Epic Games is redesigning its store by overhauling its layout and adding user reviews, gifting, and other basic features over a period of time.
Sergey Galyonkin, Epic Game Store's director of publishing strategy, announced the planned changes on its store during a talk at the Game Developers Conference on Thursday, March 21.
Galyonkin also discussed the store's core values at the conference which, he said, include a fair share for all creators including game developers, influencers, and modders. He also mentioned about privacy consciousness which includes no third-party trackers and curation by people, not algorithms.
Cloud Saving, Other New Features To Expect
Aside from the renovation, the growing digital PC store will also introduce a cloud saving and installment management features The sizes of its DLC and patches will also improve in the next three months. The store will also see the addition of developer opt-in user reviews in the next four to six months.
The Epic Games Store will further add achievements, a loyalty program, multi-game sales, and a social overhaul. Other new features that Epic Games intends to add to its store but are not mentioned in the timeline include gifting, automated refunds, and additional support for more languages. These features may become available sooner or later than the ones mentioned above.
The company is also figuring out ways to avert review bombing and add mod support, news feeds, as well as a bundle price adjustments. These are all extremely important features for a digital store but currently unavailable from the Epic Games Store.
Epic Games Store User Base
There are 85 million people who are using the Epic Game Store on PC, according to Galyonkin. He based it from two surveys that Epic conducted of its users, where he noted that 40 percent do not have Steam and 68 percent do not use Steam regularly.
Galyonkin also said that there are 55,000 registered creators on Epic Games Store and there are 41 million players supporting creators. Since its store launched in late 2018, it has released more than 20 great games, with more superb titles in its pipeline.
Epic Games has successfully entered into partnerships with publishers such as Ubisoft and most recently, with Private Division in the exclusive distribution of the highly anticipated Obsidian Entertainment sci-fi role-playing game, The Outer Worlds,
