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Fortnite dev Epic Games is launching a Steam rival, teases bigger reveal

Fortnite's success led to the announcement, with more details to come at The Game Awards.

Mike Sorrentino Senior Editor
Mike Sorrentino is a Senior Editor for Mobile, covering phones, texting apps and smartwatches -- obsessing about how we can make the most of them. Mike also keeps an eye out on the movie and toy industry, and outside of work enjoys biking and pizza making.
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Mike Sorrentino
2 min read
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CNET

Fortnite's developer is ready to battle Steam by building its own digital store.

Epic Games announced Tuesday that the Epic Games store is coming soon to PC and Mac, with eventual plans to also come to Android as well as other "open platforms" in 2019.

Epic Games says more information about the store will be revealed at The Game Awards on Thursday, but for now says the store will first launch with a curated set of games with plans to open up to more titles next year.

Developers will get to keep 88 percent of the revenue for a game sold at the store, with Epic taking the other 12 percent. The company will sweeten the deal for developers that are using Epic's Unreal Engine by covering the 5 percent engine royalty within that 12 percent.

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But games that aren't using the Unreal Engine are also encouraged to appear on the digital store. Developers will have full control of their game pages with no store-placed ads, cross-marketing of competing games or paid ads in search results.

Fortnite's success appears to be what has paved the way for Epic Games to launch this store, with the developer saying the game's store -- which sells outfits, emotes and other customizations -- has led to a fast system for making online payments.

"Because of the high volume of Fortnite transactions, we can process store payments, serve bandwidth, and support customers very efficiently," Epic Games said.

CNET has reached out to Epic Games for additional comment, and will update should we hear back.

Watch this: Fortnite on Android: How to download it safely