Steam has some new competition in the release of the EPIC store, which offers quite a bit better financial split that's more in favor of the developers. The deal is that devs get eighty eight percent of the money their games make. But on top of that, if you happen to be a developer using the Unreal Engine, Epic will pay for five percent of the cost of using that engine out of their twelve percent take. That's a pretty tempting deal to be sure. Hopefully they'll start seeing a big user base build up and EPIC will actually bring some real competition to Valve in the digital service market.
Discord is also jumping on the train with arguably, the best deal for devs (at least in terms of a pure revenue split), offering to take only ten percent of sales revenue.
GoG has already been around a few years and uses a DRM free platform. This is great but they don't really receive many new titles very often, so while the service is solid and uses some great curation, you may not see what you're looking for when you may be looking for it. GoG is hands down the place to go for classic titles though since they will make sure that all those vintage games are compatible with modern systems.
Personally, I've not used the EPIC store yet but I'm probably going to make an account because Subnautica is free this weekend and I hear it's pretty cool beans.
Anyway, What's Everyone Playing?
AJ: Mass Effect 2 and The Messenger (and Red Dead II).
Tru: Super Smash Brothers Ultimate… So much of that. More of Spyro Reignited Trilogy and perhaps jump into a new playthrough of L.A. Noire.
Yoda: Been really digging the Surge. But I think I may pick up Thronebreaker this weekend to spend some time back in the Witcher universe. I miss it :(
Greywolfe: hey! hey! did you kno- SHUT UP, NAVI! but seriously. did you know it's sierra december for all of this month with me? no. well. here's how it works: i take the sierra games i missed out on when they were current and play them through from end to end and see how they land. i just finished the absolutely terrible heart of china [that protagonist was awful] and am about to embark on conquests of the longbow, the robin hood game. i have a BAD feeling about this one too. strap in! other than that? not much.
Scrooloose: Still progressing in Mutant Year Zero. I finally feeling like I'm getting a leg up after beating my head against it over and over. Dead Cells is also still keeping me entertained quite a lot with it's excellent play style and sound track. And I'm still liberating planets in HellDivers with friends. Finally, if my new GPU ever ships out of Indiana, where it's been for 4 days now, I'll jump back in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.