Wait What? Epic has made some pretty daring moves since creating its own showcase: chasing exclusively a dozen people, firing on Steam with aggressively developer-compatible revenue actions, using Fortnite to bring the $ 1 billion tech companies to the courts. They are now moving away from the gaming bubble and have added the Spotify monolithic music streaming service to their platform today.
Not really. It’s right there, just below Hyper Scape.
It’s not a completely new move, and even Steam has been involved in other games from time to time. But they tend to be sets of creative tools or professional software packages, a little more niche than broadband streaming services like Spotify. Nor is it timely, as it sounds like Epic plans to bring more non-gaming apps to its store.
“Spotify is one of the first apps not to offer games on the Epic Games Store, and you can expect more in the future,” Epic wrote in a press release: “We will continue to work with partners to continue to grow the store’s offering for our players and create a more robust platform for developers “.
I would understand this movement more if, perhaps, it came with some kind of special integration. One way to easily hit background music on any Epic Games game you’re playing, or even just means sharing tunes with your peers. But as it stands, it doesn’t sell me at all the reason you download Spotify through Epic and not, for example, through its own website.
Of course, this move may be more for the good of Epic than for ours. By filling its store with more than just games, Epic is positioning itself towards platforms like Apple’s App Store or Google Play. While this still makes it a strange prospect for PCs, it aligns with Epic’s plans to bring Epic Store to mobile, creating an alternative store to those who are suing.
It should be noted that Spotify is a strange ideological choice for this first partnership. While Epic boss Tim Sweeney forever advocates the benefits of paying fairer shares to developers, Spotify has become notorious for paying artists hefty amounts per broadcast. Getting a name known as Spotify on Epic must have been tempting, however, enough for Epic to not even cut back on regular revenue by 12% of subscriptions made to its store.
Who knows. Maybe next year’s Spotify Wrapped will show you which artist you played the most during the Fortnight sessions. What a world it would be.