The indie online storefront itch.io is coming as a downloadable app to the Epic Games Store.
Yes, you read that correctly. The digital storefront itch.io, a popular platform for distributing indie games of all shapes and sizes, is coming to a different storefron, along with a handful of other PC apps.
The addition will put itch.io in front of the Epic Game Store’s roughly 31.3 million active daily users and bring over 200,000 titles from itch.io to Epic’s customers.
“Itch.io is a collection of some of the most unique, interesting, and independent creations you’ll find on the web,” a representative from itch.io told Polygon via email. “Bringing the itch.io app to the Epic Games Store will give us an opportunity to widen the audience of people who can discover the diverse collection of indie works that we host.”
A representative from Epic Games confirmed details of how it works to Polygon. Basically, users will download itch.io on the store as they would any other app or game. Once it’s downloaded and you launch it, it’s it own thing. Epic will not take a percentage of sales of those games.
Currently, developers selling their games on itch.io get to choose what percentage of their sales go toward itch.io, meaning that creators could now get the exposure of all more users on a storefront that takes a lower cut of the sales. For comparison, Steam uses a tiered system where Valve takes between a 20% to 30% cut, depending on how much money a game makes, while the Epic Games Store takes 12 percent cut.
The move affirms the idea that the Epic Games Store is moving toward creating its own app store, rather than just sticking to games. Spotify came to Epic’s store late last year and was the first non-gaming app to arrive on the storefront. In addition to Itch.io, Epic’s store will also add iHeartRadio, open-source web browser Brace, 2D-to-3D modeling generator KenShape, and painting software Krita.
Itch.io and the other apps roll out on the Epic Games store today.
Source: https://www.polygon.com/22396021/itchio-epic-games-store-windows-pc-apps
