Boy, hope that one holds up.
It’s really no secret that Steam has had their fair share of curation troubles. Early on, they dealt with it on a case by case basis. Then, Greenlight, which became a mess of its own. And eventually, they got to the state of openness we find them at now; for good or ill.
The Epic Store is currently in the same place as Steam was way back when, negotiating deals one by one. And while they do have plans to expand, they won’t be taking Valve’s hands-off approach. From an interview with PC Gamer, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney had some insight:
“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,” he 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.”
When it comes to what Epic itself puts into the world via the Epic Games Store, however, Sweeney said that Epic will apply quality standards “similar to what a movie theater might apply as to what movies they show.”
The PC’s an open platform and if we don’t distribute it in our store you can still reach consumers directly.
“We’ll have a quality standard that doesn’t accept crappy games,” he said. “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.”
“We’re not going to have something like the console certification process involved in releasing a game,” said Sweeney when I asked how Epic would apply this quality standard. “But I think we’ll be aware of the quality of what’s submitted prior to making a decision to list it in the store—somehow.
He added:
Humans can make those judgment calls, and they’ll be pretty reasonable.
On the one hand, this makes some sense. Steam’s spent years trying to decide what is the best form of game curation for the platform. And it has meant that, over time, a lot of chaff has been mixed in with the wheat. On the other hand, expanding your acceptance with a manual review process will quickly become a nightmare; that’s likely why Valve stopped doing that and tried other methods. for argument’s sake, let’s imagine Steam might put up, say, 3 or so new games a day. That may not seem like much, but manually reviewing 3 games a day would take a much larger staff than you’d think.
And while it’s reasonable to not allow porn games on your platform, finding a means of review that works for the platform should be priority number 1. It’s not going to stay this way forever, especially if Epic’s store grows exponentially.
Source: PC Gamer
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