Epic Games is opting to let developers decide which platform features they’d like to use on their listings on the Epic Games Store, rather than having everything required for all games across the board.
It’s the same approach company leadership has already said it’s taking toward game reviews on the Epic Games Store. According to tweets from Epic’s Sergey Galyonkin, developers will be able to opt into “almost all future sub-systems” on the Epic Games Store, such as achievements, unlocks, and even support tickets.
For developers, this means they’ll have an added level of control over what platform-specific resources their players will have access to through this particular channel. For example, Galyonkin says that the system ideally lets smaller devs use the Epic Store’s support ticket system while larger studios with their own support departments can just link to their own services instead.
As with the reviews story from last week, news of more opt-in features on the Epic Game Store have been met with mixed reactions on social media. For the most part, those against the system view it as Epic Games pushing the burden of community and support features to other platforms, as compared to the more centralized all-in-one store pages featured on Steam. But, as Galyonkin says later on in that same Twitter thread, the Epic Games Store isn’t trying to imitate Steam.
“But on a broader topic – Epic is not a better Steam,” says Galyonkin. “It’s built on different principles and while it will have some of Steam’s features, it doesn’t aim to mimic it.”