I notice that you can gain access to the Unreal Tournament tab in the Epic Games Launcher by simply logging into the UT forums. Very cool!
In developing my own game I have not found a great solution to distributing the client and incremental updates to testers. Valve’s steam is a bit too mature for the prototype stage I’m at and I’ve tried my hand at contributing to another member’s ‘LaunchPad’ project here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/show…-game-launcher . But I’ve found that creating a solid launcher is a full time job in and of itself! Between all of the work I’m trying to accomplish full time on my game I do not have the time to support what would be another project.
What do you think the chances are of Epic generalizing the ‘Unreal Tournament’ tab in the launcher to allow developers to submit/host their own games in development? You would have to have some sort of filter to prevent everyone from putting their project up (either a manual approval process or a simple $100 fee) but that would not be hard to solve. In the short term I think it would go a long way in helping developers get their games ready for a platform like Steam but in the long term it could mature into something that could offer all of the same services.
If that is not in the cards what do you think the chances are of Epic open sourcing the relevant portions of the launcher for developers to customize and host their own game/updates?
All of those games are sequels to games Valve bought from somebody else… they didn’t create the IP themselves. So I agree with The Brit… Valve only sells other peoples games. They are no longer a leader at anything game related beyond the marketing and sales of other peoples games.
Interesting suggestion and I would be all for an implementation of this feature/service, either that or this is a very good opportunity for someone from the community to jump in and make their own solution to offer to the public commercially or otherwise :rolleyes:
Something could happen in the future, but it would more likely be something where they could sell games in the marketplace or early access type stuff. It would cost them some amount to support that option so it would need more than like a $100 fee or something like that. Valve gets 30% from Steam stuff, so it would probably be similar to that.
Interesting - but I would rather Epic focus on engine features and bugfixing. In theory they only have to provide a working game packaging system once, then Steam or Desura or GoG already specializes in these distribution services, so why should Epic do this too?
