Steam is a f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c place for gamers, but it’s also a bit of a minefield. For every great niche game you find, there’s 50 terrible asset flips that have no business being sold for IRL money.
Valve has come under a lot of fire for its lackadaisical approach to what is and isn’t allowed onto the pages of Steam, but it seems this isn’t a mistake that Epic Games will be making.
The Epic Games Store is a relatively new addition to the PC gaming market, and with a tonne of very nice exclusives plus a free game every two weeks, it’s providing some serious competition for Steam.
In an interview with PCGamer, Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney explained what the company is planning to do to curb an influx of ‘bad’ games.
“The side of Epic that makes creative tools like the Unreal Engine available to everybody says that you can use our tools for creating anything that’s legal, and we have no creative say in it—we can’t veto, whether we find it controversial or tasteful or not,” Sweeney said.
“That applies to the Unreal Engine, because we see it like Microsoft Word. How insane would it be if Microsoft Word’s EULA said ‘you cant write this set of ideas in our word processing software?’ We don’t go there.”
He went on to say: “We’ll have a quality standard that doesn’t accept crappy games,
“We’ll accept reasonably good quality games, of any scale, whether small indie games to huge triple-A games, and we’ll take everything up to, like, an R-rated movie or an M-rated game.
“A GTA game would be fine to us, but Epic’s not going to distribute porn games or bloatware or asset flips, or any sort of thing that’s meant to shock players. The PC’s an open platform and if we don’t distribute it in our store you can still reach consumers directly.”
As for how Epic is going to achieve this, Sweeney didn’t give any clear indication. Surely Epic won’t be testing every single game that comes their way…?
Only time will tell!
Featured Image Credit: Epic Games.