Hi, i belive this is the most important topic before selling a game, so please read and comment, because remember that up to this point you already invested months, maybe years in development.
STEAM:
Steam has a lot of information about the process of selling, testimonies and an easy way to keep in contact, they have clear steps about the process here: Getting Started (Steamworks Documentation)
There is no need of having a Publisher at all, you simply create your store inside Steamworks, sign some paperwork including your Bank Account information and pay $100.00 for Dev Team to check your game, you have to wait 1 month for aproval and release, since the momment you pay till the momment you can actually release the game. The $100.00 paid are latter refunded after your game sells $1,000.00, this is when you start beeing paid all your money, during selling you can discount your game only once every 60 days, games with the most positive reviews chances will receive more exposure from Steam.
Steam comision: 30%: Taxes FAQ (Steamworks Documentation)
Big companies with already popular games and big budgets have a lower comission revenue because they may exclusively sell through Steam, Microsoft, Play Store, etc, they can negotiate comissions, it also depends on the country the company its located, but 30% is the top limit, from my understanding.
Video tutorial with Selling steps in english: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9cMYnddQMk
What hapens to your Steam account if you die: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHLFUbU5ceI
EPIC:
I tried to find an Epic customer´s chat, but found nothing… all Epic has its a support contact form, but they hardly answer. worst way of communication in my books: Epic Games Technical Support & Customer Service | Epic Games
Here comes the confusing part: As i already found information here and there, if your game sells $3,000 every 3 months, you pay to Epic a royalty of 5%, if after this 3 months, the next 3 months your game sells less, for example: $2,500, you pay nothing to Epic, you only pay if the game sells more than $3000 every 3 months, this means this is not an acumulative amounth…… from my understanding……, they calle it a “quarterly royalty”.
How you pay? …. don´t know really. Since the game is going to be sold at Steam, not sure how Unreal syncs with Steam to find out the exact ammounts to pay each quarter, here the royalty form: https://epicgames.formstack.com/forms/royalty_report
I could not find any Country, Bank account or insight about payments to Epic or email and how, all i know is you must include Unreal´s logo to the game, fill more payperwork and notify Epic. Release and Royalty Tracking Guidelines - Unreal Engine Before pay, each quarter (3 months) you discount the first $3000 and then you calculate the 5%, as an example of making 30k in a quarter the calculation goes:
($30,000 - $3,000) * 0.05 = $1,350 quarterly or $450 monthly (but remember you already paid 30% to Steam & this 5% its calculated from the original total amount of sales, so in reality it represent a bigger revenue than 5%, maybe even 15% making an aproximated total of 45% in revenues)
I tried to find a video tutorial to understand the whole process but could not find anything, so if you want to know how to do this, the only way is that someone that has done it before tells you the “real experience” and process of selling and paying.
I investigated my best before making this post, please share, comment and help the community!