The new Epic First Run program gives participants the opportunity to boost their net revenue from user spending on eligible products from 88% to 100% in their first six months on the Epic Games Store. After their six-month run, participants will continue to benefit from Epic’s 88%/12% revenue split.
Honestly, I don't like EGS. Find their store pretty crap and the development on it has been extremely slow. And they are definitely not on the side of consumers. But, I have to respect the willingness to burn money as well as how sly they are.
What this program will try to achieve is simple. It will take off the burden of exclusivity deal from them. Now is an opt-in program, meaning that they didn't really reach out to any companies for exclusivities so they can be shielded from taking games out of other platforms even if it was already announced for them. At the same time, by making first-party sales an exception they also addressed the "Key issue" where Steam more or less gave the service free for developers that use their store. And they also made it clear that their target is not just Steam anymore. By including other services in the program, they are not only giving developers a good reason to skip Steam for at least 6 months. But also to skip Gamepass day one deals.
So it's really a genius move. Any harassment, rage or complaints will fall solely on the dev/publisher that checked the box. In a not-dissimilar way that we see happening with stuff like regional pricing. Meanwhile, the program is structured in a way, that even with bad PR it really makes sense for heavy hitters to adopt it. So we will likely see a lot more games going for those 6 months exclusive from large publishers (Ubisoft in particular should be jumping with joy) as well as successful Indies that already have a good number of fans.
It's kind of crazy more people aren't talking about this. The first 6 months of revenue for MOST games is where the VAST majority of the money comes from.
This will be HUGE for developers.