By now, most of you are familiar with Epic Games Store. If not, it’s only one of the biggest piece of news stemming from the PC gaming space.
Not only are they taking the battle to Steam, but the storefront seems to be caught in a love/ hate relationship with many of us. My issues with the storefront are due to the lack of many features that I feel that the Epic Games Store should have – cloud saves and reviews are the focus of my concern. Thankfully, according to the Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney, those features are coming.
In a recent tweet, Sweeney confirmed that the review system for the storefront is being worked on. Something that many fans have been asking for.
We’re working on a review system for the Epic Games store based on the existing one in the Unreal Engine marketplace. It will be opt-in by developers. We think this is best because review bombing and other gaming-the-system is a real problem.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) December 26, 2018
However, it also appears that Sweeney and company have been watching the uphill battle when it comes to game reviews on Steam. Review bombing has been a huge issue on the platform and while Valve has made strides to fix, review bombing is still heavily apparent. As such, when the reviews are live they will be opt-in for developers. Which seems like a valid choice, however, I feel that this could be misused as well. What if a game is released and it’s a complete waste of money and time. One that deserves bad reviews? A developer could simply decide to not allow reviews, leaving many to wonder if the game is worth it or not. Though I’m sure Epic Games has also thought of that.
We’ll just have to wait and see how this turns out. As it stands, Epic Games hasn’t provided any ETA on when we can expect to see this arrive. As for the game saves, they’re slated to be enabled Q2 2019. Even still, Epic Games has its work cut out when it comes to winning the hearts of PC gamers everywhere. With the 88%/12% revenue split and picking up some huge games, I think they’ll be fine. As for me, outside of the missing features, I’m still not sure what to think about the storefront.