Hi, Since our publishing background experience is primarily on console (Playstation, Nintendo Switch), Steam for PC (were reviewing process is about 1 month) and Microsoft (Less than a month, lots of communication and excitement). We are now surprised and wondering how long it takes to review-approve a game on the EGS (self publishing)? a brand new store, allowing self publishing since 2021 and growing fast.
Our experience: We submitted an application with one of our first indie projects in January 2022, a cool indie space game concept that we edited specifically for the Epic Store community, with multiple laguages and great quality, and we are still waiting for any response from Epic, at this point (7 months of review) we think it might be a simple: No, and we would understand it, because it’s an Indie project with an small team behind it; but, we have publisher offers, even from before our application was submitted and they are already putting pressure on us to decide what to do, whether to go console exclusively or keep waiting for an answer from Epic.
So we are wondering if any of you already has experience releasing an indie game on the Epic Games Store, so people like us have an idea of ​​what to expect, how long this process takes, if a review that takes this long is a good sign or a bad sign and if you get feedback suggestions during this process, so if approved, we can improve-edit our projects before release, like most other stores do, they guide you with fast communication and give you support in the process.
Please share your experiences, just to get a general overview of what to expect in the most positive way to help our community.
Our intention is to reach the Epic community, we have a lot of time in development, we feel welcome even in the forums and we understand the EGS segment; but, we have proposals, one is exclusive to console (PS, Switch and Xbox), another is exclusive to Switch, a third is in talks, and we still wanted to try with Epic after checking that they did have a few indie games, but now it’s a real pressure to keep waiting, just to give you an idea of ​​how long it’s been since we applied in January, right now we’re already in the early stages of production on another project for PS and we’ve finished pre-production.
Great to hear from you! and know that we are not the only ones with this issue.
I think now I have a “clue” as to why reviews take so long, I think the EGS may have a very long list of pre-requisites (probably 50+) and you don’t get them in advance, which could cause delays and your project to fail, only because you didn’t know what was expected, very different from other PC stores, for example at Microsoft (XBOX), they just play the game and have constant email communication, the mood is like they get very excited to get in touch with developers and friendly, more fans than officials LOL; on Steam they play your game 1 time (never more than I know), and if they find no bugs, controls work correctly (very important) and the game is fun (any style) they give you the green light, once we had an approved game in 7 days from the date of submission, and we only get “suggestions”, for example, if the menu button is not mapped, but… they still approved it, I guess they trust developers to make the edits before release, of course in case they are small details, but then, you do have a lot of time before release date to polish them and you need that time to create the achievements, sometimes you get great suggestions.