It says on their website that they will open up the store to “all developers” at some point like Steam. But still after 2 years I don’t see how indie developers can submit a game to the store. Has anyone done this? I would like to get a piece of that 88% revenue share.
There’s a form at the end of this page: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/about
AFAIK they’re only letting big name indie games on it so far.
Epic says lots of things. From what I can see, Epic wants to remain a curated store. Much like Steam was prior to adding the Greenlight system. You submit for inclusion, and they decide if they want you in, where any standards really come down to what their opinion of your game is. I don’t expect that to change.
Opening up to all developers doesn’t necessarily mean they will allow every game in. All that might mean is all developers can submit games for judgement.
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Actually, they’re letting any kind of indie games. I see tons of indie games I don’t know and I would never care about 
It’s just not the automated App Store.
Really? I’ve only seen stuff that at worst are big name adjacent. Usually I know of the title, or the developer or the publisher, but maybe I haven’t browsed the store enough.
It’s because it’s not true unless you’re paying the least amount of attention possible to the indie game space. Pretty much everything on EGS is an award winner of some sort and/or being published by a boutique publisher like Devolver Digital.
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It would be better for us with attention to detail and quality if Steam didnt let in so much crap
Yeah that’s my impression as well.
I can promise you that, as somebody who has dealt with the pre-Greenlight process, the only reason it would be better for you is because you’d just have a desk job instead.
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You really don’t know what the process was like, huh? Lemme break it down for you.
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You send an email to your official Valve contact
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You don’t have an official Valve contact? Send an email off to the Steamworks email
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Okay, you don’t have an official Valve contact because you haven’t released a game on Steam, so you’re put in a queue. You will be in this queue for 3-6 months
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Do not send more than one email before you have an official Valve contact within 6 months
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Good, you have an in! Provided 6 months didn’t pass, at which point you might as well apply again because your application was either missed or part of a backlog purge
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Now that you have a contact, you’re ready to go through the initial approval process. This puts you on the track that will let you send them a game
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You’ve gotten approved. This swift and speedy process tends to take 2-4 weeks
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Spend about 1-7 days negotiating your release price
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Send your first build
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Wait about 1-2 weeks
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Your build was rejected because of a minor Steamworks API issue, you fix it and submit again
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Wait about 1-2 weeks
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Hooray! You’ve been approved to release on Steam. The store management sucks but it’s workable. Getting the page complete takes a few days
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Wait for the date that you designated as your earliest release date with Valve, at which point your game will release unless you’ve said “I need to push this back”
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I bet you thought we were done. Nope! It’s patch time. You submit an update to Valve
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Wait about 1-2 weeks unless you’re able to convince them this is an emergency update, which is rare
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Your game has updated
Do you have a game on Steam already? Good, then you have a working relationship already!
You get to skip all the way to start at step 8.
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And the best part was this was the only option for years that didn’t involve uploading a limited copy of your game to a server somewhere, hoping someone discovered it, downloaded it, played it, and decided they weren’t happy with just the limited copy and sent you a check for the full version.
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Shareware! Shareware sucked as a business model, but there were some indie gems that sadly I probably couldnt find anymore given they likely had like 20 purchases max and never uploaded it to the internet 
If you can remember some of the details I might be able to find them.
If you think Home Alone was shovelware then you haven’t played real shovelware.
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Both are just different decade 
edit: I played the shit out of home alone btw
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Ok so, most of the ones I used to play a lot I have been able to find, but there are 2 that elude me. One I care about finding as I actually want to play, one i just want to see for nostalgic reasons.
So the one I care about:
It was like a sidescroller with retro simple pixel graphics, and you were a robot that looked like some sort of R2-D2 or Dalek type thing. It had like doors you would go through to get to other bits, and there was areas with like aliens buried under the ground and other stuff. It was really interesting little open world thing, and I cant remember the name as it came on a big CD compilation of like 1000 shareware games (I miss those) but I have never been able to find it 
The second that I care less about was like a pokemon rip off where you were a wizard basically, was clearly made by 1 person but was pretty fun all things considered (but a bad game)
Neither of the above are “good” games so they probably might not have registered with people, but yeah if anyone knows the robot one or has suggestions what it could be I am all ears!
What Terminator 2 J.D. shovelware ?
I had to check if it is the same Terminator 2 with you using the bike to run from the truck…
The only problem with this game is it’s length.
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Ocean pumped out alot of games like these though But the VGA gfx and sounblaster sound was cool back in the day
edit: btw. did you play the The Terminator? It was probably one of the first open world games. It also had some very good looking VGA stills from the movie. And sound blaster support… Thogh the ingame vector gfx wasnt that nice
Was thinking that there couldn’t be that many games that fit that description… and there aren’t but it’s still more than I’d have thought there would be. I came across the following list on Mobygames and poked around it for a bit but quickly realized that I would be making more than just a few suggestions so it’d be better to give you the list.
https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/protagonist-robot/offset,350/so,1d/
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