general quality" with the only content-based restrictions being on "adult-only content."
If this initial list of titles doesn't convince you to try out Epic's new storefront, remember too that PC and Mac versions of Epic-developed titles like Fortnite will also be exclusive to the Epic Games Store. That alone should ensure that millions of potential players are exposed to these and any other games that make it over to Epic's service.
[contf] [contfnew] 
Ars Technica
[contfnewc] [contfnewc]
