Epic Games’ store has announced its own take on the Steam Summer Sale—the latest spoonful of Steam’s game-selling pie that Epic has shoveled directly into its mouth. The move comes over a month before Steam typically offers its famous Summer Sale.
The Epic Mega Sale, launched today, is discounting games up to 75 percent. Right now, Oxenfree, Transistor, Subnautica, The Witness, and What Remains of Edith Finch are selling for half to a quarter of their original prices. Slime Rancher and Super Meat Boy are just $5. Items that cost more than $15, like the Borderlands 3 preorder, are all getting at least $10 off.
The store smartly got ahead of Steam’s Summer Sale—that sacred time of the year when gamers splurge on several $5 or $10 PC games they’d been waiting to play or seem kind of cool. Last year’s Steam Summer sale gave 40 to 50 percent off on games like Terraria, Gorogoa and Ni No Kuni 2, and nearly 70 percent for Grand Theft Auto 5. The competing stores’ sales on indie games are similar. Steam last year offered big-interest indies like Firewatch and Undertale for $5. Yet because Steam has traditionally sold more big budget games like Nioh or Nier: Automata, a lot of users might be biding their time for June’s Steam’s Summer Sale and crossing their fingers.
Since the Epic Store launched late last year, it’s been making big waves in the PC gaming market without approximating Steam’s market share of games. Developers seem taken by the store’s promise to skim just 12 percent off games’ sales as opposed to Steam’s 30. Also, the Epic store has promised “a quality standard that doesn’t accept any crappy games,” citing “porngames or bloatware or asset flips”—a direct contrast to Steam’s “come as you are” approach to curation.
As the months went on, Epic locked down triple-A exclusives like Metro: Exodus, The Division 2 and Borderlands 3. Longtime Steam devotees have complained that moving over to the Epic store means leaving behind Steam’s whole ecosystem of communities, friend lists and other social features. Currently, the Epic store is barebones.
If its sale proves tempting enough, Epic might lure over more couple Steam stalwarts. Yet even as it rolls out its Epic Mega Sale, the Epic Games Store doesn’t have a shopping cart; so despite all the delightful price-slashings, it won’t be the same as stuffing a half-dozen wildcard games into your bag and hoping for the best.